Vuze Study Exposes P2P Throttling By Canadian ISP Cogeco

urbanriot writes "Despite a growing number of complaints on the popular North American consumer broadband site BroadbandReports, employees working for the Canadian cable internet provider Cogeco have publicly denied interfering with torrents on their network. However, a recent plugin put out by the Vuze team exposed Cogeco of being the second worst ISP globally, of those tested. So far, Cogeco has failed to respond to these findings, but recent coverage from the mainstream media and Michael Geist may prompt them to finally admit to their controversial practices." The report by the Vuze team has some interesting information about other ISPs from around the world as well. Prior to this, Bell Canada was taking most of the flak in Canada for traffic management.

this is why we need competition

[timmarhy]

no monopolys or duopoloys - real competition.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[Jurily]

Yes, it has. Hence the need for anti-trust laws.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[Ihmhi]

No, moreso that they aimed to prevent companies from charging customers as much as they wanted.

Let's say Verizon completely kills every other company in the landline telephone market in, say, 1995 (when VoIP wasn't as popular as it is now). They could charge $250 a month for a landline, and you couldn't do crap because there's no competition. Any competition that rose up might be local, at best.

If there were more competition, there would be better infrastructure, better service, and less bullshit from t

Re:

[electrictroy]

>>>"has'nt history already proven that competition naturally drift towards monopolization?"

No. On the contrary history has shown that IF a company becomes a monopoly and starts "raping" its customers with outrageous prices, then another competitor will rise-up to provide cheaper alternatives:

- Itunes replaced the CD cartel
- Dish television broke the back of local cable tv monopolies by offering cheaper service
- And now FiOS is providing another form of competition

- The railroads had monopolized pa

DeVry do MBAs now?

[Hognoxious]

history has shown that IF a company becomes a monopoly and starts "raping" its customers with outrageous prices, then another competitor will rise-up to provide cheaper alternatives

It will if the barriers to entry[1] are low or absent. It most certainly isn't the case where they are high - this is why you don't see 19 toll roads or 12 railway lines running in parallel.

[1] Which can be artificial or natural, geographical or political, legal or technical - I could go on - the priciple applies

Re:this is why we need competition

[CastrTroy]

Itunes replaced the CD cartel

I don't know why people love iTunes so much. Personally I think it's just as bad, if not worse than the CD cartel ever was. At least when I bought a CD, I owned it, and could copy it for personal use however I pleased. With MS shutting down shop for music sales, and cutting access to DRM keys, you would think that people would realize just how bad of a situation DRM music puts us in. Sure iTunes has some stuff that's DRM free, but the vast majority of it still has DRM. Online music sales (like the CD before it) was supposed to make things a lot cheaper. On iTunes, it still costs $10 an album, and you don't even get a physical product. CDs were only moderately more expensive. At least where I live. I like eMusic, because even though I'm bound to paying my $15 every month, I know I'm only paying $0.30 cents per track. Which I think is a much more fair price when you don't receive an actual physical product. And you can also redownload your music in the case where it was lost. I would probably spend $15 anyway on music. Better I get 50 tracks than 15. I have to admit, I do miss some of the bigger name bands, and wish that their music was available through better means, but I just can't justify paying $1.00 for a track. It just seems like a complete ripoff.

Re:

[Murrquan]

iTunes is a lot better than we give them credit for.

DRM-wise, they only have it there to appease the labels, and you can burn un-DRMed tracks to CD. I no longer use iTunes, but I still have a copy of an album I bought there. I didn't have to bypass anything, I just told iTunes to burn it to CD. No more DRM.

Value-wise, the tracks are $0.99 each, but the $10 albums usually have more than 10 tracks on them. Plus you can listen to previews of each track, and get recommendations based on your tastes.

iKnow it'

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[riegel]

iTunes does what they are told. To blame them would be to miss the point.

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[Uncle Focker]

- Standard Oil has a monopoly on PA/Ohio oil fields... until the government stepped in with it's anti-trust laws and broke it up

Fixed it for you to be historically accurate.

Re:this is why we need competition

[WK2]

Competition doesn't do much good when the ISPs are allowed to lie. Some good, yes, but in order for competition to do it's thing, users need to be well-informed before they purchase.

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[ZeroExistenZ]

but in order for competition to do it's thing, users need to be well-informed before they purchase.

