Bandwidth Throttling in Canada
How Internet Service Providers Protect Your Internet Speed
Jun 13, 2009
Given the widespread popularity of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file sharing programs such as Limewire, internet users are capable of sharing music, movies, etc. over their internet connections. These files are typically very large, and tend to slow down the entire server for everyone, even those not sharing files via P2P programs.
The ISP's in Canada
Therefore, Internet Service Providers (ISP`s) in Canada such as Bell Sympatico have taken it upon themselves to protect the internet speed of their users that are not sharing files through P2P programs.
They do this at peak internet times during the day (4:30 pm to 2:00 am) by targeting internet users who are sharing these files through P2P programs.
They intentionally `throttle` their internet connection, which means they reduce the internet bandwidth available to those users. This, in turn, preserves a higher internet speed for the rest of the internet users using the network, but not using P2P programs.
An Attack on User's Rights?
Many view this as an attack on internet user rights, and claim that the ISP`s have no right to intentionally target the users of P2P software and reduce their bandwidth.
Many businesses and companies that have a large internal network and share a lot of information of P2P programs, but are doing so legally and for business purposes, are one of these plaintiffs.
Reasoning for Bandwidth Throttling
However, the ISP`s claim they have the right to do this for two reasons:
- The act of P2P file sharing, for the large majority, involves copyright infringement through the sharing of music files and movies. They believe they should be allowed to limit this illegal activity whenever possible, including throttling.
- They claim their right as the ISP to preserve the internet speed of all their internet users; particularly the one’s not using P2P programs.
In 2008, Google stepped into the arena when they said that Bell Canada should allow all lawful internet traffic without restrictions, and blamed the company for not taking steps to ensure it is able to meet demand.
"Instead of further expanding its network so that it can honour all end-user choices of content and applications, and instead of implementing technologically and competitively neutral measures for addressing instances of congestion, Bell has pre-empted end users' right to choose," a spokesperson for Google stated.
"It should not be allowed to continue to do so."
Canadian ISP's continue to engage in web-throttling, and it remains a contentious issue to this day for many subscribers.
- Google Condemns Bell’s ‘Throttling’ Practice. The Toronto Star. July 8, 2008.
- Connor, William, Klara Nahrstedt. (Nov. 2007). Throttling Attackers in Peer-to-Peer Media Streaming Systems. Proceedings from the 4th Middleware Doctoral Symposium Conference, Article #13
- Porter, George, Randy H. Katz (March 2006). Effective Web Service Load Balancing Through Statistical Monitoring. Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery. Vol. 49, Issue 3. The University of California, Berkeley.
