What is Digg?161 Comments
- mentill, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11Yes I'm on Rogers, which is basically the same network as far as I know and have felt the effects of this breach of free-speech, especially considering bandwidth is limited for ANY bittorrent activity, including legitamate downloads.
Fix: Windows users can use BitComet and turn on "Encrypt Protocol Header." I've regained full speeds with this. - MoeB, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4also changing your ports wont change anything.
Also a clever chap at the dslreports.com / forum / rogers found a way to get around this. he realized that my isp ROGERS uses port 1720 for its IPPHONE and its not being throttled. so when you change your clients port to 1720 you're no longer being throtteled. :D - GogDog, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I work for a large cable company that does the same thing. The reason is, during peak hours, especially in areas the have thing like college dorms, there is so much traffic due to those programs on those ports that it can cause an outage of service. We did not adopt that policy until we had several areas with outages occuring everyday at the the same times. I'm all for Bit-torrent, we have three computers in my apartment running it at the same time right now. But if there is so much traffic to where it causes loss of service, it has to be throttled down a bit.
- courvoisierxo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"Fix: Windows users can use BitComet and turn on "Encrypt Protocol Header." I've regained full speeds with this."
OK... I did this, and switched it to 'Always'. Q: Is there any downside to encrypting the protocol headers? If not, why hasn't Azereus done this already? - brickbat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Poor guys. I feel sorry for you. I live in Amsterdam and I hate it here. The only thing that is good is the competition for Internet business is very high. Therefore I just got an offer for Wanadoo ADSL Family + Telephony. 20mbit down 1 mbit up + voip no limits or caps for 27.50 EUR per month and I get a free ipod shuffle to join. Don't give me this ***** about bandwidth costing money. This is about competition pure and simple.
Ciao
BB - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2it isn't just shaw, buckeye cable in toledo, oh secretly blocks torrent among other types of p2p traffic. http://bex.net. i know because i work there as a help desk technician and we are told not to tell anyone. basically we are told to lie to our customers. that is customer service for you. damn communists!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2you have to understand that encrypting protocol headers does nothing. i work for buckeye cable in toledo oh, and they use a Ellacoya switch which does layer 7 packet inspection. which means it looks at your applications data packet not just the headers. to prove this i tried the bit comet encryption which was ineffective. the only way past it was FULL encryption. for instance, TOR would allow it to work because it encrypts the entire packet and its payload. if torrents would utilize Full encryption or create encrypted VPN or SSL tunnels to each client it would be completely stealth although the transfer speed would drop a little and it would take a lot more processor power. until then we have to put up with it. i say encrypt all your traffic so your ISP can't do ***** but limit your connection by port number which would prove ineffective. i hope they all choke on their own vomit.
- TytotheG, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It's a livin'....
-Shaw Tech - sebastiangomez, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I used to live in Vancouver and used to be pissed at them on a weekly basis. Their service sucks, their speed is nothing like the one they advertise and now they're coming up with a way to suck even more.. pfff!
I'm now in a different province using Videotron (guess which province haha) and I have upgraded my service to their "Extreme" package because I was paying stupid extra charges for exceeding bandwidth - 6,5 Mbit/s download and 900 Kbit/s upload.. HELL NO!!! If one user has that speed using their extreme videotron service, please reply..
I have to admit that I don't have to pay anything extra now that I have unlimited bandwidth but the speed is the same unimpressive low..
Shaw is not the only company that sucks and makes money without fully delivering on said services. - jpjd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I HATE ROGERS! don't like that there trying tol control my internet experience. especially for how much i pay. TIME TO LEAVE THEM!!!!
dig+++++ - jwdeff, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1* "Traffic Shapers" are extremely common. They're a necessary evil that most ISPs have to maintain a baseline of service. They make it so less bandwidth intensive things (such as web browsing and gaming) still works when there is an excessive amount of bandwidth intensive things. I don't know how Shaw does it, but most reputable ISPs and universities have some sort of traffic shaping technology.
* Consumer-grade services don't "guarantee" their maximum theoretical bandwidth. That's one of many reasons it's cheaper than a $400 1.5mbps T1.
* People pegging a 7mbps internet connection 24/7 are big money losers for ISPs. If you start an ISP that catered to people that wanted to transfer 7mbps of BitTorrent traffic 24/7, then you would have to charge hundreds of dollars per month.
* If ISPs lowered their bitrate to the most they could economically sustain for a user doing 24/7 downloads, then users who just have to download the occasional Windows Update / Firefox / etc would get burned with much slower downloads.
