PA ISP to Restrict P2P Uploads

Maleko writes "PenTeleData, once an innovator in broadband internet service, (was one of, if not the first cable internet providers in the USA) has decided that their customers need to disable P2P uploads or face possible filtering to stop uploads. DSLReports has the story." While an interesting solution on the part of the ISP, it will definitely increase the number of "leechers" on file-sharing systems.

Comments

P2P networks

[Isbiten]

So? I will jsut use another app that isn't suing the same port

Re:P2P networks

[turnstyle]

"I will jsut use another app that isn't suing the same port"

Please let me suggest my app, Andromeda, which uses the web. I do ask that people pay for the software, but I've put years of work into it, and I think you'll find it to be a good thing.

-Scott

Re:P2P networks

[Anonymous Coward]

A new open source business-model?

1) Write free software.
2) ?
3) Change port to be able to continue warezing.
4) Profit!

Re:P2P networks

[Anonymous Coward]

Run everything on Port 80, lets see them block that.
They then have to monitor every bit of traffic (more strain on them :D)

Encrypted links via PGP desktop? (download that at any good P2P outlet :D )

Re:P2P networks

[0x0d0a]

They don't *need* to, because they can just say that you're exceeding your upload limits. They don't care about *what* is generating the upwards traffic -- they just want users not saturating it.

If you were going to do what you're suggesting, you'd want something that's SSL-tunneled and runs on 443. They can't possibly monitor that, particularly if the remote P2P client also responds to HTTPS requests (their probes) with a valid response code (like 503 or something).

Re:P2P networks

[OrangeSpyderMan]

You all assume that the only way an ISP can filter traffic is at the TCP/UDP layer, or the IP layer. This is wrong. Content based filtering, while still expensive is a *real* possibility, and has come on in leaps and bound. Level 7 switches have come down in price a lot, and are a fairly simple way of implementing application layer priorities. Just a thought, but don't get to excited at the idea that no ISP will ever filter anything that uses port 80 tcp.

Re:P2P networks

[glesga_kiss]

It's nice, I've seen it before. However, you'll need a global search function if you want to compete with P2P... ;-)

Re:P2P networks

[glesga_kiss]

Sure, they'll then block incomming port 80 traffic, then we can't run webservers without using an obsure port.

Re:P2P networks

[glesga_kiss]

exceeding your upload limits

The whole concept is crazy. When I pay for a 512/256 connection, I expect to be able to use it all the time. Obviously, you have to allow for occassional network congestion, but if you can't utilise your full bandwidth most of the time, surely that must be considered false advertising?

Re:P2P networks

[digitalsushi]

If you want a 512kbit connection all to yourself, you should be paying the same an ISP pays for 512k- roughly 650 to 800 dollars a month for the port charge and data hookup. ISPs make money by overselling their service. They dont have to sell to a person, and if a person breaks their model, they can stop selling them service. I was just gonna say life ain't fair, but... this is fair.

Re:P2P networks

[EvilAlien]

Actually, this isn't all that expensive. Content filtering a real option that ISPs may take increasingly in the future. Technology to do this will come out of the same flow and signature analysis IDS relies on. Port schmort, its all about the payload.

Re:P2P networks

[EvilAlien]

Getting a broadband residential connection for your home or office doesn't mean you have a dedicated and guaranteed 512/256 mb slice of the available bandwidth. You simply AREN'T paying for that, despite how much your tiny $30-40/mo may feel like it is worth to you. There is no way your monthly broadband bill is fair compensation to the ISP for 24/7 usage of that level. Residential connections and networks are engineered for bursty traffic, and there is nothing in the marketing literature that contradicts this. The terms like "unlimited" that just about every ISP uses comes from the context of dialup, wherein you are limited to a certain time connected to the network. Broadband (most implementations) connect you to the network 24/7, but aren't a dedicated pipe for your server. Make no mistake about it, when you configure a P2P app to share out without limits you are running a server, and can/should be shut off by your ISP for breach of their TOS.

