Sympatico begins traffic shaping (ie. throttling) for many P2P applications

[Blane]

So since I've come back from africa I noticed that my torrent speeds have been really erratic. I thought it was something to do with my port forwarding being out of whack since bell had to send us a new modem over the summer (another long, harrowing tale).

I finally got annoyed enough yesterday to do a little investigation online, only to discover that they've started throttling Bit Torrent and other P2P apps (VoIP, Sopcast, etc) during "peak hours". The peak hours seem to be totally at their discretion, but usually from 5pm to around 1am or later, and at various times during the work day.

I was getting 26kb/s up and down on my $40/month "unlimited high speed" connection, which pissed me off. I called the tech support in India, and spent 45 minutes with them trying to explain what bandwidth shaping IS, then convincing level 2 tech support that Bell is doing it (literally sending him to the page on the sympatico forums where the Sympatico moderator admits to it), only to have the guy try to sell me on an upgrade to my service.

Anyhow, today I cancelled my plan after close to 3 years, and signed up for teksavvy.com's service, which has no bandwidth shaping, 200gigs per month of transfer (25 cents per gig after that) and costs 10 bucks less per month than bell.

Just thought I'd let other Sympatico users know that this is happening now.

Here's some more detail with links to Bell's admission that they're doing it:

http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rspenc4/lies.php

[ollie]

Anyone know if this affects Bell's resellers like Magma?

[balogna pogna]

I noticed some Sympatico issues lately with a $30.00 extra charge for downloading more than 30 Gigs a month plus the overall speed is slower.

They told me they have no unlimited plan anymore.

[Blane]

Ollie, as far as I've read it doesn't affect the resellers. Max, that's right, there is no more unlimited plan. In fact, bell has reportedly been switching people off the unlimited plan without informing them. While on the phone with Tech support last night they told me my limit was 30gb per month, when I knew for CERTAIN that I had subscribed to the Unlimited plan (back when it existed). I went back to verify my usage and plan on the bell website and sure enough it is still listed as Unlimited there. of course, with a 30kb/s cap on transfer speeds there's not really much of a way of testing if I've got a 30gb limit since i'd pretty much have to have my torrents running 24/7 to transfer that much data!

[Davey Boy 2.0]

facking hell!

[Blane]

here are the quotes from the bell reps on their sympatico support forum. Gotta love the corporate newspeak from the 2nd guy. Only word missing is "exciting".

Re: Torrents throttling Oct 31, 2007

Hi,

Yes, we are now using a Internet Traffic Management to restrict accounts that are using a large portion of bandwidth during peak hours. Some of the applications that are included are the following:

• bitTorrent

• Gnutella

• Limewire

• Kazaa

• eDonkey

• eMule

• WinMX, etc.

Thanks.

Re: Torrents throttling Oct 31, 2007

Hi Speedy,

Bell Sympatico has launched a solution to enhance the online customer experience and improve Internet performance for all our customers during peak periods of Internet usage with the introduction of Internet Traffic Management. There continues to be phenomenal growth of consumer Internet traffic throughout the world and Bell is using Internet Traffic Management to ensure we deliver bandwidth fairly to our customers during peak Internet usage.

Bell will be using the latest, state-of-the-art technology to improve the customer experience for a vast majority of our customers’ favorite applications (such as Internet Browsers, E-mail, Instant Messaging, Streaming Video, etc.) as required during peak times on the Internet, while ensuring all customers receive fair use of the network when there is heavy Internet traffic. In addition, Bell continues to make significant investments in network capacity and speed to meet the growing Internet demand.

[Kanada Kev]

I've been getting my blood pressure up over this for the last couple of days. I had known that it was happening for a while, but just the other day i got a warning from Cogeco about exceeding their CAP LIMITS! This had never happened before and they are hiding behind their vague User Agreement Policy and other bullshit. Check out all the bullshit with the 3 BIGGIES (Rogers, Sympatico, Cogeco) and how they are ALL doing it:

http://www.dslreports.com/forums/23

It's total bullshit and they will NEVER admit to it. Just like you experienced, they will turn around a LIE to you. I even had a guy start saying he didn't know what I was talking about when it came to traffic shaping/throttling/etc and he was a "tech expert"! Then he tells me that NOBODY offers unlimited bandwidth ... another LIE. I ask to speak to a supervisor and he says NO. I ask to speak to another tech who will corroborate his information and he says NO.

Customer service was kind enough to drop my rate for 12 months (after they just jacked it up by $5 a month). What's the point of having high speed if you have to worry about your limits all the time.

