Why does it take such a long time to post photos or videos to Facebook, Youtube, etc.?

This post is intended to inform the less technically knowledgeable about how this stuff works. If you live in Canada or the USA, then this will probably sound familiar to you.

Protecting your computer and yourself, with common sense.

In my last post, I explained how to update Windows and Mac OS X, and other programs, to install security updates. I also mentioned some free antivirus and antispyware software that do the job quite well. But even after that, there's still one thing that software can't necessarily protect you from...

Internet in Canada just isn't what it used to be

The internet in Canada. About 10-15 years back when we used to use dial-up, there was a 5-15 hour limit on how much you can use the internet. When DSL and cable internet came along, limits were scrapped and you could use the internet as much as you want. But then our major cable and phone companies put usage limits on their internet services, bringing us backwards...

The UBB sitch (or why we will pay up to 300% more for internet access)

Before I go on, it stands for Usage Based Billing, because I'm sure many of you were confused by the acronym.

Chances are, some of you may read the title, and think it doesn't affect you. If you're Canadian, give it a chance and read this. If you're American, I don't think this is much of a problem now, but may be in the future.

How to avoid Bell Canada's torrent throttling

In late 2007, Bell Canada started throttling bittorrent transfers on their network down to 60KB/s or 30KB/s depending on the time of day. As you might expect, many people got frustrated with it and switched to using some of the many Wholesale DSL Internet Service Providers such as Acanac, Electronicbox, TekSavvy, Velcom, etc. Around March 2008, Bell Canada started throttling users of these wholesale ISPs without telling them. Sometime around May 2008, members on the TekSavvy forum on DSLReports found that MLPPP (meant to bond lines) has a side effect that it bypasses the throttle. In July 2008, a company called Per Vices publicly mentioned a way to bypass the throttle. Whenever the µTorrent 1.9 beta was released, it was found that Bell Canada does not throttle the UDP protocol. µTorrent 1.9 beta and later supports torrent transfers over UDP instead of TCP.

Bell Canada introduces a new tier and new names. Brings many lies along with it.

Two days ago, Bell Canada introduced a new internet tier in Ontario and Quebec. Aside from that, they renamed their Performance tier and Max tiers. They are now called "Fibe" and there's also a new tier called "Fibe 25".

Now, the name "Fibe" sounds an awful lot like "fiber", doesn't it? In fact, you'd probably think it is fiber. Nope. Bell just uses FTTN (Fiber To The Node) which connects what's called a "remote" to the central office via fiber optic cabling. From the remote, the data gets to/from your modem via ADSL/ADSL2+/VDSL2+.

Help to keep broadband competitive in Canada.

Earlier today, I received an email from my ISP (Internet Service Provider) TekSavvy Solutions Inc. . In short, it states that the CRTC recently made an interim decision that would likely cause all wholesale ISPs to go out of business. This would leave us with only Telus and Shaw in B.C. and Alberta, Bell and Rogers/Cogeco in Ontario, and Bell and Videotron/Cogeco in Quebec.

With no competition, they would be able to use DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) to detect the sites you view and create direct advertising in your browser based on your site views and file downloads. Using these same technologies, they could also turn the internet into a pay-per-website service similar to how you pay for different TV channels.

Go to the website mentioned within their email to send a message via email to Industry Minister Tony Clement, Prime Minister Harper, Opposition Leader Michael Ignatieff, and your MP. The website describes the issue in a nutshell, and gives multiple reasons why cabinet should reverse the decision.

See the body of the email after the jump.

Whoa! Something is different around here.

"The Linux Action Show" (Linux AC-shonn showw) is now called "The Computer Action Show" (COM-puter AC-shonn showw).

It's no longer just about Linux, but about general computing topics. During the current episode, Bryan and Chris talked about Jolicloud, which is an Ubuntu-based cloud OS. It's supposed to seamlessly integrate with the desktop as well as include their own social networking service. It's meant for netbooks, which is why cloud computing can make it run really FAST!

Next episode though (in 2 weeks), they're having a topic which I think many more people would be interested in. Turning a PC into a Hackintosh!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGHH!!!!

The CRTC just agreed to allow Bell's request for Usage Based Billing. What this means is that rather than the somewhat high cap (or unlimited) that small ISPs in Quebec or Ontario offer (and pay bandwidth providers for), they'll now be stuck with a 60GB cap and have to pay Bell $1.15/GB for excessive usage. Also, even though there's a maximum overage fee of $22.50, they'll keep collecting $0.75/GB after 300GB. Keep in mind that these charges are in addition to the bandwidth costs that these ISPs are already paying for. My ISP TekSavvy Solutions Inc. is not a Bell reseller, but a wholesaler. They have their own gear, but Bell's equipment gets it to the customers' residence. Now that the UBB will be in effect (in 90 days), TekSavvy is essentially a Bell Internet reseller.

I'm having trouble formulating my thoughts right now. I'm kind of... I'm REALLY pissed off.

Links:
Article from DSLReports.com . Canadian Regulators Send Another Love Letter To Bell Canada - Allows telco to double dip wholesale competitors... - dslreports.com

Angry people are congregating here. From Rocky: OUTRAGEOUS CRTC Descision - dslreports.com

Article from the CBC. Bell to charge small ISPs by usage

This is getting REALLY annoying...

Surprisingly, I'd say Bell Internet is actually more reliable than the internet at my school. It hardly ever works.
Internet that doesn't work within an IT program. Crazy, eh?

Arch Linux 2009.08

The Arch Linux 2009.08 installer is now available to download, so... that's what I'm doing now. Downloading the i686 and x86_64 versions of both the core and netinstall isos. 4 in total. I'm going to be seeding them (the webseeds will cause a bit of trouble with that because their upload bandwidth is a tad higher than 60KB/s which is what I usually seed at when I'm not throttled (which just started when my last file was at 99% downloaded). I downloaded the 2009.08-RC1 installer a few days ago and there were some nice changes to the installer since 2008.06 which was the last one that I used. I skipped out on 2009.02 . I'll provide screenshots along with my experiences of installing Arch in Virtualbox.