CRTC Issues Net Neutrality Rules

An anonymous reader writes "The CRTC today introduced a new framework to guide Internet service providers in their use of Internet traffic management practices. ISPs will be required to inform retail customers at least 30 days, and wholesale customers at least 60 days, before an Internet traffic management practice takes effect. At that time, ISPs will need to describe how the practice will affect their customers' service. The Commission encourages ISPs to make investments to increase network capacity as much as possible. However, the Commission realizes that ISPs may need other measures to manage the traffic on their networks at certain times. Technical means to manage traffic, such as traffic shaping, should only be employed as a last resort."

Comments

As someone living in Canada..

[Anrego]

.. and I know this will get -1 troll.. but I have to say it...

fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck..

and of course.. FUCK!!

Re:As someone living in Canada..

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed -- Government copout, plain and simple.

Re:As someone living in Canada..

[Anonymous Coward]

.. and I know this will get -1 troll.. but I have to say it...

fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck..

and of course.. FUCK!!

But how do you really feel.

Re:As someone living in Canada..

[Anonymous Coward]

the CRTC really proved who has the pants in the family.

effectively, the ruling says "all we have to do (as ISP's; and let's not forget there are really only 3 flavours here) is provide notice that we are doing...everything we are already doing, and can now do it in a more legitimized way. thanks CRTC, the cheque is in the mail."

this really doesn't bode well for any new competition in any communications arena, including cell phone services, as the only players are the one's mentioned above.

for anyone mentioning that 'they own the pipes, let them do what they want". the canadian taxpayer subsidized the development of the networks involved, they were not privately funded. at the same time, money provided via a service charges on all bills was to go into a further system upgrade. the money seems to have never made it, and the companies continued to charge the fee and pocket the money the entire time AFTER the goverment had told them to stop it. it finally took a supreme court decision (yep, they fought it the entire way) to force them to spend the money on more than just fresh decorating the their offices.

Re:As someone living in Canada..

[FatdogHaiku]

.. and I know this will get -1 troll.. but I have to say it...

fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck..

and of course.. FUCK!!

But how do you really feel.

I suspect they may be holding something back... possibly some repressed displeasure...

Re:As someone living in Canada..

[BitZtream]

You bitch, but its better than what you have now. Right now they don't have to even tell you.

This doesn't seem to preclude having a different law requiring it to be fair. This is just to make sure it is disclosed to you.

Re:As someone living in Canada..

[Anonymous Coward]

I am surprised that no coverage on slashdot for this:
http://dissolvethecrtc.ca/ Details is on the site.

This is a online petition for Canadian who are dissatisfied with our CRTC. Currently there are 8495 signatures and need another 1505 to go before this petition is submitted to the minster in charge of the CRTC.

Contrary to the name, this petition is aimed at getting a new CRTC from people that cars about Canadians. It is not about removing it let things go to hell as it is already.

>The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) was created for the purpose of ensuring broadcasting and telecommunications systems serve the Canadian public and ensure that Canadians have a wide variety of options to create and view works of media or communicate across the country and the entire world.

>We, the undersigned, believe that the CRTC has become a burden on the Canadian public and are failing to perform their duties in the interest of the Canadian public and that of a fair and unbiased telecom policy.

Re:As someone living in Canada..

[Cryacin]

.. and I know this will get -1 troll.. but I have to say it... fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.. and of course.. FUCK!! But how do you really feel. I suspect they may be holding something back... possibly some repressed displeasure...

Help! Help! He's being repressed!

Re:As someone living in Canada..

[Anonymous Coward]

I also live in Canada
I'm unsure exactly what part you are so upset about?

Content blocking is completely prohibited. Filtering of 'time sensitive' traffic requires CRTC approval.

I also don't see in any way how you were modded as insightful.

Re:As someone living in Canada..

[Anrego]

I'm unsure exactly what part you are so upset about?

The main thing I`m worried about is charge by usage.. which for the right amount of money and lobbying is a perfectly reasonable solution to network congestion.

I also don't see in any way how you were modded as insightful.

.. Totally agree.. for those keeping score at home:

    50% Insightful
    20% Informative
    20% Overrated

Re:As someone living in Canada..

[cjfs]

I trust you already contacted the CRTC and representatives in your area? Maybe made donations or volunteered for parties that oppose this? Perhaps started creating ways to convince the general population this is a bad idea?

Or did you just post 37 expletives and forget about it?

Re:As someone living in Canada..

[lamapper]

the Canadian taxpayer subsidized the development of the networks involved, they were not privately funded

Same here in the USA. Since the 1990s, it has been estimated that the Telcos (& Cable Companies) have received in excess of $200 Billion dollars, specifically for laying Fiber to yours and my home. None of which was done. The telcos made promises, in order to receive money + additional taxes on bills + additional fees on bills (many of which, if not all fees & taxes are still being collected) that they would put fiber to our homes.

Worth repeating, The telcos received American tax revenue to put fiber to our homes and apartments. They have been receiving this money since the 1990s. They still receive money today.

Where's the Fiber? (Think 80s Wendy's commercial, Where's the Beef? and you have the right idea)

In addition, they spend in excess of $1.8 million per week to lobby our elected officials against net neutrality, to prevent being forced to run fiber to our homes, to prevent losing their monopoly/oligopoly tiered pricing system, to prevent being forced to provide enough upstream bandwidth so that Americans can watch IP TV, Videos and "rich" content via the Internet. All because they want to force to you pay for content via their Cable system ONLY.

This has been going on for over 20+ years.

The telcos were asked to provide fiber to homes in Wilson N.C., but refused. Based on their refusal the local politicians decided to get fiber for their community and invited Greenlight into the community. Greenlight put fiber to people's homes and charged $100 per month for 100Mbps / 100Mbps (synchronous, not throttled) service to their customers.

The Cable Company / telco response was to lobby the state legislature in North Carolina in order to prevent Greenlight from doing business and to prevent other communities from providing decent fiber service to themselves. The public record is there for all to see. It started last session and will continue next session. Citizens of North Carolina, do something before its too late, let your politicians know that they need to force open the market and invite businesses in to put fiber all the way to people's homes. Nothing less is acceptable.

It's been 20+ years if American providers wanted you to have fiber you would have had it by now. Stop defending the FUD and them. They do not deserve anything but your contempt.

FIOS charges $119 for 50MB/5MB. At least its Fiber.

In Japan, they have had 100Mbps/100Mbps for less than $55 per month as of 2000, thanks to government deregulation of NTT and fiber to homes. (Americans would have had this had the telcos been prevented from watering down and making un enforceable, The "Telecommunications Act of 1996". The telcos lobbyists were very effective. One can only imagine the parties held at Cable Company / Telco boardrooms all across the country at putting one over on American citizens.)

In Japan, by 2006, those same consumers were getting 1 Gbps / 1 Gbps (again synchronous service, not throttled or shaped) for less than $52 per month. Unlike in America where politicians (primarily Republicans) keep touting Market competition, it actually exists in Japan, not here in America. In America corporate monopolies and oligopolies prevent competition.

If the market would or could work, it would have. Face facts Americans, the market is NOT working. We have a 20 year proof and history. Other markets that are not working are obvious as well...wake up Americans, its already too late!

One might ask how the Japanese could give more bandwidth to consumers while lowering prices at the same time.

Very good question as here in America, the telcos/cable companies try to lie and tell Americans that bandwidth is scarce. It is not. This is a lie, it is FUD. Just look at the conversations they have with investors to get the truth of the

Re:As someone living in Canada..

[Darkness404]

But how do you really feel.

I really feel you should have ended that sentence with a question mark.

Re:As someone living in Canada..

[Interoperable]

the canadian taxpayer subsidized the development of the networks involved

Can anyone provide a source for this. I said it in a previous thread and someone called me on it. The two of us couldn't find any real evidence that this is the case. Bell was a government sanctioned monopoly with complex ties to the (publicly funded) railways throughout it's history; but no direct subsidies. I think Rogers may have purchased some formerly public infrastructure but, so far as I can tell, it purchased it with straight up private funds and never got subsidies. Some of the smaller ISPs (eg. Sasktel) certainly do have publicly subsidized infrastructure but they buy bandwidth from the big guys for backbone connections and they're opposed to throttling.

If anyone has a source for the "public subsidy" argument, post it! I'd love to read it.

Re:As someone living in Canada..

[gordguide]

... the canadian taxpayer subsidized the development of the networks involved ..."

It's bull. You can't find any confirming evidence because ... wait for it ... there is none.

There was some public money to provide internet connectivity to schools and libraries in Canada*, but it wasn't paid to the telecos or cable operators.

There has never been any taxpayer cash paid to ISPs or Telecos, aside from the fact that, like everywhere else, they enjoy a kind of utility monopoly provided they follow some rules, on the company's dime, in exchange for the same monopoly rents every teleco or cable provider anywhere enjoys.

You have to realize that there is a certain constituency amongst some of the more right-wing pundits in America to explain every difference that might exist, for whatever reason, in another country, as "they must be subsidizing something." A publicly announced initiative that has the words "government money" and "internet" in the same sentence is enough to make some fearlessly take whatever leap necessary to jump to whatever hasty conclusion the situation requires.

They jump and yell "Subsidy!" as one man, and just drink the Kool-Aid. Mercifully there are others in America who can actually think for themselves, and can see a self-serving political grandstand for what it is.

*Late 20th century there was a Federal Initiative to insure there was a computer with internet connectivity (could be dialup, was sat in remote areas) in every school, which they achieved by around 2000. Next, it was a computer with connectivity in each classroom, which was achieved by about 2002. Since these are all public schools, it's appropriate and hardly unusual that it involved taxpayer money ... the entire system is run on taxpayer money. again, just like all public schools everywhere.

Re:As someone living in Canada..

[Dr Caleb]

"It's bull. You can't find any confirming evidence because ... wait for it ... there is none."

Telus was formed out of a merge between BC Tel and Alberta Government Telephones (AGT). Both Crown corporations that went 'public'.

Rogers became through CNCP telecommunications, another Crown Corp that used to be part of CN rail and CP rail.

That's just off the tip of my 'tongue'. Remember kids, just because you can't find it in Google; doesn't mean it didn't happen!

Re:As someone living in Canada..

[Interoperable]

I only researched Bell myself and, as I mentioned a post ago, I found that it was a government supported monopoly but not subsidized. Rogers purchased CNCP's infrastructure but did it with private money, so it's a stretch to say it's taxpayer money. You're right about Telus, it's privatized public infrastructure. (I always forget about Telus, probably repressed memories due to hours and hours spent on the phone trying to find out why they arbitrarily disconnected my internet).

