Broadband providers blocking podcasts in Canada?
Over at TorCamp, Alec Saunders hears that Rogers and Shaw may be blocking podcast downloads:
While at Torcamp I have heard from several sources that Rogers and Shaw are blocking podcast downloads. After two to three downloads, the data stops.
I highly doubt this is true: I subscribe to several podcasts here in Vancouver, and am connected to Shaw. No blockage here. If this *is* true, it would be a major issue (kind of like throttling BitTorrent traffic). Alec, let's get confirmation on this, because it doesn't sound realistic right now.
Update: Patrick Dinnen left a comment, pointing especially to Apple forums where this is being discussed. Virtually all of the complaints seem to be limited to Rogers customers back east. The factor seems to be anything that downloads the same file from multiple servers -- which is consistent with Apple's use of Akamai, as well as P2P programs that use multiple download sources.
Other links: digg pointing to this Techdirt article, also pointing to Boing Boing bringing it up. Still no confirmation, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's Shaw/Rogers not blocking podcasting, but rather having misconfigured traffic shaping tools.
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No podcast problem with Shaw - e-mail another issue
I live in Richmond, BC and have not had any problems downloading podcasts through my Shaw connection.
I've had problems with their e-mails though. A few of my domains are hosted with 1and1.com and for a while they (1and1) blocked e-mails coming through Shaw's main (home use) domains/IPs. I called their helpdesk where the rep actually had a 1and1 domain himself. Together we were able to figure it out.
Unfortunately it is not the first time I've had problems with Shaw getting blacklisted. And I really wish they would upgrade their spamfilter tool and let me decide if a piece is spam or not!
roar at roarweb dot com
Email hopeless with Rogers, Shaw, Telus
I haven't used ISP provided email in years, precisely because of the unreliability. I'm quite happy with my aliasing/forwarding to Gmail accounts, plus POP3 downloads. It means that I can send and receive email wherever I am, without worrying about being blocked.
ISP Provided e-mail
As you I'm not using the Shaw provided e-mail much. Owning my own domains and aliasing/forwarding is a strategy that has worked for me for quite some time.
It's amazing that for $6 US/yr (as I pay for my roarweb.com domain) you can start builing a personal brand!
My last challenge was that shaw-subscriber could not e-mail me. Earlier, with a different domain that I forwarded to my Shaw account, Shaw actually suggested I was spamming myself and that I should develop a written spam policy before they would allow me to receive my forwarded e-mails. I had them call my domain host to figure it out. A couple of days later I had my e-mail back.
I must admit there are times I'm thinking about swithing to Telus.
roar at roarweb dot com
Maybe, maybe not
There's a lot of discussion about this over on the Apple forums.
I think (I may be wrong) that it was Richard Sharp from PodChannels who mentioned this at TorCamp yesterday, and he seemed to think it was a valid claim.
Update on Rogers Blocking Podcasts
I heard this from a couple of people at Torcamp yesterday. Subsquently, Mark Evans (National Post business reporter) called Rogers who denied blocking podcasts, but did admit to prioritizing them low vs web and email during peak traffic. A subsequent mail from another reader confirmed that service providers do selectively degrade some kinds of traffic during peak times.
Nothing new
OK, this is nothing new...guess people doing podcast downloads just noticed. I wrote about this almost exactly one year ago, talking about BitTorrent. The information came from some DSL Reports postings -- apparently using products from Ellacoya.