Peer-to-Peer Networks Blocked in NZ

mjl writes: "It seems that Time Warner is not the only ISP that limits bandwidth of residential customers. In New Zealand, Telecom is also blocking the use of well known P2P applications. What Telecom fails to recognise is that these people are pushing the envelope of what the Internet can do, and will drive the technology economy in years to come."

Comments

Kinda Sad Really

[cm0s]

It's a shame that .nz Telecom won't just put their play-fair hat on and start trying to give us service to complete with the rest of the world. 128kbit/sec just plain sucks. So too is it a shame that our leading newspaper can't employ a technical editor with enough competence to get simple math right, or acknowledge a mistake in an article instead of just editing the electronic copy. This article also demonstrates an ignorance on the authors behalf with respect to proper notation for network units. Let alone the blatant crap he is saying about Windows Update being a server as well. How about Telecom/XTRA paying 5c per Meg? It's more like 5c per Gigabyte, if not less. Lets hope the good-willing public of New Zealand don't happen to encounter this pile of drivel.

Re:Kinda Sad Really

[Anonymous Coward]

128kbit/sec just plain sucks

Try 14,4 buddy.

Re:Kinda Sad Really

[Plug]

For those who haven't been following the entire debate, when the article was first posted online yesterday Chris Barton suggested that vampires on their 128Kbit connections were downloading "5Gb (gigabytes) a day / 120Gb/month."

Today, it has been corrected. Not annotated, acknowledged or errata'd -- silently replaced.

Re:Kinda Sad Really

[Anonymous Coward]

Or 300 baud... bloody kids..

Re:Kinda Sad Really

[Rackemup]

Today, it has been corrected. Not annotated, acknowledged or errata'd -- silently replaced

wow.. right outta 1984, editing history on the fly. It could have just been a typo but why not just own up to it?

Re:Kinda Sad Really

[kiwipeso]

NZ Telecom play fair? with a comment that naive you have to be in auckland...
I have 128k on TelstraClear, 10 gig a month, no blocking, just the usual data interception by the secret service... [they don't like it if you turn down a job offer...]
The Herald is only the leader in Auckland, mainly because it's the only daily paper there. The national leader is the Evening Post.
Math is beyond the capacity of most journalists, ignorance is the tool of a good story.
Telecom pays about 0.5 per gig, NZ has enough drivel with the Crimes Amendment Bill (#6) [data interception act]

Wrong

[DarkZero]

What Telecom fails to recognise is that these people are pushing the envelope of what the Internet can do, and will drive the technology economy in years to come.

The problem here is that Telecom HAS recognized that these people are pushing the envelope of what the internet can do and that it will drive the technology economy in years to come. They also realize that P2P is very expensive for ISPs because it actually makes the "unlimited use" part of their customers' contracts a true statement. Thus, they are trying their best to turn back the clock and bring back the days when they made more money per customer.

They're not being ignorant. They're being smart. They're also being money grubbing assholes, but that's beside the point. ;)

Re:Wrong

[Matthew Luckie]

I don't understand how Chris Barton can say that P2P users are driving the Internet, and how these people will drive the knowledge economy in years to come.

They are stealing copyrighted media. This is illegal. They should go to somewhere like China where there is no copyright law, and see how they like that knowledge economy.

Re:Wrong

[forgoil]

Exactly, I can't figure out how anyone could ever make any real money on these technologies. P2P has it's uses, but it won't have any more impact that anything else in the computing world.

The ISPs doesn't have the money to build superfast networks and charge almost nothing for it. I am afraid that the massive use of bandwidth will only result in services where you pay according to how much bandwidth you eat up. That in turn will deliver the internet completely into the hands of the rich media companies that can afford setting up servers.

Re:Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Well boo fuckin' hoo...
I am sure I'll cry myself a river tonight for the poor RIAA executives that can't afford to eat.

The "copyright industry" is a dinosaur, the faster it is forced to reform, the better for mankind, artists and audience alike.

Art will always be made and apprechiated, as long as man exists. Maybe less art will be made with the main purpose of making money, but I can't really see how this is a bad thing.
The content industry will have to reform of course, and possibly accept a smaller cashflow. But that's life in a capitalist economy. If your business model don't float, you sink. And if you don't accept that you are building China here right now! (I leave the pros and cons of "socialism" and "capitalism" aside for now...)

On the positive side of this demise of the content industry as we know it is free (almost) information to everyone (almost).
This will be a huge leap forward for mankind!
And the ill effects on the economy will be temporary at most, people will not stop spending their disposable income just because they are not buying musik. They will simply use their money for something else, wich will benefit some other industry.

To sum up.
Quit whining, deal.

Re:Wrong

[phunhippy]

Good Morning Mr. Moron. you say: "I don't understand how Chris Barton can say that P2P users are driving the Internet.....".

Ok so all p2p people are stealing? your obviously misguided and have some serious reality issues.. I direct you over to http://www.furthurnet.com[furthurnet.com] where you can find a legal(no copyright violations here) p2p file program supported my muscians and listeners alike.

Re:Wrong

[jawtheshark]

You do realise that the author of the article specifically mentions that he uses Kazaa himself. You are not going to tell me that it is for legit use. Or did you think he'd install potential spyware just to "test" what those vampires are doing? I really think this guy doesn't have that much of a concept how networks work. The only thing he does is ranting that *his* Kazaa connection is slow and that it is due to "the Vampires".

I use Gnucleus for the sole reason of listening to music I never would have heard in the first place. And when I like I buy. What I do is illegal, yes, but not bad for the economy.
I'll shut up now...

Re:Wrong

[perky]

On the positive side of this demise of the content industry as we know it is free (almost) information to everyone (almost).
except that it won't mean that at all because if the content producer cannot make enough cash out of producing content, then he won't be able to produce anything at all. That means less information available to all.

Yes, I agree that the RIAA, MPAA are greedy motherfsckers. Yes, I agree that the internet presents a real opportunity to cut out the middleman in media distribution and publishing. No, I don't agree that there is no place for copyright law, and the right of the creator over his/her intellectual property.

just out of interest, what do you do for a living?

Re:Wrong

[paule9984673]

content industry != content producer RIAA/MPAA != creator

The artist will continue to produce art and find other ways of distribution. He will probably be much better off financially than with the current system.

For most musicians that don't happen to be Michael Jackson or Britney Spears the content industry is the greatest risk for the creator's rights.

Re:Wrong

[Saeger]

(I'm not the original poster, but...)

cannot make enough cash out of producing content, then he won't be able to produce anything at all.

I think his point was that he doesn't much care for the over-produced crap out there, and would rather swim in low-budget crap because it's keep'n it real, yo. :)

My opinion is that we're going to have a hellish few decades ahead of us until such time as nanotechnology effectively transforms matter into information too... at which point the cost of producing just about anything drops to zero and capitalism (and the need for a selfish copyright) pretty much goes out the window.

--

Re:Wrong

[mgv]

They are stealing copyrighted media. This is illegal. They should go to somewhere like China where there is no copyright law, and see how they like that knowledge economy.

Well, you can send someone a music file using instant messaging, e-Mail and news groups, just for starters.

Are you suggesting that we should diable these web services too? Or that (in your opinion) there is sufficiently high illegal activity on P2P software to justify blocking it alone? Even though it has perfectly legitimite uses as well (like distributing linux iso files).

For that matter, alot of stuff that you say is illegal may not be.

Examples:
1. Music which is distributed free of copyright
2. Music which you already own the copyright to but just want a MP3 backup of (will become more important as copy protected music gets pushed more).
3. My own example -
I used morpheus to get a win XP iso, even though I bought a legit one (remember, you buy the licencse, not the software) because I hate product activation that much. Have I broken the law? A moot point. As I haven't cost M$ a cent in revenue, I doubt that they will take me to court on that one, in case I win.

And frankly, my position is not illegal until its tested in court, becaue its not for you to judge.

I doubt that P2P software will ever stop. Any more than video recorders will go away. If ports start getting blocked, the software will shift ports. Probably to port 80, which is how streaming media work through firewalls.

My 2c

Michael

Re:Wrong

[danro]

(I am the original poster)

I think his point was that he doesn't much care for the over-produced crap out there, and would rather swim in low-budget crap because it's keep'n it real, yo. :)

And, yes, that sums my feelings up quite well.
There is gold in them mountains (of crap) you know... and if Britney would only quit distracting us we'll find it too. ;-)

My opinion is that we're going to have a hellish few decades

...better make that centuries, and that is ok. Considering how we are handling this, I think human society has to mature a bit to handle "free stuff for all", not to mention free nukes for all...

Re:Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

exactly - these filthy open sores hippies who want their money for nothing and their beer for free are ruining it for all of us.

Re:Wrong

[danro]

For most musicians that don't happen to be Michael Jackson or Britney Spears the content industry is the greatest risk for the creator's rights.

This is true. The "content industry", not the audience chooses who will be listened to. So if you want to have your music played, you'll have to sign their template contract.
...and then you're screwed!

Almost all the money you'll ever make from your music goes directly into their pockets.

Re:Wrong

[digitalsushi]

They're also being money grubbing assholes, but that's beside the point.

*shrug* I'd rather have my ISP make the money they need and stay afloat rather than let them not be money grubbing and fail, and then leave me with one ISP that can charge whatever it wants (if I'm lucky enough to be left with one) Most ISPs arent exactly floating in cash. Maybe the big ones are, though. The middle sized and smaller ones definitely are not.

ISPs make their money on a gamble. Most people will use about 1/8th of what they can, say. So an ISP will oversell by 8 times that to cover the cost of that one line and the overhead of getting it internetworked and maintained. Granted there needs to be a new model that covers people using 100% of their connection by default instead of 12%, but I haven't heard of too many options, other than paying 500 bucks a month for access (at which point you're a dedicated customer and your ISP already has a plan for you).

Re:Wrong

[Saeger]

(I am the original poster)

Then why'd you post Anon before?

I think human society has to mature a bit to handle "free stuff for all"

I agree, but it won't take centuries. Our tech is evolving faster than our still primative brains can cope with... but we can probably fix that with tech too.

--

Re:Wrong

[CodeMonky]

ICMP echo has perfectly legitimate uses. However the fact is that the misuse of it causes tons of ISP to block it in order to ensure they aren't ping flooded off the net. The same holds true for p2p (in my opinion). It may have its valid uses but its invalid uses greatly outweigh the valid.

Even blocking p2p altogether your 2 of your examples are moot (2. You can just rip it yourself since you already own it, takes a little longer but its not like you don't have the ability. 3. That ISO you are getting, regardless of whether you are using it for harmless pruposes, is being distributed illegally if it weren't MS would just make the ISO available to rely on you purchasing a key for it from them) and i would argue that 1 is probably moot because if the band is making the music available free of copyright you will most likely have no problem finding it elsewhere on a non-p2p system.

I don't particularly like the policy of blocking things outbound (especially if you are an ISP) and much prefer shaping the traffic however reliable high speed shaping is expensive and sometimes this is the only way to guarantee any sort of bandwidth quality.

Simply changing ports wont do you any good (at least not in the long run), ISP will just start getting content filtering firewalls that block based on the packet content and not just ip/port (or buy packeteers and just wait a few days forthem to update their signatures for the newest p2p app).

Re:Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Just for the record: a person owning a copyright is not selfish.

Not allowing an author to benefit from his copyright would be selfish of society, however, because it would reduce the incentive to create, ultimately harming everyone.

Re:Wrong

[DrSkwid]

As I haven't cost M$ a cent in revenue

You are stealing money from Microsoft. The data you provide for product activation has value, however small.

Re:Wrong

[ergo98]

As many other people have stated, much more eloquently than I, it is absurd for them to limit usage based on what applications you're using (which is irrelevant to a bandwidth provider that simply shuttles IP packets around), rather than how much bandwidth you use (which IS relevant to someone who shuttles IP packets around).

Let me put it another way: Let's consider ISPs analagous to electric companies -> The electric co doesn't care if I'm running 50 fans, or if I'm cooking hot grits for Natalie Portman, but rather all they care about is that the little meter's gauge spins when I do, and at the end of the month they send me a bill based on it. It would be unacceptable if they started stating that they had a "TV watchers" electric supply, or a "Heavy Computer Users" plan -> They sell electricity, nothing more. All ISPs need to understand that they are no different than an electric co, and all they need to do is shuttle those IP packets around without concern of what they are, or what they're doing, and any premium pricing plan should be based on nothing more than bandwidth : Don't tell me I can't run a port 80 server, or that I can't have GRE VPN packets, just count the packets and their size, and bill me accordingly. Before everyone fears that this would lead to absurdly high prices, realize that competition would take effect under such an honest scheme (versus the current "try to fool you into thinking it's unlimited when really we want you never to use it" plan). Note that this goes both ways : Grandma who uses her cable modem once a month to check her email should be paying basically just for the hookup fee, administration fees, and the cost for a few packets, but Jimmy the P2P warez-d00dz should pay like crazy if he's hogging the line 24/7 all week long.

The only reason there hasn't been a "micropayment" system on connections has been technical, I would presume: Most ISPs just didn't have the infrastructure. However, the time has definitely come that it needs to be implemented.

Re:Wrong

[Col. Panic]

how anyone could ever make any real money on these technologies

Well, one way is to distribute a free P2P client that can be used to steal processor cycles and disk storage from unwitting users. Then write it up in your 10K and sell shares of the company.

Re:Wrong

[tomstdenis]

The problem though is when you start abusing it.

Like if you started 8 air conditioners [in one house] in USCA you wouldn't make alot of friends. I wouldn't doubt there are laws concerning power usage [there are when there are water shortages].

The problem they are trying to fix is that bandwidth is not an unlimited thing they have to give out.

Of course, I would have addressed the problem differently. Instead of banning ports I would do dynamic capping. e.g. you get 500MB a day at full bandwidth. after that you get 1/4 bandwidth [or something like that]. That way you get

a) no loss of connection
b) stops bandwidth hogs
c) doesn't arbitrarily block random ports

Personally if I were an ISP I would make it something like 250MB full speed [512k/256k] then the rest at a lower speed [128k/64k] [this is all per day]. 250MB is more than enough to browse through webpages and chat. Its not nearly enough to be a elite haxor or something [e.g. dork on Kazaa].

But what do I know, I'm just a kid who failed business in college...

Tom

Re:Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

my handle = borland, and I'm too lazy to make an account.

Copyright has it's place and I believe is perfectly valid. If I work hard to produce something (such as a song or piece of software), then I would like to get something back from it. If I'm feeling generous I can give it away, but I have to eat somehow!!!!!!

At the heart of it I believe is everyone going "Hey I don't like this, I used to get all these free songs and games and movies now I'm in trouble, waaaaaaaaaaaaaa"

What isn't right is companies trying to apply copyright to things which they shouldn't. I believe the blizzard vs bnetd is one of these things.

Also, who the heck ever uses p2p apps for anything but warez????? I know of nobody who has ever gotten anything legal off kazaa or suchlike.
Anybody with anything to give away will have it on a webserver, I mean why get linux iso's from kazaa slowly when you can get them much quicker from linuxiso.org or somewhere? come on ppl.

Re:Wrong

[Fulcrum of Evil]

You are stealing money from Microsoft. The data you provide for product activation has value, however small.

He bought a copy of XP - there is no legal obligation to activate it, so he isn't stealing.

Re:Wrong

[roe1352]

And when someday the music companies offer music downloads for a price? Are they going to limit the speeds then? I think that their idea of putting a cap on total bandwidth transfered is better than limiting the speed of the P2P programs.

Re:Wrong

[ergo98]

Like if you started 8 air conditioners [in one house] in USCA you wouldn't make alot of friends. I wouldn't doubt there are laws concerning power usage [there are when there are water shortages].

The short term lack-of-power in California was a artificial shortage, and it was quickly filled in by the private sector. Scarcity increases value, which increases investment, and California is actually a case study of how bandwidth pricing would work.

The reality is that the bandwidth that exists is not some finite amount that cannot be increased, but directly correlates to the amount of money flowing in to finance it. If Jimmy did want to run a P2P server, and he's willing to accordingly support the infrastructure, then he'll be playing a part in lighting up some fiber. Instead we have this antiquated system where bandwidth is largely the same as it was several years ago, and many of the promised services (video teleconferencing) are only marginally possible? Why? These are great things, but the financial support has to be in place for it to work.

Re:Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, bypassing the product activation is probably more "harmful" to ms than getting your copy for free.

Re:Wrong

[EllisDees]

You cannot be serious. You are under no obligation to do *anything* with a piece of software once you've bought it.

Re:Wrong

[tomstdenis]

Not only that but many business types fail at math.

A 64kbit stream both ways is at least 128kbit of bandwidth. Doesn't like much until you try getting a million users...

I'd be the first person to say that most ISPs are evil. But thats upto them not you.

Re:Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the main point is being missed here. People who use P2P software know the ramifications of their actions and they still choose to do it. If enough people think that existing laws are unfair, they should be able to defy the law en masse to get it changed. This is how changes to the legal system should work and have in the past. (If there had been no civil disobedience, we would still have slavery, which was considered legal by the establishment.)

If the result of using P2P is to bring down the state-capitalist system and replace it with a more egalitarian one, what is wrong with that? It should be the people who decide, not private corporate special interests who have hijacked the legal/political system. And if the private sector cannot survive under the conditions decided upon by the people then they shouldn't and public alternatives can be set up to do the job.

Re:Wrong

[ivan256]

I'd rather have my ISP make the money they need and stay afloat rather than let them not be money grubbing and fail,

Gah. The answer is not to limit functionality in order to become profitable, but to align prices with costs.

Re:Wrong

[DrSkwid]

no I'm not serious

but I was tyring to emphasize that part of the business model is to gather valuable data. I don't have a EULA for XP but I speculate that somewhere in there that installing the software obliges activation data to be supplied or something.

Re:Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't want things for free? What are you, insane?

Re:Wrong

[Ziviyr]

I wouldn't doubt there are laws concerning power usage [there are when there are water shortages].

Of course, water is a bit more important than electricity. Recycling your urine is not quite as ridiculous a concept as someone on a power generating stationary bike.

Re:Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Only twelve people use furthurnet, but over one million people use KaZaA. Only ten megabytes of information is available on furthurnet, but over 800 terabytes of information is available on KaZaA.

Therefore, your P2P application doesn't matter, and will not be filtered.

Re:Wrong

[legojenn]

However, the time has definitely come that it needs to be implemented.

I have been lucky with my ISP, I run my domain off of my ADSL connection, which I basically use for mail ( When I first got ADSL in early 2000, I was such a piglet on the bandwidth. I was using Napster and I was getting into Linux. I gave up on file sharing after Napster got tanked only because I got bored of it, but when I was downloading, I would have flipped out on Bell for putting up limits. Also, I know what distros I like (Slack/Mandrake) and buy them when they come out. It's just easier. Now, my use is lower, but I like the "always on" connection and have no problem paying for the data I download/upload. It's just that's more easily said after the novelty of the High-Speed connection wears off. If anything, the ISPs could simply limit the bandwidth of a new client in the beginning and release the limits as the client is around longer. It would encourage customer loyalty (something very much lacking due to the crappy service/support we get from the ISPs), and chances are we wouldn't have the bandwidth issues we have now because the resource hogs would just move on.

Re:Wrong

[einer]

I saw this posted earlier, but can't find the original. Basically, an existing idea (the Cisco Token Bucket) was proposed as being a solution to the ISP's problems. Each Token in the bucket would represent a certain number of 'bytes' that you were allowed to download. This bucket starts full and is constantly being filled. The rate of fill is up to the ISP. This provides most users with a very fast internet connection. Those who tend to use a ton of bandwidth get throttled, as they're using more tokens than they are being furnished with (at first their connection seems fast, but after they've used all of their tokens, they see a drop in speed). There would be a bottom bandwidth level which your connection would never drop below (say 56k). I hope I've explained this adequately. The original poster had a much more succinct description, but brevity is not one of my virtues.

