Canadian ISPs Limiting Access To CBC Shows 108
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... (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
Note: this only affects ISPs which resell bandwidth. Those with their own equipment can still circumvent this.
Parent incorrect (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This is bigger than comcast (Score:3, Informative)
Mod parent up (Score:3, Informative)
About Time This Came Out. . . (Score:4, Informative)
To quote the article: (Score:4, Informative)
He said there has been no backlash from customers, despite the incidents of the past week.
Re:About Time This Came Out. . . (Score:2, Informative)
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... (Score:4, Informative)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
Re:About Time This Came Out. . . (Score:4, Informative)
http://canadianisp.com/ [canadianisp.com] has a rather extensive listing of the little guys.
Re:This is bigger than comcast (Score:3, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Just an expansion of an existing program (Score:3, Informative)
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 (Score:3, Informative)
Avoiding throttling with encryption (Score:3, Informative)
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 (Score:3, Informative)
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).