The Unintended Consequences of Rogers’ Packet Shaping

A day after the government confirmed its telephone deregulation plan over the objection of a Parliamentary committee and moved forward on plans to create a new, independent telecommunications consumer agency, it is worth pointing to a necessary complaint once that agency is operational (and to the CRTC in the meantime).  For the past 18 months, it has been open secret that Rogers engages in packet shaping, conduct that limits the amount of available bandwidth for certain services such as peer-to-peer file sharing applications.  Rogers denied the practice at first, but effectively acknowledged it in late 2005.  Net neutrality advocates regularly point to traffic shaping as a concern since they fear that Rogers could limit bandwidth to competing content or services.  In response to the packet shaping approach, many file sharing applications now employ encryption to make it difficult to detect the contents of data packets.  This has led to a technical "cat and mouse" game, with Rogers now one of the only ISPs in the world to simply degrade encrypted traffic.

This raises many issues but I would like to focus on just two in this posting.  First, not only is BitTorrent legal in Canada, but a growing percentage of the file swapping on BitTorrent clients is authorized.  This includes a substantial amount of open source software development, independent films, and other large files.  By reducing the bandwidth available for this application, Rogers is impairing the ability for Canadian artists to distribute their work and hampering the development of open source software in Canada.  Moreover, this could lead to a situation where Rogers' own content is unfairly advantaged over competing content.

If that was not bad enough, there is now speculation at my own university that the packet shaping is making it very difficult for University of Ottawa users to use email applications from home.   The University of Ottawa uses a persistent SSL encryption technology for the thousands of professors and students who access their email from off-campus.  There is speculation that Rogers is mistakenly treating the email traffic as BitTorrent traffic, thereby creating noticeable slowdowns.  Indeed, I have been advised that the University computer help desk has received a steady stream of complaints from Rogers customers about off-campus email service.

If true, this form of network interference – implemented with virtually no transparency and now affecting basic Internet services such as email – demonstrates why a dedicated consumer complaints commission is a good start, but a place to complain is not enough.  The solution lies in creating mandatory net neutrality provisions to ensure that essential communications tools such as email are not surreptitiously degraded.


  1. Is not Rogers selling their customers a package of x/kbps and x bandwidth/month? If so are they not violating their own promise of speed/bandwidth usage on their network?

  2. If every Rogers customer that it is experiencing these problems were to switch ISPs, then Rogers might get the message. For the moment, at least, Bell is not engaging in similar practises. I am a Sympatico customer for that very reason. The marketplace can just as easily force net neutrality if it is allowed to work.

  3. Is it really up to Rogers to degrade BitTorrent services in order to thwart file sharing? As far as I know Rogers doesn’t own the copyright to any of the content being shared so the real reason for them to slowdown the traffic is to just save themselves bandwidth. By taking bandwidth away from the from the few people who use it the most they are effectively saying ‘your unlimited bandwidth plan actually has a cap – that way we don’t have to increase our capacity’.

    I agree that people should get to do whatever they want with their bandwidth, and hey, if you go over the transfer limit of the month you pay extra or get cutoff, and looking at their site I don’t see any internet plans with a transfer limit.

  4. > First, not only is BitTorrent legal in Canada, but a
    > growing percentage of the file swapping on BitTorrent
    > clients is authorized. This includes a substantial amount
    > of open source software development, independent films,
    > and other large files.

    First and foremost Bittorrent is simply a protocol. Like HTTP, FTP, VOIP protocols, various e-mail protocols… etc. A means of transferring arbitrary data. Content agnostic. The first sentence quoted above suggests that their is some argument for making Bittorrent illegal. There is none. Only the most authoritarian or ignorant states would outlaw a data transfer protocol.

    Second, it is not only independent films (although that would be sufficient in itself) but also big studio productions have partnered with commercial services for video distribution through bittorrent. See (who I think partnered with Universal), and which distributes BBC shows and movie trailers.

  5. You’re not supposed to be able to screw with your clients this way on the internet- it’s the one place you’re almost guaranteed that they will talk to each other.

    I can’t code very well, but if anyone can, I’ll pay for domain registration and as much hosting as I can to get a site up that encourages a boycott. My contact info and tirade can be found here: [ link ]

  6. Roger’s states that the main reason for traffic shaping is that 10% of the users are using 90% of the bandwidth, thus causing slow downs in certain areas. I have been dealing with this Rogers Throttling problem for a long time now and it has gotten worse in the past 3 months. So much so that I am considering switching ISPs. So if Rogers is throttling due to bandwidth issues, what protocols or services will be throttled next? Will youtube become throttled because too many people are watching online video? Will voip become throttled because too many people are switching to voip from landline telephones? So if Rogers is going to throttle to certain limits, then these limits should be impossed on all internet traffic and not what is chosen by Rogers.

  7. For those who find extremely dislike Rogers or/and Bell, go to [ link ] for the list of ISP that provide UNLIMITED bandwidth faster speed and CHEAP

  8. The myth of unlimited bandwidth and tran
    John, Trevor, there is not one ISP in Canada that offers truly unlimited transfer and bandwidth. In fact most ISP cap at somewhere between 50 and 100 gigs/mo. On a cable modem from Shaw for example most people are capped to 60gigs/mo, which is more than enough.

    For rogers, they sell up to 100gigs/mo on their extreme package, and their typical packages are capped at 60gb/mo.

    That rogers cares how much bandwidth you use up to your plan limits is disturbing, because it throws out their 90-10 claims, as they’re really saying that they are punishing people for using the service they bought. The new consumer complaints department might want to hear about this justification for limiting what you do with your service.

    I’d recommend that rogers start setting the caps on their plans in relation to what they’re actually able to offer. If they are offering 10gigs a month, don’t call it 60, and so on.

    [ link ] for rogers plan comparison.

    You’ll note that their packages are not broken out to tell you that secure email will go slower than their ultra-light package in terms of speed.

    If not net neutrality, than at least truth in advertising?

  9. You guys are not getting the point. Rogers only has a certain amount of upstream frequencies available. Bit torrent is killing the upstream and affecting the whole neighborhood. They really don’t care what you do with your downstream just the upstream. (I go over 250GB every month) Now if you all wanted BT they would have to upgrade their whole network at a HUGE cost to a company already in huge Debt and raise their prices a lot.

  10. I’m sure that Torrent users are consuming more Rogers bandwidth than most. However, I for one am paying for that bandwidth. I pay top dollar for a premium service; I expect to be able to use it.

    Secondly, it is one thing for Rogers to cap speed, gigabytes, uploads, downloads, or whatever. It is quite another to entirely disable a legal, valid Internet protocol. That’s effectively the case with Torrent… my upload speeds are so tiny that I’m effectively unable to use Torrent at all. Why sell me 800 Kbps uplink if I’m not allowed to use it?

    I know Rogers would rather see me go than stay, and they are very close to getting their wish. I only hope that we can get some sort of legislation that will prevent other ISPs from considering this sort of short-sighted ‘solution’ to their cash-flow issues.

  11. @Mike- I agree with Fungo. First off, bittorrent is used for many legitimate things, so \”shaping\” the bittorrent traffic is punishing the innocent for the file sharing of others. Second, they\’re doing the same thing for ALL ENCRYPTED TRAFFIC. Including VPNs for work, remote emails, online banking, etc. That\’s like swatting a fly with a Buick. Encrypted communications is one of the fundamental requirements of doing anything productive online. I don\’t want my bank info, my work email, and my VPN traffic transferring in plaintext over the public network, and now if I were a Rogers client, my only other option would be to try to do these things at a much slower rate than I am paying for.

    If they thing that this is going to make them a net profit, then good for them, but it should be something they have to disclose on every ad. That said, it is not going to make them money in the long run because eventually people will get tired of being jerked around and start switching ISPs.

  12. It is to Costly to leave rogers for most. They impose what I call Customer Entrapment. they have most of their customers under Bundles and 2 year Contracts that save their customers 15% of each service they bundle. But make you pay all the savings back if you cancel just 1 of you services you have bundled. I signed up to Rogers homephone for 2 months. when I signed up the guy said it is only 20 dollars for first 6 months then it will be 30 dollars after that. I thought great sign up incentive at the time but it is not their Idea for it. After 2 months I disconnected due to the internet shapping and had to pay back the 20 dollars in savings I had earned so far, so mainly I was holding their money not getting any savings.

  13. I went through this excersise in March, the modem from Rogers was online less than two days and returned within five. Doing business with Shaw, or Videotron, or whomever was not an option.

    I’m a long time DSL subscriber with 20GB/month cap. That’s all I want. I’ve been with my current ISP since the mid-nineties for one reason only – they do not block or shape my traffic in any way.

    What I do need is bandwidth. Pure speed. I’d love to do what I’m doing now at 100Mb/s rather than 1.5Mb/s under the same monthly cap. I’d then only need to be connected for minutes rather hours. In the nation’s capital, one would think procurring it would be easy. A competitve market, right? Wrong. Only Bell or Rogers can install a line to my property. At least with DSL, I do not need to subscribe to Sympatico.

    I don’t see this changing until the current duopoly is broken (different players – same model across the country). Compounding matters further is the fact that both are content providers whose core business can now be said to be broadcasting. These comglomerates are not interested in being a simple common carrier. They only need to dample in the infrastructure to ensure it remains unattractive to competitors.

    What I’d like to see the CRTC do is seperate the broadcasters/content providers from the infrastructure that we own. We’ve paid for it afterall, maybe it’s time the municipalities managed it as a service similar to sewage and water. This way, the municipality could maintain it and in turn lease TV, phone, internet, etc. to whomever is best able to meet the need. Run a single fibre optic line to the property (or not – whatever!) and then the owner can shop for services according to the community norm.

    Anyhow, I don’t see this changing until we stop the lunatics from running the asylum. There’s just too much money in running a Sportsnet or a TSN for them to allow you to watch something from someone else! A captive market is all they want and have.

    Thanks, CRTC.

  14. Ezzy Elliott says:

    Are Rogers\’shaping all encrypted traffic including port 443 which is used for secure socket layer ecommerce transactions?

    If port 443 is unshaped it is possible to get around shaping by using an anonymous p2p client that spoofs SSL on port 443 e.g. kerjodando p2p( or Ants p2p.

  15. Hi, friends in Canada.
    I really hope You all will fight for real unlimited broadband capacity. In Sweden an ISP capping users would not last for long. I seldom go under 30GB but usually over 70GB in total download and upload (most upload). And that is per day, not per month.

  16. Anonymous says:

    Jeremy Clark
    I would like to see the evidence that Rogers is simply throttling all encrypted traffic. There are packet sniffers that can break the RC4 encryption on bittorrent traffic. For example:

    [ link ]

    So simply the fact that encrypted BT traffic is being throttled isn’t evidence enough that all encrypted traffic is being throttled.

    However this shift in policy would not surprise me. In many, many areas of security, the modus operandi was “permit override” (by default every thing is good unless if I explicitly say its bad). Slowly things are shifting to “deny override” (by default everything is uncool unless if I explicitly say its cool).

    Currently, traffic shaping is largely permit override (its fastlane unless if its on port x, or has application header y, or…) but if its allowed to continue, it will have to move to default override to get ahead in the “cat and mouse” game between service provider and customer.

    Throttling encrypted traffic though is very disturbing to me at a philosophical level–its essentially a negative incentive to protect your online privacy.


    Rogers shouldn’t advertize that they can upload at a such a rate and for so many Gigabytes, if they really can not do it. If in reality Rogers can’t have people uploading 100 GB a month, or at whatever upload rate they promise, then it shouldn’t pretend that they can.

