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shawnb6
join:2008-03-28
| CBC TV request for people to talk on camera about this issue
Hello,
My name is Shawn Benjamin and I'm a producer with the CBC.
I'm looking to speak to anyone who uses large amounts of bandwidth and has been frustrated by either Bell or Rogers because of caps and limits. Ideally were would like to hear from people considering or have who already have switched to a third party ISP.
You can call me at 416 205 6301 (ask for shawn benjamin)
or e-mail me shawn_benjamin@cbc.ca
best
sb | |
|  iconfat
join:2005-04-06
Toronto
| Re: CBC TV request for people to talk on camera about this issue Thanks for the press exposure Shawn. Although I'm not a heavy bandwidth user I encourage you not to slant this issue as affecting only large bandwidth users.
It affects us all as we during peek times (when the throttling occurs) are limited speedwise for the bandwidth we paid for.
We are not Bells customers and we should not been affected by decisions Bell makes. Our ISP has rightfully paid for this bandwidth and should be allowed to do with it as it pleases. | |
| 
Sukunai
@bell.ca
| I think the most angry will be the ones not necessarily using high bandwidth, but using the same processes, and yet still getting affected.
I have heard that people are having adverse effects on their internet phones for example.
Bell is spinning this as being the fault of illegal torrent downloaders being the main problem. That is rapidly being proven false in many cases. | |
| 
jfmezei
Premium
join:2007-01-03
Beaconsfield, QC
 ·ELECTRONICBOX
| I am in montreal, so I don't know if you can interview me.
But remember that 3rd party ISPs
** DO NOT RESELL BELL SERVICES ***
---
They buy raw data transfer between end users and the ISP's routers. That service is offered by Bell and is not related to the internet. And that service is regulated by the CRTC.
Once the data gets to the ISP, it is then routed to the internet using that ISP's own connections to the internet, its own mail servers, DNS servers etc.
This allows each ISP to set its internet policies totally independantly from other ISPs and in no way related to what Sympatico decides to do.
(Until now since Bell is now imposing Sympatico policies on competitors to Sympatico). | |
| | iconfat
join:2005-04-06
Toronto
| Re: CBC TV request for people to talk on camera about this issuesaid by jfmezei  :I am in montreal, so I don't know if you can interview me. But remember that 3rd party ISPs
** DO NOT RESELL BELL SERVICES ***
---
They buy raw data transfer between end users and the ISP's routers. That service is offered by Bell and is not related to the internet. And that service is regulated by the CRTC. Once the data gets to the ISP, it is then routed to the internet using that ISP's own connections to the internet, its own mail servers, DNS servers etc. This allows each ISP to set its internet policies totally independantly from other ISPs and in no way related to what Sympatico decides to do. (Until now since Bell is now imposing Sympatico policies on competitors to Sympatico). EXACTLY!! KUDOS! | |
| |
Name
@teksavvy.com
| JFM, send him an email to make sure he gets that bit.
The media hasn't picked up on the critical point that the effects of BellNexxia's actions are to prevent competitors to Sympatico from offering substantively better service than what Sympatico chooses to offer.
The whole P2P issue is really secondary to the fact that what Bell is doing is quantitatively different from ordinary P2P filtering as implemented by ISPs such as Sympatico and Rogers. By filtering their backhaul network, BellNexxia is restricting competition by denying third party DSL ISPs the option to provide unfiltered service. | |
| chrish
join:2007-02-19
Ottawa, ON
·Velcom
| My email to shawn:
Shawn,
I am a user using a wholeseller by the name of Velcom as my current ISP, I am not currently being affected by bells new 'load-balancing' process, but I will be greatly affected within weeks, and this concerns me.
I was previously a customer of rogers communications, however I left them shortly after they began limiting their connections in the same manner that bell is doing. Before that I was a bell customer, and the reason I had gone with rogers was because at the time rogers did not have the same horrible caps in place that bell had.
Fast forward a year, bell has been losing a lot of business due to customers becoming informed of the situation and the fact that alternatives were available, and now all of a sudden bell feels they need to protect their network from the wholesellers customers whom are apparently putting great demand on the network.
I signed up with Velcom on February 2nd of 2007, and not once have I had an issue with the bell network, speeds are consistently at my maximum of roughly 5Mbps. Not once have I experienced a slowdown due to network over usage as stated by bell in the community that I live in.
I must admit that seeing that I live in the highly populated student neighborhood of Sandy Hill near Ottawa University, I would assume the highest downloading by students is occurring in my area, not anywhere else in Ottawa.
Now the main thing to keep in mind is that wholesellers pay bell only for transport from the customers' home to bells central point, and at that point everything is handed over to the wholeseller. Then the wholeseller is the one that has to pay other networks so the information can get to the place on the internet that it is destined for. This is where we feel bell is breaching its limits.
