Rogers wants me to upgrade my cable modem

[gthorley]

Received a letter today from Rogers asking me to take my modem in to a store for a replacement. I presently have an old Terayon from when they first issued this modem.

Looking for some advise first before I fix something that isn't broke?

What modems are available to work with Rogers? I called the local store and they told me they were replacing with the Motorola Surfboard. Future Shop sells a modem for use with Rogers service for $99.99 but don't give the make or brand on the website. Is it the Motorola or a different model?


Can the new modems they give you block torrents or is that only done from their head end?
Any recommendations?

[Aske001]

The new DOCSIS 2 modems offer 2 "features":

- faster speeds available using DOCSIS 1.5 or (soon) DOCSIS 2.0 protocol
- ability for the service provider to download speed throttle settings directly to your modem

You might like the first. You definitely won't like the 2nd if you use bittorrent or other p2p services.

[CodecX81]

Yea...careful.

I got a motorola and i was heavily throttled on BT.

[7jaii]

Keep you old modem if it's fast enough for you. Don't listen to Rogers, theyre not the BT police.

[Kwirky]

Keep in mind they're probably decreasing the available spectrum for the Terayons, to free up space for their DOCSIS modems. On Shaw my speeds were consistently under 2Mbit with the Terayon modem, even though I was supposed to be getting 5Mbit; when I switched to the Moto SB5101 I got the full advertised speeds again.

[hightech]

You can try to keep the existing modem but at some point, you may have no choice but to change the modem.

[5abSingh]

i had that modem for several years, and just last month, i began having problems connecting to the rogers network. rogers tech showed up, said i needed a new modem, and after the swap, everything was fine. you can try to keep the old modem, but you may start experiencing dropped connections. if you do, switch to the new modem

[gthorley]

Yesterday I visited my Father and using uTorrent and Demonoid.com I did a test run with his system as he has the Motorola Surfboard and is on Rogers in Pickering. The fastest speed I got was abot 90 and it avg'd under 40. Only tested it for about 10 minutes and he is on Rogers lite. Don't know whether Rogers lite would cause a decrease in speeds or not. Presently I am averaging about 80 using Utorrent and Demonoid.

I guess I am going to have to make a switch sometime though as they plan on eliminating support.

Anyone using Rogers and the Motorola Srfboard that is not being throttled down to 5-10 out there?

[Tereno]

I was throttled for about a couple weeks. And then I just stopped downloading..did research on other companies in the meanwhile. Now it seems to be back up. Not entirely fast..but at least not 5kb/s or even worse.. 0.2 kb/s

oh.. and I'm on Rogers with the Motorola Surfboard.

[hightech]

I for one am glad that this p2p stuff is throttled down. I recall my neighbourhood used to go from 800K/sec down to like 28K/sec. After the throttling, I am at a more constant speed.

As far as I am concerned, all you leachers should vacate and move to Sympatico so that the honest folks (aka non leechers) can get decent speed. :mad:

[CompWizrd]

My 8(10?) year old Samsung Inforanger won't go over about 4.5 mbit on my 10mbit connection... too lazy to take it to Cogeco and get it replaced with something faster. :)

[Oversized Rooster]

I for one am glad that this p2p stuff is throttled down. I recall my neighbourhood used to go from 800K/sec down to like 28K/sec. After the throttling, I am at a more constant speed.

As far as I am concerned, all you leachers should vacate and move to Sympatico so that the honest folks (aka non leechers) can get decent speed. :mad:

LOL This is the wrong place to say this. You might have a price on your head now. :lol: No, but seriously I don't think that people who "leech" should stop or leech less.

I think that Rogers should start providing enough bandwidth to each street to account for the possibility of each client using their entire connection.

If you have a street with 10 homes, Rogers basically provides enough speed for any 3 or 4 to download at full speed. It works, because you rarely have more than half of the clients using their whole connection. But when that does happen, Rogers doesn't actually have enough bandwidth. And actually, everybody is NOT being provided with what they paid for.

So I don't feel guilty at all leeching, and I don't think anyone else should. I quit Rogers a couple of months ago, and I'm very happy.

[hightech]

LOL This is the wrong place to say this. You might have a price on your head now. :lol: No, but seriously I don't think that people who "leech" should stop or leech less.