Re:Wrong

[harlows_monkeys]

The only reason there hasn't been a "micropayment" system on connections has been technical, I would presume

There are ISPs in the US that do this. At my old place, my DSL was $20/month with 500 MB of xfer, plus $0.10/megabyte above that. This was what the ISP charged all DSL customers, no matter what speed connection we had. (That was the ISP charge. There was also a charge from the phone company for the line. The phone company charge depended on what speed line you had, but didn't depend on how much data you transfered).

However, most people who want to access the internet as ordinary people, not as geeks, want a fixed-price service. They don't want to have to deal with keeping track of their usage so that they don't get an unexpected large bill. That's the main reason you don't see micropayment systems.

At a level above the ISP level, micropayments could work, I think, kind of like pay-per-view. Pay-per-view only works because the things on pay-per-view are special. If all the normal channels were pay-per-view, I don't think many people would use them, even if they were very cheap.

Re:Wrong

[Niflar]

They also realize that P2P is very expensive for ISPs because it actually makes the "unlimited use" part of their customers' contracts a true statement.

Yes, but at the same time, ISPs get a lot of new broadband-customers because of P2P.

Re:Wrong

[ergo98]

They don't want to have to deal with keeping track of their usage so that they don't get an unexpected large bill. That's the main reason you don't see micropayment systems.

People always claim that people don't like "micropayment" systems, yet if you told people "We're getting rid of electric and water meters, and instead everyone will support the guy with the pot growing operation in his basement, and the lady who refills her pool every 3 days", how many people would agree? I LOVE that my electricity is metered, which means that I can follow basic conservation practices like turning off lights, and using flourescents.

There is no comparison whatsoever between cable TV and the internet: When I decide that I want to watch a Shakira video on perpetual repeat (I actually did this once by accident) I'm using a percentage of the pipes bandwidth (percentage depending upon the section of the request) : When you watch Greg the Bunny it doesn't make them have to upgrade the cable pipe. The "I don't want to keep track of my usage" argument doesn't make sense anyways: You ARE paying for it, but you're probably paying more because you're also supporting the "geeks" that have the warez server going 24/7.

It seems to be a bizarre notion on here that nature provided an infinite number of internet pipes, and evil ISPs are restricting us unfairly. Instead, small ISPs have to constantly debate whether to upgrade the T3 because a couple of DSL customers are hogging it 24/7. Of course that carries completely up the line.

Re:Wrong

[mgv]

You are stealing money from Microsoft. The data you provide for product activation has value, however small.

Its very small, as I lied to them anyway the first time I went through this (with front page 2000). How valuable is a false entry in their database? (In fact, the only information they say they require is your country - I'd put that value as pretty small even if they get the correct information).

I suppose someone is going to tell me that its illegal to lie to microsoft now.

Michael

Re:Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Several points here -

1) It's not Telecom NZ doing this. It's Xtra. Now granted, Xtra is owned by Telecom, but it's Xtra making this decision, not Telecom.

Why? Because Telecom will _want_ Xtra to use more bandwidth (I'm guessing they don't just give it to them - that'd be anticompetitive).

So because Xtra is paying for this bandwidth, it's up to it to decide how to best utilise it. What's

2) Xtra is NOT blocking these ports. They're rate-limiting them. There's a very big difference.

3) Xtra has a legal obligation to make money, not to give away bandwidth. You can't really fault them for doing what they're legally required to do. As DarkZero says, they're being smart.

Re:Wrong

[kiwipeso]

I'm planning to make seriously large amounts of money from these technologies. I'm developing a hybrid P2P / Messaging / Semantic Web service protocol called Samizdat.
I want to be able to see someone's website, look up their files and instant message them with a request to swap files we don't have yet.
This is a valuable service and I want to bring it to the world. I figure that I could easily make real money for the convienence of an internet suite of apps that do that just as convient as an office suite.

Actually, I'm on the TelstraClear network which does charge a fair price for 128k, 10 gig per month with full rights to run websites, P2P, etc.
You only pay more when you go over the prepaid limit, I'm not a rich media company but I can afford to do what I want online.

Re:Wrong

[sirsnork]

Not quite the same, since we have HUGE amounts of avaliable bandwidth here in NZ since the Southern Cross cable went live. In fact last I heard they still hadn't turned the whole thing on (I believe it's running at 1/2 capacity). So having the bandwidth avaliable isn't the problem, it's that poeple are using their "all you can eat" accounts to do just that, and now the ISP is upset!

Re:Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, AOL is to America as Xtra is to New Zealand.

They're not low on cash. They're a monopolist pigdig.

Re:Wrong

[perky]

The "content industry", not the audience chooses who will be listened to.

I have to disagree with this. It is true that marketing has immense power to influence buying decisions, and the media corps do hold great sway on deciding radio playlists and the other avenues for new acts to break. However now more than ever before there is a great variety of new music being produced and bought. At the end of the day people will go out and find music that they like rather than listen to what the radio shoves down their throat. The internet even has a pretty important role to play in all this - I bought my three most recent records after hearing low quality streamed versions from the web, and I actively went to find those sites based on friends reccomendations and the music press.

Looking through the box of records next to me I see a litany of independents; records that weren't produced just to make it onto top of the pops. Many of these records went on to sell millions of copies, others very few. Labels like moving shadow, ninja tune, compost, warp, mo' wax, glo, even the venerable blue note are all churning out quality records that will receive no tv advertising, and for the most part little radio time, but which sell enough copies to sustain the artists.

Fundamentally I strongly believe that the diversity of music that is available is the the main reason that the charts are filled with such insubstantial shite at the moment. The market is sufficiently disaggregated that if a record appeals to only one subset then it will not make it into the top 10. It will still make money for the artist, but not the millions that the record company hope for. So what do they do? They focus on the one market that is still coherent enough that you can shift enough records to make it to number 1. That market is 8-16 year old girls. How else do you explain the piles of westlife style dross that sits in the charts these days?

So I return to my original point: The music industry has never been in a stronger position and those of us that listen to music have never had more choice or quality available to us. Much of this diversity comes from the small independent labels that certainly don't fuck over their artists, mainly because they are run by the musicians themselves. end of rant.

Heh, that's Xtra, not telecom

[LadyLucky]

Here, all DSL modems must go through Telecom's networks, as they own the lines, the exchanges, everything. You always pay around NZ$30 (around US$13) per month for the privilege of a DSL enabled line. The remaining NZ$35 or so you pay to whomever your ISP is, which is for many people Xtra. This gives you a 128kb connection, (in theory) unlimited traffic.

It seems Xtra has done this throttling, but that won't cause problems for those of us who dont you use Xtra (that's me!). It seems silly to say "people are using too much bandwidth, so rather than capping bandwidth (like most do), we'll try a round about way of doing that...". Strange. If the problem is too much traffic, well, then limit the traffic.

Re:Heh, that's Xtra, not telecom

[AtomicBomb]

This gives you a 128kb connection, (in theory) unlimited traffic.
Strictly speaking, it is not true. Most service around NZ has a string attached to it (something like capped the max data transfer to 10GB per month).

The reason why Telecom rants again is probably because they want to reduce the cap further, ie break their promise once again. IHug in New Zealand, which provides broadband by satellite/microwave, has reduced their cap to 2GB per month already.... I can expect Telecom will take such excuse and follow suit later.

Re:Heh, that's Xtra, not telecom

[PhilHibbs]

If the problem is too much traffic, well, then limit the traffic.

If I were in charge of doing this, I would be inclined to implement some kind of adaptive throttling, so the more you downloaded over the last week, the slower your downloads run. So, if you are a low-volume user that needs to get a big file, it comes down quickly. If you run a Gnutella server, a Freenet server, and soak up the rest with a bit of spidering, then your connection slows down to a crawl. I would introduce a higher-usage rate that doesn't slow down as much. These slowdown rates would be adjustable on a quarterly basis with three months notice of the throttle change.

Re:Heh, that's Xtra, not telecom

[PhilHibbs]

Here's a similar idea being used by a UK ISP.

Re:Heh, that's Xtra, not telecom

[Anonymous Coward]

You are of course right in saying that Xtra's network is a subset of telecom's and that only Xtra's network has these limiters applied to it.

But in all other respects Telecom and Xtra are the same thing and don't let them convince you otherwise.

Tell us what services we can/cant run?

[GnomeKing]

Why do ISPS always tell us what services we can and cant run on our computers?
Its fair enough to limit our bandwidth - but why can they say "your not permitted to run a www server 'cause it requires too much bandwidth"
there are MANY ways to use bandwidth and its just not possible to have an exhaustive list of things that use it "unfairly"...

I wouldnt have anything to complain about if they provided us with a daily quota (or something) whereby if you exceeded it then it reduced your bandwidth to a modem (but the quota added up up to a limit if it wasnt all used during a particular day)
But telling us we cant run specific programs?... that just isnt on imo
we pay for the bandwidth, we should be able to use it how we like
if these hogging programs are causing problems then the telco should look at methods other than blocking specific programs to fix the problem

Re:Tell us what services we can/cant run?

[Plug]

Telecom sell a 128Kbit DSL line to residential customers only, at a net cost of $70 a month.

A 128Kbit DDS for business usage - well, I'm not 100% sure, but a quick ask-around suggested up to $1000.

That is why you are not allowed to run servers on a Jetstart connection.

Re:Tell us what services we can/cant run?

[jawtheshark]

Well, it's not a good reason. Imagine I run a small website on my own machine (let's say a little site about sharks with a few pics and some info).
This site is small, for non-commercial use and is not likely ever to attract a huge amount of visitors. This is what I can personal use.

A company on the other hand is going to advertise it's URL heavily (it is a way of marketing and make bussinees), with as a probable result of very high bandwith usage.

I see no need why my little amateur-shark page coudn't be hosted by my own machine on DSL, for it would be sufficient and not harming bandwith usage. For a company I can understand: they expect a return of investement on their website and would eat DSL bandwith for breakfast.

Re:Tell us what services we can/cant run?

[AndroidCat]

This site is small, for non-commercial use and is not likely ever to attract a huge amount of visitors.

Hopefully you didn't just slashdot yourself!

Re:Tell us what services we can/cant run?

[jawtheshark]

LOL....No I currently have no site about sharks. I plan to put my personal page someday on my ADSL server, but that is when I got the time to make a full review of the existing pages (on my ISP's server).
However thanks for the concern... ;-)

Besides, slashdotting woudn't be aproblem: that would be exactly two days that your DSL connection would be busted and you'd have to take that as a honor for being posted on slashdot (which is very unlikely to happen anyday soon to me.)

Re:Tell us what services we can/cant run?

[Confused]

It's the other way round, at least here in Austria:

If you want a connection with all the bandwith and where you can run all services, yo pay the full price. Usually those accounts are named Business-something.

For home users, who don't need certain features, they also offer accounts that are a lot cheaper. But to use them, you have to agree to some rules, like now servers, fair use, etc.

So why's everybody whining, when a telco or ISP starts to enforce those limitations?

There ain't no Such thing as a free lunch!

Re:Tell us what services we can/cant run?

[Saeger]

Wha? No free lunch? :)

--

Re:Tell us what services we can/cant run?

[Beliskner]

Why do ISPS always tell us what services we can and cant run on our computers?

Because the Internet is not yet fully mature. Many years ago when electricity was being rolled out to the nation, the extra demands placed on it by devices with a high power factor lead the electric companies to state, "We make electricity - it's ours. You may not use any equipment that has not been manufactured by us and connect it to *OUR* electric rails."

The ISPs are claiming similar ownership over our use of IP packets over *THEIR* routers, same as electric companies claimed ownership of sine wave electricity over *THEIR* power lines.

This was resolved when the market was saturated and power stations were idling in the name of load-spike absorbtion. The broadband market hasn't yet been saturated, the ISPs are giving away bandwidth for a flat fee, same as electricity companies used to give electricity. Upon market maturation, people demanded a drop in prices, and the freedom to connect whatever electric devices they want to the power lines. But what if one household or company used 10 times more electricity than their neighbour? It was obviously unfair to charge them the same amount. This gave rise to electric meters. The electric companies retorted,

"But what if someone tampers with the box, what if someone steals electricity by tapping the wire before the meter and steals the electricity?"

. The customers demanded it, so they took the chance and installed metering in every home, and charged for actual usage. The restriction that you may only connect electric company authorised devices with a good power factor and negligible line interference was dropped. Technology advanced and suppression capacitors smoothed out the consumption spikes. The mains line was no longer used as a clock, quartz oscillators took over. Any device that needed a smooth sine wave no longer used the mains, but instead used an AC-DC converter (transformer+bridge rectifier) and sine wave generator using transistors, or more recently switched-mode PSU. The electric company geeks were pissed because all this extra hardware was needed just to generate a smooth sine wave, instead of pulling it directly off the mains, but everybody got used to it. Now all that remains is a limit on consumption so that you don't burn out your wires and start a fire, together with regulations on interference (unsuppressed motors) being introduced on the power line.

The Internet will follow the same trend, IP packets are turning from "Cool Internet stuff" into infrastructure, same as that beautful 50Hz. sine wave delivered to your home/business changed from a nice pattern on the oscilloscope used for old Sci-fi special effects into a critical infrastructure.

Consequently, when broadband saturates the demand, and enough people use it and demand unrestricted usage, the ISPs will have to respond and introduce metering, either at point-of-presence or at a black box in your home (apparantly MAC addresses can be spoofed, fraid is rife etc. but this MUST be resolved otherwise the Internet CANNOT mature). Discounts will be given to households that install these black box packet counters. If you come under DDoS attack, then you call the police and ISP, same as waking up one morning and finding a tap on your side of the electric meter leading to your neighbour's house.

Once a month, some guy will come read your electric meter, your gas meter, and your IP packet meter, it's inevitable.

End result: CDBPTAPPATBTA struck down, RIAA muzzled, MPAA castrated, Internet pay-per-packet.

What the Internet actually costs for an ISP:
Variable costs: Bandwidth to backbone (peak), internal bandwidth (peak)
Fixed costs: electric and personnel cost to keep the routers + DHCP + blah humming (seasonal A/C) + advertising + security + blah

Consumers can demand that ISPs match this model as closely as possible and be fair (metering), quite fair (bandwidth caps like now) or keep it simple (flat fee like now).

Re:Tell us what services we can/cant run?

[-brazil-]

The reason for this shizo strategy is that ISPs basically craoss-subsidize private connections by charging overproportionally more for business connections, in order to win private marketshare.
This is done by artificially distinguishing between "upload bandwidth" and "download bandwidth", the former being mostly sold to businesses and the later to private customers.

Re:Tell us what services we can/cant run?

[Lumpy]

That isnt the problem.... the problem is that people, technically savvy people are "calling them on the carpet" on their marketing promises.

when you saw the ad's for whatever service you use they scream "unlimited bandwidth"! super fast downloads 100 times faster than a 56K modem! ALWAYS ON INTERNET! and they knew when they made those advertisments that they were lying through their teeth.

They are just trying to stop you from getting what you signed up for... Too bad people aren't suing for false advertising or better yet blatent fraud on these companies...

ISP's are gambling that a huge majority of their users use almost no or very little bandwidth ... like from the late 90's most everyone that had dial up service used it maybe 1-2 times a week. not the every night for an hour or more it is today.... so they want to make you not want to use your internet connection you pay for.

I was an ISP, I know the dirty underhanded tricks of the industry... I got out of it because I have scruples and a concience.. (and didnt like being regularly screwed by my Point of Presence)

Re:Tell us what services we can/cant run?

[digitalsushi]

Why do ISPS always tell us what services we can and cant run on our computers?

While this isn't the reason, a reason is that if you are getting a dynamically shared public IP address, and you're running a web server on it, or better, an FTP server which is more likely to be advertised via IP address instead of by a host name, then people, maybe lots of people, are going to store that IP in their address books somewhere. And then three weeks later, you're on your 8th IP, and some cranky day trader with a personal firewall suite gets your old IP- he thinks he is being hacked. So he calls his ISP and crabs at them, and there's little recourse. So the ISP gets chewed out and they waste an hour calming the customer. They just spent whatever the (cost of their employee + overhead) * call duration is. If they decide to block the services like that, they avoid the cost of similar calls, and can reallocate that money into buying more bandwidth to satisfy all the P2P users that they haven't figured out how to deal with yet!

Re:Tell us what services we can/cant run?

[hypergreatthing]

It will never be pay per packet. The internet isn't an electric company, nor a water company. The resources they're offering isn't as hard to produce and renew like those utilities. A better analogy is the cable company where access is a flat rate, but more can be bought for a price. Once the infrastructure is in place, it really doesn't cost much to provide service. It's paying for that infrastructure that too many isps and other companies were betting on and lost. They expanded too fast, spending too much.

Per packet is too irrational. What price per packet will you set? Even one cent per packet is too much. Think in terms of AOL and you'll see that flat based fees are the way to go. That's because usage even for common folk is still pretty high. Viewing streaming movies, downloading demos of programs, all that takes lots of bandwidth. Even if they don't have their computer on 24/7 and d/l music and warez constantly they still have the ability to overuse their set limits by any proposals except for the most generous ones.

Let me ask you this. If any ISPs plan to limit the usage on their dsls, cable modems, ect.. then why even offer that speed? Why not set the limit so the people on 24/7 filling up their pipes only reach the max at the end of the month. I'll tell you why. They're still treating broadband as a dial-up. Why offer big connection speeds if usage is restricted? Doesn't make sense to me.

Re:Tell us what services we can/cant run?

[shepd]

>It will never be pay per packet.

Too late. Some ISPs already charge $70 per CD.

Re:Tell us what services we can/cant run?

[Beliskner]

Per packet is too irrational. What price per packet will you set? Even one cent per packet is too much. Flat rate like AoL is the way to go

Flat rate, ahh wonderful dreams. Uhh 10 bucks per Gigabyte peak time maybe, 5 bucks per Gigabyte off-peak, free at night. More ideally, proprietary MFC client app installed visible on the taskbar, communicates with a load-measuring server on the ISP, goes red at peak time (heavy traffic), yellow at off-peak, green at night (free)

The internet isn't an electric company, nor a water company. The resources they're offering isn't as hard to produce and renew like those utilities. A better analogy is the cable company where access is a flat rate, but more can be bought for a price

Agreed, bandwidth caps with extra $ for unlimited are best - easy to understand, BUT don't forget this article concerns a major ISP banning filesharing, and I get the feeling many others may follow, the ISPs have been bitchin' about filesharing bandwidth for quite some time so clearly they don't agree with you when you say that bandwidth is a lot easier to renew than electricity, it just seems easier to renew than electricity. Imagine a CCIE at your ISP watching a Cisco 12416 running at 95% usage, or facing having to cost ordering a new OC-192 to the backbone. He sees 80% of the bandwidth is used by port 1214 (Kazaa). His feeling of panic would probably be the same as the electricity distributor in California last Summer. A price rise or shutting down P2P would be the choice facing him, and as we know some dumbass MBA-dropout-type manager will make the decision, not him.

Either they meter it or they fully itemise it,
"$500 for new Cisco Catalyst 6500, split between 300 downstream users one of which is you (because 10 of you are using bearshare excessively) => give us a cheque for 2 dollars, plus 3 new T1's to the backbone $1500 each per month split between 1000 users one of which is you => your monthly subscription will increase by $1.50. If you don't pay we'll take you to court" how long do you think it'll be before you're suing your neighbours? (then theoretically electric companies should charge for installing extra transformers - people of California you are requested and required to pay $1.8billion for a new power line for the grid between Utah and California plus $0.2billion for 300kV step-up and step-down transformer array. This is because Utah has 5GW excess generating capacity. Your share of the payment = $500.
Itemised: 20 million people in California, $2billion cost => $2billion/20million = $500 per citizen. Please pay by Direct Debit or Credit card, thank you) hmmmm could this be a step towards Open Source Corporations?