    What is really going on is Rogers told its customers that the service they were selling was capable of some level of performance, but in reality it either isn’t capable, or they are to cheap to admit that they don’t really want to deliver what they sold the customer (I really favour the latter explanation: pissing off your higher cost customers is a no brainer: you want to make them leave). And this is not an honest mistake. Rogers has been lying to its customers about real restrictions on its network for a long time. And the argument Mike makes about “everyone” using BitTorrent is ridiculous. Rogers knows that some people will use the connection more than others. It has statiticians and engineers who, I don’t doubt, can make pretty accurate predictions about how customers would use the network. It can then set caps on its customers, knowing full well that while everyone wouldn’t always be using their connection to the level of their cap, the proportion who then did wouldn’t degrade the experience of all.

    Rogers should stop lying to its customers and advertize the real restrictions on its connections, or it should bite the bullet and buy more bandwidth for its customers to use (if that is really the problem), or it should be punished for trying to save money by nakedly screwing-over particular high use customers.

    And it shouldn’t spy on what its customers are using its connections for. I really hope someone has the guts to sue them. It is unneccessary for Rogers to know a packet’s contents to route it properly. It is only doing this not because they think it is certainly legal, but because no one in government or their customers has had the guts to call them to stop screwing their customers.

    PS, I use telus. At my service level, they have well known caps of ~ 100 GB/mo upload. If you go over it, they email you with a warning. Simple. Effective, and Fair.

  18. Slashdot User says:

    You’ve been Slashdotted.

  19. I quit using Rogers immediately once they started the shaping. Not only were they shaping but they were sending reset packets and just dropping TCP connections altogether. I couldn’t use my connection and I was running 0 p2p application. Everything I did was simply internet chat yet I couldn’t maintain a stable connection. I complained repeatedly to rogers and finally got away without paying a disconnect fee. If you want to keep a connection longer than a hour I recommend DSL over Rogers Cable.

  20. @ Kevin – Truly Unlimited.

  21. It’s clear that Rogers are throttling all encrypted traffic. I have a DSL and a rogers link at home, and I can hit the same service over both routes. Basically, if the packet isn’t clearly identifiable as http, smtp, pop or imap, rogers throttles it. It’s a damned shame, because I used to really like Rogers- it’s always been reliable- and is twice as fast (6mb vs 3mb).

    I also spoke with cable reseller services and they are constrained by rogers’ infrastructure, so since the throttling occurs near the head-end, all resellers are affected too.

    Rogers is also guilty of encrypting free-to-air digital television signals- if I had a television antenna I could receive HDTV signals that rogers only supplies on their wire encrypted.

    If I could do something to protest to rogers I would, but they’re deaf to all concerns. We need strong government level intervention with neutrality and right of access laws put into place.

    And to think that when I moved to Canada in 2001 I thought it was so advanced. Clearly since then, Europe, which has mostly mandated these standards, has progressed rapidly, with the restrictive/no practice countries (Canada and the US) being left in their dust.

  22. big-galoot says:

    freedom nut
    Being throttled down is bad, no argument there. Telus\’ most evil transgression to date has been their complete shut-down of access to over 600 internet sites. By a combination of evil intent, and complete stupidity, as reported here in 2005. A whole bunch of innocent sites felt the bumbling wrath of Telus against a site receptive to the unionists toiling under their reign.
    Net neutrality for all. Only the evil have reason to suppress freedom of speech and commerce. Here\’s where we need some oversight with real teeth.

  23. Anon Coward says:


    Just to brighten your day, Telkom in South Africa (the only DSL provider) charges R780 p/m for 3GB cap on 384kbps down, 128kbps up. Both downstream and upstream count towards the one cap.

    BTW, R780 is roughly US$109, CAD125, and for the person from Sweden, 81 euros.

    Enjoy your day.

  24. Moving to a Metered Usage Internet?

    What I’d like to see instead is ISPs going to a straight “metered usage” plan, where each and every bit transmitted over the wire (say, 10 cents per megabyte) is billed. This way, “heavyweight” users pay their fair share, and low-activity users get a price break.

  25. I’ve experienced the mysterious no-specified cap limit before, and now I have to tolerate this packet throttling — I don’t think so!
    Sign me up for whatever petition you guys got going, including protest rallies, and such.

  26. In the context of a metered bandwidth, prices would have to drop year after year as faster and faster network technologies become available. This is in contract to water, gas, and electricity where prices just go up year after year.

  27. TO: Anon Coward from South Africa
    Sweden uses Kronor (SEK), not Euros. So, that would be about 750 SEK.

  28. Azureus Staff says:

    About using our wiki as source
    Hello, i’m one of the Azureus wiki maintainers.

    I want to add that the “blocks encrypted traffic” refers to encrypted bittorrent traffic. It’s not exactly clean room research investigating their shaping methods, thus we can’t say what exactly they’re going against, but it seems not to be just the encryption but also about traffic being bidirectional and multi-destination. So yes, it’s kind of dragnet fishing, but we can’t predict what kinds of encrypted traffic will be affected.

  29. I had Rogers and used a VPN to work. It was abysmally slow and unusuable. Skype too would also not connect and calls would drop.

    I’ve switched to Bell, but this really shouldn’t be legal. Net Neutrality is vital and it’s companies like Rogers that are a huge threat to the internet.

  30. Packet shaping is a flow based technology. You have to keep track of every flow. A TCP Syn flood on too many ports between too many ip addresses (>100K flows/min) without the corresponding TCP Syn Acks will grind the shaper to a halt and they have to turn it off.

  31. Tassia
    I’ve been in Toronto since September, and before that was out west my whole life using Shaw Cable. I took Rogers under the assumption that the services would be the same, I was gravely mistaken. Shaw had a cap, and I only ever exceeded it once (it was 70GB at the time, this was nearly 5 years ago though). I never had a complaint with Shaw, it was fast, reliable, and the TV guide was easy to navigate.

    Rogers is horribly slow, I lose connection hourly, and their digital TV set-up is archaic at best. Not to mention their customer service is just bloody disgusting. My mother called in to ask why our modem was turned off, they treated her like a 5 year old. They “claimed” that there was a virus on one of the computers in my home, and that she would have to pay someone to remove it for her (they gave her a company name too, can you believe that?). I angrily called them back, and threatened to take my money elsewhere if they did not turn our connection back on. I also cited the “Buyer’s Remorse” right, meaning I could get out of their 1 year contract scott-free for 30 days.

    I’ll be moving back to Vancouver Island by the end of the year, and I will be ever so happy to have Shaw back. Rogers is horrible.

  32. edovale
    Could this be the reason why my vonage VOIP phone service has been so crappy lately? Calls keep on dropping all the time.. it is becoming really annoying.

  33. \”me\”
    What is more important is to regulate that infracstructure companies (such as Rogers and Bell (and Bell already does)) wholesale their services on reasonable terms. While it may be difficult to regulate what they do with their own service, it is not difficult to regulate that they wholesale their services reasonably. This, in turn, fosters the growth of small independant network providers of all types — and thay provide the effective competition to add choice and check unreasonable service restrictions.

  34. To quote the article:

    “Moreover, this could lead to a situation where Rogers’ own content is unfairly advantaged over competing content.”

    its actually not a “could lead to” situation, they are already causing a situation whereby a competitor has a disadvantage.

    In my case I use Primus “TalkBroadband” for my VoIP phone which is in competition with “Rogers Home Phone”… a few years ago Rogers introduced caps on data transfer (different depending on your plan). Interestingly enough, the data from the Rogers version of the “net phone” is not calculated against your data transfer cap, but my Primus TalkBroadband connection *is* counted.

    Practically speaking for my setup, the amount of data the VoIP phone transfers is negligible and I don’t notice the amount of data as causing a problem, however they are clearly giving “unfairly advantag” to their own service.

  35. Anonymous says:

    /sarcasm on
    I agree with most points wholeheartedly. But the system that “isn’t” capable of supporting all the bandwidth that people want (regardless of what it is they are doing with it), IS capable of digital video on demand, and voip….oh thats just tragic isn’t it.
    /sarcasm off

    I live on the edge of a business area and have had more than one brush with the all seeing eye about “bandwidth usage issues”. This was when they advertised “unlimited” bandwidth with out clearly pointing out the limitations. And thats what this is all about. Rogers and some others see a means of marketing the content that your…. borrowing. They are going to be the content delivery stream for the next generation. There is no two ways about it. Unless we get off our giga-greedy butts and do something about it.

    I don’t think that they built a network capable of providing all our wants AND their marketing plans. One of the two is going to win…take a guess who. Bit torrenting is like what the mp3 did to the music industry, to the ISP industry. A surprise as you walk past an alley by a gang of hungry ….well I won’t go there but you get the picture. And thats the story of the entire internet.”Wow look what they made.” “Hmmm I wonder what I can do with it?.” “Look he’s doing something we didn’t expect….we MUST stop him.” And they can’t, the cats outa-the-bag, like it’s tail is on fire. And all “they” can do is find a way to make a)money from it. or b) So hard or complicated to do that the the average user will be uninterested (remember what cable did to usenet? wash rise repeat.

    Making this a municipal service could be extremely destructive in so many ways that I’d only consider this an option if it was very carefully implemented. And I mean very carefully implemented. Could you imagine that your house would be worth say, at the most outrageous, $10,000 less than your neighbour across the street because he lived in a better implemented network neighbourhood. Now wouldn’t that make you froth at the mouth. OR higher rates because of where you built a house…not to mention taxes.

    I don’t think that the previous level of dishonesty is appropriate, and it continues to go on. its time to stop bitching at each other and start nagging our politicians in to action.

    Good luck and good night

  36. Owner, Developer
    does this work?

  37. Owner, Developer
    I’m completely appreciative of Rogers’ shaping traffic — and degrading some traffic over others. Yes I am a Rogers’ customer, and yes I use Bittorrent and other now-degraded protocols for many legitimate reasons, and yes I’ve noticed them much slower for well over a year now. And the funny part is, I support open and available services, and do not support packet sniffing and service restrictions such as this. But I do support this one.

    It’s very simple. I get beautiful, gorgeous, 550Kb/s instant and sustained download speeds on everything else. That’s not only most of what I do, that’s most of what most people do.

    Last year, every ISP, one at a time, started to block port 25 for outbound e-mail. So now I use another port. It was very annoying, both for me and for my clients. Of course, it was justified in order to simply reduce many spam bots. Well this is the same.

    Sure it hinders legitimate usage. But it also prevents illegitimate, illegal, and certainly unethical practices. Each of which slow down the network for everyone.

    As for “giving Rogers’ content an advantage” that’s just bull. Any developer/provider has to deal with all sorts of issues and concerns to avoid things that may or may not be necessary/advisable. Hey, FireFox causes daily headaches for me — some designs are simply not possible. But I don’t tell clients that there shouldn’t be other browsers. I tell them that there are risks and restrictions to consider.

    If all of my unencrypted traffic is fast, and my encrypted traffic is slow, I’ll survive. This decade, most Internet traffic is unencrypted. Next decade, everything will be faster across the board.

    I support a world where encrypted traffic is always two generations behind. If for no other reason than the simple fact that it cannot be optimized because it cannot be read. In this case, optimizing comes in the form of legitimizing.

    In a year where ISP’s are being threatened for carrying illegal traffic, I support trying to do something.

    Stop doing unethical things, and you won’t have to worry about people trying to stop you.

  38. Marty R. Milette says:

    “Stop doing unethical things, and you won’t have to worry about people trying to stop you.”

    Yes, citizen — if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. Go about your business in clear text and don’t worry about anyone monitoring your traffic. If you use any form of encryption you MUST be a criminal.

