Canadian internet access gets shittier

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Canadian internet access gets shittier

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

So far this has yet to affect TekSavvy from what I can see. I switched from DSL to cable because DSL in my area is awful (and yet Bell advertises non-existent Fibe all over my intersection). So far I've been able to torrent to my heart's content using an SSTP VPN, and having 10/1 instead of 4/0.5 has been awesome.

Here's hoping I get grandfathered if this all goes to hell. I wrote several MPs about how awful broadband is in the country's largest city and got only a single form reply, so no one is going to legislate us out of the stone age like they did with wireless.

Toronto seems to have it way worse than out west. My friend leases at 1 King West, one of the best addresses in the city, and says his ETTH service is 100/1 and filters all the server ports. Maybe he's not doing any thorough testing, but 100/1??

Shumagorath fucked around with this message at 05:47 on Nov 15, 2010

# ¿ Nov 15, 2010 05:12

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 16:37

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Unfortunately I doubt internet bill shock is as prevalent as cellphone bill shock. The best thing that can happen is more people using Netflix and Steam/PSN/Live, as that means more people bumping into their caps through normal use and thus creating an outcry over bills. Either that, or IP-based TV and movie services start getting bandwidth cap exemption from the carriers and someone cries antitrust.

Edit: How weak an argument is it if the carriers argue that the services should be exempt because they're entirely internal?

Shumagorath fucked around with this message at 04:40 on Nov 18, 2010

# ¿ Nov 18, 2010 03:37

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

To clarify, I was suggesting that the carriers would start offering their own cap-exempt streaming services and everyone else would have to go to the government. Rogers and Bell don't want anyone to get paid for media except them.

# ¿ Nov 19, 2010 03:43

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

spoof posted:

Good news everyone! Bell lowered their 6Mbit DSL caps to 25GB/month and raised the maximum overage to $60/month. Unless you go over 300GB/month, in which case the sky is the limit.

Words escape me.

I want to believe this is some tough love plan to force everyone over to fiber, but they don't even have that deployed in half the places they advertise it.

Do Blotto boxes actually work? Can we do that?

DropDeadRed posted:

Rogers just started RAPING bandwidth here in Ottawa. I went from pulling 1.2MBit down on torrents cleanly with other applications able to work at the same time to now only being able to pull 2-300k and any time that there is any P2P running they are breaking all connections to the point where i cannot stay connected to an online game at all. Disconnected within 1 minute. It's ridiculous.

StrongVPN to the US or even somewhere else in Canada should get your torrents back in shape. I never run P2P with games going but if you get an endpoint in Toronto or Montreal you shouldn't notice a huge spike in lag. Hell, you might even get better routing to some of the server providers.

Make sure you get an OpenVPN or SSTP connection because PPTP isn't secure. I have an SSTP connection and max out my bandwidth both ways on Teksavvy cable.

Shumagorath fucked around with this message at 05:42 on Dec 21, 2010

# ¿ Dec 21, 2010 05:33

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Blistex, initiate a chargeback the second you cash that cheque.

DropDeadRed posted:

Yay for paying MORE cash to get the ability to make use of what I already pay a monthly fee to get!

StrongVPN has other uses, the least of which being Hulu access. You can even get router firmware that will VPN everything on your LAN if you want.

quote:

Do you have trouble maxing out your bandwidth with tekksavy cable without the VPN? Are they already throttling tekksavy cable? I thought that wasn't happening quite yet.

They're governed by whatever Rogers has in your area, which in my case has been throttling as far back as 2007. It's why I left them in the first place.

Shumagorath fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Dec 22, 2010

# ¿ Dec 22, 2010 04:31

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

EoRaptor posted:

I routinely max my Teksavvy cable when using bittorrent, and while Rogers certainly has the ability to implement throttling for TPIA customers, they haven't yet. Switching from Rogers to Teksavvy should remove any traffic shaping currently on your connection.

