In response to Daniel above: having worked in IT for many years, I understand the theory and practice of balancing loads.

I don’t know how your former employer set the students’ expecations, but in Bell’s case, they want it both ways. They want to sell a “4 megabit” (for example) service, but then not deliver that service when/if it suits them. Is this a fair market practice? Not to mention that at the heart of the assessment of suitability is an overt invasion of their customers’ privacy! How do these two wrongs make anything right???

And yes, I know what some of you are thinking: “but the user agreement says that this might happen”. And fair enough, Bell has weaseled their way out of liability with clever legal gymnastics. Still, shame on them for leading the race to the gutters, and woe to they who alienate their own customer base…especially in the current economic paradigm.

Patrick

I feel that the Canadian government should really put a stop to DPI. If it does not then it would simply create a community of angry citizens who would no longer feel like their government represents them and their principles.

They were offering internet to all of their rooms.

At the start there were no DPI (or traffic shaper).

Then P2P application came popular with the sharing of mp3 files, then came video with more and more needs for bandwidth.

At the time I left, if I let the traffig get out without any shaping 80% of the Internet traffic was for P2P applications (which unfortunately are mostly for illegal files transfer).

The effect on users wihtouth shaping :
Congestion for all other content, web, emails, games, voip. Because of all those P2P applications that was running 24/7 on some users PC (some are nor even aware that they are sharing).

So unfortunately we had to implement DPI (traffic shaping) to be able to slow down P2P content so that all of our users have an enjoyable service for other usage (web, email …). At that point it was useless for us to add more bandwidth since it was getting eated up as soon as it was added.

In conclusion, the apearance of DPI is unfortunately like anything else in our society. There is “bad” behaving minotiry that do the majority of trouble, hence the implementation of control to try and limit the impact of those “bad apples” on the “normal” users.

Great point Patrick! What is currently happening to our internet IS equivalent Canada Post opening all of our mail and expediting items they deem to be of greater priority. I’ve paid money to subscribe to a LEGAL (not violating any copyright laws) video on demand service and had my connection intercepted by Bell Canada after watching a few movies. This is not only a violation of my privacy and rights, but a blow to the internet economy, since I will no longer pay for services that my ISP will prevent me receiving.

How did this ever become legal and why is this conversation (about DPI) even taking place? GOVERNMENT OF CANADA: Please respect the internet economy and put an end to this violation of my rights as a consumer!!!

Imagine: “We at Canada Post are experiencing higher-than-normal volumes that are challenging our capacity and ability to provide effective service. In an attempt to prioritize delivery, we have begun opening some/all letters to assess their value, and then deciding which letters to deliver first, and when we think the recipient will be interested, are also inserting flyers from some of our valued clients.”

Surely there is legislation that provides remedy in cases where the post office has flagrantly breached the sanctity of someone’s mail without cause? Could such legislation not be used to “take issue” with the DPI-using ISP’s, and terminate this offensive practice?

Patrick