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Bell Canada Official Speaks Out On Throttling
westcoaster004 brings to our attention an interview with Mirko Bibic, head of regulatory affairs for Bell Canada, discussing the ISP's traffic-shaping practices. This follows news we discussed recently that a class action lawsuit was filed against Bell for their involvement in traffic shaping. Bibic reiterates that internet congestion is a real problem and claims that the throttling had nothing to do with Bell's new video service. CBC News quotes him saying:
"If no measures were taken, then 700,000 customers would have been affected by congestions during peak periods. We want to obviously take steps to make sure that doesn't happen. So this network management is, as we've stated, one of the ways to address the issue of congestion during peak periods. At the end of the day, the wholesale ISPs are our customers and we generate revenue [from them], so we want to make sure we're serving them to the best of our ability as well."
Excuses.
Anyone else get a bunch of JavaScript errors form the CBC.ca site?... (Opera 9.27, XP, JavaJRE 6U6)
Damn Canadians! (Note: I am one)
Someone who pays for health insurance, and happens to be chronicaly ill, shouldn't be put on the slow lane just because it costs more to treat him. Same goes for P2P traffic, don't discriminate me bro.
s. We want to obviously take steps to make sure that doesn't happen.
Oh yeah? Then add more bandwidth. Problem solved. Delivering as advertised is not a value added service!
This is just the same excuse that other telcos are giving for overselling their bandwidth vs their customers needs. These telcos need to learn how to provide enough bandwidth for peak times if that is what they're selling. If someone were to pick up a telephone at peak times and get an all circuits are busy message regularly during peak hours than there would be hell to pay.
We need to stop letting them get away with selling service to us that they cannot provide. As consumers we need to look towards other providers and build a market for service providers that don't pull these kinds of games. We also need to make it clear to these companies that their selling us services they cannot deliver is not acceptable to us. The only way they will ever get that message is through their subscriber numbers. As long as the big telcos and ISPs have the bulk of the customers they will never see the light until an exodus towards alternatives starts.
The only way that an exodus towards alternatives will occur is if we the people move in that direction and help the smaller companies build themselves up by moving to them.
This is all about overselling which has to be done to a certain extent but when the peak times cannot regularly be met then it is too oversold. Unfortunately consumers these days are sheep and will stay with these companies because they are cheaper/easier to get service from.
If they were serious about addressing congestion, they'd prioritize traffic flows and be done with it. I don't think anyone would have a problem with putting P2P at a lower priority to HTTP. Of course, that doesn't help their master plan of billing content providers for tiered service, so they don't do it.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Then tell all the big site owners to cut out all the tube clogging, virus riddled advertisements. Or charge them extra for it.
What?
This is what happens when ISPs sell customers more capacity than they can deliver. They should lose this because they promised a product they couldn't deliver and that's fraud.
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
Don't sell more bandwith than you have!
Easy as that.
From the article:
"...we can't predict what new application is going to come along, what capacity that's going to consume..."
I can help. Add up all the bandwidth sold to all the customers, and you have a prediction for the total peak bandwidth required!
I wonder if they will give me a job.
If all the big service providers invested more profits into increasing infrastructure instead of giving shareholders, board members, and CEO's another 1.5M dollar raise this year, they wouldn't have to throttle back the bulk of their customers, the lowly single user. As happens elsewhere, big business gets the gravy while we get what's left on the bone, thrown, without a though of consequence, to their diamond and gold encrusted loafers.
Bell started throttling my connection, so I switched to Teksavvy. Unfortunately Bell controls the wires so my connection is still being throttled. It's regrettable that Bell still gets some of my money, as Teksavvy has to buy its bandwidth from Bell, but they're getting less of it. As a bonus, the exact same internet service is cheaper from Teksavvy than from Bell. If enough people would switch, Bell might change its policy.
Also in today's news, Bell's Canada spokesman Bibic said that internet congestion is a real problem and claims that the throttling had nothing to do with [b]Bell's new video service[/b].
Read radical news here
If other protocols were impeded, soon, all P2P would look like HTTP.
I am a customer of Sympatico Bell, and I can assure you that, unlike what the interviewee would make you believe, traffic is throttled all day, every day. I don't use bittorrent too often, but whenever I start a download, it goes from ~500 KiB/s to ~30 KiB/s within the span of two minutes. The speed stays the same overnight. Not exactly a peak period... Sad thing is, I'm using Cogeco for the summer, and they're even worst, uploads are pretty much completely blocked. :(
Ok, so they need to manage "congestion", so why is it a hard cap of 30 KB/s on downstream instead of say 100 KB/s?
