Packet Shaping killed our email

ISP Rogers has a cunning plan to stop P2P traffic from hiding its identity using encryption. So worried about losing bandwidth, the outfit slows all its encrypted traffic to a snail's pace.

Writing in his bog,Dr Michael Geist Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa it has been an open secret that Rogers engages in packet shaping, conduct that limits the amount of available bandwidth for certain services such as peer-to-peer file sharing applications.

While this is bad for Rogers' customers who are trying to file share their business applications, Geist says that it is having a knock on effect on other subscribers.

The packet shaping is making it very difficult for University of Ottawa users to use email applications from home as it uses a persistent SSL encryption technology for the thousands of professors and students who access their email from off-campus.

Rogers is treating the email traffic as BitTorrent traffic, thereby creating noticeable slowdowns. µ