If my access was consistently slow, I would see bell has a valid point, but since I always get full available speeds, I know for sure that the lines from my home to bells central point are not the issue. This along with the fact that bell is already limiting its own customers, means that there is plenty of available network speeds available.
If bell obviously has the capacity available, moreso since it limits its own customers, and then it states it must limit the bandwidth of wholesellers because the capacity is limited -- there is seriously something wrong here.
I personally see this as bell losing customers, and making moves to level the playing field with the competition. Bandwidth is cheaper than it was years ago, bell is limiting its network to a crawl, and with this latest move will be able to take out the competition dsl services by forcing unusable service onto the wholesellers customers.
Not only is bell affecting peer to peer downloads, but their technology for slowing the peer to peer downloads is affecting many other aspects of internet usage. Their techniques seem to control any data that they cannot identify, so if you are working with any secure data, then that data is slowed to a crawl. Telecommuters attempting to work after 5pm will be affected, anyone trying to use a pc remotely will find that such a task is impossible. Want to keep your data secure? You will deal with slow speeds. This is what the users of bell, and now the wholesellers customers are looking forward to.
Bell has a legitimate case to do this with their own customers, they can cancel accounts, and they can charge extra money. But what gives bell the right to control my internet connection, when I do not pay my monthly bill to bell. I seem to recall my payment showing on my statement as going to velcom communications.
I have a full time job with company that uses high speed networks to make our online applications available to our clients, and companies like bell controlling the free flowing access to the internet concerns me greatly, both on a personal level and professional level.
I would recommend you reach out to the wholesellers such as teksavvy, or my company velcom and get a better understanding of this issue. I am not a large downloader, but I am already being affected. I guess you could say I'm a very dissatisfied non-customer of bells.
I am not affiliated with any wholeseller, I am simply a very concerned customer.
I have setup a facebook group should you wish to visit and view the comments of the others whom share my views:
»www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=9···5&ref=mf
Thanks for your time,
Chris | |
| | 
LiQuiD
BSD geek
Premium
join:2002-08-08
Anjou, QC
| Re: CBC TV request for people to talk on camera about this issue My guess is, everyone who's replied here would be well advised to email the OP directly, in the event he is not going to look here again any time soon. I for one am forwarding him the exact same email that I sent yesterday to the G&M writer. He seemed to expand a little on the bandwidth caps to include the throttling, albeit in no great detail.
I believe that the single most influential point we have is how their bandwidth shaping affects more than just P2P. People who have made up their minds on bandwidth hogs are unlikely to change their minds easily, but no one can argue the fact that in throttling encrypted data, bell is in no uncertain way impacting the way many many canadians can access the internet. With all the concerns of identity theft, and phishing scams, a reasonable protection is to ensure data transmitted is encrypted. Essentially, Bell is discouraging this - whether intentional or not.
--
Windows is the virus. Linux is the vaccine, FreeBSD is the CURE | |
| | | 
Trisomy21
join:2006-04-27
Kingston, ON | Re: CBC TV request for people to talk on camera about this issue ^^ Already done.
Just make sure you explain things simply, use analogies. | |
| | | |
Trisomy21
join:2006-04-27
Kingston, ON
| Re: CBC TV request for people to talk on camera about this issue Oh got a reply.
quote:
Thanks for the note
You've given me an idea - can you put your feelings on this topic into a short video and post it to you tube or better yet use a service like »www.yousendit.com/
We would then put it into our piece as is.
Let me know if you can do this
Best,
Shawn Benjamin
| |
| | velcomrob
Premium
join:2006-11-28
Brampton, ON
2 edits | I understand your concern Chrish and we are as much peeved off as anyone. I can only see one reason they're doing this, loss of customers.
We are working with several ISP's to try to come to a resolution on this matter as quickly as possible. We can't divulge to much information at this point (legal stuff).
But if worse comes to worse we will work very hard to find a way around this problem. First off Bell shouldn't be looking at our packets (data transfer) that occurs over our network. We have several scenarios we will pressure Bell. But in the end if they want to do child's play then be it. We ill possibly create some sort of application that sits on the clients side PC and that sits in the middle of our network that will scramble packets as they are sent to your side. The application will decompress the packet and thus rendering Bell's traffic shaper useless. I'm not 100% sure it can be done yet but we are investigating different possibilities. We are speaking to our developers about it.
The only limitation in this is data being transfered out to a recipient won't be encrypted. But your download speeds shouldn't be affected.
Let's hope its doable.