When I tried to torrent without a VPN it was pointless. Maybe it has something to do with how the last mile is connected or whatever.

# ¿ Dec 26, 2010 03:35

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

TekSavvy still sells unlimited cable for something like $55/month last I checked.

# ¿ Dec 26, 2010 21:59

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

keyframe posted:

If novus is in your city I would recommend them %100 to anyone. Best company I have ever dealt with in Canada. Like when you call their tech support a person answers the phone instantly, I almost fell of my chair when it happened. I was paying $80 a month to shaw and was getting poo poo download and even worse upload speeds. I am paying $25 a month to novus for fios.

http://www.novusnow.ca/

drat.

Teksavvy can be like that too sometimes. I had a lighting strike wipe out my modem's firmware and a tech was able to talk me through resetting it over the phone. I can't think of another company where the consumer is treated like an adult.

# ¿ Dec 30, 2010 05:44

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

DropDeadRed posted:

I did some complaining about Rogers traffic management a while back. With a VPN in place and some clever routing rules set up, It's just like living in the states again.... literally

No effect on anything else I do which I did not want to go through the VPN either.

What are you using? I have my VPN set up through Windows 7 (SSTP) and it's kind of annoying to have everything go through it when all I need to route is BT traffic.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2011 02:32

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Steam probably should compress stuff, and doubly-so for pre-loads since it increases entropy.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2011 05:21

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Maybe the grass isn't really greener, but Telus seem like the least predatory of the big three.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2011 05:45

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Paying overage to Rogers or Bell would probably be a lot cheaper than downtown Vancouver.

# ¿ Jan 15, 2011 07:36

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Bonzo posted:

It looks like the NDP is now taking an interest in UBB

http://straight.com/article-369589/vancouver/ndp-attacks-crtcs-approval-usagebased-billing-internet-service

It's likely an election year and the Liberals will be desperate for seats, so we have to hope....

# ¿ Jan 22, 2011 00:57

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

What on Earth are you guys doing? Only in times when I was insanely bored have I ever cracked 150GB.

Don't get me wrong though, I'm as pissed as you are. This ruling completely disregards that Rogers/Bell will gladly serve you all the bits you want provided you're paying for content they own and getting it over their service. Somehow the variable cost jumps a million percent as soon as they connect to a peer.

# ¿ Jan 26, 2011 01:05

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

I'm hoping Netflix, Sony, Microsoft, Apple, hell even a few porn sites, basically anyone who provides content will decide to sue for being rendered uncompetitive in the face of the large ISP's own unlimited content.

# ¿ Jan 26, 2011 02:25

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

When they had the Olympics, CBC would have been a great candidate. Guess who owns those rights now!

# ¿ Jan 26, 2011 02:42

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

What's Bell's "uninsured" Fibe cap? 60GB? That's not going to last long at 25Mbps.

In a strange twist of fate, today is the day I discovered I still get full-speed uploads on torrents through Teksavvy without using my VPN. I'll still keep it around for Pandora access though.

Shumagorath fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Jan 26, 2011

# ¿ Jan 26, 2011 04:37

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Godinster posted:

God I loving hate Bell.

I could easily live under 75GB most months, but in 2011 on a fibre connection I shouldn't have to.

Time to start writing my MP and demand they back anything Charlie Angus tables over this.

Viktor posted:

There's no reason for SSL traffic to be ~400KB/s so they could just apply a flow to it.

If you start dropping encrypted connections just because they max out line speeds then you start interfering with people's ability to work. I couldn't even use RDP on Rogers when they implemented throttling, and that's probably the most efficient remote management protocol beyond a flat SSH terminal.

Shumagorath fucked around with this message at 02:22 on Jan 27, 2011

# ¿ Jan 27, 2011 02:09

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Viktor posted:

Excellent, now if it gains some traction.

YEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSS

fishmech posted:

A 56k connection with maximum utilization of it's bandwidth (it maxes at 64 kbps, so if you're topping the download at 53.3 k your upload will max at 10.7k, likewise when you max the upload at 33.6 k you can only download at 30.4 k) will provide 20 gigabytes of total transfer per month.

I see no goddamn reason why a broadband line should ever be sold with less bandwidth per month than a dialup line, much less a tenth of it.

An ad campaign based on "you'd be better off on dial-up / Canada Post" might do well along with others that play to telco hate and nationalism.

Pweller posted:

This is all an **AA ploy to get people to count their bytes and discourage them from seeding their torrents, finally leading to the end of online piracy forever!

A good ISP loves P2P, but one that owns the means of production ( :ussr:

) and traditional delivery hates it of course.

Shumagorath fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Jan 28, 2011

# ¿ Jan 28, 2011 01:02

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Godinster posted:

CBC has a hardon for the CRTC. They've got a loving section about it on their website.

They had some jerkoff on their Metro Morning show who's argument went like this:

1) In a restaurant I would be upset if I was forced to pay for a glutton at another table.
2) Abolish the CRTC, blah blah free market
3) Small businesses and indie content providers who make videos 30-60sec long will benefit from this :confused:

4) Internet is a natural monopoly and should be delivered by the government like water, where he is still in favour of UBB.

How he got to point #4 after all that trash was beyond me, so I called in to complain that the internet has near-zero variable cost and this is all about the big telecom companies protecting their TV by making you pay them for media regardless of how you get it.

The guest was on at roughly 6:45AM if you want to complain:
http://www.cbc.ca/metromorning/contact/

# ¿ Jan 28, 2011 13:03

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

drcru posted:

Reverse internet billing decision, Liberals say!!

I was so happy when I read this you have no idea. The CBC is also the only major news site covering this due to the massive conflict of interest elsewhere, and now they're finally reporting the issue of the telcos owning TV and networks too.

Something for Rogers customers:
1) Go here: http://www.rogers.com/web/content/contactus
2) Click "Make a complaint" and select "Office of the President"
3) Fill in whatever for the manager's name (I used the name of certain PR scum from Bell)
4) Tell them about all the services you will pull if they announce UBB.

I told them that our family would pull four phones and two cable installations, which is about 10� what they would make off UBB during my average month.

8ender posted:

This may actually do more harm than good. If the conservatives were thinking of beating up on another federal agency in public (and they sure don't like the CRTC) then they might change their mind if it means looking like they're agreeing with the Libs.

With an election looming and the Tories desperate for votes in Ontario/Quebec where all the poo poo is going down, I doubt they want to be known as the party that washed their hands of everyone getting hosed on their internet bills.

Shumagorath fucked around with this message at 02:59 on Feb 1, 2011

# ¿ Feb 1, 2011 02:56

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Is there any chance Yak's line to my house would be able to do 10/.8 if Teksavvy could only manage 4/.5? Just hedging my bets here.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2011 04:32

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

I just finished e-mailing Steam / Valve about this issue. Netflix is already on-board, and I might try Amazon next.

Even in these dark times I'm hesitant to ask Apple to come to the rescue. They'll just want a 30% cut off any bandwidth charges resulting from iTunes purchases.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2011 02:45

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

There is a Canadian parent with one (soon to be two) children in Afghanistan who posted on one of either CBC or the Globe's stories. He was complaining about the potential high cost of Skype with UBB imposed.

Find him.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2011 03:18

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

The fact remains that anyone in the Canadian Forces complaining about their families paying double or triple to stay in touch will have the PMO kill this tomorrow.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2011 03:42

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

If Radio One used the same guy as Metro Morning just go to the website and write a complaint. The CBC in general has been doing the best job covering this of all the major media outlets, with Jameson Berkow at FP being a close second. The Globe has been good all things considered.

kuddles posted:

And as a surprise to nobody, the National Post editorial team is taking the stance that this will effect nobody, that we're all a bunch of whiners, and that Bell is only charging what it needs to in order to survive, as determined through their heavy research of asking a Bell spokesperson about it.