    I, for one, am against ANY form of traffic monitoring by government OR private businesses. First it is traffic shaping (cheating people out of what they were sold), then knocking off the competition (With a telco ADSL, how long before VoIP stops working?), then outright spying through everything from your email messages to your surfing habits. (Many ISPs ALREADY sell your surfing data without you even knowing.)

    The ONLY way to protect private data is to use some form of encryption. The Internet is a “public”, untrusted network and sending any kind of confidential data over it is idiotic — as is punishing people who take the minimal reasonable precaution of using appropriate forms of encryption.

    Will Canada become the same “police state” as the USA, Russia and several other countries? A place where ISPs must route all traffic through the RCMP for monitoring. (Ostensibly ‘for your protection’.) Russia, has been doing it since day 1 — the USA and AT&T recently exposed. What’s next?

  39. None
    I suspected this for a while now, I did do some test, result where not conclusive but I do belive, Roger not only degrades the traffic but also blacklist certian ports. Switch ISP to send the message, and complain, maybe sue.

  40. Anonymous says:

    In response to the packet shaping approach, many file sharing applications now employ encryption to make it difficult to detect the contents of data packets. This has led to a technical “cat and mouse” game, with Rogers now one of the only ISPs in the world to simply degrade encrypted traffic.

    It is not so difficult, they are using Cisco SCE 1000 which are very expensive toys that can identify the type of traffic, even encrypted bittorent.

  41. “I support a world where encrypted traffic is always two generations behind.”

    That has to be some of the dumbest things I’ve heard. Do you really think its a good idea for everything to be unencrypted? So you’d want stuff like credit card information and such to be transfered over the internet in unencrypted manner, AND being sniffed and processed by the ISP every single time people make a purchase on the internet? What if government agencies had to transfer some data over the internet? Do you really want them to choose between transferring the data encrypted over like a year rather than a few days unencrypted?(yes I’m exaggerating a bit) I wouldn’t because I’m sure *someone* would choose the faster way. The reason why encryption is so important is because identity theft happens, and encryption is the best way against it. What you are suggesting is to ignore how advancements in technology works. Why don’t we ban electricity all together because electricity could be used to power tools that could be used for illegal purposes? Let’s all head back to the stone age while we’re at it. Oh wait, we can’t either, I’m sure there’s *some* illegal uses for stones.. like hitting someone with it.

    Also, “Sure it hinders legitimate usage. But it also prevents illegitimate, illegal, and certainly unethical practices. Each of which slow down the network for everyone. ” That is the equivalent of saying something like “If we randomly jail people driving around in cars, its okay because I’ll also randomly catch criminals with stolen cars too, and since this affects everyone equally, its okay”. I don’t know about you, but that’s one hell of a crappy reasoning.

  42. dave in us says:

    Competition will solve this problem faster than gov’t oversight. Sure, the actual cable to my house gives me two transit options just like ya’ll (cable and pots/dsl) but when it comes to the policies and pricing I have the choice of dozens of ISP’s. The cable and phone companies are *compelled* to allow other ISP’s to sell service using their physical network at a competitive rate. Don’t like Comcast’s or Verizon? No problem, there are dozens of national and regional ISP’s that can offer you your broadband.

    It’s not a perfect system but it does prevent you from being held hostage by the two companies that have wire to your home.

  43. ole_curmudgeon says:

    I’ve never understood why the laws regarding privacy & spying that apply to my telephone communications, did not instantly apply to my [our] internet communications.

    I interpret anything more than the monitoring of my grossomotto d/l and u/l limits [as per my SHAW contractuial agreement] as constituting spying [which is apparently a crime].

    Monitoring my/our protocols, [ftp, torrent, ports, etc..] should constitute spying and a crime.

    Why is it that if I was to “monitor” then internet protocols of my neighbors, I would be charged as a criminal, but it’s perfectly legal for the recording industry ???


  44. Anonymous says:

    I was a Torontonian for over 6 years, and lived right-smack in the center. For practically the entire time I lived there I was using Rogers internet – comically, I didn\’t even own a television and had no intent to subscribe to Rogers\’ television services. Eventually, I even convinced them to stop charging me for it.

    When I was a Rogers customer, I had no complaints for the most part – they even didn\’t mind that I was running a server of all sorts with my residential connection. (Didn\’t mind or didn\’t know??)

    A few years ago, there was a wide-spread, exponential increase in spam, so Rogers took it upon themselves to forbid the use of tcp port 25 (smtp/outgoing email) – this i thought was a hilarious attempt to thwart something they couldn\’t comprehend. So, at my work we switched our email server to listen on port 24 – wow, genius.

    In any event, there are always solutions to these sorts of problems aside from arguing about our supposed freedoms. I mean specifically our freedom to avoid being watched, which I am 100% in agreement with, and also our freedom to communicate – especially if we\’re paying for that freedom.

    For instance, why not author a \’spread-spectrum\’ peer-to-peer client and server that would operate on some of the same principals as bluetooth?

    One could negotiate the details of the \’spread\’ algorithm under SSL, and then it could be so completely obfuscated, that they wouldn\’t even have a clue as to what protocol you were using. It would necessitate that some supernodes existed, but hey, people use skype, so why wouldn\’t they use this?

    For example, with a filesharing program, one could a) rearrange the order of the packets, b) have a wildly hashed, cryptographically-shared scheme of port-skipping (much like frequency hopping), and c) automatically insert sparratic pauses in the uploads. As long as there were supernodes on the network it would be fairly tough to nail down.

    Just a suggestion…

    ps: oh yeah… the Rogers support people are definitely not very useful.

    pps: I sure am glad to be leeching off the university network, living over here across the pond 😉

  45. Uh oh, Rogers is losing money? awww.. poor babies. What a second. As I recall Ted Rogers is a multi millionaire? Maybe even a billionaire? and rogers is losing money… that’s a shame. I say we do what Chris above has written. Let’s do it!

  46. OntarionHoliday says:

    common ppl
    Lets all be perfectly honest. The only reason that people are upset is because they can’t steal things quick enough, or it’s quick down, but their share ratios suck and they get banned from the pirate sites. None of the legitimate bittorrent sites (i.e, not pirate) care about your upload ratios, so it’s only member of the pirate ones that are moaning. Cable has limited upstream capacity as it was made of a client server model of internet, not this ‘everyone a server model’, so lets save it for legitimate uses.

    If your bittorrent *is* part of the

  47. And to think: my office has been paying for all our employees to use Rogers Cable modem’s to VPN back into our office from home! Wow. I just wrote Rogers a letter stating that if our VPN speeds don’t improve dramatically in the next week I’ll be taking our 500 home cable accounts to Bell or Magma.

    Write letters people. Complain. General marketing theory says that for every letter assume there are 50 other people out there who feel the same way. And for email it’s usually 25 or so.

  48. the6ofpopes says:

    Anyone that believes their connection is truly unlimited really needs to take a pill.

    No ISP offers a truly unlimited Internet package, your $40 a month pays for only so much bandwidth. It may be 50GB or it could be 250GB that all depends on your ISP.

    The problem lies in the business model all ISP’s subscribe to, which is “The Over-Subscription Model”.

    For example; say your ISP has 50,000 customers, through models they’ve determined that only 20,000 customers will be online at any given time & over the course of one month the total bandwidth used equals X amount. Your ISP buys enough bandwidth plus extra to cover the monthly usage & provides all the other needed infrastructure to handle the number of users. With this info they in turn have determined the price you pay based on those & other factors.

    Now think about what happens when more people are online at the same time & consume more combined bandwidth than was planned.

    If you still don’t get it lets look at your local fitness club. They have 500 spaces that can be used at any given time, yet they sell 5000 memberships. What happens when all 5000 people decide to workout at the same time? Yes fitness clubs subscribe to the over-subscription model also.

    Cable Internet has it’s own set of problems but DSL providers all follow the same model & have their problems as well.

    I agree what Roger’s is doing is wrong, they need to change their advertising practices to reflect the reality they face & not resort to traffic shaping.

  49. @OntarionHoliday :
    From your statement, it would appear you DID NOT READ THE ARTICLE, as this is an issue not ONLY about upload, but about overall performance of encrypted packets. It has nothing to do with the upload/download ratios, and infact, if you were to read the user agreements and fine prints on the rogers website carefully, the usage limit DOES NOT differentiate between upload and download, and is instead that of a total usage. If they have a greater problem with upload, then they should differentiate it themselves and charge accordingly.(Which they do already in a way, considering you\’re not getting equal upload/download BW, but they should not advertise a total usage limit if they don\’t want people to upload more than download) Also, do not judge others by your own standards, there are many perfectly legitimate uses for the internet that could lead to large amounts of download/uploads per month that would exceed 60~100gb per month. Just because YOU may use it for \’stealing\’ doesn\’t mean others do. Oh and btw, downloading music is NOT illegal in Canada incase you haven\’t noticed, considering there\’s a levy on our recordable media that allows for this. If they don\’t want people to download music, don\’t charge the levy. None of this double standard that they\’re trying to pawn off on people.

  50. A. Lizard says:

    internet consultant
    I recommend telling students that Rogers cable accounts do not support U. of Calgary e-mail (along with a technical summary of “why”) and NO technical support will be provided for it, and therefore, if students want to use e-mail from off-campus, they’ll have to find a competitor.

    When Rogers finds itself losing a few thousand customers in a lump, all citing “you don’t support my college’s e-mail system”, maybe they’ll be willing to deal on the packet shaping issue.

  51. Rogers dumps users personal info on Stre
    to add fuel to this fire… seems Rogers simpley dumped years worth of USER INFO in a garbage bin for all to see:

    Credit Card numbers, S.I.N’s. License #’s, addresses, phone numbers contact names, Phone Numbers and anything other person info you give Rogers.

    Rogers data on clients found in lot

    Gordon Bobbitt found hundreds of Rogers service orders in an alley and parking lot connecting Jarvis and Mutual Sts., south of Dundas St.

    Man shocked to find personal and credit card details in scores of cable, Internet orders

    From the Toronto Star:
    [ link ]

    Something smells and it aint the dumpster Rogers dumped all you Roger-users info into for all to see.

  52. Owner, Developer
    I never said that everything you do should be open text and unencrypted. And I never said that every encrypted packet is illegal. What I said was simply:


    The packet shaping/traffic monitoring is not to stop encrypted communication. That is merely a by-product. Call it acceptable losses. Well, acceptable to some.

    Certainly some 90% of illegal traffic is encrypted. That’s worth stopping even at the expense of legitimate encryption.

    So I’ll say it again. When encryption wasn’t used for illegal purposes, encrypted traffic wasn’t monitored. I don’t need to use “if”, I can use “when”.

    Stop sending illegal traffic through encrypted channels, and those channels won’t be degraded. Send illegal traffic through the sewers, and they too will be monitored.

    Stop sending illegal traffic entirely, and nothing will be degraded.

  53. Chris Tyler says:

    Author, Consultant, Professor
    I had used Rogers for years, and was increasingly disappointed with their port blocking and traffic shaping.

    When DSL service recently became available at my location, I had to choose between bandwidth (6 Mbps vs. 3 Mbps), traffic shaping and port restrictions (increasingly severe traffic shaping and port 25 blocked vs. no restrictions), and serving capability (no servers permitted but we\’ll look the other way most of the time vs. no restrictions). I went with the lower-bandwidth option that had no traffic shaping, no port 25 blocking, and no restrictions on servers — and Rogers lost a customer that had been using their top-tier service for five straight years.

    It\’s was worth the switch just to have someone knowledgeable answer the phone when I call. Being able to download my Linux distribution via bittorrent is a bonus.

    Listen to your customers, Rogers. That\’s a basic business principle, and the best way to stave off the regulators.

