Flow Internet Thread

[achillies]

Guys, torrents are mostly illegal, though it may seem unfair to us the customers, the company, FLOW also has take the steps necessary to keep their network running in an optimal way, having all these customer maxing a connection downloading copyrighted material may be putting their network at a risk in a way that we may never know

they wouldn't throttle if they didn't have to, and if u do the research u would see that its a known practice to shape traffic because using torrents to download copyrighted intellectual property is giving away a lot of bandwidth to abusers.

sorry guys, the problem is affecting me also but i'm in the wrong so i really cant and shouldn't complain.

[ed_metal_head]

Guys, torrents are mostly illegal

False. The content being downloaded is mostly illegal, but torrents themselves are perfectly legal.

though it may seem unfair to us the customers, the company, FLOW also has take the steps necessary to keep their network running in an optimal way, having all these customer maxing a connection downloading copyrighted material may be putting their network at a risk in a way that we may never know

Emphasis on "we may never know". It's possible that you're right, but let's look at the evidence. FLOW upgraded all their packages and bumped their highest package all the way up to 100Mb down. Would a company whose network was "at risk" increase speeds in such a way? According to this week's Business Guardian they're testing speeds up to 500Mb down. Would you do this if you were short on bandwidth? As you've rightly pointed out, we "don't know", but I strongly suspect that they have more than enough bandwidth.

if u do the research u would see that its a known practice to shape traffic because using torrents to download copyrighted intellectual property is giving away a lot of bandwidth to abusers.

Throttling takes place for all kinds of reasons and not only to limit "abusers" who download "copyrighted intellectual property". Currently, ISPs are throttling Netflix users during peak hours.

If FLOW is only now throttling Bittorrent then they're years behind the curve. All forms of P2P only account for 13% (and falling) of bandwidth on the Internet whereas streaming media now takes over 45% (and rising) [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/networking/the-internet-belongs-to-netflix/265]

sorry guys, the problem is affecting me also but i'm in the wrong so i really cant and shouldn't complain.

So what if you want to download something legitimate with bittorrent? You still can't and won't complain?

The big issues here are:

1. FLOW is denying the throttling. The users are paying for the service and have a right to know what, if any, of their internet activity will be throttled.

2. Many users still aren't experiencing the throttling. Why? Has it not been rolled out to them or is there some kind of cap that needs to be exceeded before the throttling kicks in? Again, paying customers deserve to know.

3. The throttling, if it exists, is far too aggressive. Most users are getting incredibly low speeds (10-30kBps average, a little over 100kBps maximum) at all hours of the day. A reasonable ISP would throttle at peak times and not that aggressively. Most of the time I'm not even getting 10% of my bandwidth.

4. No other ISP seems to be throttling so far. If FLOW's throttling continues users will start leaving. It's fair to complain to the company and switch to another who doesn't engage in this practice.

[teems1]

^^

a man speak real sense there. FLOW should not have capped bt without first informing the users.

[Swisha]

i'll say it again, if Flow so concerned about customers abusing the speeds, then implement a Fair Usage Policy like Blink.

but i guess this "no contract" business isnt always a good thing. they can do whatever they want...

is there any kind of terms & conditions that is agreed upon when signing up for internet from Flow?

[Chimera]

wait na..a 4 page thread thats a business/commercial complaint?

interesting.

[M_2NR]

wait na..a 4 page thread thats a business/commercial complaint?

interesting.

nope its just rants & fussing.

[achillies]

All I'm trying to do is present the case from another side, Y do u think they are shaping traffic, because I am sure they are shaping. Information is what we do not have and without information we will be spinning a top in mud trying to figure out whats going on, but i ask again, why do u think they are shaping, cause they would not shape the traffic if they dont have to.

