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Rogers Hi-Speed Internet

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Rogers Hi-Speed Internet
Company typeSubsidiary of Rogers Communications
IndustryInternet Service Provider
HeadquartersToronto, Canada
ProductsCable Modem, Email
OwnerRogers Communications
Websitewww.rogers.com/internet

Rogers Hi-Speed Internet is a broadband Internet service provider in Canada, owned by Rogers Communications. Rogers previously operated under the brand names Rogers@Home, Rogers Yahoo! Hi-Speed Internet, and Road Runner in Newfoundland. It is currently the second largest Internet provider in Canada, after Bell Internet by customer-count.

History

Early years (2000-2003)

Rogers began offering its cable Internet service in Ontario and British Columbia in 2000. The service was branded Rogers @Home.[1]

Relationship with Yahoo! (2004-2009)

In 2004, Rogers partnered with Yahoo! to offer Rogers Yahoo! Hi-Speed Internet to its members. This included service offers unlimited e-mail storage, plus access to Premium Yahoo! Services at no charge, including a Flickr PRO account. Customers with websites previously hosted by Rogers were offered the option of transferring to ca.geocities.com addresses. (Unike regular GeoCities websites, these were ad-free for existing accounts, although those for new customers had drop-down ads.)[2] All such websites were discontinued with the closure of GeoCities on 27 October 2009. Although still partnered with Yahoo!, Rogers dropped Yahoo! from its services name in 2008.[3]

In mid-2009, Rogers discontinued giving free Flickr Pro accounts to all Rogers customers and switched all accounts to the free version while allowing old pictures and videos to be stored even though it was over the allowed limit. As of January 2012, Rogers Mail accounts continue to be provided by Yahoo!.

Price, speed, usage increase (2012-present)

On January 16, 2012, customer advocacy blog Stop The Cap! reported that Rogers increased the price of all its cable Internet services by $2, except for Lite and Ultra-Lite which remain unchanged. Rogers blames its slightly higher cap limits and its SpeedBoost technology as reasons for the price increase. A customer, however, was quick to point out that the cable company "introduced 'SpeedBoost' as a 'free' feature which we are now apparently/effectively going to pay more for".[4]

A few days later, Stop The Cap! reported that DOCSIS 3.0 customers would benefit from a speed and usage increase. By February 21, Express speeds of up to 12 Mbit/s would now be up to 18 Mbit/s, while Extreme speeds of up to 24 Mbit/s would be increased to 28 Mbit/s. Also, Ultimate speeds of up to 50 Mbit/s would now be up to 75 Mbit/s. On March 8, data allowances for each plan would be increased by 10 GB and 20 GB, respectively.

Services

For Rocket Hub Internet service, see Rogers Wireless.

Rogers offers cable Internet using the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) standard. They also offer value-added services such as Internet security computer software.

Cable Internet

Rogers Hi-Speed Internet users may be warned, through their browser via Rogers-injected code, that they have reached 75% or 100% of their monthly limit. This message explains that there will be charges for additional usage after the 100% warning for exceeding their limit. The overcharge fees are charged on a per-gigabyte basis, rounded down to the nearest gigabyte. Overage costs as low as $0.50 for the high-end Ultimate plan, but costs as much as $5.00 for the low-end Ultra-Lite plan. The Portable Internet bandwidth cap is not enforced.[5]

As of March 8, 2012, Rogers offers the following plans for cable Internet:

Service Speeds DOCSIS 3.0 compatible Monthly bandwidth limits Cost of additional bandwidth
Download Upload
Ultra-Lite (no longer offered) 500 kbit/s 256 kbit/s no 2 GB $5.00/GB
Lite 3 Mbit/s no 15 GB $4.00/GB
Express 18 Mbit/s 512 Mbit/s yes 70 GB $2.00/GB
Extreme 28 Mbit/s 1 Mbit/s yes 120 GB $1.50/GB
Extreme Plus 32 Mbit/s yes 150 GB $1.25/GB
Ultimate 75 Mbit/s 2 Mbit/s yes 250 GB $0.50/GB
  • Lite (excluding Portable) download cap was lowered to 15 GB (previously 25 GB) and overage was increased to $4./00 GB (previously $2.50) to a maximum of $50.00 per month (was $30.00). If signed up before July 21, 2010, customers will continue to have the old cap limit; usage allowance remains at 25 GB and additional usage remains at $2.50/GB to a maximum of $30.00 per month. Additionally, customers in the Atlantic provinces will continue to have the old cap; usage allowance remains at 25 GB, and additional usage remains at $2.50/GB to a maximum of 30 per month.

Peer-to-peer throttling

Cable Internet offered by Rogers has an 80 kbit/s upload speed limit for peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic at all times. Download speeds for such traffic remains unaffected, and as such, it is determined by the cable connection's download speed limit.[6] However download speed will be limited to those who set upload speed caps within their respective torrent clients. Trackers tend to "penalize" users who engage in these downloading habits. Thus, Rogers is indirectly limiting the download speed of users on Rogers networks. [7] [8]

Security

While previously offering Norton Internet Security, Rogers switched to offering Rogers Online Protection. It contains anti-virus/spyware, parent/privacy control and firewall features. A cutoff time of June 30, 2009 was set for people to switch from their previous protections to this new one.[9]

The security suite is distributed for free with basic services, such as antivirus, antispyware, firewall, and parental controls, while premium services, at an additional cost, include PC optimizing tools, identity theft protection, wireless security services, and backup services. The security suite only supports Microsoft Windows operating systems.