Re:Tell us what services we can/cant run?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not in NZ mate. Well, not for a long time. The second biggest telco - Clear (or rather TelstraClear) - couldn't even provide a DSL line for my Co' in the 4th biggest city in NZ.

History Lesson:
Govt owned Post Office, which owned phone lines.
Govt deregulated, Telecom formed to operate phone system, and therefor owned phone lines.
Telecom basically has all the phone lines, and unless govt steps up and forces it, that's how it's gonna stay for a while. Others provide alternatives in some CBD's etc, but it'll be a long time bfore it changes.

BTW, Power co is different. We have Power Producers, Line Companies, Retailers, etc. Telecom owns the lot. It's just a different game, and I can't see Telecom giving it up so easily.

Re:Tell us what services we can/cant run?

[5KVGhost]

Because the Internet is not yet fully mature. Many years ago when electricity was being rolled out to the nation, the extra demands placed on it by devices with a high power factor lead the electric companies to state, "We make electricity - it's ours. You may not use any equipment that has not been manufactured by us and connect it to *OUR* electric rails."

Interesting analogy. I presume that this was the case in the UK (by your address and the term "rails"), but I don't think it was ever the case in the US. There were company imposed restrictions on what "official" equipment could be hooked up to phone lines, but those have long since been removed.

Re:Tell us what services we can/cant run?

[DEBEDb]

(let's say a little site about sharks with a few pics and some info).

Are those two-legged briefcase-carrying
sharks?

Re:Tell us what services we can/cant run?

[Beliskner]

I presume that this was the case in the UK (by your address and the term "rails"), but I don't think it was ever the case in the US. There were company imposed restrictions on what "official" equipment could be hooked up to phone lines, but those have long since been removed.

He he. That's still in force here in the UK. You can only (legally) connect devices that are BABT (British Approvals Board for Telecommunications) Approved. Let me see if Google agrees with the rest of your your statement via Yahoo's Google search (Yahoo pays Google money to do their search I'd rather support ads than taint Google by encouraging pay-for-placement).....

WHOA! Sorry dude, you still need approval under certain circumstances. Quoting:

Rules:
Governing Water and Electric Service November 1996
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power As Established September 4, 1983 and Amended by Resolution
PART 2-E DESCRIPTION OF ELECTRIC SERVICE
D. Alternating Current
Frequency, Voltage, and Phase
Single-phase loads with a service ampacity of 600 amperes or less at 240/120 volts normally will be supplied through one main meter. Where such service ampacity is in excess of 600 amperes, approval must be obtained from the Department regarding metering requirements and related facilities, including switches and circuits.

You need the beauracrats' approval if you're going to consume a little more power than usual. Hey there's some more, quoting:

(1) Any single-phase motor having locked-rotor current not exceeding 46 amperes, and full-load running current not exceeding 12 amperes, may be operated at 120 volts.
(2) Single-phase, 240-volt motors installed for residential air conditioning shall be limited so that the arithmetical sum of the locked rotor currents of all motors in a particular unit shall not exceed 450 percent of the similar sum of full-load currents nor a total of 150 amperes.
(3) Single-phase motors of five hp or more may be connected to a service supplying lighting only upon special permission from, and in the manner specified by, the Department.
Single-phase commercial cooking and heating loads and other miscellaneous single-phase power loads may, at the option of the Department, be supplied through a three-phase service at 240 volts. However, approval for such service shall be obtained in advance if none of the individual loads to be supplied is three-phase.

Yup, as I said those power station geeks REALLY don't like high power factors devices being connected to *THEIR* power rails. One of the remnants of good old electricity generator control I suppose. Having to bust some beauracratic butt to get a single phase instead of a 3-phase power supply to your cooker is a shock to me. To be honest, I'm as surprised to find this out as you are. Let's see if there's more juicy stuff... Whoa! This is totally cool, a mains harmonics and flicker standard. Ahhhh Google, I wish I could marry you. Quoting,

Just when you thought it was all under control.....
......The latest elements in the EMC Compliance requirement.
In order to limit the ever increasing harmonic distortion imposed on the public mains supply the Harmonics and Flicker standards are to be introduced.
As from Jan 1st 2001, compliance with these Harmonics and Flicker standards becomes a mandatory part of the EMC Directive.
This applies to all products within the scope of these standards.

Absolutely fascinating, I never knew EMC directives were law, I thought they did ethernet switches and storage and stuff. I had no idea that Corporate rule had come this far. Hmmm, time to ask Google again...

Re:Tell us what services we can/cant run?

[Anonymous Coward]

And the irony is, NZ started off with pay per packet charges.

When ISP's first started turning up in NZ, as a corporate or individual, you basically had two options, pay per hour online, or pay per meg of traffic.

In fact, most ISP's in NZ still charge (at the corporate level) per meg, it's just that you pay $X and get Y megs per month, then if you go over Y megs in a month, you pay $Z per meg (which will be higher than the $X rate).

I know of one ISP in NZ that provides true flat-rate bandwidth at the corporate level.

Flat-rate in NZ is really only available in dial-up form, as most ISPs offering flat-rate DSL have bandwidth caps (between 5 and 10 gig usually) and that's only on their already rate-limited services (128kbit/s down and up).

I haven't heard of anyone providing "flat-rate" on full-blown ADSL (8meg/s down, 800kbit/s up max).

When it comes to per meg charging, Xtra (aka NZ Telecom) has to be the worst, as they don't differentiate between NZ and other traffic! Nor do they differentiate beween upload and download traffic!

There's always been plenty to gripe about with NZ Telecom, the biggest being that due to certain political situations and local loop issues, many corporates are stuck with them (my work included).

They have poor performance, high prices, low levels of service and wouldn't know a "Managed Service" if it jumped out and bit them.

Bah!

Mr Grumpy.

Re:Tell us what services we can/cant run?

[kiwipeso]

In that case, you get TelstraClear cable for the same price and a better 10 gig prepaid limit. A prepaid limit just ensures that you pay more to get more traffic, not cut you off.

see my website http://neural.net.nz running from a 128k TelstraClear cable modem, which has no restrictions on what services you use.

Vampires

[Alsee]

There are vampires in broadband land...
I'm talking about downloading on the internet - specifically music and videos via file-sharing networks such as KaZaA and Grokster.

Ahh! That finally explains why so many nodes seem to drop off the network around sunrise.

-

:D

[scrblur-]

panix is gay.

New way of locating peers

[rbeattie]

No biggie... it just means that p2p clients will have to add in ports to their other forms of locating peers. For example, right now Gnutella queries well-known UltraPeers to prime the p2p pump and helps you locate peers around you (instead of spamming your network with random ping packages).

Well, obviously this "priming" will have to switch to use port 80 if others are blocked, then the response servers can give your client information about the "port of the day".

Personally, I think the P2P clients should use different ports for different uses. (And it's already enabled to change the port and client name in each Gnutella client). Music could have one port, eBooks on another, video another, and pr0n on another. This would be great so my quieries for "Bare Naked Ladies" brings up music instead of jpgs...

-Russ

Re:New way of locating peers

[blixel]

Well, obviously this "priming" will have to switch to use port 80 if others are blocked, then the response servers can give your client information about the "port of the day".

Umm... that would suck if you have a firewall. I like knowing that such and such service is using such and such port day in and day out. I don't want to reconfigure my firewall so that such and such service can work with the "port of the day".

Re:New way of locating peers

[Anonymous Coward]

You know it sound like a fun project to connect a gnutela client discovering nodes and their ports all day to a traffic shaper cap`ing new nodes and ports all they. Just think of the fun of having to run a gnutela client when you are administering an isp that has just halved the total bandwith usage ;-)

Re:New way of locating peers

[Sloppy]

Heh, I was just thinking that. If users can find peers using automated software instead of socializing, then cops and ISPs can do it too. You just can't run and hide while simultaneously being easy-to-use.

Another completely different idea concerning ISPs and p2p: if the ISPs don't want to form an adversarial relationship with their p2p customers, then there's another way they could react instead of merely capping p2p'ers. Have a transparent proxy that intercepts the attempts to find other peers, and instead refers them all to each other, (along with one node at the ISP which is actually connected to the internet-at-large). In other words, get your customers to peer with one another. If you get the virtual p2p network to more closely resemble the physical network, then you'll somewhat reduce usage of the main pipe by having more requests serviced locally.

P2P taking over from Pr0n?

[Richard_at_work]

What Telecom fails to recognise is that these people are pushing the envelope of what the Internet can do, and will drive the technology economy in years to come.

Sooo, when did p2p apps take over that torch from porn? :)

Re:P2P taking over from Pr0n?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dunno 'bout you but I get plenty of pr0n from p2p!

Re:P2P taking over from Pr0n?

[Anonymous Coward]

Happy wanking, my friend... Happy wanking.

Blocking? No... restricting? Only maybe.

[silvaran]

They say they're "managing" the use of P2P apps, and that's all they say. Nothing about blocking. And you may still use these file sharing services, only you are subject to a restricted download. What did the writer say, sub-kb speeds? That's about what I get from most users on Kazaa.

On a lucky streak, I can get several kb. A little more now that my winbox is masqed behind my linux box (and I'm not subject to windows crappy IP stack as the bottleneck). Xtra must really be doing some heavy filtering on their server side to discriminate against P2P apps, if that is the case. Consequently, my connection is DSL, I'm in Canada, and I usually get around 150kb on a good day.

The reference to vampires and blood-sucking indivuduals gets tiresome. Talk about editorializing.

An ISPs perspective

[fruey]

I work at an ISP in Morocco. We don't limit anything but then we don't provide high speed access at low cost. We don't do home DSL because the market isn't ready, and the first uptake will always be high-bandwidth users which will kill us if we did try to launch such a service as the first provider to do so.

For those of you more fortunate than I, that already live in an xDSL enabled area, I would like to draw an analogy.

You go to a restaurant with 10 friends, and you all agree to split the bill 10 ways, and pay 1/10 of the bill each.

Would you now say it was fair to order twice as much as everyone else, and a bottle of champagne for yourself?

That's the bandwidth issue. ISPs pool 2mbps or so for a circuit of n DSL subscribers. Those with the highest appetite still only pay 1/n of the bill.

Blame their business model if you like, but it's the market that is crying out for flat-rate high speed access. Flat-rate means, IMHO, making certain sacrifices. If you want hardcore fast, then pay the real price for the dedicated circuit. ISPs do not promise you a dedicated circuit for your low monthly fee. And ISPs pay full price for their dedicated circuits.

Re:An ISPs perspective

[GnomeKing]

No, I agree, thats not fair

But neither is it fair to tell the subscribers what they can and cant use their connection for.

The only fair solution (that I can think of) is to introduce some bandwidth limiting/quotaing that disuades people from using this p2p applications in an unfair way

That way the customer still gets to choose exactly what they want to do with the bandwidth they have paid for

Customers shouldnt be subsidising other customers, whether it be for them to run p2p stuff or for them to have a webserver, or anything like that

Cableco's are trying to keep the pricing structure and t&c the same for everyone - but it just isnt going to work when there are people who use the connections in very different ways

Whats next? their going to ban masquerading or other forms of connection sharing 'cause its unfair on the people who only have one computer connected?

Re:An ISPs perspective

[Brento]

You go to a restaurant with 10 friends, and you all agree to split the bill 10 ways, and pay 1/10 of the bill each. Would you now say it was fair to order twice as much as everyone else, and a bottle of champagne for yourself?

Another example: if you buy a commercial plane ticket for $100, do you expect to be able to pull the back door open and parachute jump out of it? No. There's no big conspiracy to halt your freedom, you just have to do it in the right plane: go hire a plane that is dedicated to doing that sort of thing.

If you want to run P2P apps from home, you need to understand that you can't jump out of every airplane, and you can't stick your friends with the champagne bill. Go get an ISP that allows for that kind of thing, and yes, it will cost you more. There's a time and a place for everything, and if you want to transmit huge files, it's going to cost you more.

What's that you say? You don't have the money? Well, just like everything else in the world, you gotta pay to play. Just because you can't get a free billboard in Times Square that says "I Love Morpheus" doesn't mean anybody's restricting your freedom of speech.

Re:An ISPs perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

ISPs pay full price for their dedicated circuits.

Ooops! You accidentally made an argument that weakens your own claim. ISP's have to pay for their dedicated circuits anyways . Why does it matter whether the pipe is .40 or .60 full?

The reason people use ISP's is because ISP's function as a conglomerate of users. They can buy bandwidth in bulk and save tons of cash. The end-user cannot afford this. If you force all end-users to pay for dedicated circuits you are taking away the power of volume pricing. Seems like the winners are bandwidth providers. Making a buck off of your inability to purchase in bulk.

Re:An ISPs perspective

[fruey]

That way the customer still gets to choose exactly what they want to do with the bandwidth they have paid for

That's exactly the problem. The customer hasn't paid for the whole meal, so any champagne they drink (above 1/10 of the bottle) is not paid for by them.

Re:An ISPs perspective

[fruey]

Ooops! You accidentally made an argument that weakens your own claim. ISP's have to pay for their dedicated circuits anyways . Why does it matter whether the pipe is .40 or .60 full?

The problem with ISPs only happens when the pipe is 100% full. They wouldn't limit if the pipe was only 40% full. They don't want to upgrade bandwidth on a pipe that's 100% full to support low-cost DSL subscribers.

As an ISP employee, I understand the business model of buy in bulk, sell in pieces. But don't think that I'm making money in this market... I bet I earn less than you by a large margin. Even relative to the price of living.

Re:An ISPs perspective

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Ok, if nobody else eats all the food they bought, then is it ok if I eat it? That seems reasonable. But obviously if everyone rushes for the food when it gets laid out, the restaurant may not be able to physically lay the food out fast enough- so they have 'fight over the food' clauses.

So it's not 'all I can eat' exactly, there's a maximum I can eat because of the size of the plates they give you.

And further the restaurant doesn't in fact guarantee all you can eat in the first place; they only guarantee all I can eat upto a low limit 1/50 of the plate size; generally they'll try to fill my plate, particularly if no one else is eating, but they only guarantee 1/50 of the plate.

This being the case, I fail to see why the restaurant should impose restrictions on the food I eat; any food you want provided it isn't green! Why? "Cause I don't like it when you eat green food cos you eat more green food normally." Huh? If I'm consistently eating more than 1/50 of my plate, they're quite at liberty to limit me; within reason. However, if theres no rush on, then what do they care? The restaurant has already bought in the food from their supplier when I entered the restaurant... and for most normal people that's plenty of food. But if they decide to charge me extra 'because you're being too greedy'; tell me again who's being greedy? Why didn't you invoke my 1/50 limit then?

Re:An ISPs perspective

[fruey]

And further the restaurant doesn't in fact guarantee all you can eat in the first place; they only guarantee all I can eat upto a low limit 1/50 of the plate size; generally they'll try to fill my plate, particularly if no one else is eating, but they only guarantee 1/50 of the plate.

Well, if they get their traffic shaping right of course. The problem is that the greedy client in the restaurant generally takes all the shortcuts necessary to get more food, including

• cajoling the waiter
• pretending to be someone else
• going to the kitchen direct
• saying his plate is really someone else's plate
• running plates out of the restaurant to his friends and coming back with an empty plate much faster than the others who are eating at their normal pace

:-) etc etc

Re:An ISPs perspective

[hypergreatthing]

I am sick and tired of hearing about the crap excuses that ISPs make when trying to earn a profit. Practically all of them advertise a 24/7, flat fee for unlimited usage. Practically all of them claim in advertisements that they want you to use the connection as much as possible. Then they turn around and stick it to you when you actually take them up on their word.

The problem here isn't that it'll cost too much. The problem is false claims and not the correct math. You can't allocate a percentage of about 1/5th usage and expect every user to follow that on a always on, always ready connection. You have to figure out that at least 75% of the users will leave their computer on all the time and constantly use up the bandwidth that they're alloted.

The analogy that sharing a bill when someone orders a hell of a lot more than the rest is a bad one for this problem. It's more like everybody is a student on a university using a meal plan, and one or two of the students actually use it all up after a semester. Should they be thrown out of the meal plan? Should they have to pay more for the same meal plan? The answer is of course, no. If you want to limit this, you simply but clauses in the service contract that limits the bandwidth and or usage of the service, but don't blame me if your service isn't that popular.

Besides, lets face the facts here. Most people don't pay that much for the bandwidth, but the connection itself. If you don't use up all the bandwidth of that connection, you're practically wasting money. If it's there, let the users use it and don't complain.

Re:An ISPs perspective

[SlashDread]

Fine nice and dandy.

The real problem is of course not that they limit yur useage, it is that they do advertise the opposite: unlimited Internet Access!

- First off, a "fair use" limit *is* a limit
- Second blocking ports =! Internet, read the IP specs.

So sell it as a "Almost-Internet" "Almost-Unlimited", but nobody does.

Sue em, I say.

Gr /Dread

Re:An ISPs perspective

[InsaneGeek]

Your analogy also fails because you don't have any statement about limited resource. In my opinion an anology something along the lines of:

There are 20 seats on an amusement ride there is a line of 100 people waiting to get onto it. There are 19 people who refuse to get out of their seats and continue riding continuously, leaving only 1 seat to change between runs.

Whether you are on cable or dsl, there is a limited bandwidth portion, and if 90% is in use by 10% of the customers that means 90% of the rest of all customers have to fight over the remaining 10%.

Yes, lets really face some facts. The fact is that most people don't pay that much for bandwidth, but the ISP does. If one does some simple math of 100 customers downloading at T1 speeds paying $50/month, ISP gets $5k/month, how much do 2x T3's cost per month ($5k is about cost of maybe 4 commercial T1's) of course this is ignoring the rest of the infrastructure fees, wages, servers, etc) and that one only has to pay for bandwidth.

It's no wonder that there aren't any mom & pop ISP's around and that major players are falling like flies (how many DSL & cable providers have gone bankrupt the past year).

Re:An ISPs perspective

[MajroMax]

Well, if they get their traffic shaping right of course. The problem is that the greedy client in the restaurant generally takes all the shortcuts necessary to get more food, including

* cajoling the waiter
* pretending to be someone else
* going to the kitchen direct
* saying his plate is really someone else's plate
* running plates out of the restaurant to his friends and coming back with an empty plate much faster than the others who are eating at their normal pace

Cajoling the waiter -- the proper Customer Support response to this is "I'm sorry, sir, but while we allow people to use the entirety of our unused bandwidth we reduce this excess use as needed to gurantee quality service for all users."

Pretending to be someone else -- on Cable, where it's all one big fat pipe with packets being sent into the ether[net], I can see this as being a problem. On DSL, however, each client has his own loop, so these things can be more controlled. Even then, the proportion of bandwidth hogs who will resort to outright fraud (and probably criminal computer tresspass to get username/passwd) is quite small.

Going to the kitchen direct -- then the resturaunt isn't actually serving his food, and he's getting his food the same place they are [I.E. the upstream provider] -- no problem for the resturaunt.

Saying his plate is really someone else's plate -- since there's no provision for "getting packets for someone else" in any of the RFC's I've read, this is the same as the fraud mentioned above.

Running plates out of the resturaunt -- Still no QoS problem, because he's the same person still -- the waiter will give him a guranteed service level of the same rate as other customers, and if he's less busy he'll stop by more often in his downtime.

Getting the traffic shaping correct isn't a piece of cake, for example, but I think you're underestimating the utility of a simple Guranteed (pipewidth/max#ofusers) burstable to the full pipe bandwidth. If you really want to get fancy about it, give a minimum (pipe/max#user) gurantee and twice that as a "second tier" gurantee -- all users with enough traffic (to generate that much bandwidth) will have the second gurantee filled before anyone can burst beyond it.

In the States, where 1Mbps+ connections are relatively common for broadband, your first-tier guranteed bandwidtgh might only be 128kpbs or so -- but this represents the worst possible case over _everyone_ on the loop online at the same time fully utilizing their connections at the same time. In the average case of you going online with a few 31337 gnutella users at the same time, you'd meet however many levels of quotas there are directly out of the gnutella guys' burst, and then compete with them for the burst-level bandwidth +(say)700kpbs.

