News Canadian ISP admits throttling World of Warcraft

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2011/03/29/canadian-isp-admits-throttling-world-of-war/1

 

If my ISP tried to pull anything like that i would be gone in flash. Wouldn't be waiting months for them to get themselves sorted.

 

Rogers? should rename themselves to LEEEEEROY JENKINS!!

 

Man, Canadian internet users have really been having a hard time recently, pretty much all thanks to Rogers (and Bell), too. If you didn't know about it, look up UBB - Usage-Based Billing.. Let's hope our government isn't looking at them for ideas.

 

Reminds me of the days I was on Nildram in the UK, would always disconnect shortly after starting the Twin Emperors encounter in Ahn'Qiraj. Turns out Nildram was routing badly for many WoW users for months that only switching to a new ISP fixed it.

Nildram was popular back then, now it isn't. I wonder why

 

I personally wrote a letter to the regulatory board about the usage based billing on behalf on myself and my roommates. The Canadian Radio Telecommunications Commission actually reversed their decision on usage based billing. However I'm unsure of the future. Our internet bill would have increased by 40% per month, which is a lot for students.

I don't think you know how lucky you guys are that you don't have two giant monopolies (Bell & Rogers) running most of the telecommunications in your country.

 

Blocking P2P ... Have they heard about net neutrality?

 

BT runs almost everything in the UK, it's government legislation that has stopped monopolisation of the markets.

 

I used to have Videotron.. they are only in Quebec and Ontario.. small ISP in comparison to the other only "choices" we have: Bell, Rogers, and Shaws.

Videotron is SUPER expensive, small gap too, unless you go with the really high end services such as 30Mbps or even 120Mbps, which has a 100GB bandwidth cap per month download/upload shared.
30Mbps service is 67$/month Canadian (U.S currency is about the same as Canada's, if you want a point of reference). 120Mbps is 150$ per month.

Videotron did not throttle anything, did not care what you did, has descent service, no special software to install, no special anything.. just plugin the modem to your own router, and your set. Everything stays connected.

Sadly, my mother could no longer pay Videotron high fees as life expense in Montreal is increasing, and my mother didn't want to pay a penny (despite me being able to afford Videotron service entirely). So we went with Bell (I knew it was crap, but no choice).

We are the lucky ones in term that when you get the 10Mpbs service, you have 10Mpbs (most people have <10.. and I don't mean 9.. I mean 6 or 5 or even 3Mpbs... as Bell plays with the words "Up To"). They throttle your internet access based on file size, if you do any sort of P2P, unless your do Windows Remote Desktop (VNC is throttled), they also throttle based on time of day and if it's a week-end or not.
In addition to all this, Bell has horrible service. Anything you want to do requires to call to a specific department. You want to add a service, call at..... you want to modify a service you need to call at.... you want to remove a service, call at... And they can't transfer you, and their system takes 24 hours to update, and each department are COMPLETELY disconnected from each other.. like if you call a different company.

You have a Modem/router thing, which was HELL to setup with my own router, as they use a custom layout for the router, where everything is scattered everywhere, it's super slow to navigate, and you have virtually little options to do things. AND their DNS service is utter crap. Every 5-6 pages, or pages I never visited before, will time out before connecting as the DNS service is not doing it's work, and I have to re-try to get it to work (common Bell problem). In result, let's say I click on a YouTube video... well sometimes, the video doesn't load, as it connects to a different domain name, and the DNS server doesn't do it's job. I have to re-load the page 2 or 3 times to get the video going.

Bell is AWFUL, and severally annoying. And based on other stories.. it's similar with other ISP in Canada.
Seriously.. with Bell.. I feel like the first days of this Internet technology. It won't surprise me, if they run on Pentium 1 their servers, with a few megabyte of RAM, running Windows 3.1 or 95.

Also, it's not like Bell was significantly cheaper either.

Why not pick someone else? Most people have at best 2 choices.

 

I think over the next few years we'll see ISPs doing this more and more as they come under financial pressure and look to cut their overheads. P2P has a bad rep and it's easy to defend throttling it.