Again data being transferred our our network is private, so we will keep it private. | |
| | | matt_m
Premium
join:2007-04-07
Ottawa, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| Re: CBC TV request for people to talk on camera about this issue Very cool that you guys are thinking of this and care enough to try to work around the Bell stupidity, but in the end you'd probably spend a wad of cash on development and QA, only to realize Bell found a way to detect a pattern in your scrambling that identifies in, and patches the shaper or some other firewall for it.
said by velcomrob :I understand your concern Chrish and we are as much peeved off as anyone. I can only see one reason they're doing this, loss of customers. We are working with several ISP's to try to come to a resolution on this matter as quickly as possible. We can't divulge to much information at this point (legal stuff). But if worse comes to worse we will work very hard to find a way around this problem. First off Bell shouldn't be looking at our packets (data transfer) that occurs over our network. We have several scenarios we will pressure Bell. But in the end if they want to do child's play then be it. We ill possibly create some sort of application that sits on the clients side PC and that sits in the middle of our network that will scramble packets as they are sent to your side. The application will decompress the packet and thus rendering Bell's traffic shaper useless. I'm not 100% sure it can be done yet but we are investigating different possibilities. We are speaking to our developers about it. The only limitation in this is data being transfered out to a recipient won't be encrypted. But your download speeds shouldn't be affected. Let's hope its doable. Again data being transferred our our network is private, so we will keep it private. | |
| | velcomrob
Premium
join:2006-11-28
Brampton, ON
1 edit | I thought about that already. The client side application will check for updates on our side and allow us to change algorithim at any time. You have NO idea how HORRIBLY slow Bell is with doing ANYTHING. They'll patch their traffic shaper 3 months after figuring out what to do. It'll take us couple hours to apply an update.
its crazy but in this circumstance thank god they're slow 
However we are still trying to resolve it outside this scramble patch. We're trying to figure out what to do in the meantime as a quickfix. | |
| | |
heybirder
@velcom.ca | Re: CBC TV request for people to talk on camera about this issue As a Velcom customer, I heartily endorse your idea! | |
| | 
root9
join:2005-04-08
Kitchener, ON
2 edits | Correction:
Bell has NO legitimate case to throttle via DPI [deep packet inspection] due to Canadian privacy laws and other related laws unless it's a direct attack on their servers or equipment. Neither does any ISP in Canada. It's called self-defense for ISP only.
This is why Rogers moved their email and homepages to USA and to get around these laws. It's why Bell uses MSN as email partner. And so they can watch users private communications.
Users can request such DPI protection from an ISP "in writing". Answer from ISP must be in writing as well. It can not be a part of User Agreement or initial contract.
As a user or person living in Canada you must be notified in writing that such may be taking place by any company. Unless there is a warrant signed by a judge with damn good reason to do so.
You have the right to request any and all information being gathered by any company. This includes their partners or resellers. They must provide it! Same as you have the right to visit Hydro-1 Power company and request information pertaining to you. You then have the choice of wiping such information from any and all records of said company.
I suggest that all Indie ISP's and users request this information in full, make a full copy and or have it wiped.
It is up to the user to provide their own protection. In cases where offered a user may request protection by or from ISP.
Thank You,
Senior Network & Systems Analyst | |
| | |
Comment
@teksavvy.com
| Re: chrish, 2008-03-28 10:04:44 said by root9 :Correction: Bell has NO legitimate case to throttle via DPI [deep packet inspection] due to Canadian privacy laws and other related laws unless it's a direct attack on their servers or equipment. Neither does any ISP in Canada. Users can request such DPI protection from an ISP "in writing". Answer from ISP must be in writing as well. As a user or person living in Canada you must be notified in writing that such may be taking place by any company. You have the right to request any and all information being gathered by any company. Strange that no one has mentioned these "points" of yours - perhaps you could substantiate with a few links to the relevant statutes. | |
| | | | 
travisc
join:2001-11-09
Port Perry, ON | Re: chrish, 2008-03-28 10:04:44 I'd be interested in seeing this as well. | |
| | | ultracat
join:2008-01-30
Toronto, ON
·TELUS
·Bell Sympatico
·TekSavvy Solutions..
1 edit | said by root9 :Correction: Bell has NO legitimate case to throttle via DPI [deep packet inspection] due to Canadian privacy laws and other related laws unless it's a direct attack on their servers or equipment. Neither does any ISP in Canada. It's called self-defense for ISP only. This is why Rogers moved their email and homepages to USA and to get around these laws. It's why Bell uses MSN as email partner. And so they can watch users private communications. Users can request such DPI protection from an ISP "in writing". Answer from ISP must be in writing as well. It can not be a part of User Agreement or initial contract. As a user or person living in Canada you must be notified in writing that such may be taking place by any company. Unless there is a warrant signed by a judge with damn good reason to do so. You have the right to request any and all information being gathered by any company. This includes their partners or resellers. They must provide it! Same as you have the right to visit Hydro-1 Power company and request information pertaining to you. You then have the choice of wiping such information from any and all records of said company. I suggest that all Indie ISP's and users request this information in full, make a full copy and or have it wiped. It is up to the user to provide their own protection. In cases where offered a user may request protection by or from ISP. Thank You, Senior Network & Systems Analyst For those looking for a link to read:
»www.privcom.gc.ca/information/02···08_e.asp
btw - this would be a GREAT letter writing campaign to conduct against Bell. Imagine if Bell had to all of a sudden handle 21,000 or whatever written requests for privacy disclosures! | |
| | | | 
Guspaz
Guspaz
Premium,MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC | Re: chrish, 2008-03-28 10:04:44 Problem is that Bell does not "Collect, use, or disclose" any private data. At least, nothing that the government considers private information. | |
| | | | |
jfmezei
Premium
join:2007-01-03
Beaconsfield, QC
·ELECTRONICBOX
| Re: chrish, 2008-03-28 10:04:44 >Problem is that Bell does not "Collect, use, or disclose" any
>private data. At least, nothing that the government considers
>private information.