Re:As someone living in Canada..

[Anonymous Coward]

So what. The networks/infrastructure that had any public money was TDM/POTS/last mile copper. None of the IP backbone or new home last mile has gov't money involved. Virtually all of the IP infrastructure in BC, AB, ON, QC is privately funded. Its been twenty years since AGT was privatized and the government of the time was paid for the assets ( $900 million comes to mind ).

Besides being able to recite some historical lineage, where is the so-called subsidy money that people claim has gone into the IP network infrastructure? I don't think there is any. Its just a specious claim that people make without any support and without any expectation of a challenge.

Re:As someone living in Canada..

[gordguide]

What does forming a company and selling it to private investors who, unless they are idiots, value it for what it is, have to do with subsidies?

Subsidies are collected from the public and paid to the private. If you are a Crown, you are not a private company, anymore than NASA is a private company.

But, if after a firm becomes privately owned, whether closely held or trading on a public stock market, you then give it cash collected from the taxpayer, that's a subsidy.

All of your examples, by the way, were private firms long before there was an internet.

Re:As someone living in Canada..

[Tubal-Cain]

You: fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck

Eliza: Please go on.

# extra text to defeat repetition filter

Re:As someone living in Canada..

[Dr. Hellno]

Even though you're a little over the top in places (I'd rather live with no internet than die, quite frankly), this is a fantastic post. Way to shed light on the abhorrent practices of the telcos. Every American should read this, pass it door to door, and maybe (just maybe) we'll get something done to finally take back power for the consumer.

Re:As someone living in Canada..

[gordguide]

" ... Rogers purchased CNCP's infrastructure but did it with private money, so it's a stretch to say it's taxpayer money. ..."

And it's quite a stretch to include CNCP in this at all; although CN was a public company for a while, it was formed from a series of bankrupt private railways, and then eventually returned to the private sector.

CNCP was a joint venture between CN Rail and CP Rail (which is, and always has been, a private company) to amalgamate their telegraph business ... you know, Morse Code. Telegraph morphed into Teletype, and that operated via sat channels and ground stations (think "big dish").

CNCP itself was never a Crown; CP eventually purchased CNs stake before selling a minority to Rogers (40%). To say Rogers evolved from CNCP is also incorrect; Ted Rogers sold the company around the time the IBM 286 was the only desktop you could buy, to AT&T (US). The first web browser would arrive a decade later.

Re:As someone living in Canada..

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called regulatory capture.

Re:As someone living in Canada..

[Znork]

You bitch, but its better than what you have now. Right now they don't have to even tell you.

Frankly, I must say I don't quite understand what happened in the network neutrality debate. IIRC, it began several years ago when some US ISP's wanted to blackmail content providers or just companies that could afford to be blackmailed by threatening to throttle their own customers access to specific sites (like Google) unless they paid.

That should have resulted in a quick and simple 'no-no' against discriminating against certain sites or not in exchange for blackmail money.

But somehow, through what seems to be misunderstandings and/or pure misinformation, it got expanded to include everything up to even normal (and often reasonable) traffic management practices that have basically always been around (they can, of course, can be discriminatory and completely unreasonable as well (like throttling without congestion reasons, throttling protocols that compete with your own services, etc), but tends to be far from as asinine as site discrimination as they're generally easier to bypass and make pointless if they becomes really intrusive).

I think the whole debate could do with a complete reset and a clean restatement of what the discussion is about. Or split into several discussions.

Oh, well. At least the blackmail plans seem to have been shelved for the moment.

Re:As someone living in Canada..

[TheRaven64]

The confusion happened because it was in the best interests of the ISPs. They initially proposed filtering based on off-network endpoints. This was widely disliked, and the term 'neutral network' was adopted to describe a network that didn't do that. Rather than address the real issues, the ISPs then took this term and created a straw man of a network that didn't do any traffic shaping at all, then attacked this. As a result, the term 'network neutrality' is now quite misleading. I think most of us would agree that these things are not acceptable:

• Blocking trafic based on the protocol.
• Delaying traffic based on the remote address.
• Breaking well-defined Internet protocols such as DNS.
• Using their network in an anticompetitive manner, for example prioritising VoIP packets using their service over VoIP packets using someone else's.

While the following are acceptable:

• Respecting QoS flags so that services like VoIP that use low bandwidth but require low latency get prioritised, while packets that are not latency sensitive get more bandwidth but in a lower priority channel.
• Notifying users that are sending out virus traffic.
• Charging heavy network users more.

Unfortunately, depending on whom you ask, some or all of these come under the 'network neutrality' umbrella.

Re:As someone living in Canada..

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it has to do with the fact that, as taxpayers, we built the original, public incarnation of these networks. When they were "sold", I didn't get any money back on my taxes. When I begrudgingly pay my cable bill each month, there's no kick back, not even a "Thank you for letting us rape you".

The reality is that none of these companies would exist today, if not for the initial commitment of large government funds to get things started, so for them to do a 180' and systematically fuck government (and thus taxpayers) around with this he-said-she-said game of half-truths and weasel words, that is a huge insult and it just begs for harsh punishment.

Put aside your irrational disdain for socialism, and think for a moment: who should own the networks ? Us, or them (telcos) ? Who do you trust more, to run a clean, fast network that benefits every individual and society as a whole ? And should that be a for-profit venture, or does the pursuit of quarterly gains run afoul of modern humanity's eudaimonic aspirations ?

Re:As someone living in Canada..

[Deliveranc3]

We REALLY need ALL your bandwidth every 45 seconds for about .4 seconds.... sorry were you going to use VOIP, that's too bad.

Re:As someone living in Canada..

[Anonymous Coward]

" ... Maybe it has to do with the fact that, as taxpayers, we built the original, public incarnation of these networks. When they were "sold", I didn't get any money back on my taxes. ..."

Your grasp of the history surrounding the publicly owned telecoms of western Canada is a little lacking. They were built because, despite 40 years of begging and pleading, and yes, offers of cash, which ARE subsidies, Bell Canada steadfastly refused to provide telephone service to rural residents outside the major cities of Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver and Victoria. Towns and villages set up their own community owned exchanges, but rural residents remained outside the network.

Threats by the provincial governments of doing it themselves for the public good were ignored, until the day they had enough, and formed the provincially owned telecos. THEN Bell complained.

When these entities were sold to the private sector, a fat cheque arrived in the mailbox of the respective governments. I don't know how you work your abacus, but when taxes pay for expenditures and a cheque arrives, those taxes are not collected yet the money is spent. If you're looking for your own cheque in the mail, you would be disappointed. But, there was money in your pocket, none the less ... less was collected from you for the spending that was going to happen anyway.

Since a citizen-owned entity should operate at nearly break-even, as a matter of principle, with enough profit to maintain sustainability only, rates were lower than those paid in Ontario and Quebec to Bell Canada. Since, as we said already, sound Crown management dictates a small profit rather than a loss, there was a dividend cheque every year these companies operated, and that dividend pays some of the taxes you were otherwise obliged to make up.

SaskTel, which is still in Government hands in Saskatchewan, provides a dividend that varies around the $100~150 million mark per year, and retains a similar amount for infrastructure improvements, and they lead the nation in innovation (first fibre network in North America, first TV over IP in North America, first HDTV over IP in North America ... the list goes on). Are you suggesting that the dividends paid each year to the treasury go nowhere? They lower the taxes citizens of that province otherwise would have to pony up themselves. This isn't rocket science.

To say there was nothing in it for taxpayers is absurd. To say there was no cash for the value received when the teleco Crowns of Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia were privatized is to fly in the face of the facts, which are not hard to hunt down ... provincial budgets are public documents.

" ... Put aside your irrational disdain for socialism, and think for a moment: who should own the networks ? ..."

I don't have an irrational disdain for socialism. I have an appreciation of the value of private enterprise, and an appreciation of the public good.

It's right to undertake an obvious need in the public interest via a Crown corporation when reasonable efforts to encourage the private sector fail and the private sector makes it known it cannot or will not oblige to undertake that need, and it's right to have a utility (in particular, due to the huge costs of the necessary capital improvements) in private hands, where funding to pay for infrastructure is far more readily available via the public markets via the age-old method of outlining your plans, printing share certificates and demanding money for them. That's what stock markets are for; that's what the bond market is for, that's how we, collectively, prosper in the modern world.

Do you know that Crowns are prohibited by law from raising funds other than via the government treasury? Can a government of a million or three afford to spend billions when an option exists to get investors to do so instead? Profit is not a dirty word; i

Re:As someone living in Canada..

[Hurricane78]

Uuum, where did you get the idea, that a replacement of the CRTC would be any better?

If anything, this site actually IS by the ISPs. And after dissolving it, things will be much, much worse.

Ownership

[colganc]

Why should anyone be required to do this. It is their pipes. They own it. They run it. They should be able to do what they want.

Re:Ownership

[Anrego]

"Their pipes" were built with government money.

As someone who pays taxes.. I expect the people who run the network I paid for to do so in a way that best serves me..

Re:Ownership

[JoshuaZ]

Yes, just like the railroads in the 19th century that were paid for by the government. There's a reason we called the people who then refused to give any money back to the government or listen to government legislation about the railroads "robber barons." Fun fact: When this was going on, one of the strongest opponents of the robber barons was Ambrose Bierce whom you may know as the writer of an "An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge" and "The Devil's Dictionary." If he were alive today he would likely be railing against this sort of poor treatment of net neutrality.

Re:Ownership

[BitZtream]

They can, if they don't want the benefits associated with being a carrier, and they'll have to make it clear they aren't an 'ISP' or something like that so people are not confused by it.

Re:Ownership

[causality]

Yes, just like the railroads in the 19th century that were paid for by the government. There's a reason we called the people who then refused to give any money back to the government or listen to government legislation about the railroads "robber barons." Fun fact: When this was going on, one of the strongest opponents of the robber barons was Ambrose Bierce whom you may know as the writer of an "An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge" and "The Devil's Dictionary." If he were alive today he would likely be railing against this sort of poor treatment of net neutrality.

I am not fond of putting it this way, but it happens to be the truth. The robber-barons were successful for one reason and one reason alone: the government and the citizens didn't have the balls to do whatever it took to hold them accountable. They caved and they kow-towed. So the robber-barons were enriched, no one liked it, and no one did a damned thing about it.

