Slashdot Mirror
ISP's War On BitTorrent Hits World of Warcraft
jfruhlinger writes "Canadian Internet users have the prospect of a metered Internet looming over their head, and now World of Warcraft players who use Rogers Communications as their ISP are encountering serious throttling. The culprit seems to be Rogers' determination to go after BitTorrent. WoW uses BitTorrent as a utility to update game files — something most users probably aren't even aware of."
oh what a great loss. no more WOW (aka internet crack) idiots
these are sad days indeed
It's Canada.
Bottom line, if you're a Rogers Communications customer and play WoW, you'd better find an alternative ISP for your patches, at least until this situation is resolved.
Fixed that for ya. I've heard that TekSavvy is a great alternative.
I am a happy TekSavy's customer. And because i like how it sounds, F............. you Rogers/Bell
I'm sure a lot of us saw this coming. Back when I was living in some apartments, the only broadband was a cable company (Ygnition) that does apartment complexes, etc. Little choice for broadband providers. So I went with them. Their TOS forbid bit torrent by name. Thankfully, it was either an empty threat or they knew enough about what was going on to ignore WoW update traffic.
They aren't the only ISP, and it will show the other ISPs the consequences if they decide to cap or meter usage.
"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."
I don't play WOW myself but I hate selective service blocking...found this digging around for a couple of minutes:
Thank you for your letters of February 23rd and 25th, 2011 regarding the impact of Rogers Internet traffic management practices (ITMP) on the interactive game called World of Warcraft.
Our tests have determined that there is a problem with our traffic management equipment that can interfere with World of Warcraft. We have been in contact with the game manufacturer and we have been working with our equipment supplier to overcome this problem.
We recently introduced a software modification to solve the problems our customers are experiencing with World of Warcraft. However, there have been recent changes to the game, which has created new problems. A second software modification to address these new issues will not be ready until June.
We have determined that the problem occurs only when our customers are simultaneously using peer-to-peer file sharing applications and running the game. Therefore we recommend turning off the peer-to-peer setting in the World of Warcraft game and ensuring that no peer-to-peer applications are running on any connected computer. Rogers will engage our customers to ensure they are aware of these recommendations, while continuing to work on a longer term solution.
We sincerely regret the inconvenience that some of our customers have experienced in playing World of Warcraft and will continue to work with the game supplier and our technology supplier to solve the remaining problems as soon as possible. source
(I have doubts about that portion above in bold.)
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
Having the ability to uncouple my ISP with the DSL provider, and having an AWESOME local ISP, I really like to laugh when stories like this crop up. DSL may be less bandwidth but with the right tweaks (AKA nag your DSL provider) you can get low latency connections similar to cable, with none of these silly problems.
The BitTorrent feature in WoW's updater used to download patches is completely optional. It is on by default, but can be turned off very easily. Blizzard didn't implement this functionality to save on bandwidth (unlike what many reports have been suggesting) but to allow users outside of North America to download the patches quicker. Also it helps a lot during times of heavy load (such as any major patch which is downloaded by 12 million people at once).
Who would have expected BitTorrent to be used for lawful data dissemination? What next, entire films being produced exclusively for the protocol!?
Wouldn't it be better [for the RIAA and MPAA] to try this [latest "fuck the consumer" crap] in France?
They already are. What do you think DADVSI and HADOPI are?
It's common knowledge that BitTorrent is only used for copyright infringement! Wait, that can only mean that WoW players are all pirates! And here I thought it was only the Threepwood Guild. But then, what do I know, I don't play.
..for most of the rest of the world, where data caps have been in play for some time, if not since the beginning of broadband. Having unmetered data is the exception, not the norm. Calling for boycotts is very funny indeed.
...are a bunch of dicks in everything they do. They've never thought of a fee that is too insulting for their customers. They wrote the book on poor service. They only exist because the government provides protection to a corporation that provides too many political contributions.
