Bell Sympatico's War On 'Network Abusers' Company admits throttling, prevents 'hogs' from going to competitors... Monday Nov 05 2007 13:04 EDT For several months now, users of Canadian ISP Bell Sympatico have been noticing that the company has been throttling user BitTorrent traffic. A forum user now points out that the company recently admitted to doing so, though they fail to specify what hardware is being used. In a post to the official Bell Sympatico forum, a company manager has this to say about their traffic shaping practices: quote:
Bell Sympatico has launched a solution to enhance the online customer experience and improve Internet performance for all our customers during peak periods of Internet usage with the introduction of Internet Traffic Management. There continues to be phenomenal growth of consumer Internet traffic throughout the world and Bell is using Internet Traffic Management to ensure we deliver bandwidth fairly to our customers during peak Internet usage.Bell will be using the latest, state-of-the-art technology to improve the customer experience for a vast majority of our customers� favorite applications (such as Internet Browsers, E-mail, Instant Messaging, Streaming Video, etc.) as required during peak times on the Internet, while ensuring all customers receive fair use of the network when there is heavy Internet traffic. In addition, Bell continues to make significant investments in network capacity and speed to meet the growing Internet demand.
A user at P2PNet on November 1 also noticed the admission, and does a great job summarizing the company's policies. She also reprints the Sympatico e-mail that's sent to out to "network abusers," who Bell informs have consumption rates "5000% higher than the usage of an average Bell residential customer."Last November the company began capping new users and implemented $1.50 per GB overage fees should users pass the cap. Users wanting to get around these limits had been finding solace among more popular alternative ISPs, who were offering unlimited PPPoE logins over DSL. Bell is now taking steps to make sure those users can't get service -- by refusing to serve addresses of high-consumption users. "What's happening is users of Sympatico that are abusive are getting their network access shut off but through login service with us and other ISPs they're getting back online," says Rocky Gaudrault, CEO of Bell competitor TekSavvy. "Bell is now fighting back by trying to find means to shut that address off completely," he tells us. Users in our TekSavvy forum have been discussing TekSavvy's decision to stop offering unlimited logins, and their new pricing plan crafted to handle high-consumption users -- assuming they're allowed to do business with them. |
  FFH5
Premium Member
join:2002-03-03
Tavistock NJ
1 edit |
FFH5
Premium Member
2007-Nov-5 1:10 pm
Ilec enforcing abuse rules against ClecsSounds like Bell Sympatico(like a U.S. Ilec) is trying to enforce their abuse rules on the Canadian equivalent of any Clecs using their infrastructure. I'll bet this goes to the courts pretty quickly. | |
|  |  en102Canadian, eh?
join:2001-01-26
Valencia, CA |
en102
Member
2007-Nov-5 1:51 pm
Re: Ilec enforcing abuse rules aaginst ClecsWell, then again, it is Canada.
With the Canadian dollar being very high against the U.S., pricing on bandwidth should be dropping. | |
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Bellunder
Anon
2007-Nov-6 2:01 am
Re: Ilec enforcing abuse rules aaginst ClecsI've been trying to tell them this all along. But the shills dream up some spiel of cockamamie malarkey to try to make it sound like i don't know what i'm talking about when in fact the converse is true. | |
| | | yabos
join:2003-02-16
London, ON |
to en102
Well, I agree that the 1.50/GB is a cash grab. The bandwidth from Canadian ISPs isn't an import. It's not like we're importing GBs from the states. | |
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| | |  Snickerdo3
Premium Member
join:2001-02-28
Niagara Falls, ON |
to FFH5
said by FFH5:Sounds like Bell Sympatico(like a U.S. Ilec) is trying to enforce their abuse rules on the Canadian equivalent of any Clecs using their infrastructure. I'll bet this goes to the courts pretty quickly. The CRTC will stop Bell from refusing to service specific addresses to third-party ISPs dead in their tracks. Bell will most certainly not be allowed to do this for very long, if at all. The CRTC and Bell aren't exactly on friendly terms, you can bet that the CRTC has just been waiting for the moment to lay some smackdown. As for the connection between the DSLAM and the ISP, the ISP pays for them, not Bell. The ISP can also choose whether they use Ethernet or ATM, and the different levels of DSLAM connectivity are priced accordingly. Bell can't justify refusing access based on this, because it's the ISPs who are paying for the access and having to deal with the congestion. | |
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YO Q
Anon
2007-Nov-5 1:15 pm
......BURN THEM! | |
|  bylo
Premium Member
join:2004-05-04
Waterloo, ON
1 edit
1 recommendation |
bylo
Premium Member
2007-Nov-5 1:41 pm
This is will make a lot of people very happyMy current contract with Sympatico ends in January. At that point I intend to jump ship to TSI. Even if Bell offers to match TSI's $30/month when I utter the magic word "cancel" to Emily, I'll switch on principle. That should make Kevin Crull happy because evidently I'm a "network abuser."