I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but many of today's Internet users have somehow come upon the idea that they have a right to do whatever they want. Your rights end at the cable modem, past that it is the ISP's network, resources, and rules that govern the priveledge of connecting to the Internet. Just because you pay a piddling amount of money every month does not let you dictate terms of service. Despite common misperception, the customer is not always right.

Re:P2P networks

[Anonymous Coward]

BS I dont see how an ISP can filter encpryted traffic.

Re:P2P networks

[Mad Bad Rabbit]

Even if the FTC cared, the ISPs would simply
start adding obDisclaimer: "Monthly traffic
limits apply. Rate is for residential uses
only. Federal copyright regulations apply.
Offer void in states that have voids." etc.
etc.

Re:P2P networks

[glesga_kiss]

dedicated and guaranteed 512/256 mb slice of the available bandwidth. You simply AREN'T paying for that

Yes I am. That's what the adverts said. You obviously have to make allowances for occassional slowdowns, but if they advertise that level of service, I expect to get that level of service. How they handle and pay for it behind the scenes is their problem, not mine.

Ditto blocking ports, they shouldn't be advertising it as "Internet Access", because once you start breaking the RFCs, then it's no longer the Internet, just a subset of it.

We do have a right to do what we want, it's supposed to be a free market. If my ISP ever imposes any of these conditions on me, I'll switch to another. There are at least 20 different providers offering broadband in my area. My current ISP is a cable provider, if they lose me, they lose a customer that is paying for digital cable, their "gold" cable modem package, and two telephone lines. Should I ever have to switch, I'll damn sure tell them why. If consumers don't stand up for themselves, they get trampled on.

Re:P2P networks

[Fuzzle]

Exactly. The Packeteer ( http://www.packeteer.com/ ) is what my college uses. And when configured properly it can choke a p2p connection all the way or down to 2k a person or connection. Not too expensive if my school bought it, cause they are cheapskates. The problem is that people still try to connect, and it can end up choking the whole connection, because of so many repeating connections. But if it's tweaked properly, it can work.

Re:P2P networks

[turnstyle]

Hey, I'm glad you like Andromeda. As I just pointed out in the other followup to my post, Andromeda isn't meant to be a way to anonymously search for and download files.

It's mostly used by people who want to remotely play their MP3 collection, and also by bands and other organizations that want to share their files.

-Scott

Re:P2P networks

[Anonymous Coward]

You know not running a server is against my right to free speech.

There for any contract that calls for this is ileagal.

And there for unenforceable.

Thousands of lawsuits would fix the problem

Verizon my ISP has blocked port 80

I am searching for a new ISP that dont block ports.

else I may go back to dialup

Hell I can always wait till a lug meeting to connect to high speed net and make my big downloads there or ask for a copy of what I need from another member.

Im so fed up that I may just not have a internet connection anymore.

Who need's it.

Re:P2P networks

[Pussy Is Money]

I think your comment reflects the attitude of many Slashdot readers. Personally, I think you are dead wrong, not just in the sense that your beliefs are incongruent with reality (since your connection is neither "yours" nor "unlimited") but in a deeper moral or ethical sense as well. Peter Berkowitz said it better than I could ever hope to, so I'll let him speak for himself:

"The ideal of equality in freedom--the good above all that liberalism seeks to promote--may nurture a tyrannical tendency. Once it has a grip on our souls, freedom grows dissatisfied with being first among goods and sets out to become the one and only good, the good pure and simple. In its quest for unchallenged sway in our hearts and our heads, it can make us soft and selfish, averse to the constraints of that discipline whereby we defer the gratification of some desires for the sake of the satisfaction of higher and better desires, and whereby we show respect for others because it is in our enlightened self-interest to do so."

Re:P2P networks

[crucini]

And there's at least a third possibility: pattern-based QoS that doesn't care about either ports or content. I bet P2P usage has a distinctive "signature" in time. Geeks always underestimate fuzzy techniques like this and bring up edge cases that confuse them, but I think that realistically P2P can be cleanly cut out from the rest of IP traffic with minimal collateral damage. Without looking at either ports or content.

Re:P2P networks

[Blue Stone]

"If you want a 512kbit connection all to yourself, you should be paying the same an ISP pays for 512k- roughly 650 to 800 dollars a month for the port charge and data hookup. ISPs make money by overselling their service. They dont have to sell to a person, and if a person breaks their model, they can stop selling them service."