Within the next 5-10 years we'll see the end of cheap, good internet access. You really will get what you pay for.

 

or alternatively p2p will become more common in distribution of media/"cloud computing"
i believe sky player use p2p too distribute files support by it's own servers

 

We have one company that pretty much owns most, if not all our network.

 

Ever since Cataclysm it has been really bad for most WOW players. ISP issues and Blizzard making so many changes to the game without really understanding the effect or testing them lead to countless hours of running through wow log files, repair the game file, etc with no real positive fix.

For some of us approaching our ISP is useless. We have a monopoly (with the only telecommunications company having ties with the government) in our country with no consumer law. The best we can do is talk to the "right" person or just become plain annoying until they look into it.

This is from a ISP that charges prices like 81 GBP per month for a uncapped 512kbps ADSL (over 1 year period) and 59 GBP per month over a 3 year period. For a 2Mbps line over 3 years it would cost you 146 GBP per month. Oh yeah - and they are the only ones allowed to resell ADSL in the country.

Have a look at Telecom Namibia pricing for yourself:

http://www.telecom.na/index.php/products/broadband/484?itemID=18

How do i as a consumer even start to fight against something like this?

 

Damn, and I was contemplating moving to Canada. I heard they have poor ISPs, but what I see here is ridiculous. Where I live I have a 75/50mb/s DSL which goes full speed even at peak hours, is completely uncapped and unthrottled and costs me something like 50GBP. This means that Canada is a no-no for me, in january I had just a bit over 940GB of transfer and there were months I got over a TB, I don't want to think how much would I have to pay over there...

Soo, any good ISPs in California?

 

[delete]

 

rofl

I did some quick math and if you had downloaded 940GB on my current isp contract (videotron 15mbps) it would have cost you 1305$ for the month LOL

 

Hmm affordable. Let me just get out my money tree that I have right here.... let me grab some bills...

You know Tthe trick with money trees is the healthier it is, the more and larger value bills comes out from it. So not only it provide you with a larger income, but it's like a heath status bar. You can read all about it all in my "I am trying to afford my IPS, so buy my book of nonsense on how become rich in 10 easy steps" for only a low low price of 3 easy payment of 49.99$. BUT WAIT! If you buy it on the next 30 sec, we will double your offer, with 2 books for the price 1. BUT WAIT! For this first time exclusive offer, we will remove 1 payment. That is right, now for just 2 payment of 49.99$. Each book comes complete with a certification of authenticity. Against our management, if you call now, we will also include this vacuum cleaner as a free gift for you! A 999$ value, all yours for 2 payments of 49.99$. This fabulous book won 5 TheGoodBytes awards! Sorry, the 30 seconds ran out... no more offers. But call now!

 

I'm thinking of jumping to Sonic.net. Its in the SF bay area only, but they have a bonded 40mbps DSL with 2 phone lines for $70/mo. Considering how much 40mbps costs with comcast this is a pretty good deal especially if you have use for 2 phone lines. They are also a local company and have a really good customer service reputation.

 

Hi all

I am Elise with Rogers. I would like to bring more details to this issue.

As you mention in your blog post, we have been investigating issues related to World of Warcraft (WoW) and we recommend a temporary workaround.

What we know today is that there is a problem with our traffic management equipment that is inadvertently slowing the game for some customers. While we have fixed some issues with a software modification, new problems have emerged that we expect will be addressed with a second software update in June.

As you explain, we believe the problem occurs when P2P is running while simultaneously playing the game. If customers are experiencing problems we suggest they turn off the peer to peer setting within the WoW game and ensure no other P2P file sharing applications are running while playing WoW. WoW does use P2P for software updates, but with this setting changed they should continue to automatically receive software updates through other methods.

This is only a temporary solution. We continue to work closely with the game manufacturer and our equipment supplier to help resolve this issue as soon as possible.

We also want to thank all our customers for their patience while we are working on this issue.

 

Ouch! This makes me pleased as punch with my Brighthouse Networks contract. $164/mo includes phone/internet/cable with HD channels.