Looks like Sympatico has jumped on the throttling bandwagon. At least they're up front about it.
http://www.slyck.com/story1613_Sympatic ... P_Limiting
Sympatico throttling bitTorrent
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highlander
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I've noticed. 40K download sucks. 
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Legit BitTorrent users face traffic jam
MATT HARTLEY
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
November 28, 2007 at 10:57 PM EST
Anyone who has ever found themselves trapped alongside other frustrated commuters during rush hour knows just how frustrating heavy traffic can be. But with more cars than ever crowding the highways, congestion and lane closures have become an unavoidable reality.
On the Internet, the resource isn't asphalt, it's bandwidth. But similar congestion problems have prompted some Internet service providers in Canada and the U.S. to restrict the flow of certain traffic on their networks.
They argue that bandwidth-intensive applications such as peer-to-peer file transfer programs clog their networks by using a large percentage of their traffic space, which leads to a poor experience for the rest of the customers, the same way a lumbering tractor trailer can impede flow on the highway. Their solution has been to "shape" traffic, essentially slowing down certain kinds of Internet activity while giving other data priority. Most of the traffic being shaped is peer-to-peer traffic.
Depending on the study, peer-to-peer traffic accounts for anywhere from 50 to 90 per cent of online traffic, but emanates from as few as 10 per cent of all users. Much of that traffic is facilitated through BitTorrent, a file-sharing protocol once synonymous with piracy but which recently has developed into a legitimate tool for quickly delivering large amounts of digital content.
Programs based on the BitTorrent protocol have been installed by more than 150 million users worldwide and in 2004, the developers of the technology founded BitTorrent Inc., a legitimate download service that has struck distribution deals with major film studios such as Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox. The service is also used by open-source software developers, university professors distributing class lectures and independent filmmakers looking for an audience for their films.
Which means legitimate BitTorrent users like Julien McArdle are sometimes left trying to find ways around ISPs' anti-file-sharing efforts. Last year, the 22-year-old Ottawa University student produced an amateur documentary, On Piracy, a balanced and informative look at music and video piracy, which he distributed using BitTorrent.
"I had a shoestring budget," he said. "Not only does this [BitTorrent] give me the ability to distribute my film, which I wouldn't have otherwise had, but it gives me control over the distribution."
When the amateur documentary filmmaker found out his Canadian ISP was shaping traffic, he started using data encryption software to disguise his torrent traffic — an unproven method of skirting traffic-shaping measures.
"I can understand their concerns, but at the same time it really is curbing something that has a lot of potential to get user created content out there," he said. "When you have stuff like traffic shaping happening or outright blockage of certain ports, you're really killing a lot of potential for having user-created content distributed more widely."
Because of BitTorrent, more than 4,000 people have downloaded Mr. McArdle's two-hour-long film, an audience he never would have been able to reach otherwise.
BitTorrent's chief technology officer Eric Klinker said the company's relationship with ISPs has steadily improved since it was founded in 2004, and that signing deals with Hollywood studios has helped to legitimize the service as a way of delivering content.
"They're looking at the problem from a different angle," he said. "Not that it's piracy, although they'd like to hide behind that fact, but the fact that it is producing large amounts of traffic on their network ... that they need to keep up with, but the Internet is going to grow regardless of BitTorrent and these networks are going to be in a constant race to keep up with demand."
But it's not just BitTorrent that has created more costs for network providers. Other bandwidth-intensive services, everything from the explosion of video sites such as YouTube to the growing prevalence of voice over IP telephony, creates the need for more lanes on the so-called information highway.
Sometimes the measures ISPs take to ensure things like BitTorrent traffic don't crowd out regular Internet users can violate the unwritten rule of Net Neutrality — which states that all content must be treated equally online — and incur a user backlash. In October, Comcast Corp., the second largest ISP in the U.S., admitted it actively interferes with attempts by some of its customers to share files online. The news has prompted consumer groups and industry watchdogs to called for government sanctions against Comcast.
As far back as 2005, Rogers Communications Inc. said it shapes traffic by prioritizing smaller users. Rogers allocates a certain portion of its bandwidth for peer-to-peer usage, which allows the company to manage its network and provide adequate service levels to all its customers, the company's chief strategy officer Mike Lee said in an email.
"This type of network management is now being used by most ISPs around the world," he said. "Otherwise left unattended the networks would devolve to being effectively unusable."
However, traffic shaping exposes the "dirty little secret" of the ISP game in Canada, according to University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist.
"For many years the business model was to oversell in massive amounts," he said. "You had a certain amount of bandwidth, and you could oversell it so that you could sell to many more customers than you knew you would be capable of servicing if they were all using your product at the same time, because you knew that wouldn't have?? happen."
Because ISPs are reluctant to upgrade the amount of bandwidth they can provide, they have to limit how people use it, Mr. Geist said.
