CRTC Says Rogers Violating Federal Net Neutrality Rules

beaverdownunder writes "A Canadian CRTC investigation in partnership with Cisco has found that Rogers Communications has violated federal net-neutrality rules by throttling connections related to P2P applications. Rogers has until noon on February 3rd to reply to the accusations or face a hearing." Quoting the letter sent to Rogers: "On the basis of our evidence to date, any traffic from an unidentified time-sensitive application making use of P2P ports will be throttled resulting in noticeable degradation of such traffic."

Comments

Finally

[iONiUM]

Rogers (and Bell) have been abusing their customers since the beginning, this is just another example. I hope the CRTC sticks it to them, and I really hope this becomes very public. Please share this everywhere, so the hatred towards this duopoly in Canada can grow even more.

And yes, I use Rogers, because I literally don't have another choice. And they definitely throttle torrents, during "prime" hours, which is apparently 8am-11pm.

Re:Finally

[stanlyb]

Hey, what is going on? Is today the new April.1st?

Re:Finally

[atlasdropperofworlds]

So does Shaw. I get bizarre behavior with Skype (distortions, connection problems) at non-peak hours. If I run speed test at those times, both my download and upload capacity max out. It's all very annoying. I also have inside information that Shaw has had throttling equipment in for almost 10 years now, and that they do use it.

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

And yes, I use Rogers, because I literally don't have another choice.

Me either. Unless I track down which neighbour it is I'm leeching my connection off of and encourage them to switch to telus. This is good news indeed.

Re:Finally

[cpu6502]

Why is Canada dominated by this company?

Here in the U.S. we have two sometimes three different internet companies to choose from. It prevents them from being abusive to customers (since then we would just switch companies).

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't blame all Skype issues on your ISP.

The problems with Skype are pretty much universal. But some of them might be due to your ISP.

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in the U.S. we have two sometimes three different internet companies to choose from. It prevents them from being abusive to customers (since then we would just switch companies).

Wait a minute, you are actually trying to say with a straight face that the USA has a competitive residential internet market, with low prices, high speeds and good customer service?

My ass.

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is Canada dominated by this company?

Here in the U.S. we have two sometimes three different internet companies to choose from. It prevents them from being abusive to customers (since then we would just switch companies).

Here in some places (but not enough) of the U.S. we have two, sometimes three different internet companies to choose from.

FTFY

Re:Finally

[fullmetal55]

Inside information not withstanding, as a longtime Shaw High-speed customer, (we signed up with "Shaw Wave" when it was first brought into our town in 1998) They told us up front, that excessive use will cause throttling. As Shaw migrated to @Home, It was again mentioned that throttling high-usage accounts would occur. with the caveat that it was once you reached 4 GB of data downloaded per month you'd be throttled down, with your speed refreshed the first of the month, repeat offenders would receive letters, and face possible disconnection. They've had the ability to for longer than 10 years, and have only in the last 10 years (since abandoning @Home) not advertising this ability in their TOS. in experience however, the throttling only ever took place for repeat offenders, who continually broke the barrier got Shaw's attention.

Re:Finally

[Anrego]

I imagine it has something to do with population density. We are kinda spread out up here.. makes it hard to have competing services given the cost of infrastructure compared to the number of potential customers.

Re:Finally

[compro01]

It prevents them from being abusive to customers (since then we would just switch companies).

That works until they start colluding, as Rogers and Bell do.

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

Shaw doesn't throttle torrents. Or doesn't try very hard to.

Source: 100mbit down 10mbit up capped 24/7 for the last 4 months

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA before you get too excited. They do throttle bit torrent, openly, because it is legal for them to do so. FTFA:

The Telecommunications Act and CRTC regulations allow throttling of peer-to-peer file sharing programs like BitTorrent, but not of time-sensitive internet traffic like video chatting or gaming.

Re:Finally

[Skarecrow77]

I don't know where you live, but every market I've lived in in the past decade (which has been 4 of them now) in the US has had the following internet options:

1. Verizon DSL. moderately priced, but slow. Like "what the hell is it 1999?!" slow.
1a. perhaps one or two companies reselling verizon DSL. same product, different company on your monthly bill. what's the point.

2. Comcast or Timewarner or Cox cable. Faster, but prone to both overselling and random packetloss. 9 times out of 10 they don't care about either.

3. Verizon or AT&T promises of FIOS/U-Verse access to your neighborhood "some day". When you poll people you know (who care about such things) you can't find a single person who actually has access to these products, despite the product being nominally "available" in your city.

The best internet access I ever had was when I was younger and under-employed, my wife and I lived in a community full of people who were for the most part too poor to afford the luxury of cable internet (so were we, but being a geeks, we dispensed with things like cable tv and a house phone instead), so we were one of the only people on the node. That was pretty sweet.

Re:Finally

[sconeu]

So forget about downloading a Linux ISO?

Re:Finally

[phoenix_rizzen]

And it's done on a per-IP basis, not a per-household or per-account basis. Since you get (at least) 2 dynamic IPs per Shaw Internet account, all you have to do is separate your "normal" traffic from your "excessive" traffic.

For example, we setup to routers at our house, with a switch between them and the cable router. They each get a different IP via DHCP.

Torrents and other "bandwidth hogs" go through one router. All other traffic goes through the other router.

That way, when they throttle all traffic through one IP, it doesn't affect our normal web browsing activities.

Re:Finally

[compro01]

Your experience is probably because their 100 Mb is only available as "unlimited" (500GB cap).

Re:Finally

[dgatwood]

4 GB in a month is not excessive. That's less than the average bandwidth of a 14.4k modem. Remember those?

Most sane Internet services set their cap at 250 GB these days. A 30 GB cap is considered paltry. 4 GB is... well, the only place that's remotely acceptable is on an untethered cellular phone.

Re:Finally

[Pope]

Why is Canada dominated by this company?

Shaw and Rogers, over the years (Rogers has been around since the 1960s), bought up smaller competing cable companies, then did a cross-country territory swap: Shaw got the West, Rogers got the East. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_Cable#History

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

Skype uses two endpoints: you and the person you are communicating with. It is also subject to jitter problems which do not necessarily show themselves during a speed test.

Re:Finally

[Enderandrew]

I have the choice of low speed Qwest DSL where I can't use a router, or higher speed and higher price Cox cable modem service. Cox blocks mail ports, so I can't connect with a mail client to any email server other than their own.

I have amazing choices available to me.

Re:Finally

[Clueless Moron]

There are gobs to choose from: See canadianisp.ca.

To be fair most all of them rent most of their infrastructure from Bell or Rogers, but their policies can be quite different. For example, my ISP permits me to run servers and is net neutral on their network. Once the packets hit someone else's fiber it's beyond their control of course.

Re:Finally

[camperdave]

Where do you live where you don't have another choice? You should check out Teksavvy. They have both DSL ("wet" and "dry" loop (ie with or without dial tone) DSL options, as well as DOCSIS cable.

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is why I'm really happy to have a great cable provider like Videotron here in Quebec. Their prices might not be the best, but the service quality is more than exceptional. They've always been against bandwidth throttling and I doubt their stand on this will ever change.

Re:Finally

[operagost]

3a. They rip out all the copper when they install, forever making your home totally inaccessible to traditional copper networks. Oh, and whether or not you have service with them, these bastages tromp all over your property, hack down all your trees, and leave the lumber lying on your lawn-- so they totally don't deserve any money.

Re:Finally

[Tanktalus]

4GB may have been the cap back in 1998. Now, however, I get 50Mbps down, 3Mbps up, and a cap of 450GB per month from Shaw.

Re:Finally

[Dixie_Flatline]

Effectively, it has to do with foreign ownership rules. (Ironically, something that the CRTC is responsible for enforcing, which lead us to this problem in the first place.)

So! Because of some legal argle-bargle, Canadian telcos must have majority ownership in Canada. It means that a big US company can't come and set up shop. Nor anyone else from anywhere else. Wind Mobile kinda skirted the rules a bit, but it was a desperate play and it looked like it wasn't going to work for a while there.

So the big telcos can operate with relative impunity because it's effin' expensive to set up national infrastructure in a country like Canada. They were effectively gifted the copper (as I recall) in the first place when it was phone and cable TV lines, and now they've got a stranglehold. This applies in many different areas, as well; Rogers does home internet as well as cable TV and mobile phones. But they're not technically a monopoly because Bell does the same thing. So you've got a few (barely) competing entities that see no reason to lower prices because going to the other guy means you're still bent over the table for exactly the same price, and the only difference is whose name you mutter through clenched teeth.