  54. Stephen Hawking says:

    Professor of Lucasian Studies
    @ Bryan: The motives of Rogers for throttling encrypted traffic are certainly debatable. The most common response from representatives seems to reference the 90-10 usage situation, which itself should be taken with a grain of salt.

    However, Rogers has no business throttling traffic based on perceived legality (note that they have no practical way to ascertain that the transfer is in fact illegal, given that it’s encrypted). Nor is it their place to act as a moral police – after all, they are not liable for the communications over “their” lines. Your comment about refraining from unethical behaviour comes across as sanctimonious. Ethics are subjective.

  55. the6ofpopes says:

    Bryan, proof that 90% of encrypted traffic is illegal!

    Rogers isn’t throttling encrypted traffic because it’s illegal traffic, their throttling it because it’s the largest source of traffic they can slow down so they don’t have to buy excess bandwidth which cuts into their profit (read my earlier post).

    I run my own email server with encryption for personal emails & an FTP server with encryption to share files between friends, encryption is also enabled when I run utorrent.

    Is my traffic illegal! that’s none of my ISP’s business, you just claimed you use a non-standard port for email to circumvent your ISP’s port blocking, who’s contravening their service agreement now?

  56. Just like every other business, an ISP is in business to make money. Don’t forget that they have to pay for their bandwidth too.

    Like it or not, the Internet has become a commerical entity. What was once a public network has been overtaken by private firms. These are their networks, they can do what they want. Sorry. “Net neutrality” doesn’t apply to private networks.

    Don’t forget – consumers have a vote in private industry; it’s called the dollar. When the current set of ISPs and network infrastructure providers start choking the consumer too much, you can bet a more open service will become available and provide competition to the over-restrictive ISPs. With enough competition the over-restrictive ISPs will become less restrictive and eventually a balance will be found.

    People, this is called Capitalism.

    Deregulation is awesome and it’s a step in the correct direction. Things won’t be smooth at first, as things never are after a big change, but like I said, a balance will be found.

    All of this however, takes some cooperation on the part of the consumer. What do you expect will happen when you abuse any privilege? Stop consuming so much.

    Remember, you don’t have a right to the internet.

  57. mike from toronto says:

    I do a lot of work from my home using a VPN tunnel to our main office. I have not noticed any slow down while uploading or downloading. I am presently on Rogers Extreme internet and today I tested by up/download speed using the VPN connection into work and back out to the internet. The speed test indicated that my speeds were within 5% of what I am being sold by Rogers.

    I do not believe that Rogers or anyone else should be throttling back my internet speed because the data is encrypted. There are many people who use VPN tunnels as I do for very legit reasons. If Rogers or anyone else can break the encryption and read my data then they should be brought to justice for corporate espionage. Companies use VPN tunnels specifically to prevent espionage and there are laws against that. I would like to hear from lawyers regarding the espionage laws if any would like to comment?

    There may be other methods to detect if data is encrypted without reading it. If anyone understands how that can be done I would very much like to read a technical explanation on how that is accomplished. IThe explanation should be technical but also at a high enough level in order that most people, who are not networking engineers, could understand and appreciate the information.

    It seems that George Orwell\’s 1984 was not all that far fetched! Big Brother is watching.

  58. mr
    Welcome to the great firewall of Canada, no doot aboot it. Only Torontonians are capable of such travesties. I think in part because they don’t want to raise prices, so they decided to get smart to get rid of 1% of their customers. Also 1% of people who install internet in their parents / grandparents places etc.
    Because if they raise the price to upgrade their network, then it won’t jive well with net surfin grannies. Truth is many people I know used and liked rogers, but now they are fumbling up my ssh and VPN sessions, they can got to HELL.

  59. @basil
    I agree with Basil, if you pay for capped service then you should be able to use what you pay for. If you can’t don’t advertise it. As well I am getting alot of software updates via bit torrent, I do use it for an odd movie I cannot find on news service (giga news), but them strangling my connections to point of nothing is absurd. I can’t even send IM messages, now that I used skype. 🙁

  60. @Bryan
    First of all, I\’d like to see where you get the 90% illegal statistic from, unless you\’re just parroting the claims of Rogers and the biased studies from the industries, as its nearly impossible to determine if a DATA PACKET itself contains illegal information. Second of all, acceptable losses? That\’s pure bullshit. You\’re justifying things as acceptable only because it does NOT affect YOU PERSONALLY to a degree YOU can stand. There\’s a good reason why this \”acceptable losses\” concept isn\’t as widespread, mainly because its usually too subjective on who implements it. What would happen if we were to do things like say, takes a year to wire money through the bank, or send mail through the postal system, while at the same time keeping track of everything you do and write about? Since \”illegal money and stuff\” are sent through these \’channels\’ just as is the internet, so according to you that\’d all be \”acceptable\” losses anyway until the bad guys stop doing bad things through the banks and postal service eh. I\’m sure everything would be still be very enjoyable then for you right, since o\’ you never do anything unethical so you don\’t mind having everything slowed down, or instead having your private mail send in open envelopes for everyone to read.

  61. @pavel
    I can’t seem to get a trackback to work (stupid blogger), but I am advocating a boycott here: [ link ].

    Only problem is I can’t code a website. I’ll register and pay for bandwidth though 🙂

  62. This traffic shaping does NOT just affect bitTorrent or encrypted traffic.

    We run a legitimate web conferencing service, used by our customers for legitimate business reasons, sometimes as a vital part of their small business or consulting practice.

    Our protocol does not look like bitTorrent and is typically not strongly encrypted. But we’ve seen for over a year now, that for many of our customers on Rogers (and on Shaw, they’re doing it too) the service is so slow as to be unusable with our default protocol.

    It has gotten to the point that when someone from Canada calls with a problem, the first thing we ask is if they’re on Rogers or Shaw cable internet. Then after we do whatever workaround we can, our main suggestion to them is to get DSL or some other ISP.

    Our opinion is that Rogers and Shaw have oversold their networks, and are solely interested in the consumer market of people who only surf the web and do not produce anything. Their cable internet is not a legitimate service for business or creative content producers. We think they need more competition.

    Unfortunately it’s not a completely free market. I don’t know more about Canada, but here in the US, one of the reasons some of us are so strongly for net neutrality is that the cable and telephone companies have a monopoly on the utility poles and the right to string wires all over town or under the streets. It is nearly impossible for a good competitor to come into this market. Technical limitations on satellite and other wireless do not make these good alternatives at this time.

    I may not have a right to the Internet any more than I have a right to good roads, good banking institutions, decent telephone service, etc. But those who espouse Capitalism ought to realize that our system of commerce depends on good infrastructure. And I hope they believe that Canadian consumers at least have a right to what they pay for.

  63. Art Director
    Maybe it’s time to truly treat the internet like the utility it is. Create a company whose sole responsibility is the wiring, upkeep and upgrading of the physical infrastructure. tis company would in turn let everyone access to this pipe so that everyone would or could compete.

  64. The Slow Death of Unlimited Plans
    I think that fairly soon we’re going to see the death of (cheap, anyway) unlimited plans in Europe and North America. Here in the UK, BT already make it fairly attractive for providers to give a set transfer limit per month. It sounds bad, but I get 40 GiB of transfer allowance per month, and I can do whatever I like with it, including BitTorrent or hosting a server – no traffic shaping, unlike on virtually all so-called unlimited plans.

  65. Scott In Ottawa says:

    This explains it…
    I’m new to Ottawa, and also new to BT clients. I have the 5Mb/s Rogers package, and I can easily download 550k from sites that can support it on their end. However, in the past couple of weeks I’ve been using uTorrent, and I’ve had a hard time getting my download rates that fast. I’ve tweaked XP, the TCPIP.SYS, the uTorrent settings, and all to no avail. Now I know why dammit!!

    This is not the service I signed up, and pay for. I was aware of the speed restrictions (that’s fine), but not for encrypted traffic. This also explains why a colleague of mine and I never got our PCs connected via VPN (connection drops), and why my connection to work is LOUSY.

    I’m now going to look for alternatives, dig out my original contract, complain to Rogers, and check out the site. At minimum, they’re being corporate jerks to their paying customers.

  66. What is kind of interesting about the link to the Rogers package choice page is that they upsell the higher speed packages based on the amount of files you will be sharing. And yet they turn around and pinch of the oxygen for the transfer. So you pay for more speed and they slow it down to the bargain package rate?

  67. Owner, Developer
    Just a few more comments to those who have referenced my earlier comments.

    ssh, vpn, and most legitimate uses of encryption that you’ve listed clearly are not part of “residential” usage. If you’re logging into your business, or managing a corporate server, try teh business packages, not the residential ones. My question to you is simply: how is your RESIDENTIAL service?

    Secondly, bittorrent is most definitely a server. You’ve purchased downstream bandwidth, you upstream is intended to request the downstream, and sure, to send files and e-mails and such. Your upstream is NOT meant to serve content to the rest of the world. You’re supposed to be a leaf-node of the Internet — a terminal/terminus if you will — not a root-node, and not even an intermediate/relay node. I ask again, how is your CONSUMER service?

    This is now my third successful comment here — there have been a dozen unsuccessful submissions. I just can’t read the stupid image code. Worse than that, I think I can, but in actuality I cannot. I’m currently looking at one I and two 8’s. But I can’t be sure that they aren’t l’s and B’s.

    I don’t need to prove that 90% of encrypted traffic is illegal. Certainly a large — scratch that, a SIGNIFICANT (read financially significant) percentage is illegal. And so, measures are taken. Acceptable measures. In the Rogers case, maybe dropping customers who use far more but pay the same amount is worthwhile. I wouldn’t be surprised. Similarly, right here with this stupid image code thing is annoying and gets in the way, but it’s certainly an acceptable aggrevation for the benefits.

    Incidentally, you do know taht Rogers offers exceptionally high-speed DSL lines as well right? If you’re willing to pay more for more service, you’ll get everything you want. But if you want the cheapest family of packages, then you get to choose — as many here have said — between way more bandwidth, restricted, versus way less bandwidth, unrestricted. (n.b. “way more” is not a technical term)

    In the end, I’ll say it again because I like to say it. If you’ve never spent any time using your Internet connection for illegal purposes, and you’ve never encyrpted your illegal activity, then you’ve got every right to complain about current affairs. But if you’re complaining about your legal traffic being impacted by someone trying to restrict your illegal activity, then you’re simply smoking dope — almost literally. Do one of two things, either make illegal activity legal, or stop being illegal.

    If you don’t do unethical things, you won’t have to worry about people trying to stop you — at the expense of your ethical things.

    And yes, ethical is subjective. Good news, it’s not your opinion, it’s the owner of the business. And we know his name. He can do whatever he wants with his own business and with his own customers. That includes me. I love my 550K instant downstream bandwidth from almost anywhere. And I don’t mind my consistent 40K upstream bandwidth to almost anywhere.

    And you know what, if I wanted to engage in illegal activity, I could download those illegal elements at 550K per second. So you want me to complain that I can’t feed it to others? I’m not upset about that. I’m actually kind of proud.

  68. Mister
    How much are T1s for home these days? Including installationg and monthly costs? Theres talk of a few houses in my neighbourhood willing to split the cost.

    Anyone got leads to where i can find a T1 Provider in the Mississauga/GTA region?


    I would contest that VPN, as well as most forms of encrypted data connections can reasonably be considered as part of RESIDENTIAL service (your emphasis, not mine). A business person at home logging into their corporate email isn’t running a business, they’re acting as a typical residential user. This type of data should not be throttled (and mine most definitely is).

    Even the recording industry has figured out that overly restricting consumers simply stunts growth. Apple and EMI have it figured out – charge people a fair price, sell them a good product, and let them decide what they do with it (referring to the availability of unencrypted MP3s available on iTunes). My bet is that people will actually buy more because they don’t have to deal with the DRM headaches.