Also anything that is legal on torrents you can get through a direct download, I downloaded Ubuntu in short time, no issues, we know the topic here is software, music, movies and games, why deny it, and while u were posting links, u should have posted this one http://wiki.vuze.com/w/Bad_ISPs bandwidth shaping is a part of the landscape now

and BTW, Flow is not a company on its own, they are a very very small subsiduary of the much larger Columbus Networks or http://www.columbus-networks.com/. lets just be glad that FLOW no longer calls customers and informs them that they are breaking the law by downloading so n so movies and so n so games through torrents

And I dont think its fair to talk about how we are paying customers when the argument is not about the service which is good but about Torrents, we are after all getting for free what we are supposed to be paying for it is the main use of torrents, Case in point I bought Starcraft II and I'm downloading it directly from Blizzard, you aint pay a cent and you getting it from isohunt.com. Whose traffic should be shaped and who should download at the max speed their connection allows. Talk Nah

[Stephon.]

Man still beatin up off of he topic closing so long ago, anyways, if I notice any throttling going on I don't know what I would do ... fact is FLOW has the fastest internet in the country so there aren't many other options, and afaik blink doesnt have the speeds that i am currently with for flow, so if i go with blink it would be like a downgrade

[ragzinc]

All I'm trying to do is present the case from another side, Y do u think they are shaping traffic, because I am sure they are shaping. Information is what we do not have and without information we will be spinning a top in mud trying to figure out whats going on, but i ask again, why do u think they are shaping, cause they would not shape the traffic if they dont have to.

Also anything that is legal on torrents you can get through a direct download, I downloaded Ubuntu in short time, no issues, we know the topic here is software, music, movies and games, why deny it, and while u were posting links, u should have posted this one http://wiki.vuze.com/w/Bad_ISPs bandwidth shaping is a part of the landscape now

and BTW, Flow is not a company on its own, they are a very very small subsiduary of the much larger Columbus Networks or http://www.columbus-networks.com/. lets just be glad that FLOW no longer calls customers and informs them that they are breaking the law by downloading so n so movies and so n so games through torrents

And I dont think its fair to talk about how we are paying customers when the argument is not about the service which is good but about Torrents, we are after all getting for free what we are supposed to be paying for it is the main use of torrents, Case in point I bought Starcraft II and I'm downloading it directly from Blizzard, you aint pay a cent and you getting it from isohunt.com. Whose traffic should be shaped and who should download at the max speed their connection allows. Talk Nah

like flow paying ah small money to lick they arse or wha?
i use torrents to download tv episodes that i missed - and yes i do have cable...i really dont see your point....cause we could still get whatever we need from ftps and file sharing sites....it would just take longer...that is if you dont have a premium acct

the point being made is that we want an official word from them and not no BS like "we cannot/not allowed to diagnose the problem" and "torrents are illegal"

[achillies]

All I'm trying to do is present the case from another side, Y do u think they are shaping traffic, because I am sure they are shaping. Information is what we do not have and without information we will be spinning a top in mud trying to figure out whats going on, but i ask again, why do u think they are shaping, cause they would not shape the traffic if they dont have to.

Also anything that is legal on torrents you can get through a direct download, I downloaded Ubuntu in short time, no issues, we know the topic here is software, music, movies and games, why deny it, and while u were posting links, u should have posted this one http://wiki.vuze.com/w/Bad_ISPs bandwidth shaping is a part of the landscape now

and BTW, Flow is not a company on its own, they are a very very small subsiduary of the much larger Columbus Networks or http://www.columbus-networks.com/. lets just be glad that FLOW no longer calls customers and informs them that they are breaking the law by downloading so n so movies and so n so games through torrents

And I dont think its fair to talk about how we are paying customers when the argument is not about the service which is good but about Torrents, we are after all getting for free what we are supposed to be paying for it is the main use of torrents, Case in point I bought Starcraft II and I'm downloading it directly from Blizzard, you aint pay a cent and you getting it from isohunt.com. Whose traffic should be shaped and who should download at the max speed their connection allows. Talk Nah

like flow paying ah small money to lick they arse or wha?
i use torrents to download tv episodes that i missed - and yes i do have cable...i really dont see your point....cause we could still get whatever we need from ftps and file sharing sites....it would just take longer...that is if you dont have a premium acct

the point being made is that we want an official word from them and not no BS like "we cannot/not allowed to diagnose the problem" and "torrents are illegal"

If you take the time to read and stop being emotional, u will see my point, i stated it in the first line.