Users NEED that with all the different uses with their connections now (streaming audio/video, video communications, downloads, online gaming, downloading 'legal' music, etc. etc.) They are seeing a CASH GRAB here and way to penalize the heavier users (who are a minority).

I asked to have a Tech Supervisor call me back. They did, the next day, but of course they called my home when they knew i was at work (and at the CBC who just did a damning piece on the big ISPs http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/speed_bumps/ ) and didn't leave any worthwhile answers.

I am going to get back at 'em when I have a chance. I am leaning heavily towards TekSavvy too! I did a lot of research and they seem to be the goods.

The BIG ISPs are doing this to protect their other media streams IMHO. Why would they want you downloading/streaming/torrenting all your favourite TV shows and movies when they can get you to PAY for them on their other services??

Don't get sucked into "bundles" or long contracts.

FUCK 'EM ... I place Bell, Rogers, and now Cogeco on my Colbert "On Notice" board of assholes (alongside insurance companies, oil companies, GWB, etc.)

Seriously, anyone here who has "High Speed" access through a major provider should call them up and ask teh question (demanding a YES or NO answer) "Does _insert ISP_ utilizing traffic shaping/throttling on encrypted data transferred via torrent software?" Guarantee you get them waffling ... escalate it and raise hell.

[Kanada Kev]

And another note ... with BELL you receive DEDICATED SERVICE via DSL! That means that YOUR traffic should have no bearing on anyone elses (unlike cable).

It's BULLSHIT.

Your speeds are dependent upon the copper wires and your distance from a main hub.

How come the independent ISPs (who all run on BELL's backbone) can provide unlimited and uncapped service to customers?

[AD]

Seriously, anyone here who has "High Speed" access through a major provider should call them up and ask teh question (demanding a YES or NO answer) "Does _insert ISP_ utilizing traffic shaping/throttling on encrypted data transferred via torrent software?" Guarantee you get them waffling ... escalate it and raise hell.

I'll give you $20 if you can get someone from my provider (cia.com) to even answer the phone.

[Kanada Kev]

^^^^^^

Don't ya just love "customer service"

Seriously, the service at TekSavvy is supposed to be fantastic and nothing like any other provider.

Since I broke free from Bell land lines when I went Vonage, I'll need to pay a little extra for a DryDSL, but I really think I'm going to do it.

[Blane]

Seriously' date=' anyone here who has "High Speed" access through a major provider should call them up and ask teh question (demanding a YES or NO answer) "Does _insert ISP_ utilizing traffic shaping/throttling on encrypted data transferred via torrent software?" Guarantee you get them waffling ... escalate it and raise hell.[/quote']

I'll give you $20 if you can get someone from my provider (cia.com) to even answer the phone.

Bell told me outright that they didn't until I proved where they admitted to it.

When I called Teksavvy this AM I asked the CSR outright, and he responded "absolutely not". Not only that, but there's no contract, it's month to month, so if they ever introduce it, I give my 30 days and drop them.

Edited November 30, 2007 by Guest

[secondtube]

anyone heard of Mountain Cable?

One AMAZING thing about living in Hamilton!

[Kanada Kev]

Yup. I just can't get it in Oakville

Just watch though, since Mountain Cable provides TV and VOIP, they'll prob follow Rogers/Sympatico/Cogeco eventually.

Give 'em a call and ask them what their plan is. Might be interesting to see what they say.

[Esau.]

anyone heard of Mountain Cable?

One AMAZING thing about living in Hamilton!

Literally across the steet from me, people get Mountian, on my side of the street we get Source Cable which has great speeds (6Mb download and 512 Kbps up). I get on avargae 50-75kbs upload on a torrent, download varies from 60-600kbs.

They are a small provider (as far as I'm aware) in comparison to most around here, but they have the monopoly on certian parts of town meaning, anyone within Sources coverage have no other otion for highspeed internet. You can get Bell dial-up if you want though.

[The Chameleon]

YEah fuck Bell already. The are the worst.

DSL in my experience had always been slower than cable anyways.

[Kanada Kev]

What would you choose though:

1. 7-10 MB Cable service (that fluctuates with neighbours' usage) with a 60Gig cap each month

or

2. 5 MB DSL dedicated service that is UNLIMITED.

Depends on your usage, but if you are into downloading, streaming, torrenting, etc. what would you do?

[ollie]

Is it possible that Bell's non-bit-torrent-using customers *are* experiencing slow downs at peak hours and Bell is just responding to the need that all customers have fair access to the bandwidth?

The bandwidth will run out at some point, won't it?

