Archive for Net Neutrality

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If You’re Canadian And You Care About The Internet, You need To Read This.

Posted in Commentary with tags , on April 1, 2008 by itnerd

I encourage all of my Canadian readers to surf to this link and sign this petition as well as read the website:

http://www.neutrality.ca/

As I’ve stated many times over the last few days, the net neutrality battle has arrived in Canada. Given that companies like Bell and Rogers seem not to understand the concept of net neutrality, it’s time that Canadians made them aware of it. Send this link to as many people as you can and encourage them to sign the petition as well. If Canadians don’t stand up for themselves, then the Internet in Canada will be a miserable place that only a few control. That my friends cannot be allowed to happen.

Update: I just came across another campaign to stop the insanity. Check out http://democraticmedia.ca/throttler and sign their petition as well.

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Bell Finally Responds To Throttled DSL Resellers

Posted in Commentary with tags , , on March 31, 2008 by itnerd

It took a while, but Bell who has caused no end of grief for itself, its DSL resellers, and customers of those DSL Resellers has now come up with an official response to the outcry caused by the throttling of things like BitTorrent. Check out this paragraph:

“Bell’s congestion and bandwidth management solutions apply to our entire DSL PPPoE (Point to Point Protocol over Ethernet) network, including both retail and wholesale services. To ensure optimal use of Internet network resources for all of our customers Bell has implemented Data Packet Inspection (DPI) on P2P file sharing and bit torrent applications. DPI identifies the packet mapping, but does not monitor, track, or access the data of your customers who are using P2P applications. Your customers can continue to use P2P services but they will not work as fast during peak periods. All other application functionality is not affected.”

This is dumb move given that the CBC for example is using BitTorrent to distribute shows like The Next Great Prime Minister. Not to mention that BitTorrent has lots of other legitimate uses (such as downloading LINUX software for example). To me it seems like Bell is trying to level the playing field between it’s Sympatico High Speed Internet offering that has throttled BitTorrent for some time and DSL resellers who don’t. After all, BitTorrent users are fleeing Bell (not to mention Rogers who does the same thing) to ISP’s like Teksavvy and Acanac because they don’t throttle anything (not to mention that their customer service is reportedly better than Bell which is not hard to believe from my experiences with Bell), which has to hurt Bell’s bottom line (even though Bell resells DSL service through these companies, they would make less money). Another possibility is that Bell is trying to cut out “rich media” (aka video, audio, etc) from sources other than CTVGlobeMedia (which Bell owns 20% of). It’s kind of an odd coincidence that they throttle BitTorrent within days of The Next Great Prime Minister being made available on BitTorrent. Perhaps I’ve watched one too many episodes of X-Files, but it’s an odd coincidence.

In either case, this is not good for Canadians who access the Internet. This needs to stop sooner rather than later, otherwise Canada in the long term will regret it.

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Net Neutrality In Canada – The Debate Starts Now

Posted in Commentary with tags , , , on March 28, 2008 by itnerd

You can now add Rogers to the list of ISP’s who do stupid things. This morning they announced that so called “bandwidth hogs” who exceed their allotted limits on Rogers’s networks will face service-fee penalties of up to $5 a gigabyte, to a maximum of $25 a month. That on top of the fact that they screw with certain types of Internet traffic (read: BitTorrent). So that’s the bad news…. What’s the good news you ask? The stupidity of Rogers and Bell (who not only screw with traffic on their Sympatico Internet service, but they screw with the traffic on the parts of their network that their resellers use) has gotten the attention of the Canadian Parliament. Here’s a quote from from Charlie Angus of the New Democratic Party who speaks on copyright and digital issues via an article posted on Globeandmail.com today:

“[Industry Minister] Jim Prentice cannot turn a blind eye while the telecommunication companies decide which lanes of digital traffic will be deliberately filled with potholes,” he said in a statement. “Protecting Net neutrality is a fundamental cornerstone in encouraging the development of a true knowledge economy.”

I’m glad to see someone is paying attention.