Used to be on Rogers. YES, you get fast connection. But, they are on http://wiki.vuze.com/w/Bad_ISPs
Internet is not longger a luxury "In some countries such as Estonia,[3] France,[4] Finland,[5] Greece[6] and Spain,[7] Internet access has already been made a human right" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Internet_access
Reading the article will show that:
If you use peer to peer applications (bittorrent) at the same time as playing WoW you will have latency problems.
To quote: 'the problem occurs when customers are “simultaneously using peer-to-peer file sharing applications” '
The problem does not happen when people are playing WoW with not torrents happening in the background. I wouldn't venture a guess that most gamers who are worried about latency would not be file sharing while wondering wondering why their pings times are so high.
Ahhh, you Canadians.
Let me introduce you to a little company out of Philly that we like to call - Comcast.
CANADLOL
If I'm not mistaken, the torrent aspect of WOW also extends to its normal gameplay connection since Cataclysm. In that they altered their network traffic protocols which resulted in high ping times for users of various ISPs. I think RIFT has the same issues with its traffic being delayed by ISP traffic management software because it sees it as P2P traffic.
I think this is an example of how the witchhunt against pirates and the reluctance to upgrade systems to meet consumer demand will hurt innovation and use of the internet overall.
My understanding is developers are making these protocol changes because they are more efficient - except they are being blocked by ISPs.
Sadly, we do need government regulation to keep the playing fields level, and to ensure that we see continued growth and development of various industries over the Internet. If every ISP employs the same measures, and smaller providers must follow the traffic restrictions of their own larger providers, there is no Choice and Free Market to influence the behaviour of these corporations. It is also clear that these corporations are working hand in hand with IP Holders such as the MPAA and the RIAA. So there is no decoupling of the various business considerations.
I'm not sure why Anti-Monopoly and Anti-Trust laws haven't kicked in yet to prevent what is obviously destructive to competition and a free market. Perhaps Rogers wants Blizzard to knock on its doors and offer money to allow WOW traffic to flow unimpeded?
We may all need to pay a separate VPN provider to play our MMORPGs and other games in the future. Then they'll probably spend MILLIONS developing software that can inspect VPN packets and determine if it's likely to be gaming, video, or torrents. Instead, of course, in spending those millions in upgrading infrastructure.
Make no mistake, none of these companies are strapped for cash. None of them would be pushed to the brink by the use of World of Warcraft, Torrents, or Netflix across their networks. They post >40% profits.
Everyone knows that Torrents are only used for illegal file sharing.
My friend's wireless provider does the same thing. When I say wireless, I don't mean cellular and I don't mean wifi, it's some local provider for some corner of our county delivering wireless internet on a licensed spectrum.
Anyways, his terms of service explicitly forbid Bit Torrent and after three days of their service he was disconnected. He called up their tech support line and their first question was, "Well do you play WoW?" After he answered yes, they re-enabled his service and apologized for the inconvenience.
Bit Torrent = Evil except when it keeps people paying their ISP bill...
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
I actually had to give up my Rogers service due to this same problem. That was a couple years ago, at the time I let them know that I wanted to be able to use the service I paid for or to cancel my account. After I kept turning down the discounts they used to try and keep me as a customer(discounts on a service that wasn't usable for what I wanted it for) they were more than happy to cancel my account.
They told me that I was in the minority and the average customer doesn't complain. The reason they get away with their terrible service(and customer service) is that a lot of times they're the only game in town.
Rogers:
As a Canadafag anon with access to a good number of your customers' computers infected with a botnet, I suggest you get rid of your restrictions on your internets, else you're about to be flooded with a good amount of your customers asking why Rogers is putting child porn on their computer.
Have fun,
r.
People still P2P too. The traffic is just encrypted instead. If the WOW client doesn't support it, blocking P2P are only going to hinder the nice innocent people. The whole telecommunication ecosystem in Canada is scary. It is painful to read in the newspaper that people argue that Parliament should not intervene with the CRTC. Which is a complete joke. Any government organization that does not have the fear of having responsibility to the people is just asking to be abused.
As someone who is not a Canadian, it is my understanding that your politicians are not permitted to accept contributions or donations from corporations as per the Federal Accountability Act.
Perhaps you should get your facts straight before you attempt to mix two different concerns in your single rant.