Blocking ports, although effective in reducing the total amount of bandwidth you'll have to deliver, is most definitely _not_ the most effective means of fairly allocating the bandwidth you have. It's possible, with a given amount of bandwidth, for there to be "enough for everybody" while still allowing a few people to have "as much as they want" when no one else is using it.

Re:An ISPs perspective

[GnomeKing]

Yes we have paid for the "whole meal"

As far as my contract with my cable provider goes, I am entitled to take as much of the champagne as I can get through my straw.

I am not limited by how much I can drink, only how fast I can drink it

Its like those "eat all you can for £5" places

the ISP's are hedging their bets that on average people will eat less than £5 worth of pizza and when it turns out that people eat more of the cheese and tomato pizza, their taking it off the menu

If the ISP's cant cope with me eating as much cheese and tomato pizza as I want to eat, then they should either charge me more or tell me, in my contract, that once I've eaten 5 slices I can only have one slice every hour

Re:An ISPs perspective

[technos]

Wrong. Totally wrong.

There is no situation where you will get only 5% of your bandwidth while everyone else gets 100% of theirs if all the end points are of equal bandwidth. Both your 20 second email download and the greedy hog down the street with a 20 hour Gnutella session will get the same 'peak' bandwidth if there is a saturated bottleneck in the network. The network hog recieves more data, sure, but remember; You're not greedy, all you wanted was your email. Because of the hog(s), it took you five seconds to retreive your email instead of three.

A more correct analogy would be a one seater ride with 9 people riding constantly. You want to ride only ten times, but you think you are entitled to cut ahead of everyone to get your rides simply because they have all ridden before, and will ride again no matter if you cut in front ten times or not.

And as for your math, it's flawed. Look at the 'minimum guaranteed bandwidth' clause in your contract. Sure, everyone can have a sustained bandwidth of T1 speeds, but they are not given that. The ISP takes roughly double the guaranteed bandwidth, multiplies it by the typical number of users in peak times, and buys that much bandwidth. If they only have a 1/10 T1-speed guaranteed downstream and only a peak user base of 1/5 of their paying members they make out like bandits, to the tune of $2500 a month over bandwidth costs. At least in the dialup market, you can count far fewer users online concurrently than one out of five, so realistioally they make out like bigger bandits than my math shows.

Re:An ISPs perspective

[jaylen]

You go to a restaurant with 10 friends, and you all agree to split the bill 10 ways, and pay 1/10 of the bill each. Would you now say it was fair to order twice as much as everyone else, and a bottle of champagne for yourself?/i? Now look at it another way- You and your 10 friends go to the restaurant, except this restaurant is 'all you can eat for a fixed fee' (read unlimited usage, just like an ISP claims) Seven of your friends eat a normal meal, and have a good time doing so - but the other three are real fans of good food, so eat a whole load. What happens then is the chef and owners of the restaurant decide that those three friends are eating too much, so they change the menu as you all sit at the table, saying 'you can still eat all you like! But, btw, we are no longer serving X,Y,Z. Please pay your bill at the door'

Re:An ISPs perspective

[fruey]

You are indeed correct. I was kinda being facetious by then :)

The conclusion is the same: traffic shaping is the way to go, not blocking ports and services, because you can just run on other ports or via proxies until the cows come home.

Re:An ISPs perspective

[kindbud]

Food is not data, restaurants are not ISPs. When I download a file, there is no chef at the data center cooking it up for me from ingredients in his pantry.

Re:An ISPs perspective

[Ziviyr]

if 90% is in use by 10% of the customers that means 90% of the rest of all customers have to fight over the remaining 10%.

Only if theres a psychotic admin playing with QoS.

Re:An ISPs perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

You go to a restaurant with 10 friends, and you all agree to split the bill 10 ways, and pay 1/10 of the bill each.

Would you now say it was fair to order twice as much as everyone else, and a bottle of champagne for yourself?

That's why people frequently ask for separate chacks.

But in seriously, if you go to a buffet, you get all you can eat, and everybody pays the same price. They don't say "all you can eat up to a point where we're loosing money off you".

Re:An ISPs perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

But think of the emormous entertainment possibilities if there was! Let's knock this file up another notch, BAM!

Re:An ISPs perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

Aaah. No. Let's take another analogy water supply. The main cost of water supply is the pipes and the cleaning facilities of water. Even if you're on the shower a lot and waste a lot more water than others, it doesn't make a whole lot of diffrerence since it's not the physical water that's expensive but the infrastructure to transport water. Thus, there's sort of a fixed cost or almost fixed cost on it.

new economy??

[Anonymous Coward]

What Telecom fails to recognise is that these people are pushing the envelope of what the Internet can do, and will drive the technology economy in years to come."
Can someone tell me how exactly P2P networks will drive the technology economy? Last I saw, the only money P2P apps where making is from advertising. Or are you talking about some new P2P service where people pay you for downloading stuff from you??

not a right

[tomstdenis]

since when is using a P2P system [or any other] over a PRIVATE network a "right"?

I agree that the ports and services should be fully open [they shouldn't only keep tabs on who uses what bandwidth] but its not upto me, or you for that matter.

If I own a network and I rent out a connection, you do not have any rights as far as what you can do with are concerned that are not listed in the TOS.

Its just like renting an apartment. you're not allowed in most cases to tear down walls and piss off the balcony. Its not that your "rights" are being infringed its that its PRIVATE property.

Tom

Re:not a right

[PigleT]

Who cares about a *private* network? Are these ISPs not *I*SPs??

Show us the T&Cs as well; I'll bet they don't say anything about p2p usage.

Re:not a right

[Mika_Lindman]

"If I own a network and I rent out a connection, you do not have any rights as far as what you can do with are concerned that are not listed in the TOS." Well, lets say you've lived in your apartment for few years. Then your landlord tells you that he doesn't make enough money. So he changes you contract (in your contract it says ofcourse that landlord has the right to do any kind of changes as he likes) so that you can live in your apartment for only 15 days a month. How would that sound like? ISPs are luring customers with all kind of things. But they also keep that "right to change all contracts" thing there, so that when they have enough customers they start RIPPING THEM OFF by changing contract.

Re:not a right

[hypergreatthing]

But this is a service. I'm pretty sure they're blocking it just now even though it wasn't part of the service contract that they would.

A correct analogy would be to say that the cable company decided to block MTV because it's unappropriate. I agree that it's their choice to do such, but if (and i do suspect) that the ISPs down in NZ are very limited and is practically a monopoly, then many users don't have a choice to jump ship and go with someone with less draconian measures.

Ohh, and just because the rights aren't mentioned in the TOS doesn't mean you don't have them. If you're paying for a connection, it's a connection no matter how you look at it. Blocking ports limits the connection. I'm pretty sure it's advertised as an Internet Connection account, not a web proxy or a ftp service. An Internet Connection should be open for all ports and services that anyone could think of to use on the Internet. Besides, they're basically tell you they have the power to control what programs you run on your computer. That is a terrible precedence that someone probably is going to fight about.

Ohh wait, didn't they censor a big part of the internet already in NZ? I guess they had this coming then.

Re:not a right

[Anonymous Coward]

No there are many ISPs in NZ. Telecom, the main/only provider in the local loop also have a ISP called Xtra. The number of ISPs that offer high speed connects is more limited, and you really need to be in a main centre to have any choice at all. Most ISPs have to use Telecom's infrastructure at some point.

An no, they didn't censor a large part of the internet - that would be Australia.

BTW, NZ is far more technically advanced than many western economies. There is very little or no regulation in the telecoms field.

Re:not a right

[tomstdenis]

I whole heartedly agree its not fair and shouldn't be done.

That doesn't change the fact that P2P over an ISP is still *not a right*.

Hence the section "Your Rights Online" is just over-zealous.

As far as your tenant example is concerned thats why tenants have rights. Maybe someday ISP users will have explicit rights but I don't see that any time soon. Living in a shelter is more important than being online [although sometimes I wonder... :-)]

Tom

Re:not a right

[tomstdenis]

It still gets down to the fact that ISPs are not essential services.

If a phone company had less then "five 9's" uptime they could get fined by the government. The same is not true for ISPs. My ISP for example, is well within their rights [and within the contract] to drop every 3rd packet I sent, to mis-direct every 8th and to send my computer 2^20 ICMP packets a minute.

Even if my ISP was the only one in the area [they pretty much are] it still not an essential service hence the lack of quality is just shotty business practices, not illegal.

As for "connection to the net". Its still a private network. Its like if you walk into my restaurant and I say "you can only eat melon because of the colour of your skin.". Thats not illegal [might be civil...] and perfectly within my rights as a private property owner. Your ISP can dictate [note: I don't think they should] exactly what you do with the connection.

In the end though less obtrusive ISPs will always win over.

tom

Re:not a right

[arkanes]

Rights aren't something that people can give you. That's a privledge. I have the right to do whatever I want with my internet connection, any limiting of that is a limitation on my rights. Some of those limitations may be reasonable limitations in the interests of providing QoS to everyone. I don't mind those. Others may be limits so that the ISP makes more money off me. That I mind, especially when they insult my intelligence by pretending that it's MY fault that thier buisness model was wrong.

Appropriate response: "Due to changes in the Internet market place, we are no longer able to offer unlimited service, and we will now be throttling connections over (X) GB per month. If you choose, you may sign up for our advanced user plan..." blah blah blah. I'll be annoyed, because I like free stuff, but I'll understand and I'll deal.

Poor response: "Our users are stealing from us by using too much bandwidth, even though we sold it to them, so we will be blocking ports that some of the applications that might use lots of bandwidth might be using."

Re:not a right

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends. If the ISP is a monopoly then their
TOS should be dictated by the govt. If there
is real competition, then yes, let them make
up their own rules.

Telecom == XTRA == NZ's AOL

[Byter]

Telecom runs commericals talking about the basic benefits of the Internet (for people who still don't know why they'd want this internet thing anyways). They also give away "Xtra" cd's for free in all kinds of stores, and they basically go after the "clueless users". So I don't think there will be too much of an outcry by people just struggling to understand how to web surf.

Most people who want a large (national) ISP but actually understand what they're doing use IHUG, and as far as I know, they don't have the same restrictions.

So think of this more like an "AOL restriction", and not like all of New Zealand is blocking P2P services.

Er, what?

[IamTheRealMike]

What Telecom fails to recognise is that these people are pushing the envelope of what the Internet can do, and will drive the technology economy in years to come.

No! The people who invented P2P apps maybe are pushing the envelope of what the net can do - but 95% of the people on the biggest P2P networks are just downloading free music. They're not pushing anything other than their luck, because they're basically massively abusing the system.

I'd love to be in NZ right now! Now all the kiddies that think downloading music and burning it to CDs for their friends constitutes a "business" - like some people I know - have had their access blocked, it means better connections for everyone else who does in fact respect the law. I think this should happen more.

Re:Er, what?

[Mulletproof]

"...because they're basically massively abusing the system."

There is a difference between "abusing the system" and the company of said system simply not accounting for the results of their actions. It's already been brought up by several other people on this board... You can hardly call it abuse when people acually take advantage of all the bandwidth you promised. "Oh wait... I didn't say it like that... What I really meant was limited unlimited high speed internet access within reason." It's the companies own damn fault for not being able to live up to their marketing claims, not the users. The applications the users are running is acually beside the point.

"...but 95% of the people on the biggest P2P networks are just downloading free music. They're not pushing anything..."

Partially correct. I'd agree these people (me included) aren't actively doing anything but creating traffic, but I'd think just their existances forces those who acually do push the envelope to account for them in future developement. Kind of like muscles. "Wow, that's an insain amount of bandwidth they're using! We had better: A) Build the muscle; make it stronger and more robust B) Limit it's growth, developement and potential."

Opinions are like armpits. Everybody has two and they both stink.

Re:Er, what?

[zerocool^]

The problem with what i see here is that nothing's pushing any envelope. The internet is designed to transfer informataion / packets. P2P aps do that. The aps may be new, but the technology isn't. No one had a major breakthrough and designed kazaa. Also, they may be tugging on the bandwidth streams, but that's quantity.
Honestly, with the costs of bandwidth, i can't blame anyone. I know kids who get pissed when they can't download movies at 500K/sec. Well, considering a T-1 from sprint costs a little more than 900/month, unless you buy lots of them, and a T-1 transfers ~190K/sec, these kids are getting just plain greedy.

Contention Ratio Rules OK

[nelf]

I've heard the term 'contention ratio' many times over the last few years relating to internet access. The first time I heard it was relating to modems in a rack (and phone lines) compared to the number of customers being sold dial-up accounts. This is essentially the gamble that any ISP are making... they need to keep their contention ration as high as possible to make money.

The most recent time I heard it was relating to bi-directional satellite internet access in the European market. Essentially, a supposed 'broadband satellite ISP' was waxing lyrical about beating UKs British Telecom offering...both ISPs were offering the same bandwidth of course but....

The reasoning was this: BT has a contention ratio of about 20:1, so every 1MG of bandwidth would be sold 20 times... the other ISP proudly pointed out that they had a contention ratio of about 10:1

Excellent stuff :) The best thing about it all, is that, for love nor money, neither ISP will actually sell you a satellite access point, or provide the service that they're offering on their websites..... presumably because they'd need a contention ratio of about 50:1 to actually make any money at all :]

It Ain't Free

[hondo_san]

Fer fuck's sake... I keep hearing bitching and moaning about what we can or cannot do. Does anyone bitching about this realize how much P2P can suck from a network? (Of course you do) I've looked at MRTG at the ISP where I work (and where I'd like to someday get a raise) and many people are running full-throttle on the upload; the outgoing circuit is saturated for days! This is a consumer-grade product! It is designed for reasonble and just usage. We don't happen to give two shits whether you run a Web server or other stuff prohibited by other ISP's; in fact we promote ourselves as a "geek's ISP." But at some point we have to slap some people and remind them that a T costs a fuck-pile of money, and that they are not paying for a T, they are paying for DSL and such overuse is not in the "consumer envelope" The bandwidth is not infinite. Somebody has to pay for it if everybody wants to beat the crap out of their connections. The problem is, the user doesn't want to be that person. Ain't no free beer in this bar. I'm *totally* for P2P, but seriously, we need to realize that it can be used irresponsibly. - Hondo_san

Re:It Ain't Free

[Anonymous Coward]

Then limit the bandwidth.

It's no good offering in exchange for money, a service you cannot provide.

Re:It Ain't Free

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, if you can't afford to provide unlimited access and the users that come with it, don't claim to be unlimited. I'm tired of these half-assed companies bitching about people using their unlimited connections. Duh! What the fuck do you think unlimited came about for? It's because people were tired of being the 20th person to be sold the same bit of bandwidth and then penalized for actually using it.

Re:It Ain't Free

[Ziviyr]

Why not suggest ahead of time that they limit their bandwidth instead of waiting for someone to take advantage of what they've been promised and then charge in decapitating everyone in your path?

Sheep are New Zeland's Real Pipe cloggers

[phunhippy]

Come on now!! we all know its not "vampires" clogging new zealands net pipes!

Everyone knows the sheep are clogging priceline.com to find the a cheap ticket out of there! they're sick of being sheared! theres only 40 milliion of them to the 3.5 million Kiwi's there(new zealanders).

Re:Sheep are New Zeland's Real Pipe cloggers

[Reziac]

Actually, the sheep found their cheap ticket to America. It's via refrigerated cargo ship and the end destination is Purina.

p2p

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I guess the rampant music/software/movie piracy on P2P networks is going to be what is driving the new economy in years to come.

Sure it's a generalisation, but I defy you to say that 95% of it isn't illegal use at this point in time.