You'll notice that the ed. board gets absolutely savaged in the comment section and a few people even cancel their Post subscriptions. No one is deceived. There's another FP columnist, Terence Corcoran, who wrote something even worse but you can't comment directly on the article. Just e-mail him instead, because his column was either the laziest journalism I have ever seen or paid for by a telco.

Sashimi posted:

I love how just about every comment on that editorial is calling the author out on their bullshit.

Also saw coverage of this issue on Global for the first time tonight, its becoming too big for even a news outlet owned by Shaw to ignore.

CTV covered this once and I think the article was pulled afterward. Even if their entire piece was interviewing Mirko Bibic and other scum from Bell there's no way anyone with half a brain wouldn't wonder why they're going to get less for their dollar.

Speaking of which, Bibic has resorted to flat-out lies worthy of his employers. In a Globe article late today he claimed that the smaller ISPs only think free bandwidth is a good idea because they don't have to invest. Last I checked, they are only renting the last mile and everything beyond central office is their own.

There is a circle of hell for people like him.

Suniikaa posted:

Friend who is a CSR at Telus sent me a txt this morning. They got a work email stating that Telus will not be changing their bandwidth policy. If this is true, yay.

I wonder if it's because they didn't buy Corus entertainment in time :v:

Shumagorath fucked around with this message at 03:11 on Feb 3, 2011

# ¿ Feb 3, 2011 02:57

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

less than three posted:

Holy loving poo poo I want to wave this on a flag.

And Postmedia broke the story, :lol:

# ¿ Feb 3, 2011 05:33

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Suniikaa posted:

This was really refreshing to watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYizoh_r6D0&t=304s

The only way this could be better would be if someone ran up behind Kevin O'Leary and slapped his bald head with a dead fish.

Saving this here since Rogers will never approve it:

quote:

Nice try, Rogers, but you aren�t going to legislate you competitors out of business. Either compete fairly (and that includes licensing content to Netflix) or get out of the market.

I was a Rogers customer until 2007 when I noticed my encrypted connections being throttled (Remote Desktop and BitTorrent). I called and complained three times and was told my line was not being shaped. Only when I switched to a much stronger SSL VPN did my connections go longer than a minute without dying. When I called customer support with this evidence I was told to cancel my account if I didn�t like it. I did exactly that and went to TekSavvy.

I�ve since moved on to TekSavvy cable since Bell�s last mile to my area is wired with cans and string, and that you would have the audacity to imply that fixed bandwidth allotment to resellers over your last mile is justified in being marked up 10,000% percent is criminal.

Canadian consumers have had enough of your anti-competitive, anti-consumer practises and are now aware that better service lies elsewhere. Wireless and Video-on-Demand are next.

http://redboard.rogers.com/2011/rogers-high-speed-internet-customers-not-impacted-by-crtc-decision/comment-page-2/#comment-20656

They are getting worked harder than the National Post editorial board.

Shumagorath fucked around with this message at 06:04 on Feb 3, 2011

# ¿ Feb 3, 2011 05:49

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Parachute Underwear posted:

I love that that shareholder was just cut off at the end. He sounded like a tremendous rear end in a top hat and it was obvious the only thing he cared about was his wallet and that he gave no gently caress about anyone. It's easy to say you're for this and that when you're so rich you can probably download any amount of anything you want every month and it still wouldn't make a dent on your bank account.

Kevin O'Leary is a tremendous rear end in a top hat and would likely back UBB imposition on resellers even if he understood how the Internet worked, as shown by his continued use of the word "parasite". I also have it on good authority that he regularly crank-calls his cell provider's customer retention line to get a better deal, so he must enjoy overpriced telecom services on a perverse level.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2011 06:26

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Isizzlehorn posted:

Maybe now we can get fair use for 3rd parties, so that someday I can look forward to Teksavvy DSL higher than 5mbit? Oh, and burn Bell corporate to the ground. Still want that.