But isn't this a kind of deception. They don't really state this up-front to their customers.

What I want is a pipe of a given bandwidth that I can do what I want with, and I'm willing to pay £n. If an ISP syas I can only have it for £n2, then I'll look for competition.
Surely that's the way it's supposed to work, not fannying around with, you can't do this with your BW, you can't do that?

Re:P2P networks

[devmike]

This is an example of the problems of the broadband business model.

If you really want 512/256 service, expect to pay what we pay when we hook it up with a backbone.

And sure you have a right to do what we want, but you have to remember that it is quite easy for a customer to cost the ISP more money than they're making on your invoices. Then it doesn't exactly hurt to have you leave.

Re:P2P networks

[Blkdeath]

Even if the FTC cared, the ISPs would simply start adding obDisclaimer: "Monthly traffic limits apply. Rate is for residential uses only. Federal copyright regulations apply. Offer void in states that have voids." etc. etc.

Last I checked, companies don't have to tell you that you're not supposed to break the law.

Wouldn't it be silly if General Motors started telling people that "You are not allowed to run over pedestrians with our products."!

Long story short - if you're using their service to break the law, they can shut you down to avoid litigation. If you're abusing their service, they can restrict your usage or bill you for the additional use.

Re:P2P networks

[Anonymous Coward]

I average about 3GB per day of traffic going either way (3 up, 3 down). It's a residential cable line. I pay the .. what did you call it? "piddling amount of money every month" and I use every ounce of bandwidth that I can. It was advertised as such and I'm not about to sit here and act like a dial-up user just because they think I ought to. If they don't want people like me using their service, they need to fix their advertisements. If they don't want me on their service, they need to cut me off. Until such time, I'll continue using the service as it was advertised to me; an always on, high-speed connection to the internet.

Do you like apples? How do you like THEM apples??

Re:P2P networks

[Casualposter]

The Berkowitz quote is not the issue.

I'm paying for a level of service. A level that I expect to recieve regardless of the time of day or the other activities on the internet. That is the service that I was sold by the nice sales person I talked to on the phone. I was told that I would have this level of service if I agreed to pay a certain sum of money. That sum of money is not trivial to my budget.

If I receive this level of service, but at some time in the future, the service provider decides that because I use the service "too much" that I should be paying more for it, then I will feel cheated. After all, the service advertised was X and now they say that because I used all of the X that I have paid for; I must now pay more! OR instead, they say that my connection must be regulated.

Lets put this in to perspective: The phone comany has gotten most customers to expect certain behavior. If I pay more, I get more service. NOT LESS. If I pay the same now as I did last month I get the SAME service; not LESS. The ISP, by suddenly stating that because a user is actually using the promised bandwidth, (See Note below), that they must now reduce the available service, is going to leave the customer feeling deceived. Imagine the outrage if the phone company that promises unlimited local calling suddenly puts a charge on your bill because you spent the entire billing cycle on the phone using every last bit of unlimted calling time.

The ethics of such things have been found wanting in many other forms of advertising: The Bait and Switch.

This is not a case of the customer being greedy with "his" connection, but the ISP being stupid in the levels of service provided for the dollar earned.

NOTE: That the ISP provides a contract that essentially promises to provide nothing to you including the attempt to come to your house and try to install a working connection to the internet, and that bandwidth may vary, and that they are not in any way shape or form liable for anything including providing the service that you are paying for at all is really boilerplate. Read the contracts on airline tickets, or fedex, or UPS, or the post office, and see what they promise to do for your dollar. If people expected that the company would only do what is listed in the contract, contracts would be very different.

Re:P2P networks

[Pussy Is Money]

The ISP could adjust its pricing to account for the biggest bandwidth leeches but then costs would skyrocket and nobody would buy broadband service. It would make the entire business proposition unfeasible.

So ISPs oversell their bandwidth based on fairly reasonable assumptions about average and peak bandwidth usage and this compromise is what leads to the best arrangement for the largest number of people.