Re:p2p

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and the ISPs know it. But if they try that blocking/traffic shaping/QoS shit on P2P in the states, they might just find themselves with about 1% of the customers they used to have. The good news is they won't use much bandwidth. The bad news is that there won't be very many of them.

~~~

Re:P2P

[someone247356]

First off, the argument is about telco's capping supposedly "flat rate" unlimited access because P2P apps use one heck of a lot of bandwidth.

Secondly, ISP's are trying to claim the mantle of "Common Carriers" (at least in the US) and the legal shield that provides.

What a person does with the "bits" they've bought is completely irrelevant to the ISP, or it should be. Your moral pronouncement about the legality of trading files does not add to the discussion.

The problem is that ISP's don't want to be seen as the electric company of the twenty-first century. If this were any other utility it would be perfectly clear that your announcement is ridiculous. Here a parallel to help you;

Telephone company: Most telephone companies in the US offer flat rate local calling plans. They aren't allowed to limit your use of the phone, You can call whoever you want to for as long as you want to.

Does it matter if you are a terrorist communicating with your local cell and planning to blow up the post office? Nope.

How about planning that lynching for next week? Nope.

I know, surely the phone company should block harassing calls to the local abortion clinic? Nope. That's not their responsibility. You can call whomever you like, the legality or not, of what you are talking about isn't any of the phone companies business.

Can the telephone company limit you online time because you have a teenager that spends every minute when she's not in school tying the phone line? Nope.

I know, when people are using dialup internet access they started tying up circuits for hours on end. Could the telephone company charge them more because they were actually using the unlimited flat rate plan they had bought? Nope, though some tried.

I know, the telephone company could block calls to ISP modem pools, after all, calls to ISP's were using one heck of a lot of bandwidth compared to people who didn't call ISP's. Perhaps, the should simply disconnect you if you are tying up your phone line for more than two hours at a time. Everyone knows that this new fangled internet thing is used mainly for trading illegal files and breaking into company's computers.

I mean really, what can you do with the internet that you couldn't already do without it, and more importantly without being a telephone hog? The telephone company bases it profits on oversubscribing, they plan on most people only using the phone for a couple of hours a day, if you are using more than that they should start disconnecting you, or blocking what numbers you can call.

Sounds silly, no?

Then why is it ok when your ISP does it?

Bandwidth limiting by IP?

[boltar]

Surely it wouldn't be too difficult to install some software on the routers that will start reducing the bandwidth a given IP (customer) can
use depending on how much they've downloaded in the last few minutes/hours. Perhaps a gradual decrease of their bandwith in a linear way over
the space of say a day down to a minimum level would be an idea. And if they simply disconnect and and get a new IP vis DHCP or whatever , well
I'm sure the ISP could keep a list of phones numbers people are connecting from (and insist on
no anonymous calls if NZ telecom has those).

Just my tuppence worth.

Re:Bandwidth limiting by IP?

[wanion]

and insist on no anonymous calls if NZ telecom has those

They have them but I somehow doubt this prevents Telecom from knowing who is calling - just their customer's Caller ID and such.

Besides, would anonymous voice options even have any impact whatsoever on DSL?

whatever

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all i don't think they'd put random
bandwith limits changing all the time and .02K/s
doesn't seem very likely either.
Second of all, I don't understand why this
telecom would pay less for uploads than downloads
overseas, but that might just be me.
Also why is no source listed in that article?

Adapting priority on bandwidth usage

[ukryule]

OK. If the problem is that some users are hogging all the bandwidth, what about this for a solution:

You monitor the total bandwidth usage over the month for each user. Then you adapt the priority of each connection dependent on the usage:
User A has only used 2MB bandwidth this month, so you give their requests priority over User B who has already downloaded 200MBs.

In prinicipal, this is easy and seems a fair solution - the more data you download the slower your connection becomes. I'm sure this has been thought of/implemented already - so why aren't ISPs using something like this?

Re:Adapting priority on bandwidth usage

[macrom]

the more data you download the slower your connection becomes. I'm sure this has been thought of/implemented already - so why aren't ISPs using something like this?

Because usage isn't always usage. What if User B has already downloaded 200MB, but it's actually the first day of the month? Let's also say that user pulled down MP3s, some pr0n, a copy of Adobe Photoshop from Kazaa, and some e-mail. Should that user be throttled? Some say yes...

Now, what if User B has already downloaded 200MB and it's the 20th of the month? She's exceeded 200MB because she keeps e-mailing large documents to her colleagues working on cancer research. She's also connected to her e-mail server all day long, so those small packets for checking add up over time. Should this user be throttled? One could make a case that her usage is more "legitimate" than the usage of the "pirate".

The problem is this : determining "legitimate" use versus "less proper" use is so vague. Blanket limits on bandwidth could hurt people that use large amounts of bandwidth over time, just in smaller chucks on a continuing basis. For ISPs to determine who's using what bandwidth when and how could present an administration nightmare. Blocking P2P applications which tend to suck bandwidth for (arguably) less "appropriate" applications is just plain easier (evidently).

Add in that P2P content is presenting legal issues around the globe (or is it only here in the US?), this NZ company may be blocking use to cover its own ass.

Re:Adapting priority on bandwidth usage

[Peter Harris]

The problem with this is the assumption that the ISP should care what the bandwidth is used for and make moral or legal judgements about it. I don't think so. 200Mb is 200Mb.

Overuse of bandwidth is a technical problem, and it merits a technical solution. Misuse of bandwidth is either a social and ethical problem, or just an ill-defined problem.

I think the ISP should step back from the issue of misuse completely, which by the way covers their arse better than a half-hearted stab at it, implying responsibility but no competence.

Let them solve the overuse problem, if necessary by employing quotas, and ADVERTISE THOSE QUOTAS HONESTLY.

Of course, I've never run an ISP, so I could be being naive about their real motives and the constraints they work under.

Re:Adapting priority on bandwidth usage

[bvark]

Why ISPs aren't using something like this is reasonably simple - the router hardware, and the metering systems necessary to track usage and implement this are very expensive.

COPS, diffserv and other priority mechanisms are somewhat available but not widely deployed on ISP/service provider networks.

I'm certainly not convinced that replacing my router hardware with systems that can do this (and hiring the people that can support it) are financially viable yet.

Until then, flat rate with overuse detection and prevention remains among the most cost effective methods of providing consumer broadband.

Of course, widespread overuse might well encourage people to deploy these types of solutions on their network - so maybe they really are driving the technology economy.

Re:Adapting priority on bandwidth usage

[pne]

I would guess that the 2MB user would tend to get throttled instead... since the 200MB user might be pulling streaming video which he needs to get without dropping any frames, so he demands higher QoS from his ISP *sigh*

OTOH, I agree with you that people that use *more* bandwidth should get a *lower* priority. So your Voice-over-IP system gets a choppy connection? Well, sorry, but you're using a shared medium, and you don't get a service guarantee.

P2P good for ISP

[elgaard]

IT seems to me that P2P could be a big advantage
for ISP's. Most P2P protocols support caching.
That could make most of the traffic internal to an ISP.

A bit like ISP proxy servers were supposed to do,
before everthing became dynamic.

Maybe ISP's should set up huge gnutella servers.
If all users could get the most popular files
at full speed from
a gnutella server at their ISP they would not
generate much less international traffic.

Maybe ISP's should not count intra-ISP traffic in
a monthly cap or reserve extra bandhwidth for
intra-ISP traffic. We would soon see P2P protocols
taking advantage of this, thus minimizing external
traffic for the ISP's.

Then again, maybe this is already happening.
Maybe P2P clients tend to get files from hosts
in the same ISP or at least country because interantional
traffic is a bottleneck.
I wonder how much P2P traffic is international
compared to eg. HTTP.

Re:P2P good for ISP

[Anonymous Coward]

We'd also start seeing ISPs forced out of business for housing illegal copies of various intellectual property

Re:P2P good for ISP

[Sloppy]

This is really technically the right way to attack the problem. But it creates legal problems due to the bizarre laws that invented the crimes of "vicarious" and "contributory" copyright infringement.

It reminds me of the situation with governments that give clean needles to heroin users. You can pretend that your people don't use heroin, and then let 'em get AIDS and hepititus from each other. Or you can help your people and seriously address a real problem (disease/bandwidth waste), but in doing so, you assume the appearance of "legitimizing", advocating, and aiding another problem (drug use/piracy). You're damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

Re:P2P good for ISP

[grahamsz]

I've been advocating this for some time.

Basically what ISPs could do is offer a high bandwidth cap for traffic within their own network and enfore a far lower cap at boundary router level.

The ISP doesn't have to run a gnutella server, their users will set up a protected network with it's own connect strings and all will be good.

I'd sign up for an ISP that provided that service in a heartbeat, just because it would be fantastic for so many things:

- file sharing
- vpn's with my friends

- gaming with my friends
to name a few...

I guess we'd almost move back to a more bbs style environment where most of the content is local but some of it comes off the net.

I think it's the principal of locailty at play. My UK isp must have thousands of broadband subscribers and it's likely that 95% of the mp3's i'd ever want already exist on their network - but their poor upstream caps force me to retrieve that content from US college hosts and the like.

not that it matters

[nzhavok]

not that it matters too much at the moment as telecoms most popular "high-speed" package is 128kb ADSL connection (about $30 US BTW), oh and apparently 128kb is too much for any single connection so they limit you on each particular file you download to about 56kb!!

I used to have a high speed satellite connection through IHUG which would peek at about 2500kbps but then they did the stupidist thing they could do and capped it at 512MB per month! Thats write the high-speed, high bandwidth connection was capped at 512MB, which meant you could use your month quota in under 30 minutes, and still not get a single ISO.

We are getting some faster connections through cable company saturn, they offer you higher speed connections such as 256kb or 512kb, however even though these cost more, the monthly data cap is a lot less. IIRC 128 was capped at 10GB and then the 256 (which costs more) was capped at 5GB. Saturn mainly targets businesses. Again that's not such a problem since only a small proportion of people are connected by this anyway. So in short, sure it's a hassle but the bandwidth here is so limited that it's no big deal anyway.

Re:not that it matters

[Dalcon]

I have 2mbit cable with TelstraClear and a 5gig monthly limit. A big part of why this works for me is nz traffic is divided by 10 before being added to the monthly limit. So a gig of nz traffic only counts as 100mb towards the monthly limit. This is how all TelstraClear's plans work. I'll probably get a 256kbit/5gig connection but keep the 2mbit with 1gig monthly plan as well. About $50NZ cheaper but a total of 6gig to use, an extra gig for $50 less. If I went to a 128kbit connection it'd cost me $60 less to get an extra cable modem and get another 6gig to make a 11gig monthly limit! I agree with a previous post this is crazy and results from pricing speed as far more valuable than traffic. Of the 1.5million homes in nz, about 150,000 have access to TelstraClear and this is growing fast. About 25-30% who have the choice sign up with TelstraClear for phone line and other options.

Re:Eva !?

[Anonymous Coward]

Guten Tag.
Hier ich bin. Immer wann ich ein deutsch lesend auf Slashdot ich gross freuen. Wo du kommst her? Ich aus Munich komme. Wo man gross 1-Liter Bier-Tankard trinkt und der Yodel-Gesang singt.
Auf Wiedersehen.
Eva.

my isp does it too

[jefklak]

I suspect my broadband isp (telenet belgium) limits kazaa bandwith for all its cable users. Or maybe the network has just become slower. Does anyone have any info on that?

Re:my isp does it too

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I don't have any more info on that. Sorry.

Re:my isp does it too

[Cpyder]

Telenet indeed is known to limit bandwith on port 1214 (Fasttrack (old morpheus, grokster, KaZaA))... But the are also known for their network which is not equipped for this kind of real bandwidth-use: their strategy is just to create a huge, mandatory proxy, limiting the need for "outside bandwidth" (or so they think), allowing them to cut some costs.
Of course, everyone in Belgium knows Telenet sucks regardless of that...

Who cares

[Ubi_NL]

This is a free world

If you don't like Telecom products, go to someone else.

Having said this, I can fully understand the ISP's decision as I've seen what MP3 and DivX can do to my server's bandwith. I don't see why creating GB traffic just because your are too lazy to go out and rent "will drive the technology economy in years to come". All it will drive up is prices.

Re:Who cares

[Plug]

Telecom own the local loop. They are our spun-off-from-the-Government telco. We have no choice.

Re:Who cares

[Zaffle]

&lt:RANT>

Yup, except, its not a free world.
For starters, Telecom maintains and controls *ALL* DSL in NZ. Because they still own the local loop.

So, I go elsewhere?
Cable. Nope, Not yet. Not atleast in Auckland. (The biggest City in NZ).
Satelite. Nope, limited by the 2nd biggest provider (IHUG).
Radio? Ok, *maybe*, for about twice the price, and radio doesn't work in the rain!

Ok, I'll go live overseas. Doh, its STILL not a free world. The US won't let me just pick up and move in just because I don't like my NZ telephone provider.

So do NOT just assume just because you have it good that the rest of the world has it the same.

Heck, Our Prime Minister just admitted to atleast 4 counts of *FRAUD* in public, however for some *reason*, the government isn't pressing charges. Funny that. And you thought Billy boy Clinton was bad, atleast you had the resemblance of a trial or any kind of justice.

</RANT;>

Re:Who cares

[wanion]

If you don't like Telecom products, go to someone else.

I'm afraid the options for consumer broadband (16KB/sec broadband?) are somewhat limited in New Zealand. Very, very limited. Go to someone else? I wish that were an option!

Having said this, I can fully understand the ISP's decision as I've seen what MP3 and DivX can do to my server's bandwith.

Yeah, the only reason they haven't done it earlier is because they're trying to get the high users. All the other ISPs have been forced to put 10GB or so caps on DSL because of the low profit margins (half of the money, at least, goes to Telecom no matter which ISP you choose). So this has left Telecom's Xtra as the only real option if you want to download more than that. Now they feel they've saturated the market for high-usage flat rate users they're now considering introducing a monthly cap of 6GB of so, which is lower than even the other ISPs have previously done.

I guess they're hoping that the benefits of switching to another ISP for an extra few GB aren't attractive enough to overcome the aggravation of dumping people's current account?

Re:Who cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Heck, Our Prime Minister just admitted to atleast 4 counts of *FRAUD* in public, however for some *reason*, the government isn't pressing charges. Funny that. And you thought Billy boy Clinton was bad, atleast you had the resemblance of a trial or any kind of justice.


Well if you must know some of our green MP's arn't doing so well either go to http://www.dhmo.org/ and laugh your ass off.

But for about the same price as a jetstart connection I have a faster flat rate connection via wireless in hamilton. I don't think my ISP is in auckland, but they might be able to point you to the correct people. Their URL is http://www.satlan.com/ but I don't think that will help you much as it looks like they are redesigning their site

Re:Who cares

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and from only a few Billion in capital investment. I think i will start one tomorrow...

This article...

[Bnonn]

...is garbage. I'm a bit disappointed in the standard of writing for the Herald, considering it's the largest newspaper in this country. Not only does the article not examine many sides of the issue, such as how many people are using Kazaa enough to be considered "vampires" (please, what a ridiculous term; this isn't even an editorial, it's a personal rant--stop throwing your toys out the cot Burton) and what Telecom's profit margins are on the service, but it blatantly omits several key points that turn the article into little more than fud.

For example, Burton says in the article that he sometimes gets as little as 0.02 kiBps on Kazaa, and an average of less than 1 kiBps. Erm, entry for Duh Magazine, anyone? I mean, I'm only on dialup so I can't speak for 128k Jetstart, but I regularly get less than 1 kiBps even when my connection is completely idle. It's a huge p2p network; it's invariably pretty slow. Sure, the average he states does seem a bit low, and perhaps Telecom is throttling bandwidth a bit, but the range of download speeds he states (if we are to take his word; I see no actual figures) seem to indicate that there's something more at work that simply that. Assuming that sometimes bandwidth is throttled more and less, it's still disingenuous to suggest that the only cause for such slow downloads is due to Telecom.

I also find it ridiculous that he suggests, "to be consistent Xtra [Telecom's ISP branch] should be limiting bandwidth used by Microsoft Update and Messenger software which act as servers too." Microsoft update is a necessary feature for many people, and neither it nor MSM, ICQ or IRC is going to be sucking anywhere near the bandwidth that filesharing apps do. This is either just a completely skewed viewpoint, or plain ignorance. In my view it's the latter, since Burton (the Herald IT editor) doesn't seem to even know enough to differentiate between GB (gigabytes) and Gb (gigabits).

I'm no fan of Telecom. I hate them; they're manopolistic and have extremely poor service. But this isn't a valid reason to attack them. They state in the users' contract that running servers (incidentally, I question that webservers running on their service would account for even one hundredth of the bandwidth that p2p does, although Burton seems to imply otherwise) of any kind is unacceptable. Personally, while I think it would be courteous for Telecom to inform their customers that they will actively throttle p2p and server applications (and no, I don't think messenger programs can be classified as "servers" Mr Burton), I don't see how it's a requirement on their part, or a breach of contract as Burton suggests. If you're doing something with their service that you've agreed not to, I can't see how you can complain if they quietly ensure you can no longer do that thing.

IANALawyer, so I can't speak for the legality of my opinion, but I'd be interested to hear from anyone with a more solid understanding of the technicalities.

Re:This article...

[Anonymous Coward]

I would think he is referring to opening a tcp or udp port and allowing others to connect to it, to send and recieve information. In which case, he would be quite right in saying that most IM's act as servers(using Telecom/Xtra's(They really are one and the same despite what they claim) definition), since they open ports and publish these and allow other clients to connect in quite the same way many P2P networks operate.

It should also be pointed out that The NZ Herald is far from a IT paper, only featuring a IT page once a week on tuesdays (IIRC), so the average reader is not concerned with the difference between bytes and bits.

I'd be quite worried if you were a lawyer Dominic...

Re:This article...

[Tim C]

doesn't seem to even know enough to differentiate between GB (gigabytes) and Gb (gigabits)

I live in the UK, and I have seen plenty of adverts for PCs, from brand name manufacturers (Time, Dell, etc) that purpotedly come with 40Gb hard drives, and 128Mb RAM...

Personally, I blame a combination of not-too-clueful PR/marketing people, and Word auto "correcting" the double capitals.

Cheers,

Tim

Re:This article...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to attack the guy on issues of correctness, atleast get his name right.

I think as a former editor of PCWorld he does know a thing or two about PC's.

Not exactly

[wanion]

I'd love to be in NZ right now! Now all the kiddies that think downloading music and burning it to CDs for their friends constitutes a "business" - like some people I know - have had their access blocked, it means better connections for everyone else who does in fact respect the law. I think this should happen more.

Oh, don't worry - they still provide a poor service where you're lucky to even get close to the 16KB/sec (128kbit) cap. It's not about providing a better service to their other customers, but merely increasing their margins and avoiding the need to upgrade their own equipment.

It would be nice if they were doing this for their other customers though. If they removed P2P altogether (not that FastTrack isn't effectively crippled as it is) and increased the cap to 32KB/sec that would be a real improvement which perhaps customers who aren't purely leeching might appreciate.

They should take a page out of Paradise's book

[Anonymous Coward]

Paradise, another New Zealand ISP has never offered any form of flat rate plan, instead they offer very reasonoble plans the will turn away only the most hardcore downloaders. Their broadband plans have a 10gb cap on them, but local traffic only costs 1/10 of this (eg only using NZ traffic you get 100gb) and Paradise traffic is free including their fileservers with many utilitys and iso's of many linux/bsd installs.

Unfortunatly due to the Telecom's monopoly of the land lines, their dsl support is somwhat limited, however TelstraClear is laying fibre cables (When allowed to by councills that is) around New Zealand currently servicing Wellington and Christchurch. When they are finally allowed to lay the cables in auckland, i belive Telecom will be on the back step with a better priced and better product being offered to the majority of New Zealanders.

Gnutella?

[Jacek Poplawski]

What's about gnutella? Can anyone block it? What means "block known p2p systems" ? Just filter known ports?

Re:Gnutella?

[Brian Boitano]

It's not "blocked" as such, the p2p ports are just allocated a smaller pool of bandwidth than the rest.

not very clever

[overlord]

I think this is stupied, you can move the door ports and you are free to share any file you want.
At least in edonkey you can do that.

OverLord

Why not diffrent service?

[LWolenczak]

Seriously, I don't see why people, who can afford it, don't go get business class or telecom grade lines? I would have sdsl if I could get it in my area, and I have a small stack of quotes for T1 lines. Right now, I'm on a cable isp that dosen't care about servers, so I'm happy, but I would perfer a sdsl or hdsl/t1 line, just so I get my ip allocation, and can do 'bout whatever I want.

I know people in the computer industry make enough to pay for half a t1 with ease... so why not get the half a t1, and be happy. Seriously, you think that you would have more bandwidth with cable broadband, or cheapy adsl service? Its allways capped.

Re:Why not diffrent service?

[Brian Boitano]

We don't have T1's in NZ, and the prices of dedicated lines outside of inner-city areas are prohibitively expensive (perhaps approximately 10-15 times the amount of 128k dsl).

There are other options (wireless is the main one) but they aren't available in enough areas to be really competitive.

Re:Why not diffrent service?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe in the rest of the world (the part not included in USA) its called an E1.

These really are not economical here (In New Zealand). The only economical form of broadband(128k is not broadband, its hardly even an inprovment on dual ISDN) is cable which is served to a few parts of 2 of NZ cities and not even the biggest ones.

Re:Why not diffrent service?

[LWolenczak]

T1 is the standard in at least four countries, Japan, US, Canada, and Mexico.

I should have said E1, but the term is for the most part interchangable, all it is is the number of channels the multiplexor will break it up into, and I have been in areas in the US that operate with enough channels to be an E1, but they still label it T1 for sales purposes. Ofcorse, for data, most ILECs are using HDSL.

Re:Why not diffrent service?

[LWolenczak]

Then why not get together with some friends and create your own wireless networks. 802.11b + signal amp + directional antennas could allow a link that is a fairly good distance.

802.11a might also work, but it being new is fairly costly.

If enough people start getting linked together this way, then isps will be forced to do what the users want them to do.

Time Warner vs. limits bandwidth vs. Telecom/XTRA

[Anonymous Coward]

"Time Warner ... limits bandwidth of residental customers."

I would not recommend Time Warner to anyone as a method of getting on the Internet. However, I think it is a misrepresentation of Time Warner's actions and the NetworkWorld Time Warner: Bandwidth hogs, pay up! article to state that Time Warner is limiting bandwidth.

First, there is a clear distinction between a change in billing policy and network traffic shaping!

Second, the distinction becomes more clear when comparing Time Warner's plan to have an announced change in billing and XTRA's unwritten policy of traffic shaping.

[flame turned on]
For whatever reason mjl and Timothy seem to think it is acceptable to gray lines. Then again, either of them can feel free to try to provide quotes from their referenced NetworkWorld article to try to support the claim.

I don't mind comparing one company's bad choices and actions against another company's actions. But to complettely make things up to fit an agenda is just wrong. What NetworkWorld states is that Time Warner plans to charge extra for bandwidth and does not support the statement!
[flame turned off]

Anyways, for a fair comparison between different company's actions, look at the NetworldWorld article which compares Time Warner bandwidth charging with DSL multi-tier bandwidth account options.

Here's a better way

[Adrian Lopez]

Rather than cap bandwidth on specific protocols and to such extremes as suggested by the article, do it on a global basis according to use.

Reserve a small but significant amount of bandwidth for the following procedure:

1. Make a list of users, excluding inactive users.
   
2. Find users with low transfer rates, give them some of the reserved bandwidth. Note any users whose transfer rate increases.
   
3. Take away bandwidth from users with the highest sustained transfer rate, give it to those users identified as needing more bandwidth.
   
4. Repeat periodically.
   

Bandwidth

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it all boils down to the cost of bandwidth, the number of people sharing it, and their monthly cost.

Face it, a full T1 is going to cost you $1500/month or so, probably more once you factor in the cost of routers, csu's, and.. oh, lets not forget the cost of the DSLAM equipment for their end of your DSL connection...

For that wonderful amount, they get 1.5Mb of bandwidth to divide up between their customers. Now, at 128Kbit, thats only 12 customers at their max bandwidth... and at say $35/month... well, gee, they only get $420/month in return. Hmmm...

So, they have to count on most people not using their full bandwidth... but, even if they have say 50 customers ($1750/month), they will still only be *close* to breaking even... and they of course have a much higher chance of having 12 of those people doing full-bandwidth (128Kbit).

Now, those 12 people are now going full out, and one of the other 50 people wants to go visit Slashdot to get his latest Geek News... gee, its taking him like 2 minutes to get the homepage (those 12 guys are sucking the whole pipe up)... wow, I was getting better response than this for my $14/month dialup.. screw this DSL company, I'm dropping it and going back to dialup.

Suddenly, the ISP that was just breaking even is losing customers... all for the sake of those 12 people who feel it is their *right* to get the full 128Kbit 24/7. Well.. ok... so after 6 months, the ISP now has only 20 customers left (12 of whom are eating the line up...), are only making $700/month to pay for hardware/connectivity that is costing them much more than that each month... uhh... bankruptcy anyone???

Oh, gee... those 12 guys... well, better find another ISP that will give you full bandwidth. Hope your 6 months of 128Kbit was nice, because now you're back to dialup, and having seen one
ISP go under in the market is going to hurt the chances of another even *wanting* to start up in your area...

Re:Bandwidth

[Anonymous Coward]

If only this were the case, then maybe the govt could buy back the loop and lease it to anyone at cost and we could see some real competition here.

But with Telecom making many millions a year, they arn't going under any time soon.

Oh well until that day i will just use my 56k...
(or maybe those aucklanders will finely let a few "ugly" cables uglify their city a little more than it already is...)

Re:Bandwidth

[Anonymous Coward]

You're being far too empathetic. Often businesses charge at a loss to gain customers, or they have specials, or whatever. That's their business, and it's nothing to do with me.

However when they advertise that I get unlimited traffic, or a certain speed of traffic, then I expect to get that. I expect them to handle the details. I don't expect Napster to move at a slower speed than the rest.

Xtra are liars. Being annoyed at this is natural.

Windows Update does act as a server

[Anonymous Coward]

I run Windows Update regularly, and ZoneAlarm Pro (software firewall) recognises it as acting as a server. The same with MSN Messenger, it also acts as a server according to Zone Alarm

Re:Windows Update does act as a server

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a difference between the 'human' definition of a server and zonealarm's.

As far as a human is concerned, a server is a process that sits on your computer listening for incoming connections and serving up data to people who connect to it and make requests (eg a webserver)

As far as zonealarm is concerned, a server is a process that opens a socket for listening.

In the case of MS update, I would imagine that the only host that MSU expects to receive a connection from, is microsoft. It's not like it's sitting there waiting for anyone on the web to connect to it.

I am become a page-widener - destroyer of posts

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.eveeieyhfgfcdoosammgwsnboivvbsczxlzgabc / /ooieiabdcdjsvbkeldfogjhiyeeejkagclmieooionoepdk / /abcdefmfighyiqxjklmonopqrosoyotuvwxoyqwertyuiov / /sdfghjklqewiuznmbjadzmcloeuirquakndsflksjdflkas / /fskdfasiewurznmcvweroiqewrnamdnzcvuowieramnfkas / /dfhzuxcihskjrnakjzkjcxbviusayrkajsfzxncvizudyri / /bakdnfbzkcvhgiuegriweramdnfzxlcvueirhamdnzkciue / /jranbsdmfzcowierandmfxzncbkjhfabsdifuweajzkxcuw / /erhasdfzxncvkjdfyiuzxcnvsikirkajeajsbdfkzxbuyef / /rahsdjbzcvxmnvcuweyriausdnfzxbcvkwueyrajnbvkjxg / /iwueyajdfkzxjcnbkeyriaushdfkjbzbuowrnasdkfbhuie / /asjmfnkkbyiurnakjsndfkzjbhiuwerajsknfkzbyhweiua / /dkfjbzkxvbjywekrjaskjnvzxjcweruiasdhfkzjxnsjkld / /fasoidfjalskdfasklhfxjdnmenrqoiuozxcopjgneaksjo / /nzxdkfajlsdfkljsdfoiasdfasndflzxkcvozixucoqweiu / /pwoeiruzxmncvoutyqwerizxnvmxmcnvoweurqmznxmbouw / /rmnzbkhuyrtjghanzxcvbkhgjweyriaudfbznbkweruyabz / /bcvnkdhityqhagsdfjglsieurakfsdnfbvfdsajkbiuyqwe / /kweorjasdknfbkjsdoifuzxbcmfgsltjewioahsdfnbzxcb / /heoiroaisjdfzbxckjksrhiuehadsfbzkxjcbhkeuryaksj / /fzbxcvkxlkcnvmndskfjwehaiursdfzjxnbjkdfhskdflas / /yroausdfzxmncvskeyiqozsjhfasdfoiwueranmcnzbkjhd / /ueafhksjfwheuirasdjhbzxiuewjhasmdnkfzxciurhaskj / /roiquwermcvkhiruhasdkjfnzxkjyeiuahsdbzxckjvopwe / /uqweuirjhvxzckjhweriuasydfoiqurnmxckvhweruiahdj / /znkxcvjhwierahsfzkxhhidufhsakjbzxjchiwueryqagsd / /kjhaksdfnbakwreyhaisknfjkzxbcvkoiqwueraskfzxcbk / /nlkwejrasoidjfxzlknvlkwjeroiasudflknzxlkbjeoiru / /slkdjfzxnmvkljdfawienzxveoriuaskdfjzxcmbnkseuri / /kfjlznxcvksjroeijasdklzjfowierqouasdhfzxncbkjhd / /jsdfljkweoriuasdfkjzxmcnvlkjdowuieraksdflkzxjbo / /werklasdnfmzxclkjewoijasdlfknzlkjwoeirqpweoiasd / /kjzxjvwperaksdjfxzweirjaslkdfzxnclvkjweroiasufd / /zxclkjeworijasdflknzlbkoiwuraksjflknxblkwjerois / /jfweknasdkfjzoxijkenraksjdfoizxjvlknwerlkajsdfo / /yroausdfzxmncvskeyiqozsjhfasdfoiwueranmcnzbkjhd / /ueafhksjfwheuirasdjhbzxiuewjhasmdnkfzxciurhaskj / /roiquwermcvkhiruhasdkjfnzxkjyeiuahsdbzxckjvopwe / /uqweuirjhvxzckjhweriuasydfoiqurnmxckvhweruiahdj / /znkxcvjhwierahsfzkxhhidufhsakjbzxjchiwueryqagsd / /kjhaksdfnbakwreyhaisknfjkzxbcvkoiqwueraskfzxcbk / /nlkwejrasoidjfxzlknvlkwjeroiasudflknzxlkbjeoiru / /slkdjfzxnmvkljdfawienzxveoriuaskdfjzxcmbnkseuri / /kfjlznxcvksjroeijasdklzjfowierqouasdhfzxncbkjhd / /jsdfljkweoriuasdfkjzxmcnvlkjdowuieraksdflkzxjbo