My two-phone contract with Bell Mobility ended this summer. I've since switched to a competitor. That must have made George Cope happy because we were just "low-ARPU customers."
We can't get satellite TV because we don't have line-of-sight to the bird, so all that's left with BCE is barebones POTS. (And by "barebones" I mean pulse dial, no calling features, no long distance.) By the time we find a viable alternative, George Cope will be in the big chair so he'll be happy again because we were merely "low-margin subscribers."
This month and early next year I'll be donating my BCE shares to charity. That will make a lot of people happy.
Early next year, when he gets all those BCE shares for a mere $42.75, Jim Leech will no doubt be happy — assuming, of course, there's anyone left in BCE's customer base to generate the massive cash flows he's going to need to pay back all the debt that he's taken on to do the deal.
Michael Sabia will be happy next year as he yanks the rip cord on his $25M golden parachute. George and Kevin et all will likely also be happy because they'll move up a level on BCE's organization chart.
So in summary, I'd like to take this occasion to publicly thank Michael Sabia for making a very large number of people very happy. | |
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a solution that's apparently not on the tablethey could always add bandwidth to resolve this issue, but that's not in their interests (their interests being monetizing every aspect of the internet).
although a few in this forum continue to point out "the high costs of capacity", a lot of things I read indicate bandwidth is not that costly.
the ILECs and their supporters (traffic shaping h/w companies and big business sycophants) are much more interested in promoting the fallacy of bandwidth scarcity (repeat the lie over and over and over and pretty soon it becomes "true"). this plays into their narrative that they need to "manage" the network, which seems to consist of throttling, blocking or otherwise interfering with traffic and/or applications; and don't forget caps.
it would be very interesting to see a study comparing the cost of adding network management equipment that inspects and interferes with packets versus simply adding more bandwidth capacity.
when the internet2 project looked ahead to what options were available when the existing bandwidth became inadequate, they concluded it was much cheaper and simpler to just add capacity, rather than implementing traffic shaping/monitoring capability. | |
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Re: a solution that's apparently not on the tablesaid by nasadude:they could always add bandwidth to resolve this issue, but that's not in their interests (their interests being monetizing every aspect of the internet). The trouble is it's not clear whether it's internal or external traffic causing the congestion since the wholesale ISP's are tunnelled through Bell's fiber network to get to the provider. I also do not see why they would not increase traffic since they are technically (though not in my experience) a tier 1 bandwidth provider. | |
| | |  SpaethCoDigital Plumber
MVM
join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN |
Re: a solution that's apparently not on the tablesaid by BACONATOR26:I also do not see why they would not increase traffic since they are technically (though not in my experience) a tier 1 bandwidth provider. What makes a carrier a "Tier 1" carrier is that they don't pay anyone else for access to any routes. There's only (10) Tier 1 carriers that have exclusively settlement free peering: ATDN (AOL Transit Data Network), Level(3), Global Crossing, ATT, MCI/UUNet/Verizon (whoever they are today), NTT/Verio, Savvis, Sprint, Qwest, and TeliaSonera. Everybody else pays someone else to move at least some of their traffic. | |
| | | |  NormanSI gave her time to steal my mind away
MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
Asus RT-AC66U B1
Netgear FR114P
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Re: a solution that's apparently not on the tableWRT AT&T, specifically, AT&T Worldnet Services. My DSL connection, from the premises to the edge is AT&T; but it is AT&T Internet Service. My traffic may, or may not, transit AT&T Worldnet Services routers en route to the destination, but it always leaves/returns on ATTIS routers. | |
| | | | |  PiggieJust A Pig With A Computer
Premium Member
join:2005-11-23
Orange Springs, FL |
Piggie
Premium Member
2007-Nov-6 12:35 pm
Re: a solution that's apparently not on the tableI don't live there, I haven't followed it closely. But I had several friends leave Sympaco in the last year after they announced selling IPTV on demand or something like that? Now won't that eat up bandwidth?