U really tink they going to come out tell anyone, u really expecting to pick up an express and see "we have a public service announcement, we are shaping traffic, we are limiting the traffic that we suspect to be P2P traffic" U really tink they sent a memo to all the staff in the company stating this. u ever think that maybe the guys we speak to do not know whats going on. u ever think that maybe the techs we talk too trying to figure out why their torrents moving like shyt to

But we calling them, they might not have a clue whats going on, but we want them to fix/diagnose the issue, HOW?

All of us have experience, think for a moment that the ppl that we call or talk too, really dont have the answers because they themselves dont have the info, maybe we are putting the blame on the wrong ppl, maybe the shot call from high up and those who we talk to cannot do a thing about it, they were never informed, so maybe we have to find a next means of trying to get the answers, I am sure Flow employees does get internet free so they would be experiencing the issue also, but they are just like us wondering, somebody in this thread mus be working flow and aint saying a damn ting cause he dont know.

So if allyuh vex, write a letter to the CEO, the managers, somebody on Trinituner must know someone high up who might have the info and they willing to leak it. We all know how organizations work, so y we inside this thread playing dumb and trying to get the answer from somebody who we can easily reach over the phone knowing fully well how the world works

Put an editorial in the papers, FLOW Shaping P2P Traffic and make some noise if you dare

Be realistic nah fellas

[ed_metal_head]

achillies, I'm assuming that your post was mostly directed at me since you touched upon a couple of things I mentioned. I don't see that you've responded directly to most of the issues that I mentioned but since you've been so kind to ask me to "talk nah" I'll humour you.

Also anything that is legal on torrents you can get through a direct download, I downloaded Ubuntu in short time, no issues, we know the topic here is software, music, movies and games, why deny it, and while u were posting links, u should have posted this one http://wiki.vuze.com/w/Bad_ISPs bandwidth shaping is a part of the landscape now

I've downloaded various Linux distributions and copyright-free movies over bittorrent. These were available from other sources, but bittorrent is my (and usually the creator's) preferred download choice because it puts no stress on their server. Of course, "legal" torrents represent a small percentage of what I download but I still don't see why bittorrent is being targeted.

What's up with your link? I'm seriously not sure what to do with that. Should I add FLOW to the bad ISP list? At no point did I deny that ISPs throttle bittorrent. It's a popular thing to do. The link I posted indicated that bittorrent traffic is falling quickly and that streaming media takes the most bandwidth now. The point wasn't to deny throttling but to point out that FLOW is pretty late. Some ISPs have already relaxed their bittorrent throttling rules and are only throttling during peak hours or when users have exceeded a cap. They've also moved onto throttling other non-bittorrent bandwidth. FLOW, on the other hand, is throttling too aggressively.

and BTW, Flow is not a company on its own, they are a very very small subsiduary of the much larger Columbus Networks or http://www.columbus-networks.com/. lets just be glad that FLOW no longer calls customers and informs them that they are breaking the law by downloading so n so movies and so n so games through torrents

I know of Columbus, but I'm not sure what FLOW being a part of a bigger company has to do with anything. I was unaware that they used to call people about their downloads, but then I rarely, if ever, download big studio movies/music anyway.

Case in point I bought Starcraft II and I'm downloading it directly from Blizzard, you aint pay a cent and you getting it from isohunt.com. Whose traffic should be shaped and who should download at the max speed their connection allows.

