Torontoist » BitTorrent

Oh! What a Throttled Web We Weave

Photo by sssteve.o from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. For almost a year and a half now, some of Canada’s major ISPs, including Bell and Rogers, have defended their throttling practices by arguing that excessive BitTorrent traffic is crippling their networks. Open-internet proponents, like Michael Geist, SaveOurNet.ca, and even Google, have questioned the telecoms’ motives and [...]

Canada’s ISPs Need a Good Throttling

Photo by –richelle– from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. For more than a year now, Canadian ISPs, net neutrality advocacy groups, and the CRTC have been battling over the issue of internet traffic management. ISPs, like Bell Canada and Rogers, argue that they need to manage their network traffic in order to stop BitTorrent users from [...]

Save Our Surfing

Photo by Galvatron from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. For a year now, several of Canada’s ISPs, including Bell, Rogers, Cogeco, Shaw, and a few others, have been throttling BitTorrent transfers, frustrating subscribers and internet wholesalers like TekSavvy. Two weeks ago, we noted that the CRTC was investigating the throttling practices of Canada’s ISPs, and while [...]

Our Digital Squalor

Last week, Google and Measurement Lab introduced a new web application called Glasnost that allows users to test the extent to which their ISP throttles or blocks their BitTorrent traffic. According to the statistics currently available on their site, Canada is one of the worst throttlers in the world—Canada ranks fourth for blocked hosts and [...]

Bell Puts The Squeeze On ISPs

The day after the CBC announced its plans to release the finale of Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister through BitTorrent, Bell Canada has moved quietly to throttle its services—including peer-to-peer filesharing—outraging both its customers and wholesale clients. Among the affected is TekSavvy, a family-run Internet Service Provider based in Chatham with service areas in Ontario, [...]

CBC: Who Needs TV?

University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist is reporting that the nation’s public broadcaster is about to take a hugely progressive step in media distribution. On Monday, the day after Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister (the political fantasy reality show filled with keeners and bored ex-prime ministers) airs, the CBC is going to release a [...]