Re:Finally

[anyGould]

We used to have Videotron here in Edmonton - until Shaw bought them.

Actually, it was kind of weird - Videotron had half the city and Shaw had the other half (I'm going to guess divided by the river, but I'm not sure). So no-one was really surprised when one bought the other, although most of us wish it had gone the other way.

Re:Finally

[danomac]

Back then linux was on floppy disks.

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

They also seem to be throttling VPN, which is a blast when working off-hours from home for a high-tech firm, uploading fairly large files to the office barely over dialup speeds. My guess is that any non-web traffic gets classified as 'p2p' and throttled. Getting hooked up with Teksavvy next month. Hitting them in the wallet enough times should drive the point home. Hopefully the CRTC 'throttles' them harder than I can.

But I shouldn't complain, right?, I mean how else can they afford to buy the Maple Leafs if they DON'T screw the customer?

Re:Finally

[nosferatu1001]

I was downloading ISOs in 2000....

Re:Finally

[tlhIngan]

And it's done on a per-IP basis, not a per-household or per-account basis. Since you get (at least) 2 dynamic IPs per Shaw Internet account, all you have to do is separate your "normal" traffic from your "excessive" traffic.

That's unusual. Shaw's throttling is actually applied per-modem, so the entire modem is throttled, not IP (it's easier to do because the CMTS can do it rather than have an upstream router do it). People have split their traffic/changed MACs etc and have verified that their internet stays throttled on Shaw.

That said, Shaw still does do throttling, but they've stopped expanding the program since it was discovered in 2009 or so. Places that already have a DPI system will still suffer, those that don't, won't.

Re:Finally

[idontgno]

Where would this be? And which "mail ports?"

[E]SMTP? Pretty rare any more for any residential service to permit that; it's just too easy to find home machines botted as spam relays.

I connect to non-local IMAP ports from my Cox connection all the time; in fact, none of the email client ports are a problem.

Yeah. I'm guessing you're talking about SMTP, and that stopped happening almost anywhere last millennium, unless you're a business-class subscriber.

Re:Finally

[cheekyjohnson]

All I've got is Comcast. That's all I've ever had, too. So if Comcast treats people where I live poorly, there's nothing that can be done (outside of canceling Comcast and getting awful satellite or dial-up).

Re:Finally

[failedlogic]

I'm another /.'er more than happy to recommend TekSavvy. I'm on a 5 MB DSL dry loop. I've been a customer over 3 years w/ service in Vancouver and now Toronto.

Parent poster can always switch to TekSavvy for Cable high-speed. Uses Rogers, same modem basically, except you use TekSavvy backbone. I haven't tried it though.

Re:Finally

[sarkeizen]

Now we just make BT look like skype traffic.

Re:Finally

[Maow]

And yes, I use Rogers, because I literally don't have another choice. And they definitely throttle torrents, during "prime" hours, which is apparently 8am-11pm.

Have you looked in to TekSavvy.com? They provide internet over Shaw (& Rogers, I believe) cable connections. Not sure about your area of course.

According to another post to this story, throttling goes away by switching.

I'm a satisfied TekSavvy (TSI) customer over Shaw's cable infrastructure. Paying less per month than subscribing from Shaw and TSI takes a cut, so Shaw only gets a tiny amount of what they used to when I was their customer. Enough to pay for maintenance, not enough to subsidise their content providing businesses.

Re:Finally

[Vrtigo1]

Road Runner still leaves mail ports open. Frankly, I don't really see how you could effectively close them. Take for instance a person who has set up email at their own domain with a webhost. So they key in the webhosts SMTP server as the outgoing mail server in their mail client. If the ISP blocks smtp, this doesn't work and the ISP tells them to use the ISPs SMTP server for outbound mail. So they do that and it works fine, until they pick up and take their laptop/ipad/smartphone and connect through a network other than the ISPs network and now the ISP's mail server won't route mail for them since the connection isn't coming from an IP on the ISP's network. So you can't really lock down outbound mail ports without really pissing people off. And think about it, the majority of the world's spam comes from zombies. If those zombies couldn't send outbound mail then we wouldn't have such a huge spam problem, so that right there tells us that there are still lots of ISPs not filtering outbound smtp.

Re:Finally

[Dominus Suus]

Careful Rogers, if you don't play by the rules you may get a stern talking to!

Re:Finally

[CodeReign]

They don't throttle me. I see too many people blame slow internet on the ISP for throttling when it could be congestion in the last mile, WiFi congestion (too many laptops on the same channel), too much inbound data (copper cables can't handle inbound data quite as nicely AFAIK so if you don't limit your upload speed you kill everything.)

I've lived at six houses with Shaw and have had issues at 1 related to the last mile being weak. Throughout the average day there are 2 hours where I get less than the 15Mb I pay for and it's usually around 14Mb for a single dedicated torrent any time of day (where normal traffic speeds spike to 24Mb).

In addition to that up until June I would boost my speeds by forcing a (inbound) ddos on my own IP address which would make their QOS servers ignore me for about half an hour this would give me 3x what I paid for and maxed out the physical capacity of the modem I used (I haven't been able to get that to work lately :( )

Re:Finally

[Daniel Wood]

Here in some places (but not enough) of the U.S. we have two, sometimes three different internet companies to choose from.

FTFY

Thanks. I happen to live one of those places. The ONLY option here is AT&T 3.5mbps ADSL. Other possibilities are an AT&T EDGE(No VZW coverage here) connection that averages somewhere around 20kbps or satellite. No thanks (this coming from someone that makes a living repairing and fielding enterprise SATCOM systems).

I am fortunate enough that I was able to switch over to AT&T Business Class DSL(No bandwidth caps) for LESS than I was paying for the same AT&T Residential DSL. I get excellent SNRs and am often on FastPath because of that, but AT&T refuses to bump me up to 6mbps. That is even after explaining that I don't care if I actually get 6mbps. I will settle for whatever my modem trains at above 3.5mbps considering my primary motivator is a 768k upload versus a 384k upload and the price difference is less than $3/month.

Re:Finally

[dkf]

Now we just make BT look like skype traffic.

No, you jerk. BT traffic should look like the bulk asynchronous data transfer that it is. You do not need low latency networking for transfer of large files, so don't try to be an asshole by pretending it is anything else as that just encourages ISPs to do deep packet inspection and other wrong things.

Re:Finally

[Phrogman]

In most of Canada you are limited to just 1 or 2 potential sources for a net connection. Many years ago the various companies divided up the country between them, agreeing to operate only in certain areas so as to reduce the competition (This should of course be illegal I think but the CRTC has never said so). The two biggest companies out west are Shaw Cable and Rogers TV. They do not compete according to that agreement. Shaw (I think) left operating in Calgary entirely, and Rogers stopped operating in Victoria etc. In the east Bell is a major player I believe. For a long time there was zero competition effectively in much of Canada. Now Telus - originally a telephone company - sells Cable services in "competition" in areas that either Rogers or Shaw operate in (the quotes are there because for the most part, the services of Telus cost the same as those of the competition and there is no real competition at all. Certainly there has never been a price war that drove the rates *down*, they only go up over time).
Bell apparently owns most of the physical structure of the internet in Canada and so has an overall control of the network that lets them affect the price for everyone.

There is no real competition for Cable internet, television or cell-phone services here in Canada. The CRTC does virtually nothing to foster it that I can see. But then the CRTC usually just rubberstamps everything that the companies suggest, unless there is huge public outcry. I presume the various companies have just gotten together to agree on prices more or less and the government can't be bothered to investigate. Certainly we pay a LOT for those services up here ($100 per month for internet, home phone and basic cable is probably typical. If you want all the specialty channels its probably around $175 per month).

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

Rogers (and Bell) have been abusing their customers since the beginning, this is just another example. I hope the CRTC sticks it to them, and I really hope this becomes very public. Please share this everywhere, so the hatred towards this duopoly in Canada can grow even more.

And yes, I use Rogers, because I literally don't have another choice. And they definitely throttle torrents, during "prime" hours, which is apparently 8am-11pm.

Just use a "good" p2p application. A good one is one with the option of encrypting your connection. And change your p2p port use to something you use everyday or people use. An example would be port 465, port 20,21 or 22 and so on. That way ISP's will have lots of trouble if you use p2p and you will be able to use P2P at full speed. I'm with a Bell reseller ISP and it works perfectly. (resellers = acanac, b2b2c, 3web, uniserve and lots more).

ps: resellers for cable do exists..you just gotta find them. You usually pay less

Re:Finally

[thoromyr]

but this is exactly how bit torrent (and related protocols) survive. They'd be stomped dead by ISPs otherwise. I hate the inefficient and high resource consumption of p2p apps* and although ISPs are rather less affected by this aspect than their customers they *are* affected by the insanely aggressive nature of them. In the fight-to-the-death that bit torrent has started they do everything they can to avoid being controllable at the expense of everything else.