Problem is that the boxes used to throttle are capable of collecting private information. What you do, what applications you use and how much data you transfer is private as far as Bell is concerned (it has no business knowing that).
Unless Bell canada is audited at regular intervals, there is no way of knwoing what Bell does with those boxes and whether it collects data or not. | |
| | | | | | | | | | |
Guspaz
Guspaz
Premium,MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC
·Colbanet
| Re: chrish, 2008-03-28 10:04:44 said by fatness :said by Guspaz :Problem is that Bell does not "Collect, use, or disclose" any private data. At least, nothing that the government considers private information. Guspaz, I have a question: how is that known? Because PIPEDA seems to have an extremely narrow definition of "personal information", and would seem to not include things like what website you visit or what files you download. To capture traditional personal information, the only reasonable way would be for them to capture/store HTTP POST form data.
Are they capable of grabbing that data? Probably. Are they? Probably not.
As long as they're simply examining data, anyhow, and not storing it, they're not collecting it, and they're not disclosing it. You could argue that they're using it, but they're not using personal information to help them throttle, they're using application fingerprints, which are decidedly not personal information. | |
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fatness
subtle
Janitor
join:2000-11-17
fishing
2 edits | Re: chrish, 2008-03-28 10:04:44 How is it known that they are:
not capturing/storing HTTP Post form data?
only examining data?
not storing data? | |
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Guspaz
Guspaz
Premium,MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC | Re: chrish, 2008-03-28 10:04:44 I don't, so I admit that I'm making an assumption here. What I want to convey is that the DPI throttling system, if used as intended, does not do those things.
If Bell is doing that, it's unrelated to the throttling. | |
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R0CKY
TSI Rocky
Premium,VIP
join:2005-05-19
Chatham, ON
| Re: chrish, 2008-03-28 10:04:44 As fatness just pointed out... It's entirely possible they're holding the data as, if they're intending on possibly running billing on use, they'd have to almost for sure store it for proof of billing.
--
TSI Rocky - TekSavvy Solutions Inc. | |
| | | | | | | | | | puzz1ed
join:2005-02-20
Markham, ON
| Re: chrish, 2008-03-28 10:04:44 Perhaps they can use it to start charging by protocol or usage pattern. 
Obviously, if you're using VPN software from 9 to 5 you should be on a more expensive business service etc. The possibilities are endless. | |
| | | |
Comment
@teksavvy.com
| said by ultracat :For those looking for a link to read: » www.privcom.gc.ca/information/02···08_e.aspbtw - this would be a GREAT letter writing campaign to conduct against Bell. Imagine if Bell had to all of a sudden handle 21,000 or whatever written requests for privacy disclosures! It would be annoying, but all Bell would send you (if anything) would be a form letter saying they do not collect any PERSONAL information nor "read your raw data". (They only look at the formatting of it.)
In contrast, BT (British Telephone) is in the midst of a kerfuffle because they did collect "personal information" by recording the addresses of the sites INDIVIDUAL subscribers were visiting. | |
| | | | | ultracat
join:2008-01-30
Toronto, ON
·TELUS
·Bell Sympatico
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| Re: chrish, 2008-03-28 10:04:44 Yeah, but once you get that response from Bell then you turn around and give an appeal to the privacy commissioner and complain that they are in fact inspecting my data. Then let Bell deal with the privacy commissioner. It's just one more irritant (and not a false accusation either, if you ask some people) : ) | |
| | | | | 
Candoo3
join:2005-01-24
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| said by Comment :
It would be annoying, but all Bell would send you (if anything) would be a form letter saying they do not collect any PERSONAL information nor "read your raw data". (They only look at the formatting of it.)
In contrast, BT (British Telephone) is in the midst of a kerfuffle because they did collect "personal information" by recording the addresses of the sites INDIVIDUAL subscribers were visiting.
And BT also DENIED that they were doing this, until they were caught.