"Suddenly you've got more and more customers using more and more bandwidth and you've either got to increase the amount of bandwidth you can provide to those customers, or you have to take mechanisms to cut down on their usage," he said.
MATT HARTLEY
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
November 28, 2007 at 10:57 PM EST
Anyone who has ever found themselves trapped alongside other frustrated commuters during rush hour knows just how frustrating heavy traffic can be. But with more cars than ever crowding the highways, congestion and lane closures have become an unavoidable reality.
On the Internet, the resource isn't asphalt, it's bandwidth. But similar congestion problems have prompted some Internet service providers in Canada and the U.S. to restrict the flow of certain traffic on their networks.
They argue that bandwidth-intensive applications such as peer-to-peer file transfer programs clog their networks by using a large percentage of their traffic space, which leads to a poor experience for the rest of the customers, the same way a lumbering tractor trailer can impede flow on the highway. Their solution has been to "shape" traffic, essentially slowing down certain kinds of Internet activity while giving other data priority. Most of the traffic being shaped is peer-to-peer traffic.
Depending on the study, peer-to-peer traffic accounts for anywhere from 50 to 90 per cent of online traffic, but emanates from as few as 10 per cent of all users. Much of that traffic is facilitated through BitTorrent, a file-sharing protocol once synonymous with piracy but which recently has developed into a legitimate tool for quickly delivering large amounts of digital content.
Programs based on the BitTorrent protocol have been installed by more than 150 million users worldwide and in 2004, the developers of the technology founded BitTorrent Inc., a legitimate download service that has struck distribution deals with major film studios such as Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox. The service is also used by open-source software developers, university professors distributing class lectures and independent filmmakers looking for an audience for their films.
Which means legitimate BitTorrent users like Julien McArdle are sometimes left trying to find ways around ISPs' anti-file-sharing efforts. Last year, the 22-year-old Ottawa University student produced an amateur documentary, On Piracy, a balanced and informative look at music and video piracy, which he distributed using BitTorrent.
"I had a shoestring budget," he said. "Not only does this [BitTorrent] give me the ability to distribute my film, which I wouldn't have otherwise had, but it gives me control over the distribution."
When the amateur documentary filmmaker found out his Canadian ISP was shaping traffic, he started using data encryption software to disguise his torrent traffic — an unproven method of skirting traffic-shaping measures.
"I can understand their concerns, but at the same time it really is curbing something that has a lot of potential to get user created content out there," he said. "When you have stuff like traffic shaping happening or outright blockage of certain ports, you're really killing a lot of potential for having user-created content distributed more widely."
Because of BitTorrent, more than 4,000 people have downloaded Mr. McArdle's two-hour-long film, an audience he never would have been able to reach otherwise.
BitTorrent's chief technology officer Eric Klinker said the company's relationship with ISPs has steadily improved since it was founded in 2004, and that signing deals with Hollywood studios has helped to legitimize the service as a way of delivering content.
"They're looking at the problem from a different angle," he said. "Not that it's piracy, although they'd like to hide behind that fact, but the fact that it is producing large amounts of traffic on their network ... that they need to keep up with, but the Internet is going to grow regardless of BitTorrent and these networks are going to be in a constant race to keep up with demand."
But it's not just BitTorrent that has created more costs for network providers. Other bandwidth-intensive services, everything from the explosion of video sites such as YouTube to the growing prevalence of voice over IP telephony, creates the need for more lanes on the so-called information highway.
Sometimes the measures ISPs take to ensure things like BitTorrent traffic don't crowd out regular Internet users can violate the unwritten rule of Net Neutrality — which states that all content must be treated equally online — and incur a user backlash. In October, Comcast Corp., the second largest ISP in the U.S., admitted it actively interferes with attempts by some of its customers to share files online. The news has prompted consumer groups and industry watchdogs to called for government sanctions against Comcast.
As far back as 2005, Rogers Communications Inc. said it shapes traffic by prioritizing smaller users. Rogers allocates a certain portion of its bandwidth for peer-to-peer usage, which allows the company to manage its network and provide adequate service levels to all its customers, the company's chief strategy officer Mike Lee said in an email.
"This type of network management is now being used by most ISPs around the world," he said. "Otherwise left unattended the networks would devolve to being effectively unusable."
However, traffic shaping exposes the "dirty little secret" of the ISP game in Canada, according to University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist.
"For many years the business model was to oversell in massive amounts," he said. "You had a certain amount of bandwidth, and you could oversell it so that you could sell to many more customers than you knew you would be capable of servicing if they were all using your product at the same time, because you knew that wouldn't have?? happen."
Because ISPs are reluctant to upgrade the amount of bandwidth they can provide, they have to limit how people use it, Mr. Geist said.
"Suddenly you've got more and more customers using more and more bandwidth and you've either got to increase the amount of bandwidth you can provide to those customers, or you have to take mechanisms to cut down on their usage," he said.