on Monday, November 07, 2005 - 12:38 AM CST - 1022 Reads
News Shaw cable has, this year, begun to roll out traffic-shaping technology on their network using technology from Ellacoya, and reportedy by this Wall Street Journal article. It seems they started using this service in early 2005 in the greater Vancouver area, probably because Shaw's network is most overloaded in that market. There have been reports that they are rolling it out to Edmonton, Saskatoon, and Winniepg. Check out the reports, there's a lot of talk.
Ellacoya's technology works by "deep packet inspection" which is a type of firewall that's super-intelligent. That is, it doesn't just know about IP and TCP or UDP ports, it can also look inside the packet and see if it's FTP, HTTP, Bittorrent, kazaa, and etc. Therefore, it's not affcted by port numbers. This technology, while impressive, is not perfect. It can mis-identify packets, and requires constant upgrades to keep track of all potential types of data traversing the internet, of which there are many, and the possibility to create a new one today exists.
I find Shaw's actions here completely reprehensible. I do not pay for "Xtreme-I" service because i want slow Bittorrent uploads. I pay because i want the speed they advertise. If their network is not capable of providing the service they are selling me, is would expect them to upgrade their network. Afterall, Shaw made about $160 million income on revenues of about $2.2 billion in FY2005 (see the Q4 2005 report (PDF)).
And even if the economics are such that they must cap, lying about it is completely unacceptable. I have contacted Shaw about this issue and so far, have recieved completely unsatisfactory responses, which can be summarized as "The problems are definatly not Shaw's that's for sure. Oh, and go suck a lemon."
If you do not have bittorrent caps now, enjoy it while it lasts. The limiter is coming.
The question now is: what can we, the Shaw customers, actually DO about this?
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If Shaw is giving priority to certain applications on its network, are there not legal ramifications? What if they downgraded Vonage's or Skype's priority and elevated the Shaw VOIP offering? This *may* be an acceptable move if they were only crippling verified illegal traffic, but we all know that Blizzard uses BitTorrent for its World of Warcraft updates.
They offer a $10/mo "QoS/Quality of Service" enhancement for VOIP applications, but only the VOIP applications that they recognize. This puts competetors at an unfair advantage, does it not?
Reaper is right -- it's Shaw's responsibility to upgrade their networks, especially in light of the fact they charge EXTRA for the Extreme-I (DOCSIS) plan. This is a blatant abuse of a Monopoly. I guess there is always Telus... :oS
Posted by kadams at November 8, 2005 03:21 PM | TrackBack