Canadian ISP Admits to Throwing Brakes on World of Warcraft

Rogers, one of the largest Internet service providers in Canada, had admitted that it has been throttling World of Warcraft. The ISP insists, however, that it had only done so by accident as part of its efforts to clamp down on peer-to-peer file sharing.

Last month, WoW player Teresa Murphy lodged a complaint, with Canada's telecoms regulator, the CRTC, saying that Rogers indiscriminate throttling was making the game almost unplayable. She didn't care if Rogers wanted to try to stop file sharers, but said she was paying for a service that she wasn't able to use, because Rogers' filters couldn't tell the difference between P2P and her game.

The CRTC ordered Rogers to investigate Murphy's claims. They discovered that she was right on the money, and that its filters really couldn't tell the difference between P2P file sharing and World of Warcraft. Rogers insists that the problem arises when players use P2P software at the same time as the game, despite Murphy's claims that she didn't use P2P software at all. Unfortunately, it's going to be a while before Rogers will be able to fix this problem. In its reply.to Murphy, the ISP said that a fix for the problems that she and other players were experiencing wouldn't be ready until June.

Internet usage is proving to me something of a thorny issue in Canada; just last month the Canadian government vetoed a ruling by the CRTC that would have allowed fairly stringent usage-based internet charges after the public made its displeasure very clear. Canada is one of the few Western countries that doesn't offer broadband plans with unlimited data.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/108792-Canadian-ISP-Admits-to-Throwing-Brakes-on-World-of-Warcraft