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

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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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?

[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).

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

[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

[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

[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'

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

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: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.

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.

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...

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.

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!

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 ?-)