And this DOES have something to do with their video site, you're launching a bandwidth intensive application which will be used during prime "congestion" hours. Disgraceful.
Look at the Bell provided graphs:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r20567537-
Their ATM capacity is around 170 Gbit/s and their backbone traffic is around 125Gbit/s. They have 45Gbit of spare capacity and this is Bell's own numbers so who knows if they're inflated or not. Also, their DSLAM capacity is enormous so where exactly is the congestion? Maybe there are some DSLAMs that are congested but that's why you upgrade, not throttle your entire network and all 3rd party traffic over the ATM network.
I believe them.
The problem is, how will we ever know whether or not a particular provider is throttling traffic in a fair and neutral way for the overall benefit of its customers... or whether it is cutting deals to favor business partners... or certain industry segments (the RIAA and MPAA come to mind)... or even political parties?
If common carriers are allowed to do this, how will we know when they stop serving the public and start serving themselves... and how will we able to stop them?
They've chosen to solve their problem in a cheapjack, lazy, sloppy way that virtually guarantees future abuse.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I think bell canada has really shot itself in the foot with this one. If they are complaining that their lines are saturated they should install more infrastructure. Someone else pointed out that Europe has many countries with a larger population that have moved towards net neutrality without any infrastructure or network congestion issues. Seeing as bell has started throttling the service to customers who have already paid for a certain amount of data, they are in fact not delivering on their promise of providing said data. I was happily surprised by the insightful remarks on the cbc interview with Mr Mirko Bibic from bell. The full article can be found here http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/05/30/tech-qandabibic.html. Most consumers seem to have seen through his marketing speak. With the lawsuit from the consumer rights group and the government motion to move towards net neutrality it`s starting to look like Bell`s excuse for throttling is going to be what galvanizes Canadians towards net neutrality.
"Bell started throttling my connection, so I switched to Teksavvy. Unfortunately Bell controls the wires so my connection is still being throttled."
Looks like win-win for Bell. The get most of the revenues, and don't have to provide internet backbone bandwidth or tech support, they can now mess with your connection and don't even have to listen to you complain.
Bell gets about $20 out of $30 for just providing the throttled last mile. $30 out of $40 if you are on Dry DSL. So Bell gets to keep most of the money and they reduce over-head. I don't think they are going to be defeated by this.
I am with Vianet and being Bell throttled. I am canceling all Bell services (third party DSL, landline and long distance) and moving to Cable + VOIP.
I am actually denying Bell every penny of revenue they get from me. I will also tell them exactly why they are losing a long term customer and all associated revenues.
What do you mean by "impeded"? I'm not advocating blocking anything in the slightest. However, you can prioritize highly interactive traffic (IM, HTTP, SSH) over bulk data like FTP or P2P transfers. This lets all the packets through, but doesn't make browsing impossible just because a tenth of an ISP's customers are downloading screengrabs of the new Indiana Jones.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
In typical style bell lies through their teeth.
Depending on where you are there are alternatives, such a cable internet. There are issues there too, such as the maximum amount of data you are allowed to download. Videotron, for example limits to 20GB download and 10GB upload on most packages - you have to look at the small print to find this out.
One thing is worth noting is that nowhere in the conditions applied by Bell is there anything indicating throttling. If it is there I can't find it.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
People understand how to conserve resources when it directly affects their economic well-being. (Witness unsold SUVs stacking up at car dealerships.) If ISPs are running out of bandwidth, then they need to charge people in a way that more directly relates to their use.
Bill per GB, and set peak and non-peak rates. Be transparent about it though. People should be able to see how much they have used at any time, receive alerts when they cross some preprogrammed levels, and even choose to throttle themselves down when they cross a certain number of GB per month, or just during peak hours.
Make people responsible for their usage, and give them the tools to monitor/control it, and you'll find this problem will fix itself.
Yeah, thats how my ISP (claims) to handle it to...
DL 5MB/UL 512KB
But it throttles that 5MB seemingly randomly, ocasionally I can get up to 600k/s download (using BT, HTTP, FTP, etc doesnt matter) other times 15k/s... noon, midnight, weekday, weekend doesnt matter... and 2 or 3 times a week, it just shuts down entirely for about 3 hours somewhere between 9PM and 9AM...
So i assume one of two things.
1. they don't know what they are doing.
2. they most likely dont know what they are doing.
They behave like an infected computer... unless their hardware is constantly dying, inwhich case see assumption 1. or 2.