So, you think the clerk or the sales is going to be aware of these "technical" issues or marketting strategies?

If you'd inform, you'll only hear the things you want to hear or what they've been trained to parrot to you, so you'll sign up and they have another consumer. Once a consumer signs, even with "better alternatives", many wont research because they don't like the hassle to move to another provider or

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[Jack Conrad]

Maybe, at this point, you need less services.

All people should be constantly reviewing all their existing insurances, subscriptions, contracts, and providers. Additionally, all people should be attending their local town meetings and planning commissions. All of the meetings. And by all people, I'm including those under 18.

Additionally, all people need to gather their daily news constantly; they can never stop. All people need to research all their purchases, not only for cost and usability, but also for co

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[ZeroExistenZ]

I understand your point and agree with it to a certain extend. However your conclusion a capitalistic society not being for me is not a correct one.

Perhaps you have all the time in the world to compare and reevalutate all your services, but I don't personally. But I do generate more money, consume and put it back into the capitalistic system. In that logic, I am a big partaker in the system. I just don't compare constantly, only when I'm about to purchase. There are more important things to do with my tim

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[Jack Conrad]

I'm not saying capitalism *is* not for you, just that it might not be for you. Personally, I do not like spending as much time as I do evaluating products and services; I am at the point in my life where I would like things to just work, however, capitalism doesn't work that way.

If you are not constantly scanning the horizons, you might very well not only miss better financial options but unknowingly support the institution of a monopoly by not adopting a smaller, better service firm (this is not to say tha

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[TubeSteak]

Competition doesn't do much good when the ISPs are allowed to lie.

There really oughta be a law:
The 'Truth in Corporate Public Statements Act'

I would have sworn there is one, but neither Comcast nor Vuze has been sued or fined for their materially false statements.

As a sweetener, the law should have a "spirit of the law" clause to keep companies from making technically accurate but misleading statements. Either tell the plain truth or say 'no comment'.

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[WK2]

Maybe there is a law.

A while ago, Nike stated in a press release that they did not employ children in sweat shops. This turned out to be a lie. They were sued (probably a class action lawsuit) and Nike tried a First Amendment defense, saying that the constitution gives them the right to lie to people. Nike lost the case. The judge said that press releases are considered advertising, and you aren't allowed to lie in advertisements.

Maybe a "corporate public statement" is not the same as an advertisement, or p

Re:this is why we need competition

[erroneus]

Without question. If fact, I would go so far as to say that there should be laws written about infrastructure ownership.

We, the people, should own ALL things "infrastructure" and allow companies to use it for providing services. AT&T can't be allowed to own the wires and switches any longer. Comcast can't be allowed to own the cables any longer. And rather like patents and copyrights, these monopolies should be allowed for only a specified amount of time but should not exceed the time it takes to recoup the costs of building the infrastructure. After that, they lose their monopoly. (And to add incentive to these parties, they can extend their temporary monopolies any time they upgrade the infrastructure...say by putting fiber at EVERY door.)

They have gotten away with cherry picking and raising prices without improving services for far too long. Their regional monopolies demonstrably harm the consumer. I find it amazing what they have been getting away with.

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[electrictroy]

Define infrastructure.

I know you're thinking "cables", but could it also mean the healthcare system? How about food stores? Clothing stores? Or perhaps the land that everybody sits their house upon? Maybe the houses themselves could be considered "infrastructure" and should be owned collectively by the government?

Ooops, I just used the word collectivism.
So much for free will of the individual.

"HISTORY has shown that Government is like fire: a troublesome servant & a DEADLY master. Never should it b

Re:this is why we need competition

[erroneus]

Infrastructure are the vehicles by which services are traveled or transmitted. This would include the roads, railways, air space, the power lines, the pipes and sewers, phone lines, cell towers, radio frequencies or anything along those lines.

"Healthcare" is not even remotely within that description. Land ownership is even further removed.

The prevention of ownership of infrastructure *IS* a pro choice move. It allows multiple service providers to compete across the same media offering "pro-choice" to the consumer. Regional monopolies are still monopolies and cases of abuse are frequent. I'm not talking about socialized services. Only publicly owned infrastructure. The Public Utilities Commissions which were created to prevent the need for public ownership of infrastructure has failed in its mission where it has permitted cherry picking and inconsistent levels of service. There are places in Texas and all across the U.S. that still have no water and no power, forget about broadband internet access and cell phone coverage.