The question is what constitutes reasonable use of the network. By your reasoning, since spammers are paying for their network connection, they should be allowed to spam everybody to oblivion. But realistically they cannot be allowed to do so, for reasons both pragmatic and principled. Equally bandwidth leeches must be curtailed so they do not spoil the service for everybody else, either through rising prices or diminishing throughput.

Re:P2P networks

[Anonymous Coward]

The simplest solution would be to program Kazaa so that by default, it only shares one or possibly two connections at a slower upload speed. I've set them myself, since opening a bigger pipe to uploads really slows down my download speeds as well as my browsing speeds. I've set it to where it's a bearable setting.

Kazaa should just test the connections to be sure it doesn't suck up too much bandwith upstream since most broadband users have asymetric connections. Maybe this will stop, or at the very least, delay, the ISPs from implementing blocks. Also, this may get more people to share. The default setting they have includes a Optimal Bandwith use when Computer is Idle. That just slows my network to a crawl since I have more than 1 machine on my network. That's probably the reason ISP's want to ban P2P. 1d10t neubies probably leave that on and cause the entire network to be clogged especially on Cable systems. They should get rid of that setting or at least not make it a default setting.

It seems to me that less than 20% of Kazaa users actually do any real sharing. When I check the the list of uploaders more than 80% don't share. Usually, if I happen to be checking - less than 5% of the time, I'll just cancel the leecher's uploads until I come across someone that does share. This lets me get to more viable downloads, since they'll have files. Once you click on a share, that shared file is in your queue. I just put them all on hold until I'm ready to grab them a few at a time. This way I'll get my downloads quicker. You can come across more files of the same categories than by searching. Their search engine needs some work. I find more files through users that share than I would just through searching.

Now if more people would share. They only need to allow 1 or 2 uploads at 24 or 32 Kbits/second. That would mean an additional 3-5 KBytes/second download per share. If only another 10% of 3 million share that's an additional 300,000 sharing which could mean an additional 50% increase in downloads spread across users. If an additional 30% of users share, we're more likely to get users within our own ISP, which means we won't need to use the ISP's upstream pipes. Within the same subnet, we'd just use their switches, and there would be no complaints about sharing to Florida from New York or California through their expensive OC3. There isn't that additional cost of sharing through their paid OC3 pipes. Then the ISP's have nothing to complain about.

Hopefully, people would just share. I don't want Kazaa dictating to me that I need to have one share, like some of the other P2P's. I have 2 Kazaa's running, and I don't want one of those to share, since that one uses a work machine and costs us more if we exceed our upstream bandwidth. I use that for the occasions where I can get the 700 MB files in less than 30 Minutes. I leave the slower downloads to my always on home connection. Usually, people don't cancel me, since I'm done before anyone notices and I have multiple connections, so if 1 out of 10 cancel my download, I only get delayed by a few minutes. Ahh... the Joy of OC3.

Re:P2P networks

[Strog]

Plenty of corporate firewalls are setup to shut off outbound encrypted traffic if it exceeds a certain level. My work's PIX does this and doesn't matter if you are tunneling ssh/ssl/etc. on any port, it will shut it off if you get crazy with bandwidth.

ROFL!

[Isbiten]

Maybe I should learn to spell don't you think?

On a somewhat related note, Roadrunner blocks

[JeanBaptiste]

ports 137-139. They also mess with kazaa. /. had a couple stories about this before. Does anyone know how to get past the 137-139 blocks? Do they block it at your modem or at their location? anyone know how to reconfigure a Toshiba pcx2500 cable modem?

Re:On a somewhat related note, Roadrunner blocks

[Anonymous Coward]

The stories they ran were about paranoid users assuming that RoadRunner was blocking Kazaa when the truth was that they were having their own problems getting Kazaa to work.

And why the hell would you want NETBIOS access unless you were simply trying to access other peoples computers on your subnet?

