chrish
join:2007-02-19
Ottawa, ON
 ·Velcom
| reply to shawnb
Re: CBC TV request for people to talk on camera about this issue
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 |
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LiQuiD
BSD geek
Premium
join:2002-08-08
Anjou, QC
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| 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.
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Windows is the virus. Linux is the vaccine, FreeBSD is the CURE |
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Trisomy21
join:2006-04-27
Kingston, ON | ^^ Already done.
Just make sure you explain things simply, use analogies. |
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Trisomy21
join:2006-04-27
Kingston, ON
·WTC Communications
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| 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
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velcomrob
Premium
join:2006-11-28
Brampton, ON
edit:
March 31st, @04:52PM
| reply to chrish
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. |
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matt_m
Premium
join:2007-04-07
Ottawa, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| 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. |
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velcomrob
Premium
join:2006-11-28
Brampton, ON
edit:
March 31st, @05:24PM
| reply to chrish
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. |
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heybirder
@velcom.ca | As a Velcom customer, I heartily endorse your idea! |
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root9
join:2005-04-08
Kitchener, ON
·Bell Sympatico
edit:
April 7th, @03:35PM
| reply to chrish
Re: chrish, 2008-03-28 10:04:44
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 |
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Comment
@teksavvy.com
| 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. |
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travisc
join:2001-11-09
Port Perry, ON | I'd be interested in seeing this as well. |
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ultracat
join:2008-01-30
Toronto, ON
·Bell Sympatico
·TekSavvy Solutions..
edit:
April 7th, @04:22PM
| reply to root9
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! |
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Guspaz
Guspaz
Premium,MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC | Problem is that Bell does not "Collect, use, or disclose" any private data. At least, nothing that the government considers private information. |
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Comment
@teksavvy.com
| reply to ultracat
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. |
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ultracat
join:2008-01-30
Toronto, ON
·Bell Sympatico
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| 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) : ) |
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jfmezei
Premium
join:2007-01-03
Beaconsfield, QC
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| reply to Guspaz
>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. |
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Candoo3
join:2005-01-24
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| reply to Comment
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/ |
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fatness
subtle
Janitor
join:2000-11-17
fishing
Host:
Earthlink DSL
TekSavvy
Forum Feature Requ..
Need Site Help?
Sports Chat
| reply to Guspaz
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?
--
Female monkeys often utter loud, distinctive calls before, during or after sex.. |
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Guspaz
Guspaz
Premium,MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC
·Colbanet
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| 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
edit:
April 7th, @08:33PM
| How is it known that they are:
not capturing/storing HTTP Post form data?
only examining data?
not storing data? |
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