Wasn't TekSavvy supposed to be granted access to the new fibre networks independent of other lovely rulings? Not like it matters though; Bell has advertisements for it all over my neighbourhood (including on loving phone booths) while we're limited to their 6/1 Mbit DSL that's 4/0.5 in practise.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2011 06:42

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

This is complete regulatory capture of the CRTC. There's no other way its chairman could say Internet Protocol TeleVision is not an Internet service with a straight face.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2011 01:07

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

XYZ posted:

So I guess I should wait until March to switch to TekSavvy cable?

Switch now. Even if UBB were put in place that's 15% of your bill not going to Rogers.

Kreez posted:

Browsing through Facebook, I see that a ton of people I went to school with or whatever have joined anti-UBB groups. I know the vast majority of these people have a cheap Bell account. Overturning UBB has nothing at all to do with Bell's rates, it's just their applying their lovely rates onto 3rd party ISPs, right?

Obviously some of these people are waking up to there being other options out there, but I can't help but feel there are a ton of people who are as informed on the issue as the head of the CRTC, and are just being against UBB for the sake of being against it.

I'm hoping that many people who weren't on independent ISPs already are either now fully aware of them and/or how much their Bell bill sucks. Bell probably won't be able to get away with their bullshit on many of their own customers.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2011 19:07

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

jizzpowered posted:

How slow is the 5M dsl line? I'm thinking of switching over from Videotron's 15M line. I'd rather have unlimited than a shitter 70GB cap.

You will go from being able to watch an HD movie off Usenet on a whim (<1 hour) to needing 5+ hours to download it. Not sure how it affects streaming like Netflix.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2011 19:29

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

XYZ posted:

I have a Bell 5Mbit/512k connection. Unlimited bandwidth, but with a horrendous bittorrent throttle of 30Kb/s after 4:30pm. I'm paying $60/month.

Bell's DPI hardware is laughable and can't even handle an empty MLPPP header. If you rent the cheapest unlimited-traffic VPN you can find you can probably bypass that throttle, or failing that get an SSTP VPN or OpenVPN to the US for Hulu / Pandora / etc.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2011 20:16

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Bloody Hedgehog posted:

Someone has to be there to sign for the package or they won't deliver. You can ask them to drop it on their second attempt, but if there's nowhere safe to drop it (even though you said they could), they won't leave it.

They left a pair of Kindles sitting in the middle of my porch, so clearly this policy isn't uniformly applied. I called to complain as they've done that before with less expensive items, but once they figured out I'd received my item all investigation stopped.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2011 17:39

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

His history with the big telcos is probably a distant second to Public being unable to compete with Wind. They're a convenience store brand and drop calls if you go outside their coverage zone, putting them a distant third behind Mobilicity.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2011 22:08

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

I just got a voicemail from the president's office at Rogers. Apparently they took notice of my crank e-mail where I threatened to pull all my family's TVs and cellphones (easily $500/mo) if they imposed UBB on cable wholesalers.

They're going to call back, so this should be really interesting.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2011 00:40

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

teethgrinder posted:

I'm now posting from TekSavvy Cable.

My plan is twice as fast as the DSL was, but upload is like 10-20 KB/s slower.

What and where are you uploading? My torrents uploaded slower initially, but someone must have fixed something higher up the chain because now I hit my full 1Mbps on torrents without a VPN.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2011 00:58

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

I was genuinely and pleasantly surprised when I saw that. Rogers didn't call me back today and I deleted the voicemail with their number, so that was probably it... unless I grab their number off my own Rogers bill :haw:

# ¿ Feb 9, 2011 03:59

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 16:37

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Bibic has at least once gloated about screwing independent ISPs on his Facebook page. This was a few years ago, so if anyone is able to dig up the story it might be an opportune time for some character assassination.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2011 03:52

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