Hughes this year started a hard hard limit on it's users. At first the casual users thought it was for them to have better access. Later the truth came out of Hughes wanting to put more subscribers per satellite.
Watch what they tell you is the reason.
Plus, IF bit torrent is the problem, why not QoS it down to 1 mbps or so on down and 128 on up. That way they can still play. To all but ban it is arcane. | |
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 Matt3All noise, no signal.
Premium Member
join:2003-07-20
Jamestown, NC |
Matt3
Premium Member
2007-Nov-5 1:55 pm
5000% more?I like how they used a percentage to make it seem like a larger number.
5000% is only 50 times the normal amount. That's still a significant number, but doesn't 5000% sound so much scarier?
Why don't these providers just say, "You used X amount of transfer which is Y percent higher than our average customer."? | |
|  hopeflickerCapitalism breeds greed
Premium Member
join:2003-04-03
Long Beach, CA |
Wake up ISPs"There continues to be phenomenal growth of consumer Internet traffic throughout the world"
Right there. They (Bell) said it themselves.
Wake up ISPs.
You need to grow with the internet and not stifle it. | |
| | SpaethCoDigital Plumber
MVM
join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN
1 recommendation |
Re: Wake up ISPssaid by hopeflicker:"There continues to be phenomenal growth of consumer Internet traffic throughout the world"Right there. They (Bell) said it themselves. Wake up ISPs. You need to grow with the internet and not stifle it. How do you propose you grow your network to support a specific application traffic type that consumes everything you add, the instant you add it? How much are you willing to pay for your broadband service? | |
| | | hopeflickerCapitalism breeds greed
Premium Member
join:2003-04-03
Long Beach, CA
1 recommendation |
Re: Wake up ISPssaid by SpaethCo:said by hopeflicker:"There continues to be phenomenal growth of consumer Internet traffic throughout the world"Right there. They (Bell) said it themselves. Wake up ISPs. You need to grow with the internet and not stifle it. How do you propose you grow your network to support a specific application traffic type that consumes everything you add, the instant you add it? How much are you willing to pay for your broadband service? As Bell said, they see an phenomenal growth. This here is a wake up call. How do they pay for it you ask? well, we see price increases every year, and sometimes even twice a year. So there. | |
| | | | SpaethCoDigital Plumber
MVM
join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN |
Re: Wake up ISPssaid by hopeflicker:As Bell said, they see an phenomenal growth. This here is a wake up call. How do they pay for it you ask? well, we see price increases every year, and sometimes even twice a year. So there. What kind of price increases though? Are they phenomenal price increases? Price out carrier bandwidth sometime; I think it would be an educational experience for you to see how much it costs ISPs to move bits. | |
| | | | | hopeflickerCapitalism breeds greed
Premium Member
join:2003-04-03
Long Beach, CA |
Re: Wake up ISPsfrom what i read and hear, Bandwidth doesnt cost as much as everyone says it does. | |
| | | | | | SpaethCoDigital Plumber
MVM
join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN |
Re: Wake up ISPssaid by hopeflicker:from what i read and hear, Bandwidth doesnt cost as much as everyone says it does. That's why I said to price it out for yourself rather than relying on people who may or may not have a clue of what they're talking about. There's also 2 components to ISP bandwidth: the cost to procure upstream connectivity from a carrier, and the cost to provide "last mile" services to your subscriber base. I think if you took the time to do an honest investigation into just the carrier costs alone you would be surprised. | |
| | | | | | | yabos
join:2003-02-16
London, ON |
yabos
Member
2007-Nov-6 10:24 am