    Rogers should take the hint:
    Set your price for residential service, charge me more if you have to, but get rid of the limiting restrictions that cripple the usefulness of your service

    As a side note – if Rogers thinks BT is illegal then block it outright, don’t throttle it. This implimentation simply highlights that they know they’re likely throttling all sorts of legitimate traffic – slow VPN is one thing, no VPN is another.

  70. Owner, Developer
    It isn’t our place to advise Mr. Rogers on how to run his business. Besides, judging by the buildings alone, it seems to be growing just fine.

    As far as your comment regarding VPN as residential use, I’m not sure where I stand on working from home as being a residential consumer. However, I’d think that if working from home is a requirement of your employment, then your employer would pay for your Internet connection. That would make it a business expense. And I’d have a hard time describing company-provided internet service as residential usage.

  71. From the "not always so moral says:

    Good reference to \”traffic shaping\”: [ link ]

    Bryan, many large corporations promote work from home and do pay the expenses of their employees for their ISP costs. Most of the activity is downloading/viewing information from Data Bases with little uploading. As you described the service is intended for downloading and this meets the requirements as you stated for the service provided. I believe the point is that I pay for access to the “information highway” and what data I decide to move along it should be my decision, whether that is encrypted data or non encrypted data. The terms of the agreement are well stated as to how much data I can move and do respect that.

    I also agree that it is not up to us to tell Rogers how to run his business, however where we the consumer spend our money does influence the behavior and the financial results of these businesses. (case in point the North American Automobile companies)

    Secondly, the concept of being able to connect to your work place from anywhere is a big advantage for any company. I find it difficult to believe that being an ‘owner, developer’ that you have never used you RESIDENTIAL internet service in any way shape or form to support your business. I would also have to believe that “if” you have VoIP on your RESIDENTIAL internet service that you also NEVER use it to make any calls with respect to your business from home and that you pay your telephone provider for a commercial telephone line at home, or subscribe to a commercial internet service to run your VoIP service. After all you would never use your RESIDENTIAL phone line at home to support your business… Right?

    PS I am using GhostSurf to send this message as I do not believe that sending my views unencrypted is wise. It is a way to protect my anonymity in order to reduce the threat of a serious backlash. In an Ideal world as you described that would be ok, but we do not live in such a world.

  72. I’ll just say one thing – BT is very hostile to service provider networks independent of the content being transferred.

    It’s agressive strategy to get as much data across the network as possible often provides superior performance but crowds out other protocols. When things like Email, Web Browsing and DNS start breaking because the network is 90% file sharing the service proivder has no choice but to take action.

    For better or for worse many Service Provider Networks are designed assuming asymetric bandwidth usage (much more downstream than upstream). They thought all people would do is browse the web. A side effect of that design is if the upstream is saturated (on an individual or neighborhood) then the performance downstream (i.e. downloading) is poor. P2P apps turn homes, or dorms, into data centers and many SP networks are not designed to continue to provide good service to all users when that happens.

    So, until infrastructure is upgraded that assumes equal upload and download speeds there will be cases where service providers need to take control of their networks back from applications and can not serve all traffic on a 1st come 1st served basis.

  73. Worst part is they dont just throttle your P2P, but your entire connection. I wish I got it in writing, but I talked to a tier 2 tech guy and he admitted that they throttle the entire connection.
    me: So Im basically SOL
    tier2 tech : Yup

  74. If P2P apps are breaking the network, then explicitly state that they are not allowed and completely shut them down – don’t throttle them to uselessness. I believe the reason for the throttling (as opposed to outright blocking) is because Rogers knows they’re affecting much more than P2P traffic. If someone’s VPN or VoIP application works, but slowly, there are many possible culprits, and people may tolorate it or simply not know any better – they may not complain to Rogers. When these same services are simply blocked, people begin to complain loudly, to Rogers, and change providers. If Rogers is against P2P traffic, fine, that is their right – but be open with it, state clearly which apps I’m not allowed to use, and block the associated traffic completely…

    …They’ll never do it because of how many VPN connections it’ll mess up and because of how many of the users of those VPNs are also heavy cell phone users (VPN users, I’d bet, are also more likely to have corporate reimbursed or corparate paid cell phones with high ARPUs attached to them) will switch service providers.

    What we really need is someone to develop a combined P2P VoIP application with encrypted data that looks the same wheter you’re making a call or transferring a file. Throttling such traffic would degrade the VoIP service and I’d bet the CRTC would have something to say about that.

  75. giggles
    CRTC Minister Bernier and the Telco Mafia tells the CRTC what they can and can’t do.

  76. Anti_Idiot says:

    Senior Networker
    Hahaha ,, ROGERS?
    One of my favorite subjects, right up there with ALL major ISPs, SPAM sites, intruders, armchair critics, big business rip-offs etc.

    First of all let me introduce myself, I’m a Network and Security Analyst and have been for decades. Have Rogers account for many yrs along with numerous other ISP accounts. Keep Rogers one to get them rip roaring mad and keep them in check each time they decide to be rude. Like now!

    As if we don’t have enough problems with oriental idiots now.

    Where to begin? So much to discuss and only so little time and space.

    First of all Rogers is a MEDIA company and not a real ISP. Go read your End User Agreement [EUA] to confirm. If you’re smart enough you will understand. This means that they will stuff all the garbage at you they can while they make you pay for their advertising. Rogers Internet has switched hands numerous times due to their inability to promote their crap affectively.
    I.e. wireless, VOIP, promotions, deals, high speed, etc.
    … while they watch your browsing habits, personal content, private information, etc. This is also why they don’t support any other browser but IE, have cancelled News groups, implemented server scans and blocks, throttled your speed etc., basically anything to get you to view their content and their affiliate’s.

    Any fool should know by know that anything not encrypted should not be used or shown on the Internet. Maybe this is why they make firewalls and privacy software. You think?

    Each person becomes a server as soon as they connect to Internet and is responsible for their privacy / security and what they choose to share. No ifs or buts about it.

    Rogers or any ISP “legally” MUST ask each user PERMISSION to look at their user settings and or connectivity each time they try to access each computer! If user doesn’t wish to do it they have to solve the problem in other legal means.

    I get slightly livid when inexperienced users think they are safe by using anything Microcrap [Microsoft, for those that don’t understand good hate slang]. Rogers pays homage to Microcrap in a big way and continues to do so for obvious reasons.

    If an ISP doesn’t support Unix [the real language of our Internet], Linux, SUN systems, MAC OS, CP/M, Netware and major protocols of TCP/IP, IPX/SPX, Appletalk, DECnet, SMB, Systems Network Architecture (SNA) and Distributed Systems Architecture (DSA) then it is NOT a real ISP and it IS just a joke or scam.

    One of the best ISPs for Internet in Ontario and some other provinces is Teksavvy. Real Internet, real tech support, full unlimited service. Your other option, if you live in Toronto is to contact UUNET / WorldCom. These are the people that provide [as far as I understand] Rogers and other ISPs their bandwidth. I’m sure they can strike up a deal for group of users to share a T1 or higher line. The only thing to watch out for is Rogers may try to kill the deal as they have with numerous ISPs, television stations and other media, right through CRTC yet. For further information on Rogers killing such deals see Privacy Commissioners office and or CRTC. Some references may still be on the Net.

  77. Anti_Idiot says:

    Senior Networker
    Now for throttling / shaping:
    all ISPs do it and for many reasons. Mostly to cut down on intruders, abusers, junk, etc. For Rogers to shape encrypted packets that’s outright illegal according to the Charter Of Rights, Privacy laws, etc. Rogers requires contact of local authorities, RCMP and or CSIS, a search warrant AND MUST WARN YOU THEY ARE DOING SO if they want to look at any packets going in or out. No matter what their EUA says.

    BTW: that EUA puppy is illegal in many parts, as is Sympatico’s, Telus’s and other major ISPs. Policies are just that, they are not laws! And they are there to confuse the user in most cases as to their rights under law.

    If you have file sharing on your home network [LAN] all machines are automatically servers. If you do a DNS, whois or traceroute you are doing a scan. Misdirected port scan for vulnerabilities or to see which ports you have open is terms for discontinuation of service according to Rogers. Even if you have permission to do so to your friend or your other location machine.

    By law I / we have the right to backup and or share my information [encrypted or not] to whomever I / we want.

    Legal / Illegal / iffy content: that is for you and the authorities to decide and not your ISP. You are paying for certain bandwidth and that should be there as you pay for it. ISP has no business what-so-ever to mess with it in any manner unless you are threatening, abusive or outright idiot to ISP. According to original rules of the Internet your upload connection must be 2/3 of download speed. Any ISP not providing such is ripping off the customer. You put up with it then it’s your loss.

    The only reasons an ISP has the right to get involved is when you ask them to help you with an abusive user or you have connection problems. They have absolutely no right to throttle or shape your bandwidth to less than what you pay for.

    Any real or smarter criminals use “undocumented protocols” with high “custom” encryption that any average ISP can’t even see. All they see is higher CPU and network card usage. Similar is used by filthy rich persons / corporations to transfer their data. Any half ass educated person knows to use proxy servers for private data.

    Rogers is not going out of business or in bad shape, they are loosing money only for their investors and shareholders and this is why they are cutting on users services. Rogers infrastructure is excellent and can support double, if not triple, the bandwidth at present.

    Now for a general lesson to all:
    The Internet was given away by US DOD [department of defense] for sharing of any information for betterment of all due to it’s insecure and wide open nature. This means that it is up to you [each user] to provide your own security as you are a server [no matter what others want you to believe] when you share files, any files. It is up to you to choose the content you want to share, not your ISP. If this means the pictures or video of your butt because it has warts on it then so be it. If you want to backup your whole hard drive to a number of people for safekeeping that is your choice and no ISP has the right to mess with it. Especially Encrypted content. The only place that they have a right to censor is your home pages as to appropriate or generally accepted content.

    If you have a problem with your ISP messing with your connection then bill them and or invoice them for loss of time and or bandwidth, call CRTC, picket them, charge them under criminal code or as last resort choose another ISP. Believe me, they jump when you do it in this order. And if they still don’t learn or want to pay take ‘em to small claims court. Excellent way to get out of long-term agreements too.

    I / we run an FTP for defunct software, drivers, manuals etc. [for friends] since Rogers has no provisions for transferring files between users as is our legal right. That’s about 250 GB of data. I /we share files, backups, video [whatever it may be], legal documents, etc. all encrypted, and if we EVER caught Rogers tracking and or messing with it in any way there would be hell to pay from us, friends, businesses, government agencies and affiliates.

    Moral of the story: quit being an armchair critic, read the links associated with original story and learn [the one at top of page], get off your butt, learn the laws, your rights and let loose on Rogers or anyone that messes with you.

    Good article Michael, thanx for the heads up 🙂

  78. Mister

    If Rogers is breaking the law with checking packets… where can one go to complain? Better Business Bureau or something? Not that i am going to do anything. Just curious.
    Couldn’t one person sue the company?

  79. Robert A.
    The practice of overselling bandwidth is similar to “fractional reserve

    banking”, where a bank lends out more money than it has on deposit, on

    the theory that not all depositors will withdraw on the same day.

    Similarly the ISPs assume that not all consumers will use 100% of the

    bandwidth to which they are entitled at the same time. This becomes

    perverse when the ISP characterizes a consumer using full bandwidth as

    an “abusive” user.

    Ironically, Bittorrent is a means of optimizing bandwidth for consumers,

    and the “Broadband Optimization” advocated by Allot Communications and

    others consists in part of stealing bandwidth for which consumers have


    Therein lies the main difference between the banking and ISP paradigms:

    in the former, the consumer may use loaned money for any legal purpose,

    whereas in the latter, the ISP asserts the right to tax back the

    bandwidth if they don’t approve of your use of it.