Congratulations on your Starcraft purchase. Blizzard is a company with a reputation for putting out great games. It's interesting that you'd bring up a Blizzard game though. You see, the Blizzard Downloader implemented the Bittorrent protocol (I don't know if it still does) so legally downloading the game and any updates would have been throttled too (again I'm not sure what protocol Blizz is currently using).

Now, if they're still using bittorrent your legal downloads will be throttled to the same speed as the guy downloading from isohunt. But guess what? There are people downloading it full speed from Rapidshare or Hotfile or any of the other dozens of HTTP sources. There are people downloading it for free and faster than you on usenet. At the same time the fella down the road is streaming the latest movies on watchmovies24 or some such site also at full speed.

The percentage of illegal material on rapidshare and usenet is the same as on bittorrent. All services can be used for legitimate reasons but mostly aren't. All those services can be throttled. Why discriminate against one of those particularly at a time when its popularity is dropping?

[achillies]

@ed_metal_head, i like how this discussion is going, its an exchange of information and not a blind argument

now i have a question, you are speaking of world trends but flow has more bandwidth than BLINK and Greendot put toether, so they should have the knowledge of what type of traffic is being utilized more than the other and so they would adjust the shaping to suit

Alot of users in trinidad are not aware of or care to use the other ways to get the stuff u can get on torrents, these are facts, the methods of shaping would change to suit the the trebds here in Trinidad, so bare in mind the shaping is going to be geared towards the "offending"
traffic.

[M_2NR]

anyone in here actually working flow? ed_metal_head, achillies?

#imjustsaying were going along the line where we dont know for a fact that flow even throttling anything.

[achillies]

^^^^ I am trying to get info as we speak, so far though from what i am seeing it is being throttled, i can say for sure that the techs we speak to on the phone have no official word on whether or not it is being done(which means "NO" officially)

If u must know, i know someone who use to work there as a Service Tech, he is trying to get the info.

What he did explain to me is that the P2P traffic is responsible for a very large percentage of the residential traffic coming out of Trinidad, and guys in case you do not know, they can tell exactly what that traffic is made up of.

I just put 2 and 2 together, the company i work for pays over $20,000 a month for a their connections, and their are companies that are probably paying more, and their isn't any P2P running on that. I know that if bandwidth issues arise, i could make an educated guess as to where they would put the squeeze first.

[metrini]

Well Im glad Ive read this.

I play World of Warcraft and at the beginning of this month I started getting alot of trouble with the game. With their last expansion/patch they changed the format of their data packets to p2p technology.

That isnt illegal technology but I believe Flow has some packet shaping measures active now and I'm havig a hell of a time playing the game. Once I use SSH tunnel service I can play latency free. SO it proves that the ISP is causing the packets to be lost.

And the rehearsed speech I got when I spoke to a tech pretty much solidifies it. Why cant they just admit they're shaping the packets now?
Im not doing anything illegal by playing WoW!

[achillies]

Well Im glad Ive read this.

I play World of Warcraft and at the beginning of this month I started getting alot of trouble with the game. With their last expansion/patch they changed the format of their data packets to p2p technology.

That isnt illegal technology but I believe Flow has some packet shaping measures active now and I'm havig a hell of a time playing the game. Once I use SSH tunnel service I can play latency free. SO it proves that the ISP is causing the packets to be lost.

And the rehearsed speech I got when I spoke to a tech pretty much solidifies it. Why cant they just admit they're shaping the packets now?
Im not doing anything illegal by playing WoW!

If u playing a game and getting issues u should call in and let them check on your individual connection to make sure everything okay on your personal account

If u are playing a game, u have a very valid case against them, but first be sure that your connection is working as it should, what u should do first though is bypasss your router if u have any and do a speedtest to the at speedtest.net and also try a direct download from a site like download.come or filehippo.com, u should get your full speed, if u are not, restarting in safe mode with networking and doing these tests would also help, if u have connection issues when u do this, they will look into the connection

[metrini]

I have done speed tests etc

This blizzard game is the only thing I am having problems with. I had them check my connection and everything is working as it should.