Re:On a somewhat related note, Roadrunner blocks

[eht]

i'm on roadrunner, and it's kind of disturbing to see all the hits i get on ports 137-139, and why would i want to get them anyways?
TCP 137 NETBIOS Name Service
TCP 138 NETBIOS Datagram Service
TCP 139 NETBIOS Session Service
those ports i explicitly anyways, i don't want them in or out

Re:On a somewhat related note, Roadrunner blocks

[eht]

and maybe you missed this Uncap Your Modem, Get Visit From the FBI

Re:On a somewhat related note, Roadrunner blocks

[JeanBaptiste]

I have work computers I could access with DSL from home. Now with roadrunner I cant. I don't want them open on my home computer but I do want to be able to access these on the outside. I dont want a filtered internet, I want to be able to use it to its full functionality.

Re:On a somewhat related note, Roadrunner blocks

[Anonymous Coward]

Then use PPTP to access your works network from home.

Re:On a somewhat related note, Roadrunner blocks

[rugger]

Why do you want to disable the block on ports 137-139. It isn't like you don't have another 65532 ports that you could use instead!

These ports are used by windows file sharing and many ISP's block access to these ports so that users don't get hacked the moment they step on-line.

There is absolutely NO need to be running a windows sharing or a samba server on the public internet. Use HTTP, FTP, peer2peer, rsync or any of the other protocols that are actually designed to be used over the public internet.

I can understand why Roadrunner would mess with kazaa. If I had to put up with wankers like you, I'd be messing with kazaa just as much.

Re:On a somewhat related note, Roadrunner blocks

[LinuxHam]

Does anyone know how to get past the 137-139 blocks?

WebDAV is how to do file sharing over HTTP with or without SSL. Works with IE5/Windows 2000's Web Folders function.

Re:On a somewhat related note, Roadrunner blocks

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need Netbios with roadrunner. It is a security hazard and you should disable it. Never ever run Netbios!

RTFA

[Lethal_Geek]

I know people generally don't read the article with the post, but do people even read the news post on slashdot anymore?

I'm waiting for the "I'll pay more for the bandwidth I'm eating up but uncap my bandwidth" service, I'll be on top of that in an instant.

not surprising

[TheLastUser]

Upstream has always been a problem for cable providers. The system was designed to move content down not up. Just use dsl instead.

Re:not surprising

[moonbender]

DSL? The most common form seems to be ADSL (A for asynchronous) which has the exact same design - it moves more data down than up. Here in Germany the vast majority (I don't have any factual data, but I'd guess more than 95%) are 768/128 kbit ADSL links.

Re:not surprising

[rapidweather]

Well, I can't get broadband cable here anyway, so the idea about dsl looks good. All I want broadband for anyway is to download linux distro iso's so I don't have to pay 'em for a cd.

Re:not surprising

[TheLastUser]

The big problem with cable is that is has a shared cap which means if your neighbor is uploading on gnutella your upload speed is affected. This makes cable operators very sensitive about uploads. In Vancouver (Canada), they actually scan for open server ports (80, 21, 22 etc) and threaten you with disconnection if you won't close them. I get no such harrassment from my adsl provider.

Local adsl speeds here range from 512Kbps/1.5Mbps to 640Kbps/4Mbps. SDSL is also available but its probably cheaper just to colo a server, especially in the states where bandwidth is cheap.

Re:not surprising

[Archfeld]

US is even worse than that, the average Adsl line is actually 384/128 with about 15% missing from that for overhead. If the subscribers are on a contract, and the company has altered their access during said contract period you might have a case, otherwise, time to switch ISP's. One point I always look for is unlimited transfer. If they apply a cap it is NOT unlimited always on access. But of course here in Wonderful America, the truth in advertising APPLIES ONLY to the printed sections, the ones that flash by so small no one could possibly read them, All the announcer hype and BS they SHOW has no validity and is not required to be true. In effect it lets the ISP "say unlimited use, always on, and advertise their connection for blazing fast downloads of MP3, while actually not allowing the applications needed to access those MP3s, and restricting bandwidth which in turns restricts everything else. I have a 768 SDSL connect on a business class line. If they tried to tell me I could not have synchronous 768 24 hours a day 7 days a week I'd drop them so fast. I guess if you really want what you pay for you have go SOHO or business connection, otherwise you are just a cash cow to be milked by large ISP who actually hopes you drop dead the day after paying your next ISP bill.