  80. Fight Back says:

    to Scott S. & everyone

    Mainly follow the steps above.

    Before you do make sure you have massive, and I mean MASSIVE, references as to Rogers doing so, data and hard copy and lots of backups spread over many locations so they dont get lost for some reason. If you dont they will just laugh it off.

    BBB caters to larger business / parties unless you have absolute proof and or its totally illegal and they cant side with larger party. Keep this in mind for other situations too when dealing with them suckers.

    If you suspect your privacy being abused report Rogers to Privacy Commissioners Office [[ link ]]
    RCMP [[ link ]]
    Local and federal MPs

    The catch with all this is power and numbers, same as with anything. Create enough of a stink and they notice.

    With Rogers having monopoly on media in Canada they seem to think they are God. Many times they have shut down radio and TV stations before they even got off the ground. As far as I know, to date, they have shut down 5 media stations in Toronto area alone via CRTC applications process. Mostly original and ethnic content was destroyed in this manner.

    The only other way to get Rogers to comply and keep them clean is to start a class action suit. With over 750,000 Internet users there must be enough to get this done. If Canadians get off their butts and actually do something.

    I/we charge Rogers 100 bucks for each of their SPAM. Wow did it ever stop dead. One warning only in signature of email, then its war. Thats with any SPAMMER / abuser / ISP.

  81. Marty R. Milette says:


    BALONEY!!! What right does Rogers or any other ISP have to say that the speed of my connection should be any different whether I check my mail through a VPN to a corporate mail server, or a Yahoo! server, or GMAIL? Where I get my email from or whether I browse a secure web site or an insecure one is none of their damn business.

    They are an INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER — so say what you are going to provide and provide it. If you have bogus terms or restrictions — make them known to the public BEFORE people sign for the service or commit to long-term, unbreakable-without-severe-penalty contracts. THEN, and ONLY THEN can the market have a chance to sort itself out.

    If I want to work from home, or do on-line financial transactions, then it is my bloody business as long as I don’t exceed stated quotas for the ISP service. If the ISP sells an “unlimited” service, then it better bloody well be unlimited. If not, then they should be stating that right up front.

    In case you haven’t noticed, just about EVERY form of web-based email uses an https:// connection — that’s port 443 encrypted. Is everyone who uses web-based email now a criminal and deserving of having their traffic throttled? If I want to upload my vacations photos or videos to flicr or youtube (also using https://) a criminal as well?

    Face it, just about ANY membership-based web site is going to be using https:// so any advocate of throttling traffic JUST BECAUSE it uses a secure port or protocol must be out of his/her bloody mind.

    Here in Russia, I expect monkey business like that, and indeed have found it.

    My ISP here in Russia offers ADSL service, but I found that I couldn’t use Skype (or SIP or any other protocol) to make VoIP calls — because the ISP BY DEFAULT automatically throttles ALL upload traffic to less than dial-up speed. (For VoIP you can receive audio, but can’t transmit.)

    A simple call and complaint got it fixed, but this is just one example of the ISP trying to milk the maximum possible amount of money from their clients — while cheating them of what they pay for.

  82. check out 3web @ [ link ]
    they resell rogers at a much cheaper price, but without the throttling

  83. Upset about Rogers? Do something about i
    Boycott Rogers ( is a site where people can let Rogers know when and why they cancelled, as well as get and trade tips on avoiding cancellation fees, and swap customer service nightmares.

    Someone has to let this company know that their clients will not stand idly by. If people publicize their cancellation of service, Rogers will have to be accountable.

  84. Just a minute now… How exactly would Rogers be identifying the encrypted packets? By suggesting that Rogers is degrading SSL and VPN, the implication is that they use a broad-based and indiscriminant method, such as testing entropy (encrypted data has higher entropy, but so does compressed data). Since compressed data goes through without hindrance, at least in many cases, this method is not used. So it seems we’re back to examining packet headers.

    BitTorrent for example produces a distinct signature that looks something like this: $PDpTpBitTorrent protocolkI*hgA. That was captured from a session in which encryption was enabled. So it’s not hard to determine when a given IP has a BitTorrent session in progress. Check out the demo data from Sandvine
    [ link ] and you’ll see they make no secret of filtering by protocol. (They claim P2P is “greedy” and “unfair”). This is an Ontario company by the way–and that is significant because they can be subpoenaed.

    Encryption seems to be a red herring in this case.

    Incidentally, Rogers appears to be filtering P2P during business hours, but not overnight. Are they degrading residential service to enhance business services?

  85. Anti_Idiot says:

    WRONG, Rogers IS tampering with p2p all day long!

    The only way to make Rogers change is to make \’em pay or to charge them under criminal code. That\’s the only thing they understand. So present customers must CHARGE them for services lost, braking contracts due to policies being illegal, wrongful throttling/shaping, lost revenue/jobs, etc.

    Rogers has no right what-so-ever to interfere with any encrypted traffic no matter what the content, that\’s against the privacy act, tampering with transmissions [same as tampering with snail mail, and or opening it], and whole bunch of other laws. Actually has no right to throttle any user below what they advertise.

    Robert A. is correct,
    Rogers shapes/throttles torrent and other protocols, that\’s how they do it. They almost kill the protocol. They also shape/throttle anything that starts using higher or above average bandwidth. They have been doing it to torrent for over a \”year and half now\” [direct quote from Tier 1 support] other protocols since day one.

    This is why their connections ratio over the years went from 3/1.5 down to 3/0.5. That\’s 3MB download and 1.5 MB upload, down to 3 MB download and 0.05 upload approximately, then they killed newsgroups, throttled FTP for a time, high jacked email for a time, and anything they can to cheat customers. A proper connection for any ISP is 2/3 of downloads for uploads. That is 3 MB down and 2 MB up. Anything less than that and u\’re getting ripped off. Rogers started it and other ISPs followed.

    This last fact is why we as Canadians have slower connections than Japan or even USA. In Japan it\’s a norm to have 15MB up and down. ISPs there are competing for providing higher speeds. In USA Bush said that ALL ISPs will have better connections than Japan and quick. It\’s causing the economy to be 10 to 15 yrs behind.

    Check it out your selves.
    Look for \”NHL 07\” in good torrent search and with minimum of 100 sources [use this file since it has the most amount of sources of any file I found], use Shareaza to start it and wait. You are legal as long as u don\’t download the full file, so u can pause it at 99.9% and it\’s still not fully on your computer so it\’s not fully usable to be counted as piracy or copyright infringement. Then search for same file \”NHL 07\” with Shareaza its self and most amount of sources, about 10 to 20, then start downloading it. You will see the difference within half hour to an hour between both files. Pause it.

    Now try it at different times of day too. Pause.
    After that take the system to friends place that doesn\’t use Rogers, has high speed and has RJ-45 jack, then try it there. Report results here.

    Their excuse is that they need to protect the average user for browsing purposes, which is hogwash.

    \”Doing further studies Rogers can provide up to 35 to 38 MB up and down per user. Even if all 750,000 plus users did same at same time and all day long. I checked with 5 other experienced networkers to make sure.
    Senior Network Analyst\”

    So there you have it, Rogers is illegal, is just a money grab and has no respect for users. Now, are you/we going to make them change or not?

    BTW: I love the \”subpoenaed\” idea.

  86. Chris Tyler says:

    Net Neutrality – A Parable
    A parable that describes Net Neutrality and traffic shaping in more familiar terms:
    [ link ]

  87. ConcernedCanuck says:

    More at stake than we think
    [… SNIP …]
    [… SNIP …]

    Having lived in Germany for the past 2 years, I couldn\’t agree more with this statement (I also shared this view before I arrived back a few weeks ago). DSL has absolutely taken off in Europe the past few year and immense competition has driven the speed/price ratio to a buyers paradise. For as little as 10 euros a month (15 bucks) you can purchase a connection superior to that of Bell in speed (and far superior to Rogers because there is no packet shaping).

    On the plane ride back to Canada a few weeks ago, I started talking to a Canadian entrepreneur who has developed a cellular device that uses a newly developed encryption mechanism to nearly double the data rate of cellular internet technology. I asked why he is launching in Europe and not Canada and he explained how bad the situation is here in Canada thanks to companies such as Rogers (The following link provides a good starting point) [ link ]
    He had brief discussions with Rogers and explained their business practice to me with words that I shouldn\’t repeat here.

    When I arrived back to Canada a few weeks ago, I fired up a torrent and realized how poor my speeds were. I was almost sick to my stomach when I did some reading and found out what Rogers had done. This comes down to a lot more that just blocking access to P2P clients. We are allowing two companies to drive out technology, drive out Canadian start-up companies and dictate to us what WE want while lying to us all the while. This will in the long run hurt our economy if we keep falling behind and I am appalled that we as Canadians aren\’t doing more. We\’ve always believed in customer service… how do we put the power back in the hands of the consumer?

  88. it's_OUR_internet says:

    this is this is wrong on so many levels
    if this country were truly democratic rogers would not be able to get away with this. this is pure and absolute evil. Molotov cocktails anyone? (i don’t really advocate violence, but they should not be able to get away with this) WHO DO THEY THINK THEY ARE? NET NEUTRALITY BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY!

  89. it's_OUR_internet says:

    i hope i didn’t just become a target by
    never never never would I actually encourage anyone to do anything like that, got carried away by my outrage. sorry, i just got very paranoid after posting that. but net neutrality really is very critical to the future of our civilization and all LEGAL measures possible must be taken.

  90. Elder Geek
    For a week or so I have been under the impression that two sites I visit, and were down for some technical reason. I kept expecting them to come back up. NoJoy. However, I realised from some comments on other sites that others were able to connect.

    Turns out that Rogers is blocking my access to these sites. When I used an anonymous proxy through Firefox I got right through to both sites.

    IMHO, charging for 5MB, 100GB service and then making it impossible for you to obtain such service is bad enough and is, or should be, illegal under some kind of consumer protection laws. But, to outright censor and block access to a site like that just discusses games, music and movie releases and does not provide nor host any torrents is outrageous.

    Somebody, somehow, has to stop these arrogant actions against paying customers. They seem totally unafraid of any government intervention. A not unreasonable assumption on their part I suppose.



  91. Andrew McInally says:

    Thank you for bringing attention to this problem. The P2P crowd is not asking Rogers and their customers to bend over backwards to accommodate them. We are asking however for transparency, openness and a desire to improve the situation for all Rogers customers.

  92. fsck_rogers says:

    Goodbye Rogers
    Well finally did it… cancelled my Rogers Internet, Wireless and and television. Hopefully everyone will make a switch to a competitor, let them know how you feel. When corporations start trying to control the internet we need to rise against.


  93. royalone says:

    The following was taken directly off of the rogers site after I logged in to my account. Yes I am sadly a rogers customer because dsl is not available to me. I think this will set straight the bandwidh usage details and, also give some insight into the empty heads of those oh so hard done by folks at uncle teds place. I agree that they are completly wrong and if I was a lawyer lookin too make a name for himself this smells of a class action law suit to me. Their tactics and deciteful business practices are repugnent. Anyway here is the text.

    “In an effort to keep pace with the evolving Internet needs of our Rogers Yahoo! Hi-Speed Internet customers and to continue providing you with a fast and efficient service, we have implemented a combined upload and download bandwidth limit of 102,400 Megabytes (100 GB) per month for the Extreme Service and 61,440 Megabytes (60 gigabytes) per month for Ultra-Lite, Lite and Express. This is a very generous limit which is approximately equal to the consumption of a typical customer in an entire year. This limit was announced on February 15 2005.

