Whoa there, encrypted traffic!

So for quite some time now, Rogers Communications in Canada has been shaping their traffic and that should be no real surprise to anyone. QOS is a common process in MSOs and this is how it has been for a number of years. But Rogers is now on a path to make traffic shaping become much more well-known to our neighbors to the North.

P2P networks generate beaucoup traffic and suck up a lot of bandwidth for organizations like Rogers, Time Warner, Comcast, etc. To combat this issue, a number of years ago they started de-prioritizing packets that looked like P2P traffic. In response, this led P2P organizations to begin encrypting their traffic to obscure its content from prying eyes.

So, to beat the miscreants at their own game, Rogers has decided that their response is to de-prioritize (thus slow) encrypted traffic. Jeepers! Apparently Rogers' zeal for cleansing its network of P2P traffic has blinded them to the collateral damage that might be generated by their actions.

My take on this is, that the message that organizations should be sending out is certainly not one where encrypting web traffic is penalized. I really do not have an answer for this one yet, but I believe it is a bad precedent to set.

The problem here, of course, is that a number of people connect into their network via encrypted tunnels. Hopefully, everyone connects into their bank via an encrypted session. Also, anytime you purchase anything over the Internet or when your personal information is requested, the traffic is typically encrypted.

Additionally, bittorrent and limewire are not illegal (yet). There ARE legitimate uses for these services, whether they are the primary reason they exist or not, is another question.

Here is a little bit of the conflict that I see in this:

• Should companies be allowed to shape their service to best suit the needs of their customers as they see it?
• Should customers pay for a service that they feel does not adequately provide the functionality they seek?

I believe that companies should be allowed the flexibility to make their product cater to their market however they see fit, as long as the market has the ability to go elsewhere if they do not like the product.

So, Rogers customers - if you need your encrypted traffic post haste then I would recommend letting Rogers know or find another ISP that will take your business and give you the service you require.

I encourage other ISPs of the unintended consequences before making a decision to de-prioritize encrypted traffic.

Michael Mongold

Technorati tags: Michael Mongold, Rogers Communications, Slashdot, bittorrent, P2P, encryption, traffic shaping, MSO, ISP, LimeWire

Comments

[rG0d]

I noticed a SIGNIFICANT slow-down in my P2P (despite encryption) a month or more ago. However, playing with my VPN client and/or SSL tunnels showed no slowdown. My solution: move my P2P traffice to port 500 or 443 and everything works smooth as silk.