We've seen this. Every single day, the ILECs pour a lot of money into improvements. The spend the money on
... Ok, well isn't that ENOUGH!?!?
1. Lobbyists
2. Campaign contributions
3.
4. Oh, ok, a few bucks now and then on basic improvements in areas where they can DEFINITELY get a profit on them in the short term.
Now, that all works very, VERY well to improve the company. The profit margins of the company, that is.
But the Incumbent local exchange carrier companies (the ILECs -- other wise known as TPC) in North America have spent so much money on discouraging competition through regulation that they have made their own business very expensive to run. They also have policies going back to the late 1800s of treating jobs as cogs in a machine with replaceable parts, so their labor relations are geared towards replaceability and strike-resilience. It's very inefficient.
And in a business where things can be automated up to wazoo, the ILECs are hamstrung by unions and their own evil need to have huge headcounts so that their lobbyists can pressure their unions to pressure the politicians to do as their lobbyists demand. Need for headcount reduces desire for automation.
You want more bandwidth? Push for campaign finance reform. Whenever you hear ANYTHING that a local ILEC wants from a politician, call your local reps and tell them you wont vote for them again if they vote for what the ILEC wants. Then, after any election, whether your anti-candidate wins or loses, call them and tell them that they didn't get YOUR vote because they voted with the ILEC.
Only by removing the best business model the ILECs have (preserving the status quo and gaming our democracy) will you get ILECs which listen to customers.
I think that while Bell may likely win the battle at the CRTC, they have fallen far behind in the PR battle, and are scrambling to catch up.
/. reading, torrent downloading geek friends, but from all manner of non-tech-savvy friends, family and clients. Any and all net problems are now attributed to Bell:
Since the traffic shaping controversy began, I've been surprised by the number of negative (towards Bell) comments I've heard about it. Not just from my
A website is slow -- is this that Bell 'throttling' I've been hearing about?
A (sketchy) website in China is down -- Bell
The internal university network is slow today -- Bell
Skype is unreliable -- Bell
my VOIP is saying 'all circuits are busy' -- aargh. Bell
My DSL connection was down -- Bell's really throttling my internet now!
I hear these things and have to laugh. I think Bell's really shot themselves in the foot when it comes to customer perception and mind-share.
... BUT, truth in advertising laws should kick in. They should only be allowed to advertise their DSL service at the lowest throttling speed. So if you buy service X that throttles protocol Y down to 20kb/s, then Bell should only be allowed to advertise that service as a 20kb/s service.
They should also not be allowed to throttle wholesale bandwith that other DSL providers buy unless those providers agree to the throttling (and advertising restrictions.)
This is actually an issue for several of my clients who use P2P for backup purposes, etc. So I watch what is going on in terms of throttling. I can demonstrate that Bell Canada is throttling P2P at just about any time you care to mention, including 4 A.M. Sunday morning. Does Sunday morning sound like a peak period to you? Or does this smell like more B.S. (Bovine Scatology)?
Fortunately, this issue won't be affecting my clients for much longer at all. I have nearly completed a P2P application that does all its work over port 80, and as far as the ISP is concerned, the traffic will be indistinguishable from loading a series of web pages with large graphics.
I dare them to throttle HTTP.
Quite simply the problem is this:
unlimited bandwidth is based on consumers surfing and enjoying the web as an end user.
Things such as torrents, skype, joost, and 101 other P2P products break the situation because they aren't surfers - they are servers. The product end users sign up for isn't the unlimited right to run servers and resell / reassign bandwidth to others, but to use for themselves for their own ends.
At the end of the day, Bell will at some point come down and start agressively enforcing their "no servers" rule to include things such as P2P products. People will be unhappy, but THERE AIN'T NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH.
Wake up. Few things in the world is truly free.
The peak hours they describe are 4:00PM to 2:00AM.
One exception: Speakeasy, who lied to me during pre-sales chat, stating I could use 100% of my bandwidth 100% of the time, and that they don't regulate their connections at all -- ultimatley called me up and told me if I didn't download less than 100G a month, that they would terminate me.
They then had the gall to try to silence me with a threat of an early termination fee, and took many months to properly pay me back for the pre-paid month of service that I didn't get.
They are assholes. They should burn. But Patriot.Net? Capu.Net? Silcon.com? All great ISPs that let you do what you want.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
I second this. This is what I was thinking as a possible solution if congestion is a reality, though a interim solution until more capacity is added.
I do it with my WRT54G as I use my net for VoIP and gaming, P2P traffic gets the lowest priority and VoIP, Xbox Live and other activities go on as usual.