In an ideal world, everyone would get the fastest internet package, and then you'd pay based on how much bandwidth you use (especially during peak usage). That would more accurately affect costs, and wouldn't unnecessarily slow down the occasional internet users internet access. - Stan_Dupp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Almost every ISP does this and if they don't, their service sucks. Traffic shaping is not new technology. Everyone has been doing it for years. I started working for an ISP eight years ago, and they were doing it then. Traffic shaping is totally normal. Getting upset about this is like the people who get upset that they aren't allowed to transfer 10 gigs of data a month on their $30 a month DSL line. Read your contracts. You pay tier 3 ISP rates, you get tier 3 ISP service. You want unshaped, unlimited 3mbit service, try paying tier 2 or tier 1 rates, at $1500 a month.
- inactive, on 04/06/2008, -0/+1I am, My current speed is 170kbps on a well seeded torrent. Before all this throttling started it used to be around 450kbps.
- elmuerte17, on 03/04/2009, -0/+1no
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I have SBC DSL and I have never had anything but full up and down bandwidth - 300k down and ~45k up for a year now. I've never had any communications from them about usage.
And my dsl line is running at full speed up and down 24/7/365. - SupaDawg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"I'm sure they would restrict your gas usage if you paid $40/month for unlimited gas. You can't compare this to gas."
Thats not the point. The point is that you can't offer one thing and deliver another... It's unethical and a terrible way to run a business. - SupaDawg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Really? Thats a smart idea. I've never used BitComet.
And It's horrible. Shaw promises "1MB up & 5mb Down" on Shaw extreme... but with this new rollout they'll be restricting me.
I dont know about you, but if thats the case i'm taking my $60/mo elsewhere. - djcoolmax, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Fix: Windows users can use BitComet and turn on "Encrypt Protocol Header." I've regained full speeds with this.
Works really well if everyone had this turned on, if not, you would be limiting yourself to packets that are encrypted and not many are.. yet. - kungfustickman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1We should start a club called "unprofitable cable customers", I would definetly be on the list.
- emocean, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm with Shaw in Saskatoon. If there was another option, I'd be all over it.
Is anyone here actually experiencing the slowdown w/ BT ?
:: - eschatonik, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1FYI: Telus (Shaw's DSL competitor) recently set bandwidth limits (total bandwidth, up AND down) on DSL, but at the moment do not enforce the limit unless you go WAAAAY over (I have used 300+% of the cap without a warning, but there are other's who have gotten warning letters from Telus).
- csaw, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Screw Shaw. They are trying to screw us knowledgable consumers at every turn. Soon they are gonna turn this around and say that if we want a higher cap, we'll have to pay so much every month. INTERNET REBELLION TIME!
- sewerhobo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Not so secret anymore, eh?
- Abatrour, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I called Shaw about this a while ago, right after the CEO made a public statement about the throttling, the guy I talked to said that it is limited based on the port and that I could get around it by changing it. As for the "unlimited" thing, apparently they mean that you can go online at anytime that you want. And also they say the have the right to limit your speeds and cut off your internet if your "degrading the quality of the internet" ie excessive upload speeds, the guy said that the internet wasn't designed for everyone to be a server.... I laughed at him because thats exactly how the internet works. Oh yeah, one more thing, it only affects people who are connected through the docsis 2 modems.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"This sounds like a typical assumption made my non-Canadians, and unfortunately, most Canadians as well. If one were to look into it more, we can get by the Bell-Telus-Rogers-Shaw paradigm that is drilled into our heads. A short visit to http://www.canadianisp.com will show that there are many many more ISPs out there, especially for DSL service. Currently, I'm on MyCybernet.net in Ontario and I haven't had a single problem."
If you read more you'll see that "• Service is not available in all areas or on all telephone lines and is subject to circuit availability." Most telephone lines in Canada are owned by Sympatico/Bell. In most area, all cable are owned by Rogers. - whitesanjuro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1when i moved, my neighbors no longer offered me free wifi, so i had to get my own cable modem access. after waiting a month for them to come over to my house and give me the modem (and fighting with them to not show photo id or divulge SSN), i was finally able to start downloading torrents again.
