The math, do it again.fix-the-spade said:
Then maybe it's time to google "home made napalm"... not that I'm suggesting any illegal actions here, it's just something worth knowing.Worgen said:
Rogers Ordered to Stop Throttling Games
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
- Start date
About fucking time they fixed this. I fucking hate how Bell, Rogers and the other companies fucking strangle the Local ISPs.
Hooray for actually doing math correctly and using simple definitions like "8 bits == 1 byte". fix-the-spade, you should take notes from this guy. Even if you're only counting peer-to-peer connections and nothing else your Internets are doing, it's not hard at all to hit 10 KB/s as the host of a multiplayer game. And that's just the game state data. It only gets worse from there once you include voice chat and non-game network activity. Heh.Nimbus said:
I'm glad I'm in Quebec, then.
...
Oh, wait. Over here we're stuck with Videotron and its ridiculously low bandwidth cap limits. My speed isn't throttled, but I can't fire up Left 4 Dead without wondering if I'm about to incur a debt to my ISP, seeing as a two-gigabyte increase past the cap costs about thirty fricking dollars.
Troll Fail, moving on.
The CRTC took its sweet time to realize what's happening. Canada's basically the Far West as far as Internet legislation goes; nobody dares to step on Rogers, Bell or Videotron's toes. The few local ISPs with decent unlimited plans can't keep their customer base because they can't deliver the same bandwidth. It took years for someone to work up the balls to start a class-action lawsuit against Videotron concerning the excessive caps, and the commission is still collecting complaints. We're still years away from seeing them adjust their policies in our favor. As is, they've set up things so that you can't be a Netflix HD user in Canada without blowing your cap - even if you've subscribed to the priciest connection plan they've got. They have the gall to market it as being unlimited, while everyone knows we're capped at 120 GB a month.
...
Oh, wait. Over here we're stuck with Videotron and its ridiculously low bandwidth cap limits. My speed isn't throttled, but I can't fire up Left 4 Dead without wondering if I'm about to incur a debt to my ISP, seeing as a two-gigabyte increase past the cap costs about thirty fricking dollars.
Troll Fail, moving on.
The CRTC took its sweet time to realize what's happening. Canada's basically the Far West as far as Internet legislation goes; nobody dares to step on Rogers, Bell or Videotron's toes. The few local ISPs with decent unlimited plans can't keep their customer base because they can't deliver the same bandwidth. It took years for someone to work up the balls to start a class-action lawsuit against Videotron concerning the excessive caps, and the commission is still collecting complaints. We're still years away from seeing them adjust their policies in our favor. As is, they've set up things so that you can't be a Netflix HD user in Canada without blowing your cap - even if you've subscribed to the priciest connection plan they've got. They have the gall to market it as being unlimited, while everyone knows we're capped at 120 GB a month.
Very well put, and OpenMedia is definitely something that people interested in this issue should check out, but I don't agree that the major telecoms should "fall." They need to be brought to heel, but not brought down entirely. Same with the CRTC; it could stand an overhaul, but it serves (or could serve) a worthwhile purpose. Not going to happen in the current political climate, though. The Conservatives are possibly the most unprincipled and opportunistic bunch to ever hold power in this country, and if there aren't votes in it (and let's face it, this is not a huge populist issue), they're not interested.AC10 said:
I hate to burst everyone's bubble, but there is a limit to broadband. I'm not saying that they aren't intentionally throttling internet, but I'm also saying the the current generation of broadband technology is not nearly enough to handle everyone. There is stuff out there that can, but it's not cheap and it would need to be installed, which is not cheap either. I hate caps as much as anyone, I was stuck using satellite internet for a short while, god that sucked. I couldn't do shit, and there was a threshold of about 50 gigs. And it was never ever stable enough to play online games.
There is also a reasonable chance that if you live in a populated area, you could easily be hitting those limits naturally. Rogers being the giant they are, clearly would make more money if they went with new technology and I am willing bet that if they could, they would.
It's not like P2P is only for file sharing. It's when a company creates a virtual server in a program, then one computer acts like a server and others connect to it. It simulates a server, but servers have significantly faster data streams than normal peoples broadband. So games without dedicated servers will still be stuck under their system.
After all is said and done, there has been no proof at all they are throttling the connections of online games (and definitely not on purpose), only one accusation from a single player base. So, they were sent a letter saying they had to draw up a plan to permanently fix any future potential mishaps. The title of the article is very misleading. They made it sound like Rogers WAS DEFINITELY doing this, when the reality is, they were accused of it and the good Canadian government responded the only way they could, by sending a heavy handed letter. Either way, I'm sure this will be resolved soon enough. Sundays are bad news days.
There is also a reasonable chance that if you live in a populated area, you could easily be hitting those limits naturally. Rogers being the giant they are, clearly would make more money if they went with new technology and I am willing bet that if they could, they would.
It's not like P2P is only for file sharing. It's when a company creates a virtual server in a program, then one computer acts like a server and others connect to it. It simulates a server, but servers have significantly faster data streams than normal peoples broadband. So games without dedicated servers will still be stuck under their system.
After all is said and done, there has been no proof at all they are throttling the connections of online games (and definitely not on purpose), only one accusation from a single player base. So, they were sent a letter saying they had to draw up a plan to permanently fix any future potential mishaps. The title of the article is very misleading. They made it sound like Rogers WAS DEFINITELY doing this, when the reality is, they were accused of it and the good Canadian government responded the only way they could, by sending a heavy handed letter. Either way, I'm sure this will be resolved soon enough. Sundays are bad news days.