I recently had occasion to investigate some bit torrent traffic and discovered that *28 hours* after the client had disconnected remote peers were still hammering for more. A reasonable, high network latency, time out is 5 minutes. 15 minutes is unreasonable, an hour time out is ridiculous, but I'm starting to wonder if bit torrent *has* a time out. And all of this traffic, which is comprised of small tcp packets, has to be routed. Hundreds of remote peers doing this to who knows how many disconnected peers just for one torrent? (The IP address in question was on wireless which has high turn over of IP *and* is generally harder hit with routing the numerous packets associated with p2p so no good arguing that the IP had been stable and in use by the client for a long time, it hadn't.)

Peer-to-peer file sharing *should* be tcp -- this allows for assessing, in the underlying protocol, whether or not the packet was received and resending as necessary. But P2P switched from tcp to udp because... udp is stateless and harder to block. With tcp you can send a reset both ways to disrupt the connection, not so with udp. So the p2p protocools had to have this basic capability built into them -- and, as it is relying on UDP for transport -- has necessary and unavoidable inefficiencies.

Count on bit torrent being adjust to look like VOIP or some other requires-low-latency protocol. Count on everything possible being done to make protocol detection difficult and blocking infeasible. It doesn't matter to these guys what impact this has on protocols that actually *do* require low latency.

* no, I'm not talking about the computer running the client, I'm referring to the cheap router that is connecting said computer to the Internet that runs out of table space due to bit torrent's inefficient and high resource consumption design -- and then the user blames their ISP

Re:Finally

[Enderandrew]

My mother had an at-home business and needed to connect to her work email via POP and SMTP. Cox blocked access to 25 and 110. I contacted them, and they said they wouldn't open those ports for anyone. Last time I checked (2 years ago) this was still the case.

Someone's gonna get fired!

[TheSpoom]

From the CRTC, that is. Apparently they didn't get the memo stating who their masters were.

Re:Someone's gonna get fired!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I almost did a double take here.

The CRTC, probably one of the most bought and paid for group of assholes in Canada, is actually doing something vaguely resembling their job.

Part of me suspects someone typed up the email as a joke, but it made it out of the office and now they have to actually deal with it.

Re:Someone's gonna get fired!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey Moderators, if you actually knew the history of the CRTC and how they do business, and where the CRTC board members come from, and who hires them after they leave the CRTC, then you would know this isn't a troll.

Re:Someone's gonna get fired!

[denis-The-menace]

CRTC

Definition:
  acronym for "Captured Regulator of Telephone and Cable"

Purpose:
To provide the illusion of a regulatory body for communications in Canada
by ignoring offences of the companies they regulate while ignoring the needs
and the will of the people they were meant to protect.

Status:
Currently staffed by past and future Bell, Rogers and Telus executives.
Actively lobbying for draconian laws written by US content bodies (RIAA, MPAA).

Re:Someone's gonna get fired!

[Anrego]

Totally this.

As a Canadian this action on the part of the CRTC would seem in my benefit. This is the CRTC where just yesterday the former head was whining about how the Internet is making it hard for them to control what Canadians watch. This is the CRTC that wanted to give us caps which may have been appropriate in 1996. That wanted to effectively end video streaming in Canada. This is practically unheard of.

Re:Someone's gonna get fired!

[Anonymous Coward]

Definition:
    acronym for "Captured Regulator of Telephone and Cable"

FTFY

Definition of CRTC: Canadian Roadblock To Communication.

Re:Someone's gonna get fired!

[anyGould]

Actually, since part of the CRTC's mandate is to promote and protect Canadian content, complaining about how the Internet makes that more difficult makes sense. (And yes, I'm fully aware that the media companies have managed to subvert, pervert, and otherwise avoid that mandate whenever possible).

Of course, the answer isn't to block off the internet, but since that's an answer that makes the media companies happy, that's what they'll roll with.

Re:Someone's gonna get fired!

[Mashiki]

Bell and Rogers have been controlling the CRTC though Konrad Von Frankenstin(yes I know not his name) for years, those of us involved in fighting for digital rights have seen it time and time again. The whole UBB fiasco was a direct result of his: "and these guys said..." mentality. He was replaced at the end of his term by the conservatives. Simply because he was doing what wasn't in the best interest of Canadians.

Despite all the whining and crying of people, and how they bitch and moan the the conservatives are evil people only out for corporate interests. So far, they're the only government we've had that's pushed for more competition in the markets. Wind mobile(when rogers and bell), tried to cockblock them for example, and block not only the spectrum bidding, but tried to block them out of the market because they weren't "canadian enough" yes we do have that on the books here(thanks liberals). Or when UBB came up, and the industry minister said: "We will overrule the CRTC on this issue if we don't feel it's in the best interest of consumers."

Re:Someone's gonna get fired!

[Anrego]

Oh I totally get why it makes sense for the CRTC to make such statements (as completely backwards as they come across).

But the point is, from my vantage, the CRTC is all about making insane decisions that hurt Canadians for a goal that they probably don't even understand (what the hell is "Canadian culture" in the context of our media anyway .. I'm Canadian and I only vaguely know... is it Red Green!).

Seeing them do something that isn't along their traditional approach of "my shoes don't fit any more so I'm gonna saw off 3 of my toes" is startling.

Re:Someone's gonna get fired!

[anyGould]

But the point is, from my vantage, the CRTC is all about making insane decisions that hurt Canadians for a goal that they probably don't even understand (what the hell is "Canadian culture" in the context of our media anyway .. I'm Canadian and I only vaguely know... is it Red Green!).

I think at this point it's simply defined as "made in Canada" - Canadian writers, producers, actors, etc. I could go all warm-fuzzy about "Canadian stories", but that's almost beside the point. Right now it's cheaper to pay a US channel to grab Simpsons reruns than it is to film a Canadian show - so if we want a Canadian film and TV business, we need some carrots and sticks.

Re:Someone's gonna get fired!

[TheSpoom]

...so if we want a Canadian film and TV business, we need some carrots and sticks.

So offer (more) tax incentives. Artificially inflating the value of the market through restrictions on broadcasting is not the way to encourage the creation of content that can actually compete in a global marketplace... it just means you're going to get crappy shows to fill the "Canadian" slots.

YES!

[GigaBurglar]

How about that for irony. If this succeeds it will be +1 for the internet. I love how people are actually taking a stand; I just hope it's enough for things like ACTA which will or will not be ratified next week..

It should be throttled.

[Anonymous Coward]

P2P traffic should take a lower priority over VOIP and other more interactive traffic. That is just common sense. Net Neutrality (IMHO) should allow for ISP throttling when network bandwidth is in contention -- to meet QoS. What I am against, though, is allowing ISPs to outright ban certain types of traffic. Whether that is based on source/destination IP addresses, or whether you are running a server application at home, or what the actual bytes in the traffic represent.

Re:It should be throttled.

[danbob999]

Why?

Let say we both pay $40/month for our internet connection.
I use only 1GB P2P/month, and you use only 1GB VoIP/month. We both have no other traffic.

Why should you get priority over me? I paid as much as you and deserve what I paid for, at full speed.
If an ISP can't offer unlimited traffic for $40/month, then they only have to put data usage caps (preferably only during peak time since that's when there is congestion).
Until I bust my usage cap, I should be able to do what I want without being throttled.

Re:It should be throttled.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because a VOIP phone call will suck if the network is congested. Whereas your P2P download can take an extra 30 seconds to keep my call quality good. FYI, I worked on SNA and traffic prioritization was baked into the protocol for exactly these purposes -- TCP/IP is actually quite a dumb protocol in this regard.

Re:It should be throttled.

[tonywong]

Why is this common sense? Might need to download a manual shouldn't have a lower priority than your need to talk to Gramma over the interwebs. If your portion of the service you contracted was throttled because _you_ wanted it, that's fine, but my service shouldn't be throttled to your needs. Besides, I manage my QoS with my own firewall, and which packets get prioritized are none of your business, nor should it be my provider's unless I ask them to.

Re:It should be throttled.

[P-niiice]

This makes no sense whatsoever. Traffic is traffic. it's no one's business what I do with it unless I'm violating some cap.

Re:It should be throttled.

