For those following the regulatory / net neutrality debate, the Canadian
Radio and Telecommunications Commission released this morning a decision
requiring additional transparency with respect to the traffic management
practices of Canadian service providers.
News Release:
http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/NEWS/RELEASES/2009/r091021.htm
Policy Details:
http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2009/2009-657.htm
Jeff Gallagher
Network Engineering
jeff.gallagher@bellaliant.ca
Holy Hannah!
ISP actions affecting content
According to the Telecommunications Act, a telecommunications company must
obtain the Commission’s prior approval to “control the content or influence
the meaning or purpose of telecommunications” carried over its network. The
Commission does not consider such disruptive actions to be proper Internet
traffic management practices, and they will always require prior approval.
An ISP would therefore need to seek the Commission’s approval before it
implemented a practice that would:
block the delivery of content to an end-user, or
slow down time-sensitive traffic, such as videoconferencing or Internet
telephone (Voice over Internet Protocol) services, to the extent that the
content is degraded.
When faced with these requests, the Commission will only grant its approval in
the most exceptional cases.
The email marketing lobby already got the legislation watered down on the spam
front, but does this in essence say that ISP's are no longer allowed to block
email content, viruses et al?
No more null-routing targets in your own network as a DDoS mitigation technique?
Joe
Realistically this has to do with one main thing, traffic throttling (Mainly of bittorrent and other p2p applications).
In previous decisions and hearings they discussed at length the management of networks in regards to spam and viruses.
These have nothing to do with what this ruling is about and they stated that there is a clear distinction
between managing spam and viruses and management of traffic for specific applications.
This ruling really doesn't amount to much at this point as bell, rogers, shaw, cogeco etc will all still throttle whatever they
want, whenever they want without much regard for the rulings of the CRTC. They ignore many other rulings every day,
why would this one be any different.
Michael Peddemors wrote:
The email marketing lobby already got the legislation watered down on the spam
front, but does this in essence say that ISP's are no longer allowed to block
email content, viruses et al?No more null-routing targets in your own network as a DDoS mitigation technique?
Some better-informed person dropped me a note off-list, pointing me to the following. On the face of it it seems like consideration for this aspect has already been incorporated into the ruling.
Tim Lampman wrote:
Realistically this has to do with one main thing, traffic throttling (Mainly of bittorrent and other p2p applications).
In previous decisions and hearings they discussed at length the management of networks in regards to spam and viruses.
These have nothing to do with what this ruling is about and they stated that there is a clear distinction
between managing spam and viruses and management of traffic for specific applications.This ruling really doesn't amount to much at this point as bell, rogers, shaw, cogeco etc will all still throttle whatever they
want, whenever they want without much regard for the rulings of the CRTC. They ignore many other rulings every day,
why would this one be any different.
The issue that interests me most is the reputed filtering and throttling performed by these companies for broadband L2 connections backhauled to ISP's doing the L3 on them, such as with ATM or L2TP.
In that scenario, a broadband user who is a customer of Mom'N'Pop ISP is getting throttled by a third party providing a L2 backhaul.
From what you have posted, this would now require prior approval. As I feel strongly that this behavior is quite wrong and should not happen, I am encouraged by these rules.
Joe
Joe Maimon wrote:
Tim Lampman wrote:
Realistically this has to do with one main thing, traffic throttling (Mainly of bittorrent and other p2p applications).
In previous decisions and hearings they discussed at length the management of networks in regards to spam and viruses.
These have nothing to do with what this ruling is about and they stated that there is a clear distinction
between managing spam and viruses and management of traffic for specific applications.This ruling really doesn't amount to much at this point as bell, rogers, shaw, cogeco etc will all still throttle whatever they
want, whenever they want without much regard for the rulings of the CRTC. They ignore many other rulings every day,
why would this one be any different.The issue that interests me most is the reputed filtering and throttling performed by these companies for broadband L2 connections backhauled to ISP's doing the L3 on them, such as with ATM or L2TP.
In that scenario, a broadband user who is a customer of Mom'N'Pop ISP is getting throttled by a third party providing a L2 backhaul.
From what you have posted, this would now require prior approval. As I feel strongly that this behavior is quite wrong and should not happen, I am encouraged by these rules.
Joe
It would appear this is how it should be, however the track record of Bell heeding the CRTC's rulings has not been good. Last year Bell was ordered to offer matching speeds to their wholesale GAS customers to that of their retail offerings, they simply never complied. This ruling only applies to time sensitive traffic, most of which Bell does not currently throttle. While I think most people would agree that its completely wrong to throttle the traffic of a third party wholesale customer, the reality is that Bell does this every day and will continue to do so regardless of what the CRTC tells them.
Tim Lampman wrote:
Joe Maimon wrote:
In that scenario, a broadband user who is a customer of Mom'N'Pop ISP is getting throttled by a third party providing a L2 backhaul.
From what you have posted, this would now require prior approval. As I feel strongly that this behavior is quite wrong and should not happen, I am encouraged by these rules.
Joe
It would appear this is how it should be, however the track record of Bell heeding the CRTC's rulings has not been good. Last year Bell was ordered to offer matching speeds to their wholesale GAS customers to that of their retail offerings, they simply never complied. This ruling only applies to time sensitive traffic, most of which Bell does not currently throttle. While I think most people would agree that its completely wrong to throttle the traffic of a third party wholesale customer, the reality is that Bell does this every day and will continue to do so regardless of what the CRTC tells them.
Disappointing, but at least it is not a step in the wrong direction.