Canadian ISPs Limiting Access To CBC Shows

An anonymous reader sends word that, even as ISP interference with BitTorrent traffic is easing in the US, the issue is heating up in Canada. Major Canadian ISPs are limiting access to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's shows, made available online using BitTorrent. This issue has burst onto the scene due to smaller ISPs, such as Teksavvy, blowing the whistle on the fact that Bell was expanding its traffic-shaping policies to smaller ISPs that rent Bell's network. These events have sparked a formal complaint by the National Union of Public and General Employees, which represents more than 340,000 workers across Canada, to the regulatory body, CRTC, and calls for change in Parliament.

I forsee the CRTC's response...

[Innominandum]

The CRTC's response will probably be similar to the one I received when I tried to file complaint against the grossly incompetent & abusive TELUS: "The CRTC does not regulate the business practices for Internet Service Providers." The CRTC is absolutely steadfast in their position.

The only body willing to oversee Internet issues is the CCTS or "Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services." This entity is completely funded by the telecom industry. If you need help, they're utterly useless and will basically tell you to take a hike.

Just an expansion of an existing program

[nilstar]

It's not just CBC news, but all bit-torrent that's been throttled by all the Large ISPs in Canada for a while now. The CRTC/Gov forced them to open up access so that smaller ISPs could resell bandwidth. Now, those same ISPs which charge less $$ than the big players, have had their bit-torrent throttled.

Note: this only affects ISPs which resell bandwidth. Those with their own equipment can still circumvent this.

Parent incorrect

[Anonymous Coward]

>Note: this only affects ISPs which resell bandwidth. Those with their own equipment can still circumvent this.

Bell is throttling the connection path to the DSLAM. Unless your ISP has a connection directly to your house, you are still affected. Next time read the facts first.

Re:This is bigger than comcast

[MrKevvy]

re: "I can only speak for my ISP in Canada (Shaw). They throttle Bit Torrent on the default ports it would appear, but not on any other ports."

I'm with Rogers since they took over @Home's market when it went bust. The throttling is ridiculous but only on the upstream, which now varies between 1-10KBytes/sec. All ports are affected and encryption doesn't help. It did for a short time, but they caught on and started throttling all encrypted traffic which caused work-at-home business users on VPN's to go ballistic.

Re:Just an expansion of an existing program

[LittleStone]

Note: this only affects ISPs which resell bandwidth. Those with their own equipment can still circumvent this.

That's not exactly correct. CRTC forced Bell to open up access to the last mile. Some ISPs (like Teksavvy) have their own network equipments and bandwidth not from Bell, they only rent the last mile from Bell. Bell is actually messing with the data in the last mile.

Re:This is bigger than comcast

[shma]

Actually, I'm with Rogers as well, and where I am (downtown Toronto) I've noticed no problem with encrypted traffic. So it seems that the degree to which they throttle traffic varies from region to region.

Mod parent up

[PFAK]

The parent is correct. These people are not resellers of bandwidth, they are wholesalers. They have their own infrastructure, except they have to lease the last mile from Bell.

About Time This Came Out. . .

[clragon]

While Comcast hogged most of the publicity in the past regarding throttled P2P traffic, almost all Canadian ISPs [azureuswiki.com] limit P2P traffic in one way or another.

To quote the article:

[Geak]

Bell spokesman Jason Laszlo on Friday reiterated the company's position --that it was shaping traffic in order to prevent a small portion of bandwidth hogs from slowing speeds down for all customers.

He said there has been no backlash from customers, despite the incidents of the past week.

I call bullshit. I used to work for Sympatico's technical support so I KNOW. If a customer complained about traffic shaping, no matter how savvy they are and how much evidence they presented, we would have just told them bit torrent is not supported. Regardless of the fact that the problem has nothing to do with bit torrent, that's where the blame would go. If we escalated something like this we would get written up for it. There is no backlash because management ensures they won't hear any backlash.

Re:About Time This Came Out. . .

[jbpro]

...almost all Canadian ISPs [azureuswiki.com] limit P2P traffic in one way or another.

Actually ...
In Canada, since the big guys are forced to lease their lines to smaller ISPs, we have dozens if not hundreds of ISPs in Canada. The smaller ones either A) don't have user bases large enough to make traffic shaping profitable (with the sizable management equipment investment required) OR B) choose not to shape their traffic.

This is great!

In the link you posted, Azureuswiki only has 8 ISPs listed for Canada. You seemed to be under the impression that Canada only had 8 ISPs. Since the big telcos don't have a monopoly here we have healthy competition.

Re:I forsee the CRTC's response...

[Arctic Dragon]

I received the exact same response when Rogers tried to screw me over. I receive my phone service from Sprint Canada and my DSL from Storm Internet, a Bell wholesaler. When Rogers bought Sprint, they switched me to Rogers Digital Home Phone, and they assured me that my DSL would not be affected. They lied and my DSL stopped working, so I asked to be reverted to analogue phone service. They flat out refused, saying all they can do for me is switch me to Rogers Highspeed. I argued with them over the phone and by email for over a week, and they kept saying that I can no longer have DSL in my apartment. I complained to the CRTC and got the "we don't regulate ISPs" BS response. I considered complaining to the CCTS, but look at the process involved: ccts-cprst.ca [ccts-cprst.ca]. It can take 60 days for anything to happen!
I ended up getting my DSL restored by converting to dryloop DSL.