As a compromise Qos is a better option compared to throttling itself.
Further those who are impacted by this are seeing P2P speeds of 30kB/s, that is slowoooo, I don't think congestion requirs this much of a slow down to cope with peak hour traffic, thats just bull.
I am on sympatico in Montreal and all my torrent downloads are started in the evening when I get back from work, and very often I get 200 to 300 KB/s or more, depending on number of seeders.
so it seems I am not throttled at all.
but then again I have been with them for a few years and I still have the original 5M "high speed edition" without any download limit. maybe they don't throttle those people?
And that's why Bell's "response" is fronted by their head of regulatory affairs - whose role in life is to keep this entire discussion in so-called public hearings before a regulatory tribunal, the last place you'll ever find an actual member of the general public. Bell has survived for over a century in Canada by ensuring a) that nobody but economists, lawyers and policy wonks ever gets a word in edge-wise; and b) that even when ordered to play nice with new entrants (unbundling network for resale, etc), they will keep coming up with ingenious ways to drag their feet on progress. And they've succeeded brilliantly, partly because non-facilities-based competition doesn't work. But what the telcos, and cablecos, really don't want, in Canada or the US, is for the great unwashed public to discover... FTTH! And that all the copper plant they're squeezing the last dollar out of (for DSL and DOCSIS) is part of a holding pattern to keep typical residential bandwidth down in the 5 Mbps vicinity. In other words, a scarce resource. What's this horsemanure about "uncontended interntet" and freakin T1 lines? That's where the ILECs want the debate to stay. Meanwhile, anybody get a glimpse of the OECD Broadband Report released 2 weeks ago? The one that shows the US dropping - again - among the 30 member countries in BB rankings. And Canada coming up with one of the lowest FTTH scores on the planet. This debate's gotta move to a 3-to-5-year horizon - to a day when throttling is a non-issue, and the real issues resolve to whether residential pipes are still under the control of providers who lie through their teeth, never spend a dime on technical innovation and will fight to the death to own both the pipe and the content.
If you a Bell customers downloading something with Bittorrent its very possible that some of your peers are also Bell customers. Do the throttle this traffic also? They should encourage this kind of traffic since it doesn't traverse their Internet gateways.
when I had a single 56k dial-up connection that was shared among four computers congestion was the norm. In such an environment, even viewing a single web page often filled the available bandwidth. This made browsing from multiple computers at the same time nearly impossible. To counteract the issue, I implemented a single SFQ QOS on my router and within minutes after turning it on, the congestion was well under control.
Congestion primarily occurs due to more data being sent than can be received during a specified amount of time. Consequently this often results in unnecessary retransmissions of data and increased congestion. By dropping data which would otherwise be duplicated during a retransmission, congestion is relieved and the flow is normalized.
One must therefore ask, why have they not implemented a QOS at the locations where congestion is known to occur?
You could prevent that with shaping based on volume. A token bucket tied to a given link would ensure a high burst speed for any protocol and deteriorate after a short period of constant heavy traffic. You'd have to properly set it up so a user won't be able to get more speed than he's allowed to, with short bursts.
*cough, cough, bullshit, cough, cough*
Modding Trolls +1 inciteful since 1999
All the ISP has to do is say "up to" and they've weaseled their way out of accountability.
Bell Canada on the other hand, used words that promised more than "up to" and I think they're screwed.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
If what you say is true, then we need some regulations that state how much over-subscription is permissible. Yes, some level is acceptable but lately it has gotten way out of line. I'm not going to pretend to know what is acceptable but there has to be some limit.
I do this at home, but on a port basis. Basically I have DD-WRT and an iptables script which allows NNTP traffic on a certain port to be throttled when there's http traffic. If I download a big file say some movie trailer from Apple.com, the usenet traffic goes to almost zero. I think I let it have 10kbps minimum. They have these fancy DPI boxes and they could easily tag torrent packets to low priority and configure their routers to obey QOS tags. If the link really gets congested the the whole thing will work itself out because http(s), pop, imap etc. are all easy to detect. Give those higher priority and whenever a non bulk packet comes along it will get out before the rest.
In the late 90's Bell darkened well over 40% of it's fibre. Fibre I might add that was paid for mostly by the taxpayer. The excuse at the time was that it was unneeded capacity due to the hightech crash. They explained that failure of projected new technology deployments made it a necessity.
So they jammed as many customers as possible into their ever shinking pipe and generated the next round of excuses that 10% of it's customers were using 90% of it's bandwidth (Hmm is that still going on?). So what do they do to 'enhance' the experience for the masses?
