News

Videotron Throttling P2P Traffic?

There are some reports that Videotron has begun to throttle P2P traffic.  Comments based on personal experiences welcome.

Update: Commenters indicate that this is false and that Videotron denies throttling activities. 

26 Comments

  1. I’m a Videotron subscriber, and I’m getting perfectly decent speeds on my torrents right now. I haven’t noticed any changes in performance recently.

  2. Jourdespoir says:

    Pay per Gigs…
    With no unlimited program, all the services from Videoétron are pay per gigs… so less likely they will loose that streams of money.

    I get all my traffic right… to the point of the others users are throttle.

    Jourdespoir

  3. notice nothing
    I didn[t try p2p but tried ssl ftp on non-standard ports. All workds well.

    I see no reports of p2p throttling and no one complaining of slow speeds on their DSLr forum found at [ link ]

    Will keep an eye open on the issue.

  4. I’m not experiencing any slowdowns at the moment. Although they might be doing the same thing as Bell does (i.e. throtting between 4pm and 2am). I’ll have to check tonight. But last night everything was working fine.

    I sincerely hope Videotron has not hopped onto this bandwagon as well. This will render the Quebec market for high-speed internet 100% throttled. Not quite the “competition” you’d expect from a developed country.

  5. in Addition
    In addition to this, and worth noting.

    Videotron increased its prices to the resale competition by 20$

    What was once ~65$ to 75$ for unlimited 7-meg internet is now going to be 85$-95$ for unlimited internet.

    What these resellers were selling was videotron’s 7-meg cable service that was 35$ and included the max B/W overage cost of 30$ (hence the resellers were selling unlimited for 65%)

    The 30$ price B/W overage cost is what was raised to 50$ as well as a new cap installed.

    In addition to this, the word is out that videotron pulled unlimited internet from the resellers and the new cap is going to be 200 or 300-gigs (TBD).

    So this in effects removes any option of unlimited in Quebec. Unless you buy videotrons business unlimited service. No word yet if this will change for the business internet.

    In addition to whats going on with Quebec cable, Bell announced to all their wholesalers that there will be no more unlimited from them. Starting in Jan 2009, Bell told the wholesalers that they will be forced to give new subscribers a 60-gig limit per month (if you want more info on the Bell part just ask).

    So what we have is NO MORE unlimited at all in Quebec, except maybe videotrons business internet which could also change and which is 80$/month.

    Jan 2009 = death of unlimited in Quebec in its entirety.

    in the end, Bell and videotron effectly doubled the cost of your internet in Quebec and lowered the B/W you can use.

    Enjoy.

  6. @also, Will the Bell cap on wholesalers starting in Jan 2009 apply to new accounts only, or also to existing accounts? I’ve heard conflicting information on this.

    Does throttling or capping wholesalers make any sense from a technical point of view? In either cable or DSL case, is there really that much congestion on shared part of the network?

  7. Switching to reseller in a few days
    I did download a torrent from a private site last night and I had no problem to reach the full speed of my connection. My contract ends during this week and I am switching to B2B2C which offers the same service I had with Videotron for lest and with no contrat. I guess Videotron resellers will be hit by the throttling too… We need new players on the market…

  8. Rogers Throttles then advertises on bitt
    Rogers recently began as of this month rolling out this new ad on many popular filesharing/upload services one of which was demonoid.com

    I took a screenshot of this clearly misleading advertisement aimed at canadian bit torrent users of demonoid.

    During Rush hour (or better yet 1 p.m – 11 pm)I am able to get max 20-30 kb/s upload speed with only 1 popular torrent running (hundreds of leechers not as many seeds) and no other internet apps or firewalls running. I have Rogers Highspeed I pay over 75$ total a month in extra bandwidth fees and regular service.

    How many other Rogers High Speed customers pay through the roof and are sick and tired of seeing false/misleading ads about the service they already have?

    If you agree that this ad: [ link ] and [ link ] is false or misleading direct your complaints to the canadian competition bureau here: [ link ] hopefully this investigation IS in their mandate!

  9. OOPS Sorry!
    Sorry all, I overlooked an automatic update of the BT client software as the cause of the limits!
    Info here – [ link ]

  10. Bernard
    Seems Comcast is also getting rid of unlimited in the US. Starting 1st of October the new download cap will be 250GB/month. Which sorta means the cost of a GB is about 15 cents there.

    Gotta love Bell and Videotron pricing for overages, but what a surprise from companies that charge more per byte for SMS than the cost per byte of communication between earth the the martian rovers. I’m not making this up!

  11. Haven’t notice anything. Speed is good

  12. email from videotron (use of torrent)
    around one or twice a month, I download movie using the web site mininova and the bittorrent software.

    last month I download kung fu panda for my child.

    I got an email from my internet provider:

    -My internet provider got a complaint by someone and my internet provider could possibly give my personal info (name, address..etc) to the person that did a complaint if he decide to go further (charge against me). In the email, my ip address was there will other info and the name of the file/movie kung fu panda.

