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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

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.

-

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

[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? :)

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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

[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."

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?

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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

[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.

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...

[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:Who cares

[Plug]

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

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.

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;>

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?

[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.

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: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?

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

[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.

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.

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 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]

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

[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

[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 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.

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.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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.)

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.

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: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 ?-)

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?

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: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.

Re:Kinda Sad Really [OT]

[phyxeld]

Try this article from the Washington Post.

thanks, thats it.

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

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

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...

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