At least they wrote a book, it's kinda impossible to get anything written or otherwise binding out of my ISP...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's been a few years since I played WoW, but my (old) ISP used to block all p2p traffic as well.
This wasn't a problem for me, though, as the Blizzard Updater had a HTTP-only fallback. Has this feature been removed or something?
It really shits me when companies fail to realize that the BT protocol is not just about illegal download and that it does have real world and legitimate purposes.
Sounds a lot like how Turbine runs their games, i.e. D&D Online, Asheron's Call, and Lord of the Rings Online.
To make a long story short: the "support" system is there to fix problems people have with the game...by banning the people experiencing the problem.
Report a graphics glitch? BANNED. ...and then BANNED.
Online GM harassing you over his personal religious beliefs? BANNED.
Ask why somebody was banned? BANNED.
Discuss their banning practices on a forum or blog? BANNED, and the place you posted is "asked" by their lawyers to remove the posting.
And they even have emplyees run low-level alts in the player population IN ORDER to find people expressing discontent with the game (i.e. secret police)
And so on, and so on. In the meantime this lack of reachable feedback by others means that NEW players only see the GOOD reviews (most of which are astroturf), and get sucked into spending money on a game that they will eventually be banned from.
FUCK Turbine!
Compared to Rogers, Comcast is eligible for canonization.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
If they wrote the book, then AT&T in the US is about to make the movie on poor customer service. Don't forget to join the facebook protest group against AT&Ts bandwidth capping. Don't let this happen in America. http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_186439608067383
Sam has one liberty, which he sacrifices for one security. Can you tell me what Sam has now?
Car accidents can cause deaths! People get drunk, then drive cars and kill people, or drive into buildings or posts and kill themselves. The solution: ban all cars. Its the cars fault. Its either that, or sue the car manufacturers for these problems! Cars are just like bittorent! And bittorrent is bad, just like cars! NOOO, its not what people do with them, some of it good, some of it bad, we are going for blanket stupidity here! BAN ALL CARS! (oh, and bittorrent too).
I have never had to deal with an American ISP, but I suspect that Canadian telecoms are worse than American ones. I recently read a financial article that said that American telecoms need to follow Canadian telecoms to achieve better profits. ie - charge more, provide less. Canadian telecoms are world leaders in monopoly power abuse.
I beg to differ. Bell is very competitive in providing poor service.
I'm on a horse!
Our office has a Comcast business line (while we wait for some jackass to hurry up and fix our broken fiber) - several times a day, our latency spikes up to - in some cases - 15 fucking seconds.
MTR graphs show this latency spike is always in the middle of Comcast's local network. ... I think once you get past the first few circles of Hell, it doesn't really matter how evil you are compared to your neighbors.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Telling you want protocol you can and can not use is like telling you what sites you can and can't visit. Are they going to block YouTube next because that causes a lof of downstream traffic? I also think it is worth mentioning that there are a whole lot of other legal BitTorrent uses besides WOW. You make a movie, you want to distribute your movie for free, you put it on BitTorrent and now your movie is censored in Canada.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
These days the in-game downloader is required as changes are loaded dynamically. Whenever you enter an area there are two progress bars - one for loading objects in memory and one (the small one) for downloading essential area data. An alternative would be to leave the launcher running until it downloads all zillion fragments (16GB or so) most of which you're never going to see. And repeat after every patch.
It is funny trying to see this form of regulation in a commodity, I wonder how stupid all those execs from the music/film industry will feel in 15 years time when they realise that they were supporting an obsolete model, which was stopping them from making even better business.
ISPs have over sold. WoW is just a game. Move along, nothing to see here.
Unfortunately, Illegal != Does not exist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sponsorship_scandal
One of many examples of our illustrious politicians throwing handfuls of money at their friends. Some of which they see back via "fundraising". It's our form of corporate contributions, and even though it's limited it still stains politics.