I think that Rogers should start providing enough bandwidth to each street to account for the possibility of each client using their entire connection.

If you have a street with 10 homes, Rogers basically provides enough speed for any 3 or 4 to download at full speed. It works, because you rarely have more than half of the clients using their whole connection. But when that does happen, Rogers doesn't actually have enough bandwidth. And actually, everybody is NOT being provided with what they paid for.

So I don't feel guilty at all leeching, and I don't think anyone else should. I quit Rogers a couple of months ago, and I'm very happy.


I'm not afraid of what people say. Most providers look at usage patterns and use that to shape their networks. I do download large files fairly often (high res images, service packs, etc.) but I have no issues with Rogers service. In my area, Rogers is the ONLY high speed provider. I am too far from the central office to get decent speed (over 5km away).

As far as I am concerned, its easy to put a sniffer on a system that looks for p2p packet types with specific port and connection logic and just block it. In fact I have done this for many companies and helped Rogers/Bell to identify security issues and abusers on their network.

Since Rogers won't need to spend more $$ to create extra bandwith and new equipment, the costs for internet may not need to increase.

[ah802]

The new DOCSIS 2 modems offer 2 "features":

- faster speeds available using DOCSIS 1.5 or (soon) DOCSIS 2.0 protocol
- ability for the service provider to download speed throttle settings directly to your modem

You might like the first. You definitely won't like the 2nd if you use bittorrent or other p2p services.Anyone know if the WebStar Scientific Atlanta cable modem has this speed throttle setting? I'm back to a crawl on Rogers BT again.

[Oversized Rooster]

Anyone know if the WebStar Scientific Atlanta cable modem has this speed throttle setting? I'm back to a crawl on Rogers BT again.

Yeah.

[simondaman]

Yeah i have the new SB5105 the only time i get full speed isonly when i do speedtests which is useless. P2P is pretty good, but bittorrents move at 5kb/s max!

[Happy13178]

I'm not afraid of what people say. Most providers look at usage patterns and use that to shape their networks. I do download large files fairly often (high res images, service packs, etc.) but I have no issues with Rogers service. In my area, Rogers is the ONLY high speed provider. I am too far from the central office to get decent speed (over 5km away).

As far as I am concerned, its easy to put a sniffer on a system that looks for p2p packet types with specific port and connection logic and just block it. In fact I have done this for many companies and helped Rogers/Bell to identify security issues and abusers on their network.

Since Rogers won't need to spend more $$ to create extra bandwith and new equipment, the costs for internet may not need to increase.


Hmm...this might be a difference in perspective, because a good chunk of this doesn't make much sense. If you're calling high-res images and service packs big files, then you're barely a light bandwidth user.

Also, I'm maybe reading this wrong, but I was under the impression that Bell had issues with distance from the nodes, not Rogers. May be different out in the sticks, but never heard of that before.

And "As far as I am concerned, its easy to put a sniffer on a system that looks for p2p packet types with specific port and connection logic and just block it. In fact I have done this for many companies and helped Rogers/Bell to identify security issues and abusers on their network." makes no sense at all. You don't need to identify packet types to identify p2p users, checking ports is only minimally useful, and if we're still talking about residential lines, sniffers can't be installed on other people's systems. What exactly is it that you do for a living?

[gthorley]

Update:

So today I went and switched the modem as I was told they couldn't guarantee my Terayon would work after the end of April.

They gave me a Motorola SB5101 model. The terayon was great I had the cable split off just befor the modem going into my computer video card TV tuner. Now I found that this modem wouldn't work properly until I took of the splitter. I will see what happens with a different splitter but I think the Terayon needed less signal strength than the SB 5101.
I notice that the lights (4 green) on the modem stay on all the time is this how it is supposed to be? I seemed to recall that my Fathers motorola didn't have all lights lit all the time.

First off my speed has increased when tested at dslreports. Before I got anywhere from 1.5 to 2.5 now I am consistant between 4.4 to 4.7. Upload speeds are as before in the 350 range.

I am in the process of trying to get a torrent and am experiencing much lower speeds than I used to get but will have to download mor to confirm. Average speed over an hour is about 7 when I used to average about 40+. I am hoping this is just the particular torrent althouigh it is well seeded so am concerned.

