Rogers customers: Extreme or Extreme Plus for internet service?

October 10, 2007 8:06 PM

Rogers customers: would you recommend Rogers Hi-Speed Internet Extreme Plus?

I'm looking at canceling my TV service (a savings of about $100) and instead upgrading my internet service to Extreme (8 mbps) or Extreme Plus (18 mbps). I currently have Express which is 7 mbps, although speed tests show speeds of about 3 or 4. My question is: is the jump from 7 to 8 mbps even worth it? Should I just go crazy and go with 18? If you've used Extreme Plus, can you comment on the quality of the service? I'd love to hear specifically about things like advertised speed vs actual speed, downtime frequency, and any problems they've given you with BitTorrent. Thanks!

posted by saraswati to computers & internet (6 comments total)

So all you use is BitTorrent?

Usenet and BitTorrent is very very different, but I'm paying the ~$55 plan for Roger's cable internet ("80 gig"/monthly download limit*) and I consistently get 768kb/s off of a private usenet server - most days it's up to 1024 and it never falls below 384kb/s.

*they seem to base their metrics on the same metrics that they let you see; from usenet activity, it's seriously under-represented. BitTorrent (uploads!) seem to be logged and recognized accurately.

BitTorrerent and Usenet are very different beasts, too, for what you want of them. BitTorrent is far far better for current shows, whereas seasonal DVDs of older show become available on Usenet - but in unpredictable cycles.
posted by porpoise at 9:53 PM on October 10, 2007

I can't vouch for Rogers, but I haven't watched cable tv since TED became usable and stable, so you're definitely on the right track.

Bandwidth limits are more worrisome than some theoretical speed that you won't get in the real world. When your ISP starts flipping your connection on and off because you're passing their limit per month, that stinks.
posted by rokusan at 2:22 AM on October 11, 2007

Be aware that Rogers will happily forward any copyright infringement notices on to you if you're caught downloading torrents. I've also heard of serious throttling of BitTorrent with Rogers, but I can't verify that since I've been using Sympatico for the past while.
posted by Meagan at 5:34 AM on October 11, 2007

Rogers WILL do their best to make Bittorrent, legal or no, unusable for you. They're using traffic shaping to send BT packets to the bottom of the queue, and since people cottoned on to VPN and encrypted BT, they've been throttling ALL encrypted connections.

Rogers and Bittorrent do not work together, and I'm speaking as someone who's been with them for years and is in the process of ditching them over their data policies.

Plus the bandwidth cap on ExPlus is actually LESS than Extreme, and Extreme is only 100 GB / month, which is nothing in terms of BT use.
posted by Dipsomaniac at 8:00 AM on October 11, 2007

I also had to move away from Rogers because of bittorrent issue. Straight downloads via ftp and http were amazingly fast, and voip was perfect. However, upstream bittorrent would max out around 5kB/s, and downstream was maxed around 80kB/s and often around 20kB/s. And if you're on a private torrent network which enforces a long term ratio over 1:1 you're going to eventually end up with effective 5kB/s download, so after 2 months of roger's traffic shaping I switched. Paying even more for a higher but unusable max, and an higher, but unusable cap would make it worse.

It's not even that I do that much bit torrent; a max of 10G a month, and often closer to 1-2. But it was crippled to the point of hair-pulling.

I stopped using Rogers around Feb-Apr of 2007. At that point, my ipsec connection to work was still speedy.
posted by nobeagle at 9:10 AM on October 11, 2007

Teksavvy is the greatest ISP in Toronto bar-none. I shit you not, you will love me forever if you switch.

I switched from Rogers to them because Rogers loves to throttle bit torrent every so often.
posted by chunking express at 11:44 AM on October 11, 2007