»www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/27···er_2007/ | |
|
Trisomy21
join:2006-04-27
Kingston, ON | If anything those that are with 3rd party providers, like TSI, have more reason to be upset. We're paying to for something different, to avoid Bell. And of course Bell interferes and shoves their horrible service down our throats still. | |
| Jabus
join:2002-11-24
Mississauga, ON | I like the idea he's going for. | |
| | 
Arbalister
join:2007-11-24
St Catharines, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| Re: CBC TV request for people to talk on camera about this issue Just sent him this:
Good Morning,
I saw your post on the Teksavvy DSLReports forum and I wanted to touch base with you one a couple of points. Please don't limit your story to users of "large amounts of bandwidth" because that's a false impression that *Bell* wants to give. While Sympatico is capable of detecting people that use large amounts of bandwidth, and taking actions like capping or throttling *those* users, this is *not* the issue with this new move. The current issue is that they have instituted throttling across the board. Everyone. Every single user, including people that are not buying service from Bell. They are throttling now at the access server level. In other words, they're causing the hardware that the end users connect to, regardless of whose end users those are, to throttle all p2p traffic through that access server, between 5pm and 2am. I run an independant ISP in St. Catharines. We're pretty small compared to someone like Execulink or Teksavvy, both of whom I use as 3rd party DSL suppliers...I buy and resell *their* services. I've used Teksavvy for my higher demand customers because they offer a premium service that has lower latency, much, much cheaper bandwidth, and no throttling. As of this move by Bell, Teksavvy is technically violating our agreement - I signed up for unthrottled bandwidth from them. Now, I would never try to hold TSI to that, in this case, because I've had to deal with Bell's anticompetitive tactics towards independant ISPs for the last 12 years. I know it's Bell, not TSI. Its not the first time Bell's played us dirty. An example - during the roll-out of DSL service, they actually filed documentation with the CRTC stating that the wholesale price of DSL for 3rd party ISPs would have to be at least $250 per end user...while they were retailing it themselves for $25. More recently, they've tried to get the CRTC to approve them dropping Unbundled Local Loop service ("Dry Loops") because they have no use for anyone other then independant ISPs that sell them to customers that want to stop paying Bell for phone service. We can use them to provide DSL service, even though they aren't "active" phone lines. Once the customer has DSL on a Dry Loop, they can set up VoIP service for the phone.
This change by Bell doesn't just affect large users. It affects smaller independant ISP's like Merge Internet - me. It affects every single DSL user that decides to download your networks "Next Great Prime Minister" - to the tune that I've heard people are finding it's going to take them 11 hours to download it. It affects people who decide to drop Bell over the issue - there's a report in the Teksavvy forum about someone that called to cancel, was asked why, said it was over throttling, and the Bell rep told him, "its going to happen to everyone soon!" They're using this as a customer retention tool..."sure, we're throtting, but good luck finding an alternative, because we're buggering up everyone else too."
Thanks for looking into this issue. Perhaps this time Bell's gone to far.
Chris Hanlon,
Manager,
Merge Internet
350 Ontario St. Unit 9
St Catharines ON L2R 5L8 | |
| | |
See 8 replies to this post | |
Flannel
join:2007-11-28 | Michael Geist would be a good candidate, he's pretty well the expert in the Canadian field. | |
| | chrish
join:2007-02-19
Ottawa, ON | Re: CBC TV request for people to talk on camera about this issue I think they are focusing on the user side of things here, which is good - showing the actual effects on wholesellers customer base. | |
| | 
Quake110
join:2003-12-20
Ottawa, ON
·Velcom
| said by Flannel :Michael Geist would be a good candidate, he's pretty well the expert in the Canadian field. He will be considered, no doubt about it. I think what the CBC wants is to interview the average joe. | |
| 
milnoc
join:2001-03-05
H3B
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| This is what I've just sent.
Hello Mr. Benjamin,
I'm in an interesting situation here. I'm currently working at launching Canada's first national public access television channel to be called "The Canadian Public", a specialty channel where Canadian citizens and organizations from across the country and around the world can submit their own full length television shows for national broadcast.
My business plan is unique in that I'll intentionally distribute the channel's programming for free using every means at my disposal. Not only will the service be provided free of charge on digital cable and satellite to anyone who wants it, I also intend to distribute as much of the programming as possible on the Internet via BitTorrent. So when Bell started crippling all encrypted and large volume traffic travelling through their communications lines, I was immediately affected long before my channel will even go on the air.
When I start distributing the channel's programming over the Internet in about a year from now, will the communications link between my corporate Internet connection and the viewing public's connections be impeded by traffic crippling technology? Will I be told that the only way to efficiently distribute the channel's content will be via digital cable and satellite only, and that all Internet-based distribution options are no longer available to me?
In today's world of readily available high speed Internet access, traffic shaping technology is attempting to revert us back to the bad old days of painfully slow dial-up Internet access. Technology is suppose to move us forwards, not backwards. Yet, this is exactly what all forms of traffic crippling technology are attempting to accomplish.
Good luck with your piece, and please make sure the technical information is accurate. When a news piece has even a single technical error in it, the entire piece regrettably loses all credibility.
