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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 second for blocked ISPs. All of the major Canadian ISPs admit to traffic shaping, but whether it’s necessary is difficult to determine as none of the providers are willing to publicly release their data. Glasnost’s timing couldn’t be better—in addition to providing much needed transparency, the data should also assist CRTC in its current investigation of traffic management policies.