As to the legality of switching plans, false advertising, etc... that's a bit of a double-edged sword considering that a lot of bit-torrent traffic is used to illegally acquire protected material.

[Blane]

Ollie, think of it from the perspective of the guy I linked to above:

Their network struggles during peak hours because that's when most people use it. So for someone like me who wants to download something using a torrent after work, I can't. I can't because my upload speed gets chopped to 30K/sec which drastically slows down my download rate. I'm not one of those crazies who downloads 500+ gigs a month. I just want to download the occasional torrent, and I can't. By using the very same service that I have purchased from them, I am causing their network to be 'unduly impaired' which then supposedly gives them the right to slow down my connection. They do this because it allows them to stay closer to the limit of their networks, or even push that limit further than they could have before without most customers noticing. The limiting factor to the number of people they can cram on the network is the bandwidth (the upload bandwidth specifically for the Bell network, hence them limiting it), which reaches it's limits at peak hours. Instead of buying more bandwidth or equipment to fix their problems, they're stealing bandwidth using a loophole in their service agreement which then allows them to fit more customers on the network. So in essence, they're stealing my upload speed and reselling it to other customers. I have no idea how they think they'll be able to get away with this.

The arguement that BT is used to illegally acquire copyrighted material is problematic because using bt.etree.org, for example, is completely legitimate. Not only that but email and any other number of web applications have also been used in illegal fashions.

Comcast is being sued on these same grounds in the US right now (violation of net neutrality, false advertisement, misrepresentation, etc.)

Edited December 1, 2007 by Guest

[Kanada Kev]

amen

As for what people are using their up/download traffic means nothing. Think of it this way. You go and buy a beautiful Ferrari with that christmas bonus you are going to receive. It has the capabilities of driving at extremely fast speed. However, the monopolistic provider of roads in your area (that you pay money to monthly, and has just increased their fees without making the roads any safer or smoother) has decided that they are going to restrict your car from functioning only in first and second gear. On top of that, they had let you drive previously in all gears, but without warning have now limited your use. They have also sent you a warning that you are driving too fast and taking up too many lanes. All the while, they keep licencing more and more users of the road without widening the lanes. If you call them and ask them about what they are doing, they LIE to you and say that it's simply a problem with your car.

Bastards!

[ollie]

So if the alternative to bandwidth throttling is for Bell to buy more bandwidth then would you mind a rate increase to pay for it?

That point aside, I cannot sympathize with buddy for exaggerating the truth and acting like a little bitch:

So for someone like me who wants to download something using a torrent after work, I can't. I can't because my upload speed gets chopped to 30K/sec which drastically slows down my download rate. I'm not one of those crazies who downloads 500+ gigs a month. I just want to download the occasional torrent, and I can't.

1. The "I can't" bit is a complete and utter lie. Decreased speed just does not equal "I can't". Further to that, if I'm using my computer while downloading a torrent, I don't *want* my upload speed to be much more than 30K/sec because then I have very little left for surfing, etc.

2. You don't have to be home from work to download a torrent. Queue it up in the morning before you leave work and let it leech all the bandwidth it wants during non-peak hours.

There may be point in all that but the writer frames it in such a pathetic context that it's totally lost on me.

[ollie]

The arguement that BT is used to illegally acquire copyrighted material is problematic because using bt.etree.org, for example, is completely legitimate. Not only that but email and any other number of web applications have also been used in illegal fashions.

I said:

"considering that a lot of bit-torrent traffic is used to illegally acquire protected material."

I know there are legitimate uses for bit-torrent. But the current problem is being cause by users downloading movies and other DVD-sized files. Let's not kid ourselves here.

[ollie]

As for what people are using their up/download traffic means nothing. Think of it this way. You go and buy a beautiful Ferrari with that christmas bonus you are going to receive. It has the capabilities of driving at extremely fast speed. However, the monopolistic provider of roads in your area (that you pay money to monthly, and has just increased their fees without making the roads any safer or smoother) has decided that they are going to restrict your car from functioning only in first and second gear. On top of that, they had let you drive previously in all gears, but without warning have now limited your use. They have also sent you a warning that you are driving too fast and taking up too many lanes. All the while, they keep licencing more and more users of the road without widening the lanes. If you call them and ask them about what they are doing, they LIE to you and say that it's simply a problem with your car.

In the context of your analogy, are you saying you'd like to be able to drive your Ferrari as fast as you want with no regard to the other drivers sharing the highway?

[Blane]

I'm assuming kev was kidding. Ollie if that's the case then bell needs to be above board and revise their service provision policies, not hide behind a bunch of obfuscation. In my mind, if they're selling me an unlimited 5mbit line, it's under the assumption that i will make full use of it (not 24/7, but that I will want to use what I've paid for).

