Canadian ISP's Intentionally Make P2P Slow
Looks like Comcast is not the only ISP guilty of "traffic shaping". The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has launched an investigation into several of Canada's largest Internet service providers, specifically concerning their traffic management practices.
Bell, Cogeco, Rogers and Eastlink, the four largest ISP's in Canada, were subject to questioning by the Commission regarding traffic management, bandwidth issues and traffic shaping. Bell was perhaps the most forthright, admitting to utilizing Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) on both regular customers and wholesale buyers of its service. Also, they severely throttled P2P traffic for all users on a daily basis, from 4:30PM to 2:00AM. Bell also said it planned on terminating service for heavy P2P users and was close to introducing a "metered" service plan, meaning customers could choose how much they could download a month.
Cogeco, Rogers and Eastlink all admitted to using some sort of traffic management system regarding P2P traffic, with Cogeco being the only other company to admit to using DPI technology. As of now, it is unclear which route the CRTC will take; Will it become another FCC vs. Comcast battle and demand that "traffic shaping" be ceased immediately? Or will it simply nod its ahead and say "move along"?
Speaking of Comcast, the American ISP giant is still under the scrutiny of the FCC. Despite the changing administration and FCC Chairman Kevin Martin now out of office, the "former chairman" set one last action into motion before vacating office. Martin "Announced an investigation into whether Comcast Corp. is deliberately degrading its rivals' Internet phone services, suggested fines of upwards of $500,000 against cable companies in another dispute, and released a flurry of long-delayed reports," according to the Wall Street Journal. So while the newest salvo against Comcast has little to do with P2P, Martin certainly ended his professional relationship with the company on a bitter note.
- Networking,
- P2P ,
- Internet ,
- Torrents ,
- Comcast
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jonnyhuk2> The big deal is, it shouldn't be done at all. You pay for access as advertised, at a certain speed. The file type / protocol shouldn’t matter. Also, If the fact that they are opening your files and reading (even 0.01% of) the content doesn’t bother you. Then your are part of the problem.
Also, In the UK we already have extremely slow access - For business to grow over the internet, the fat cats need to take some of the money they make and reinvest it back into the system. The net is still in its infancy, we got a long way to go and they have already started to take it away from you.
When I pay for an amount of data at a certain speed, I assume ALL that data is at that speed (unless locally hosted by the isp).
If the ISP is limiting my speed to certain types of data (which i've PAID for), I am not getting the full use of my paid-for data. This should be illegal, especially when such limitations are not immediately clear (as is the case in australia).
If treating all data and all users equally is going to require investment in network backbones, so be it. Make net access more expensive. Give us bandwidth caps. I'll pay for it, willingly.
But dare to deprioritize my paid-for connection because I make a fuller use of it than the granny who lives next door, and I will never be your customer again.