We've an election very soon and I feel there is no one to vote for that isn't either corrupt or bat-shit crazy (or both). :(
This is pretty much old news, this has been seen ever since Cataclysm was released.
http://wow.joystiq.com/2011/01/14/the-lawbringer-net-neutrality-and-mmos/
I believe the issue is mostly that the deep packet inspection kit that the ISPs use to classify and throttle/shape traffic are unable to distingush between Warcraft traffic and Bittorrent traffic since the changes made for Cataclysm, until signatures/filters/etc are updated to classify the traffic correctly, but in many cases they seem to be taking their own sweet time about doing it (or aren't capable of doing it).
Note that I don't really have a huge problem with traffic shaping as done by an ISP, as long as the customer is well informed as to exactly what is going on and why, some ISPs are better at cummunicating this than others.
I know several people who have changed ISP over this issue, but obviously this isn't an option in some areas where there isn't really much competition.
Verizon FIOS, for $60/month, 50Mb/50Mb, no throttling. My family typically downloads, through Hulu, Netflix, and many other services that we take advantage of probably download 750GB per month, and there are no issues. None. In fact, Verzion is letting me burst above that from time to time.
( don't use Bit Torrent, but that is a *choice* of mine, not a restriction)
So anybody telling you its not sustainable, Verizon has proven them wrong.
You're confusing ISP greed with economic viability. Someday you'll see the difference.
>I beg to differ. Bell is very competitive in providing poor service.
Fairpoint also does a splendid job of providing shitty internet access.
I have said it for years, and yet ISPs/Blizzard only learn by doing.
Bittorrent != Piracy. It is used by applications for distributing e.g. updates or games in Steam-like services.
So what does Blizzard have to learn? That they kept on using bittorrent for distributing updates, knowingly ISPs would block or throttle the bandwidth for it.
However I still praise Blizzard for using bittorrent, to fight the consensus that bittorrent is equal to piracy.
That's what they're thinking. But, like it or not, metered Internet - properly, fairly metered Internet - is the solution to this problem.
ISPs should be selling you A Chunk of Data. They can figure out how much they should sell you based on their recorded average usage patterns, figure out prices, and then tell you that you get X GB per month for $Y.
And then their job is to fuck RIGHT off, and let you use it any way you see fit. You want to use it to download 1 megabyte of email a month, fine. You want to blow your whole quota downloading WoW patches and seeding them and playing the game, fine. The important thing is that they're neutral,
As long as there's this bullshit expectation that "unlimited data" is a real thing, ISPs will keep finding ways to justify crippling, throttling or otherwise screwing over customers. If you're not with an ISP that is truly neutral and is prepared to sell you an unfiltered connection then you need to change - unless you're one of those third world countries like the US where you are screwed by monopolistic telcos.
If you're a World of Warcraft player though, you might want to ask why Blizzard has to leverage your Internet connection - and thus your dollars - to help distribute their patches. You'd think that'd get covered by your monthly fee! If I was paying $10 a month or whatever a World of Warcraft subscription costs, I would expect my updates to come from high-speed HTTP servers and I would expect to not have to contribute my bandwidth to the pool so other people could download the patch.
Don't get me wrong, I don't begrudge them the ability to do that. I think it's a great example of BitTorrent being used legitimately. All I know is, we mirror World of Warcraft patches for Australian users and every single patch release, they're hugely popular because users know they can just come to our site, download the patch in a quarter or a tenth of the time of the Blizzard Downloader, so they'll be up and playing much faster and they don't have to blow their precious limited monthly quota sending bytes to other WoW users!
Isn't that sort of throttling a failure to respect their peering agreements?
Telus is also in competition with regards to lousy service, but then so is Shaw.
What is a shame is that the various cable/internet providers have been allowed to carve up the market in such a manner as to avoid competition for the most part. Here in Victoria, your choices are Shaw or Telus. By agreement Rogers does not compete in the internet market here, just as Shaw agreed to not compete in other cities. They divvied up the market between them and for the longest time there was no competition at all. Telus jumped in a few years ago (they also provide TV over the phone lines now of course) and that has provided competition, but if anything the prices for both Shaw and Telus have gone up, so not much evidence of any competition. Shaw's internet is so/so in terms of quality but being a cable company there TV is superior to Telus. Telus's internet is pretty decent overall, but being a phone company their TV is pretty so/so.