Thanks!
François Caron
President and CEO
TCPub Media Inc.
| |
| Laidback
join:2001-09-30
Woodstock, ON
·PrimusDSL
| I just want to thanks those of you who responded to this. you have great writing skills.
To Shawnb, did the CBC not recently start using P2P for program downloading. I apologize for being vague on that, but I do seem to remember something about that. Bell's decision will obviously affect that also. | |
| |
Trisomy21
join:2006-04-27
Kingston, ON | Re: CBC TV request for people to talk on camera about this issue Yeah they uploaded a torrent of Canada's Next Great Prime Minister, the last episode. Many people complained about waiting 6-12 hours to download it.
Hmm anyone know when this segment is going to air? I hope they use my video lol | |
| 
inferno_gn
Premium
join:2007-02-26
Verdun, QC
| Hi there,
Problem is the average joe won't know what to do. *hehe* But seriously, we want to help the average joe to get out of Bell, but it's hard.
inferno_gn
--
Otaku Anime Network
»www.otakuanime.com/ | |
|
Name
@teksavvy.com
 from:
JunkieXL
| Some hours ago I sent the following to Shawn Benjamin:
...
I want to emphasize an angle to BellNexxia's traffic policy that's been ignored in most reporting so far. Anecdotal evidence from people in areas where traffic shaping has been turned on indicates that Bell's tools are extremely blunt weapons. They are reportedly slowing down or rendering unusable all encrypted communications, including protocols used for voice over internet (internet phone services), possibly the secure HTTP protocol used for online ecommerce including online banking, and VPN protocols used to tunnel private data over the public internet. None of these tools are in any way related to P2P or overall traffic use, but all of them have been caught up in the overly broad net used by Ontario ISPs to filter internet traffic.
The implications for me when BellNexxia imposes traffic filtering in my area (Ottawa) will be severe. I will no longer be able to phone family in Vancouver over the Internet (at no cost) and will instead have to fall back on making long distance phone calls. I will no longer be able to manage my parents' computers remotely or easily share photos with them over our VPN. Closer to home, as a student, there is a very real risk that I will not be able to access academic research databases from off campus and will need to commute 40 minutes to access electronic materials I've so far been able to access at home. Bell has no legitimate right to impose these costs on me for any reason, let alone as collateral damage as part of a highly questionable war on P2P users.
Moreover, because Rogers implements the same policies as BellNexxia is imposing, it's not clear if I can get back the services I currently enjoy at any price short of the $3000 a month fee required for a dedicated commercial connection. I don't have that kind of money to spare.
My situation, though, is really just the tip of the iceberg. BellNexxia traffic shaping will severely impact people who telecommute from home and freelance/home business professionals who regularly need to move client files confidentially over the Internet. There is a very real risk that these people could be unable to do their jobs once BellNexxia's traffic shaping rollout is complete. I'm going to be severely inconvenienced by Bell; others who need to use VPNs for their jobs could be put out of work or forced to leave the province (!) to get unfiltered Internet access.
The whole P2P issue is really secondary to the fact that what Bell has done in the past few days is quantitatively different from ordinary P2P filtering as implemented by ISPs such as Bell-Sympatico and Rogers.
What Bell is doing is filtering their backhaul network which moves internet traffic from subscribers to third party ISPs. By placing filtration gear on the backhaul network, BellNexxia is restricting competition.
As you probably know, Bell-Sympatico filters traffic to restrict the use of P2P applications. Virtually all of Ontario's 3rd party DSL ISPs earned their market by offering unfiltered service. By imposing filtering on the backhaul network, BellNexxia has essentially prevented Bell-Sympatico's competitors from offering substantively better service than what Sympatico chooses to offer.
What's going on here is not a network neutrality issue as much as it is an apparent conflict of interest between Bell as an ISP (Sympatico) and Bell as an infrastructure provider (BellNexxia). The CRTC is supposed to prevent these kind of things from happening, *especially as BellNexxia's backhaul is regulated by CRTC order.*
My overall point here is that BellNexxia's questionable zeal to attack P2P users has lead to them adopting practices akin to using a nuclear device to kill a fly. They're going to penalize a lot of people for things that have utterly nothing to do with P2P or alleged overuse of Bell's backhaul bandwidth. What Bell is doing is unethical, unreasonable, a threat to privacy, and a threat to the Canadian economy.
I got several emails back and then the reporter on the case phoned me and we spoke for a few minutes. While he seemed to be most interested in people who have been burned by GB caps, I made a case that GB caps aren't the real issue and that the real problems are traffic shaping and Bell's conflict of interest. I was, however, caught off guard by the reporter's emphasis and probably didn't make a very good verbal case.