Re:not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. My cable cable provider even has contract language which they interpret to deny servers. At one time they even scanned ports.

(Personally, I believe my provider's contract language doesn't forbit open server ports--only running services that consime a lot of upstream bandwidth.)

Re:not surprising

[duren686]

As well as songs by your favourite artists so you don't have to pay 'em for a cd.

Re:not surprising

[jofizz]

If only! Telecom ( New Zealand ) has, without any warning or decrease in service price, restricted P2P access to all their DSL customers. I pay NZ$100/month for my home phone line, and a crippled DSL account (128k data speed) Telecom have also recently introduced a 5GB/month data cap. These changes have been made during the time I've been a customer, but of course, there's been no price change.

Re:not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

You think that will cost less? You must be downloading a Linux ISO every day. Let me give you a hint: you can use the same install CD for each machine on your 100 node Beowulf. Linus won't send the BSA after you.

Re:not surprising

[STREMF]

ADSL (A for asynchronous)

I thought the A was for "Asymmetric"

Re:not surprising

[moonbender]

Yes, you're right, of course. Sorry. The rest remains correct, though. :)

Re:not surprising

[mpost4]

I doubt they would like you to drop dead after paying the last bill, they want you alive so they can charge you for many moons.

Berman

[dolo666]

disable P2P uploads

Marshall Berman said, in "All that is Solid Melts into Air", that you can't stop progress, and anyone that attempts to stop progress will be torn asunder by it. I'm paraphrasing with that statement, but you get the point. I find it ironic that the very elements the Bourgeois Elite employ seem to dethrone them, time and time again.

Supply and Demand will solve this problem. :)

Re:Berman

[Anonymous Coward]

well, thank you Mr. Karl Marx for that wonderful and totally irrelevant insight.

Re:Berman

[achaudhary]

Hehe. Nice to see Prof. Berman mentioned on /.. Had him last semester for a very interesting course.

Re:Berman

[Anonymous Coward]

PenTeleData is Bourgeois Elite now? You probably never freakin heard of them until this story.

It's amazing what people will construe from a story. Anecdotal evidence is that, anecdotal; you use it when you have nothing else to support your claim.

Re:Berman

[dubious9]

How is P2P progress? I assume that's the point that you are making.

<rant>Way too many people think P2P access is an inalienable right. How many people here couldn't get even lousy HTTP connections because too many people were downloading full length porn movies and programs? As a sysadmin its a major headache to try and deal out bandwidth fairly. If people could use P2P on my network and not decrease my bandwidth to about 10K, then I'd allow it. P2P sucks up all available bandwidth. Until TCP/IP comes up with a more fair bandwidth sharing protocol, I'm with cutting P2P down. It's simply not fair to other people on the network. How can you justify 1000 CS people not being able to compile stuff on our unix server because too many people in the dorms are downloading music?

At my university, P2P accounted for all major slow downs this year, even when taking into account a three day blackout.

I don't care what you do with "your" bandwidth, as long as it doesn't effect mine. All you P2P advocates people are selfish and greedy. How much more responsive would the net be without P2P? Is porn and wharez and music that much of a nessesity?

IPs are starting to increasingly limit all upload material since they can't effictively block P2P traffic. It's simply not fair that I can't run a small personal website simply because a lot of horny P2P need more material

God think about other people for once. </rant>

Re:Berman

[dolo666]

At my university, P2P accounted for all major slow downs this year, even when taking into account a three day blackout.
Yes, and that is because the hardware is slow to respond to the changes in software. Software changes will always be faster, because software is dynamic and hardware is static. We are already realizing how deprecated static forms of internet design can be; how long do you think it will take before we adapt our hardware to becomming more dynamic until there is a design balance between hardware and software? Okay geeks, now you can spooge. :)

The only reason you are suffering now is because when they designed the whole network at your school, they failed to account for music downloads. Once the rest of society catches up to P2P, they will adjust. Remember when BillG said, "640K ought to be enough for anybody."