Blizzard changed the way packets are sent since October 2010 and the ISP's are seeing them as P2P, so there being shaped.

And everything was fine but I think the recent developments with Flow and the changes they made but claim they havent is causing the problem for me. And reading that about the same time you guys started having issues with torrents pretty sums it up for me.

I personally dont see them changing anything because a handful of legit claims are made against their packet shaping. =(

[Archvile]

I'm from Rio Claro, and the thrrottling is still there.

Initially when it started some weeks ago it was a drastic drop from like 1.2-1.5 mbps average on good torrents to like 50kbps MAX, and gaming was affected greatly. Lots of spikes and lag, even soem drops.

Within the last week or so, the gaming prob has mostly eased, i dont lag, spike or drop really but the torrents....well sometimes it feels like maybe i shouldnt even bother.
Its Painfully slow. Glastnost test showed throttling, but we knew that already.

If if was only supposed to be for a short while and go back to normal, I hope the 'going back to normal' wasnt when everthing else except torrents started to work 'normal' again.

[M_2NR]

eh... ulyuh check ulyuh ping to miami...
RE: This Post

[achillies]

From what i understand, flow has gotten letters (emails) from the owners of copyrigthed material e.g SONY which basically stated that your customers with so n so IP addresses are downloading alot of our copyrighted material.

The rest is history

[redmanjp]

From what i understand, flow has gotten letters (emails) from the owners of copyrigthed material e.g SONY which basically stated that your customers with so n so IP addresses are downloading alot of our copyrighted material.

The rest is history

how u know this? and does flow keep logs of who used what IP at what date & time? if not then as long as its dynamic IPs we safe

also i think enabling encryption should help

[dragaholic]

Ok according to sppedtest.net im getting my speed but im getting horrible lag on the game i visit. Taking very long to load .

[M_2NR]

so from my initial post on this page... it seems my ping is ok now... yay



drag, check your ping

[dragaholic]

speedtest

pingtest

[veer01]

To anyone who has had their P2P (torrent etc) bandwidth throttled by FLOW, i urge you to copy the message below or write one of your own and post it on the flow website. Do this every day for as long as it takes until FLOW gets the message.

In the end this will only stand to benefit us, the paying customer. Long live true net nutrality, long live the Trini!

http://www.flowtrinidad.com/corporate/CorporateProfile/ContactUs/tabid/236/Default.aspx

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Flow,
I paid for a flow internet connection. What I do with that is my own business. I do not appreciate you throttling my p2p traffic.

My online games that use a p2p system for connecting and hosting games are suffering noticeably. My Bit-torrent downloads (an yes, there is such a thing as legal bit-torrent files) are also downloading extremely slowly.

The competition, BLINK, does not practice this blatant insult to the general public, especially those of us intelligent enough to recognize it.

Do not take your customers for fools and do not expect us to stand for this.

Stop throttling the bandwidth WE PAYED FOR, and let us download what we want, where we want when we want.

Do not oversell your bandwidth in hopes to compete with the other providers and then make your customers suffer because of your poor business practices. It will eventually be your downfall.

Your Customer.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[cacasplat3]

Its 'paid'......

[rollingstock]

That never works just pee on their tyre

My answer to anything.

[Humes]

This is why every time I see men shytin up TSTT and sayin Flow is de greatest, I does just sit back and laugh.

[ru$$ell]

This is why every time I see men shytin up TSTT and sayin Flow is de greatest, I does just sit back and laugh.

x2 and lmao@torrents

[M_2NR]

now i getting a lil bit vex eh... This is a n FTP transfer to a website...

wtftp.JPG (10.86 KiB) Viewed 5460 times

This should be at around 125kB/s and I'm getting 28...

EDIT: Phewwwww that was just on one pc... not sure as to why that is happening (because although it on wireless it used to max out) but my other pc getting 131kB/s... yay