The envelope please

[The Ape With No Name]

What Telecom fails to recognise is that these people are pushing the envelope of what the Internet can do, and will drive the technology economy in years to come.

Sure. Whatever. But RIGHT NOW these "radicals" have saturated not one but three DS3 at my University, including the Internet 2 link. That's 20000USD a month per. By limiting Kazaa and other Fastrack based P2P's we cut the bandwidth in half. But the ants simply adapt and move to Gnutella. How long did that take? About a week. The only solution RIGHT NOW? Buying an OC12 and the baddest Juniper router out there. Yikes.

Re:The envelope please

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not take action against abusive users? Other schools monitor bandwidth usage and warn/punish users who consistantly exceed reasonable limits. This solves the general problem, without limiting casual p2p users. (Users who set reasonable bandwidth caps on uploading and are only up for moderate periods of time)

Adam

Re:The envelope please

[The Ape With No Name]

Why not take action against abusive users?
You can't do this without treading on the intellectual toes of the people who hold the "University" ideal really high or the whiny little bastards say "We paid for it!" Which in a sense they did.

Time Warner... lets clear it up.

[ImaLamer]

I'm using Road Runner and I certainly am not being charged extra. I download plenty of 'unstable' iso's for friends. I'm not charging anyone, it's free (as in everyway) and usually the images are a few hops away [Universites all around America ;-].

I'm sure that article is linked to because it's the latest, but almost every highspeed internet now a days has a tier plan or a cap.

The story was originally based on a rumor - right now they plan to do any such thing.

Re:Time Warner... lets clear it up.

[nytes]

I'm using Road Runner and I certainly am not being charged extra.

You will be.

Follow the link to the previous /. article and, thence to NetworkWorld, and you'll see:

"Some users take up an inordinate amount of bandwidth," says Mike Luftman, a spokesman for Time Warner Cable. "Anyone staying below a total amount of bits moved per month won't pay more. But if you consistently go over the limit, you're going to have to pay."

WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE FIX THE PAGE WIDENING

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah.. why do these happen ??????????????

Re:WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE FIX THE PAGE WIDENING

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you considered giving a more complette description of the problem to Slashcode?

communication must be free!

[Anonymous Coward]

free as free speech and free as free beer

to charge money for communication or
to limit it someway is dishonest for
intelligent beings

coward

Re:Bandwidth limiting by IP - unfeasible

[Anonymous Coward]

This has been said over and over, so i'll repeat it here - IP has not been designed with bandwidth accounting in mind. The router has no way of distinguishing packets that you have 'ordered' from those coming from ping floods, NIMDAs, spams and such. How to tell whether a smart user hasn't concealed his 1GB pr0n download as a spam flood?

Irrelevant

[Perianwyr Stormcrow]

Because usage isn't always usage.

No, actually usage IS usage. It *is* all just bits. Thinking of bits as bits leads to a robust solution.

What if User B has already downloaded 200MB, but it's actually the first day of the month?...etc

vs. Now, what if User B has already downloaded 200MB and it's the 20th of the month?

Luckily, this problem has already been solved for you.

What's expensive is not total amount of bandwidth, it's bandwidth over time. Bandwidth is not a bucket of bolts, it's a road. A road is not defined as congested when 2000 cars have passed over it in a month- however it is, if those 2000 cars tried to pass at the same time.

Use a "burst" system. Essentially, limiting of any sort does not kick in until you've used your full capacity for an extended period of time. This would make the structurally sound distinction- excess vs. utility- without placing discriminatory regulations on users' ports or application types. This system also requires no oversight once created- you don't have to stay on top of whatever file sharing flavor of the month does to hamper it, you just manage capacity. This is also far more in line with a "common carrier" concept than any sort of filtering or blanket limiting model.

Should this user be throttled? One could make a case that her usage is more "legitimate" than the usage of the "pirate".

Be careful, to solve this problem, one must realize that the purpose of the transfer is utterly irrelevant to the solution, and in fact adds unnecessary complication. In short, relying on such inapplicable concepts obscures the issue (resource management) and makes the issue into a series of judgments, most of which will be discriminatory and ineffective.

Re:Irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to agree that a burst system, in theory, sounds reasonable. My thoughts were more of a "Devil's Advocate" point of view...

But let's take your road analogy and extrapolate a bit. If you noticed that 2000 cars were driving over the road at the same time every day, you would analyze the traffic to see if there was a pattern. Let's make something up...say that you noticed a sizeable number of those vehicles were carrying hazardous cargo (radioactive waste, medical waste, etc). What if you could reduce traffic AND increase safety by prohibiting the transport of hazardous cargo on this road? You would free up traffic and at the same time increas the safety of the road (no risk of a truck crashing and spilling body parts everywhere!)...

Apply this to the Internet world. I think Telecom (or whatever the name is) noticed that a large part of it's simultaneous traffic was heading to P2P apps, which are under scrutiny for possibly aiding the distribution of questionable/illegal content. Not only would they free up more bandwidth for "normal" customers by blocking these ports (banning the hazardous cargo), they free themselves from the huge megacorporations that seem to be filing lawsuits left and right (make the road safer).

I don't agree with what they're doing, but I can certainly see some reasons for it. It's sad that technology gets the cold shoulder because uneducated corporate entities can't see the forest for the trees...

Well, someone's wrong, anyway...

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The "copyright industry" is a dinosaur, the faster it is forced to reform, the better for mankind, artists and audience alike.

Nope, sorry, you're wrong. That same copyright system protects you in more ways than you apparently realise. Don't label it a poor system just because of abuse of that system by the RIAA and MPAA (which is really monopoly abuse used to fix prices rather than a flaw with copyright anyway, and probably should be investigated as such by the authorities if they have any integrity).

But more than your first claim, I love this bit.

The content industry will have to reform of course, and possibly accept a smaller cashflow. But that's life in a capitalist economy. If your business model don't float, you sink.
[...]
On the positive side of this demise of the content industry as we know it is free (almost) information to everyone (almost).

Except that, since most good information is hard to come by or requires genuine effort to produce, those two statements are contradictory. Again, you're mistaking a high profile but relatively isolated example (RIAA/MPAA) for the whole world, and overgeneralising.

Re:Well, someone's wrong, anyway...

[EllisDees]

Copyright is a piss-poor system. It has been distorted so far from its original intent (to promote progress in the arts) that we would be better off without any copyright at all.

Re:Well, someone's wrong, anyway...

[Anonymous Coward]

That same copyright system protects you in more ways than you apparently realise.

How about providing at least one example when making a statement like that?

Re:Well, someone's wrong, anyway...

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

That same copyright system protects you in more ways than you apparently realise.

How about providing at least one example when making a statement like that?

I'm surprised that anyone who frequents a board where the GPL is so valued would need to ask that. Still, there's your example.

Re:Well, someone's wrong, anyway...

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Copyright is a piss-poor system. It has been distorted so far from its original intent ... that we would be better off without any copyright at all.

I very much doubt that. Without the sort of intellectual property laws present in the Western world, your life would be very different, and I doubt you'd like the changes. Try asking someone from a country where such laws don't exist or aren't respected. As I said before, you shouldn't mistake a couple of recent, high-profile abuses of the system for a flaw in the system itself. Nor should you ignore the reasons the system was created in the first place, and the many advantages it's brought.

Reality issues

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Someone here has some serious reality issues, but it isn't the guy you're replying to.

No, not everyone who uses p2p is stealing. However, the vast, vast majority are, and there are viable alternatives possible for those who are not. If those with genuine uses for the technology don't like seeing it restricted, they should take it up with those who are abusing it and motivating that restriction, not the parties who are just defending their rights under the law.

Re:Reality issues

[tps12]

If those with genuine uses for the technology don't like seeing it restricted, they should take it up with those who are abusing it and motivating that restriction, not the parties who are just defending their rights under the law.

Likewise, suppose a right-wing extremist Christian group wants to burn down the local library due to the rampant Satanism found in its books. Then I, as a reader with a genuine use for the technology, should take it up with the authors of the offending works?

Nice troll.

Re:Reality issues

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad Analogy, those books are legal, and burning down the Library would be illegal. Stealing copyrighted works is not legal.

Re:Reality issues

[tps12]

Yes, that does cloud the issue, but I was trying to discuss the actions themselves, not the legality thereof.

Let's see...

Suppose there is a National Park that I enjoy walking in. However, the wildlife there is frequently targetted by poachers (for the sake of analogy, go ahead and assume that there are way more poachers than walkers). To combat them, the park is closed to the public. Then, to be able to walk again in the park without being arrested, I should petition the poachers (who have no interest in my walking) to stop their activities (which are already illegal), so that the Bureau of Parks or whatever will reopen it? Or should I appeal to the Bureau itself, explaining that in closing the park to everyone, innocent citizens are made to pay for the wrongdoings of the poachers?

Think I got it that time.

Re:Reality issues

[dossen]

No, they are not stealing. They may be violation copyright law. But they are not stealing.

Re:Reality issues

[dossen]

Ooops... violating. Or in violation of. Just goes to show that you shouldn't comment in a hurry.

Re:Reality issues

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

No, they are not stealing.

By any definition of the verb "to steal" in my dictionary, yes, they are.

Re:Reality issues

[Xaoswolf]

No it would be more like if the local Barnes and Nobel were to stop selling books on Satanism due to the fact that people crowding the isles, even though they aren't buying any more books, they are just being Isle Hogs and making it so the other paying customers can not get into that section.

Which leaves you who has a genuine interest in Satanism, you see that if these people keep hogging the isle, then you will not be able to purchase your books. You then talk to the people and remind them that they can actually buy the books and read them at home, as opposed to standing in the isle for hours at a time.

Re:Reality issues

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

No troll intended. The flaw in your analogy is that the vast majority of people who use your local library aren't right-wing extremists. If you were the only person out of 100 in the library who was not using it for such extremist purposes, don't you think burning it down would be in everyone's best interests (except for the extremists, of course)?

Re:Reality issues

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

If you're the only person walking in the park, and the poachers outnumber you by 10000:1, then within a short time, there won't be any wildlife there for you to go and see anyway. While you might not be able to convince the poachers to stop directly, you could support moves to prevent them from poaching, if necessary including forcing them to stop by some means. That would be far more in the long term interests of the park you enjoy than letting the poachers go unchecked, continuing in their arrogant and obviously false belief that they can take for free without harming anyone.

Re:Reality issues

[tps12]

If you're the only person walking in the park, and the poachers outnumber you by 10000:1, then within a short time, there won't be any wildlife there for you to go and see anyway. While you might not be able to convince the poachers to stop directly, you could support moves to prevent them from poaching, if necessary including forcing them to stop by some means. That would be far more in the long term interests of the park you enjoy than letting the poachers go unchecked, continuing in their arrogant and obviously false belief that they can take for free without harming anyone.

Now I got you! To make the analogy complete, I wouldn't care about the wildlife...maybe I'm a mushroom enthusiast. Though we have a medium in common (the park), there is nothing inherent in either of our activities that decreases the other party's enjoyment or utilization of the resource.

It is probably not even possible for me to try to convince poachers to change their ways, as they are well-camouflaged (sp?)...after all, if they could be easily found and stopped, the government would have probably done that rather than close the park in the first place.

In any case, the governing body is the entity here that has a problem with poaching, so the responsibility of stopping the poaching without trampling on the rights of the innocent lies with them. If doing this accurately is technically impossible or unfeasible, then they are SOL. Otherwise, they are effectively punishing me as if I were a poacher, though I am not. This deprives me of the due process guaranteed me by the Constitution.

Re:Reality issues

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice. I bet that's kinda like what you tell your boyfriend "That's not cheating, I was just having sex, that's not cheating by any definitition of the verb "to cheat" in my dictionary!"

It's a sad world, I know, people just doesn't let you have your own dictionary, I bet you're misunderstood quite often.

Re:Reality issues

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Ah, but even if you don't care about wildlife, the whole ecosystem in the park does. Actually, that's not a bad analogy; even if you don't care about the latest Westlife CD, lots of teenage girls do, and the same record companies are producing groups like them as produce some of the more original material that your particular demographic might like. If you harm one thing, you harm the whole system, and that's exactly what Napster and all the current P2P tools are doing.

There are ways to make it clear to the record companies that they're overpricing things unreasonably, but this still isn't the right one. If you just broadside them with broadband, you can't be surprised when they fight back, nor can you do much to help the innocent minority using the system who get caught in the crossfire. I have sympathy for those people, but their fellow P2Pers have brought it upon them, everyone should have seen it coming years ago, and the selfish majority are to blame far more than the record companies and such now fighting to have the systems closed down.

Re:Reality issues

[tps12]

Ah, but even if you don't care about wildlife, the whole ecosystem in the park does. Actually, that's not a bad analogy; even if you don't care about the latest Westlife CD, lots of teenage girls do, and the same record companies are producing groups like them as produce some of the more original material that your particular demographic might like. If you harm one thing, you harm the whole system, and that's exactly what Napster and all the current P2P tools are doing.

You wield awesome power over the analogy. To this I counter that I am interested in geology rather than any type of flora or fauna. That is, I do not care about the ecosystem one way or the other. This is in line with the original assumption: that I correspond to someone who uses P2P networks for legal applications. So I do not necessarily care about the wellbeing of squirrel farmers, and thus do not mind the poaching of squirrels in my favorite rock bed in the park.

Even better, perhaps I am interested in certain animal or vegetable species, but these are ones that survive in a seperate niche and are not protected by poaching laws (they can be legally hunted, and are not affected by the populations of other, protected species).

There are ways to make it clear to the record companies that they're overpricing things unreasonably, but this still isn't the right one. If you just broadside them with broadband, you can't be surprised when they fight back, nor can you do much to help the innocent minority using the system who get caught in the crossfire.

When the poacher population explodes and the park authorities suddenly won't let me in anymore (to walk, pick mushrooms, look at rocks, or hunt legally), then I might well be a little piqued at these criminals. But when it comes down to it, the ones depriving me of my park are the park officials. Even if I knew who the poachers were, what chance would I have against them? What is my hobby in terms of importance next to the law? No, the park authorities need to invest greater manpower and effort into finding the poachers and stopping them only, and otherwise resign themselves to the fact that "hides want to be free."

I have sympathy for those people, but their fellow P2Pers have brought it upon them, everyone should have seen it coming years ago, and the selfish majority are to blame far more than the record companies and such now fighting to have the systems closed down.

Okay, I'm going to commit a logical fallacy here, but I can't resist... I have sympathy for those people, but their fellow African-Americans have brought it upon them, everyone should have seen it coming years ago, and the selfish majority are to blame far more than the cops and such now fighting to enact martial law in Harlem.

That is, a legit P2P user is no more to blame for the crimes of Joe Haxor than Colin Powell is responsible for some black lowlife from the hood's crack business. To punish either is to suspend due process, and Constitution trumps DMCA (for the moment...).

Re:Reality issues

[darien]

Stealing is defined in UK law as "wrongful appropriation of goods or services with the intention permanently to deprive." Which dictionary are you using?

Re:Reality issues

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

From the Oxford English:

steal v.t./i.

1. to take (another's property) illegally or without permission, esp. secretly
2. to obtain surreptitiously or by surprise; to gain insidiously or artfully, etc.

Sounds pretty much like the action of the P2P abusers to me.

Added to which, given that downloading music instead of buying it is patently depriving those who sell it of the money they would otherwise obtain, it is stealing according to your legal definition also.

Re:Reality issues

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

OK, I give up with the analogy already. :-)

It occurs to me, though, that the whole situation is much simpler than that. The criminal justice system in every democracy I know of has made well-documented, and sometimes very serious, mistakes in individual cases. However, the vast majority of the time, it punishes and restrains criminal activity. Would you want to live in a world with nothing but "natural law", in order to protect those very few who are wronged? It's not an easy question to answer, and neither is the P2P issue. On the whole, though, I think I favour the current approach at present. Of course, in the criminal justice systems of the world, you generally have the chance to appeal if they make a mistake, while here the closest you have is switching to an alternative service that isn't blocked in order to use your P2P legitimately.

Re:Reality issues

[darien]

I quite like the phrase "gain insidiously." That does seem quite apt.

But I can't accept that "depriving those who sell [music] of the money they would otherwise obtain" necessarily equates to stealing. For one thing, I wouldn't have bought most of the songs I've downloaded (though I'd be FAR more likely to if I could buy them singly rather than being forced to buy a whole album for £10+ - the industry shoots itself in the foot badly there). And anyway, I'm really not sure I've "stolen" the face-value cost of the music. Imagine I spent ten minutes recording myself playing the ukelele, and offered the recording for sale for £1,000,000. If you downloaded it off Napster, would you really consider you'd stolen a million pounds from me?

Re:Reality issues

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

But you're simply attempting to justify your position by claiming that you wouldn't have bought most of the stuff you'd downloaded. Firstly, how can you be sure of that, since you're not in a position where you have to make the choice? Secondly, if you hadn't bought it then you wouldn't have it. If you want it, you're supposed to pay for it. Simple as that, really.

And yes, in your £1,000,000 case, someone has stolen that money from you. Hey, it happens in the art world all the time.

Re:Telecom == XTRA == NZ's AOL

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG Ihug.... you have to be kidding... they kick you off after 3 hours, have the worst tech support in the world, and as for their satilite service, they change the settings on that, then email you to tell you the changes (after they have changed them and can't connect anymore)

Last but not least the 2gb download cap...

Damn. Ihug are not my favorite people, I would hookup with xtra before ihug. fortunately I have no intention of joining either...

I wish I lived in wellington so I could get on telstra-clear'c cable network or better yet citylink.

not done with ranting yet.. My soulution to having happy p2p customers while not killing bandwidth is to remove the restriction on national bandwidth and just cap international traffic. I mean telecom owns all the backbone so it's not going to cost them to use it, and then everyone is happy.

Port blocking?

[ZaneMcAuley]

Just run a SOCKS or HTTP proxy to get around them :D

First pirates, now vampires?

[slipgun]

There are vampires in broadband land

To begin with, people who downloaded music from the internet were equated with people who robbed and looted ships at sea. Now I see they are being compared to the blood-drinking undead.

Re:First pirates, now vampires?

[yoinkslap]

pirates are awesome! but not the computer software kind..they give the originals a bad name. thou ive yet to see nerds go around yelling "arrr!" ...ok, 2, but thats it, i swear.

doesn't solve anything - flatrates

[gl4ss]

I'd love to be in NZ right now! Now all the kiddies that think downloading music and burning it to CDs for their friends constitutes a "business" - like some people I know - have had their access blocked, it means better connections for everyone else who does in fact respect the law. I think this should happen more

Blocking fasttrack doesn't solve anything, those kiddies can still get mp3's from number of sources. Maybe they cap ftp usage next.. and http too.

And just today i heard an add for flatrate on radio that was exactly(About) like this: "-Hello i would like to book a ticket for theatre. - Thanks, do you want one time fee of or the special where you can sit at the theatre for the whole month for 30 euros?"

with adverts like that how can people say that flatrate shouldn't be abused?? when they sell the service as 'use it as much as you can and then some more', you can't really blame those who hog bandwith.

and if somebody actually pays for a burned cd he's stupid as hell, and both he and the burner should be burned.

Hehe, yeah right...

[Anonymous Coward]

"What Telecom fails to recognise is that these people are pushing the envelope of what the Internet can do, and will drive the technology economy in years to come."

BS! How often are these technologies used for something else than piracy?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

What Telecom fails to recognise is that these p...

[mbbac]

What Telecom fails to recognise is that these people are pushing the envelope of what the Internet can do, and will drive the technology economy in years to come.

What Telecom fails to recognise is that peer-to-peer applications are probably selling the vast majority of their subscribers on broadband. Initially online gaming drove broadband adoption, however once that niche is filled you need something more mainstream to drive sells, and that is peer-to-peer.

So Build Your Network on Top of Them

[Greyfox]

Just build a tunneled VPN on top of them. Once you have your own network set up, ports and routing are no longer an issue. Hell, some (most?) of the nodes on your network don't even need to be directly connected to the Internet. All they need is a connection to someone on your network willing to provide a connection.

Of course, the whole thing would probably evolve into a microcosm of the Internet, complete with nodes cutting off or throttling the bandwidth hogs so that they can get reasonable download times.

It'd be interesting to come up with a peer to peer system to let anyone find and establish connections to your cloud without having to establish a relationship with a peer first. I think the Cult of the Dead Cow has something similar though I can't recall the name of the software (Haven't had my coffee yet this morning.)

Re:damnit

[kiwipeso]

I get to vote against those new zealand politicians this year, I just hope we still have the main opposition party strong enough to block some very bad laws...

Anybody heard of a thing called profit?

[arfore]

It is interesting that most of the people complaining about this are saying that the bandwidth cap should be lifted. The technology to offer the unlimited bandwidth to a large community of users may not be dramatically expensive anymore, but that is not the only cost involved.

There are staffing expenses, electrical, and others. If you don't like what they are doing vote with your feet and go somewhere else, but don't whine because you can't download multi-gigabyte files that are illegal in the first place.

To the users who say that there are other legal P2P applications on the web: good. Now all you have to do is find some way to filter the copyrighted material from the other users. What? That's draconian you say? Well, why should you be allowed to get for free what other people have spent a lot of time and money producing?

Re:Anybody heard of a thing called profit?

[Ziviyr]

Peer to Peer comminucations is not limited to file transfers. That few things take advantage of that fact is something that annoys me.

Re:Anybody heard of a thing called profit?

[Mulletproof]

Oh goody. Another shortsighted weenie assuming that all P2P transactions are illegal. Do you ever speed in your car? Do LOTS of people speed in their cars? Gee, it's amazing we don't put 65mph caps on all cars or just outlaw them all together for the crimes commited in them. But you wouldn't whine and complain about THAT now would you? 9_9

Who is more greedy and most stupid?

[software_non_olet]

All partners in this game know exactly, that traffic costs money. Yet the ISPs try to catch customers by selling things under price - a "flat rate" which cannot be "flat". And the heavy users buy it, because they know the price for it is not realistic, if heavily used. While the low-volume users simply don't count one plus one with their fingers.

The result is a clash of interests which can be seen from the very beginning, and the struggle seems to be fought on the shoulders of low-usage customers. But who would buy a telefon contract which promises flat rates for international calls, if he hadn't a use for it?

Vampirism? Who tried to seduce as much customers as possible into a contract with unrealistic "flat rate" offers?

What to do? Simply don't make contracts with somebody who tries to catch you with a "flat rate" which is economically impossible. Stick to realistic offers, then you'll get what you pay for (fast access).

The problems are self-created by all three partners: ISPs, low-volume as well as high-volume customers. Put them all onto a distant island (say New Zealand?) and let them think it over, how greedy and stupid the other two players in this game are.

When I've time, I'll go down into the cellar to laugh.

yuck

[shren]

What Telecom fails to recognise is that these people are pushing the envelope of what the Internet can do, and will drive the technology economy in years to come.

Could you just give me the news and stop telling me what to think, please?

P2P

[Anonymous Coward]

What slashdot and most of it's readers fail to recognize is that P2P is not being used to trade the users property but rather others hard earned product. Whether movies or music or books, most of the filesharing being done is illegal. Get with the program, and understand that just because some monkey programmer is stupid enough to believe that his file sharing GnutelKazaaCrapola will survive on advertising revenues thus it's ok to give it away so the "why does Motorhead want royalties?" actually becomes an argument to these freaks! Christ is this getting old!

Music, created by another person, is not yours to do whatever with! Get it? Probably not! The telcos know this and legally will be held responsible for the activity. They're just covering their asses. When you own an isp, you can pay the attorney fees and penalties, until then SHUT THE PHUCK UP!

Order of magnitude more expensive

[yerricde]

If you want a connection with all the bandwith and where you can run all services, yo pay the full price. Usually those accounts are named Business-something.

Very few people have $1000 per month to spend on full service Internet connection.

So why's everybody whining, when a telco or ISP starts to enforce those limitations?

Because if the telco or ISP has a government-granted monopoly, there is no alternative.

Interesting snippet

[BenBenBen]

There was an interview with the legal representation for the IFPI on the BBC yesterday that I was listening to out the corner of my ear, discussing the "fall" in industry profits. The phrase that caught my attention was "we are going after the people that run these [P2P] networks, and the ISPs that allow access to them".

This sounds a hell of a lot like we can expect to see, and be subjected to, things like this from our ISPs. Not a happy thought.

bnl

[freeefalln]

it also might help if you spelled the bands name correctly, barenaked ladies, im sure you'd get more hits that way

Re:bnl

[Ziviyr]

barenaked ladies, im sure you'd get more hits that way

Actually, for sub-word search capable clients (most I'm guessing) that more limits the amount of hits you might get.

Bare and naked can be found in barenaked, but there is no barenaked in bare or naked.

kb vs KB

[freeefalln]

why is it that even people on slashdot get kb and KB mixed up? 150kb/sec is not the same as 150KB/sec.

Re:kb vs KB

[Ziviyr]

why is it that even people on slashdot get kb and KB mixed up? 150kb/sec is not the same as 150KB/sec.

I think you mean Kb and KB, kb is just laziness.

Who fails to recognize the weed he's just havin'?

[Qbertino]

What Telecom fails to recognise is that these people are pushing the envelope of what the Internet can do, and will drive the technology economy in years to come.

Yeah. Shure. What ever you just smoked, timothy, please don't let me have a puff :-).

hmmm ...

[afxgrin]

So you're telling me that all the OSS and GPL'd code in the World was created by selfish people who had no incentive to create?

Not buying that argument.

Re:hmmm ...

[The Cat]

Day job.

Bills are due *every* 30 days.

Re:Bandwidth limiting by IP - unfeasible

[boltar]

It doesn't matter , if it comes from his IP address then hes using bandwith. I meant doing this on total bandwidth usage , not on TYPE of
usage.

NZ is america's pet.

[Anonymous Coward]

When the US wants to try some new shit, they tell NZ to do it first. This way they:

- see if it can success

- say "NZ did it already and nobody complained, so don't complain either"

poor NZ blokes get some attention this way and feel they are part of the world and not just some island in another planet.

my $0.0025 cents

Re:NZ is america's pet.

[Anonymous Coward]

my $0.0025 cents

= AU$1