I'm not convinced the media has yet bitten down on the teleology of BellNexxia traffic shaping. They are certainly aware that something is going on, but they seem to be more interested in issues related to nextgen content distribution (the reporter specifically mentioned HDTV over Internet) and caps, but I don't know if they've cottoned on to the implications of traffic shaping yet. | |
| | 
neko
All Hail Canada
Premium
join:2006-08-11
canada
 ·Callcentric
 ·Cogeco Cable
·Future Nine Corpor..
·TekSavvy Solutions..
2 edits | Re: CBC TV request for people to talk on camera about this issue Well I just wrote to Shawn, explicitly telling him that Tek has generous 200GB a month caps, CAPS aren't the issue. It's the throttling that's the point.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi Shawn,
I seen your post on DSLR reports. I thought I should write to you, just to get a few things clear.
The mainstream media, in general, has been obsessed about ISP's limiting data by 'Bandwidth caps'. This is *not* the case with my ISP: Teksavvy, & the recent fiasco with Bell.
Teksavvy give me a generous 200Gigabytes a month, to download. But Bell has been limiting the ability to download, in effect, cutting my bandwidth.
I tried to download the recent CBC showing of 'Canada's next Prime Minister' via bittorrent. It was abysmal! It took 11 hours to download.
This was due to Bell Canada's recent throttling. Teksavvy don't throttle their connections, but with Bell doing this, they are affecting my Internet connection.
I also use SSL FTP to transfer files to my family, securely. Home movies, pictures of the kids, songs that the kids made, etc...NO PIRATE STUFF - ALL LEGITIMATE.
If Bell suspect your line of doing any encryption; they throttle it!
Please ensure your story covers these points. Teksavvy don't have small caps. They have large caps that are throttled by Bell - Limiting my Internet experience.
Yours faithfully,
*** ******
-----------------------------------------------------------------
REPLY:
Thanks for your help, we are getting a lot or response. I have passed your name to our reporter please don't be offended if he does not call you to be interviewed as we have only 120 seconds to fill tonight. But your opinions are helping shape our story.
best,
sb
Shawn Benjamin
National Tape Producer
CBC News
416 205 6645
--
...virtue gives you heraldry. | |
| | Mark Rejhon
join:2004-02-02
Ottawa, ON
·Magma Communications
| I nominate that Shawn at CBC should also give coverage to Voip users (i.e. Vonage) who are being interfered by these throttling issues. This can seriously affect ability to place phone calls, including 911 calls, as Vonage now supports them.
quote:
Some hours ago I sent the following to Shawn Benjamin:
...
I want to emphasize an angle to BellNexxia's traffic policy that's been ignored in most reporting so far. Anecdotal evidence from people in areas where traffic shaping has been turned on indicates that Bell's tools are extremely blunt weapons. They are reportedly slowing down or rendering unusable all encrypted communications, including protocols used for voice over internet (internet phone services), possibly the secure HTTP protocol used for online ecommerce including online banking, and VPN protocols used to tunnel private data over the public internet. None of these tools are in any way related to P2P or overall traffic use, but all of them have been caught up in the overly broad net used by Ontario ISPs to filter internet traffic.
| |
|
Scott Allison
@teksavvy.com
| I am all you smoking guns
if they tape you tape them back
and as they dont seem to care about privacy laws then why should i?
A) After moving, was tricked baltantly into a 7 megabit 60GB capped account,
this right after having dropped a 160GB external and going back to net and grabbing 84GB,
-remedy took three weeks and ultimatly was never solved
B) lied to over course fo three weeks that my 2 year ocntract for 5 megabit unlimited was restored.
C) when thought it was fixed was playing ogame.org and developing my onine game, both non intensive bandwith things to do. Router declared 300Megabytes transfer over three weeks.
D) Capped me anyways which was a violation, and on tap threatened to sue me or as they said considered me "actionable for use of a p2p client as the govt a few days ago made them illegal"
that statement was false. I told them i considered them actionable for violation of my contract and changing it without contating me properly as per the contracts rules much as they have recently done to TekSavvy and 3rd party isps there blatant disregard for legal practices is astounding.
E) then canceled contract on the above grounds and they still billed me and not only that have somehow tried to bill my father for MY INTERNET. they ever requested he return the modem. NOW IM 37 not 13. billing both of us is fraud again.
and about that bill, 7 pages . and in my phone section is 50$ charge to satellite ironically its not payper view its a
differant charge. thats also billed in the OH MY television section.
F)note at tiome of the legal threat i was using utorrent and grabbing some free ebooks from northern journeys WHOM I AMY add have stated to me in email that they have no problem with me getitng the books via bittorrent and after we talked about it may in fact do future releases that way as it SAVES THEM THE DEVELOPERS AND PUBLISHERS MONEY.
chronoss2008@hush.com
i am leaving the net possibly as im not paying 34$ for 30Kbytes so bell silences me by taking away that which i pay for.
I moved to TekSavvy for these reasons.
