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Broadband In Australia Just Got Slower
liquidx writes: "Seems like broadband Down Under is getting more and more restrictive. First we had our _unlimited_ plans changed to capped usage plans, then incoming port 80 traffic was blocked (due to Code Red/Nmida worms) and now file-sharing protocol ports are filtered due to 'load balancing issues'! Whirlpool reports that Optus@Home throttled traffic to ports 6700-6702 (ex-Napster ports) without telling its users. Read the letter and article here. Are there any other broadband services, other than the ones in Australia, continually degrading their service to customers? When will this stop?"
It will stop when you and your peers start using IP Security with the Encapsulated Security Protocol (ESP) where in all data in the packets except for the IP header are encrypted. If you do this, the ISP will only be able to tell where your packets are going. They can't see your transport protocol (TCP, UDP, etc), let alone what application protocol you're using, so they won't be able to filter.
Here's the situation:
Telstra costs per month costs are higher than yours for what we pay for.. The monthly fee schedule may look similar, but here's the killer: While Optus has an Acceptable Usage policy of 10 times the average use...you guys are probably are allowed to go up to 20GB per month! At Tel$tra, customers are CAPPED at 3GB a month! What happens if we go over 3GB? Telstra charges you A$0.18 (US$0.09) per meg if you go over!! Imagine that...if you clock an extra 3GB over your limit, ontop of your monthly service fee you would be looking about over $500 (US$250) per month!! I'm sure our international counterparts are probably wetting their paints, laughing and saying what a joke this is... here's the link for your confirmation: (Prices are in $A. You can roughly divide by 2 to get the US dollar equivalent.
By the way costs is one thing, what about service? I tell you for your monthly fee OPTUS does not throttle limit your downloads (with exception of this post, ie port specific). At Tel$tra, for the same monthly fee, you would only get 256kbps down and 64kpbs upload!
That's not all, lets just say you require extra speed (hey, isn't this what broadband is all about?), you have to pay extra on top of your service fee!!! Get this, your cap remains at 3GB! So you are in fact paying more for a faster connnection that makes it easier for you to exceed your 3GB cap and from there its $$$ -> Tel$tra!
But wait there's more....you are probably thinking why there is not higher cap plan available? Well the situation is if you went to the link I provided above there is a 5GB cap plan (no speed limit)...look at the price... A$209 ($US100) per month!!!!
What really amazes me is that it would be cheaper (but not possible in this case) to set up 2 x 3GB cap cable accounts and it would be still cheaper than the 5GB plan. I just don't get how Tel$tra has come up with their pricing models! Let's just say you wanted 10GB Cap, $US 200 per month!!! What do ordinary Optus customers pay for this competing service? Approx $70 ($US35) per month. Only 17% of the Telstra cost!!!
According to Telstra, the customers have to "MANAGE" their usage to ensure they don't go over their cap...so what tools have Telstra given to its customer's? A an online usage meter that does not work! Check this link to see why customers a very angry. I wish I could switch over to Optus, but where I live, Telstra is the only broadband provider. Talk about monopoly.
Optus customers have it good and I wish I could join you guys. I think the broadband broadband offered overseas kick butt.
Maybe I should relocate (I can not see myself going back to dialup). Btw, Telstra have recently introduced these new restrictions so I did not know about them until after I signed the contract months before.
Here's a link that mentions the first customer hit with the 3G cap.
I can fully understand ISPs throttling people's P2P transfers to save some Internet bandwidth. But I also think they ought to be more selective and allow full bandwidth between customers of their own network since this essentially doesn't cost them anything.
I mean, think about it... Everybody in your city connects back to the cable company's head end office where they are all trunked together using the cable company's high speed local area network equipment. Traffic that only goes between people in the same city doesn't need to go through the Internet at all.
People SHOULD be running servers on their home systems -- providing services that are for use by other users inside their ISP's network. It's content without the cost of Internet bandwidth! ISPs should be ENCOURAGING this type of network usage.
This assumes that proper routing is being done by the ISP. Your customers in the city need to be able to talk to each other. My current cable ISP by gives you a NATed private IP address instead of a real Internet routable IP address. This is incredibly stupid because now all of the P2P clients running on their network can only transport files to/from users that have a real IP. And since none of their own users have real IPs, guess where all the P2P traffic HAS to go? Yep, through the Internet to other cities.
By saving a little money on buying fewer IP addresses, they waste who knows how much on extra Internet backbone traffic costs.
P2P has the potential to be the most bandwidth efficient system of distributing large files. In an ideal world, when the next release of my favorite Linux distribution is put online, ONE copy of it gets downloaded through the Internet backbone to my city. From there, people inside the city copy it from each other, wasting no Internet bandwidth at all. Simple P2P systems like gnutella probably couldn't pull this off very well, but something like the mftp based edonkey2000.com could do it IMHO (with proper routing in place).
Throttle the Internet P2P data streams. Route internal P2P data streams properly so they don't use the Internet. Try to expand your coverage area to the as much of the city as you can.
Just my 2 cents on the stupid ISP management going on.