Bell files its congestion data as demanded by the CRTC. The data suggests no congestion problems for at least 95 percent of the network in Ontario and Quebec.
Bell’s Congestion “Problem”
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Truth
That’s why they tried to keep it under wraps…
Security By Obscurity
If you read the full DSLReports thread and the submission, you get an appreciation for the term “Security By Obscurity”. Bell has only just satisfied the CRTC’s disclosure demands. However, they have (deliberately) left figures, monitoring practices, and definitions as ambiguous as possible.
There’s only so much of this we’re willing to take from Bell.
Congestion?
Maybe they should spend some of their profits to upgrade the network so the “congestion” levels go down…
Ellacoya
“Maybe they should spend some of their profits to upgrade the network so the “congestion” levels go down…”
Or maybe they’ll just keep installing those Ellacoya boxes under the false pretense of “network congestion”. Then, when they’re ready, they’ll switch over to a tiered internet offering, start injecting ads, and blocking traffic. That’s where most ISPs are going (and they’ve said it).
moar info needed
I’m going to hold off on kicking Bell in its already blackened eye until I see an informed and unbiased technical analysis of this data. I’m not a network specialist so for all I know the claims that Bell makes are totally warranted (a small amount of traffic still having an effect). I agree that investing in infrastructure is the best route to combat this in the long run, but by no means is it an all round panacea. Network management has to be part of this solution as well. I am most concerned with the fact that Bell is improperly balancing these two paths to a healthier network and relying to heavily on the latter.
…more info needed?
Robert wrote: “I’m going to hold off on kicking Bell in its already blackened eye until I see an informed and unbiased technical analysis of this data.”
Until Bell releases, at a minimum, the raw data and a complete description of their control and sampling methodologies, along with a discussion of the techniques they used to reduce the data to tabular form, or is ordered by the CRTC to have CAIP or 3rd-party installed monitoring equipment to gather accurate independent data, there will be NO informed analysis possible.
moar!!
[ link ]
Maybe I don’t understand the table perfectly but these percentages represent total network congestion? If that’s the case, the average network congestion from March 2007 to March 2008 is about 4%. If we look at the month of April and May 2008 (when Bell was now throttling 100% of it’s customers) the reduction from the average network congestion has only been 0.6% for March and 1.1% for May. Does that mean that those two numbers represent the percentage of network congestion associated to Bittorrent? Seems a lot lower than the initial 33% and then 5% that they said they were experiencing.