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[Shakrai]

The Public Utilities Commissions which were created to prevent the need for public ownership of infrastructure has failed in its mission where it has permitted cherry picking and inconsistent levels of service

Those Commissions haven't "failed". They were defanged by a decade of deregulation and pro-business lobbies that denied them (in all but a few states) the power to regulate ISPs and the Wireless Industry.

I can't speak for other states, but the NYS Public Service Commission is pretty damned good at what they do. The few times I've had to escalate a complaint to them I usually wind up talking with a utility executive (typically Verizon) within two business hours. Give them authority over Internet Servi

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[hvm2hvm]

"You can not have government control of the Infrastructure and individual freedom at the same time. When government is in control, it suppresses the individual to the will of the state, and imprisons or kills those who refuse to be trampled."

Well it's still better than what happens when the companies have control. The government is somewhat forced to make it better for the people but companies have no interest in caring for their customers as long as they get the money. And considering the owners of the

Re:this is why we need competition

[mmurphy000]

I know you're thinking "cables", but could it also mean the healthcare system?

A neighborhood can only have so many buried cables before they start conflicting with each other, with water/sewer/gas lines, etc., particularly since each cable must reach each house. Talk to a civil engineer sometime about the royal PITA known as "Miss Utility" or "OneCall" or the equivalent.

The same neighborhood can have many healthcare providers without similar conflicts. Healthcare is far less a natural monopoly than is sewer service, or roads, or cables.

It is a wiser course to pursue a "pro-choice" position that seeks to provide multiple choices, and places the power of decision in the hands of the citizen. i.e. A policy that empowers the individual.

In the abstract, you'll get no complaints from me. The question, though, is where the competition lies. Just because some portion of the service is community-owned (e.g., roads) doesn't preclude competition at other levels (e.g., package delivery services). Just because the city owns the water and sewer lines doesn't preclude competition among Roto-Rooter and similar home plumbing franchises. Similarly, just because a town decides to own the physical cabling would not preclude competition among firms wishing to use said cabling to provide communication services.

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[the_arrow]

In Stockholm, and maybe in other Swedish cities too, when there is work where they have to open up the street, they also lay down fiber. This fiber is then owned by the city, and anyone can "rent" bandwith on the fiber. Community owned, but since anyone can use it there is competition where it counts.

Much of the Internet backbone in Sweden is run by SUNET [sunet.se], the Swedish university computer network, or owned by TeliaSonera [teliasonera.com] with strict rules to allow fair usage.

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[Doctor_Jest]

They already do (speaking specifically of the USA). Cable companies and phone companies are government sanctioned monopolies in most areas (and nationally, the seizure of right of way and juicy subsidies make it not just local municipalities doing the sanctioning.) Any time there is a local move for municipal broadband or other forms of competition, the Bells and the cable companies whine to their patrons (the government) and try to get such moves squashed. (Rather than providing a better service at a com

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[Remusti]

I have to say, your argument is excellent. I completely agree.

Utility and internet companies should own their own infrastructure. The only acceptable options are either:

a) One company delivering services to specific areas. This is a great way of securing personal liberty. Don't like the broadband provider for your area? Move house! Don't like the electricity provider in your new area? Move again! Wait, now you have a problem with your telephone provider? Move again, and this time do your research. Rem

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[Atzanteol]

The difference is in what is called a 'natural' monopoly where it really makes sense to only have one entity digging up streets and installing cables. There was a time when every individual phone company was running its own lines but that's infeasible for large distributions.

At times I've wondered whether a "telecom authority" may be the best way to go simply for setting up and maintaining cables. But even then I'd be concerned about the technology stagnating under government monopoly...

It's a tricky

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[blitziod]

Look it's easy. Step 1: allow 2 year contracts to "own" the lines in any given city. Step 2: Have a fixed maximum price per year, you can go uner but NOT over. Step 3: Every 2 years interested companies place a bond or secure insurance to be fiscaly fit enought to provide service to that area. Step 4: Put the companies names on a ballot, voters decide in the election who gets the contract.