~~~

Re:Bandwidth limiting by IP - unfeasible

[boltar]

Sorry , meant going to there. If he gets spam or ping flooded , well I'm sure there could be exemptions for ICMP packets and if he's simply
downloading off a POP3 or IMAP server owned by the ISP then they could do some cross checking.

Analogy...?

[I didn't]

Would you now say it was fair to order twice as much as everyone else, and a bottle of champagne for yourself?

This analogy is flawed. Because we're odering a set-meal here. The restaurant is advertising that I can have that much of food and now they said I ate too much when I had the amount they advertised!!

So do I have to pay AMD more if I run SETI?

Or do I have to pay more if I filled up my hard drive?

The answer is obiously a big NO.

I bought my 1.4GHz because it is advertised as 1.4GHz. How many % of its full potential I use is my business.

Same as my ADSL connection. I subscribed to my current ISP because they has been advertising it is a nkbps pipe.

P2P and NZ

[Anonymous Coward]

>What Telecom fails to recognise is that these people are pushing the envelope of what the Internet can do, and will drive the technology economy in years to come.

Oh yeah? Why don't you go work for Telecom then Timothy?
They can sure use an insightful person like you.

Actually..

[Anonymous Coward]

In a good p2p the traffic would be more localized and actually saving them. However, there are currently several reasons for banning it:

-You could easily extend the network to your neighbors. Not good for monopolies.
-Controlling content is next to impossible. Not good pr and might get sued too.
-Currently, users of p2p networks tend to move gigabytes of data while your average vidiot does half a percent of it. Not good for traffic costs.
-If it's too efficient you can't charge more for a "real service". Not good for screwing customers.

Will be interesting to see what happens when a brave new isp gives unlimited 10 megabit connection to localnet and some sorry 10 gigs per month cap in outside traffic and actually advertises it. There are plenty who wouldn't like such a thing..

Re:Eva !?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ohne Bier?

Oh you poor man.

Maybe they should handel This like car insurance.

[modipodio]

i.e , you pay alot for unlimited bandwith ,but if you use under a certain amount you pay less next month. Sort of like car insurance where if you do not crash the car/make any claims your premiums go down.This would be a better way if it was workable for isp's to control prices than just plain caping bandwith.

Also I would like to point out that alot of isp's advertisement's are misleading and give the impression that they are offering unlimited bandwith when actualy they are not, I say this as there seem's to be alot of angry comment's here giving out about people who are heavy bandwith users and these people do not seem to take into account that alot of the time isp's can be misleading in the way they advertise there service, at the end of the day if you sell your service as unlimited it should be unlimited, if it is not , then do not advertise or mislead people into thinking that it is, personaly I think people should get what they payed for and not have there account's frozen because they did not read the fine print.

Pay per packet.. im outta here

[nurb432]

If we get to that point, im back to dialup/BBS land..

Re:Pay per packet.. im outta here

[Beliskner]

If we get to that point, im back to dialup/BBS land..

I already am. The packet counter meter could give big discounts for off peak use. There are 2 possibilities:

1. Our future Internet bills will look like this except substitute IP_PacketCount into Kwhours

2. Metering was somehow impossible, all there is are flat flees. To get maximum household penetration (majority of customers are Joe sixpack too stupid to shop around ISP), cable companies' broadband will be HDTV-over-IP with email on the ISP's portal. All other uses of the Internet will be a breach of policy. HDTV-over-IP will be cached at Point of Presence or multicast from the ISP. Joe sizpack will be a very happy man for a flat fee of $40. The only remnant of the free Internet will be the Google search textbox (bought by Micro$oft in 2004) in the corner of the ISP's portal homepage. Pay an extra $30 to get Internet access and you'll find a void, as the drop in ad revenues no longer pays for bandwidth+servers. Independent websites will require you to have run a Cydoor signed applet for 5 minutes before allowing you access to the site's homepage. Well, at least we'll have our privacy from people like doubleclick.net.

3. Metering is impossible, but Joe sixpack demands the free Internet otherwise he won't pay a dime. Due to negligible advertising revenues, all content providers are about to go bankrupt. A transparent proxy (e.g. Squid) at the ISP can count the number of HTTP GET requests sent to each website. They pay for the bandwidth to the backbone PLUS a royalty to the content provider to whom the HTTP GET request was sent. {My lunch is getting cold so I can't think about this thoroughly}. If not transparent proxy then the IETF can come up with a "IP collect call reverse charges type" protocol. And there I was thinking that virtual circuits were out of fashion ?-)

Re:Pay per packet.. im outta here

[Anonymous Coward]

"The World Won't Miss You" -- Reverend

Re:Pay per packet.. im outta here

[Anonymous Coward]

all content providers are about to go bankrupt

I am a content provider, I have a website which focuses on a small part of history that is regularly browsed by those interested in the same topic. It is 346 html pages at last count.

I am not about to go bankrupt. It is vanity publishing that is affordable. I can afford it and am glad I have an outlet that is readily viewable and of use for others. If CNN cant survive in that environment, it is not my concern.

mocom-

Re:Pay per packet.. im outta here

[Beliskner]

I am a content provider, I have a website which focuses on a small part of history that is regularly browsed by those interested in the same topic. It is 346 html pages at last count.

I am not about to go bankrupt. It is vanity publishing that is affordable. I can afford it and am glad I have an outlet that is readily viewable and of use for others. If CNN cant survive in that environment, it is not my concern.

Who pays for your bandwidth? Who pays your hosting fees? Perhaps a freebie thrown in by your ISP to sweeten the deal. If your website becomes popular and people demand more information, and need new content (ala tomshardware), who's going to pay for the research? Right now it's ad revenues or web surfers' credit cards. But here comes the chicken and egg - who's going to pull out their credit card for tomshardware if they need to pay to read it for the first time? Will they erect billboards on the highway? Which highway, which State, only in California? Maybe tomshardware would accidentally become an exclusive Californian Internet chatroom

I'll admit that the gross excesses of before with armies of $150,000 HTML developers creating websites that on /. would be Score: -1, Redundant is gone. However now we're seeing a worrying swing in the opposite direction where if you put up a website you have to pay, plus if it becomes popular you have to pay for bandwidth, all out of your own pocket. I'm not even considering the cost of refreshing content like news stories or TV listings. This kills free content, relegating it to some Bill-of-Rights pleasing formality like the Public Access Channel.

If CNN cant survive in that environment, it's not my concern

CNN: big website, nice fresh content, ad supported
Tomshardware: big website, nice fresh content (latest Athlon MP, etc.), ad supported
Dude, you just alienated the whole of /.