There may be legal reasons i can't publically out these tapes unlike bell i should follow the law. | |
| |
neko
All Hail Canada
Premium
join:2006-08-11
canada | Re: Video and audio of BELL practices @: Scott Allison
You have 'tapes' of Bell stating these things?
release them: Rapidshare, etc...get them out. Lets have a listen...
--
...virtue gives you heraldry. | |
| | |
LiQuiD
BSD geek
Premium
join:2002-08-08
Anjou, QC
| Re: Video and audio of BELL practices said by neko :@: Scott Allison You have 'tapes' of Bell stating these things? release them: Rapidshare, etc...get them out. Lets have a listen... just don't bother using BT to share them. | |
|
scott allison
@teksavvy.com
| A) they know i have tapes
B) at time i did not state like the law says that i was taping until later on which is a privacy act violation
im not going to prison to prove a point
so while i have such , all it does is protect me form legal action from bell as they stated and make sure that any action they wish to take against me in future , id bring em.
AND i cant state enough , maybe everyone should do it and state at beginning "you say your taping for quality , im taping for legal protection...then proceed"
All i can say is if i were subpoenaed or somehow the law were to be able to protect me then and only then id out them.
Like i can say they already put me through hell im not going to jail or being sued for it on top of it.
Privacy laws while great can protect the wrong people too. | |
| | a1_Andy
Premium
join:2005-12-29
Peterborough, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
·Bell Sympatico
1 edit | Re: CBC TV request for people to talk on camera about this issue said by scott allison :
A) they know i have tapes
B) at time i did not state like the law says that i was taping until later on which is a privacy act violation
im not going to prison to prove a point
so while i have such , all it does is protect me form legal action from bell as they stated and make sure that any action they wish to take against me in future , id bring em.
AND i cant state enough , maybe everyone should do it and state at beginning "you say your taping for quality , im taping for legal protection...then proceed"
All i can say is if i were subpoenaed or somehow the law were to be able to protect me then and only then id out them.
Like i can say they already put me through hell im not going to jail or being sued for it on top of it.
Privacy laws while great can protect the wrong people too.
did the bell recording not say to you "this call may be recorded"? | |
| Ontarionet
join:2005-07-05
Guelph, ON
| What about a report on how Bell OWNS the lines and is virtually a MONOPOLY as is Rogers (more or less) and how the Canadian government allows this?
Isn't CBC owned/controlled by the government? Ooops... I guess we won't be seeing that report anytime soon. | |
| | | | |
See 7 replies to this post | |
Jean_22
join:2005-08-27
Quebec, QC | Since also talking about the cap, you might also want to add Videotron  | |
| |
Scott Allison
@teksavvy.com
| @a1_Andy
you have to in canada before taping anyone alert them that you are doing I suspect you think that because they said they are taping me or could be for quality purposes that means i have a legal right to just start taping them, which it does not.
Ive checked into things and unless someone wants to guarantee paying a fine regarding me and or guarantee legal expenses im not outing th tapes, i can tell you as a person what i went through but there is in them also my own personal data on those as well. and i have to say it makes me sick the to think that people less strong in the mind would and could get bothered like this. | |
| | 
eots
join:2003-02-04 | Re: CBC TV request for people to talk on camera about this issue Actually in Canada it's only required that one of the parties involved in the conversation be aware it's being taped. If you are doing the taping and are also involved in the conversation then no one else needs to be informed. | |
| | | Jean_22
join:2005-08-27
Quebec, QC | Re: CBC TV request for people to talk on camera about this issue Yes that's true. | |
| iconfat
join:2005-04-06
Toronto
| And before that...
Jason is throttle-icious. 4:34pm
Jason is throttle-ishus. 4:32pm
Good spelling Jason. Obviously he thinks this is a game.
I guess he doesnt get that this is my money and my internet experience he is tampering with.
I don't want to give any money to the company that hires him. | |
| 
NeTwOrKDawg
Networking is a lifestyle
join:2005-04-25
Brantford, ON | Wow looks like Jason has changed his profile.. someone must have alerted the goof. | |
| | ultracat
join:2008-01-30
Toronto, ON
·TELUS
·Bell Sympatico
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| Re: CBC TV request for people to talk on camera about this issue said by NeTwOrKDawg :Wow looks like Jason has changed his profile.. someone must have alerted the goof. Hilarious! So, if there's no backlash then why would he have to change his Facebook settings? There's no backlash right? So there's no more people than normal looking at his profile, sending him messages of disapproval, etc. No backlash right? Whatever, you liar! What I like about liars (especially professional ones) is that once the light is shined on them little things begin to crack and almost always the truth comes out given enough attention. | |
| | | ultracat
join:2008-01-30
Toronto, ON | Re: CBC TV request for people to talk on camera about this issue My mistake, his profile is *still* public. Please go to facebook and post him a Wall message telling him what you think of Bell's actions. He believes there's no backlash, well lets show him there is. | |
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