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[DarrenBaker]

That's the irony - in the areas where Cogeco serves customers, they *are* the competition to Rogers. In most respects, they are superior to them; but I guess in this they fall down.

hahaha Cogeco

[afxgrin]

Egg on your faces yet assholes!!?!? You didn't think anyone would notice the throttling eh? I thought at first my router just sucked and couldn't forward ports correctly, or I had a faulty modem, or some other dumb shit - instead it's been you all along. I hate being in denial that the company I had trusted and spoke so confidently for has been resorting to these underhanded tactics for so long. And then, after making an anonymous posting on Broadbandreports.com that they didn't like, they somehow weasel

DSL has competition, not monopoly, in the US

[billstewart]

Cable modem service is usually a monopoly in the US, unless you're somewhere that RCN built a second infrastructure - and that's largely because the local governments "helped" people get cable TV by granting franchises to cable providers. Those of us who watched that business evolved generally saw contracts award not to the providers who were most visionary about telecommunications, but usually because of whose brother-in-law got the installation or street paving contracts. The major competitor to cable T

two words:

[QuantumG]

slow hockey.

Keep pushing.

[Thanshin]

I wonder what will businessmen of the future think when they read about how full encryption came to be, taking into account it's speed and complexity problems.

Bad ISPs

[daydr3am3r]

For those who are bored to RTFA and dig through its links, there is a handy Bad ISPs [azureuswiki.com] list maintained by the Azureus team.
That being said, there are many ISPs who also do p2p traffic caching, which is not inherently a bad thing. Certain block lists consider those wrongfully malicious as well.

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[Alpha Whisky]

What is really needed is a good ISP list. The only way to sort this out is to hurt the bad ISPs in the wallet by moving to the good ISPs.

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[L4t3r4lu5]

Wouldn't a torrent cache be a good place to look for copyright-infringing content, providing a repository of exactly the kind of "p2p is ripping us off" evidence that the MAFIAA need to continue their *Godwin* Hitler-esque domination of p2p file sharing?

Kind of like a drug trafficker keeping his stash on the passenger seat, as storing it in the fuel tank takes just a little too long for his liking.

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[Dan541]

You mean ISPs are downloading and uploading bittorrent traffic instead of just being the carrier?

Mayb the MPAA should sue them for copyright violation.

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[budgenator]

if they had a sever seeding on a 10Gbs connection, nobody would care if they almost totaly blocked out-of network portions of the BT traffic!

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[jimwatters]

Some possible good news. This article http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=c5fb15b5-d012-4cee-819b-ef95556ac78c [canada.com] came out yesterday

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission will begin deliberations tomorrow to determine if Bell's "bandwidth throttling" should stop immediately until government policy is set.

Adelphia?

[antdude]

Adelphia is dead (no more). Are we sure the list is updated beside the history changes? I don't have an account there to fix and not going to do so for one change (already tried BugMeNot).

Torrent of PDF

[gbickford]

Just in case they get dotted: http://spunts.com/vuze-plug-in-results.pdf.torrent [spunts.com]

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[electrictroy]

Too bad some of us are stuck with ISPs that forbid use of P2P file sharing.

Too bad these ISPs don't realize P2P has legitimate uses.

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[gbickford]

That was the irony which I was attempting to imply. :) The torrent is valid though.

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[conlaw]

From TFA, "From Monday 21st April you will be able can find this information as a torrent file at..."

Apparently, if you're a Comcast customer, your chance of being able to download the torrent are probably very slim. Even though Cogeco is the highest-rated Canadian ISP in terms of resets, the top 20 list contains many different Comcast ISP ID's.

I'm not seeing this

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Cogeco cable internet and I haven't noticed this. A well seeded torrent will max out all the bandwidth I pay for (16 mbit). I use their pro service now but the same was true when I was using regular highseed only capped at 10mbit They just enforce a soft bitcap which is annoying but I'm only able to hit the caps they are now enforcing because they've made the network so fast.

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[Adeptus_Luminati]

Yeah right. Try uploading buddy. Then come back and tell me you are not capped.

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[ObscureMotives]

I have Cogeco's 10mbit service, and I don't have any problems with torrents, uploading may not be as fast as downloading, but if anything is left alone to seed, it will get the job done. The only thing I can think that would matter is that my client allows me to use a custom port. My thinking was always that to be as bad as everybody claims they are, Cogeco must be coming down heavy on bittorrent specific ports and leaving everything else alone.