Legacy services

Main article: Inukshuk Wireless

Rogers previously offered a Portable Internet service in select rural regions, similarly to its competitor Bell Internet. These services used the Inukshuk Wireless network. The company is no longer accepting subscriptions to this service, as they plan to discontinue the service on March 1, 2012. Customers are encouraged to use Rogers Wireless Internet services instead, which generally offer a much lower bandwidth cap.[10]

Controversy

Rogers has been criticised for traffic redirection and inspection. They use deep packet inspection to identify and throttle BitTorrent traffic.[11] and use website address errors (failed DNS lookups) to redirect traffic to their search portal.[12] They have also made a controversial move to display advertisements in webmail even though users pay for the service.[13][14]

Project Cleanfeed

Internet service providers Bell, Bell Aliant, MTS Allstream, Rogers, Shaw, SaskTel, Telus, and Vidéotron announced "Project Cleanfeed Canada" in November 2006; this involves the blocking of access to a blacklist of sites suspected to contain child pornography. The blacklist is compiled from reports by Internet users and investigated by the independent organization Cybertip.ca.

Throttling

BitTorrent traffic is restricted through bandwidth throttling using equipment from Sandvine Inc, which has caused complaints as users feel Rogers is overstepping their bounds as a service provider and despite Rogers advertising their service “for sharing large files and much more”. Rogers has previously denied such allegations, despite widespread reports of the issue. Further controversy arose when in May 2007, Rogers began throttling all encrypted file transfers allegedly to combat BitTorrent traffic, but affecting all encrypted transfers regardless if they are BitTorrent traffic or not.[15] [16]

In January 2011, the CRTC issued a letter to Rogers stating it was breaking CRTC policy by actively throttling download speeds while Peer-2-Peer (P2P) was active without notifying users 30 days in advance of the change, and without updating its Network Management policies page on their website. [17] Despite the letter from the CRTC, Rogers still had not updated their policy pages as of February 4th, 2011, and had in fact begun throttling all internet traffic (no longer just P2P) for up to 15 minutes after P2P had been disabled. Several games have been caught up in this more restrictive throttling as Rogers is incorrectly detecting them as P2P, and has also been slow to fix it despite offers of assistance from customers, and game manufacturers. [18]

Injection of content

Rogers injects a warning message into Google.com

Since early December, 2007, Rogers has been injecting their own content into other companies' websites without permission.[19] Rogers users who are close to the maximum download limit are seeing red text appear above the content of every website they visit. The notice continues to appear on every page until the user either clicks a link acknowledging that they have seen the message or chooses to opt out of the notification.[20]

Hijacking failed DNS lookups

In late July, 2008, all "server not found" pages are redirected to a webpage with Rogers advertisements, those similar to the page the user was trying to access. Those who decide to "opt-out" are still redirected to a Rogers page made to look like an Internet Explorer "server not found" page, regardless of the user's web browser.

References

  1. ^ "Rogers@Home". Rogers Communications. Retrieved 2012-01-21.
  2. ^ http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,14811144
  3. ^ NeoWin forums
  4. ^ Dampier. "Rogers Hiking Prices on Broadband by $2/Month; Blames Service "Enhancements"". Retrieved 2012-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |list1= ignored (help)
  5. ^ Rogers website stating that they do not enforce cap
  6. ^ "Rogers.com - Rogers Network Management Policy".
  7. ^ "wiki.theory.com - BittorrentFAQ".
  8. ^ "wiki.theory.com - BittorrentFAQ".
  9. ^ Rogers Online Protection
  10. ^ Hardy, Ian. "Rogers discontinuing Portable Internet service March 1st, 2012, now only option for rural customers is a 4G HSPA+ device". Retrieved 2011-12-14.
  11. ^ Tech Net Neutrality on CBC, March 28, 2008
  12. ^ Rogers violates net neutrality by hijacking failed DNS lookups
  13. ^ Business article on TheStar.com
  14. ^ p2p.net story
  15. ^ "Rogers Bit Torrent Cat & Mouse". dslreports.com. 2006-02-09. Retrieved 2007-06-15.
  16. ^ "Rogers Fights BitTorrent by Throttling All Encrypted Transfers". torrentfreak.com. 2007-04-11. Retrieved 2007-06-15.
  17. ^ "CRTC letter to Rogers". 2011-01-13. Retrieved 2011-02-04.
  18. ^ "Rogers throttling/deprioritizing World of Warcraft". 2011-01-21. Retrieved 2011-02-04.
  19. ^ Rogers tests new cap warning system, raises neutrality alarms
  20. ^ Canadian ISP tests injecting content into web pages
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