Had the government instead revoked their corporate charters and sold all their assets at public auction for failure to comply with the legislation, we would all be telling a very different story. Even more so, if this had been accompanied by a widespread boycott of all rail services, with the intention not of reforming them, but of driving them into bankruptcy. I am not fond of it and I don't like it, but every now and then a message along the lines of "don't fuck with us" needs to be delivered. This seems perfectly acceptable when corporations take minors to court over copyright. I see no reason why the citizens should hold back and refuse to take every lawful action available to them to keep the corporations in check.

Re:Ownership

[pnewhook]

"Their pipes" were built with government money. As someone who pays taxes.. I expect the people who run the network I paid for to do so in a way that best serves me..

I hate that sense of entitlement attitude. Me me me and fuck everyone else.

Re:Ownership

[Anrego]

Me and everyone who's _not_ the telecommunication industry

Re:Ownership

[pnewhook]

I'm not in telecommunications, and I don't share your attitude thank you very much.

Its a competition, not a government entity. The CRTC ruling doesn't change anything except make public the rules. If it's public, people will choose the supplier with more favourable rules, so eventually the free market will change things.

Re:Ownership

[BitZtream]

I am not fond of it and I don't like it, but every now and then a message along the lines of "don't fuck with us" needs to be delivered. This seems perfectly acceptable when corporations take minors to court over copyright. I see no reason why the citizens should hold back and refuse to take every lawful action available to them to keep the corporations in check.

I could not agree more.

Re:Ownership

[Anonymous Coward]

I AM fond of it. I positively squeal with glee at the thought of revoking corporate charters and liquidating assets. I also look favorably on jailing senior execs and repossessing THEIR assets. I'm looking at you comcast. I just wish people would care more so that somebody in power could grow balls. People have a earned skepticism of government, but they haven't yet learned en mass to scrutinize the machinations of business. Each are equally fond of abusing the public.

Sigh... Yeah, it's a pipe dream.

Re:Ownership

[dogsbreath]

"Their pipes" were built with government money.

Bullcrap. What government money? Bell, Shaw, Rogers, TELUS [the largest Canadian providers] are private companies and their networks have been built with shareholder dollars. Are you a shareholder? Then you have shareholder rights.

The only money you've paid for these guys is via your monthly bill, and that is not a subsidy.

Hey... that doesn't mean we shouldn't criticize them.

Re:Ownership

[Anonymous Coward]

as someone who pays taxes, i expect government to be an efficient and beneficial enterprise.

no wait, I don't, because I know better.

Re:Ownership

[Idiomatick]

Boycott is a bit more difficult in this situation. I'm with teksavvy which is completely pro netneutrality and very open, has high caps and no traffic shaping. No desire to hurt them at all.... Unfortunately since Bell owns the lines they have to pay bell for access. As well I don't know how reasonable it is to give up the internet completely in Canada ... we don't have some shining alternative except for resellers.

Re:Ownership

[onemorechip]

In return for the privileges that corporations receive (and for the inherent power they gain over individuals), some price has to be paid. Regulating commerce is exactly one of the things we the people (in an enlightened liberal state) specifically empower government to do.

This would hold even if the pipes were not subsidized with public money.

Re:Ownership

[TheRaven64]

Their pipes, at least the expensive last-mile ones, generally run over (or, rather, under) ground that is owned by the people and controlled by the government on their behalf, for example streets. They were permitted to lay these pipes to provide certain services because the government, on behalf of the people, felt that it was advantageous for them to do so. They are allowed to exist as a corporation which exists because the government, acting on behalf of the people, awarded them a corporate charter, which exists for the sole reason that it was decided that their existence would benefit society.

Re:Ownership

[dkleinsc]

During that era, the government officials who might have put a stop to the railroad robber barons all had several thousand reasons (mostly with Benjamin Franklin on the front) for not doing so. Where do you think the term "railroading" in reference to legislation came from?

It wasn't even subtle: it was along the lines of railroad executives coming into Washington with suitcases of cash and each congresscritter stopping by and leaving with filled pockets.

Re:Ownership

[Anonymous Coward]

as someone who buys from corporations, i expect corporations to be an efficient and beneficial enterprise.

no wait, I don't, because I know better.

Wow it works that way too

Re:Ownership

[DaveOne]

While a nice idea, in practice this can't work. Mass boycott of the ISPs would cripple many businesses, and produce alot of whiny Facebook addicts.

For that matter, we are all so numb to the realities of the world around us that it is next to impossible to organize any sort of mass rebellion to fix this type of thing. People want to go back to their Facebook and WOW and forget the ever present BOHICA.

Re:Ownership

[Anonymous Coward]

it's 'this attitude' that keeps us from being bent over a table and fiscally raped by the telcos, and attitudes like yours - the turning of a blind eye towards what is the start of a very slippery slope - that allows abuses to happen that will eventually escalate.

This really is a simple problem with a simple solution.

ISP's oversubscribe, take all the money for the subscriptions, then blame the users when their business practices bite them in the arse as users attempt to use what they've paid for.

The simple solution is DON'T OVERSUBSCRIBE.

It will definitely bite into the profit margin of an ISP - but when this profit is based on essentially defrauding customers I don't think it is asking too much for them to roll it into providing the service they agreed to provide in the first place.

.

Spineless CRTC

[RedACE7500]

And of course the big ISPs get what they want, all they have to do is tell us first. How is this net neutrality?

Re:Spineless CRTC

[shentino]

If it weren't for oligopoly, publication of their rules would become a bargaining point that would allow us to shop around.

Name reflects subject not position

[calmofthestorm]

The same way the Sedition Act wasn't supporting sedition;(

And innovation takes another giant leap backwards.

Useless

[foo fighter]

ISPs will be required to inform retail customers at least 30 days, and wholesale customers at least 60 days, before an Internet traffic management practice takes effect.

Most locales have de facto ISP monopolies. This ruling will just give customers 30 days warning of a rape, with no practical way to avoid it. Arguably better in theory, but no different in practice.

Re:Useless

[JoshuaZ]

Yes, and what fraction of customers are going to have a detailed understanding of what the letter means. They can barely understand that "world wide web" isn't synonymous with "internet" let alone understand what traffic shaping means. Indeed, many people might notice problems when they try to do things and not even realize why. This is the real danger of non-neutrality: websites and dowloads taking time and people not even understanding why. The end result: They won't go to those websites. They'll assume something is wrong with the website not something wrong with their ISP.

Re:Useless

[butalearner]

You are quite entitled to make any protests in the appropriate time period. Provided, of course, you visit the unlit cellar with broken stairs at the ISP offices, where you can find the notice on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'.

Re:Useless

[TheRealMindChild]

"world wide web" isn't synonymous with "internet"

my internet is netscape where do i get world wide web

Re:Useless

[shermo]

Honestly? I don't know the difference between WWW and the internet. I could guess, and I'd probably get close to correct, but how does it affect my every day browsing? I sure know what traffic shaping is though.

Re:Useless

[mftb]

Wait hang on. ISPs are demolishing houses to lay down cables now?

Re:Useless

[The Archon V2.0]

"world wide web" isn't synonymous with "internet"

my internet is netscape where do i get world wide web

how do i shot web?

The sad thing is, the last person I know who said something like that said it literal years ago. These days it's all "my internet is the blue e where do i get world wide web" or worse, "my facebook is the blue e where do i get internet"

Re:Useless

[Cryacin]

You are quite entitled to make any protests in the appropriate time period. Provided, of course, you visit the unlit cellar with broken stairs at the ISP offices, where you can find the notice on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'.

You got that far? Wow. I couldn't get past the Bengal tiger at first level support!

Re:Useless

[neflyte]

"Well instead of a guard dog, they had dis bloody great big Bengal Tiger. I managed to take out the tiger with a can of mace, but the shopkeeper and his son, that's a different story altogether. I had to beat them to death with their own shoes."

Amazingly, Wayne's World II is relevant! (for about 2 seconds)

Re:Useless

[negRo_slim]

From Wikipedia...

The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks.

Re:Useless

[Korbeau]

At least it opens a debate.

A few months ago it was really unclear that the CRTC would ever lean ever so slightly in the direction of the consumer, all indicated the contrary. A previous preliminary ruling for Bell traffic shaping of its wholesalers gave almost all authority in the hands of Bell. I'm amongst what is I'm sure a lot of fellow Canadian slashdotters that petitioned against it.

Also remember that the CRTC is an old organization that is not very adapted nor flexible enough to take a real stand in modern communication issues. I find it better that they keep a cautious neutral stand in slight favor of openess, net-neutrality and of consumers rights than simply closing their eyes like they used to do in the past years.

At least from now on we won't discover shaping practices by pure random amateur discovery but we will be notified and will be able to fully protest. It also opens the debate in a language the media will be able to understand.

A good thing overall IMO - but we'll have to wait and see.

Re:Useless

[Anonymous Coward]

you're missing the point. the fact that the world wide web is a specific subset of the internet is a useless fact, moreso than knowing nowadays about what a dangling preposition is. they're synonymous in the same way that car to a vehicle. ftr, i didn't know until earlier today what the difference was when i picked up my old networking book. port 22 traffic spans world wide and is on a web of computers.

Re:Useless

[Anonymous Coward]

"Yes, and what fraction of customers are going to have a detailed understanding of what the letter means."

I see nothing about a notification "letter" sent out to customers. That might draw more attention to the fact that the terms of service are changing. All I see is an indication the information has to be "displayed clearly and prominently" on the ISP web site, which I suspect most people would notice only if they were looking for it.

Re:Useless

[TheRaven64]

WorldWideWeb only runs on NeXTSTEP, although you could probably port it to Mac OS X without much effort. Netscape is better though; WordWideWeb doesn't even support pictures!

Re:Useless

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever thought of going into Advertising?

The Fix is In

[Anonymous Coward]

And the Internet Town Hall Meeting in Halifax NS October 26th apparently can't get any mainstream press interest. Gee, guess there's nothing to see here, move along citizen, etc. Net Neutrality is getting covered there.

Re:The Fix is In

[Anonymous Coward]

And the Internet Town Hall Meeting in Halifax NS October 26th apparently can't get any mainstream press interest. Gee, guess there's nothing to see here, move along citizen, etc. Net Neutrality is getting covered there.

The press is interested primarily in victims who need to be rescued, perferably by the police or the legislature. Citizens who get involved and take their greviances directly to their communities and relevant parties (such as the ISPs) to seek redress are not victims. Watch the news sometime. You can watch hour after hour and never see any stories about anyone who stands up for themselves and refuses to be screwed over. That's because this is not a mentality they wish to encourage. It might bring about social change if the rabble start getting uppity. It might change the status quo, and the status quo has been very good to the media companies.

