TekSavvy → Re: Investigating countermeasures

Realistically, you want a solution that is widespread/worldwide and not some local hack. You want something that could be implemented in home routers as well as Gabe's ERXs.

Another approach is simply to prove to Bell that their fancy Ellacolya boxes are stupid.

If every alternative ISP were to make available a 2 gig file on a local web server (HTTP), and get all its customers to download that file between 8 and 9 one day, it would bypass the Bell filters and overwhelm the Bell network. Sort of a denial of service attack against Bell that would prove that their stupid throttling doesn't manage their network properly.

Do this every night until Bell relents and agrees to drop the throttling.

Gabe's ERXs ??

Do you have something in mind? I'm not being throttled yet, as far as I can see, but I don't use any BT. I am however not pleased with this as, if I need to use BT that one time every so often, I don't want it capped at 30k/s

On another note, to the rest of the people in here, has anyone noticed if FTP transfers are being throttled? I mean, if they have no problem throttling NNTP, why not go full force right? heh.

I also want confirmation that *anything* encrypted is being throttled. I use ALOT of encrypted data transfer, from SSH to sftp to imap/pop3 TLS/SSL. There's absolutely no way in hell they are going to stop me from using this stuff.

So Teksavvy should host a "REAL" linux ISO that every user downloads at say 9PM EST? And I'm sure "someone" could even write a neat little app so that you don't even need to be home, it could auto download/delete the file for you at the exact same time every single day, and it could even go further and compinsate for time zone changes if any.

It's not just BT users, if you use i.e YouTube or similar it will add up really fast towards the cap(s).

Sadly, there is likely no such solution. The only short-term solution is a legal injunction, and that's for the ISPs to look into. They're all meeting in Toronto today, or so we think. Rocky announced that he was going to Toronto to meet with people today. Bell is in Montreal, so the only logical thing would be for the leaders of the various independent ISPs to be having a meeting.

Acanac has already said that group legal action is the likely recourse, as DSLR reported.

So, aside from that, the possible solutions will be client-side. The ideal solution is a PPTP VPN. Simple, because it will take over all internet connectivity on your machine, and is supported by Windows without any third party software. We'll just have to wait until we're throttled and can investigate issues.

Funny, being annoyed that I'm NOT throttled...

I think he means the ones that hook TSI up to Bell's network, not your Vegas stage show which you've nicknamed "Gabe's Fabulous ERXs".

A better idea is that Teksavvy become a VPN endpoint/provider themselves. So if a client opts in for such a service, they will instead get a private IP for their PPPoE link, then have to establish a VPN connection to a Teksavvy server to get a public IP so as far as Bell can tell it's just an SSL link (or a random stream of UDP packets).

I'd personally suggest OpenVPN, because it's free/open source, supports multiple platforms, can encrypt into TCP or UDP packets, etc.

Of course, the best solution is to get Bell to just stop fking around with traffic that isn't theirs to mess with...

But wouldn't Bell then throttle all VPN connections - I believe Rogers does this?

>Bell is in Montreal, so the only logical thing would be for
>the leaders of the various independent ISPs to be having a
>meeting.

Bell may have far more than a token presence in Montréal, but a lot more gets done out of Trwanna than quebecers are led to believe.

And yes, Rocky drove to Toronto yesterday night for meetings with others ISPs today.

EBox has already signaled he would work with Rocky. What is not sure is whether large ISPs like AEI/Cybersurf etc will join in.

If they do that, then more people would be impacted by the throttling, and the more people complaining about it the better chance there is of them getting forced to scale back the extent of the throttling.

OpenVPN supports whole packet encryption as well, I'm not sure how effective that is against VPN throttling but AFAIK as far as they can tell it's a (udp) packet of random junk.

Now, by all means someone correct me if i'm wrong, but wouldn't this not work anyway?

From what I've been made to understand here, they are basically throttling before the ISP even sees the traffic. Thus, regardless what you do, you'll be impacted by them, no?

By before the ISP sees the traffic, I mean physically from the C.O. to the ISP's pop or something...

Yes, they are inspecting the traffic before it reaches the ISP. So, as long as the traffic they're inspecting isn't P2P (or another throttled protocol), they won't throttle it.

Except early reports are they they are throttling more than just P2P right now.

I can't do any real investigation until I get throttled, though. Which will hopefully be soon.

Funny, eh? Wishing I was throttled...

My Windows XP update is going to take 19 hours. apparently I'm downloading service pack 3, RC2. Last I checked, Microsoft was not a BT client

It took me 2+ hours to install Vista SP1. At least an hour of that was downloading. It actually pauses every little step of the way and does other stuff while downloading.