Vuze Study Exposes P2P Throttling By Canadian ISP Cogeco

urbanriot writes "Despite a growing number of complaints on the popular North American consumer broadband site BroadbandReports, employees working for the Canadian cable internet provider Cogeco have publicly denied interfering with torrents on their network. However, a recent plugin put out by the Vuze team exposed Cogeco of being the second worst ISP globally, of those tested. So far, Cogeco has failed to respond to these findings, but recent coverage from the mainstream media and Michael Geist may prompt them to finally admit to their controversial practices." The report by the Vuze team has some interesting information about other ISPs from around the world as well. Prior to this, Bell Canada was taking most of the flak in Canada for traffic management.

Comments

this is why we need competition

[timmarhy]

no monopolys or duopoloys - real competition.

Re:this is why we need competition

[WK2]

Competition doesn't do much good when the ISPs are allowed to lie. Some good, yes, but in order for competition to do it's thing, users need to be well-informed before they purchase.

Re:this is why we need competition

[Jurily]

Yes, it has. Hence the need for anti-trust laws.

Re:this is why we need competition

[erroneus]

Without question. If fact, I would go so far as to say that there should be laws written about infrastructure ownership.

We, the people, should own ALL things "infrastructure" and allow companies to use it for providing services. AT&T can't be allowed to own the wires and switches any longer. Comcast can't be allowed to own the cables any longer. And rather like patents and copyrights, these monopolies should be allowed for only a specified amount of time but should not exceed the time it takes to recoup the costs of building the infrastructure. After that, they lose their monopoly. (And to add incentive to these parties, they can extend their temporary monopolies any time they upgrade the infrastructure...say by putting fiber at EVERY door.)

They have gotten away with cherry picking and raising prices without improving services for far too long. Their regional monopolies demonstrably harm the consumer. I find it amazing what they have been getting away with.

Re:this is why we need competition

[erroneus]

Infrastructure are the vehicles by which services are traveled or transmitted. This would include the roads, railways, air space, the power lines, the pipes and sewers, phone lines, cell towers, radio frequencies or anything along those lines.

"Healthcare" is not even remotely within that description. Land ownership is even further removed.

The prevention of ownership of infrastructure *IS* a pro choice move. It allows multiple service providers to compete across the same media offering "pro-choice" to the consumer. Regional monopolies are still monopolies and cases of abuse are frequent. I'm not talking about socialized services. Only publicly owned infrastructure. The Public Utilities Commissions which were created to prevent the need for public ownership of infrastructure has failed in its mission where it has permitted cherry picking and inconsistent levels of service. There are places in Texas and all across the U.S. that still have no water and no power, forget about broadband internet access and cell phone coverage.

Re:this is why we need competition

[mmurphy000]

I know you're thinking "cables", but could it also mean the healthcare system?

A neighborhood can only have so many buried cables before they start conflicting with each other, with water/sewer/gas lines, etc., particularly since each cable must reach each house. Talk to a civil engineer sometime about the royal PITA known as "Miss Utility" or "OneCall" or the equivalent.

The same neighborhood can have many healthcare providers without similar conflicts. Healthcare is far less a natural monopoly than is sewer service, or roads, or cables.

It is a wiser course to pursue a "pro-choice" position that seeks to provide multiple choices, and places the power of decision in the hands of the citizen. i.e. A policy that empowers the individual.

In the abstract, you'll get no complaints from me. The question, though, is where the competition lies. Just because some portion of the service is community-owned (e.g., roads) doesn't preclude competition at other levels (e.g., package delivery services). Just because the city owns the water and sewer lines doesn't preclude competition among Roto-Rooter and similar home plumbing franchises. Similarly, just because a town decides to own the physical cabling would not preclude competition among firms wishing to use said cabling to provide communication services.

Re:this is why we need competition

[CastrTroy]

Itunes replaced the CD cartel

I don't know why people love iTunes so much. Personally I think it's just as bad, if not worse than the CD cartel ever was. At least when I bought a CD, I owned it, and could copy it for personal use however I pleased. With MS shutting down shop for music sales, and cutting access to DRM keys, you would think that people would realize just how bad of a situation DRM music puts us in. Sure iTunes has some stuff that's DRM free, but the vast majority of it still has DRM. Online music sales (like the CD before it) was supposed to make things a lot cheaper. On iTunes, it still costs $10 an album, and you don't even get a physical product. CDs were only moderately more expensive. At least where I live. I like eMusic, because even though I'm bound to paying my $15 every month, I know I'm only paying $0.30 cents per track. Which I think is a much more fair price when you don't receive an actual physical product. And you can also redownload your music in the case where it was lost. I would probably spend $15 anyway on music. Better I get 50 tracks than 15. I have to admit, I do miss some of the bigger name bands, and wish that their music was available through better means, but I just can't justify paying $1.00 for a track. It just seems like a complete ripoff.

Keep pushing.

[Thanshin]

I wonder what will businessmen of the future think when they read about how full encryption came to be, taking into account it's speed and complexity problems.

Bad ISPs

[daydr3am3r]

For those who are bored to RTFA and dig through its links, there is a handy Bad ISPs list maintained by the Azureus team.
That being said, there are many ISPs who also do p2p traffic caching, which is not inherently a bad thing. Certain block lists consider those wrongfully malicious as well.

Cogeco response

[wrook]

The CBC has a decent article where they contacted Cogeco. They claim not to use false resets. They also say that they haven't received the letter from Vuze yet.

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/04/22/tech-vuze.html

I'm not sure if I believe them or not. When I lived in Ottawa last year I had friends using Cogeco. Some people had no problems at all with bittorrent while others couldn't use it. It's hard for me to tell if they are blocking some of their customers, or if my friends just couldn't figure out how to set it up.

False advertising?

[fastest fascist]

It seems to me that when an ISP states they do not throttle traffic and secretly do so anyway, they are giving their customers a false representation of the product they sell. Probably their EULA gives them the right to throttle traffic, but does it give them the right to lie about it?

I believe traffic shaping is ok...

[graymocker]

... when it's transparent and disclosed. If ISPs believe that traffic shaping is a legitimate cost management solution that most customers wouldn't mind, then fine, make the legitimate case: use traffic shaping and disclose the existence of traffic shaping in your plans the same way maximum bandwidth is disclosed, and we'll let the market decide. Personally, I believe that enough customers wouldn't mind traffic shaping, bandwidth throttling and caps, etc. that in the future we might see different priced "tiers" of internet service, which is fine with me as that would make service pricing more representative of internet use. My ISP wants to bandwidth cap my internet service? Fine, if they disclose these caps at the time that I sign up. Then I'd be free to negotiate with another provider or sign up for a better plan. It's the fact that ISPs today advertise one thing and then deliver another that's truly offensive.

The sneaky underhanded meddling with the service of customers that have existing contracts just undermines the ISPs' case and suggests to regulators and customers that they aren't interested in honestly selling a service.