Once you accept that the various for-profit media conglomerates tend to reinforce each other by acting in their common interests, you can detect that there is an agenda common to all of them. Once you are aware that such an agenda exists, you can look for patterns in the stories presented: both what IS presented and glorified and what is NOT presented or is downplayed. You can then see a subtle undercurrent, a unifying concept that explains each one of these patterns. That unifying concept has nothing to do with Right vs. Left, or Democrat vs. Republican. It has everything to do with a society that has been increasingly regimented and under central planning and control for the last hundred years or more, and with the need that such a society has for arbiters of information. The media is not your friend.

Re:The Fix is In

[Anonymous Coward]

I sent Representative Steve King a letter about Net Neutrality and got a form letter back about having to pay state sales tax on internet purchases. His people obviously have no idea what the main idea behind Net Neutrality is or they've been lobbied into submission. Sad that such ignorant people are in charge of such things.

Re:The Fix is In

[Anonymous Coward]

no, it just that the same poeple that own the 3 major ISPs in Canada happen to also control TV, radio and newspapers.

Re:The Fix is In

[Braedley]

What, there's a town hall meeting in Halifax? Why wasn't I informed of this earlier? As a side note, at least the CRTC doesn't equate traffic shaping with throttling like a Reuters article I read earlier.

typical

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Technical means to manage traffic, such as traffic shaping, should only be employed as a last resort

And in this world, that means FIRST RESORT and STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE.

Gutless gutless worthless CRTC.

"Hey CRTC! Thanks for condemning Canada to third rate connectivity. Chintzing on the bandwidth saves the provider money - they have no incentive to provide better access, and since most people are tied into multi-year deals with their phone or cable service, a 30-day notice is fucking bullshit.

FUCK CRTC and FUCK ROGERS and FUCK BELL CANADA. You people suck great steaming tourdes out of my butthole you greedy pathetic scum sucking freaks.

Next question?

What real alternatives are there around here (Canada)?

RS

Re:typical

[ubercam]

MTS is not bad, but you have to live in Manitoba. We live in a small town about 30km from Winnipeg and we get 8/1 DSL. In the city it's a bit better upload, but it sure beats dial-up or satellite, because there's really nothing else out here (aside from a couple fixed wireless providers). Luckily they don't seem to give a shit what you download or how much. This month I've burned through 56gb downloading about 30-40 torrents. They seem to be acting like a "dumb pipe" which is great for me. No caps, no throttling that I've noticed. Unlike Shaw (their only direct competitor), they don't seem to cap or throttle.

However, MTS does have a telephone line monopoly in Manitoba. Not long ago it was a Crown Corporation, but it was privatized in 1996 I think. They could be jerks if they wanted to I guess, but I suspect a good chunk of their customers might jump ship to Shaw for phone, internet and TV. Shaw is too much of a competitor in every area except cellular for them to really start floundering around and doing stupid shit.

Also, as far as I know, MTS doesn't allow anyone else to offer DSL (à la local loop unbundling) so there is no Teksavvy & co. here just yet, but I suspect that may happen at some point.

Re:typical

[Ralph Spoilsport]

sounds cool. I'm in Tronno...

Re:typical

[agnosticnixie]

Videotron?

Okay, I'm kidding. I keep hearing about a nice local ISP in Toronto, forgot their name. I know Montreal and Southern Quebec has CoopTel which isn't too predatory.

Re:typical

[McGiraf]

Teksavvy is the name.

Re:typical

[Anonymous Coward]

You forget a FUCK TELUS in your rant. Telus is truly scum. Absolutely the worst customer service ever.

Telus sucks. It's true!

Re:typical

[thebigmacd]

AFAIK their DSL traffic is routed over Bell's infrastructure...just like virtually all third-party providers.

Re:typical

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah, at least Videotron has fast Internet. They're just as big crooks as Bell and Rogers, but they give faster net. It's better than nothing?

Re:typical

[agnosticnixie]

*shrugs* I'd wish it was, they're basically in the media monopolists' camp.

Re:typical

[Idiomatick]

http://www.teksavvy.com/

You're welcome. Unfortunately... a crtc decision will soon doom these companies. Go here to complain: http://www.consumersforinternetcompetition.com/

Re:typical

[McGiraf]

Yes, just to get from the customer to their own connexions to the internet. And real tech support staffed with knowledgeable an helpful people that do care.

Re:typical

[Tim MacDonald]

Cogeco doesn't throttle, or block, anything. They do have bandwidth caps, but they're soft, and they just charge $5/GB over the cap, to a maximum of $30 extra. Most people I know just factor the extra $30 into their bill. Personally, I have never hit my cap, although it's a commercial cap. ^_^ 200 GB/mo.

Last resort

[darthwader]

We tried positive visualization, prayer beads, and yelling really loud at the routers. Nothing worked. I guess we'll have to implement traffic shaping now.

Re:Last resort

[Anonymous Coward]

"Pissed off now, Joboo. Look, I go to you. I stick up for you. You no help me now, I say f*** you, Joboo, I do it myself." - Pedro

Re:Last resort

[Anonymous Coward]

The rest of us could try kerosene and flame.

Re:Last resort

[bugs2squash]

Presumably, if that is actually written into the law, then it means that traffic shaping could never be used. After all, there is always something that could be done prior to a last resort. It's like that phrase "best efforts". I suppose now we'll see the ISPs hiring hit squads to silence zealous users as a possible recourse prior to traffic shaping.

Re:Last resort

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot a few steps (at least for US-based ISPs):

1) Add more subscribers
2) Whine to congress about not enough bandwidth for subscriber-count
3) Get government handouts
4) Profit!!!
5) Pretend to upgrade network
6) Raise rates (ya know, for all the "upgrades")
7) Profit!!!
8) goto 1

Shaping vs Crippling

[Adrian Lopez]

An ISP would therefore need to seek the Commission's approval before it implemented a practice that would:

        * block the delivery of content to an end-user, or
        * slow down time-sensitive traffic, such as videoconferencing or Internet telephone (Voice over Internet Protocol) services, to the extent that the content is degraded.

So ISPs can't slow down time-sensitive traffic without prior approval by the CRTC, but there's no restrictions on slowing down other kinds of traffi, perhaps even to the point where the link is useless without being completely blocked? That's exactly the reason why I fear traffic shaping. Far too often it's used as a way to cripple people's connections rather than provide clients with true "quality of service".

Re:Shaping vs Crippling

[jvillain]

I am usually the first to bash the CRTC but this time I think they got it right. You could go into super detail but then any one can find a loop hole they can exploit. Or you can just put out a blanket statement that says knock it off and then the CRTC who are law maker as well as judge and jury can then interpret it any way they want.

Re:Shaping vs Crippling

[thule]

Could you publish the list of ISP's that cripple people's connections? That would be good information to know. I personally have not heard of any ISP's in the US that have completely cut off specific protocols. Lowering the priority of P2P connections doesn't count if the P2P app continues to function.

Re:Shaping vs Crippling

[Adrian Lopez]

I don't have a list of ISPs, but I've read several posts by ISP employees (on a public forum that caters to ISPs) discussing and even bragging about crippling P2P applications and doing so in a way that leads users to believe the problem is with the peer's connection rather than the client's connection.

Re:Shaping vs Crippling

[thule]

I think that had more to do with a company hired by movie studios to kill P2P networks.

Re:Shaping vs Crippling

[Idiomatick]

Here is a partial list: http://azureuswiki.com/index.php/Bad_ISPs

ISPs that cripple torrents and sometimes how.

Re:Shaping vs Crippling

[dmatos]

I'd link you directly to the blog post by Michael Geist on this issue, but his blog site appears to be down right now. Here's the rss feed through livejournal:

http://syndicated.livejournal.com/michaelgeistrss/505360.html

A couple of excerpts of his analysis/summary that will interest you:

"traffic management that degrades or prefers one application over another may warrant investigation under section 27(2) of the Act."

"Even for non-sensitive traffic, the CRTC has ruled that it is possible to slow down to an extent that it amounts to blocking or controlling the content, therefore requiring prior approval."

Re:Shaping vs Crippling

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.dslreports.com/

What I expect

[Anonymous Coward]

Notification from your ISP: We are screwing you. You have 60 days to find a better ISP, oh wait we are the only one that offers a high speed connection in your area so you have no choice but to take it.

How is warning given?

[seifried]

How is warning given? One of my links at home is through shaw.ca, and the killer is that customer support can't email you at anything but a shaw.ca email address (I asked about an outage and was told an email was sent about the planned maintenance, I asked what address they had for me on file, they said none so I tried to give them kurt@seifried.org and they said sorry, we can't enter that into the system, it has to be a shaw.ca address). I suspect warning will consist of a printed notice being placed in a filing cabinet with a sign saying "beware the leopard" on the front of it. The reality is that most large ISP's in North America are going to screw customers as much as possible and reduce infrastructure development due to short sighted accounting practices (rather than take a long term approach that would benefit customers and their bottom line ultimately). Case in point: my shaw cablemodem service is only twice as fast when I first signed up about 10 years ago, and that's with bandwidth caps in place.

Re:How is warning given?

[BitZtream]

in a filing cabinet with a sign saying "beware the leopard"

Well, at least its not locked, and in a disused lavatory in the basement where the lights and stairs have gone.

Re:How is warning given?

[seifried]

Yeah I couldn't remember the whole shtick, to bad one can't edit posts like reddit.

Re:How is warning given?

[NoYob]

(rather than take a long term approach that would benefit customers and their bottom line ultimately)

Where's the goddamn Japanese when you need them! They operate in the long term. They'd show'em! If the ISPs dont' get it, well fuck'em! Just have a look at Detroit.

Wait a minute....

Re:How is warning given?

[PFAK]

You can forward shaw.ca e-mail addresses to your personal email elsewhere.

Thank you, CRTC

[yamfry]

We appreciate that you are encouraging the incumbent oligopolists to "make investments to increase network capacity as much as possible" by providing them with an incentive to do the exact opposite. I guess that's what happens when friends regulate friends.

30/60 days

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it's a little more than just a 30/60 day notification. They have to demonstrate to the CRTC that they have tried everything and still had to resort to traffic shaping in order to maintain quality of service.

One of the simple recommendations was to charge higher rates for high bandwith consumption. This isn't a blow for Net Neutrality but at the same time, they're not allowed to throttle for the next 30/60 days. Smaller ISPs will have to find other ways of competing other than offering unlimited bandwith for peanuts. It sucks but at least they have some avenues to pursue.

Amazing..

[Anonymous Coward]

The US and Canada are so far behind in internet infrastructure it's pathetic. I forget the report I read recently but it said somthing like it would take 10 years or more for us to upgrade our infrastructure to even come close to Malaysia, South Korea, and Japan.