Re: Wake up ISPsGo check out Amazon S3 prices. $0.10/GB in and $0.18/GB out. You do have to pay for storage but the bandwidth cost is extremely low and they're still making a profit. | |
| | | | | | | | SpaethCoDigital Plumber
MVM
join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN |
Re: Wake up ISPssaid by yabos:Go check out Amazon S3 prices. $0.10/GB in and $0.18/GB out. You do have to pay for storage but the bandwidth cost is extremely low and they're still making a profit. So assuming a conservative 220GB per 1mbps of 95th percentile usage, that's $39.60/mbps out and $22/mbps in. That's hardly impressive pricing. Amazon is cheaper on inbound because you purchase bandwidth symmetrically (ie, you buy 1gigabit, you get 1 gigabit in and 1 gigabit out), and since Amazon is in the business of moving content out from their network, they have a substantial amount of inbound "free" bandwidth where you can use a ton of it and they wouldn't have to add capacity. Only usage in the outbound direction would make them grow their circuits. Applying this pricing to ISPs where the traffic is mostly inbound (and thus inbound consumption makes them grow capacity) if you are eating 5mbps of bandwidth all month long you are consuming $198 ($39.60 x 5) worth of uplink transport. ISP fees are closer to the $10-15/mbps rate, but it still adds up. Especially so when you figure it costs them about $15-40/mo in just the local cable/DSL access network costs to provide 4-10mbps of shared capacity to your house. Then you have the call center / service tech overhead on top of that, plus you need some room for profit. | |
| | | | | | | | | yabos
join:2003-02-16
London, ON |
yabos
Member
2007-Nov-6 7:08 pm
Re: Wake up ISPsI'm comparing it to Bell's $1.50/GB which is outrageous. $0.10 per GB may be still a lot but it's a little more reasonable if they want to charge someone for going over some data cap. | |
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1 recommendation |
Cancel my service, Please.I wonder if this constant abuse of power will be the end of the internet. Due to companies unwillingness to expand capacity for new services they insist that the best way is to go after the people who use the product they are paying for. I doubt any of the simple internet users are experiencing any problems checking email or shopping on amazon. The average user probably spends very little time online doing anything that actually taxes the system. Unless customers start canceling services with these companies they will continue to walk all over them. Stop accepting these idiotic changes in TOS agreements, stop paying the extra $1 to $2, and stop allowing them to continue to make billions of dollars per quarter not giving you the service you "initially" signed up for. Somehow the word needs to move from these forums of the technically informed to the regular mom 'n' pop blogs. The word needs to become an issue of political debate, let alderman, mayors, & congressman know that you are tired and it must stop.
Just think, should truck drivers be capped on their road usage, I can't get around quickly do to all the trucks on the road, it is unfair to me.
quote from the movie 'Network' - I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. | |
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NicPlus
Anon
2007-Nov-7 11:33 am
Re: Cancel my service, Please.Why would bell pay millions to upgrade b/w for the top %2 of users. What bell is saying is that their service is fine the way it is for the bottom %98
It has nothing to do with expanding capacity.
This is the equivalent of an All You Can Eat Buffet putting up a sign that says "No Fat Chicks" | |
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Re: Cancel my service, Please.said by NicPlus :
Why would bell pay millions to upgrade b/w for the top %2 of users. What bell is saying is that their service is fine the way it is for the bottom %98
It has nothing to do with expanding capacity.
