Linux-friendly (non-Bell) GTA DSL providers

[JoeHill]

Michael MacLeod left a post-it on the fridge:

> On 5/29/07, George Nicol <gnicol-PeCUgM4zDv73fQ9qLvQP4Q at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> >
> > James Knott wrote:
> >  
> > > Now you again say "block".  What is blocked, other than port 25?  
> >
> > Today, Port 25.  Tomorrow... whatever they choose.  Their record speaks
> > for itself.  What speaks loudest is the Rogers TOS.  Read it and weep.
> >  
> > > What throttle are you referring to?  
> >
> > "For the past 18 months, it has been an open secret that Rogers engages
> > in packet shaping ... 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." - Michael Geist [emphasis mine]
> > http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/1859/
> >
> > "Rogers Has Resumed Throttling P2P with a VENGEANCE" posted by the Forum
> > Moderator on February 10, 2007, at RBUA:
> > http://www.rbua.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=5677
> >  
> > > There was some mention of one in the paper a couple of weeks ago
> > > and Rogers said it didn't happen  
> >
> > Business as usual for both Rogers and Sympatico.  Denial by default.
> >  
> 
> 
> My experience with residential Sympatico DSL was that there was no traffic
> shaping or other practice that I would consider unethical. Despite have a
> sync rate of 1728/384 due to terrible phone lines in my area, I could
> download torrents faster than on my 6 megabit rogers connection.

This sounds like past tense. In any case, I'm pretty sure they were trampling
on my connection. I don't think they would unleash this traffic shaping over
the whole network at once, so of course there are going to be exceptional
experiences with this, no?

> Blocking outbound port 25 doesn't qualify as unethical in my world. They
> didn't even block inbound port 25 (and rightly so).

I don't know if anyone said it was unethical, but you're right, it isn't if
it's in the terms of service. To me, it's just like the fact that you cannot
get a static IP from Bell if you want one. I think it was Lennart who once
said something about Sympatico being okay for browsing the web and not much
more. Sympatico is basically becoming just another AOL, offer the same vanilla
crap to millions of people, make it nearly impossible to complain, and hope that
somehow you keep enough customers to make the shareholders happy.
 
> From what I gather, Bell and Rogers purchase bandwidth in different ways.
> Best that I can tell is that Bell has peering agreements with other
> networks, so bandwidth is essentially free to them, so long as the bandwidth
> exists. Rogers has to actually pay for bandwidth to other networks, so they
> have a far greater financial incentive to minimize the amount of traffic
> entering and leaving their network.
> 
> 
> I may be completely wrong, but I suspect that this is the case, and that
> this is why Bell will never be as draconian as Rogers.

Financial considerations aside, Bell has an infinite capacity to make really
stupid decisions for completely arbitrary reasons. Trust me, I have it on very
very good authority ;)

-- 
JoeHill
++++++++++++++++++++
 Bender: Stay away from our women. You got metal fever, baby, metal fever! 
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