Many of these ISP's were subsidized by the government (at least in the USA) in agreement that they would upgrade their infrastructure so we could be on par with the rest of the world technologically. Many of our tax dollars paid for this 'upgrade' but in the end we got nothing. It is one of the biggest overlooked schemes ever.

The idea that traffic shaping should even be considered is total crap. North America should already have the infrastructure to handle the traffic at speeds far beyond what we're used to. I smell another 20 years of slow very incrimental speed increases all while we are sucked dry $49.00 a month for "High speed internet!! 50 times faster than dialup!!!!! Can't you believe that?? 50 times faster than DIALUP!"

Re:Amazing..

[Anonymous Coward]

Many of our tax dollars paid for this 'upgrade' but in the end we got nothing.

Just like the majority of other tax funded initiatives of this nature. This is a prime example of why giving tax money to companies to perform private sector projects is a bad idea. The sad thing is that many of the current social programs on the table would increase this cash flow. We need for the government to stay the fuck out of private industry as a backer. It doesn't work.

It is one of the biggest overlooked schemes ever.

You must be new to politics. This is just another example, certainly nowhere close to the biggest.

Re:Amazing..

[Anonymous Coward]

Malaysia: 220 people/sq mile
Japan: 870 people/sq mile
South Korea: 1260 people/sq mile

US: 80 people/sq mile
Canada: 7.8 people/sq mile

Re:Amazing..

[agnosticnixie]

London, ON to Quebec, QC corridor: roughly 200 people per square mile, half the country's population.

Most of the population in the West is on the southern border, also in dense zones.

Re:Amazing..

[Anonymous Coward]

Vancouver CANADA: 5,335 people/sq km
Machida JAPAN: 5,772 people/sq km

There are too many to choose from, but city densities are not quite so skewed.

Re:Amazing..

[cdrguru]

The problem is that it would appear that other companies did not build a neighborhood node structure. This put them years behind the US in delivering the Internet but once they did it was a lot faster. Problem in the US is we have 1000 homes hung off a single neighborhood node which is supplied by a fiber connection to the head end. This pretty much is how both DSL and cable work.

So you can give the homes "up to 20Mbit" access because the fiber link was upgraded from 256Mbit to (maybe) 2Gb. We are probably now at the limit of how fast you can link the neighborhood node to the head end. Sure, the right way today might be a fiber for each house - probably how it was done in Japan and Korea. But we did do it that way and to change now would be a complete re-do of the entire system. My guess is that would take billions and they just spend tens of millions upgrading the fiber to the neighborhood nodes.

Re:Amazing..

[Anonymous Coward]

They already were given billions to do this. Instead of using that money for what it was supposed to be for, it got lost in peoples bank accounts.

Elections

[Anonymous Coward]

Did this happen because I voted Conservative? Or, put another way, would this have happened if the Liberals were in power?

Re:Elections

[biggknifeparty]

You voted Conservative? Yes, it's your fault my Internet sucks, jerk.

Re:Elections

[cjfs]

Did this happen because I voted Conservative? Or, put another way, would this have happened if the Liberals were in power?

The liberals stated their support of net neutrality earlier in the year.

Re:Elections

[uniquegeek]

And an article link posted (from the National Post?) a few months ago on here mentioned it was the liberals who actually put it on the table in the first place, while they were in power.

In general:

It takes more than one party to enable this nonsense. Last year after Geist brought this to our attention, there were a lot of knee-jerk reactions of "evil Conservatives". Get real and use your brain, people. This is not a single party issue. So many people were waving around their single-coloured flags (red or blue) so hard they forgot to actually deal with the freaking issue.

Furthermore, anyone desperate to get back into power can promise anything they like (like reducing GST... which didn't happen until only a couple years ago...). This is the case for ANY party.

The reason I am in sciences instead of politics is because I never had any interest in playing the same childish junior high verbal games over and over again... or at least, not having it take up the majority of my day. I couldn't abide being that useless. On the other hand, if you like the science of bullshit, get into politics.

Re:Elections

[jeffstar]

both parties are garbage. You have to take the garbage out now and then or it really starts to stink. The liberals got too smelly.

It shouldn't matter what party is in power when the CRTC makes decisions? I suppose the CBC should also be neutral instead of having a liberal slant as well.

I haven't read the ruling but it sounds like it is all you can expect. Some traffic *is* more important than other traffic and some people pay a premium for faster/lower latency connections.

At least the telcos aren't allowed to deliberately slow down VOIP

Re:Elections

[Idiomatick]

Though that might not mean much it is certainly better than nothing. I believe obama has stated support for net neutrality as well.... but it hasn't so cleanly happened.

Re:Ownership -- not always

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? I sometimes consult with a small ISP and their pipes are their pipes. Their transit is a fiber connection put in by a large ISP.

Everything is just fine most of the time. The condo's are fed with large pipes. Some of the condo's that this ISP services have pure Ethernet switches with no rate limiting per port. It only takes one person will fire up their P2P program and suck up all the bandwidth to the building. No biggie I say. I don't really care until latency states taking a hit. The ISP doesn't care until they get a letter from one of the movie studios. It would be nice to de-prioritize P2P traffic so the people that just simply want to use their VoIP phone or browse the web don't have issues with high latency. Now the government has to get in the middle of this because the ISP has a couple of people that like to run their P2P programs during high traffic hours? Screw that!

Well you put it best.

[Wrexs0ul]

I've been following this and there's really no difference to what telco/cablecos are doing right now. It's all spin factor you see:

"We're adding* protective measures* to ensure your regular* internet use* remains at high level of quality you've come to expect from Bellusawtron."

* at at additional $1.99/mo to your bill
* that prevent legitimate technology use that might be used for criminal/copyright infringrment purposes... like your computer
* Checking your @Bellusawtron.com email and browsing the telco/cableco news potal
* Which is 3-4 times per week for less than 30 minutes per session

Simply put, nothing's changed. Companies are now required to provide the spin letters they've been doing for years. Service is being fundamentally limited, but in a way that a majority of users won't understand relates to the message sent.

The funny/sad part is the fiber market has both improved and dropped in price tremendously with competition where I'm from, but just you try getting above a 1mbit connection to your home, or even a 1mbit who's QoS doesn't go to crap when you hit 60% usage.

-Matt

Blocking access?

[DeHackEd]

Hypothetical scenario: an ISP is under DDoS attack originating from some fixed foreign IP. Since it becomes impossible to "block access" without CRTC approval, does that mean the ISP has to take it like a bitch while waiting from the OK to have it blackholed? What about any other kinds of attacks? What about Spam filtering?

I really don't think the CRTC really understands the issue. I should know, I listened to some of the public hearings a few months back.

Disclaimer: I work for an affected ISP.

Re:Blocking access?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hypothetical scenario: I pay for internet connectivity. I don't want "unlimited" to mean there is actually a cap hidden in the fine print. I don't want speeds that are "x Mbps" to mean maybe on a good day but mostly not. I certainly don't want ISPs deciding which bits I will get and which I won't.

Disclaimer: I am a paying customer. Treat me as one.

Re:Blocking access?

[jeffstar]

i didn't read the ruling, and apparently neither did you, but from a post above it says you can block DDOS attacks and take measures in the event of outages or other 'network security'/malware etc events

Re:Shaping vs Crippling - I have a great idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

How about if a new p2p protocol was developed which embedded a time sensitive video feed into every packet (only a few bytes in each packet - make the video feed 10x10 pixels @ 20 fps or something). The rest of the packets could then be devoted to transmitting actual useful data. At 1 time sensitive video byte per 500 byte packet, that should guarantee about 1 Mb/s throughput.
Best part is that way the ISPs would need approval to degrade it (which they would no doubt get considering how useless the CRTC is, but at least it could slow them down).

traffic shaping as a last resort?

[Anonymous Coward]

by last resort they mean the first thing you do, right?

Business as usual

[GrBear]

They're already traffic shaping, this just gives them an official OK..

Business as usual folks, nothing to see here.

Re:Ownership -- not always

[Reapman]

Your argument might carry weight if you weren't AC and provided more then generic terms. For all I know your talking about your condo in Italy or Brazil.

Considering your talking about a small ISP that owns their own pipe's I'd wager your very much NOT in Canada.

First use noted: Geist sites unreachable!

[Obstin8]

Can't reach _any_ Michael Geist sites (from either my cable and DSL conns). Coincidence? I think not!!!

Re:First use noted: Geist sites unreachable!

[SunSaw]

http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:gC1IVoriwq0J:www.michaelgeist.ca/+geist&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca

I'd like to see the CRTC come down hard on them

[mirix]

Just once.

And if the ISPs bitch too much, saying it's no longer profitable, then have the gov appropriate the "infrastructure upgrades" we paid for, and lease their use. Send 'em a bill for upgrade cash that wasn't spent on the network.

Shaping traffic might be necessary...

[willy_me]

But ISPs should be required to validate the shaping. ISPs should be required to provide a web interface to allow users to see if shaping took place. The amount of shaping, what traffic was shaped, and why it was required should also be provided upon request. And overall statistics should be posted to ensure that the ISPs do not rely on shaping as a replacement for infrastructure investment (typically funded by the government).

Without this information there is no way to keep the ISPs honest. So require that is is available. And the legal right for an ISP to shape traffic should be preserved just in case it is occasionally required.

As is stands, this is not required. Net neutrality just died in Canada.

Re:Shaping traffic might be necessary...

[shentino]

Network neutrality has been dead everywhere ever since Big Content bribed its way into the inner circle.

Re:Shaping traffic might be necessary...

[PsychoSlashDot]

How is traffic-shaping necessary? Oh, right... it's necessary when you have a bunch of customers you're selling 3Mbps DSL circuits to who are very nearly saturating your backbone architecture and maxing out your peering agreements THEN you decide to "upgrade" your customers to 4Mbps service. You do that to "compete" with those other guys on cable who have just raised their advertised service rates. Of course, you don't actually upgrade your back-end... that's expensive. You just adjust a port rate limit at the CO and call it a day. Things start to break because of all of those nasty customers using 25% more bandwidth than you can support. Poof, traffic-shaping and you're back to 3Mbps per customer on average. Hey! Now you can "upgrade" everyone to 5Mbps service!

I'd far rather have a slower rated link that's guaranteed not interfered with than a faster but shaped link.

Note: the "other guys" on cable are doing the same thing, over-selling their links. This is just a circle-jerk.

Re:As someone living in Canada...

[Informative]

...we're always fucked up every orifice we've got, so there's no surprise here.

Uhm, no

[Senjutsu]

Did you read the ruling?