What I'm guessing most people don't realize when they look at data speed is that ISP's use BITs not BYTES. A byte is 8 times the size or a bit, so when you're getting 15Mb/s you're getting the equivalent of just under 2MegaBytes/s. The capital letter means everything 1MB=8Mb.
I'm not sure if ISPs do this to try and trick us, or if there's some super important reason they use a measuring system that NO ONE uses in the real world, but there you are.
All of the Big Three telecom companies have been screwing people for years. You try to go to a smaller company to get better service, and lo and behold, it's owned and operated by Rogers/Bell/Telus.
I'm not sure if ISPs do this to try and trick us, or if there's some super important reason they use a measuring system that NO ONE uses in the real world, but there you are.
All of the Big Three telecom companies have been screwing people for years. You try to go to a smaller company to get better service, and lo and behold, it's owned and operated by Rogers/Bell/Telus.
Mr.K. said:
Here is the math.dogstile said:
1kb = 125B
80 x 125= 10'000.
80kb/sec = 10'000B/sec... oh dear.
10KB/sec and I am such a muppet.<spoiler=
In fact, if you click this text, there's a picture of me underneath>
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_nJyPPsxX1P0/TUsWIWPyLyI/AAAAAAAADQ8/dEJ0ln1G770/s1600/beaker.jpg
Now, excuse me while I do some editing.
I got an unlimited connection in Ontario but the download speed is capped at 1 Mbps. Don't think they have a very large coverage area though so I guess I'm just lucky.
http://www.shaw.ca/Internet/
http://www.shaw.ca/Internet/
What I don't understand is that the new Conservative Party doesn't really take on issues Canadians care about anyhow. They love prattling on about crime and how the biggest threat to Canada is Islamic extremists (who honestly believes that?) and the polls show that it's just not resonating with Canadians.Andy Chalk said:
It seems they've been running almost purely upon Canadians memory of the Liberal's endless corruption scandals, the immensely unlikable ex-leader Ignatieff, and the belief--reinforced by the CBC constantly--that the NDP wasn't in a genuine position to oust the Conservatives, so a vote for them would be a vote for Harper (as so many pundits tried to paint it).
With the NDP refuting that argument, becoming the new official opposition and electing such new young MPs in the last election, I'm hoping next time around they try to leverage that. Bring more youth issues to bear on the electoral scene while pointing to their youthful MPs as evidence to get young voters out. Things like tuition, student loans, and this, bandwidth limitations.
Rogers is so stupid about this. The filter is supposed to catch Bit Torrent, but it doesn't actually work if you run it on non-standard ports. What sort of filter is that? I torrented through their filter for years without issue before I switched to a cheaper provider.
Now I have unlimited internet through Teksavvy in Toronto.
Now I have unlimited internet through Teksavvy in Toronto.
Since the problem is with WoW I can say that not a fuck is given this day.
However, if any providers in Britain dare to pull the same crap once Guild Wars 2 has finally been released, I will be doing some throttling myself.
However, if any providers in Britain dare to pull the same crap once Guild Wars 2 has finally been released, I will be doing some throttling myself.
These days that's all companies ever really think of because money is all they are really after and in this day and age they don't care how they get it and they in turn lost track of their actual goal of being a company "to provide great quality to the customer" and instead they just threw that ideal goal away to make way for shoddy products and half assed attempts at providing a service while not giving two shits about how their customers think because they are far too greedy to even notice, and i sometimes wonder why i don't always buy games all the time.Rednog said:
Also on topic i have unlimited cap over here on the IOM but we only have up to 16mbs and i paid for the top service and i don't even get the full speed at all and they get away with it by simply saying in tiny tiny letters "you could get up to 16mbs but it can vary which i believe is utter bullcrap considering we have the technology to make sure everyone in the community can get that speed but instead they just sit back and let the small print wash their problems away instead of doing something about it.
I believe that's a big part of the problem, they'll only deal with the most basic, easy to stop stuff like uncloaked torrents.Flunk said:Rogers is so stupid about this. The filter is supposed to catch Bit Torrent, but it doesn't actually work if you run it on non-standard ports. What sort of filter is that? I torrented through their filter for years without issue before I switched to a cheaper provider.
Now I have unlimited internet through Teksavvy in Toronto.
There's enough ISPs in the UK with 10 or 20gb monthly limits however, it's really quite silly how scared they are that people might actually USE their damn service.
Incidentally, as the entire topic refers to, there's more than enough ways to use tens of gigs of bandwidth without doing anything morally or legally wrong.
Hell, consider how many people downloaded the 5gb of free Portal this month.
I agree my wording was a bit sensationalist, sometimes I just get swept up in the heat of the momentAndy Chalk said:
I agree though. We don't really need to dismantle the system entirely, but we need to reform it. If the CRTC could be flushed out and replaced with a new board (ideally, members without much stake in big telecom corporations) that alone would be a step towards consumers gaining a glimmer of hope in this issue.
Harper is a whole other bag of worms though, and you're right about him (and let's face it, most of his cabinet) being opportunistic. Remember the whole bell fiasco awhile back? They tried to introduce that metered internet and the issue simply exploded, then Harper issued an ultimatum that the CRTC basically disallow the issue or he would step in (you can find the news story here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/crtc-will-rescind-unlimited-use-internet-decision-or-ottawa-will-overturn-it/article1892522/ ).
Of course, only a fool would think Harper really cares about that; but what he does care about is staying in power. And, as you said, he's an opportunist. This was an opportunity for him to gain favor with the populous. Hopefully if we can raise enough of a stink, maybe someone at parliament hill will smell it.
Of course on the flipside, even last February were different times. The parties all knew an election was right around the corner. Now that the conservatives don't need to win favours, why do they need to care what we want? Troubling times indeed.