Bell pushed ahead with it's pppoe deployment explaining that customers wanted the 'dialup' feel added to their always on connections. Remember the heady days where Bell had been selling adsl as an always on experience. Well suddenly that system would change to maximize the feeling consumers wanted for that 'dialup feel'? Oh and why not throw in the ever present ip's were in short supply and it's more secure, just for good measure. Last but not least was the explanation that 'bandwidth was running out', as if it was like a water pipe. So people should welcome ppoe as a way to make sure that when they wanted online they could get online, instead of getting what Bell explained as the equivelant of a busy signal on their internet connection. Ummm ya oookkkkeee. Isn't marketing a wonderful tool?
So here we are about what? 10years later and still Bell continues to spin the words until they find the ones that strike home with consummers. Darkened fibre still exists, Bell has no room for customers that don't want what bell has to offer.
You are bad, bad people...err pirates...err anarchists...errr customers for wanting what you thought you were paying for. No..no.. you have it all wrong. The sky is falling and you are unappreciative cads. Who do you think is in charge here and defines what the internet is? Not you. Our business plans are what defines it. There is no room and Bell wants to roll out their new pay content platform. GET OFF THE NET!!! BELL COMMING THROUGH! DING...DING.
They should be able to do what they want on Sympatico, but that is supposed to be separate from Bell Canada. Bell Canada has to give access to 3rd party companies. That means the 3rd party company pays Bell for dedicated links over their ATM network. The 3rd party provides their own connection to the internet backbone. Bell is only providing ATM transit. That is the problem. Bell Nexxia is supposed to be separated from Sympatico. One is an internet service(Sympatico), the other is the core network.
They are screwing with data for other companies. Imagine that Peer 1 started throttling torrents over their network because they say it takes up too much bandwidth. People would be outraged.
"At the end of the day, the wholesale ISPs are our customers and we generate revenue [from them], so we want to make sure we're serving them to the best of our ability as well."
I call bullshit. They make more money from selling the service directly to customers with extra caps. Independent ISPs provide much better (and less) restrictive service than Bell which is why it is against their interest to have people use them. If Bell really want us to believe this they should cease offering internet service altogether and only let independent ISPs do so.
No, no, no. That's what Comcast is doing right now. What we want to do is leave everything unlimited, but prioritized. If it's 4AM and nothing's happening, why shouldn't a torrent get the full bandwidth possible? For that matter, if it's 4PM and everyone's out playing golf or something, why shouldn't that same torrent run at full speed then?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Impeding isn't "blocking". You could try a dictionary:
impede To retard or obstruct the progress of.
(The American Heritage® Dictionary).
However, you can prioritize highly interactive traffic (IM, HTTP, SSH) over bulk data like FTP or P2P transfers.
And then, as I said, very quickly P2P apps will start to mimic or run over "highly interactive traffic" so as not to be slowed down.
FTA:
So this network management is, as we've stated, one of the ways to address the issue of congestion during peak periods.That's a fine and dandy argument for ISPs, but I know mine (Shaw) throttles mine at non-peak hours. Very often they actually kill the connection and force you to reset your connection if you leave it running overnight. I don't even share big stuff that often, it's usually little stuff that has a small following.
Despite the argument, if they are purposefully intending on giving you less than what your contract agrees you're paying for, yes, it's fraud.
If it's really such a huge problem, why don't they set definitive quotas and give tools to users so they can work together? They could make a bloody simple script which would email users when they reach certain percentages on the quotas for the month. They could have a usage page where you get to set YOUR preferences on what you'd like to do when you reach certain quotas. Instead they would rather pay several tech staff to call people who they 'feel' are downloading too much and tell customers they have to buy a 'business' plan!
Given that that's the logical thing to do and they aren't doing it, I conclude the actual goal is to force people into buying pricier packages, not "reducing network congestion during peak hours". It's all BS.
impede To retard or obstruct the progress of.
Take your own advice. A definition of "block":
Sounds damn near synonymous. Anyway, QOS is not the same as blocking or impeding in any way. With QOS, all the packets get through, just not at the expense of other traffic.
And then, as I said, very quickly P2P apps will start to mimic or run over "highly interactive traffic" so as not to be slowed down.What would the advantage be? Why would the Bittorrent (or whoever) devs want to do that? There's a huge difference between bandwidth and latency, and optimizing bulk transfers for the best latency would be completely pointless.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I would have a huge problem with that, as I know for a fact many others would.
oh geez... PLEASE! I am sure Bell would give you all the bandwidth you wanted if you weren't running a file sharing server. You need to understand that P2P means that much of your bandwidth usage is to provide files to others.