ISPs don't get to throttle at a whim. They can throttle, but if they do, they have to demonstrate to the CRTC that the throttling is as narrow as possible to solve the problem and, importantly, economic measures like tiers, or building capacity would not solve the problem. They're also not allowed to throttle any protocol so hard as to effectively block it, or throttle things like VOIP without advanced, explicit permission for the CRTC.

That's a big improvement over the status quo at the moment, which has allowed the ISPs to throttle for years with no oversight for any reason they felt like.

Re:Uhm, no

[mysidia]

At a glance, the issue didn't appear to be very limiting.

"Traffic management practice" could include null routing or rate-limiting a flood source, or capping a link that a specific flooding event is coming from...

E.g. A bunch of customers with infected computers participating in an unexpected DDoS attack against a target outside their network, causing the ISP's backhauls or other interconnections to be saturated (and thus seriously impairing connectivity for customers).

So will ISPs be not allowed to mitigate DoS attacks if they cannot anticipate them within 90 days?

Will the customer whose PC got infected and got shutdown or rate-limited be able to take the matter to the CRTC and recieve renumeration, while fining the ISP for protecting the quality of service for their other subscribers?

Re:Uhm, no

[ptaff]

From Telecom Regulatory Policy CRTC 2009-657: (emphasis mine)

44. The Commission notes that Canadian ISPs have used certain ITMPs for the purposes of network security and integrity. Specifically, these ITMPs have been employed to protect users from network threats such as malicious software, spam, and distribution of illicit materials. In the Commission’s view, such activities are unlikely to trigger complaints or concerns under the Act and are a necessary part of an ISP’s network operations.

45. The Commission is therefore not addressing, in this decision, ITMPs used only for the purpose of network security, nor those employed temporarily to address unpredictable traffic events (e.g. traffic surges due to global events and failures on part of an ISP’s network) in order to protect network integrity.

I'm sorry, but I don't grok how a router can tell an IP packet has an illicit payload. Now wouldn't that be just what the ISP need to throttle any P2P protocol, in fact making all this “warn before you harm” policy moot?

Re:Uhm, no

[TheSunborn]

P2P (Legal or otherwise) are not a network security thread. So when they talk about network security they most likely talk about (d)dos attacks such as sym flood and similary attacks.

Re:Uhm, no

[Nabeel_co]

...Will the customer whose PC got infected and got shutdown or rate-limited be able to take the matter to the CRTC and recieve renumeration, while fining the ISP for protecting the quality of service for their other subscribers?

It shouldn't up to the ISPs to decide what is and/or to take care of DDoS attacks or spam bots.

When I was on Rogers, my server would send me email updates quite frequently, and suddenly it stopped working, because Rogers assumed my server and any other residential computer that was sending out emails was sending spam.

In fact, sendmail doesn't work at all if you are on a Rogers residential network, and that's just wrong. I should be able to send email from my machine without using someone else's SMTP server.

Basicly what you just said it's ok for Rogers, Bell, Telus, etc. to be judge, jury, and executioner.

That's the CRTCs job, a job that they don't seem to want to do, because, hell, they have no problem with Rogers, Bell and the others being in control, raking the citizens of Canada over the coals, while making heaps of money.

Rogers, Bell and the rest, should simply provide a connection to the internet. No more, no less. Any filtering, blocking, or traffic shaping should be done by the government. (Which we, in theory, have control of)

On another somewhat related topic:
Here's a good idea:
ISPs should either drop bandwidth caps completely, or drop tiered connection speeds.
I think the best solution for bandwidth usage is to give the customer the fastest connection their hardware will support at no extra cost, and just charge them per GB for every GB.

eg. I go with Rogers, and get a basic connection for $5 a month, the speed is the fastest that the network and my modem will allow regardless of how much a pay a month (lets say 30Mbps). If at the end of the month I end up using 30GB I will get charged at the rate of $1 per GB, If I end up using 60, I'll get charged $0.75 per GB, if I use 150 GB I end up paying $0.50 per GB

Why you ask? Well, there is no real point is limiting people's connection speed. It's the same technology, and same connection, your link speed is just an arbitrary cap in software (as far as residential internet is concerned anyway). Giving me a faster connection doesn't cost Rogers anything extra, all it does is insure that I am using the networks resources for a longer period of time then is necessary. What does cost money is the throughput. If I have a 5Mbps connection and am transferring 200 GB per month, I'm costing Rogers more than someone who has an 18Mbps connection and only transfers 20GB per month. Since their costs come from the throughput, why don't they just charge for that, and drop all this speed cap crap? It would be much more profitable in the long run.

Re:Uhm, no

[Anonymous Coward]

more to the point, I'm sick of watching the various associations spreading fud over this. ISP really want to provide a better service? QOS was invented for a purpose, you know? Throttling via packed dropping or port blockades will only cause more damage to the customer and to the ISPs. Imagine having most of legitimate traffic running on NOP/RST via tor. This is not what the net was invented, this is no internet.

Re:Uhm, no

[Anonymous Coward]

I read the ruling to say that ITMPs that even *incidentally* affect VOIP or video conferencing are prohibited (at least without prior CRTC authorization). To wit,

In the case of time-sensitive audio or video traffic (i.e. real-time audio or video such as video conferencing and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services), ITMPs that introduce delays or jitter15 are likely to cause degradation to the service. The Commission considers that when noticeable degradation occurs, it amounts to controlling the content and influencing the meaning and purpose of the telecommunications in question.

So just wrap P2P traffic in encrypted video conferencing traffic. Problem solved. And the kicker? We didn't need any regulatory order because an ISP wouldn't dare blocking videoconferencing traffic. And if they did they really wouldn't risk blocking HTTP so we could use that.

We don't need to depend on the state to solve this problem, we can do it ourselves. Stop hoping that our rulers will do the right thing for you when only a modicum of effort will let us exercise our self-determination. Take control. Stop being helpless.

Re:Uhm, no

[mysidia]

It shouldn't up to the ISPs to decide what is and/or to take care of DDoS attacks or spam bots.

Um.. That proposition is lunacy. The customers are downstream on the ISP's network, using the ISP's IP address space to commit their abuse.

If the ISP doesn't do something, other providers will de-peer them, or block their traffic in the end, to their detriment.

Also, contrary to the suggestion above, the CRTC is not equipped to deal with DDoS attacks. If many customers are involved, it can shutdown the ISP, until something is done.

If they had to wait for CRTC action, the ISP might be down for months, to the detriment of their revenue, and none of their customers having usable service.

Re:Uhm, no

[Nabeel_co]

Which is my point, it shouldn't be that way. If I start a pirate radio station that is relatively powerful, you can bet your ass that the CRTC will be knocking at my door. Why is it different for the internet? It shouldn't be. (That's not to say that all contributors on the Internet should be blocked, just the ones who cause harm.)

Re:Uhm, no

[DarthVain]

Yes and no.

Yes it is marginally better than what was, which was nothing. So better than nothing. AKA greater than zero. Not exactly an astounding success.

I read the ruling but not all the way through the policy, and in this the devil is in the details. Time will tell how this works out. However experience tells me from the very hearings put on by the CRTC that the telcos are quite willing to lie and BS about what is the current state and why they need to do what they say they need to do. It was already shown from Bell's own reports that the crap falling out of their mouths in protest about the need for file shaping due to potential network congestion was utter garbage.

So the question is who is going to monitor, force compliance, or enforce this? CRTC? So far they seem to have no teeth whatsoever.

As for the notice, because of the monopolies this is mostly a joke. So what they give you notice before screwing you? Is that supposed to make you feel better, more engaged? "Oh by the way, we are going to screw you royally by this date and their is nothing you can do short of dropping us and not having internet access so too freaking bad" Why don't they just take a photocopy of some guy giving me the finger and mail that to me as notice for all the good it will do anyone.

Here is how I see it playing out.

Bell: "I need to slow peoples connections!"
CRTC: "Why?"
Bell: "Because we don't have enough capacity."
CRTC: "Why don't you build more?"
Bell: "Too expensive."
CRTC: "What do you propose?"
Bell: "Here is some reports we made up to support our decision."
CRTC: "OK."
Bell: "Exceelllleent!" (arching fingers)

Nothing will be independent. CRTC will depend on teleco expertise to TELL them what is required.

In a word. Lame.

It is better than what we had, and if we fight enough, perhaps just the first step to something more comprehensive. I noticed the other day that Finland just made internet access a "right". We will see how long the Canadian government continues to drop the ball.

Re:Uhm, no

[Minwee]

I'm sorry, but I don't grok how a router can tell an IP packet has an illicit payload.

Then perhaps you need to read RFC 3514 a little more closely.

Re:Uhm, no

[mysidia]

The perpetrator is anonymous and unavailable.

Botnet nodes participating in a DDoS are innocent computer users, far too massive for the CRTC to go knocking on everyone's door, and seize their computers.

And many attacks will originate from an international source or target an international destination.

The spoofed manner of IP-based attacks makes identifying perpetrators on a large computer network almost impossible.

Certainly there is nothing the CRTC can do to help, not in a usable timeframe.

Re:Uhm, no

[Nabeel_co]

Yet Rogers has the time to send you a letter if it sees your computer is infected with a botnet.

Why can't the CRTC just do the same?

And regardless of how difficult the job is, at the end of the day, that is their job. That is what part of my taxes goes to...

Re:Uhm, no

[Nabeel_co]

Not to mention that I think that it really sucks that I couldn't run an SMTP server from home because most people aren't knowledgeable enough to secure their computer...

I can guarantee that if I got into my car and drove into a wall causing thousands of dollars worth in damage, and my excuse was "I didn't know where the break pedal was", my ass would be going to jail.

But if I don't protect my computer and cause millions of dollars of damage to a company because my computer was part of a DDoS attack, then everything is hunky-dory!

Re:Uhm, no

[neoform]

That's nice, a tiny victory for Net Neutrality.. however the other part of the CRTC's decision gave total control to the big 3 to charge resellers anything they want.

Right now I have a 24MBit uncapped and unthrottled ASDL2+ connection for $39/month with a Bell reseller (colba.net). Yesterday I got a letter from my ISP telling me that under the new rules set by Bell, I was only really allowed to have 5-10GB a month, but that they would be so kind as to permit me to have 60GB a month at my current monthly rate. Every additional gigabyte would cost $0.75 to a maximum of $30. If I exceeded 300GB in a month I would then be DISCONNECTED until the end of the billing cycle.

