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Canadian Throttling: It’s Not Just For P2P

Throttle Everything

The issue of net neutrality is quickly coming to a head here in Canada.  It’s been long known that the largest cable internet provider Rogers has been throttling P2P activity, but since the announcement a couple of weeks ago that Bell would start throttling P2P on it’s 3rd party wholesale lines (which would affect DSL users not subscribed to Bell’s Sympatico service), there has been a lot of action.

What has been largely overlooked is that not only is Bell throttling P2P, but they are, if the evidence is accurate, throttling ALL traffic.  Recently, Canadian DSL provider Teksavvy (which I use for my home service), posted before and after graphs of their traffic throughput, which suggests that all types of traffic have been scaled back by 2 thirds.  I’m reprinting the graphs here, as this information seems to be getting lost in the shuffle…

Before throttling
before throttling and…

After throttling
after throttling.

On Wednesday, Bell called on the CRTC to scrap the mandated wholesale of DSL, even though the CRTC stated that 3rd party companies should still be able to rent telecom lines.  The issue of net neutrality was raised in the House of Commons by NDP MP Charlie Angus during question period, which prompted the following response from Industry Minister Jim Prentice:

“We have a well advanced Internet system in this country. It is not publicly regulated,” he said.

“At this point in time we will continue to leave the matter between consumers on the one hand and Internet service providers on the other”

After the disclosure by Ellacoya (which received millions in investment from Bell) that P2P is not the most bandwidth intense traffic (further evidenced by TekSavvy’s charts), Bell gains the advantage of controlling it’s own streaming media services over legal P2P traffic, or outside services accessed by both Sympatico and 3rd party customers.

This is a follow up to our previous article: Net Neutrality Perfect Storm, eh!

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10 thoughts on “Canadian Throttling: It’s Not Just For P2P

  1. […] is TekSavvy’s report that it’s more than just P2P traffic being throttled, as mentioned here last week. Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and […]

  2. […] the equivalent of a convoy of 18-wheelers blocking the poor little guy. As we previously reported the numbers show that gaming, web streaming, and email each hog more lanes than all torrents combined. These numbers […]

  3. […] at Arstechnica, Nate Anderson gives a nice outline of why and how, and RGBFilter.comhas more information on the throttling that you will know what to do […]

  4. […] claim of bit torrent traffic hogging all the bandwidth was demonstrably false. It was clear from data provided by TekSavvy, one of the parties affected by Bell, that torrents did not account for as much traffic as Bell […]

  5. […] and abroad claiming that it’s crushing their traffic, and needs to be slowed down. However, all reports, including Bell’s own data along with data provided by 3rd parties all reveal that bit […]

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