Personally I would like to see our internet providers all put out of business and be replaced with a Crown Corporation charged to provide the best service at the cheapest price. Canadian's pay an exorbitantly high fee for all of our communications services generally, far higher than other nations from what I understand. The reason is that the CRTC seems to just rubberstamp whatever the providers ask them to.
Thankfully Bell has apparently dropped its push to go for metered billing...
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
These companies fail to realize a very important detail about BitTorrent. Just like it happened in Linux when it came to new distro releases and in a game like Warcraft when there is a new patch to download, I have yet to see anything more efficient than BitTorrent to download content. Everybody wanting to get a piece of something needs to contribute with something. That has to beat setting up your own CDN architecture since not everybody is a freaking company willing or able to pay for such premiums.
I understand that bandwith doesn't grow on trees and I'm much better signing a contract where they say, here, have 200 GB a month in any way you see fit, than getting "unlimited" or worse limited bandwidth with throttling issues. In any case, I really believe this market in question is in dire need of regulation of some sort. So push your ellected officials to do something about it.
I f configured properly, WoW can be played with no slow down what so ever, as the file is downloaded in the background, and will be installed once fully loaded, so if it takes 5 minutes instead of 1, who cares...i guess they are trying to get more to see there is a potential problem, but we all knew that already. Do not let them throttle your connection for any reason, as you pay for a service for xxx bandwidth and xxx speed....for the price you pay....unless they want to give you credit every time they throttle you down, as it now breaks the said contract....
Thankfully Bell has apparently dropped its push to go for metered billing...
Nope, they've just changed the name of it to Aggregated Volume Pricing (AVP). From Michael Geist's blog: "Bell obviously saw the writing on the wall and has come back with a plan that allows independent ISPs to purchase 1 TB of data for $200 with an overage charge of 29.5 cents per GB."
That's data that the ISP already pays for. Bell wants to double-dip.
...Google "Comcast bittorrent throttling." LOL, n00b.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
I've always found Rogers internet service to be great. Never experienced any throttling. I really think it varies by where you live. Everyone I know in Ottawa has never had a problem with traffic of any kind being throttled. They even have a new feature that detects available bandwidth in the network, and lets you go beyond your maximum speed. Because of this, my 3 mbit connections runs almost exclusively at 10 mbit. I would like to know where people are reporting these throttling problems from. Because living in Ottawa for 10+ years, and being on cable internet 10 years, I can say I've never seen any evidence of this.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
But if several people from a corporation were to donate their personal maximum to a political figure/party, no one would bat an eye. That's to say nothing of cash under the table or work provided in-kind :S
52 52'23" W 47 32'07" N
Maybe this will finally get people to protest against the monopolistic ways we keep allowing.
all true, and the really sad part is Rogers is still far superior to Bell!
The bnig providers, Telus, Shaw, Rogers et al are greedy MOFO's all this bandwidth stuff all comes when Netflix hits canada. and these big providers decided HEY we acan make a killing charge everyoine for usage. Canadians are getting raped for internet access as it is. take a look at what othjer countries have faster speeds, cheaper rates etc.
That's what they're thinking. But, like it or not, metered Internet - properly, fairly metered Internet - is the solution to this problem.
ISPs should be selling you A Chunk of Data. They can figure out how much they should sell you based on their recorded average usage patterns, figure out prices, and then tell you that you get X GB per month for $Y.
And then their job is to fuck RIGHT off, and let you use it any way you see fit. You want to use it to download 1 megabyte of email a month, fine. You want to blow your whole quota downloading WoW patches and seeding them and playing the game, fine. The important thing is that they're neutral,
The problem is that, in Canada, just like American airlines (all of them, not just the one so named) oversubscribe. Even if they sold everyone 100 GB of data, I can guarantee they wouldn't have the capacity to provide #customersx100GB at any given time. They'll oversubscribe regardless of their pricing model. The problem right now, is that they got to a certain point and said, 'fuck infrastructure' let's just shape them, and oversubscribe them and turn that water into wine. It was cheaper for them to invest in new software than new hardware. And as a result the customer is screwed.