[AngryDeuce]

Then it would no longer be "neutral", would it?

That's kinda like the whole issue, they are throttling one type of traffic and prioritizing others. If we're all paying the same amount for the same amount of bandwidth, how I use said bandwidth is at my discretion, not yours or my ISPs. If I want to sit here and watch the same Youtube video of adorable kittens over and over and over and over and over again, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, that's my business, is it not?

Why should VOIP or any other web service get priority? What makes their usage more worthy of the bandwidth?

Besides, once this particular Pandora's Box gets opened, consumers are boned. You'll see how fast these ISPs start throttling anything and everything, at least, until you purchase the appropriate tiered plan. They'll have the VOIP priority plan, the Web priority plan, the Streaming Media priority plan...all the same pipe, all the same potential for bandwidth consumption, totally different rates. How much you think they'd gouge the "Online Gaming" tier?

Re:It should be throttled.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because VoIP is sensitive to things like latency spikes. P2P isn't. If the packets are given the correct priorities, your download finishes in just about the same amount of time while the other person has a nice audio quality. If the VoIP packets aren't given priority your download won't be significantly faster (the same amount of data is still being sent over the same pipes), but the call quality will be abismal.

Re:It should be throttled.

[Anonymous Coward]

QoS should be per customer, not per network. The only QoS they should be allowed to do over a network is round-robin fair queuing. Classifying traffic based on anything else must be disallowed, unless it is the customer that wants it.

So if you want your SIP to have higher priority over your bulk HTTP or FTP, then it should be *you* that puts that QoS on *your* line after the fair RR queue. Otherwise, it will be the ISP that will shit all over your SIP connection because they want to sell their own VOIP solution.

QoS must be customer settings, on a webpage or similar, not ISP. ISP network after customer bottleneck should be all RR queues without classifiers.

Re:It should be throttled.

[Urban Nightmare]

+1 to that. I use VOIP for all my phone needs. If I have a crappy phone connection then I shutdown or throttle my own stuff. No need for my ISP to do so. Just give me the bandwidth I pay for. Does any one actually have sympathy for Rogers/Bell/Shaw when they complain about their users actually using the network?

Re:It should be throttled.

[tonywong]

Err, Might = My.

Re:It should be throttled.

[ceoyoyo]

No. P2P traffic can be delayed, but it shouldn't be throttled. If I'm using my paid for connection and you're using your paid for connection, why should you get more bandwidth than I do?

Re:It should be throttled.

[ceoyoyo]

That's not the same thing as throttling.

Re:It should be throttled.

[Obfuscant]

I use only 1GB P2P/month, and you use only 1GB VoIP/month. We both have no other traffic. Why should you get priority over me?

Because his application is time-dependent and yours is not. If his application can't get packets through for thirty seconds, the connection is as good as dead. If you can't get packets through for thirty seconds, you probably don't even notice, and in the long run it doesn't make any difference.

Until I bust my usage cap, I should be able to do what I want without being throttled.

And the hell with anyone else and what they have paid to do. Yes, I know, the bad guy is the cable company that doesn't provide enough bandwidth so that every customer can get full throughput simultaneously. Because of that, you feel no compulsion to let someone who is doing real-time things get theirs done and over while yours can lag a bit and make no difference.

Re:It should be throttled.

[Anonymous Coward]

It should be throttled.

That's nice, now address the person several posts above yours who have their VoIP throttled during off-peak hours while speedtest sites show full bandwidth available.

I'm guessing the VoIP that they're having "problems" with is not part of the "triple play" the cable company is selling....

Re:It should be throttled.

[Bucky24]

I've honestly never had an ISP give me the bandwidth I pay for. It's usually about half of what they "promised".

Re:It should be throttled.

[Anonymous Coward]

But the network is congested because the provider has sold what they don't have. Why you think any other users should be punished because of that fact is beyond me. Fact is, overselling with 10-20:1 ratios on network connections is no longer tenable.

Re:It should be throttled.

[cpu6502]

>>>P2P traffic should take a lower priority over VOIP and other more interactive traffic.

You didn't read the ____ing summary. This IS an interactive P2P application and that's why it should not be throttled.

Also

If they laid fatter "pipes", like 100 Mbit/sec to every home, they wouldn't need to throttle anything. Throttling is only necessary when you fail to lay sufficient bandwidth to handle the load.

Re:It should be throttled.

[Ichijo]

Because a VOIP phone call will suck if the network is congested.

When the network is congested, it like any other shortage means the price is too low, at least at that time of day. Because that's so easy to fix, there's really no need to prioritize packets.

Re:It should be throttled.

[Obfuscant]

Then it would no longer be "neutral", would it? That's kinda like the whole issue, they are throttling one type of traffic and prioritizing others.

Net neutrality has nothing to do with prioritizing one KIND of traffic, it has to do with prioritizing SOURCES -- as in "Rogers VoIP services get priority over Skype and Vonage...", or "Rogers streaming video gets priority over Netflix".

Throttling P2P and other non-realtime data so that real-time (VoIP, e.g.) can get through is not violating net neutrality. It's network planning and is part of the IP.

Why should VOIP or any other web service get priority? What makes their usage more worthy of the bandwidth?

VoIP is not a "web service". VoIP should get priority because when bandwith is limited it needs it for the service to work. Your P2P will handle delays in packets getting through. It doesn't care. VoIP does because people do.

Re:It should be throttled.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm the Grandparent. ISPs should absolutely NOT throttle based on source/destination IP address -- I said that already. VOIP, regardless or provider, should take precedence on the network (over P2P) -- not just at the ISP layer either -- but on the entire connection on the backbone and the wires under the ocean. If there is some other type of traffic that has a bigger dependence on real-timeliness than VOIP (I doubt it), then that traffic should take precedence over VOIP.

Re:It should be throttled.

[Obfuscant]

When the network is congested, it like any other shortage means the price is too low, at least at that time of day. Because that's so easy to fix, there's really no need to prioritize packets.

I assume your easy fix is to simply increase the price. How does this provide more bandwidth? Do you think that people who are paying MORE for their internet will think "I need to use it less"?p.

Re:It should be throttled.

[danbob999]

They can offer incensitive to move big downloads at night, when the network is not used. They just have to put a data usage cap during peak time. In fact if they did that they could even lower the price instead of inscreasing it.

Re:It should be throttled.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have any stats that says they need to throttle anything? Since Bell and Rogers won't release any info about their networks it seems odd to jump right into throttling is the solution, even if no one has proved it needs to happen.

Re:It should be throttled.

[danbob999]

If your VoIP call suck, then switch to a better ISP.
I shouldn't have to be throttled so that you be able to call.
In the worse case YOU should be throttled, I mean, the 99% of your traffic that isn't VoIP, so that your call be priorized over the rest of your traffic.

Re:It should be throttled.

[BlueBlade]

I think people are confusing arbitrary throttling with priority queues. What Rogers and Bell are doing is arbitrarily limiting the rate of p2p traffic to 25KB/s. This is just rate limiting. If, on the other hand, they would treat VOIP traffic as higher priority and process those packets first, possibly dropping the lower p2p traffic if the link is congested, that would be perfectly fine. Just don't rate limit p2p to 5% of advertised bandwidth for no good reason.

Re:It should be throttled.

[AngryDeuce]

VoIP should get priority because when bandwith is limited it needs it for the service to work. Your P2P will handle delays in packets getting through. It doesn't care. VoIP does because people do.

Since when is that my problem? If the ISP isn't providing enough bandwidth to support VOIP along with all the other traffic, they need to bone up on their infrastructure, not start arbitrarily slowing down my perfectly legitimate use of the bandwidth I pay for. What you're basically arguing for is prioritizing one set of customers over another. That's fine if they want to do that, but why the fuck should I have to pay the same rate as they do if I'm not going to receive the same service?

And it's not just about P2P. It's about traffic in general, because there is absolutely no way they would ever stop at prioritizing VOIP traffic and you know it. It'll start there, but then it will quickly evolve to other types of traffic as well. The ISPs have a particularly big hard-on for streaming video services right now, so don't for one second believe that they'll start doing some deep packet inspection to see what the hell your traffic is doing. "Oh, streaming video?! Not for long!! Should have got our cable television service, too!! What do you mean 'net neutrality'?! We ARE being neutral, there's 'too many VOIP users on right now', and they get priority!!"

As long as I pay the same amount for my internet as the guy next door, we damn well better be getting the same service, regardless of what the fuck I'm doing on it. If not, I want a fucking discount, because we're not getting the same level of service. End of story.

Re:It should be throttled.