Given that Canada has a minority parliament, there is an opportunity to effect some real change here. If you’re a Canadian who reads my blog, you need to call your MP and tell them that what companies like Bell and Rogers are doing is harming not helping the Internet, and counterproductive to Canada as a whole. If you need help finding your MP, click here and search by postal code. If your MP needs a primer on net neutrality, you can send them this link. Besides telling your MP what they need to do, you also need to vote with your dollars. If you’re a Rogers or Bell customer, you should switch to an independent ISP such as Teksavvy or Acanac. While they still resell Bell DSL, at least Bell gets less dollars from you. If enough people did that, it would get Bell’s attention.

The bottom line is this: The net neutrality debate in Canada starts now. If we engage in this debate and express how fundamentally wrong this is, we can make Bell and Rogers cave the way Comcast did. Which would be good for Internet users in Canada and perhaps beyond.

The clock is ticking.

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BREAKING NEWS: Comcast To Stop Targeting BitTorrent Traffic

Posted in Commentary with tags , , on March 27, 2008 by itnerd

I just came across this article that says that the targeting of BitTorrent traffic by Comcast will end. Not only that, but Comcast will increase it’s broadband capacity so that it can handle this sort of traffic. In return BitTorrent will make it’s software more efficient and ensure that developers of BitTorrent clients learn how to do the same thing. Of course, the fact that the FCC was breathing down Comcast’s neck had absolutely nothing to do with this. But still, this is great news. Now if other ISP’s who screw with BitTorrent traffic will do the same, the world will be a better place. (Rogers, Bell, are you listening?)

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ISP’s To Bell: Stop Throttling Or We’ll Sue!

Posted in Commentary with tags , , , on March 26, 2008 by itnerd

I’m glad to see that ISP’s aren’t taking Bell’s attempt to throttle their resellers lying down. Canadian ISP Acanac is now telling customers that they’re considering legal action against Bell. I applaud their move, but I think more needs to be done. Canadian Internet users need to start urging their government to enact net neutrality as quickly as possible to stop nonsense like this from happening. If you check out this link, I think that this poster on DSLReports.com has the right idea. E-mail your MP, contact the competition bureau and the Industry Minister. Given that Canada’s Parliament is in a minority situation, this may be the ideal time to make this happen. But it will only work if lots of people do this. So get cracking!

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Bell Canada Throttles DSL Wholesalers Without Notice… WTF?

Posted in Commentary with tags , , , on March 25, 2008 by itnerd

From the “this is bloody stupid” file, comes the news that Bell Canada (the de-facto top telco in Canada) is throttling people who get DSL based Internet service from wholesalers (in other words, not from Bell). On top of that, they didn’t tell the wholesalers up front that they were doing this. The most noise is coming from users of Teksavvy who are with that ISP specifically because they don’t throttle anything such as BitTorrent (on top of the fact that they have superior customer service as rated by DSLreports.com). You can check out the original post on DSLreports.com that started the fun. Now the story is being picked up by Canadian tech lawyer Michael Geist and it’s being mentioned in Slashdot. The owners of Teksavvy have a meeting of some sort with Bell today to get some answers.

My take on this is simple. Bell has the right to do whatever it wants on it’s own service (which is Sympatico BTW). But if a wholesaler is buying DSL service they in my opinion have shouldn’t be messing with it (and not without some sort of prior notice). The problem is that Bell is the only game in many parts of Canada for DSL, so they may just say to wholesalers to FOAD, and everyone loses in the end. Here’s hoping that there’s a different outcome.

UPDATE: So much for hoping for the best. According to this, Bell Canada has confirmed that throttling is going on, they’re in their rights to do so, and if you don’t like it you can FOAD. Much as I thought they would. 🙁

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FCC & Net Neutrality – Round 2

Posted in Commentary with tags , , on March 19, 2008 by itnerd

It looks like the FCC is going to have a second look at the Net Neutrality issue. According to this post, the FCC has scheduled a new round of network neutrality & traffic shaping public hearings at Stanford on April 17. This is interesting as the FCC had denied that were going to do that not to long ago. Perhaps Comcast’s absolutely Comcastic stunt of hiring people to fill the seats in the last hearing made the FCC reconsider? Who knows. But it’s a good thing for anyone who is in favor of Network Neutrality.

