# Does Bell also throttle bittorrent traffic?



## macmac (Oct 22, 2006)

I'm becoming furious as I just can't acquire any good speeds on bittorrent. I hear a lot from bell customers that they consistently have good speeds. Are there any NEW bell customers which can confirm this? I used to have DSL years ago, but it made my existing phones in the house sound fuzzy..staticky, hence the move to rogers. I'm assuming Bell might have fixed this problem by now. 

Anyone here ever use Primus? How reliable are they?

Are there any OTHER internet providers?


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## 8127972 (Sep 8, 2005)

Bell is decent, but expensive. If you want DSL, I'd look into Teksavvy:

TekSavvy Solutions Inc.

Same (or better) speed. Half the price. Great support. No Throttling. Reviews below:

Detail : TekSavvy Solutions Inc. - dslreports.com


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## wing (Jan 4, 2006)

Bell does not throttle bittorrent or anything for that matter.

P.S. They are looking into technology to do so, but Bell is so big I believe it will take awhile.


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## Boomcha (Jan 29, 2004)

I second the move to Teksavvy.com , I have been with them since mid February (was on Rogers before) and I'm EXTREMELY happy with their service. No throttling, newsgroups access, CHEAPER prices. Extremely professional service reps that you can actually talk to right away on the phone instead of being on hold for 20 mins.

If you have decent speeds with DSL now I say move and dump Bell.


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## macmac (Oct 22, 2006)

Boomcha;568355 If you have decent speeds with DSL now I say move and dump Bell.[/QUOTE said:


> I'm with Rogers now..everything is great...never have any problems or issues with connectivity, online gaming over wireless has been rock solid. Only problem is Bittorrent, but it's enough thats its bothering me.
> 
> Thanks for the tips of Teksavvy. How do they connect? is it via telephone lines? Maybe i'll do the switch before the end of July.


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## Boomcha (Jan 29, 2004)

I was with Rogers before too. For about 9 years easy, but I got tired of prices going up and features getting chopped. The throttling was what did it for me, I haven't cancelled my TV package with them because I don't like Bell TV packages but maybe one day.
Teksavvy is DSL, all DSL is through the bell copper phone lines but they resell to 3rd party companies that can charge higher or (usually) lower for the same service. 
Now, DSL is a bit more complicated than regular cable because it depends how far you are from the CO (Central Office) and that determines what kind of speeds you are going to get. The best course of action to do is to call up Teksavvy and tell them that you are interested in signing up. They will ask you what your Bell line phone number is and they look up what types of speeds Bell says that you should get, but they won't be able to tell you exactly until you have a DSL modem and DSL service active on your line. For me, it took a little bit of back and forth and luck to get everything straightened but now everything is running great.

I also overlapped the two services for about 2 weeks to make sure that I wasn't going to be getting stuck with crappy service, just to be safe.


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## macmac (Oct 22, 2006)

My last post with my G4 before I send it off to Apple. Anyhow, I looked into Teksavvy, and here is what they offer and are available in my area.
erBasically for $30.00 i'll have high speed. Those filters are a bit costly at 7 bucks each.

Service Type	PRICE	
SPEED
PURCHASE
DSL Basic Service	$24.95/month	288K/288K Click here
5 Meg Service	$29.95/month	5M/800K Click here
Additional Information

Other Charges
(if applicable) $25 - Moving during the first month of the activation date
$25 - For any speed change after activation
(ex: from 5 Meg to Basic, ...)

Serving Area	Ontario/Québec (call for details)
External Modem
SpeedTouch 516
Purchase ($99) 
Rent to Own ($50 + $10/month for 6 months)
SpeedTouch 546 (4 ports)
Purchase ($125) 

SpeedTouch 780 (Modem/4 ports/Wireless/Gateway)
Purchase ($164.99) 

VoIP Gateway 2102
Purchase ($99.00)

Filters	$6.99/each
Network Card	DFE538TX DLINK 10/100M $29.99/each
Activation Fee	$0.00
GB Included	
Residential - Unlimited
DSL Basic - Unlimited


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## HowEver (Jan 11, 2005)

Get high speed with Bell, no contract, and then after your first free 3 months and perhaps a few months more, call and get them to pricematch one of the $25 or $30 services, for another 6 months or a year, also no contract. They do cap new customers though, so you should be asking for no caps as a condition of signing up and staying on.


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## bryanc (Jan 16, 2004)

macmac said:


> I'm becoming furious as I just can't acquire any good speeds on bittorrent.


I actually just talked to Rogers' tech support about this, and yes, they do throttle all P2P and encrypted traffic. 



> Are there any OTHER internet providers?


Not in the maritimes 

Cheers


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## satchmo (May 26, 2005)

macmac said:


> Service Type	PRICE
> SPEED
> PURCHASE
> DSL Basic Service	$24.95/month	288K/288K Click here
> ...


Hmm...I can get Bell for $30/yr (high speed) for a one year contract. No extra charges for filters or modem. That said, their billing practices are pretty frustrating and even though you've been quoted $30/mth, that's not what usually ends up on your bill.
These TecSavvy prices are just okay...but perhaps their service makes up for that.


