[hylaride]

Bell Canada also has had a long-standing policy of refusing to peer with internet exchanges. They'll only truly peer with other direct backbone providers and a handful of one-off peer with other large networks (google, cloud flare, etc), but their historical position as Canada's base backbone (not so much anymore, but it was definitely a thing pre-2005) has meant their policy is most people should pay them to peer. I'm not sure if it's still the case, but IIRC for awhile they also refused to peer with any other domestic backbone providers.

The result has been some funny routes sometimes. I live in Toronto and have seen trace routes bounce over to Chicago to connect to stuff colocated here in Toronto.

It's frustrating as their fibre is my only real high speed option; also their lack of IPv6 on anything but their mobile network is annoying.

[jacquesm]

That's insane given that Front St. 151 is probably the best spot on North America when it comes to connectivity.

[1over137]

it’s also insane because probably no Canadian wants their traffic going through the US unnecessarily, since all the 51st state takeover crap.

[hylaride]

FWIW, this has being going on for decades. Bell literally doesn't care if there's a chance they can suck up some peering fees.

There have been periodic times where it became an acute problem, like early in the YouTube and Netflix years there was a lot of congestion in their upstream peers and they held out hoping those orgs would pay for the peering. They were also over provisioned in early DSL days where their upstreams became saturated and there were few alternative paths.

[subarctic]

Maybe that's a way to give them bad PR and convince then to change policies? Unfortunately most people probably don't understand this well enough and they have a pretty well oiled PR machine with all their control over tv and radio stations, etc

[idatum]

> also their lack of IPv6 on anything but their mobile network is annoying.

This gives me even less confidence after BCE took over ZiplyFiber, US PNW provider. There's a long running joke about IPv6 just one more lab test away from deployment.

[inemesitaffia]

It's not unusual for incumbents to refuse to peer in their own country.

See Telstra(Australia), the Korean Telcos, NTT(in Asia), Globacom (Nigeria) etc

[subarctic]

It's annoying how they're the only big ISP offering fiber everywhere when they're also the ones that don't support ipv6 and have the shitty peering policy. I've heard you can use another isp though (teksavvy maybe?) that uses Bell's fibre and supports ipv6

[deviantintegral]

I’m on teksavvy fibre (via bell) and IPv6 works wonderfully.