    I taught that torrent was safe? I guess not Who could someone have done a complaint. Someone else have saw this?

    I know that I’m not suppossed to download movie but hey who doesn’t do it? Like I said I download maybe 1 or 2 movies every month. and I consider myshelf like a normal internet user. I have a 20gig download limit and 10gig upload limit so that why I do not download like other people/friend. I will take my responsibitty if I have to pay a fine (I just hope it’s not in 1000$ figure outch….)

    thanks for your help

  13. Email from Videotron
    Ok, Got the same email as above. Now this is where the real question comes in, are we dead for P2P in Canada? How much more of this crap must we take from these companies? Gouging customers seems to be the trend with Bell, Rogers, Fido, Videotron, Express Vu we are paying through the nose for basic services….tv used to be Free & telephone lines were $20 max!!! Ok we want better programming, want bells & whistles… Now the internet! $75 for 100gig max U/L or D/L, then they **** *** with a 12month agreement & god forbid if you complain at customer service about poor service, they just hang up on you. They don’t give a crap either! I have been noticing a drop in speed in the last few months!! Wondering why? I guess I found the reason…pay more for less! that’s the ticket!

  14. Email from videotron
    no, in fact, videotron recieves a letter from the company that owns the copyrights of the file you downloaded. **SPEED WILL NOT SLOW DOWN THEY ACTUALLY Increased high speed by .5 mbps. Usually, this is done through the P2P client you are using, one seed or leecher is in fact a tracker and gets all The IP addresses that try to download the file. After that, they send a letter to the providers concerned, the then advises the client that if the owner of the rights wants to pursue, that they are not going to protect the client and hide him to get sued in his stead.

    HAve a good one! (they cant sue in canada for this, so all you get now are warnings)

  15. Jerome Lapointe says:

    They are Throttling right now
    I don’t know that they were doing this back in the summer of ’08 but I believe they are doing it now.

    I start a torrent download. It starts off fast and can stay that way for a long time especially at night… other times I stay on normal speeds for 10 minutes.

    It is not just the torrent that is slowed down, any website will take for ever to load even after the torrent has been stopped for more then an hour.

    If I disconnect my modem and reboot… I’ll get fast speeds again.

  16. Throttling is just 1 of many thing
    I had a 3rd level reseller ISP under “The Quebecor – Videotron”. The problem currently is to go out of the province (speaking of packets), you are using their infrastructure.

    So we have to comply with their policies otherwise they have the power to Trottle your phone call if it please them.

  17. max payne says:

    slow
    i have performance issues lately… browsing seems to be slower, ps3 online gaming i am getting shot all the time because i’m lagging lately… not sure what the cause is but overall a less pleasant experience compared to the last couple of years

  18. Videotron has just started slowing my connection as of Sept. 28th-ish… I’m getting about 10% of my maximum speed!

  19. Hi Pings
    I host games online at my house every Friday night over Videotron. For the last year it has been fine and now the last couple of weeks my players have been getting super high pings. Is videotron throttling us now?

  20. As of last week when Videotron came to do some sort of maintenance on their hardware/wires in my backyard (they allegedly did this in my area of Dollard Des Ormeaux), my evening (7:30 – 11:00pm) p2p speeds have been decreased considerably. I used to reach speeds of up to 1.0mbps at the same time of day and now its somewhere between 120kbps and 350kbps.

    I’m also under the impression that Videotron has started throttling us!

  21. damn them…..
    certainly throttling the traffic…ICMP response times to various sites (google/yahoo/202.54.1.30) etc increases dramatically the moment i start a torrent!! the throttling is effective almost immediately. as soon as I stop the torrent, the response times improve.
    e.g “normal” response time 217.289 ms to 202.54.1.30.
    “torrenting” response time 1902.505 ms !!!!!

  22. Definitely throttling
    Starts super fast (had 1.4mbs on one), then hits a brutal ceiling, shuts everything down then crawls back up again to brutally slow (5-80kbs). Outrageous when I pay for 30mbs speeds. I’m calling to leave a complaint.

  23. Something funny
    I used to be bale to hit 1.0Mbps during p2p downloads, but since I called videotron this week to figure out why my max speed is 10mbps when I’m on a 30mbps package, I can’t even reach 1.0Mbps anymore. it caps out at 250. On everything. Preforming speed tests still show me my max speed, but when it comes to downloading, I can’t even break the 300kpbs barrier.

  24. Guys… trick to unlimited speed
    Just encrypt your torrent download with SSL.
    Google the options for your favorite torrent client.

    Always max speed with that.

    Peace

  25. Throttled2011 says:

    Happening now… getting worse
    Videotron client here…

    I consider myself a “power user” … downloading over 300 gigs a month, sometimes more, I notice that torrents cause my connection to drop / modem timeout after I download too much… anything over 10 gigs a day will cause this to happen.

    Videotron is DEFINITELY throttling their customers nowadays.

  26. notice to disclose info
    hey guys

    whatch them they started to send notice of possible law suit for downloading movies they will give all the info freely
    IP adresses and so on.