Except When it Doesn't...
Earlier this month
we noted that Canadian cable company Rogers was given until September 27 to fix their broken network management platform, which for many of the ISP's users has resulted in Rogers throttling legitimate applications and games like World of Warcraft. Rogers issued their
response (pdf) last night at around 6:30. In it, the company insists their current solution to their errant throttling is working well -- namely the "whitelisting" of impacted games:
Whitelisting means creating a policy that will not apply ITMPs to packets going to and from a game manufacturer’s servers no matter how the traffic is classified. This can usually be accomplished in a very short period of time. Whitelisting is effective where the game manufacturer’s server can be located. The second stage is a long term solution that involves a software upgrade created by Cisco and deployed on our network that will correct the misclassification. We note that we did not use whitelisting until recently...
In other words, Rogers hasn't technically fixed the problem -- they're just having to go in manually and whitelist any game or application caught by their overly aggressive network management policies. That's something users in our forums say hasn't worked very well, especially when companies tend to change server locations. Groups like
Canada's Open Media argue that Rogers effectively ignored the CRTC's directive:
“The way the CRTC has put this to Rogers is that the CRTC expects a plan with dates to have this misclassification issue resolved. This just simply hasn’t happened here. The CRTC has been pretty clear to Rogers they want no possibility of misclassification here on any programs, games etc. Simply whitelisting on consumer complaint here will create undue preference to games, and applications reported...Until that happens, if Blizzard moves any of their servers (as they did last summer), the whitelist will no longer apply to World of Warcraft traffic, and we'll be back in this same situation all over again..
The ball is now back in the CRTC's court.