That was a month ago. Now this week my connection started getting throttled. It's ridiculous and you can't win. If you choose Rogers, you get screwed. Use Bell's service, you get screwed. Switch to a small local ISP, and Bell still manages to find a way to screw you.

Re:They're our shows anyway

[CastrTroy]

The CBC actually has a mandate to deliver the shows in the most relevant way for the public to get them. It's the same way a lot of their content is offered on podcast [www.cbc.ca]. It's the way that people want to listen to the radio, so they get it that way. In the same way, people want to be able to download TV shows using bittorrent, so they are trying to see how well it works. Limiting access to the CBC distributed shows is probably illegal in qutie a few ways.

Re:About Time This Came Out. . .

[compro01]

that is far from "almost all". competition is generally alive and well, as the CLECs are required to lease out lines.

http://canadianisp.com/ [canadianisp.com] has a rather extensive listing of the little guys.

Re:This is bigger than comcast

[tlhIngan]

I can only speak for my ISP in Canada (Shaw). They throttle Bit Torrent on the default ports it would appear, but not on any other ports. (This is based on my own informal speed tests.)

Actually, no. Shaw uses Ellacoya units [www.shaw.ca](warning, PDF) which perform deep packet inspection. These units, which have been recently tested [arstechnica.com] (and Ellacoya is one of the two that had faith in their units), do not care about what port traffic is on. They inspect packets and throttle those like BitTorrent, regardless of what port it's on. The Ellacoya units faired quite well during the tests - identifying most P2P traffic, with no false positives.

So far, encryption is the only way to foil these shapers, and there's lots of talk about the traffic shaping that Shaw does in the Shaw forums at DSL Reports. There's a link to Shaw's CEO saying they use traffic shapers as well.

Of course, I think more and more BitTorrent clients are coming with encryption enabled. Eventually, I see everyone encrypting all traffic soon...

Re:Gotta change the system

[taylortbb]

Actually in this case you're a bit behind, Canada does have a system for letting small independent ISPs setup with low cost exactly so there is competition in the marketplace. The big players are required to wholesale their last mile at government regulated prices. There are independent ISPs that oppose traffic shaping, TekSavvy is one of them, the problem here is that the big players are throttling in the last mile so that independent ISPs have throttling like it or not. TekSavvy plans to fight this one to the end, but right now they're throttled by Bell. What Bell is doing is likely illegal, but they don't give a crap, TekSavvy has been stealing Bell's customers since Bell started throttling their own customers. Bell didn't like that so they decided they would take TekSavvy's competitive advantage away.

Re:Just an expansion of an existing program

[InvalidError]

That's not exactly correct. CRTC forced Bell to open up access to the last mile. Some ISPs (like Teksavvy) have their own network equipments and bandwidth not from Bell, they only rent the last mile from Bell. Bell is actually messing with the data in the last mile.

Actually, TSI leases a whole lot more than the last mile: all of TSI's core networking equipment and connections to transit providers PoPs for ON/QC are located at 151 Front-Street in Toronto. TSI actually leases everything from the GbE links to 151 Front St from Bell's GAS down to the DSLAM port in the CO or remote and the copper loop from there to the customers.

TSI does not own anything nor operate any equipment in Quebec - this is why they they are not required to collect the QST.

Re:This is bigger than comcast

[Brickwall]

I'm a Robbers customer in Richmond Hill, and I notice that there seems to be some kind of monthly limit. At the beginning of the month, downloads run pretty quickly, but by the end of the month, they are crawling.

Avoiding throttling with encryption

[gubachwa]

There have been a number of posts that have mentioned using encryption to get around the problem of ISPs that throttle bittorrent traffic, but no one has posted a HOWTO for the less enlightened on how to actually enable encryption in a bittorrent client. For those interested, here you go: follow this link [torrentfreak.com] for details on how to enable encryption in Azureus, BitComet, and uTorent.

As has been mentioned, this may or may not improve the download speeds that you experience. But it's worth a try.

There are plans in the works for developing new protocols [torrentfreak.com] that are even better at bypassing existing throttling techniques.

Customers get screwed anyhow

[phorm]

Yeah, but even if they stop throttling, it doesn't change the fact that Bell's "last kilometer" of infrastructure is sometimes more like the "last 6-7 kilometers" (hey, it's a Canadian article, what's with this "mile" stuff).

At that distance, there's a pretty heft attenuation of the DSL signal. Bell feels no obligation to fix or upgrade this, so customers who are subscribing to a 5000/1000 down/up package actually end up with less than half that.

The throttling issue is just one of many related to the leasing of Bell lines, as the actual quality of said lines sucks in many instances, Bell doesn't care (even with their own customers, let alone others), and there aren't really other local alternatives (cable=Rogers, which is worse).