Torrents, Joost, Skype, and many other "peer" oriented programs use significant amounts of bandwidth OUTGOING even when you aren't actively at your computer. All those files you peer, all that data going out, that is all basically bandwidth you have sold to someone else in return for getting files, phone service, or TV.
If you used your Bell service as a normal surfer, visiting websites, download music (using normal download methods) and not operating a P2P server, you wouldn't get throttled.
Note also, it is only your P2P activities that are throttled. I download stuff all day and all night at full speed - because I am not running a P2P program to do it.
Accept reality - 99% of P2P users are (A) stealing copyrighted material from others, and (B) reselling or reassigning their bandwidth to others by operating what is effectively a file server against the rules of the user agreement.
The true numbers are that less than 10% of the people are using 50% or more of the total bandwidth. Do you truly think it is fair that an occassional user or someone logging on after work should have to suffer with slow service because of a few pigs gorging themselves?
No, Bell shouldn't be obliged to increase their infrastructure to support your file theiving hobby.
An ISP should have at all times, 100% of bandwidth for everyone on the network at all times. They pay for 7Mbps they should get it 100% of the time, not this up to and throttling crap.
"You will also find Rogers prices to be ludicrously high, the networks even more congested, and the throttling even more draconian."
:-)
I had a buddy test the theory. He got 250 kB/S using BT. I was getting 30 kB/s using DSL with throttling. That is faster than my unthrottled DSL speed. I can live with that.
Losing all revenue is going to have a much more significant impact on Bell decisions, than losing a bit of revenue and a pile of overhead. The CRTC won't do anything. Bell can easily fudge the network numbers to "prove" congestion, or they can do what they have likely done which is not build out the ATM interconnect to the point that they are overloaded at peak times, giving them the leverage they need over the 3rd party ISPs which they hate.
If in some bizarro twist this actually ends in favor of the DSL third parties, I can switch back, but until then, Rogers appears to be the lesser of evils.
Why? Do you also run every process on your system at nice=0, including stuff like Folding@home, or do you prioritize so that your desktop stuff isn't unresponsive while still allowing the background tasks to run at full speed?
The distinguishing characteristic is interactivity. Stuff that a human is waiting for should go as fast as possible. Everything else should run unhindered after the latency-sensitive packets get through.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Bell sells a capped service. They say you can get 60G/month. So it should be easy to figure out the average load on the network with everyone under this Cap. If Bell can't actually provide the service they sell, then they should set the cap at a level they can support.
/95% = 1.58 kB/s
Think for a second how oversubscribed Bells network is. Here you can use Bells own claims. "5 percent of users generate 60 percent of its total traffic":
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080519-regulators-want-answers-from-bell-canada-on-p2p-throttling.html
So how much are those nasty 5% capable of gobbling down?
If you max your cap that is 2G/day. Say all of it is in the peak 12 hour window (but actually heavy downloaders run 24/7).
So 1G/6hours. 167MB/hour = 45 kB/s. This is the most on average, that the theoretical bandwidth hogs can use. Bell advertises a service that is 10 times that speed. So if everyone was a peak user and only used it during the peak window, bells network is over-subscribed by 10 to 1 vs the evil bandwidth hogs.
BUT these are the evil 5% choking down 60% of the bandwidth according to Bell. How much does the other 40% (good users) average? So (60%) = 5% x 45 kB/s = 224kB/s, so (40%) = 150kB/s
So a "good" user averages 1.58kB/s, less than modem speed. If sold a 5mb/s connection (Bell advertises up to 7mb/s), they are oversubscribed about 300 to 1 on what they expect from users.
So is a 300 to 1 over-subscription fair? Perhaps bell should be forced to tell it's customers their target average usage for their network. In Bells case that seems to be 1.5kB/s average if used a lot by everyone. Is this adequate for a service sold as up to 7mb/s fast and never shared??
http://www.bell.ca/shopping/PrsShpInt_Perf.page
"Consistently fast service that's never shared"
High speed always on, never shared internet connections are not the telephone service, with 5 minute hold times and 2 hours a week usage. This is multi-hour/day usage. Attempting to solve bandwidth problems by traffic shaping traffic you don't like is a never ending cat and mouse game that doesn't address the real issue: Over subscription of the network or a completely incorrect usage model. This has to be addressed regardless of any traffic shaping. What is next shaping youtube? Voip? VOD? How can this be justified when you start offering VOIP and VOD services.