One tip: Arrive early to get yourself a seat just in case Comcast has any evil ideas. 

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FCC To Slap Comcast…. Or Not

Posted in Commentary with tags , , on March 11, 2008 by itnerd

I just noticed this piece over at news.com which seems to indicate that the FCC is none too pleased about Comcast and their packet shaping activities. As a result, they are toying with the idea of doing something about it. Kevin Martin who is the head honcho over at the FCC said the following recently:

“A hallmark of what should be seen as a reasonable business practice is certainly whether or not the people engaging in that practice are willing to describe it publicly,”

If you’ve followed this story, Comcast wouldn’t admit to their packet shaping activities until the Associated Press proved that they were doing it. So it comes as no surprise that the FCC might take a dim view of that. The problem is, what can they truly do about it. The story points out that there are no net-neutrality laws on the books at the moment and the FCC’s own net-neutrality principles are not legally binding. Still, the Comcast circus might be enough to get the U.S. house and senate to pass some net-neutrality laws to stop this from happening in the future. In some ways, that might be worse (for Comcast and other ISP’s) then anything the FCC could/might do.

Perhaps someone with a legal background would be kind enough to leave a comment about what the FCC can do to Comcast. I’m sure we’d all like to gain some insight on this issue.

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Sandvine Stock Tanks – Comcast To Blame?

Posted in Commentary with tags , , on March 7, 2008 by itnerd

Sandvine Corporation, whose traffic shaping hardware is responsible for the packet shaping non-sense that the FCC is investigating Comcast over, tanked yesterday to a new low of $1.55 on the Toronto Stock exchange. That’s a drop of 42%. There’s a bunch of factors at work here:

  • The company warned yesterday that sales for its first quarter ended Feb. 29 will be about $8.2-million, plummeting 88% from a year earlier.
  • Full fiscal year revenue for Sandvine will be between $80-million and $85-million, down from the range of $100-million to $110-million estimated in December. That means annual growth of just 15%, compared with 132% a year earlier.
  • The FCC is looking at Comcast in terms of it violating its net-neutrality rules. Comcast is rumored to be Sandvine’s largest customer.

All of these will send investors heading to the exits.

Is this a long term thing? I doubt it. Just for giggles, lets say that a Democrat gets elected as President of the USA and the congress and senate fall into Democratic hands. There’s ZERO chance that the you will see any legislation that bans the use of this gear if that happens. Nor will a Republican president do anything similar. The problem is not the gear. It’s how it’s being used. But I do think that some ISP’s are going to think twice about buying and deploying this gear just because of the bad press that it generates (just ask Comcast). Perhaps some of them already have. Take a look at their press release section. Very few press releases have any names of companies that buy their gear. Not to mention that they’ve posted a document on net-neutrality that puts an interesting spin on the subject.

This one is worth watching.

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Comcast Tries To Stack The Deck In Their Favor

Posted in Commentary with tags , , on February 27, 2008 by itnerd

Comcast went in front of the FCC the other day and apparently tried to limit how much backlash that it would get from public by hiring “seat holders” to take up space that should have gone to the public. Comcast at first admitted to hiring people, but only to hold seats for their employees. Then when it was pointed out that not only did these “seat holders” not know what they were there for, and they were there from the wee hours of the morning, but they were still there when the FCC hearing started. Only then did Comcast fess up with the truth:

“Comcast spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice said it hired seat-holders only after an advocacy group called Free Press urged its backers to attend.

“For the past week, the Free Press has engaged in a much more extensive campaign to lobby people to attend the hearing on its behalf,” Philadelphia-based Comcast said in a statement.””

So, Comcast is afraid of having dissenting opinions about it’s packet shaping practices, and because of that it pulls stunts like this. One hopes that the FCC spanks them silly. That would be Comcastic.

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