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[Secret Rabbit]

I have Cogeco as well and they do indeed throttle it. Though it doesn't seem to be all the time, but they definitely do do it. It almost seems as though they have a defective traffic analyser that catches you... sometimes. Or perhaps it's an "If bandwidth of the total network exceeds a certain amount then do it (perhaps to random people, random number of them)" type thing.

But, I have also noticed that, from time to time people have problems connecting to me and myself to them. Nothing like have a 0kbps

Cogeco response

[wrook]

The CBC has a decent article where they contacted Cogeco. They claim not to use false resets. They also say that they haven't received the letter from Vuze yet.

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/04/22/tech-vuze.html

I'm not sure if I believe them or not. When I lived in Ottawa last year I had friends using Cogeco. Some people had no problems at all with bittorrent while others couldn't use it. It's hard for me to tell if they are blocking some of their customers, or if my friends just couldn't figure out how to set it up.

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[ergo98]

Another Cogeco user here (I've had their high speed service for about 5 years now). Overall I've been extremely satisfied, and have experienced extraordinarily little downtime, 10Mbps virtually around the clock, and the torrents I have downloaded seemed to work perfectly.

Dunno, but I would still have a high opinion of Cogeco even if this were true (though I don't see why they would explicitly lie about it. That part doesn't mesh).

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[solakov]

I was a Cogeco user (in Hamilton) for about 5 years, until quite recently July 2007. I had the fastest service they could offer (5-7 Meg?).

I am 100% confident that they were practicing numerous phases of traffic and packet shaping, specifically targeted towards impeding Bit Torrent traffic. Both packet header encryption and using port 1720 seemed to "help" at first, but eventually all BT traffic seemed to trickle, with uploads never exceeding a few KB/s aggregate.

It was frustrating that I was un

Re:

[BitterOak]

I'm not sure if I believe them or not. When I lived in Ottawa last year I had friends using Cogeco. Some people had no problems at all with bittorrent while others couldn't use it. It's hard for me to tell if they are blocking some of their customers, or if my friends just couldn't figure out how to set it up.

I'm a Cogeco user in Windsor, Ontario, and I can say that how you set up BitTorrent has a HUGE impact on performance. I originally used the BitTorrent client from BitTorrent inc., and it was unusably slow. I couldn't figure out why everyone thought the BitTorrent protocol was so wonderful, when I could download files using ftp at 400 kB/s on a good day, and BitTorrent would typically download at less than 10 kB/s. At some point I switched to BitComet, and the software suggested I change some TCP setting

False advertising?

[fastest fascist]

It seems to me that when an ISP states they do not throttle traffic and secretly do so anyway, they are giving their customers a false representation of the product they sell. Probably their EULA gives them the right to throttle traffic, but does it give them the right to lie about it?

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[DragonTHC]

There has been a sense of security about the eula. I happen to believe that burying a clause in the eula that completely contradicts the open advertisement should be actionable. It's a violation of good faith trust that I had unduly placed in the company. I also happen to believe that placing 'future-proof' clauses in eulas and other such contracts and agreements is unconstitutional. basically those clauses that state, "we have the right to change anything in the contract without notice at any time" is

Re:

[redelm]

It's not quite so easy -- first, most contracts contain a clause that the contract is the complete contract and other materials are not binding. Also notice disclaimers in advertising "where available", which may not be in many places. Third, the service advertised and shown as unlimited _home_ use may not match yours: a bit of surfing and sis watching a cartoon is not the same as 24/7 DL.

As for contract modification, these are not "one-time" contracts but continuing agreements. You can terminate at an

Re:

[DragonTHC]

what about those of us who have been customers so long, we signed up when it was unlimited. There was a time when it was fully advertised as unlimited.

This is about those corporations reneging on what they promised. It's about the small print contradicting the giant sign. I don't think it's right. I can't wait for a brave congresscritter to introduce legislation to fix it.

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[redelm]

But it is a continuing relationship. Either can terminate at will. Signing up a long time ago just means you've been more-or-less satisfied with the service and terms for a long time.

Put it another way: assume cableco violated the contract. How much damages do they owe you? Maybe a refund for the month? No court will compel them to serve you as you think you should be served.