"If no measures were taken, then 700,000 customers would have been affected by congestions during peak periods."
He says would have, so no one was currently affected. Whether I was downloading a torrent, using my voip phone, playing online games, I certainly noticed no congestion prior to this throttling during peak times or not.
The service seems to me to be the exact same before or after throttling (minus torrents of course). And when have you heard a company being so proactive? Did they even have one complaint about network congestion due to torrents?
shhh. It's bad form to interrupt the kids' tantrum with some rationality. It'll just make them more frustrated
They would love you to buy internet service and never use it.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
So you have a 40/4 Mbps connection? Or is it that you are just unable to tell the difference between bits (b) and Bytes (B)?
That's not how traffic shaping works, it's an instantaneous decision. If you have a link that can do 10 Gbit/sec, and 12Gbit/sec is trying to get through, you can't just deprioritize the bulk transfer stuff and have it all somehow get through. You have to drop 2Gbit/sec of traffic on the floor. Dropping the bulk transfers that are insensitive to packet loss is exactly what they're doing, if I understand the article correctly.
A whole lot of people are whacking Bell Canada and ISPs in general for traffic shaping, but it's not justified. The reality is that it's far, far, simpler and easier for the majority of users to buy/be sold an "unlimited" internet connection for $X/month. It's vastly more complicated to sell somebody "flat rate up until Y Mbit/sec or Z GB/month" because non-geeks have absolutely no conception of how much bandwidth any given application might use. If you charge people for what they actually use, you implicitly require people to make a judgement call every time they browse a website, buy a movie off iTunes, or play a multiplayer game. Can I afford this? Can I not? How big is an XBox update anyway?
The right way to sell internet access is as "unlimited" and then specifically exclude certain classes of apps that are known to be bandwidth hogs, like P2P apps. It's much simpler for Joe Schmoe to understand "I am on flat rate as long as I don't use BitTorrent" than it is to understand arbitrary numbers in an alien unit of measurement. This makes the 90% of users who are not geeks happy (or at least, less confused) and still lets the people who want to sit online and do illegal downloads all day do so, as long as they pay for it.
Sure you can, unless you're really so oversold that the baseline interactive traffic is greater than your capacity, in which case nothing will help but extra capacity. After all, traffic is prioritized everywhere; the only difference is that the default metric is packet arrival order.
I still think this is infinitely preferable to shutting down P2P altogether. Shaping the traffic at least lets everyone keep using their Internet connection any way they want. The only difference is that huge P2P downloads don't interfere with VOIP or other more time-sensitive traffic.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
What would be a good ad-hoc solution around that little fiasco also is diverting a specific P2P server/client setup to use port 80.
After that, you know damn well it's filtering of data in the middle to figure out what to throttle.
Of course, I guess that relegates anyone who has port 80 blocked on their network connection hah I guess 8080 or 443 would work.
Bell's statements are misleading and completely besides the point. Take Teksavvy: Bell provides the last-mile copper for Teksavvy, an independent ISP that uses DSL to provide customers with high-speed internet. Teksavvy, a completely independent company, has its own Bell-independent backbone internet providers. However, Bell, being the monopoly over the last mile, subjects this last-mile of copper to bandwidth throttling. It's not Bell's internet bandwidth that's being used by Teksavvy customers in any way, shape or form whatsoever. I'd conjecture that they're throttling this last mile for one of two reasons: Bizarre technological incompetence, or anti-competitive behaviour. Unfortunately, I suspect the latter and the visibly retarded policies of Bell Canada are matched handily by the impotence of Canadian anti-competition laws.
Thankfully these no-talent ass clowns were just maimed by the Quebec Court of Appeal, essentially filibustering their bid to be bought out by the landmine- and handgun- toting Ontario Teachers Pension Fund.
This Mirko Bibic is a lying, insulting @*#@###@# (insert colourful phrase here) Moron. I cannot express how disappointed i am in even reading this article hoping Bell would actually be productive in the interview.
/rant. sorry you had to read it guys.
from the caption (because the paragraphs were too large to paste):
>Mirko Bibic, head of regulatory affairs for Bell >Canada, says the protests against large internet >service providers have been fuelled by >misinformation from people who don't run >networks. (Courtesy of Bell Canada)
Congratulations, Mirko- you just insulted 90% of your customer base in Canada by summing it all up with a "you don't know what it's like so F*** off" comment.
>CBCNews.ca: One other thing that wasn't clear >from this filing is that there was an estimate >that 700,000 customers will experience some sort >of slowdown this year unless some measures were >taken. Can you somehow better quantify this >congestion problem?