1 week and 60GB down and 120GB up later ALL my incoming bitorrent traffic stopped and has not been back since (it has been dead over 2 monthes now). i keep an incomplete torrent running and all it does is seed what i have and never complete (even though the tracker is up and other people are seeding the complete file). i called them about it a few days after i was positive it wasn't a personal problem and they said "tough *****" after leaving me on hold. since i have no other broadband ISPs who can compete with the price ($30/mo ~ 5Mbit/1.5Mbit) and still offer broadband i am fscked.
i was considering getting basic cable and using my homebrew tivo from the dorms to start watching tv again (since the torrents stopped), but since basic cable TV (lowest tier of analog service) is $50/mo, i decided it would be better to just pony up the $10/mo for usenet service from easynews. best choice EVER. not only are my downloads via SSL on port 81 (encrypted/no proxy), easynews has enough bandwidth to saturate a 10 Mbit connection so my downloads are hella fast. also, since easynews has a functional global search, built-in par viewer, and the best binary retention of any provider available, i figured its a great goddamn deal, even if it is only 20GB/mo. - b0rg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Kind of amusing that people who think of themselves as forward-thinking, get so stressed out about a company adjusting to market conditions.
I used to run engineering for a largish ISP, and looking over long-term usage trends, it was easy to see the effect of p2p: Instead of brief usage peaks in the evening and highly asymmetrical use, some residential accounts had usage figures several hundred times higher than others. When you're paying $110/mb for wholesale bandwidth, and selling it for $8, you can't make money.
This is a logical step, and yeah, I'm not going to like it any more than anyone else when the local ISP notices my own lopsided usage, but, on the other hand, the price has gone down by $10 a month over the last 4 years, and the capacity for that price has quadrupled. So I can't whine too much. - UnderLoK, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0As others have pointed out, this is not something new. Generally they used shaping to ensure that applications that are more sensitive to latency run smoothly. Initially it was used to ensure that email, telnet, and like applications were snappy at the expense of FTP traffic for example.
Many colleges have been tanking torrent traffic along with game servers, ftp server, etc for ages now. They do this so that the majority of users can still see good performance on the network while the abusers are slamming it. Just be happy that they are using flows and shaping to get the most out of their system unlike companies like Comcast who do actually have limits on what you can transfer a month, but do not post them. Many ISP's do consider it abuse when you are maxing out your connection 24/7/365.
At any rate, just remember that while you might not agree. These measures are the only reason you are still able to game, use telnet/ssh, etc. while the leeches are doing their thing. Their bandwidth isn't limitless, they do make assumptions about usage which is why you are not paying hundreds of dollars a month for your connection. - jhunt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Good thing I am on Telus ADSL :)
- CompIsMyRx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0If you are on Shaw and you want to feel really cool, find someone not on Shaw and create a VPN tunnel to his router. Guarenteed to be untraceable by Shaws draconian servers (VPN is heavily encrypted). Kind of like using a proxy server, only encrypted.
- number8888, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I use Rogers and they supposedly has the same BT cap too. I do get 200+kbps with Bitcomet though so I don't know if the cap applies to me. What I really hate though is their stupid 60GB usage limit per month.
- defylogik, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0i once read an article that bit torrent was taking up 50-75% of the available internet bandwith. the simple fact is, that about 5% of torrent files on the net are actually legal. i do not see a problem with this really at all. if you have a problem with the service provided, switch providers. there are plenty others willing to take your money. or just switch to usenet. its better anyways. :)
dont get me wrong, i believe in the right to get what you pay for, but this clearly is just them trying to limit the bandwith of their system for people that have legitimate uses for it.
oh yeah and cable companies suck anyways. i pay 130 a month for cable and roadrunner, but i get my bandwith fill out of it every month, and i couldnt LIVE without my dvr box. :) - Optimus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Some folks are getting too extreme here. Wanting your torrents to come in a decent speed doesn't mean you want to use and abuse your bandwidth 24/7.
My ISP also throttles torrents to the point where it's useless to even bother having your content delivered that way.
Some ISPs do send out warning letters and do cut off service after a certain number of warnings within a certain time span... a fairer solution, IMHO. - G_Raph, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0charter cable has been doing this for years...i hate isp's....
- FiveIron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I, like others on rogers, suspect, that they too are doing this, I have noticed what I am getting now as download speeds are far worse than I used to, I'm gonna try bitcommet now.
- Smokezz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0If you can get DSL with Bell, you can get DSL with companies like Netrover (www.netrover.com). The phone lines are the same, however the bandwidth is provided by the ISP.
- tawker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The Shaw service region (Western Canada) doesn't have a lot of choices when it comes to bandwidth, we have Telus (rather slow, issues with support, currently on strike) and Shaw (limiting bandwidth, pricey.) We have a few smaller ISP's (Novus, IslandNet) etc, which give personalized service but other than that, there's not much choice here.
- K.Restoule, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This is typical Shaw crap. I'm so glad that I got rid of them a few years ago. Even junked the cable and went Expressvu.