[Kanada Kev]

Oops ... forgot to tell you that THEY sold me the car explaining how fast it can go.

Note, the only companies worried about traffic shaping are the ones trying to protect their interests in providing television programming, and movie services. Even though the networks are providing streaming programming, they want you to pay for it through their cable/sat services instead. They don't tell you this though.

I want to stream some great high def programming from NBC or something and I can do so with my 10MB connection. HOwever, i will reach my bandwidth cap in very quick time and get suspended. Fair?

When they advertise high-speed "internet" it's a misnomer. What they should advertise is high-speed "HTTP". They don't throttle that, but the do for many other protocols. I'm sure that since they provide VOIP phone services now, they will stealthfully throttle encrypted VOIP packets from competitors (i.e. Vonage, Primus, etc.) Right now, if your account is suspended and you have a Cogeco VOIP phone it will still work. If, like me, you have a Vonage phone and your account is suspended then you have NO phone left at all.

[Kanada Kev]

The latest that Rogers.ca is doing! Found this via boingboing. Nice to see that Rogers is monitoring your HTTP requests:

Rogers ISP of Canada breaks into your browsing session to tell you off for using the net too much

Posted by Cory Doctorow, December 10, 2007 10:11 PM | permalink

The terrible Canadian ISP Rogers has reached a new low. Now, in addition to arbitrarily enforcing limits on connectivity and "traffic shaping" its customers' connections into unusability (just try to have a VoIP call with a Rogers subscriber!), they're breaking into your web-browsing sessions and rewriting the pages you view to deliver stern warnings saying that you're using too much bandwidth. The ISP will let you opt out -- but this is so obnoxious, it's hard to believe they're even trying it. Link (Thanks, Marc!)

http://torontoist.com/2007/12/dr_frankenwebs.php

Google has always been known for its clean, lightweight, ad-free search page, but Canada's largest provider of broadband internet is under fire today for messing with it. Toronto-based Rogers has begun testing a controversial technique that allows the media empire to insert its own content into another entity's web page, angering net neutrality proponents.

According to a tip passed to L.A.-based technology expert Lauren Weinstein, the system being employed is manufactured by the "in-browser marketing" firm PerfTech. So far, Rogers is experimenting with the deep packet inspection process only to insert account status messages at the top of web pages like Google.ca, but it is easy to see how such a technique could be revamped to provide additional advertising to customers.

The tactic may be too much of a temptation for the media giant to pass up—with additional cable and wireless services to promote, as well as a lucrative existing online partnership with Yahoo!, the pushed ad idea has likely already been floated in Rogers' boardrooms. The problem is that the technology highjacks another company's web pages without permission.

Rogers says that a customer is already able to opt-out of receiving automatic status messages, and they're testing customer response to this latest approach. The status message that has been appearing at the top of some customers' pages warns when they are reaching their monthly bandwidth allotment and that they might encounter overage charges (Rogers, like Bell, admits that they employ "traffic shaping" to throttle bandwidth used by file sharing applications, and the company charges $1.50 per gigabyte overage, to a monthly maximum of $50).

"Will Web service providers such as Google and many others, who have spent vast resources in both talent and treasure creating and maintaining their services' appearances and quality, be willing to stand still while any ISP intercepts and modifies their traffic in such a manner?" asks Weinstein. The tech pundit is the co-founder of People for Internet Responsibility, which aims to reveal discriminatory activity implemented by legislators and ISPs.

With no official policy on in-browser marketing, Rogers is treading a fine line by inserting what they deem as a friendly account reminder on top of someone else's carefully cultivated property. Equipped with the kind of personal customer data that is extremely valuable to advertisers and the ability to theoretically target each one directly, one might worry where this is going.

Screenshot via Lauren Weinstein.

I found this person's comments to be intriguing:

This ISP is monitoring its users' http requests. (A violation of its users' privacy.)

Then, when a user sends a particular http request, in this case to a third-party search engine, this ISP inserts its own content over top of the third party's content, in the form of a banner ad. (Numerous potential violations including copyright infringement, misrepresentation by the ISP as being endorsed by the third party, and theft of ad revenue from the third party who might otherwise sell that space.)

Also, this ISP unexpectedly includes in its message private account information about its user, regardless of who may be looking at the screen at that moment. (A further violation of its users' privacy.)

All this comes from an ISP who has already committed practically every abuse possible, from illegal contract terms, secret bandwidth caps and active blocking of URLs for political reasons.

I think I'll contact Google, and ask them what they think about this...