[Anonymous Coward]

P2P traffic is not always torrenting. Like the article says "traffic from an unidentified time-sensitive application making use of P2P ports". The application they are testing is time-sensitive just like the VoIP traffic.

Why should my time-sensitive P2P traffic take lower priority over your time-sensitive VoIP? When both people pay the same amount of money. And there are a lot of legit time-sensitive P2P applications... just googling "VoIP using P2P" is one which gets many hits.

The problem here is blindly throttling ports and traffic, when that traffic could be anything. I'm sure you wouldn't be happy if your VoIP application got throttled because it uses a P2P backbone, only because other people sometimes torrent with the same technology.

Re:It should be throttled.

[fotoguzzi]

And I P2P over VOIP.

Re:It should be throttled.

[DigitAl56K]

Because a VOIP phone call will suck if the network is congested. Whereas your P2P download can take an extra 30 seconds to keep my call quality good.

Perhaps if P2P protocols weren't throttled people could invent more interesting things to use them for, including more time-sensitive applications?

Re:It should be throttled.

[danbob999]

Because his application is time-dependent and yours is not. If his application can't get packets through for thirty seconds, the connection is as good as dead. If you can't get packets through for thirty seconds, you probably don't even notice, and in the long run it doesn't make any difference.

Not my problem. Beside, who knows if my P2P application isn't time-dependent? One could probably make some sort of bittorrent streaming protocol.
Also, I might be using some non-standard VoIP protocol that wouldn't receive the same priority just because it's not on the ISP's list. Makes no sense at all.

And the hell with anyone else and what they have paid to do. Yes, I know, the bad guy is the cable company that doesn't provide enough bandwidth so that every customer can get full throughput simultaneously. Because of that, you feel no compulsion to let someone who is doing real-time things get theirs done and over while yours can lag a bit and make no difference.

My ISP do not throttle anything and I can make VoIP calls just fine.

Re:It should be throttled.

[DigitAl56K]

Because a VOIP phone call will suck if the network is congested.

The ISP could alternatively decide to always prioritize VOIP traffic and ensure all VOIP packets received longer than n milliseconds ago were sent before any other traffic, which IMO is vastly different than applying P2P throttling.

Re:It should be throttled.

[Zeromous]

You are free to find another VOIP provider that does not permit P2P traffic at all.

Re:It should be throttled.

[Anonymous Coward]

>>>You didn't read the ____ing summary. This IS an interactive P2P application and that's why it should not be throttled.

The perhaps the _____ing application shouldn't be running interactive traffic over well known P2P background file-transfer port numbers.

Re:It should be throttled.

[tepples]

If your VoIP call suck, then switch to a better ISP.

How is this possible if only one wired broadband ISP serves your area?

Re:It should be throttled.

[mjr167]

I'm pretty sure that if you can't get packets through for 30 seconds on a p2p connection you are going to time out... You are basically saying that your phone call is more important than someone else's download.

You are basically saying that because you need to go to work and the roads are congested, I should stay home and not go to the store so you can have a pleasant drive to work.

Re:It should be throttled.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, I'm sure this would be more compelling if you needed to do a massive p2p conference call for work, conferencing with hundreds of clients in throttle-free Europe who insist on using this P2P VoIP to give the conference and presentation (at 2am PST). Because it's so early, you plan to give the presentation at home using your Roger's internet... after all you paid for the $100/month super plan. Since there are so many clients watching the presentation, the P2P conference software was necessary. Then moments after the conference starts, you realize the little bandwidth you need is being massively throttled. You have to explain to all these clients that you have Rogers in Canada, and they throttle the P2P traffic that this application is generating, so you can't give the presentation now, and that you will try again after you switch to Telus. Later in the day you get fired for losing all those potential clients... all because of Rogers.

Re:It should be throttled.

[Pope]

P2P traffic should take a lower priority over VOIP and other more interactive traffic. That is just common sense.

No it's not. Traffic is traffic. You want QoS, do it on YOUR end.

Re:It should be throttled.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because his application is time-dependent and yours is not.

Hey! My pr0n is EXTREMELY important and time-dependent. Dropped frames on the video are BAD!

Re:It should be throttled.

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, so instead of not oversubscribing and selling bandwidth they don't have, promising speeds they can't provide we'll blame the users?

The right solution is honesty.

Re:It should be throttled.

[Anonymous Coward]

Throttling is only necessary when you fail to lay sufficient bandwidth to handle the load.

While true on the surface, your statement is extremely disingenuous. The companies are only going to put in the amount of bandwidth that people are going to pay for. They are in business to make money, have their employees and investors paid, etc. They could put in 100 Mbit/sec to each house - but the cost would be pretty high. Some people would be willing to pay it. Some would not. Would you? If not, shut up about it. Hint: if you want it dedicated and not "oversold" then the pricing would be similar to what a business pays for a leased T3 line or higher. Most of us just put up with oversold connections since the cost is pretty low.

Re:It should be throttled.

[dgatwood]

Yes, it is. It's just throttling over a short period. Latency and throttling are one and the same. You have a piece of pipe that can take hold ten marbles at a time before the marbles come out the other end. If the marbles can flow at only a certain speed (say one marble pulled out per second), then this behaves very much like a network cable. (See, it is a series of tubes.)

It's basically inevitable that bandwidth will be oversold; the cost of running the lines would otherwise be prohibitive. So this is similar to having two people who are allowed to put marbles in at a rate of one per second. Remember that you can only take out one per second from the other end.

Assume that the two people usually put in one marble every two seconds. On average, neither is throttled. However, person A has to guarantee that his marbles get there in exactly ten seconds, and person B does not. If at any point, person A puts in one marble slightly before that two second mark, this means that it delays person B's marble by a second. For that brief moment in time, person B is effectively capped at one marble every three seconds, because he or she was not able to insert a second marble until three seconds after the previous marble.

For a sufficiently large download, the period doesn't even have to be short. Assume that you and I both have connections rated at 1 GB per hour. If you download a 10 GB file over the course of 10 hours, and I make a video call that transfers 2 GB over the course of 2 hours, we're using the same amount of bandwidth averaged over the relevant period.

If the total shared bandwidth available is only 1.5 GB per hour, you can't have the 1 GB per hour you need for the transfer while I have the 1 GB per hour I need for my video call. However, if instead of rate limiting you to 1 GB per hour the whole time, the service provider rate limits you to .5 GB per hour during that 2 hour call and makes up for it by opening up the full 1.5 GB per hour to you during the following two hours, your download time is the same, but my call was successful.

In effect, what service provider temporarily increased the latency of your packets by squeezing them into the gaps between the higher priority traffic, then made up for that latency by reducing the latency it would otherwise have applied during a period when the network was less congested. However, you would say that the network provider throttled your connection during a period of higher demand.

The important factor is not whether the peak demand exceeds the peak bandwidth available, but whether the average demand exceeds the average bandwidth available, and whether the service is advertised based on best-case available bandwidth or average-case available bandwidth.

Re:It should be throttled.

[Anonymous Coward]

"...traffic from an unidentified time-sensitive application making use of P2P ports...."

So a contrived example, created to explicitly appear like a background file transfer, to prove that the ISP is doing what all ISP should be doing: giving background file-transfers a lower priority on the network.

I'm sorry, but if your "time-sensitive" application is using well known P2P ports -- then the designer was an idiot.

Re:It should be throttled.

[cowwoc2001]

I'd like to see proof that:

1) Network usage is close to maxing out capacity.
2) ISPs would be forced to raise prices for everyone if network usage was un-throttled; otherwise they'd risk losing money.

I'm willing to bet that:

1) We are nowhere close to maxing out our bandwidth.
2) ISPs are enjoying an extremely high profit margin. There is no excuse for raising prices even if unfettered P2P access is allowed.

Canada is a 1st-world country enjoying internet prices of a 3rd-world country. We pay one of the highest rates in the world. There is no excuse for it!

Re:It should be throttled.

[dgatwood]

Otherwise, it will be the ISP that will shit all over your SIP connection because they want to sell their own VOIP solution.

Doing so would violate net neutrality by prioritizing one service over another service of the same basic type. You don't have to mandate basic round-robin scheduling to avoid the problem you're describing here. All RR scheduling does is ensure that during periods of high demand, neither VoIP solution works instead of both of them working.

Re:It should be throttled.

[Obfuscant]

They can offer incensitive to move big downloads at night, when the network is not used. They just have to put a data usage cap during peak time.

How is that significantly different than simply throttling the P2P while the VoIP is requiring bandwidth? You'd rather have a permanent cap "during peak time" than fully open transport except in certain circumstances?