[Digital_Domain]

As far as I am concerned, its easy to put a sniffer on a system that looks for p2p packet types with specific port and connection logic and just block it. In fact I have done this for many companies and helped Rogers/Bell to identify security issues and abusers on their network.

Since Rogers won't need to spend more $$ to create extra bandwith and new equipment, the costs for internet may not need to increase.
I have to disagree with you. The way you've posted, it comes across as that you believe "abusers" are people who create a large amount of network traffic. If we have a bandwidth cap, I think we should be able to use up that bandwidth as fast or as slow as we want and how we want to. I also don't get why they would need to limit p2p traffic in the first place to save on extra bandwidth; last time I checked you're either on a 100GB or 60GB cap. It's pretty easy to tell how much bandwidth each person will use then.:rolleyes:

Placing a cap on bandwidth to better provide service is one thing, but to argue that a cap and traffic shaping is needed, just doesn't make sense. Are they trying to penny pinch that much?

I am in the process of trying to get a torrent and am experiencing much lower speeds than I used to get but will have to download mor to confirm. Average speed over an hour is about 7 when I used to average about 40+. I am hoping this is just the particular torrent although it is well seeded so am concerned.
Welcome to the "shaped" age.

[tensazangetsu]

You might want to try encrypting your BT traffic. uTorrent, Bitcomet, and Azureus are some popular clients with encryption support.

This seems like a good guide for improving BT performance. http://www.bootstrike.com/Articles/BitTorrentGuide/index.html

[gthorley]

Update:

I am in the process of trying to get a torrent and am experiencing much lower speeds than I used to get but will have to download more to confirm. Average speed over an hour is about 7 when I used to average about 40+. I am hoping this is just the particular torrent although it is well seeded so am concerned.


Well my speeds seemed to go back to more historic experience. The 700mb file completed in just over 5 hrs with peak speeds moving up and maintaining close to 120 for the last 1/3 of the file.

I use Utorrent and enable encryption. Does anyone set it to forced? My concern is this may make downloads harder because there are probably seeds and peers not encrypting, but I do not fully understand this process.

[certainly]

I got the letter from Rogers,too.
Should I replace my current one?

[mxhp00]

I got the letter from Rogers,too.
Should I replace my current one?

Sorry to revive a dead thread, but I'm currently in the same situation.

I received a letter from rogers telling me that I have to replace my old modem by January 28th 2008.

I think it's best if you do replace it, because in my letter it says my internet connection will stop if I don't switch the modem by Jan, 28. :(

edit:
Does anyone know what new modem they're going to replace the old ones with?

[icevenom]

Sorry to revive a dead thread, but I'm currently in the same situation.

I received a letter from rogers telling me that I have to replace my old modem by January 28th 2008.

I think it's best if you do replace it, because in my letter it says my internet connection will stop if I don't switch the modem by Jan, 28. :(

edit:
Does anyone know what new modem they're going to replace the old ones with?

There are two that i know of,

itll likely boost your typical web activity speeds....
but they do cap/monitor your traffic more and thus cap off torrents :\
i got throttled like crazy.

I Picked up the motorolla.

[shutout]

I've terayon TJ615 will it be better for BT than the new Motorola? I got call to upgrade but still haven't decided yet. Any suggestion?

[sickcars]

I've terayon TJ615 will it be better for BT than the new Motorola? I got call to upgrade but still haven't decided yet. Any suggestion?

Dont upgrade unless your internet stops working! (if you use torrents)

[akbar_k]

The new alpha version of utorrent supposedly breaks through the traffic shaping Rogers does. Just a heads up to anyone reading this thread.

Good luck my fellow people who are on Rogers and are being throttled. May all your bits flow free and fast, upstream, and may they mate with another to spawn a new generation of beautiful rainbow salmon... err bits.

[sickcars]

Good luck my fellow people who are on Rogers and are being throttled. May all your bits flow free and fast, upstream, and may they mate with another to spawn a new generation of beautiful rainbow salmon... err bits.


haha! :cheesygri

[Invasionmix]

If I didn't get a letter can I still bring it in? I don't BT much, but my speeds are really slow.

[carmaster]

I didn't get a letter, but I am having problems with my internet speeds. They said I might need a new modem.