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In 2005, it was revealed that Rogers engages in packet shaping. Now, I'm well aware that some applications, if not configured correctly, can cause significant problems on a network, and so they need to be controlled. I'm mainly thinking of peer-to-peer applications used by people who do not understand the best way to properly configure their programs. I operate a little network, and myself and all of my users are painfully conscious of the outcomes of a poor-configured peer-to-peer program on the network. I'm OK with a small number of control over peer-to-peer traffic for this reason. Rogers, however, has gone more than a few steps beyond what's justifiable for network functionality. Of course, I am assuming here that Rogers actually has the capacity to supply every client with precisely what their advertised rates are. Still, it seems not even their technical support staff know about the bandwidth throttling in effect, or they're lying to customers. I called in multiple times about this, and one individual denied that Rogers uses packet formation and further said they never would. Two others say that Rogers does indeed use packet shaping. One person described the effects as "hardly noticeable" except for "illegal traffic", while the other said the effects were "up to a 40% reduction" for all encrypted or high-port traffic. I am sorry, last time I checked, I was paying for Internet access

at "up to" the advertised rates, not pointlessly and arbitrarily degraded Internet access. What is worse, they are not only degrading traffic which is really causing network performance issues - they are only degrading anything inbound on high ports and any encrypted traffic! This is comparable to when two men were removed from a flight for perhaps speaking Arabic. Extreme example? Perhaps, but the similarities are there. In that case, passengers were removed because they might have been speaking a language that is the native language of a terrorist. In this situation, users are having traffic degraded since they could be using protocols used by a software pirate. Now, what I actually don't quite get is how it's impossible for them to differentiate between standard offport SSH traffic and other encrypted traffic. SSH packets contain, among other things, the string "SSH". It's not hard to find, it's right at the beginning of the payload, and it really is used to offer a fingerprint for SSH traffic. All traffic shaping devices and commercial-grade firewalls I am aware of are effective at detecting SSH traffic and selectively applying or not applying shaping rules based on this recognition.

Based on emails and telephone conversations with Rogers technical support, it really is not only their software but also their technicians who don't know the difference between peer-to-peer traffic and other traffic. The first e-mail I sent to them was asking about encrypted remote login protocols, and the response I received was talking about peer-to-peer downloads. They also don't recognize the difference between the BitTorrent protocol along with a BitTorrent client application, since they talk about "the application BitTorrent". Essentially, they made no effort to handle the concerns I actually had, and when I called them on it and pointed out the many difficulties presented by their own technical support responses over e-mail and phone, the next email I got simply pointed me toward the Rogers End User Agreement and the Rogers Acceptable Use Policy (PDF). Neither of these say anything about traffic shaping in just about any manner (at least they did not when I downloaded them) although the Acceptable Use Policy does say that no servers are enabled.

That would disallow any peer-to-peer client, as well as the SSH server I was running that started this whole thing. Interestingly enough, using the Video Conference or Webcam features of a MSN client also violates this policy, simply because they start servers for direct linking where possible, with alternative approaches if a direct server connection fails. I believe they do the same thing for users with the "direct dialogue" capacity, but I am not convinced about that. Other IM services might also violate the AUP in the same or similar ways. And of course, they proposed filling out their customer support form if I had additional questions or concerns, and that I should write to the Office of the President if I was dissatisfied with their service. "Dissatisfied" would be one of the ways to put it. "Dissatisfied and pissed in the incompetence of Rogers technical support and technical support managers" would be a bit more exact.

Not only should this concern individuals who care about being able to use their Internet connection correctly (and within the laws that apply to them), this should also be of great concern to supports of network neutrality. Rogers complaints can already determine what traffic is internal to their own network, and they have already got competitive traffic shaping in effect. All that is left would be to implement a rule that says "any traffic with an external source/destination has a maximum speed of X". At least the University of Ottawa has been having complaints from users that are not able to correctly use their email software from home. Interestingly enough, only rogers complaints users have complaints. It won't stop there, nonetheless. With all encrypted traffic being degraded, any businesses that depend on VPN technologies for remote users will end up with employees unable to connect (or unwilling to cope with the sub-dial-up speeds) if those users (or the business itself) uses [[http://meturazzi.com/blogs/viewstory/23512|rogers complaints]].

Michael Geist points out the lack of transparency along with the danger to communications, but he also points out something even more disturbing. As of April 17, 2007, no governmental authorities, including Industry Minister Maxime Bernier, Competition Commissioner Sheridan Scott, and Canadian Radio television and Telecommunications Chair Konrad von Finckenstein, have made any attempts to cease this. Bernier has actually acted to bring about something entirely the opposite - despite the objection of a parliamentary committee studying telecommunications deregulation, he pushed forward with a plan to do that early in April [[http://eyeuser.com/blogs/viewstory/2260854|Visit Website]].