And how does raising the price "incensitive" anyone to do their work at night? I'd say it means "I'm paying more, I expect more."

Re:It should be throttled.

[Obfuscant]

I'm pretty sure that if you can't get packets through for 30 seconds on a p2p connection you are going to time out...

So fix P2P so it doesn't time out when it faces delays. It's broken if it does.

You are basically saying that your phone call is more important than someone else's download.

I'm basically saying that getting the packets through for a phone call in a timely manner is more important than getting the packets through immediately for a file sharing connection, yes. Nobody is preventing the file sharing from happening, it's just not as fast as it would be if there were no other users. Gosh, the entire net works that way, at times. Packets for a P2P can be delayed and nothing is hurt. Packets for VoIP being delayed make the protocol unusable.

You are basically saying that because you need to go to work and the roads are congested, I should stay home and not go to the store so you can have a pleasant drive to work.

I said no such thing, and you know it. If you want an automotive analogy, I'm saying that you need to pull over and lose a few seconds of your life when a more critical user needs the road. See those flashing red lights on that ambulance behind you? The person in that ambulance might not die if you don't pull over, but it is still important for him to get where he's going, and that means you get slowed down. Live with it.

Re:It should be throttled.

[Obfuscant]

Not my problem.

Gimme gimme gimme. I'm the only important person on the planet. Ok.

You seem to ignore that the same process that slows you down a bit today might slow someone else down tomorrow when YOUR network traffic needs a bit of priority. It's called "sharing". Part of being a grownup mean knowing how to do that.

Beside, who knows if my P2P application isn't time-dependent?

If you are using a P2P application for time-critical information, then YOU are at fault, not the person who is actually using a time-critical service. You just made it your problem.

My ISP do not throttle anything and I can make VoIP calls just fine.

Thank goodness all ISPs are the same as yours and don't need to do anything different than the one you have.

Re:It should be throttled.

[Guspaz]

The problem the CRTC has is not that Rogers is throttling P2P. That's perfectly allowed under the CRTC's ITMP framework. The problem is that Rogers is throttling anything on P2P ports over a certain speed, and only whitelisting games after the fact. That's not allowed. If I design a new time-sensitive app and run it on the same port as some P2P software, Rogers will throttle it, and then whitelist it if I complain. This is forbidden.

They basically work on a whitelist system now (throttle everything by default and whitelist exceptions), and they need to move to a blacklist (throttle nothing by default and blacklist P2P apps) system to come into compliance with the ITMP framework.

Re:It should be throttled.

[Guspaz]

If your P2P application is time dependent, it can't be throttled under the CRTC's ITMP framework. If it's not time dependent, it can be.

Re:It should be throttled.

[Obfuscant]

Since when is that my problem?

Since you signed up for a shared service. While you might be the only user of the cable coming into your house, it isn't very far down the line before it hooks up with a lot of other people and you all get to share the same line.

What you're basically arguing for is prioritizing one set of customers over another.

No, I'm arguing that prioritizing one KIND of traffic from ANY user is ok. That has nothing to do with who the customer is or what "set" they belong to.

but why the fuck should I have to pay the same rate as they do if I'm not going to receive the same service?

Because you are receiving the same service, just using it a different way.

Re:It should be throttled.

[danbob999]

How does Rogers make the distinction between the two? It's just impossible.

Re:It should be throttled.

[Anonymous Coward]

If that is what Rogers and Bell are doing, then I agree with you. The VOIP throttling/prioritization should only kick in IF the network is actually congested. And the throttling / rate-limiting shouldn't just be a blind cap (25KB/s you mentioned). It should be highly dynamic to ensure their pipes are fully saturated. If their pipes aren't fully saturated, then there is no need to throttle anyone (or any specific protocol).

Re:It should be throttled.

[Ichijo]

You'd rather have a permanent cap "during peak time" than fully open transport except in certain circumstances?

During those circumstances, you're stealing from one person to give to another. It's more equitable to give everyone equal access, even if it means reducing demand by raising the price (in this case, through peak hour bandwidth caps). That's how a free market works.

Re:It should be throttled.

[AngryDeuce]

If my use results in my bandwidth being throttled, how is that "the same service"? The same service is the same bandwidth, not "oh, you're downloading a torrent, so you're only going to get 5 mbps instead of the 10 the VOIP guy is using, but you're both paying for the 10 mbps plan."

Like I said, it sets a horrible precedent, because you know they're going to turn around and do the same thing with video streaming services. "Oh, it's neutral; we're throttling all video streaming traffic, not just Netflix". Or online gaming. Or whatever segment they feel like squeezing.

Think about it, what would stop them from deliberately degrading service to sell higher-tiered plans to people? It's not like they inform people they're being throttled while they're being throttled. All Joe Blow End User knows is that the movie he's watching is stuttering and skipping and shit, or that he's lagging from one end of the map to the other. "Better get the next higher tier!" he says to himself, while all the while it's not because his current bandwidth cap is inadequate, it's because his ISP is being a fucking asshole and only actually providing half the bandwidth he's paying for. He runs a Speedtest, gets the full speed returned because it's not throttling the web itself, and thinks he needs to upgrade. The ISP, of course, laughs it's ass off all the way to the bank.

Why wouldn't an ISP do something like this? They're in the business to make money, why wouldn't they take this opportunity to make more? How many alternative ISPs do most people even have access to in a given area? And even if something does come out, like this, and people go ballistic..."We're committed to excellence and will review this very closely to make sure we are providing the best service to all our customers.", in other words "blah blah blah we'd better find a way to hide our bullshit better". Either that or they just go full retard and blame all their bandwidth ills on the torrenters. And then the video streamers. And then the online gamers. And on and on and on....

Re:It should be throttled.

[Guspaz]

Rogers does't even make a distinction between P2P and *ANYTHING* else. That's why they're in trouble.

Re:It should be throttled.

[danbob999]

uh? So they throttle everything?

Re:It should be throttled.

[Vegemeister]

Where by 'equal', you mean 'equally shitty'.

Re:It should be throttled.

[stephanruby]

I don't know about the other VOIP solutions.

But if you're using Skype, that is using P2P technology to get across, so when they're throttling P2P, they're throttling Skype. And since many P2P users also encrypt their packets and use the same port as Microsoft Messenger, Microsoft Messenger also becomes collateral damage for P2P throttling.

Re:It should be throttled.

[Vegemeister]

If there is some other type of traffic that has a bigger dependence on real-timeliness than VOIP (I doubt it)

SSH.

Re:It should be throttled.

[Anonymous Coward]

(If your VoIP call suck, then switch to a better ISP)

Cause in Canada people are poor and don't have a golden guaranteed pension in 6yr like the elected mp federal politicians so
they sign up for 3yrs or more on contract and stay stuck with a organization like Rogers. Under the other hand I think they're are too much
regulation and now ad more too these big telco's or what, not sure if it worth in the end.

 

Re:It should be throttled.

[danbob999]

Gimme gimme gimme. I'm the only important person on the planet. Ok.

Seems a lot more like your attitude. You think your are more important than the others paying the same price for the same service, so think that your traffic should be prioritized.

Re:It should be throttled.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually yes it is common sense that your download should have a lower priority. Ever hear of E911? When someone's Gramma keels over because her call couldn't go through you'll rethink your statement.

Re:It should be throttled.

[mjr167]

But who says who is more critical? We all accept that ambulances and emergency services are critical and thus take precedence. They have big flashing lights that tell you so. How do you know that the guy in the normal car speeding down the road is trying to get to the hospital because his mother is dieing or he is just being a jerk? I can make the claim that my file is vitally important and screw your phone call. You can have a call with choppy audio but I need that file now. I don't know what your phone call is about and you don't know what my file is.

The fair way to adjudicate it is to say we each get X bandwidth to do whatever we want with. If we cannot both simultaneously have X bandwidth, then we have purchased a service that does not exist. If you went to a store and paid for a dozen eggs but when you got home there were only 8 eggs in the carton because someone else also bought a dozen eggs and the store split the carton, everyone would be pissed.

In order to throttle back one type of traffic you have to make assumptions about how important it is. You assume that delaying my traffic for your convenience is ok and I should live with it. If someone decided that their packets were more important than your audio quality and that you should just live with it, you would be pissed. Why do you expect me to live with it?

Re:It should be throttled.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because VoIP is sensitive to things like latency spikes. P2P isn't. If the packets are given the correct priorities, your download finishes in just about the same amount of time while the other person has a nice audio quality. If the VoIP packets aren't given priority your download won't be significantly faster (the same amount of data is still being sent over the same pipes), but the call quality will be abismal.