Wake up!

[Anonymous Coward]

XXAA etc are equally against legal copying as well as illegal. Copyright infringement is just a scapegoat. If p2p goes far enough, those organizations as they currently are, become OBSOLETE no matter whose data people copied. Each copy is out of their pocket owned they them or not.

One problem

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't pay fixed price per packet/megabit due to moore's law. ISPs would have to tweak their prices greatly down every few months. Until that trend slows down we just can't have a very mature infrastructure. (same goes for computer programs too..)
Much better alternative would be some clever bandwidth capping and prioritizing with fixed monthly prices and ramping the service up every now and then when competitors seem to be offering a better alternative. (just that we need a better system than having a fixed x kb/s or terminating accounts that actually use the net)

Change protocols?

[ProfMoriarty]

I read the articles, which where a little light in the technical stuff ...

Instead of P2P using thier own port system, couldn't they use Port 80 tunnelling? A RFC has even been created for it (however, the RFC addresses different issues).

Then the data shouldn't be distinguishable between web-surfing and file-sharing.

What?

[Anomolous Cow Herd]

Please explain to me how pirating movies and MP3s is going to drive the economy for years to come.

Doomed to repeat it...

[Mulletproof]

Reminds me of what Simplenet used to do. "UNLIMITED SPACE ONLINE for a low monthly fee!" Unlimited, until users found out it was a great place to create gigantic MP3 archives. Once Simplenet found out what "unlimited" truly meant, MP3 archives were shutdown with a quickness (I'm sure legal pressure came to bear as well) Seems Telecom and Time Warner weren't the first to realize that their customers will acually use the services a company claims to provide without restriction. They weren't the first and they probably won't be the last. Victims of their own marketing. How ironic.

Look around...

[NeoSkandranon]

Power companies do not forbid you from running eight computers, four space heaters and a fridge and washing machine in your home, because it uses too much electricity, they simply charge you for what you use.

Granted this is somewhat a different situation, why can't the NZ telcom do the same for bandwith? Is the cost per megabyte so expensive they think they can't feasibly pass it on to users?

Honestly i'm glad bellsouth doesnt charge me for my bandwith, my connection speed is adequately fast (advertised 1.4mbit) but i would go back to dialup if i had to pay per meg. The scary part would be when they started charging me for the megs going up my pipe due to filesharing instead of down from my own activities.

Re:Look around...

[/dev/trash]

Granted this is somewhat a different situation, why can't the NZ telcom do the same for bandwith? Is the cost per megabyte so expensive they think they can't feasibly pass it on to users?

Well if they would meter it as accutately as electricity, ie I could look at the meter and adjust my use as needed, it'd be great.

Telecom...what arrogant bastards...

[kris_b]

This is the same Telecom who charged a man NZ$337.50 for being an arrogant bastard.

UIUC does it.

[Denium]

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign already does this.

Quoting from their page (a more general overview is here):

The concept of "rate-limiting" is to allow residents to download large files without getting turned off. However, the more you download in a 24 hour period, the slower your connection may get. The connection will then be restored back to full speed when the total count falls under the limit in a 24 hour period. This is still based on the previous 750MB limit for each resident per day. Currently, all halls have Rate-Limiting. The numbers and traffic patterns will be watched and some of the numbers can be adjusted for better performance and service if needed.

Their system uses four different classes: unrestricted, and restricted(A,B,C). They also have a CGI available which will display your current use. It's rather interesting, IMO.

Look around...

[Mulletproof]

Hmmm... Come to think of it, this would be the Labels best way to kill the MP3 revolution if they could somehow (or if they haven't done it already) make deals with ISPs or convince them all this traffic is costing the money. If the act of sharing any sort of file becomes prohibitivly expensive for the average person, you'd surely stunt the digital music's expansion across the web.

Not that'd I be a fan of this measure. This kind of cap is another huge step down the road of a not-so-free internet (not talking $$$ either) Besides, since I could see the Labels being shortsighted enough to pull something like this, it'd be ironic because they'd ultimately be shooting themselves in the foot when the full-blown move to digital music finally comes. "I have to pay for the music and the ISP fee for extra traffic!?" Heh.

Nice business model

[Anonymous Coward]

Sell bandwidth, and when people start using the bandwidth, prevent them from using it. HELLO? If you get tons of p2p people, give up the flatrate. Simple as that!

Its Not Xtra

[Anonymous Coward]

Its Not Xtra anymore. Its now XtraMSN. So not a surprise.

Vampires???

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell is that supposed to mean? I think that all P2P app users in NZ should file a class action suit against the author and company for 100 Billion in damages...

I really wish these fat telco's would get off their arses and develope new economy profit models instead of rolling back to old style models that no one is really willing to pay for anymore.

If I want to runn an HTTP server, POP3, FTP, and P2P, it should be my right if my contract says no limits on bandwith useage or other wise mentions them... if a contract does mention limitations, it should be license for a public lynching of the idiots who thought that up and put in the contract because it means they have no business sense to the customer's needs versus their profit line.

hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Xtra is part of Telecom. Microsoft bought into Xtra. So Telecom limits connectivity to Windows Update? WTF?!?!

How to fight back

[PD]

Cancel your current internet service and get a DSL line from DirectTV. They give you a static IP for the same price as everyone else's dynamic service. They explicitly allow you to run whatever the hell you want to run on your line.

VOTE WITH YOUR CHECKBOOKS PEOPLE

Re:How to fight back

[kindbud]

They [DirecTV] give you a static IP for the same price as everyone else's dynamic service.

Not in PacBell territory, they don't. If the ILEC that DirecTV must deal with does not offer static, then neither does DirecTV. I asked specifically about this when they sent me the offer, and they said static IP is not available in Southern California because PacBell makes all the reseller ISPs use PPPoE.

The only DSL users in PacBell-land that get static are business DSL and a handful of grandfathered PacBell residential static IP customers. Everybody else - including all resellers - have been forced to PPPoE.

I agree. Completely. However.

[mindstrm]

The reason they do this is simple: Marketing, marketing, marketing.

Though you or I would love to simply pay for what we use, it would become a support nightmare for the company, and would be more confusing for their average customer (the only customer who matters). Customers would leave for other ISPs who offer them fixed rates, etc. After all, who wants to run a webserver?

What's the breakeven point for sharing data?

[mjjareo]

At what point does the cost of broadband become greater than the cost of using the mail to exchange data?

Before the days of broadband, I routinely mailed many GB of music around using CDR and CDRW. For about $3 I could ship someone a dozen disks. For $45 bucks a month, the cost of my Road Runner connection, I could ship several hundred disks. As the storage capacity of disks grows, these costs go down.

If bandwidth costs more than the mail, is it really worth it?

DUMB ASS!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong country you dumb phuck faggot.

Reponse

[Anonymous Coward]

What Telecom fails to recognise is that these people are pushing the envelope of what the Internet can do, and will drive the technology economy in years to come.

Get real. We all know that they are just downloading porn and warez. I fully support this ban and wish my cable company would do the same -- I'm tired of these slow connections and bandwidth caps thanks to all the p2p warez d00dz.

The music doesn't matter -- the protocols do

[mactari]

> No! The people who invented P2P apps maybe are
> pushing the envelope of what the net can do - but
> 95% of the people on the biggest P2P networks are
> just downloading free music. They're not pushing
> anything other than their luck, because they're
> basically massively abusing the system.

Initially I agreed wholeheartedly, but on second thought I think I disagree.

What's being tranfered isn't important -- how is. If people want to download these shows from a cerntralized server, they'd still be pulling down gigs of data. I wonder just how bandwidth intensive the searches are compared to the actual file pulling.

Either way, it's yet another wholly new paradigm; the client is creating the server out of nothing. It's free IT infrastructure created by the same people that are using it. What could be more fair than that? Even if Gnutella's not horribly efficient now, the fact that these "freeloaders" are using p2p on a practical scale has allowed people to study the systems and suggest improvements (eg, http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~matei/PAPERS/gnutel la-rc.pdf) that will help reduce the overhead for these headless servers (sorry for the pun), making for better p2p advances in the future.

And as sneaky as KaZaa was about adding the "faux-Trojan", using a client's extra bandwidth to serve your ads is a brillant idea that has to be a sign of things to come [that are hopefully a little more straight about what they're doing].

As another poster pointed out, you can put a cap on the problem or the net can evolve to start using itself in a way that meets the proverbial "needs of tomorrow". Thanks to kids downloading mp3s, we're on our way.

Ever hear of NIMBY?

[Pooua]

What Telecom fails to recognise is that these people are pushing the envelope of what the Internet can do, and will drive the technology economy in years to come."

Everybody wants advancement, but many want it to come at other's expense. Corporations are no different, particularly when they plan to make money through a competing business plan.

Cable Technology

[harlows_monkeys]

Cable systems have limited upstream bandwidth. Bad things happen to TCP when the upstream saturates. It doesn't take many people uploading, even at only 128k, to saturate the system upstream.

As long as cable systems have these limits, P2P is not going to be a good idea on them. The only kind of large upload that doesn't cause technical problems on a cable system is email, because that is going to a server under the cable company's control, which means that they could use traffic shaping on that connection to adjust the usage as needed to keep from saturating the system-wide upstream.

Re:Wrong - developers yes, users no

[Anonymous Coward]

the developers are pushing the envelope. the majority of users are just trying to get their rocks of or avoid paying for movies and microsoft office. they're blocking applications that use lots of bandwidth, 95% of which is for illegal uses.

if you had a p2p app that was not used primarily for infringing uses, it wouldn't be blocked.

Keep voting Demoncrat,

[Anonymous Coward]

And we in the US will be just like the kiwis, i.e. government managment of your life from birth to death for the advantage of the corporations. You think we have that in the US, just go live in NZ for awhile and you will see how bad it can get.

Re:Kinda Sad Really [OT]

[phyxeld]

wow.. right outta 1984, editing history on the fly. It could have just been a typo but why not just own up to it?

Want to see something scarier than newspapers silently revising things? How about the whitehouse? Here is a video clip of George W. claiming we've been alies with japan for a century and a half, and heres the original whitehouse transcript (mirrored) that quietly changes "because for a century and a half now" (which is clearly what he says in the video) to "because for half a century now".

Only after the whitehouse got made a mockery of in the press and on the internet did they finnally do the right thing and update their transcript to say what it should've said in the first place (an accurate transcript of what he actually said, with a '**' noting what he meant to say).

Of course, there was no public acknowledgement that the initial transcript was inaccurate and only changed due to public outcry; but I saw it when the "smoking gun" (inaccurate) transcript was still up at whitehouse.gov, and I can tell you for 100% certain that they actually did this.

The inevitable direct 1984/Eastasia (hey, his speech says eastasia) comparison is here (linking to the google cache because some asshole hacked that site so the original is down).

Theres numerous other examples of the bush whitehouse revising transcripts so they don't make the president look like such a dolt. There was a interesting article I saw about it a few days ago, that mentioned this example and several others (including rumsfeld transcripts being revised too) but even with google I am unable to find it now. If anyone knows the article I'm thinking of, please post a link.

Limiting Bandwidth...

[l0c0]

They may take our women...but they'll never take OUR BANDWIDTH!

Bunny Tears

[surfcow]

If enough customers get fed up with it, they will jump ship and Telecom, Inc will lose serious market share to someone who sells "all you can eat" bandwidth.

Telecom Inc's board of directors will likely spank the CEO until tiny little bunny tears appear in the corners of his eyes. Then the policy will change, again.

Given time, the free market will likely take care of this.

=brian

How to get around telescum

[Anonymous Coward]

All peer to peer programs have to do is release a new version that allows you to choose whatever ports you want .. its EASY. Edonkey has this built into it .. its somewhat hidden .. but to change the port type in port xxxx . I use port 80 as they will never limit that port. (you type it in where the server info pops up)

Emonkey

Re:How to get around telescum

[Sloppy]

I use port 80 as they will never limit that port.

And if you are only connecting to known hosts (ones that you find via social means instead of automated means) all the time, the people who want to stop you, will never find out. But if you're using a directory to find dynamically changing peers (e.g. stuff like router.limewire.org) using an automated method, then the people who want to stop you will be able to at least inconvenience you.

OTOH, if they take my suggestion, then instead of trying to hide form them, you'll keep using a nice well-known port so that your bandwidth bill will stay low and your transfers will go faster and be more reliable, due to there being fewer hops (on average).

How to get around P2P throttling

[Anonymous Coward]

I posted this on a reply but incase its missed ill repost it here.

All peer to peer programs have to do is release a new version that allows you to choose whatever ports you want .. its EASY. Edonkey has this built into it .. its somewhat hidden .. but to change the port type in port xxxx. If you run a fire wall you need to ajust that as well.

Emonkey

Have you seen bandwidth prices in Aus/NZ?

[piku]

That's why they're banning P2P.

Re:Kinda Sad Really [OT]

[Anonymous Coward]

Theres numerous other examples of the bush whitehouse revising transcripts so they don't make the president look like such a dolt. There was a interesting article I saw about it a few days ago, that mentioned this example and several others (including rumsfeld transcripts being revised too) but even with google I am unable to find it now. If anyone knows the article I'm thinking of, please post a link.

Try this article from the Washington Post.

XTRA limits bandwidth, not Telecom NZ

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to make this absolutely clear, XTRA is the company that are shadily limiting p2p bandwidth.

Everyone in NZ has to use Telecom for DSL service because telecom owns all the lines, exchanges, wiring etc. At that point, Telecom limit to 128kps (for jetstart) or no limit (for jetstream).

Traffic is then piped to the ISP who route the data to and from the internet. At THIS point, xtra screw with traffic on the p2p ports and route it through something with bugger all bandwidth to slow it down to almost stopped.

Some other ISPs in NZ also do this, but not as blatently, and not without telling their customers. The real problem that everyone has with xtra is that they did this and outright lied about it - denying any knowledge of it, and saying that they do NOT limit bandwidth for P2P apps.

A few months later after much pressure from the press, they changed tack and said that they do in fact limit bandwidth for p2p apps.

That's what everyone is pissed about.

From a technical point of view, telecom and xtra are entirely different companies. In reality, they are closely tied together at upper managment. This was recently proven when *xtra* commented to the media that they were looking at a 256kbs DSL plan. Telecom should have said this, not xtra, and this statement made all the other ISPs froth at the mouth because telecom has steadfastly refused to allow them anything speed other than 128kbs to their customers.

Re:Kinda Sad Really [OT]

[phyxeld]

Try this article from the Washington Post.

thanks, thats it.

Article is wrong - P2P not blocked (?)

[rh2600]

I think the article has been misinterpreted. This journo is complaining of his download speed over P2P networks, as far as I can tell Telecom has not disabled these ports, and plus you could change them.

Perhaps this guy doesn't understand the technical issues if P2P, I mean he only has a 128k link that's just 2x56k modems, I wouldn't use gnutella on that!

I don't understand

[kasper37]

Why don't they just put bandwidth limits on their customers and charge them for going over their limit?

This is the unlimited traffic service only!

[Jason Pollock]

If you read the article, you'll notice that this only effects Telecom's unlimited traffic service. If you are going to pay for your traffic, by using one of the other plans, then everything is cool.

This is the flaw behind _every_ unlimited traffic plan there is. It is no longer economically viable because people are now able to saturate their links while they aren't there, and without running traditional "servers". As we saw with AOL/Time Warner, everyone is putting free traffic caps on their services.

The silly thing is that Saturn, the cable broadband competitor tried out a flat fee all you can eat broadband about a year ago. They abandoned it after about 6 months for the same reason. Their comparable plan gives you 10GB of traffic per month.

Jason Pollock

What about Afghanistan?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about Afghanistan? I am sure that about six months ago, the US Government was saying "We are going to Afghanistan to catch Osama bin Laden, DEAD OR ALIVE!!!1!". Then a couple of months ago, a Pentagon spokesman was saying "We never said we were going to Afghanistan to catch bin Laden. We have met all our objectives, stamping out terrorism and bringing peace to Afghanistan".

I was all like "WHAT? You said you WERE going to get bin Laden, now you're just pretending you never said that???". And the Press who were there, did they ask this question? Or did they just shut up and pretend that this Doublespeak was true? You bet they shut up and didn't say anything.

So was I hallucinating, or is the Pentagon blatantly lying about their intentions and about what they said in the past? Who else noticed this? Why is there a vast conspiracy of silence about this?

Re:What about Afghanistan?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is there a vast conspiracy of silence about this?

Shhhh!

OT: Bad Analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

"Like if you started 8 air conditioners [in one house] in USCA you wouldn't make alot of friends. I wouldn't doubt there are laws concerning power usage [there are when there are water shortages]."

(Ignoring the rationing scenario...) there's a way power companies deal with this, it's called demand charge. If you're a customer who could impose a significant peak load on the grid (think of a factory where they push the button at 8:05 on Monday morning to start the production line), the power supplier will often impose a charge based on the peak amount of power used in any (say) 15-minute interval. (This in addition to the total KWH consumed). You don't see this in residential situations because (1) the kind of peak load a typical dwelling can impose is low compared to a business and (2) the cost of measuring and accounting for it would exceed the revenue derived. Gentlemen, start your air conditioners.
+++
Quality AC posts since 1999!

Re:Telecom == XTRA == NZ's AOL

[Anonymous Coward]

I like how when you send an email to the ihug webmaster they don't actually send it to a webmaster. They have an autoreplyer asking if you're sure you want to contact them - and then they give you the real address.

Ihug are bloated pigdog, too.

Bandwidth and the cost of delivering it

[coli2]

http://www.zdnetindia.com/biztech/specials/datacen tre/features/stories/2374.html 11,020 gigabits per second undersee cable. http://www.kyuden.co.jp/english/What-New/English/h 010525b-2.html http://www.kyuden.co.jp/english/kjcn/index.html 2.88 terabits per second undersea cable connecting Japan and South Korea over 250km at a cost of US$60 million. Oh, and 95%+ of backbone fiber bandwidth is unused.

Bandwidth and the cost of delivering it (

[coli2]

My previous post messed up badly...

http://www.zdnetindia.com/biztech/specials/datac en tre/features/stories/2374.html

11,020 gigabits per second undersee cable.

http://www.kyuden.co.jp/english/What-New/English /h 010525b-2.html
http://www.kyuden.co.jp/english/kj cn/index.html

2.88 terabits per second undersea cable connecting
Japan and South Korea over 250km at a cost of US$60 million.

Oh, and 95%+ of backbone fiber bandwidth is unused.

Telecom owns Xtra, it's a telecom decision

[kiwipeso]

You'd be better off with Paradise.net on DSL or paradise.net on TelstraClear cable.

Telecom is a influential company

[Anonymous Coward]

They could ignore the law without fear. Why? Because the government is afraid of them.

violation of contract?

[maxpublic]

It seems to me that if the ISP promises you a certain upload/download limit in the contract and doesn't specifiy exceptions within that contract then they're in breach. The problem here isn't the 24/7 use of peer-to-peer applications, but the fact that the ISP didn't take this into account when they made their extravagant promises.

My own ISP has promised me 1.5m/128k download/upload with no restrictions in the contract. It's one of the reasons I signed with them in the first place. Telling me after the fact - after the signing - that certain applications or uses aren't allowed because they actually take advantage of the promise to it's fullest extent is a breach. The blame doesn't lie with me if I wish to run Gnutella 24/7, but with the ISP for making promises they can't keep and then reneging on their agreement - especially when they do so only for certain users.

Max

I Wonder How this Affects the Protocols?

[herbierobinson]

At first guess, one would think throttling P2P protocols would have a more than linear affect on total bandwidth usage, because it would keep super-nodes out of their network. I'll bet that's what they are trying to do, anyway.

BUT, it could backfire. It's possible that keeping super nodes off the network would actually cause more expensive (outside their network) traffic and actually increase their expenses.

This will happen in the US too.

[Snowfox]

We can't be far off from this in the US.

Here's the rest of the picture --

Part one
Part two