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[Ilgaz]

These guys are ISPs and they certainly know there is a huge, legal (and paid, real money!) traffic via Bittorrent.com , Vuze.com and of course GNU etc. software. They must have heard about the plugin too.

If they dare to send RST packets, intervene with users connection... One wonders what ELSE they could dare to do or already do? Profiling comes to mind.

I believe traffic shaping is ok...

[graymocker]

... when it's transparent and disclosed. If ISPs believe that traffic shaping is a legitimate cost management solution that most customers wouldn't mind, then fine, make the legitimate case: use traffic shaping and disclose the existence of traffic shaping in your plans the same way maximum bandwidth is disclosed, and we'll let the market decide. Personally, I believe that enough customers wouldn't mind traffic shaping, bandwidth throttling and caps, etc. that in the future we might see different priced "tiers" of internet service, which is fine with me as that would make service pricing more representative of internet use. My ISP wants to bandwidth cap my internet service? Fine, if they disclose these caps at the time that I sign up. Then I'd be free to negotiate with another provider or sign up for a better plan. It's the fact that ISPs today advertise one thing and then deliver another that's truly offensive.

The sneaky underhanded meddling with the service of customers that have existing contracts just undermines the ISPs' case and suggests to regulators and customers that they aren't interested in honestly selling a service.

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[Radium_]

> I believe traffic shaping is ok
> when it's transparent and disclosed.

How do you adverstise such a thing when less than 10% of your customer base understand the concept behind it?
Why would you advertise limited Internet access?
I can see the ads
"Try out the new crippled broadband"
"Switch to web 0.5 right now"
"Cheap unlimited* access** to Internet***"
Better filter things silently and handle the few complaints from the geeks. These guys cost more than they pa

How to advertise....

[iamsamed]

How do you adverstise such a thing when less than 10% of your customer base understand the concept behind it? Why would you advertise limited Internet access? I can see the ads

"Tired of the internet pig next door downloading illegal movies next door and bringing YOUR service to a crawl?

Working from home and your work just sits there because the guy next door is sharing all of his music with the rest of the world?

The sex addict down the street is sucking up your internet - BUY FROM US!

We don't feed the internet pigs!

Sign up with us and get your work done!

(in mice type) we throttle P2P, bitorrent, etc...."

See, no probelm.

Re:

[Lincolnshire Poacher]

> they're all at it,

Nonsense! My UK ISP guarantees no throttling, port blocking or traffic shaping, all for about 3 UKP more than the average monthly charge and a contract period of just four weeks. They do have transfer caps on all packages but AFAIK you can select up to 60 GB.

I'm not mentioning them by name because we like the exclusivity! Look around and you'll find them.

Not all ISPs are evil.

Re:

[Ilgaz]

If I were you, I would advertise them in every opportunity. The only thing which would teach those ISPs is losing customers to another, good ISP. Do you believe they didn't know thousands of people are actively tracing their connections via plugin? They knew. They didn't care. The only thing that would drive them to panic is losing those sheep (for them) customers to a good, small ISP. Would it work? See what happened to AOL when they messed with their customers too much.

Re:

[CastrTroy]

It's done this way with computers all the time. Do normal users really understand the difference between SATA and PATA hard drives? Do you think most people who buy computers look into which technology they are getting? Do they know if their video card is AGP,PCIE 4x, 8x or 16x? Sure some people think it's important, so they put it on the specs for the product you are buying. Those people who don't care can just ignore it.

Re:

[Ilgaz]

If they really care about degraded user experience and shape traffic, why don't they find the bandwidth of a normal, good Youtube performance (around 1024-1536 kbps) and filter the Youtube traffic stopping people from leeching 20 videos at once with that backwards, http system? If my ISP does traffic shaping, I demand them to shape Youtube junk. If people wants to stream things, there are better things since 1994 like UDP/RTSP/Bandwidth Switching actual media players/plugins.

They are horrified about another

Was anyone as surprised as I was ...

[NotBornYesterday]

... when they read the networks with the worst median reset rates from the appendix of the report?

UIUC - University of Illinois - 90.69%
WN-AZ-AS - Arizona Tri University Network - 89.33%

I'm not saying there is anything nefarious going on there. These networks were only sampled for a short time by a small set of users. The results gathered might not be generally representative of those networks. But it does make you wonder. Are they are blocking / shaping traffic, or do they have a massively ove

Re:

[Khyber]

Both of those universities have third-rate IT departments. UofI's network room in particular looks worse than those "Mess o cable" pictures we see on the net every year.

