Shaw Throttling Bit Torrent? > Law suit time

reply to gatorkram

Re: Law suit time

Yup, I left for telus pver a year ago now because Shaw's soft bandwidth caps were impeding my interent use. Now I'm on telus which speed wise is slower (unless you live in Vancouver or some other area that shaw has totally overloaded). Telus does block a few ports to prevent spamming, but it doesn't affect me. I get my 2.5Mbps connection and get to use it for whatever i want.

Shaw goes around and complains that users are are affecting other users. They tell them they are in the top 1 percent of bandwidth users. It's BS because they will suspend and then ban you for using too much bandwidth, so anyone that uses a fair amount of bandwidth gets chased away, so all thats left is a lot of low bandwidth users which brings the average down.

I'd like nothing more then to see SHAW crumble, I've done everything I can to avoid paying them money. I use satellite TV instead of cable, and dsl instead of a cable internet.

Shaw is shady, they've overloaded their system in many areas, and claim fast connections but don't allow people to use them. Do you really need a 5Mbps connection to download mp3's and surf the web?

SHAW SUCKS

reply to imrf

reply to imrf

You are absolutely correct Hall, there is little doubt that most is not legal. The problem is that throttling illegal use would still affect my legal use if my ISP chose to go this route.

It seems to me that the RIAA and MPAA can take care of themselves through litigation, sooner or later it is bound to cause a slowing of illegal traffic as people actually know friends who have been affected instead of just reading antecdotal stories about it. That day is going to come (in my opinion),

I realize that ISP's hate the so called bandwidth hogs, they make their job tougher, but we also need to realize that demand for bandwidth as more legitimate bandwidth intensive applications are constantly being deployed is only going to rise. The peoples need for bandwidth is only going to increase in the future. At some point the providers will have to provide it or be replaced by those who will.

A lot at work here, and I certainly don't have the answers, but this particular answer doesn't strike me as being the best one

Yeh if you are beta testing World of Warcraft for example, they push their client patches which can be nearly 2.5 GB using bittorrent technology... I use bittorrent regularly to download FPS mods for Battelfield 1942. All these uses are very legitimate, why should they be chocked becuase a few bad apples are doing illegal things?

reply to zod5000

reply to javaMan

reply to bradb007
A few?

I don't support the ISP's blocking things without telling customers, but I am not so naive to believe that there are only a "few" bad apples using BitTorrent.

It's more like a few legitimate users are using it, and have a point. The majority of bandwidth used by BitTorrents is not legitimate.

Unless you want to believe in the good of mankind, and that the 35% of Internet traffic contributed to BitTorrent is multiplayer maps, game patches, and music from artists that distribute music freely.

reply to John Galt
OK so if SHAW is in such financial turmoil, why is it that telus doesn't need to enforce caps? You seem to think Shaw is all high and mighty and if you use bandwidth you're harming other users. Did it ever occur to you that this is all just a tactic to increase profits at shaw?

You didn't understand my argument at all. My argument was that more and more internet users are using higher amounts of bandwidth. When shaw calls you up and says you've used to much and threatens to suspend you or boot you for excessive use, they basically chase you to another ISP.

So then they call up the next guy and go hey, you are in the top 1 percent of bandwidth users. He's in the top 1 percent because they don't allow more bandwidth to be used. They kick you off or chase you away.

So they artificially create these low average bandwidth numbers. Just because you don't use alot of bandwidth doesn't mean other people do.

So basically SHAW makes a killing by going after people like yourself that use low amounts of bandwidth. If they chase all the highend users away they can be replaced with alot more lowerend users. Instead of upgrading their system to deal with bandwidth, they chase away people who use it. Then they overcrowd their system with lowerend users.

This is the division we have in BC. We have telus that caters to the higherend users and Shaw that caters to the lowerend users. So why don't telus users have problems? Why isn't telus going bankrupt?

Shaw is poor service! I can't believe you stand up for those bastards. They could upgrade their systems and stop overcrowding them, but blind ass people like you fall for their crap.

It should be noted I would be content if in Shaw's advertising they had the balls to tell you how much you could download in a month. When I used to be on shaw they'd tell me something different all the time. If they're only going to allow you to download 30gb's a month, it should be in the advertising. I think people have right to know before they signup. The AUP is vague and doesn't list specific numbers for residential customers. They used to compare it to the bottom business package of 6 down/1 up. This is the 21st century.

We first got cable modems here around 1998. Back then there were no caps and it was faster. So for the last 6 years the service got worse while files got bigger. I just don't like the fact that shaw tries to brainwash people into thinking that using your connection is a bad thing.

reply to Eek2121
...until you guys realize that you have a limited amount of bandwidth available on your wireless network and that a VERY small amount of users using P2P crap paying you $30 per month are chewing up a $3,500 per month T3 - making your service unusable for anyone but file sharers because of the latency. Trust me, I own a WISP. I'd MUCH rather pitch 5 $30 per month accounts of the guys that P2P 24/7 and let the hundreds of others remain happy than lose business because some of you are too damn cheap to buy what you use. Sure, P2P has its legitimate uses, but i've never seen anyone in a life or death situation because they couldn't download Shrek2 or something in a few hours...BUT...the police departments, hospitals, fire departments, ambulance companies and such that rely on my network will suffer...

While i would NEVER deny service by blocking ports or disabling applications, It makes sound financial and business sense to have the "top 1%" of bandwidth users suffer by throttling a few P2P applications back than to lose my ass in thousands of dollars of lost revenue when subscribers start ditching me due to network issues caused by the nonstop barrage of junk. Upgrade my crappy network you say? Give you more speed? I don't think so. I have top of the line everything, with a Tier1 fiber provider for my backhaul. Tons of money invested on a product that works like a charm when we are able to control the abuse. How much money do I have to spend to make the P2P community happy? Infrastructure costs money, so does bandwidth. A dedicated 65Mb circuit costs around $10,000 per month. Twenty p2p users at 3mb saturates this link, and they pay a whopping total of $600 combined per month for that privelage.

Are you getting the idea yet?

reply to zod5000
Hmm, good idea, but one problem: What happens when you have a user [like me] who uses services that fall under all the tiers? I have two VOIP lines, I do some gaming, use a lot of "normal" traffic, and occasional P2P downloading (when I need something). Would I be forced to choose one group and deal with either traffic restrictions or inability to connect due to other traffic? Would I get billed per application I use?

In theory, it's a great idea, and probably the most intelligent one in this thread. But in reality, I think it would be far too difficult to implement.

i don't think tier packages would work for shaw, as they already have shaw-lite, normal, xtreme and then all the business packages.

problem is shaw is trying to cram as many people onto their nodes as possible. placeslike vancouver are really getting the short end of the stick. I don't think charging more for more bandwidth is gonna solve the problem. They gotta take some of the money they're makin and do some upgrades.

reply to lupinia

Ahh, that clarifies it quite a bit, and it sounds like an even better idea, but I still doubt any ISP would seriously implement it. Still a great idea, though, if only ISPs thought like their customers