Also, the ISP isn't paying to distribute WOW. They're paid to distribute data by their customer. It's the customer's choice what type of data it is and how fast to distribute it. If you've bought a contract for a certain speed for 30 days, then that's what you've bought.
As far as unmetered interent, by selling such a contract, the Big Telco's have sold an implicitly metered amount: days in month x 24 hours x 60 minutes x 60 seconds x Rate of connection = Max download per month. Yeah, this number is way above what they're actually prepared to deliver, but that was their dumb ass offer, it's not the customers fault that those are the only ones on the table.
We keep the spotlight on things like this so as to avoid desensitization. Just because something is commonplace doesn't make it acceptable or ethically right. On the other hand, something being commonplace does make it very easy to consider the norm, and the last thing we want is for corporate abuses like this to be considered normal.
By raising a clamor about it every time, we reinforce the notion that it's abnormal and unacceptable, and open the door for discussions as to exactly why.
Help protect civil rights from abuse by the TSA - visit TSA News Blog.
http://www.tsanewsblog.com
most of the 3rd party websites load much faster on the hospital network. How could this be? Is it possible Time Warner excludes known speed tests from throttling? I need to put them side by side and do some tests with a stopwatch, but I don't like Time Warner already.
Their job is to provide a connection to the internet, nothing more and nothing less. They are given more than enough money to provide a much better connection then they are providing now. And they are now metering certain internet protocools? NO! Data is Data and their job is to transmit my data.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. -- Isaac Asimov
Could Blizzard sue Rogers for interfering with their business by causing problems for WoW players?
Rogers seems to use a throttling method of simply randomly dropping P2P connections when they exceed a certain number (and that number is awfully low). Since WoW uses some form of P2P protocol during game play, and not just when a patch is available but all the time, if you happen to be downloading ANYTHING else with a BT client then there is a chance that the WoW data will be the randomly dropped connection. It's been this way since CATA was released.
From some simple tests I could get my WoW to drop with as few as 30 simultaneous connections under uTorrent. Speed itself doesn't seem to be a determining factor since if I can get 1MB/s from 10-20 peers my WoW remains stable but if I up the allowable peers to 20+, even with a slow dl of 10kb/s, I'm almost guaranteed to disconnect from WoW within 5 minutes and while I can reconnect to the logon server no problem, I won't be able to reconnect to the gaming server until I close uTorrent or lower my connection settings.
It's annoying but my 95gb/month limit is about perfect for my needs and switching to almost any other ISP in my area will mean lowering my limit or paying more. And since Rogers no longer offers the 95gb option if I switch and decide to come back I'd end up losing 15gb/month or having to pay an extra $10 to move up a package.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
Hi. I am Elise with Rogers team.
First we want to thank our customers for their patience while we have been investigating issues related to World of Warcraft (WoW). What we know today is that there is a problem with our traffic management equipment that is inadvertently slowing the game for some customers. While we have fixed some issues with a software modification, new problems have emerged that we expect will be addressed with a second software update in June.
We believe the problem occurs when P2P is running while simultaneously playing the game. If you are experiencing problems we suggest you turn off the peer to peer setting within the WoW game and ensure no other P2P file sharing applications are running while playing WoW. WoW does use P2P for software updates, but with this setting changed you should continue to automatically receive software updates through other methods.
This is only a temporary solution. We continue to work closely with the game manufacturer and our equipment supplier to help resolve this issue as soon as possible.
Let me tell you about my $2400 phone bill for 28MB of data billed out at $0.06/KB from Rogers.
Of course, this was about 6-7 years ago at this point.
Also nice was them cutting my phone off right after I got off the phone with them and trying to negotiate a payment plan ("You are expected to pay your bill in full each month. We don't do payment plans.")
Well World of Warcraft sucks anyway, so why care about the difficulty for them to be playing. They are no life fuckers who are stupid and just have no life!
Rodgers_ITMP ;Bunch of jerks.
If BitTorrent = "WOW"
Then THROTTLE = "NO"
Elseif
Then THROTTLE = "HELLYA"
Endif