>Bibic: If no measures were taken, then 700,000 >customers would have been affected by >congestions during peak periods. We want to >obviously take steps to make sure that doesn't >happen. So this network management is, as we've >stated, one of the ways to address the issue of >congestion during peak periods.
How do you do it? I mean, how do you really do it? you just told us "we will slow you down at peak hours, to prevent you from being slowed down in peak hours".
you know, if what Bell is saying is true, the SANE thing to do to resolve the issue is either a)invest money in their networks to upgrade them, or b.)downgrade their packages until they get the money to do so, and CHANGE THEIR BILLING TO RELFECT THIS. sure, poeple will hate it, but what's worse, knowing your limitations, or having a company keep this secret from you until they tell you when they can't contain it anymore?
also, I laughed at the end part with Bell not willing to spend more money on better connections. North America has reportedly the crappiest (slowest) broadband networks on record when compared to the rest of the world, and yet the first thing they do when presented with this question is whine about the cost, when they are much larger and widespread than most of their competitors.
You people make me sick. You are totally clueless.
..
.. venture out of your mother's basement and see the real world for once in your life.
Every time an article like this comes out you all spew your worst bile at the ISPs as if they were more evil than Hitler. You jump to conclusions quicker than a liberal dem at an anti-capitalism rally. You type your responses at your keyboards in your mother's basements quicker than Ernie Pyle could wire home a report from the trenches.
I got some news for you all
The ISPs *do* add capacity. They add it at a pretty steady rate, whether you care to admit it or not - they *do* add bandwidth on behalf of their users.
It is a myth that they use P2P throttling to avoid adding capacity altogether. They simply want to add capacity in a controlled manner. Allowing the P2P users dictate when they need to add capacity is foolish, is bad business, is wasteful, and is an example of the tail wagging the dog.
And, for those of you who think throttling doesn't occur in Europe or Asia - my god, that only confirms just how much you are blinded by yur own passionate, yet misguided, ideas of the world. My advice to you is
HTTP is bulk traffic.
Are you sure you are not saturating upstream so downstream gets slower because you can't push packet ACKs fast enough?
This is definitely one of THE major problems with people complaining about throttling. They are killing their own downloads by clogging upload pipes and then they complain "WTF my ISP throttles me!". I'm not saying this is the problem in your case, but a lot of people that do complain are actually "throttling" themselves by filling up upstream queues.
I am also being throttled by Bell. I have Execulink as my provider.
From what I can tell, there are different throttling periods.
I haven't worked out the exact times and speeds, but here they are roughly (downloading torrents):
Peak Hours - evenings 4PM - 12AM (ish) 20kb/s
After Peak - 12AM - 2AM 50kb/s
Night - 2AM - 4AM unrestricted (for me that means ~400kb/s)
4AM - 4PM - 50kb/s
Those numbers aren't exact, the times are probably off, but that is the general trend. Downloading an episode of a TV that just aired via torrents is impossible and you have to let it download over night.
Note: HTTP downloads are not affected at all and are unrestricted at all times.
I am really not happy with the situation.
Was this before or after they were bought up by Best Buy?
.. That certainly isn't the normal case for ISP's of the masses (especially Comcrap). Some ISP's even go so far as to only allow you 1 computer/account....which is pretty heinous in my book....like charging for electricity per room. But for most of the time I've been a customer, IP sharing (DHCP)
I am stuck with 3Mbps on Speakeasy, but have had nothing but excellent service from them for 7 years or so, but have had concerns about when the service will start approaching 'Best Buy' service (or disservice) reputation...
I'm surprised you had problems with them, as they've always been very committed to allowing their customers to use
all of their bandwidth -- and even support you sub-letting your connection with your neighbors -- for a cut in
the amount you charged, they'd give them their own account and handle billing, splitting it 50:50 with you at whatever
price you set -- OR you can setup your hotspot and give it away
wasn't even an option). Very unlike AT&T(was SBC, was PacBell) and Comcrap (who bought the old AT&T's cable service as the old AT&T was melting down).
Sorry you had a bad run w/speakeasy...sounds very odd.
But definitely agree -- DSL is not shared service -- except with yourself (it's only halfduplex at a time), and I've
never had any bandwidth problems (other than standard sub-par US-DSL broadband performance).
Forcing them to advertise the worse case scenario, as you describe, sounds like an attractative proposition in more than just this case.
Another way to fix this problem would be *gasp*...upgrade the infrastructure! Really guys, "Well we had too many people on the network...so we started rationing the bandwidth."