For those critics that say net neutrality regulation is “a solution in search of a problem”, then I present you with this. After spending months trying to help Netizen users in Canada troubleshoot their network performance problems, I’m declaring that the Rogers Cable network is crap. Rogers Cable customers have some of the highest incidents of network connectivity and performance problems in our user base. It only lends credence to the “truemors” that Rogers Cable in Canada has escalated their packet shaping practices to the outright degradation of all encrypted IP traffic. Rogers Cable is really treating their customers like idiots if they think that the Internet is just for web browsing. Customers using legitimate encrypted services such as Netizen, VPN, Skype, Joost, SFTP, secure IM, SMTP/TLS and even Xbox Live will continue to suffer until they make their wallets heard and switch to another ISP. I hope that this is not going to be a trend among ISPs.

But I haven’t given up on Rogers Cable customers, though. We’ve never counted on the ISPs to do us any favors, but this has helped us identify specific problems and make some improvements to the next version of Netizen (yes, we’re still working on it) so that we can better serve users that may have less than stellar ISP connectivity. We have started improving Netizen’s resiliency and overall experience to minimize the pain and interruption that busted connectivity has on our users’ workflow. Maybe I should juice Netizen up with some intelligent AS-level routing for good measure. The fight has just begun; because who’s to say that this won’t happen with my own ISP.