Right, there's a difference between shaping and prioritizing traffic... in throttling cases, traffic is set to a given bandwidth. The end user may have a 10Mbps service but the throttling on P2P is set to 2Mbps between 8PM-11PM.

Prioritizing traffic for QoS, in the case of VoIP, means that if a QoS enforcement point has packets in the queue is should process the VoIP packets first and then the "rest" where the service is not affected by jitter and latency like a P2P file transfer...

Throttling != QoS.

Re:It should be throttled.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a shared resource. If you don't like sharing the link with me (and others), feel free to purchase your own, dedicated, guaranteed link from your ISP. I believe the cost for a T1 (1.5 Mb/s) is around $500/month.

Re:It should be throttled.

[Anonymous Coward]

It should not on the Internet. That's not what end users are paying for. They're paying for best effort, color-blind access to a global network. What central authority decides what traffic gets priority? Where does the traffic get marked? If it's marked on ingress on a per customer basis, than how does the provider perform effective per-application marking? If it's to be marked properly, it should be done by the customer, but then providers have to trust that customers won't just mark all their traffic low jitter, low latency. Who decides the mapping markings? Do all ISPs use the same markings? Do ISPs trust traffic from a peering provider? If you actually knew how to difficult it was to design and implement a global scale QoS scheme for billions of endpoint across 100s of ISPs with 100s of different types of devices from 100s of vendors, you would immediately realize this is completely implausible.

Re:It should be throttled.

[thoromyr]

apparently you don't actually deal with QoS, haven't supported VoIP, have never dealt with what bit torrent (and other P2P protocols) do to a network, or how traffic shaping works and how bit torrent actively works to defeat shaping.

But then again, I'm responding to an AC...

Re:It should be throttled.

[Guspaz]

And that's why the CRTC is taking them to task.

Re:It should be throttled.

[ceoyoyo]

"Yes, it is. It's just throttling over a short period. Latency and throttling are one and the same. You have a piece of pipe that can take hold ten marbles at a time before the marbles come out the other end. If the marbles can flow at only a certain speed (say one marble pulled out per second), then this behaves very much like a network cable. (See, it is a series of tubes.)"

Oh, a pipes metaphor. You know the Internet isn't a series of tubes, right?

Packets take different routes, and arrive at different times. Frequently out of order. You're not pouring marbles into pipes.

Arranging packets so the latency sensitive ones take fast routes and tend to stay together more, at the expense of scattering the latency insensitive ones a bit more is one thing, provided the overall throughput of the insensitive ones over some suitably small timescale stays the same. Throttling implies that the "undesirable" packets are delayed to the point that it's noticeable, and detrimental to the user. That's NOT okay.

If you want a metaphor, it's the difference between me borrowing your lawnmower that you're not going to use today and giving it back in a few hours, versus my borrowing it and not giving it back until you need it and have to come looking for me.

Besides, the original issue was actually about World of Warcraft, which is not overly latency insensitive anyway.

However much you oversold your network, it is NOT okay for you to give some other customer with the same kind of connection preferential treatment over me.

Re:It should be throttled.

[dgatwood]

Packets take different routes, and arrive at different times. Frequently out of order. You're not pouring marbles into pipes.

None of which is relevant to the discussion of what happens when a crucial link between the two sources and the two destinations is saturated. Most ISPs have a limited number of outbound pipes, and cable modem bandwidth is shared among all the households on the local loop. These are all finite resources shared among a number of houses, and the fact that the packets can be routed in different directions only matters if there's another route that they can take.

And even if there are multiple routes, the capacities of the multiple outgoing pipes sum up to some fixed value, and the total throughput through all of those pipes cannot exceed that total capacity. Up until you hit that wall, you have no need to artificially add latency to packets. Once you hit that wall, adding latency becomes functionally identical to throttling the connection. And that was my point. Using a single pipe is a serious oversimplification for analogy purposes, but the exact same problems still come up even if you have a thousand pipes.

As for your complaint about the pipe analogy, I'd argue that it is actually a rather good analogy, so long as you use something discrete like marbles instead of continuous like water. Admittedly, most of the queueing is occurring in a router rather than in the wire itself, but the same basic principle holds—that the data rate going out can't exceed the maximum throughput of the wire it's going into. And, of course, when you're talking about a satellite hop (speaking of latency hell), because of the distances involved, even the distinction about where data is queued goes away; there are almost invariably multiple marbles... err... packets... in a satellite-based pipe at any given time. It's the only way you can usefully use a high latency connection. Otherwise, the latency results in one request backing up behind another response, and your available bandwidth just plain falls apart....

Which brings us to the bigger problem, which is that TCP does not work particularly well over high latency connections, and HTTP doubly so (hence the need for alternatives like SPDY). Therefore, adding latency can hurt the effective bandwidth far more than the packet delays by themselves otherwise would... but that's another discussion for a different thread....

Predicted outcome:

[Anonymous Coward]

Rogers: Sorry, our bad. We'll make go stop now *places appropriate bribe*
CRTC: Aight, s'cool. Don't do it again.
Rogers: Oh, we won't *wink*
CRTC: Hah! Right, cool. See you on the green.

Re:Predicted outcome:

[Anonymous Coward]

We'll make go stop now? What the fuck does that mean?

Re:Predicted outcome:

[ceoyoyo]

I believe it's related to limits on unlimited accounts.

Oh noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

A hearing!

Come back to me when there is actually a penalty involved.

Re:Oh noes!

[Urban Nightmare]

There never will be a penalty. Just a promise from Rogers that they won't do it again. Mean while back at the data center they don't actually change anything. They might have to slip a few bucks to the CRTC. Stupid corrupt government. Just like everywhere else.

Re:Oh noes!

[alexo]

Just like everywhere else.

+1 depressing.

Re:Oh noes!

[DarthVain]

HA!

If I could I would mod you up.

I found myself thinking, "WOW the CTRC actually ruled against Rogers or Bell? That blows my mind! Perhaps all is not lost..."

Then I read down and see you comment... recheck the summary... LOL Oh noes indeed!

The really summary is: "Nothing happened. Likely nothing will happen. If it does happen, they won't do anything about it anyway..."

This sounds a lot like Bell and the Independent ISP fight they had awhile back. ISP said it wasn't fair for bell to throttle their lines they buy from them. They even showed an internal Bell report detailing how it really wasn't needed. Bell responded by saying, regardless of report, we throttle our own customers just as badly, therefore it is a fair level playing field... To which the CRTC basically said "Touche Bell, Touche...".

Pot kettle black

[gmuslera]

When Canada signs ACTA shows that don't care at all about net neutrality.

Dropped rogers last week...

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 for teksavvy ... I dropped rogers the moment my contract was up.

WHAAA!

[Anrego]

The CRTC...

Our CRTC?

I know this comment is pointless.. but I just don't know what to say.. I'm kind of scared..

Missing Information

[magamiako1]

A lot of the comments here are missing some information, so let's put it this way:

The throttling argument started a while ago when gamers detected problems with World of Warcraft on the Rogers network. In fact, Blizzard Entertainment personally spent a ridiculous amount of resources to try contact Rogers but Rogers spent the whole time insisting that their throttling was not affecting WoW, even though gamers and Blizzard had found concrete proof otherwise.

Interestingly enough, if you switch your connection to a wholesale distributors of Rogers Internet, TekSavvy, in the affected areas, the throttling problem goes away--even though it's going over the same network backbone as if you were provided a Rogers pipe directly.

Blizzard also attempted to limit the ports used for WoW back to the original game ports (3724), but this was only a temporary solution as they wanted the other connections to help with reliability.

Long story short, a WoW community member living in Canada kind of spearheaded this and has been a part of this from the absolute very beginning.

It grew to the point that the CRTC has investigated itself, and this is where we stand now.

Re:Missing Information

[Anonymous Coward]

And this has taken at least 6 years.

Re:Missing Information

[thoromyr]

Having personally been in the position of contacting Blizzard to try and help them out with their customers... I seriously question Blizzard "personally spent a ridiculous amount of resources to try [and] contact Rogers". It took a lot of effort, but I *did* get a response from Blizzard, and it was "we don't care" about their customers experience.

Maybe they did as Rogers represents many more customers than we do, but their attitude towards their customers has been made apparent in other ways. (Jacking with game play, for example)

Bell does the same

[Hamsterdan]

So, can we expect CRTC to investigate Bell too?