Shaw execs are slow on the uptake. - synthesist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Companies need to learn they depend on the customer for business. If we dont get what we pay for we get very, very angry.
- synthesist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Whos up for a class action law suit? I for one can not stand companies pushing arround their customers.
BTW i am serious about the lawsuit idea. - maclive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0When I use BT on Comcast all of my Internet access goes to crap. As soon a i changed the BT port i use, everything worked again. I have been running fine ever since.
- phi0x, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0yeah knew about this months ago from my friends on shaw :P they always said telus sucks cause of port blocking, well I might have my smtp ports for server hosting blocked and port 80 httpd port blocked etc.. but my speeds are the same :p And now my shaw friends are suckin it up with their shaw EXTREME-I! only place to go now is shaw's newsgroups which suck worse then teluses, shaws retention rate is like 2 days while telus's is I believe 4-7. :)
I hope telus upgrades their speeds which does piss me of though, they make a new plan called enhanced that is 2.5mbps versus normal plan of 1.5mbps, you would think they would try to compete with shaw by upgrading normal users to 2.5 and making an enhanced thats 4mbps-6mbps. - anarchy99, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0anyway on doing this Encrypt Protocol Header thing on azereus i have a mac so no bitcomet
- Optimus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"The networks are meant for download only service. If you want tier one or two service, pony up $1500 a month. Till then, the cable companies will vigorously go after those who abuse a network, downloading 300GB a month, or uploading tens of gigs of Japanese anime videos."
Exactly. Leave me and my *occasional* use alone or *don't stifle it to such an extreme degree* (the ISP I use is worse than Shaw). - fideli, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0math_Genius: "If you read more you'll see that "• Service is not available in all areas or on all telephone lines and is subject to circuit availability." Most telephone lines in Canada are owned by Sympatico/Bell. In most area, all cable are owned by Rogers."
drn666: "So? Bell doesn't care what a third party ISP does with a phone line. It doesn't affect them at all and it doesn't detract from their IP network in way. WHat you do with a pots line being serviced by a third party is between you and the third party, as per the CRTC."
That's exactly right. In southern Ontario, ALL the lines are owned by Bell. I would assume that much of the east here is operated by Bell. That doesn't stop 96 other ISPs to serve DSL in the Toronto area. On the other hand, cable lovers don't have as much choice. In Calgary and Vancouver, which is basically Telus land, there are 34 and 39 DSL ISPs. Thus, your point, math_Genius, is again invalid. The fact that DSL is not available in certain areas depends on either Telus or Bell, not the 3rd-party ISP. I'll admit I'm not too familiar with cable, and I won't comment much more on it. - squeeze, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I have to say, for all of those using BT in the GTA use BitComet and do what mentill said, with Azureus I was only getting speeds of about 40kb/s and i've known about this cap for about the past 2 months, couldn't find away around it. Just installed BitComet and used that little encryption feature i'm hitting 242KB/s now :D
- squeeze, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Not the newest news, rogers has been doing this for sometime. When you talk to them about using it for legit use such as download linux distros, they say, "Sir, I'm sure there's another way." It really pisses me off. On top of it we switched from Sympatico because they capped their service, and rogers was not capped at the time. Now Rogers is capped and Sympatico is not....yep yep. They like to screw around.
- jicon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Wow. Simply uneducated comments left and right here...
Canada pays much less for broadband/DSL than those in the U.S. The network across Canada is generally more robust than those seen in most of the states.
Note that your sustained speeds are affected by many different aspects... routers, downed links, latency, etc, etc. On top of that, the cable companies may be experiencing technical troubles in the neighborhood (Check the upper channels on Shaw for the spectrum graph. If the baseline is jumping thru the carrier, and the node is in your neighborhood, guess what? Slow speeds.
Cable systems are notoriously fighting temperature and cable variances, poor splitters, fried amplifiers, etc. Seeing 50k/s download for a few days, before peaking over 200k again isn't necessarily Shaw testing their systems...
The networks are meant for download only service. If you want tier one or two service, pony up $1500 a month. Till then, the cable companies will vigorously go after those who abuse a network, downloading 300GB a month, or uploading tens of gigs of Japanese anime videos. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0damnit!! i live in Calgary! noooooooooo. i want my torrents back... this isn't fair
- crowbarsonly, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Secretly? Are you kidding me?
Heres the press release from APRIL 25th, 2005.
http://www.shaw.ca/NR/rdonlyres/9D8C3E29-75EE-440D-8EF5-3F03BA1405F9/0/Ellacoya.pdf -
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