I understand what you are saying, but the problem is that 98% is not the average user. If a paltry 2% of users are using P2P applications, streaming video/music, & online gaming and it degrades your giant network then you need to expand it. These telecom/cable isp's are providing bare minimum capacity with the hope that people will not actually use their service to its full "described" potential. said by NicPlus :
This is the equivalent of an All You Can Eat Buffet putting up a sign that says "No Fat Chicks"
No it is not the same, it is more like saying all-you-can-eat buffet but serve people on very large plates, hoping most people will only put a small amount of food on plate. When 2% start to fill that plate to capacity and refill several times then they get booted. | |
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Moonlight_x
Anon
2007-Nov-9 3:33 pm
Re: Cancel my service, Please.said by ossito16:I understand what you are saying, but the problem is that 98% is not the average user. If a paltry 2% of users are using P2P applications, streaming video/music, & online gaming and it degrades your giant network then you need to expand it. These telecom/cable isp's are providing bare minimum capacity with the hope that people will not actually use their service to its full "described" potential. If ISPs had to buy enough capacity to guarantee that all users could simultaneously use the full advertised speed, internet access would cost around $7 per Mbps... Bell's 16Mbps service would need to cost over $150/month instead of the current $75/month. The low costs we see from most ADSL providers ($30 to $40 for unlimited) rely heavily on the assumption of intermittent usage. As ISPs get infested by heavy users on low-cost unlimited plans, unlimited plans will either disappear or get marked up to compensate - this is exactly what TSI did two days ago after noticing the Unlimited average shooting up 60% over little more than a month, presumably in large part thanks to ex-Videotronites and October's 100GB/month cap. Another issue with capacity is that in order to deliver consistently low latencies and reliable service, the external links actually need to have significant overcapacity to keep traffic queues short on all links at all times and provide headroom for fail-over. There are very real costs to bandwidth and they do not go much below $0.04/GB in North America for the cheapest complete solutions. Bell and Videotron are clearly overcharging for the caps they have regardless of speeds... but the burden is very real for the smaller ISPs who compete on price with the rest like TSI. | |
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Re: Cancel my service, Please.said by Moonlight_x :
If ISPs had to buy enough capacity to guarantee that all users could simultaneously use the full advertised speed, internet access would cost around $7 per Mbps... Bell's 16Mbps service would need to cost over $150/month instead of the current $75/month..... Thank you very much, you have provided me with a clearer picture. I guess what I am asking for is to hear this explanation from the companies themselves instead of the double talk they give to us. I admit that 150-250gb caps are reasonable even for a online P2P/game user. | |
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Moonlight_x
Anon
2007-Nov-9 4:44 pm
Re: Cancel my service, Please.said by ossito16:I guess what I am asking for is to hear this explanation from the companies themselves instead of the double talk they give to us. I admit that 150-250gb caps are reasonable even for a online P2P/game user. The ISPs' hidden caps and various undisclosed practices are indeed annoying and the way many try to cover the facts is insulting/frustrating. The combination of total lack of transparency, overpriced plans, overpriced overage, sub-par customer and technical support do make dealing with most major ISPs a PITA. Those are all reasons why I plan to go with TSI near the end of my current internet contract... $30/200GB/month is much better than anything Bell and Videotron have to offer for a moderate downloader like me. | |
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hardwareBTW, the hardware they use is the sandvine equipment. They were clearly listed as a customer on the site for the past few years. | |
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Time to update your reviews everyone !!Yep, it's that time of year again to update your reviews of Bell Sympatico  Can't wait to see the 1.0 reviews pop up on the front page!  That should be warning enough to future customers not to go with Hell. Spread the love, Adi | |
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makeitrighteh
Anon
2007-Nov-5 3:23 pm
Spread the wordThe wallet and word of mouth have great power. If more Canadians were to become aware of this they would simply leave for another ISP or maby even stay on dial up. This crap with any ISP in any country needs to stop, I hope it slowly eats away at the industry.. | |
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money12342
Anon
2007-Nov-5 3:54 pm
i seeI see... so if i don't pay my internet bill, or get kicked off bell... the sync may stay on my line, and i can use another PPPoE @ $10... and have the sync for free.