Re:Bell does the same

[Guspaz]

RTFA. Bell has made an official filing with the CRTC stating their intention to cease all throttling on March 1st, so any such hearing would be pointless. On top of that, Bell's throttling hardware doesn't work the same way, it uses DPI, which at least tries to identify P2P instead of just throttling anything on P2P ports like Rogers does.

Not a Victory...

[Dr. Evil]

...unless there are serious repercussions.

It's no more a victory than a bully who's been caught stealing your lunch money. They won't repay, they won't stop bullying, they just wont' bully you for your lunch money... probably.

(BTW, Teksavvy is offering cable Internet now. Switch if you can.)

Nationalization is the answer

[stefancaunter]

Rogers, and Bell, should be nationalized. They simply exist to provide net to Canadians. They have one area of expertise - self-preservation. They spend the billions of dollars they get, on lawyers to lobby the government, and on advertising, so that none of the media companies will question their business practices. The actual service they provide should get taken over by the government and provided at cost to Canadians, since it is provided by government license anyway. Rogers has bought up every sports property in Toronto, and will be limiting viewership to pay subscribers to their expensive premium sports channels (sound familiar Yankee fans?); they are allowed to get away with it by transferring a percentage of their revenue to other media companies in the form of "advertising", which means no one will call them on their ways for fear of losing ad revenue. Discussing throttling is missing the point. If the government is supporting this, they should take it over for the benefit of the citizenry, not a bunch of bastards.

Some cap

[tepples]

it's no one's business what I do with it unless I'm violating some cap.

Enjoy your 5 GB per month, because wireless is often the only alternative for people dissatistified with cable.

Rogers, eh?

[Ossifer]

Any relation to that jerk in Georgia?

Shaw's current limits are much higher

[Chirs]

Their current monthy data allowances start at 60GB for the 2Mbps plan. The 20Mbps plan has a 200GB allowance, and there are a number of truly unlimited plans.

nope, there's a real unlimited option

[Chirs]

There are three 100Mbps plans, the 500GB cap one is $84.90/month, the 750GB one is $94.90, and the truly unlimited one is $134.90.

Theoretically, on the unlimited plan you could download 30 terabytes in a month.

Re:nope, there's a real unlimited option

[compro01]

Must be a regional thing. All they show as available here is 100Mbps/500GB or 250Mbps/750GB, and a few lower plans.

Either that or they don't show the higher limit plans on the site.

Re:nope, there's a real unlimited option

[trum4n]

Crap. Highest in my area is 25mbps down, 10 up. You never see those speeds either.

Re:nope, there's a real unlimited option

[dadragon]

It's probably because Saskatchewan's other ISP has ONLY unlimited plans. SaskTel only goes as fast as 25/2 on DSL (unknown on fibre, apparently they're keeping that a secret but probably 200/10 or so) but it's unlimited so many people switched when Shaw started to charge overages..

Re:nope, there's a real unlimited option

[compro01]

Site says 200/40. The September announcement about them starting with the UofR says gigabit down (unspecified upstream) "by the end of this decade".

Re:nope, there's a real unlimited option

[dadragon]

Yeah, I read that after I posted my previous comment. Sounds like in Saskatoon they've started in Stonebridge and Varsity View. Too bad I don't live in either of those areas.

Almost enough to make me switch to Shaw :(

Re:nope, there's a real unlimited option

[dadragon]

Also, it's the U of S College Quarter, the shiny new residences being built by the U of S on Cumberland Ave and 14th St.

my packets shouldn't interfere with yours

[Chirs]

And vice versa. Ideally, the ISP should be doing per-subscriber throttling such that each subscriber cannot exceed their rating. As long as each subscriber is within their limits, they should all be treated equally.

How does the ISP know whether my packets are high priority or not? Just because they're using certain ports doesn't mean they're coming from the expected applications.

Data caps are pure unadulterated crap.

[bregmata]

A data cap is not going to solve the problem of your neutral carrier selectively reading and discarding your data. See, an always-on connection is ALWAYS sending data. A zero bit is data just as much as a one bit. A "data cap" is really just charging you for all the one bits that get sent over the line. It does not reduce the amount of data and it has no effect on how fast others send and receive their data -- that's bound by the equipment on Roger's racks. A data cap is just a way for an ISP to reach around and pull money from your front pcket while they're pounding you from behind.

I've always gotten close to it

[Chirs]

When I paid for 5Mbps I got 4.9. Now I pay for 25Mbps and I generally get about 22.5.

disagree...should throttle ONLY based on IP

[Chirs]

If we've paid the same, there's no reason for the ISP to throttle us differentially. The ISP has no idea whether I'm using the standard ports for things, so therefore they have no idea whether my packets are latency-sensitive or not. What if I want to do a conference call with some sort of fancy multicast VOIP client that uses nonstandard ports?

In an ideal world the ISP would throttle all current users in a ratio relative to their subscription speed, they would communicate the current allowed speed to the subscriber, and the subscriber would then prioritize their own traffic. The subscriber is the only entity with full knowledge of their priorities, so they should be the one to indicate their preferences.

IRC

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried a torrent yesterday on Rogers for House which had thousands of seeders. 15KB/s with 1s bursts of 200KB/s at rare intervals (minutes apart). Haven't used torrents in quite a while thanks to sites like Megaupload. After about an hour of playing with ports (1720 used to bypass throttle) I loaded up IRC for the first time since Suprnova was around. 500KB/s instant download, no captcha and an actual community to talk to.

Good riddance to DL sites and torrents in my opinion, but great news if Rogers gets punished. Canada could be the tech leader if things in the US continue and we oppose them. It would be much easier for companies to move here than Sweden.

NO. Using port numbers is invalid.

[Chirs]

What happens if I write a new VOIP app using a different port? Until it gets big enough to be popular, the ISPs won't prioritize it and it'll have crappy QoS.

The only person with full knowledge of their own traffic patterns is the end user, they should be the ones doing the prioritization. Each subscriber should get a proportional amount of the total pipe based on their current subscribed bandwidth, but your VOIP call shouldn't take priority over my homemade streaming video app.

That's Shaw, not Rogers

[ratboy666]

I started with Shaw. Then Shaw and Roger re-divided, and my account was switched to Rogers. No choice.

Now, I get 50Mbps down or so (it rarely goes full-speed), but it is enough for Netflix. Bittorrent is throttled.

Still, I don't have Cable TV, so I can't buy the "top end" internet package... The highest tier I can buy is 150GB/month for $70/month ("Hi-Speed Exteme Plus")

$5 more for 20GB/month for an overage "guarantee". If I don't buy the "guarantee", I spend $1/GB overage, capped at $50/month.

Of course, I can't just buy the "guarantee".

I am looking into TekSavvy.

Re:That's Shaw, not Rogers

[Anonymous Coward]

if you r in Toronto, let me know about teksavvy, I am interested in hearing about them, from someone who has researched them and has at least a rough idea what they are talking about ...

I believe this is a series of trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

or maybe shills trying to poison the well. They all have the same screed that was generally accepted by those who DID NOT WANT Net Neutrality: NN by its supporters means that your traffic can NEVER be throttled, no matter what type of traffic it is.

This seems to be being (ab)used by shills or trolls to show that NN is wrong not by admitting that is their point, but by playing the part of their strawman NN supporter, insisting that NN means your P2P can't be throttled NO MATTER WHAT.

Those still sane and supporting NN know that it means that your packets cannot be discriminated by source or destination location. Your P2P traffic will not be throttled if it goes to Microsoft.com but WILL be if it goes to ThePirateBay.com, but your VOIP traffic to ThePirateBay.com (chat show) will be given preference to your P2P transfer to anyone.

QoS is compatible with Net Neutrality.

But the shills for the network companies want to pretend it isn't, so they can ensure it doesn't happen.

Rogers is worse than horrible

[Greefer]

I had packet loss with Rogers for 2 months. Gathering stats and logs and they just kept closing the ticket saying no one else in your area has the isuse.

Rogers support connected twice and said "yes sir we see 4% packet loss we will escalate" The escalation then simply closes the ticket, no one else in the area affected.

Come to find out my neighbour said she gave up calling and complaining that her internet was horrible and extremely slow also but Rogers refused to assist in any way shape or form.

I work with Network support for RBC Royal Bank. I provided log after log, timestamps, dates, everything required verifying I had internet issues. They flat out refused to do anything at all.

Im not saying Bell doesnt have issues, but at least Bell in Atlantic Canada doesnt cap your bandwidth and is MUCH MORE open than Rogers ever dreamed of being.

Rogers = Horrible.

Period.