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## HowEver (Jan 11, 2005)

satchmo said:


> Hmm...I can get Bell for $30/yr (high speed) for a one year contract. No extra charges for filters or modem. That said, their billing practices are pretty frustrating and even though you've been quoted $30/mth, that's not what usually ends up on your bill.
> These TecSavvy prices are just okay...but perhaps their service makes up for that.


The price is already fluctuating...


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## 8127972 (Sep 8, 2005)

satchmo said:


> Hmm...I can get Bell for $30/yr (high speed) for a one year contract. No extra charges for filters or modem. That said, their billing practices are pretty frustrating and even though you've been quoted $30/mth, that's not what usually ends up on your bill.
> These TecSavvy prices are just okay...but perhaps their service makes up for that.


The service that Teksavvy offers is great:

1. You get a live human when you call them and I've never had to wait in a queue. After 5PM you may get voice mail, but I've always gotten a call back within 15 minutes. When I went live with them, someone called me a day or two later to make sure everything was cool. 

2. They offer TWO levels of service for $29.95 a month. One is an unlimited plan (that is unlimited transfer), and the other is a low latency (in my case sub 30 ms latency) plan that caps out at 100GB of transfer a month. I'm on the latter and online FPS games are great! 

Not to mention good newsgroup access, no throttling, & I can actually use the LINUX box running Squirrel Mail (SquirrelMail - Webmail for Nuts!) that I have co-located at Level3 for both sending and receiving e-mail (on Sympatico, you have to use their e-mail server to send mail on port 995 as they block outbound mail access on port 25. To be fair, I believe that Rogers does the same thing). 

It's well worth the $29.95 IMHO.


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## Guest (Jul 24, 2007)

Pretty much every ISP out there (that's consumer level) blocks port 25 these days in efforts to prevent bot machines sending spam (of course all teh new bot machines just avoid port 25 but let's not get into that).

It's surprising that many ISP also block other common (and useful!) ports now, like 5900-5999 (VNC) which is frustrating.


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## 8127972 (Sep 8, 2005)

mguertin said:


> Pretty much every ISP out there (that's consumer level) blocks port 25 these days in efforts to prevent bot machines sending spam (of course all teh new bot machines just avoid port 25 but let's not get into that).
> 
> It's surprising that many ISP also block other common (and useful!) ports now, like 5900-5999 (VNC) which is frustrating.


You've just highlighted why blocking ports is futile. I feel that ISP's should try to educate their customers about protecting their computer (Yeah I know, futile exercise, but still worthwhile IMHO) rather than simply taking the easy way out.


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## jaline (Jul 7, 2007)

What sucks is that our part of the suburbs can't get hi-speed, so our internet is forever slow! I hope they can remedy this problem in the future. We have Bell, and the speed is decent enough. 

Although the speed is not a company-specific problem. It's because our part of Ottawa doesn't have the necessary wiring done or something. And it's not like we live in the country. It's so weird.


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## Boomcha (Jan 29, 2004)

HowEver said:


> Get high speed with Bell, no contract, and then after your first free 3 months and perhaps a few months more, call and get them to pricematch one of the $25 or $30 services, for another 6 months or a year, also no contract. They do cap new customers though, so you should be asking for no caps as a condition of signing up and staying on.


Why should you do this? More work for you and you still have to deal with Bell BS. 

I like my life to be simple and not have to worry about when contracts are going to end, no capping, etc. 
Just call Teksavvy and be done.


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## 8127972 (Sep 8, 2005)

Boomcha said:


> Why should you do this? More work for you and you still have to deal with Bell BS.
> 
> I like my life to be simple and not have to worry about when contracts are going to end, no capping, etc.
> Just call Teksavvy and be done.


I did that, and I'm happier as well has having more money in my pocket.


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## HowEver (Jan 11, 2005)

Boomcha said:


> Why should you do this? More work for you and you still have to deal with Bell BS.
> 
> I like my life to be simple and not have to worry about when contracts are going to end, no capping, etc.
> Just call Teksavvy and be done.


Like I said, my understanding is that for some they waive the caps, and there is no requirement that you sign up for a contract.


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## 8127972 (Sep 8, 2005)

HowEver said:


> Like I said, my understanding is that for some they waive the caps, and there is no requirement that you sign up for a contract.


There's a article on this over at Digital Home Canada:
Digital Home - Learn how to beat the Bell Sympatico price increases


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## HowEver (Jan 11, 2005)

8127972 said:


> There's a article on this over at Digital Home Canada:
> Digital Home - Learn how to beat the Bell Sympatico price increases


Thanks. I'm not a fan of Primus, nor of bundling services, and my Sympatico is not capped.


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## kevs~just kevs (Mar 21, 2005)

Primus gets my vote. I've been with them for 7 months now. I have the Phone/Lite DSL package and for $42/month I have nothing to complain about. As far as torrents go, I use xtorrent and have found it very fast most of the time. The "Lite" DSL is the same speed as the high speed we have at work, I personally don't think it's worth the extra 20bucks to for the regular DSL...


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## keebler27 (Jan 5, 2007)

i can't answer your ? about throttling, but wrt to billing, i had to call them about something else and then politely requested better high speed pricing or i'd be gone. 

they knocked it down to $30/month


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