I don't know what asshat at the CRTC though that allowing Bell do charge whatever they want to the resellers would actually promote competition, but he/they should be shot out of a canon into a brick wall. From their site:

A retail customer is the end user who purchases access to the Internet. The CRTC does not regulate rates, quality of service issues or business practices of Internet service providers as they relate to retail customers. This is because there is enough competition in the market that retail customers can shop around for service packages.

Thanks to this new ruling, the slim competition that existed will soon disappear; what reason do I have to use a reseller if they charge the same amount as Bell?

Re:Uhm, no

[mysidia]

Nowadays dialup and dsl user ranges (DULs) are commonly blacklisted, by orgs such as Sorbs who look at what the IP addresses reverse-resolve to and list them if they appear to be dynamic.

As a result... without control of your reverse DNS records, you can't reliably run a SMTP server in the first place, without getting branded a spammer.

(Before even considering BLs that just blanket list known DSL user ip ranges)

Oh, and it's still possible to run a SMTP server on your network, but you need to MSP over a port other than 25, either to your ISP's mail server, or to an outside mail server you have an agreement with for mail transport.

As an American, I'm sorry.

[NoYob]

If Bush were still president, we'd invade and liberate your country.

You have oil. Canada is the largest exporters of oil to the US.

Aye! We, the USA, must invade Canada and bring Democracy to your backward ways and of course to pay for that liberation, we'll have to run your oil fields.

You know, it's just not as funny with Obama as President.

Why does the army care?

[Anonymous Freak]

Really, why would the U.S. Army's Cold Regions Test Center give a rat's ass about net neutrality?

 

 

 

(aka: Watch when you use acronyms. U.S.-centric acronyms are one thing, /. readers are used to it, but non-U.S. acronyms will be completely mis-construed by a vast majority of /.ers.)

Re:Why does the army care?

[agnosticnixie]

You're the first to do it, and bringing up an obscure sub department of Army R&D is very very stretching it.

Re:Why does the army care?

[Anonymous Coward]

(aka: Watch when you use acronyms. U.S.-centric acronyms are one thing, /. readers are used to it, but non-U.S. acronyms will be completely mis-construed by a vast majority of /.ers.)

We bow and humble ourselves. Much shame that we have confused the ethno-centric US citizen with an acronym alias. Even worse, it was done on an international scale, sort of (America junior).

No big pipe protection?

[AHuxley]

"Primary ISPs generally submitted that for this reason, ITMPs designed to address congestion that are applied to their retail
services must also be applied to wholesale services provided to secondary ISPs."

Why could they not move to protect the ISP's who buy pipe space, best effort or dedicated bandwidth.
So the Canadian gov can protect real bandwidth to paying customers ie other smaller regional or national ISP's.
What a smaller regional ISP does with a pipe is of no real interest to a telco, the pipe is in place and if the ISP packs it, up and down , they paid for it.
What the national networks do to their locked in consumers on their own networks is fine print.
But to get a free pass to shape ISP's pipes must have taken some 'gifts'.

Re:No big pipe protection?

[jeffstar]

ouch

Re:Subsidies for ip networks in Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

"the canadian taxpayer subsidized the development of the networks"

OK... I see this statement now and then but never with any support. Does anyone have a specific reference for direct subsidies to BELL, Shaw, Rogers, TELUS, etc from govts to build their IP networks?

The POTS/TDM side was rooted in the natural monopoly system which saw large revenues from long distance get fed back into building of infrastructure. We also, at one time, had government ownership in the public communications arena but that is long gone. I can't find a good reference to a similar situation with IP networks.

So forgive me if I am not using the correct search terms. Can anyone provide enlightenment?

ISPs best get notices about spam filtering out

[mysidia]

I suppose it's especially important that they reveal to customers they participate in the traffic management practice called "Spam and virus Filtering" or "Bulk Mail filtering", including references to such things as spam folders, deletion/quarantine, etc, etc.

Otherwise, I see spammers going straight to the CRTC and raising complaints against ISPs for blocking or degrading their network performance (ability to deliver spam e-mail to their customers).

A similar issue exists for other types of internet abusers (that the ISP may blackhole or block access from to customers, for whatever reason)

Rulings in favor of Net Neutrality don't just benefit content providers that customers want access to/from.

The bad guys (even the ones offering spam, malware, viruses, adware, scams, etc) are content providers also

Re:Subsidies for ip networks in Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

Ooops MTS and SaskTel are publicly owned. Maybe on the East coast as well.

Bell and TELUS are the two largest companies and both are private.

The smell of government corruption:

[Anonymous Coward]

What government says: "Blah, blah, blah... Let's pretend to the taxpayers we're doing something for them."

What government actually means: "Big companies can do exactly as they like, if they've contributed to the designated politicians."

Re:The smell of government corruption:

[Nabeel_co]

Man, it's much more than that, most of the people who are in the CRTC used to actually work for those companies.

damn you!

[gh0stee]

wtf, I submitted this article like 10 hrs before this! Bastard!

Also, its Policy and NOT Legislation

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing in this policy limits network providers from managing their networks in any manner they deem fit. If anything, it could work to prevent complaints. The complaint against Bell about P2P traffic management in a wholesale service fell through when it was determined that Bell had taken appropriate action and had not violated any rules. If Bell had published the ITMP, the complaint would likely have been killed sooner with less publicity.

Also, this is policy and not legislation. In Canada, government departments like to issue policies and then act as if it has force of law. A policy can be challenged in court more easily than legislation and can often be ignored if there is no legislative weight behind it. This policy seems to be full of ambiguity (eg: what exactly qualifies as an ITMP? does suppression of DoS traffic? How about filtering of individuals for EULA violations? What about contract services where the provider specifically says they will use ITMPS? umm... or law enforcement requests?).

All the policy really does is:

* point at section 27.2 of the 1993 Telecommunications act. er... the "fairness" section
* ask network providers to publish ITMPs in advance (there is no penalty for not doing so, and no legislation to back this up).
* vaguely outlines the evaluation process the CRTC will go through to determine if the ITMP is fair, if the CRTC receives a complaint. Lots of weasel words and motherhood statements. Not a lot of meat.

I don't believe this policy changes anything; it does provide the appearance of doing something.

Now, now: play nicely everyone and don't bother the CRTC.

Re:Ownership -- not always

[Anonymous Coward]

They are a very small ISP consisting of five high rise condos spanning over three adjacent cities. They are still an ISP and would of course fall under these rules.

Re:Subsidies for ip networks in Canada

[Interoperable]

Ah, I just posted exactly this question so my other post is redundant. Mod up the parent of this one and let us know if anyone has a source.

Thanks for nothing CRTC...

[Interoperable]

The ruling is a big fat nothing. No seriously CRTC, could you have made any ruling that said less than this one? "Do what you want, but we reserve the right to not like it. Just give your customers warning so that they can also not like it and not do anything about it."

At least they could have said, "we don't give a flying fuck about net neutrality one way or the other so we're not going to regulate," but they didn't. They simply tried to come as close as possible to not actually making a decision. Even if you choose wrong at least have the balls to decide something.

Pay as you go?

[Tijaska]

Excuse my ignorance, I don't live in the USA so I'm not involved (yet), but doesn't the underlying problem stem from the fact that US ISPs aren't allowed to bill subscribers per megabyte of bandwidth consumed? If subscribers paid for the bandwidth that they actually use, plus a fixed connection fee, the whole net neutrality debate might become totally irrelevant. Users who want to download gigabytes per day would no longer be a problem, they would be an opportunity. What's wrong with the old-fashioned idea of paying for what you use, rather than getting your neighbour to pay for it? Or is it more complicated than that?

Re:Pay as you go?

[cdrguru]

Problem is, this is an unattractive pricing model. If the Cable Co. implements this people will flock to DSL Company which doesn't implement this. Currently, supplying Internet connections to homes is all about market share - either you have enough density to support the company or you do not. Density is everything because there is a huge fixed cost to supplying a "neighborhood". Every user you get in the neighborhood can be added at almost zero additional cost - whereas adding a neighborhood costs millions.

So without market share in a neighborhood it is a lose-lose proposition and expansion is pointless. This is also why there can't be any small ISPs any more - when the neighborhood node requires dedicated fiber to the head end and a lot of expensive gear then nobody can afford to do it for 10% of the homes in a neighborhood.

The short answer is unless someone made everyone supplying Internet connections price it that way, nobody is going to go to a real usage-based pricing model.
\

Re:Pay as you go?

[Interoperable]

Problem is, this is an unattractive pricing model

Unattractive for whom? I would love to have this model, as long as the price was reasonable (even 60 cents per GB would be an improvement to what I have now). The trouble is that ISPs love to give you a fixed amount of transfer and fine you if you go over. Use more than our 20GB/month plan, well then you have to buy our 60GB/per month plan to download 22GB this month. Same thing with cell phones rates.

It's almost on par with a scam as far as I'm concerned. Of course, I always download as many movies as I need on the last day of each billing period to bring my usage to within 200MB of my cap.

What everyone overlooks ...

[gordguide]

Slashdotters see a "Net Neutrality" debate, which is a borrowed phrase that encompasses a lot more than "can an ISP use packet analysis to throttle BitTorrent", which is what Bell, Rogers, etc, customers see this as.

What this ruling is about, however, goes back to how smaller ISPs were created in the first place in Canada. Basically, the CRTC said, about 20 years ago, something that might be summed up as:

Because you (the Telecos) enjoy a Utility status you have to, at the same price it costs you to transmit data across your lines, sell connectivity to smaller ISPs across those same lines, and do so in a manner that doesn't discriminate against them to your competitive advantage.
You can't offer your own customers access to a pipe that you don't also offer these independents.
You cannot say no to an ISP who wants to set up shop and needs what is on your poles and cables.
We are making you do this because we made it easy for you to build those poles across public and private land a long time ago, so there is a public interest in that infrastructure.
We do this because we think competition amongst a large number of providers is better than handing you the whole shebang to screw with like you did the phone system for about a hundred years.

Come around 2007 or so, and these independent ISPs complain that the telecos are throttling the lines they sell to these independent ISPs by the use of packet sniffing technology hunting for P2P data, and they go to the CRTC, who sets these rules, and complain that the telecos are not living up to the bargain outlined above. What they wanted was for the CRTC to say the teleco can do whatever it wants to their own customers, but the pipe to the indy ISPs must be as fat and unencumbered as ever.

The telecos respond saying "we have to, or our network will be overwhelmed".

The indy ISPs did not get what they wanted ... a ban on traffic shaping of any kind.

They did, however get what they were promised a few decades ago (see above). A lot of the noise over this last ruling comes from people who have accounts with ISPs and wanted a ruling saying "you can't throttle my BitTorrent traffic".