    New Internet file sharing applications have had a dramatic impact on the way people use the available network capacity. It is Rogers’ responsibility to ensure that these activities do not negatively affect how other customers experience the Internet. This limit is one of the measures we are taking to address this issue.

    To enable you to be informed about how much data you are using each month we have also introduced a Usage Measurement tool, to be available to all customers*.

    * To view details on your actual usage including your specific usage period, please sign-in to and select “View Internet Usage”.”

  94. Rogers blocks yes to that
    I can totally confirm that Rogers blocks any kind of encrypted traffic.
    I have 2 remote servers, from which I run a few casual websites, no big deal. I use stunnel, which is an encrypted tunnel, through which I tunnel a few ports. I route my email that way, using postfix, an email program.
    Mail started to bounce left and right. I’ve horsed and played with it, and at one point I could NOT see my home connection, not even on ssh port 22, from one of my servers at one point, but could from the other ip address.
    It’s really quite uncanny how Rogers is screwing up folks!
    I’ve just switched to TekSavvy, one of the many alternative dsl providers. Switching was a breeze. I now pay $30 per month plus tax, and my connection looks like reaches just about 5 full megabits, very good.
    The tunnels haven’t given any hickups yet, although it is a little early to tell if everything is 100% – so far it is.
    I totally recommend getting rid of Rogers. Pay like $15+ less per month, and enjoy those same speed – give or take.
    Don’t pick Bell either, I’ve had tons and tons of really bad experiences with them also. When I switched to this “alternative” dsl provider, it went as smooth as you can possibly imagine. Sign up, get modem, turn on, configure password, bang! you’re online. no big deal whatsoever.
    You’d be an idiot to stay with Rogers for whatever reason.

  95. Boyce LaForest says:

    Selling service they dont have.
    It sounds like rogers is selling service they dont have. Basically say they have 10 users, each user is garunteed 1mb down 256k up, well they should have the resources to support 10 connections at the limit (not 4 at the limit, selling service they dotn have), if they do not then they should not be shutdown.

  96. Chris Herborth says:

    Just (late May 2007) dropped Rogers High-Speed Internet, something I’ve been a customer of since, oh, 1998-ish, in favour of (much) cheaper DSL from I’m still shocked at getting customer service from an ISP…

    Now I just need to find a suitable replacement for Rogers cable (no Bell ExpressVu; no point in swapping one devil for another) and Rogers wireless.

    Rogers has been degrading their Internet service in various ways for years now (dropping the customer website, dropping the USENET feed, dropping their email server, shipping user data to the US and Yahoo!, etc.), it’s about time they lost more customers.

    – chrish

  97. Unix Admin
    When our competition bureau fell asleep at the wheel and permitted the Rogers/Fido merger, a piece of Canada was lost.

    Fido was a *great* cell carrier; they had unlimited GPRS for $50/mo (which I was luckily grandfathered into), excellent urban plans, great customer service and a solid network (in urban areas, anyway).

    Rogers bought them, and ruined them. They cancelled their data service, city fido, etc. With no usable nation-wide wireless data service (hint: 20mb/month is an insult), we’ve entered the realm of developing-country territory.

    At a time where wireless data services are just starting to take off around the world, it’s sad to see Canada damaged by Rogers and the federal competition bureau.

  98. uk_fellow says:

    Pipex the UK’s major ISP ‘shapes’ unencrypted torrent traffic down to 20KBPs.

    I don’t know if they ‘shape’ all encrypted traffic but encrypted transfers seem slower but not as slow as unencrypted torrents.

    Pipex are a division of UUNET a Tier 1 provider.

    Surely this goes against net neutrality, shaping by protocol.

    It is not a cap on heavy users, nor is time of day dependant so it is discrimination rather than responsible network admin.

    I notice it started about the time pipex started heavily promoting adverts for a dvd rental service on their homepage which they continue to do.

    Clearly discrimination to force sales of a competing service.

  99. aki
    Just a comment…..

    Hi, I designed and partially own an small isp in Kenya ( east africa ). In our business, we purchase international wholesale bandwidth for resale & is very expensive : about 7500USD per Mbit. We sell in circuits of 64kbps. Despite the internet being very expensive here, we do not apply any traffic shaping or controls on any traffic as clients pay for what they can afford. I’m very surprised that in your part of the world where international wholesale bandwidth must be at least 10 times cheaper, the ISP apply controls. If an ISP is doing that, it clearly indicates bad business decisions or poor network infrastructure design or just bad business practises by the competiton may be the real cause of these issues. Good luck..

  100. Bob Kayak says:

    Dry humped by rogers
    well i’m a usenet user that used to get great speeds downloading, and never uploaded anything. Rogers notified me saying if I went over 100 gigs a month they throttle my speed down. Being content with a 100 gigs I followed the new ditctatorship rules placed upon what was an unlimited account but with that magic loop hole in the end user, that agreement was pratically changed before the ink dried on the contract. But nope that wasn’t good enough still, now i’m being throttled for downloading encryted files through Usenet servers. Where’s the fairness. I admire their efforts for trying to track down perv’s sharing files but hey sorry rogers your my ISP, your not my Government (ECHLON) who are allowed to enfringe and spy on my doings. This if I can’t read what your doing then you can’t do it scenario has to stop. I don’t see anywhere in the end user agreement where my files need to be preapproved by them before they can be moved threw the network.

  101. Just an average Joe
    Rodgers SUCKS. I use torrents and so does everyone else( well almost). I pay for a subscription and should be able to use it. Why lie about coverage??? I live in Kitchener and need to find a suitable replacement to Rodgers cable ISP any suggestions???

  102. \”You guys are not getting the point. Rogers only has a certain amount of upstream frequencies available. Bit torrent is killing the upstream and affecting the whole neighborhood.\”

    Rogers setup is very limited, and yes they would have to completely upgrade their systems to really keep up with Net Neutrality, but if they want to stay competitive that is what they have to do. Rogers is set up that you share a connection with everyone in your area. SO, if your neighbor is downloading a lot, it affects your speeds..that might be a bit of a basic explanation, but you get the point. With Sympatico their setup is completely different and is the same as most other providers in North America. You have a direct connection, not shared. SO, it\’s sorta like your modem \’talks\’ directly with another modem of sorts in their central office. This means your neighbour does not affect your service. Although, lets be honest, Bell isn\’t always great. When Bell Sympatico works, it is AWESOME! however, if you have problems with your connection, dealing iwth their customer service is a hassle.
    Everyone always talks about how you can switch to another DSL provider…but everyone forgets that Bell still owns the lines…so essentially there will instead be a middle man that you have to deal with when Bell refuses to fix the lines or claims the problem is in the house (which it rarely is).

    If you only have Rogers or Sympatico to chose from, Symptaico is always the better choice, even if you have to deal with their customer service.

  103. I\’m with Bell Sympatico and other than the initial 3 week long setup a year ago, Ive been pleased with their service. When it works..its awesome. 200KB/s is fine for me..and NO DOWNLOAD CAP (unlike Rogers/Cogeco). Why drive a Ferrari if you can only drive 50mph?
    We initially went with Cogeco but didnt bother even setting up the modem we go in the mail after I heard about the 8 gig cap per month. Hell I download over 250 gigs per month since I get HDTV stuff from my newshosting account (14 bucks for Usenet sure buys a LOT of hdtv .ts caps!). My emule/p2p stuff is a bit slow but I dont know if that is sympatico throttling or just the nature of emule taking forever (rare files on the mule..slow speed vs. common files on bittorrent & fast speed).
    Anyways I\’m glad for so many comments (albeit negative) about rogers here..we\’re moving soon and will avoid them like the black plague they apparently are.

  104. I was with Rogers for cable, cell, internet and had nothing but problems in all 3 areas. The biggest was the internet, and once I found out that they lied to me for at least 3-4 months about traffic shaping and then offered me nothing in return I cancelled and switched to Aliant. I now have no restrictions, no caps, no connection problems and have switched my cell to Telus for $10/mth with great coverage and service. I am only sorry I didn’t do it earlier and avoided the hassle of Rogers.

  105. Consultant
    While traffic shaping by consumer ISPs is an annoying (if not worse) practice, the technology does have legitimate uses – inside organizations. No company can afford slow or no access to its critical business apps because some employee is downloading music. There are a number of vendors that provide appliances that do this, including Fatpipe [[ link ]] and Astrocom [[ link ]], and Wikipedia [[ link ]] has more about legitimate uses for traffic shaping.

  106. It sure does have legit uses, but not in a home-based account. It is not up to the ISP to decide what packet shaping is done, it is up to a company\’s network/system admin. Rogers has no business doing packet shaping for home users. I am looking to move to Aliant as soon as possible. Not that they are a GREAT alternative (their customer service is also rather lacking) but there is no other option in New Brunswick at this time. I just can\’t take Rogers and their throttling anymore…this is just not right.

  107. I too am furious about the packet shaping here with Rogers. I was born and raised here in Toronto but have spent the last 8 years in Florida. I went from my ISP which is the Rogers equivilent to Central Florida. I was paying 45 bucks a month for 15 megs down and 2 megs up with no cap and no packet shaping. Here i bay 67 for something that is EXTREMELY unextreme and get half the bandwith with someone throttling my fun away. Maxing out my cable line @ 1.7MB/s with hot torrents was awesome until i moved back home only to find my torrents trickling in @ 20 KB/s. That is just BS. We are a smaller market here in Canada but need some other bandwidth providers to step up to the plate and have some honest competition even the plane for us consumers. Bell is OK and was glad to hear that they don’t throttle bandwidth but with their adsl, 5meg + speeds are not available in every neighbourhood.

    I am also a little confused about how new content like Joost and other p2p type services will survive in the future on a crappy ISP like rogers who enjoys fat profits on being an uptsream bandwidth scrooge. I really dont know where to take my complaints or my business anymore . I am a little dissapointed in my hometown, Toronto, a metropolis of over 5 million people, i cant get decent bandwidth. Someone answer my call.

  108. Grim Reaper says:

    My remedy, switched to ADSL
    For about 12 years I have been a Rogers internet customer, faithfully paying the top price for “premium” internet service. I finally got fed up with Rogers traffic shaping and other interferences with use of their internet services and switched to ADSL through an independent ISP. I am much happier now and it’s much cheaper.

  109. Hello
    Why offer transfer speeds like this if you can’t download at that speed all the time. By the way, 60 gigabytes is a lot if you know NOTHING about computers. That means if i were to send the same file back and forth (and i’m pretty sure if i was at full speed for 24 hours, i would reach the 60 gigabyte cap EASILY). I should be allowed to transfer as much data as i want, i can’t believe that i’m being restricted just because the big boys messed up offering all that bandwith to everyone, then to save themselves from looking like fools they give you a data transfer cap which is absolutely ridiculous.

  110. mr

    WRONG WRONG WRONG. Rogers provides you with service and they have the right to request your user settings when they see fit.

    Rogers HI SPEED is the property of Rogers and has not changed hands ever !

    Please get your facts straight!

  111. Don’t complain, Take action
    Rather than complain about what they are doing, just leave and switch. The only people who should bother complaining are those that are forced to use Cable for internet, anyone else should just switch. Teksavvy and Acanac both guarantee that they do not shape packets, limit speed, no bandwidth limits, etc. They are both cheaper than Sympatico and offer great service.
    When Rogers starting shaping packets I switched to Acanac ($19/month for 5Mb service) and switched all my friend’s and family.