A Press Release

[AetherBurner]

We at LBE are proud to introduce our new pricing policies. They are as follows: 6 Mbit/sec down - 512 kbit up -> $15/mo. 1.5 Mbit/sec down - 128 kbit up - no RST -> $45/mo. Remember, LBE (Lousy Broadband Experience) are here to satisfy all of your emergent broadband needs. Thank you for using our services.

I have cogeco..

[hilather]

And have not noticed any throttling. My P2P programs work fine if they were able to work any faster I would be shocked. I do not believe Cogeco is throttling.

Re:

[GreenEnvy22]

I Concur, I'm on Cogeco in the Niagara Falls area, and I quite regularly get 800KB/s total speed while downloading torrents. My normal http downloads often exceed 1000KB/s. It's awesome downloading a linux ISO in 20 minutes :)

Re:

[sunami88]

Downloads go fine, sure, but uploading? Forget about it. My Dad back home has Cogeco and any time I'm over for a few days I find the internet is generally slower (suggesting throttling), and that my torrents do not seed whatsoever.

YMMV mind you, but in my experience, yes, they do limit BitTorrent.

Not my case...

[Kenshin]

I've got a Cogeco 10 Meg connection. I'm totally satisfied with it... most of the time.

Browsing the web, net radio, FTP, etc... super-fast. P2P can be wickedly fast too. BUT, whenever P2P uploads start going (an inevitability on most networks), my connection virtually DIES. Uploads rarely go above 10kb, and most additional connections like web or e-mail will simply stall most of the time, and remain stalled for at least 2 minutes after I disconnect my P2P. (This is even with encryption options.)

That's one o

Incompetence v.s. Malevolence

[pruneau]

Never forget one thing though: before ascribing something to malevolence, look into the incompetence direction first.

And having a mix of the two makes it even easier to hide behind plausible deniability. Because placing the right person at the right place, i.e. the worst net admin on the most loaded network might be just what it takes.

What if private companies throttled our roads?

[kurt555gs]

Do our, and it seems the Canadian Government officials understand how important net neutrality is? How would they react if some private companies decided to throttle traffic on their countries roads unless they were paid? It is the very same thing.

To bad I am not a big corporation that can say, I think that blue trucks can only go 40 MPH (64.37376 kph, for the Kanucks) unless they pay me. Even though they are on a public right of way.

Yes this is silly, but so is allowing internet traffic throttling.

This

Nice survey -- still self-selected

[redelm]

Nothing against VUze, they've done about as best as they could. But all "pulled" surveys have the same problem: most of the people responding are attracted to the issue by a personal stance. In this case, it is likely that many of the Vuze plug-in [virus?] users were having bandwidth problems and wanted to find out or help fix it.

Measuring RST is an interesting approach, but is hardly the only or even preferred solution to TCP/IP congestion control. Delaying [queuing] ACK packets is more transparent a

Sample Size

[gsslay]

You have got to be kidding. A self selecting sample of 22 individuals and this is proof?

Is it not just as likely that these 22 people have lousy connections, and so installed the plugin to 'prove' its their ISPs fault? Meanwhile, thousands of others have no problems, so have no need or desire to install the plugin.

What about VOIP!?!

[rayk_sland]

Shaw interferes with SIP so they can flog their own 'digital phone.' When is that excrement going to hit the fan...?

Comments from an actual Cogeco customer

[gvc]

I'm perfectly happy with my Cogeco service. I transfer ISOs all the time and get transfer rate in the 5Mbit range. I rarely resort to torrent -- it is unnecessary -- but it seems to work well enough as well. And if there's bandwidth contention, I would want it to be the torrents and not the direct transfers that were hit. That's the point of background.

One the other hand, I have experienced many service providers -- most recently and the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel -- whose service is crippled.

Re:

[GreenEggsAndSpam]

I too am with Cogeco. I've noticed some interesting things over the past couple months:

Last year, before August, I had great download speeds through torrents - Any kind of torrent (ISO images, videos, legal music) would maintain a high speed and I'd cap out at about 500KB/s (Yes, that's KB).