The fundamental issue, however, was addressed: This ruling says telecos cannot throttle anything they sell to these indy ISPs that they don't throttle to their own customers. They leave it up to the telecos to manage their network, but let it be known they won't tolerate the telecos doing something to the indy ISPs unless they also do it to themselves in exactly the same way and under exactly the same circumstances.

Re:Ownership -- not always

[dogsbreath]

Cripes... somebody posts a claim that appeals to the majority (even though it is patently false ie: taxpayer funded networks) and gets modded 5 for insightful.

Anyone who rightfully calls shenanigans and asks for support for the claim gets tagged as a troll or flamebait. Just mod me -1 by default.

And why sidetrack the discussion just because someone commenting is AC? You can see from AC's words that he/she is likely Canadian.

Anyways, I'm with AC on this. I really don't want the CRTC getting complicating things when there already is sufficient legislation to deal with the issues. (1993 Telecommunications Act)

All the naysaying... WTF?

[RobbieCrash]

This is fantastic. Now we actually have a way to find out WHAT they are doing and complain about it. There's no more "I think this is what's happening and it sucks." Now it's "I think this is what is happening, and it sucks... Is this the case? ... Yeah? WHY? Fuck you, give me what I pay for."

Rogers, especially, has been advertising how you can download an HD movie in 2.3 seconds on their max best super ultra service. But they don't tell you that it's only if you do it from an authorized partner while using their DNS hijacking. Fuck them, it's my bandwidth, let me do it how I want. Now they have to tell us.

While it's not endgame, it's at least a step in the right direction.

Re:Ownership -- not always

[shentino]

We already have a mechanism for that.

It's called RFC 795.
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc795

Re:billions

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe 200 Billion over 20 years?

TANSTAFL - this is the real world

[volts]

Traffic management is necessary because bandwidth is less than infinite. Extreme consumers will impair service to others if there is no mechanism to prevent this. My company recently implemented bandwidth guarantees for VOIP traffic on the fiber between our buildings because file transfers were causing drop outs on phone calls. In other words our routers throttle file transfers to provide decent QOS for voice. I like the CRTC's approach because it provides transparency of ISPs QOS policies and creates an environment for competitive incentive to avoid abusive restrictions, with some fallback for adult supervision.

I'm a moderately heavy bittorent (Vuze) user. My ISP is Rogers Cable, whose internet service is available in a number of speeds/caps/pricing from $25 to $150 per month. Rogers has been reasonably open about its traffic management practices and is on record as throttling bittorrent on the upstream (from the house) because this is a scarce resource. Problems for me - nil; obscure torrents with few peers/seeds run slowly, popular torrents download like sh** through a goose; surfing and Skype work smoothly even in peak periods. I left Bell Sympatico when my experience was the opposite.

Re:TANSTAFL - this is the real world

[swordgeek]

The CRTC's approach was fairly typical of them - stay as uninvolved as possible. This might be a good solution, or it might not.

However, you're missing a point. If I sign up and pay for (say) 15Mb/sec service, and I'm trying to get a file from a server (or servers) that can feed it that fast to my ISP, then I should be able to get it that fast to my cable modem, dammit! Restrict my upload and download speeds at the rates advertised, impose capacity limits, these are fine. However, it is NOT up to the ISP to decide what I do within my limits.

Re:TANSTAFL - this is the real world

[KillerBob]

However, you're missing a point. If I sign up and pay for (say) 15Mb/sec service, and I'm trying to get a file from a server (or servers) that can feed it that fast to my ISP, then I should be able to get it that fast to my cable modem, dammit! Restrict my upload and download speeds at the rates advertised, impose capacity limits, these are fine. However, it is NOT up to the ISP to decide what I do within my limits.

In the days when ISPs were serving a few thousand dialup customers from a 15mbit ATM, maybe. Back then, it was possible to have full speed on all your lines without capping out your overall bandwidth.

But do you know how much it would cost Rogers if they had all of their customers (let's be conservative and say they only had 100,000 custoemrs). They're offering connections up to 50mbit. With 100,000 customers at 50mbit each, you're looking at 5 terabits of bandwidth that they'd need to purchase if they wanted to guarantee that all of their customers would have all of that 50mbit, at all times. While I don't have access to the pricing that tier 1 providers charge each other, I'd be willing to bet that the price per user would be well over the $150/month that Rogers charges for that 50mbit of bandwidth... we're still in an age where Tier 1 connection speeds are measured in gigabits and maybe tens of gigabits. A terabit connection isn't unthinkable, but it's still prohibitavely expensive.

Now let's be reasonable. Most of Rogers' high speed customers are on a 10mbit or 25mbit plan, but Rogers has a lot more than 100,000 cable subscriptions. They probably have that many subscriptions in the city of Ottawa alone, let alone larger cities like Toronto, and the rest of the country that they serve. If they're going to keep their costs reasonable, they're going to have to start cutting back on the amount of bandwidth that's available to you. There's an awful lot of math that's involved in figuring out how much bandwidth they can get away with buying in order to serve their customer base, but the short answer is that they're banking on the fact that most uses of network connectivity do not suck up full bandwidth 24/7, and the fact that their users will be connecting at different times of day. You may be paying for 15mbit, but honestly, you probably don't actually need more than 100kbit of that to surf to Slashdot, and that's only for a few seconds every time you click a link. They can provision you the 15mbit you're paying for when you do something like download a file from an FTP server (and for the most part, I do get that 10mbit I'm paying for... but only when I'm downloading from content networks optimized for the purpose, like akamai or youtube), but most of the time you're only going to actually be using a small fraction of that. On a smaller scale, this is why you can have 4 or 5 computer users all sharing a 10mbit connection via wifi, and they'll usually never notice the slowdown from sharing the bandwidth with each other.

Their issue with Bittorrent is that it breaks the pattern. People downloading torrents will use as much bandwidth as they can, constantly, and will often leave their systems on for prolonged periods of time. They feel they need to implement traffic shaping in order to ensure that the bandwidth is available for users who don't break the mold.

What the CRTC policy is saying is that Rogers should be buying as much bandwidth as they can get their hands on. They need to provision as much bandwidth as they can, and need to be a lot less conservative with those math algorithms they're using to figure out the minimum needed. But the CRTC is recognizing that it's not feasible for Rogers to buy up hundreds of terabits of bandwidth in order to provision full bandwidth for all users at all times, and that there will be times when traffic shaping is necessary in order to ensure quality of service for the bulk of their userbase. As such, the CRTC is saying to Rogers that they need to make public the policy of exactly what they're going to b

Re:throttle

[Anonymous Coward]

Bittorrent was originally designed to be friendly to traffic shapers. Easily identified, and latency tolerant. Certain ISP's *cough* Bell *cough* decided it would be fun to throttle it to 10 bytes/s. And not only their own customers, but 3rd party customers who are required *by law* to go through Bell's last mile lines.

I wonder if this means

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if this means that they will be disconnecting spammers since 80% of all traffic is spam (when there's a call to stop spammers)?

Fuck I hope I didn't throw out my dial up modem.

[Atrox666]

I may need it for the speed

Telus in Western Canada

[phorm]

Telus in British Columbia was "BC Tel". I may be wrong, but I believe that in both BC and Alberta (western-most and adjascent province) they were at least one time partly public entities.

This article mentions Telus as having been provincially owned in Alberta:
    http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=M1ARTM0011790

This article mentions "BC Tel" as having been a public utility:
    http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/BRITISH-COLUMBIA-TELEPHONE-COMPANY-Company-History.html

Re:Telus in Western Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

BC Tel was GTE and wholly private for its entire history AFAIK.

TELUS (AB) was the name for AGT (Alberta Govt Tel) when it was sold for about $850 M back in, ummm, 1990 or so. It then purchased EdTEL from the city of Edmonton. A few years later TELUS and BC TEL merged, adopting TELUS as the name for full entity.

TELUS has since acquired Quebec Tel, which was a fully private company hq'd in Rimouski QC.

Regulation vs. Competition

[mea37]

I see a lot of people saying that this law is useless. On its own, with the market for service as limited as it is in many places, maybe that's so.

On the other hand, do you really want to start living with government-mandated network management policies? Do you think they'll get it right? Do you think political influences won't lead to regulations that require network management policies to suppress, say, p2p traffic?

Perhaps you wonder what's wrong with a law that says "all traffic must be treated as equal"? Apart from the fact that this is bad network management policy, what's wrong is it will never happen.

Why do I say it's bad policy? Well, spam is traffic. Botnet c&c is traffic.

Pretend we can write regulations that require all "legitimate" traffic to be treated as equal (and somehow define 'legitimate' in an appropraite way -- again, do you think p2p won't be slighted?)... now you're saying the only service that can be legally sold is flat bandwidth? If I want to offer a service that reserves some of your bandwidth for VoIP or streaming media, I can't? If I come up with some innovative new service that requires special network QoS treatment, it can never be marketed?

Ok, so maybe we say that you can offer traffic shaping, but you have to offer a flat bandwidth option as well. I'm not sure this is technically feasible, and I have my doubts about letting regulators make that call, but we're getting close to the solutions I think are reasonable.

The key element is the involvement of consumer choice. Consumer choice requires (1) that there be options, and (2) that the consumer be informed enough to choose among those options. This law helps with the second point, so I'm not so sure it's useless... but it does leave the first point unaddressed.

In general, consumer choice does not require that any particular option you may want be available. If there is true competition, then any option that "everybody wants" is going to be offered by someone. Regulating an industry to ensure true competition isn't easy, though.

If you don't have true competition, what can you do? Well, requiring everyone to offer a particular option amongst their offerings is one possibility. It can get tricky. ("Sure, we have a flat, unshaped 1Mbps option.") I dislike the idea that to sell one thing I'd be required to also sell something else, as this could destroy legitimate niche business models.

Setting up a government-run option to compete with the private providers is another idea; the US is debating this approach to healthcare. It's tricky to ensure the government provides just the right offering. Ideally you want it to be good enough that it keeps the other guy honest, but not so good that people flock to it unless the other guy becomes dishonest. It drags the government into lines of business many of us don't think they should be in. It is subject to politics. (Again, what happens when the government says "no p2p on our network"?) And in the case of ISP service, you have to decide if you trust the government to handle all of your traffic; will they respect your privacy?

Overall, any solution that doesn't involve true competition is going to be a compromise, and true competition is going to be hard to get. So, pick your poison and start pushing for whichever solution seems practical and acceptable to you.

But if you really look at it, any good solution is going to include keeping consumers more informed; so instead of wallowing in negativity about how this law doesn't solve the entire problem, you should consider it a positive first step and start doing something useful toward the next step.