  112. Rogers-less
    I’ve switched away from Rogers to TekSavvy a while ago now. Haven’t looked back. I pay $30 plus tax per month. Speed lies somewhere between 3 and 5 megabits. That’s a very good speed. Also, for file sharing, it’s not going to get faster. It’s not your ISP’s bandwidth that’s being saturated. People thinking that you need faster, like that extra speed bit that Rogers can give you, really do not understand how things work.
    Anyway, if you’re with Rogers, you’re a sucker. They cost more, and it doesn’t buy you anything. Your connection is semi-filters/hampered, on purpose, by Rogers’ routers. They hamper anything that looks encrypted at a volume. I’ve seen it, I’ve experienced it, I’ve experimented with it, and it’s unacceptable.
    It’s very easy to switch. Even if you have no active phone line. Dry DSL can give you a connection without an active phone line. That is if chose for the Rogers home phone thing. I didn’t, because I don’t like feeding into Rogers’ monopoly engine. Also their rates are misleading. $20 per month – PLUS $4.50 “system access fee”. What the hell?
    Then after 12 months, it goes up. $30 per month, plus $4.50 access fee. I’m also seeing a $30 sign up fee, but that might be dropped with various promos to make the sucker consumer thing they’re getting a deal.
    For dry DSL you have to pay 5 to 8 bucks extra though. So, it makes sense to have your phone service with Bell, and not Rogers. Bell is $30 plus $2 (touch tone?).
    Rogers is $24.50 – plus the $8 for the dry dsl (assuming you’ll go with dsl – you should). Bell comes out less.
    There are long distance plans on land traditional phone lines that makes long distance extremely cheap.
    So what if Rogers offers free long distance – and THAT’s only rogers to rogers long distance. Rogers to land-land long distance will cost you. You’ll have to use THEIR “long distance plan”.

    My god, how Rogers sucks. How misleading they are.
    I can’t stand them.
    I recently moved, and signed up with TekSavvy again. No sweat.
    I’m currenly still throwing out Rogers’ endless red flyers and booklets. My mail box is full of it every day almost. It’s ridiculous. You should see my recycling box.
    Well Rogers, I’m just not that stupid. Now get lost, bzzzzz..

  113. Dennis Meharchand
    Packet shaping – how about throwing away all my outgoing emails without telling me. I just learned that Rogers discards most of my outgoing emails (no spam)- emails to my list of shareholders and subscribers. I complained – they admitted it and appears that they promptly choked down my access to my emails from work. Email traffic to me now comes at like a byte a minute. I’m walking – Rogers internet and phone is being switched. Free TV anyone?

  114. Rogers
    I hear a lot of people making the argument “Oh, rogers can’t let you use bittorrent because their infrastructure can’t handle it, they oversubscribed, if people use bittorrent the QOS will degrade for other users, etc..”

    This doesn’t make sense because I can go to fileplanet, or any content hosting site, and download gig upon gig of whatever crap at my full 600kb/s downstream, or I can send whatever crap to my friends over msn at my full 40 kb/s upstream and rogers won’t say shit.

    Yet when I try to download a torrent I get between 0.1 kb/s to 3 kb/s download and similar upload. Does that make any sense? If they want to throttle one user to preserve the QOS for other users, you would think to implement it in a logical way.

    If I can download 600 kb/s from a website right now, how will me getting, say 200kb/s down from torrents be different? But no, I get 3 kb/s. Dialup speeds. Worse than dialup speeds. This isn’t about too much network traffic, it’s about pressure from RIAA and MPAA groups threatening to hold rogers responsible for illegal downloads if they don’t make it harder.

  115. Guy Valentine says:

    preffesional Good guy

    PEOPLE PAY FOR DOWNLOADING>>> I want my fuking download
    I am switching today..

    Let rogers have all the “email checkers”

    gamers, professionals, networrkin peeps and anyone with any computer knowlege should switch out to another ISP

  116. Here is a good idea….
    Why dont we all get together and file a class action claim against Rogers.Proff Drummond sued them and won i have heard of atleast 2 other claims before the courts now and a class action claim might tell Rogers it is time to stop screwing the people that has made him a very rich man, oh ya he doesnt care it is about greed to him

    Lawsuit anyone let me know here

  117. Bell too
    I think Bell is part of this too, keep a look out

  118. If a company says for $40 a month we will provide 300kb/s download bandwidth, and they shape it so that you don’t get 300kb/s download for the entire month, then the company is defrauding you. Millions of dollars a month, in Canada alone, are defrauded from customers in this way. It is wrong. It is illegal. It must be stopped.

    Only a class action suit against ISPs will wake them up.

  119. winner
    I just take their cable modems and never return them, i’ve stolen at least 5,000 dollars from Rogers in the past 2 years since I’m in property management 🙂

    You guys scream and yell like pussies for a lawsuit, Geist included, whereas I actually make a move… i sell them for like $50 each to my new tenants and over again.

    Geist, you’re a loser for not being tougher on ISPs but then again most Torontonians are mental wimps.

  120. Claude
    Rogers charges for its services because it costs them money to deliver those services. They are connected to the INTERNET via an INTERNET EXCHANGE. An IX(Internet Exchange) is basically a bunch of rich companies agreeing to network to each other for no cost. It is said that the Internet is owned by NOBODY. This is absolutely and unequivocably UNTRUE. Without an ISP, YOU CANNOT CONNECT TO THE INTERNET.
    What I think should happen is the Government of Canada should implement a COUNTRY-WIDE Internet Backbone, to which ALL CANADIAN CITIZENS have access to. TAKE AWAY THE POWER FROM CAPITALISTIC COMPANIES like Rogers and Bell, which PROMISE SPEEDS THEY DO NOT DELIVER!
    How would a country-wide free-access network be paid for? TAXES. So, technically, it would not be free. I’d be more than happy to pay through my taxes for UNLIMITED ACCESS.
    The ONLY reason you have to pay for the Internet is because the infrastructure which provides the ONLY connections to the Internet are OWNED BY ISPs.
    The Internet should be FREE. Information should be FREE.
    These are my thoughts. I want FIBRE-OPTIC connectivity to the Internet. I want my Government to provide it. I’m willing to pay through my taxes for this.
    Anyone else agree?

  121. It’s all about the content
    Rogers and Bell, together, own most of the tv channels and a large portion of production capability in the country. They already cap bandwidth (recently lowered) and can/do bill extra for overages. Look at the ISP’s in the US that have the same issues.. the number one being Time Warner.. same thing.

    Shaping is all about copyright and about pandering to the TV, Movie, and Music industries. If they are not seen to be doing something, they’ll lose valuable content.

  122. Also check [ link ] for help when you want to cancel your Rogers subscription

  123. Uncle Phil says:

    Who is kidding who – if you are maxing out your download allowance it is through pirating stuff (movies probably but whatever) – Sure, you can use torrents for legal things but we all rip off as much crap as we can b/c it is so easy and it is fun – just be honest. My name is Uncle Phil and I am from Melmac.

  124. Just got off the phone with Rogers – had
    Okay, I had to hear it for myself. I *was* publishing web services over SSL from my house as part of a small business startup. The site is a learning portal, completely harmless, but demands that users input credentials. As a responsible custodian, I really don’t want our customers not having the assurance that their account information is not being protected.

    Further, my day to day remote access to my coporate network over SSL just began to tank. Speeds became unbearably slow.

    As soon as I found out, I called Rogers right away.

    I went through a series of calls to speak to the individuals that really didn’t have any answer but to say “its policy.” “Really?” I say ….

    “Lets say for a moment, you go in and buy a Ferrari. One day, you show up in your garage, and their is a pinto in your parking spot, with a note attched to the window:

    Dear customer:

    Someone else smashed their Ferarri into a group of people. Now all Ferrari owners must suffer. We have replaced your high speed ferrari with a Pinto. This is because we REALLY have no means of determining who is or will leverage their car to hurt other people.”

    “Does this make any sense?” I ask

    “Its policy sir…”

    “Yes I know that its policy, but you guys are using a 500 pound mallet to squish a NAT, and breaking the table in the process. I have your “Ferrari” service, which I purchased for the exceptional UPLOAD speed, but it makes no difference now if I go with you ghetto Lite service, does it? So, is the business service affected as well?”

    “Yes it is…”

    “ARE YOU WELL? Are you telling me that your business customers cannot host a secure web site because your organbinization cannot distinguish torrent traffic from non torrent traffic? YOU MUST BE KIDDING – the most lowly Intursion Detection System/Intusion Prevention System can distinguish Torrent traffic just based on the client connecting to a tracker alone… how can you tell me that you can’t afford to intergrate these technologies into your infrastructure? Yeah.. its costs money, but so do your data rates..”

    “Its policy sir…”

    “Yeah, I get that… let me ask you, if the government just enacted a policy to stop the spread of contaminated water by simply allowing only 4 cups of water into each house, and didn’t tell you they were going to do that, would you think that its fair?…. Okay, can you PLEASE put this in writing for me?”

    “No sir, we don’t have to do that.”

    “COME AGAIN???? Its POLICY… not some secret… at least tell me where I can see that you are limiting all traffic that is encrypted because you don’t have the capacity to distinguish legitimate from non-legitimate..”

    “We don’t have to provide you anything…”

    EVIDENTLY, they are trying to take the easy way out. I GET IT. They are trying to be responsible. THEIR IS A BALANCE to responsibility – to the government/various software entertainment industries AND the customers. Downloding copywritten material is evidently not legit. At the same time their is no way to be fair but by being ACCURATE. Accurately identifying the causes of the problem – NOT EVERYONE IS AN OFFENDER. This means cost, cost of new detection equipment and costs of more resources.

    Rogers, being infinitely cheap, decides to take the easy way out and institute a policy that affects everyone unfairly. I could just see the overworked Security Officer trying to rack his brain around the fact that he is being given NO money, and being asked to fix a huge problem. Typical, and CHEAP.

    Dudes at Rogers – good security, compliancy, and efforts towards fighting the bad guys costs MONEY. Get used to it. It should be a cost of doing business that you accept.

  125. I agee independent ISP
    Let’s have an independent Gov’t ISP to provide access to all Canadian’s without traffic-shaping or caps.

    [ link ]

  126. Network Tool to Detect Forged Reset Pack
    [ link ]

    Rogers does indeed tamper with your internet traffic. After having lots of problems with torrents & Skype, I used this tool with my Rogers connection and it detected forged RESET packets – at the same time, a YouTube video died on the spot.

    Coincidence? I think not. If you go with Rogers, you will indeed be rogered. The message is clear: BOYCOTT ROGERS AT ALL COSTS!

  127. Duh?
    The problem, Quin, is that they only providers of connections to internet backbones are government organizations, educational facilities and ISP. Bell and Rogers are the top 2 ISP in Canada. Cogeco and Shaw are a couple of others. If you change providers, you will no doubt be paying a third party for use of THIER connection which is through either Rogers or Bell. It’s like a pyramid scheme. We need the government to step in and take control. Privatization leads to capitalism, and then where do we end up? Look to the US of A. War mongers and money grabbers. Citizens need to get together and rebuild our governments, so that WE HAVE CONTROL OF THEM, as it should be. As our constitutions claim it should be. Can I walk up to the Prime Minister and demand to know why he is doing something? Nope, I can’t. Red Tape abounds. bleh… this topic is old, and there’s nothing anyone will do about but bitch. Stop bitching, get off your asses, and take down the pigs who do nothing but line their coffers with our hard-earned cash.
    Plain and simple.

  128. charlesbrooks says:

    online marketing

  129. Rick in NYC says:

    I’m ok with it
    I’m all for increasing the bandwidth capabilities across the country, as long as it doesn’t affect my canada pension plan. Otherwise I might think differently.

  130. Eliza Winters says:

    Sounds good
    I completely agree with Rick. If we can increase the bandwidth without changing anything with my Canada Pension Plan ( ) then I am all for it. As long as nothing there changes we should increase the bandwidth capabilities.