Between August (Maybe sept?) and Feb of this year, I found that any videos or music files would have a TOTAL bandwidth allocation of 50KB/s. Yet a linux ISO would still download at 450-500KB/s. My upload would nev

Re:

[gvc]

You are right. In a 24 hour period since I posted by endorsement, Cogeco cut off my service, accusing me of having a virus and refusing to reinstate me until I had my wife call them back and pretend to be an airhead, then in a separate message accusing me of of violating copyright.

I don't know what has gotten into them, but it is not good.

Bell is worse, so what am I to do?

Flawed Study

[Se7enLC]

This study compares the number of RESETs to the total number of connections made. It makes NO ATTEMPT at determining if the resets are false and injected by the ISP.

Re:

[Anomalyst]

I make no attempt at determining source of the light I see in the atrium on the other side of the window, yet I am reasonably confident that it originates primarily from the sun.
I haven't RTFA, but what other plausible source would these spurious resets come from?

Throttling P2P isn't a bad thing

[awjr]

In the UK contention ratios on domestic cable/dsl is 1:50. So bandwidth is allocated on certain assumed behaviour patterns.

P2P messes up that usage pattern by using constant bandwidth for hours/days at a time.

As a company I think I am very happy to throttle P2P traffic if it allows the other 49 households to get a 'quality' experience.

The real issue is with shaping. Virgin Media in the UK have declared that unless the bigger internet companies (e.g. youtube pay them money), their data streams will be shaped

re: experience on cogeco

[Rage Maxis]

I had "10mbit" service on Cogeco in windsor, ontario...

It was my third and fastest Cogeco line at different locations.

Network Node saturation was unbelievable - in those days Limewire and a couple of other sketchy apps were the de rigeur and most people, particularily in the sketchy university and college areas (its like drunken party central there) - the p2p direct connect apps were typical set to 0 0 (full speed) everywhere and as a result anything from loading web pages to IMAP just plain didn't work.

The

RST yes, but who sent it?

[redelm]

Vuze has exposed a rather high fraction of RSTs. I would expect normal surfers to be complaining loudly. Not easy for cableco to ignore (unlike 733t whiners).

I just wonder if some of those RSTs might not be coming from bandwidth hogs -- users who disrupt other users service to capture more bandwidth for themselves. cable is shared medium.

Re:

[RiotingPacifist]

Vuze/azureus is a torrent program, it only tracks usage of torrents, so the chances are they only throttle when they detect torrents.

RSTs might not be coming from bandwidth hogs -- users who disrupt other users service to capture more bandwidth for themselves. cable is shared medium.

im not sure how that would work, but wouldnt that mean that your connection was really insecure?

p2p on tcp?

[sgt scrub]

interfering with torrents on their network

tcp torrent traffic and spam bot traffic are virtually identical. vuze doesn't seem to know this because they look at tcp traffic and p2p lives on both tcp and udp. looking for packets with the rst bit set would better indicate blocked botnet traffic.

It has to be noted that the data gathering techniques Vuze uses are far from optimal. The plugin detects all TCP resets on a connection and doesn't make a distinction between BitTorrent and other traffic, and there is

Can we get even?

[RecycledElectrons]

Can we get even? I'd love to see a plug-in for my torrent client that can send a single packet complaint to the DNS servers of anyone who has recently ticked me off every time I start d/lin or u/ling a new block on a torrent. Andy

My Experiance with Cogeco

[DarthVain]

I don't know about p2p throttling, but I have been a Cogeco customer for years.

Its primary selling point for me is that it is better than Bell.

The short version of my story goes like this. I bought a new computer almost a year ago. At one point I decided to download a whole bunch of old TV shows. I went to log on one day and could not. On my second or third try I then was redirected to a URL that basically said "Cogeco disconnected you". So I call up and basically say "WTF?". The answer I got, is that you h

Which end is doing the resets?

[redphive]

The ISP for which I work does no such packet shaping or TCP resetting one any traffic entering or leaving our network. Despite this, we have a median reset rate approaching 13%. Does this plugin take into consideration the fact that the reset could be sent from a foreign network rather than the provider the client is attached to?

Does the Vuze client track resets on a per foreign client basis, or as an aggregate of the local client.

Any insight into this?

Re:

[Faylone]

Parent is troll, don't click

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[Alsee]

[WP:Beans]

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