That must be the issue, otherwise, bell shouldn't care. They are getting more money (IMO) from having their sub pay them, and pay someone else $10 for their bandwidth. Except now, people get to drop sympatico completely, goto teksavvy directly, and get the dsl line. Bell still gets their cut from teksavvy, but the bandwidth STILL goes through teksavvy, so it has to be more than JUST the p2p hogs.
Either that, or the bell ADSL system that routes the traffic to teksavvy / bell, are being really overloaded, and they must crackdown on the 'hogs'. | |
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Re: i seesaid by money12342 :
Either that, or the bell ADSL system that routes the traffic to teksavvy / bell, are being really overloaded, and they must crackdown on the 'hogs'.
That or, Bell just want to get rid of those annoying third party ISPs also known as "competition". Adi | |
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 DKSDamn Kidney Stones
join:2001-03-22
Owen Sound, ON |
Not alwaysThen there are those of us who have rock solid connections, never call tech support, don't need newsgroups and download 10-12 Gb/month, well under the "cap". Bell makes money from us as opposed to the few bandwidth hogs who are, apparently, causing network slowdowns. | |
|  root9
join:2005-04-08
Kitchener, ON |
root9
Member
2007-Nov-5 7:13 pm
Re: Bell Sympatico's War On 'Network Abusers' > HAHAHAOh Please, here we go again  Sympatico problems are: - BS [Bell Sympatico] servers are not optimized for peak loads [get better admins] - any BS MS [Microcrap] server attached to mainframe will slow down the whole area [chuck those Mirocrap servers] - way too many blocks / throttles by BS [rewrite code to better handle full access loads] - anyone using P2P, Skype, IRC, FTP servers etc. is being attacked wrongfully by Recording Industry and others and is put into a tarpit/honeypot leaving many connections open, average of 1400 per IP [block RIAA dumb servers and the likes] - users in area hooked to same server(s) have bad lines, bad configs etc. [go fix them] - 75 to 80% of BS customers still have old or bad lines - BS has a very large outstanding debt which they need to get under control by overcharging users, same as Rogers did previously. - Pressure from other providers is another factor in upping rates, throttling or charging more. - Mike Sabia's pet project of India support sucks and it's wasting major resources/cash. - last and the biggest mistake >> BS decided to join with Microcrap Now for some good news: - there is enough Black Fiber [not used / scheduled for expansion] to make every user have the ability of T1 connection and be used 24/7 without even a hickup, and if every person in Canada had their own server, and still have lots left over! Above average users sum up aprox. only 0.1% of BS users. Definitely not a reason to throttle at all! I suspect BS is forcing Teksavvy to up the rates, directly or indirectly. Another reason could be BS is planning on introducing 15 Mbps service. In any case it's evident BS is in big trouble. | |
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Bellunder
Anon
2007-Nov-6 2:13 am
The population of Canada is still increasing!With the Canadian dollar appreciating some 20 percent in the past year alone maybe sympatico should spent 20 percent more money instead of spending nothing or actually spending less than they did in previous years. This would solve their whole problem and it wouldn't even cost them anything. | |
| |  ReformCRTCSupport Your Independent ISP
join:2004-03-07
Canada |
Re: The population of Canada is still increasing!Michael Sabia can suck my Italian dick. | |
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Pay Up
Anon
2007-Nov-7 4:57 pm
Throttling"users of Sympatico that are abusive"
That says it all. | |
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MrUmbra
Anon
2007-Nov-12 11:01 am
I'm OK with my serviceI'm one who surfs the internet, checks my email, watches some streaming video and occassionly downloads a few gigabytes of software. My connection at 700 kilo bits/s is just fine and every thing works smoothly. It costs about $18 per month.
If a few 'bandwidth hogs' think it's their God Given right to interfere with my modest usage profile, I say shut them down. | |
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Can't wait to see the 1.0 reviews pop up on the front page! 