Well the designers of your network said something similar. :)

Re:Berman

[dubious9]

Once the rest of society catches up to P2P, they will adjust. My school just upgraded to a 100Mbps network, and separated dorms and lab access. They spent millions of dollars doing it because PostDocs couldn't reliably access research material. All of this because they couldn't handle the dorms bandwidth. P2P regularly peaks at 50% network usage on the dorm network.

Bandwidth is like hard disk space, no matter how much you have, you'll find a way to fill it. When will networks catch up to P2P? With faster networks P2Pers will just download more faster. Network performance for others will still degrade.

Now if there were a way to ensure a fair division of bandwidth across TCP/IP, I'd have no problem with P2P, just as long as I got my fair share. Until then, I have no problem with people banning P2P software. HTTP/TELNET/FPT/IMAP/POP3 is much more important. P2P is a trivial nicety.

Re:Berman

[teasea]

Way too many people think P2P access is an inalienable right...If people could use P2P on my network and not decrease my bandwidth to about 10K, then I'd allow it.

You're point is well taken. Yet I see the issue as less of a right than simple empowerment. P2P allows for the rapid dissemination of information, (and a whole lot of garbage, admittedly) in a cheap, easy way. Blocking uploads will create more leeches and make the ones who share easier to identify. This plays right into the 'Powers Who Be' agendas.
I see the solution of removing the flat fee for bandwidth as the best alternative. Those who use, pay. Leeches would likely be blocked, so if they want to participate...
Yes, I changed the subject: you're comment felt like a natural segue.

Re:Berman

[Xaoswolf]

when they designed the whole network at your school, they failed to account for music downloads

Yup, those silly people that work for the school must have had the idea that you would use the school's network for educational...

Re:Berman

[dolo666]

They spent millions of dollars doing it because PostDocs couldn't reliably access research material.

Man were they pissed when they figured out it wasn't enough, eh? I bet there is a solution coming to all this. Instead of a ban of P2P, maybe tighter priority constraints need to be maintained. Or better yet... maybe a company will get wise and offer a P2P service where you get top notch BW for your buck, while staying out of everyone else's way. RIAA would most likely try to shut that down, however.

We need a technology where we can quickly upload/download anywhere in the world at a relatively inexpensive rate, without any packet loss, blackouts, or slowdowns. Okay geeks: which one of you is going to create it and get rich? :)

Re:Berman

[mattbelcher]

Until TCP/IP comes up with a more fair bandwidth sharing protocol, I'm with cutting P2P down.

Since you are the sysadmin, see what you can do with the configuration on your routers. Since nearly all routers on the Internet today use the Droptail queueing discipline, these issues are epidemic. Try reconfiguring your routers to use Fair Queueing or, better yet, Rate Inverse Scheduling. If your router doesn't support these, ask your vendor why not. Since TCP is a client-side protocol, you can never trust the users to use it properly (as Droptail assumes).

Re:Berman

[wandernotlost]

How is P2P progress?

It's a new technology which allows people to accomplish things which weren't previously possible.

Way too many people think P2P access is an inalienable right.

No, I think that if I'm paying a premium for lots of bandwidth, and that bandwidth was marketed to me as supporting bandwidth-intensive applications such as multimedia, etc., then I should be able to use that bandwidth. By marketing the bandwidth and then saying that users will be punished for using it, the providers are lying to their customers. It's certainly a right if I'm paying for it.

If people could use P2P on my network and not decrease my bandwidth to about 10K, then I'd allow it.

If it's your network, use priority queueing and put the P2P traffic at a lower priority. That would be reasonable at a University, but not at an ISP where I'm paying for bandwidth to do with as I like.

The fundamental issue here is that ISPs made a miscalculation when offering broadband service. They hoped and expected that people would not use most of the bandwidth they were being sold, and made business decisions based on that assumption. Now people are actually using the bandwidth they're paying for, and rather than admitting to their own mistakes, the ISPs villify their customers to address their problems.

If there was sufficient competition in the market, they wouldn't be able to get away with this, as people would simply move to a different provider - or the people who only wanted web surfing would go with a discount provider that only allowed web surfing, and the users that wanted more would go with a different provider. As it is, there's not much stopping the ISPs from behaving this way, and there's not a hell of a lot we can do about it, other than using political power (which the rich ISP conglomerates certainly seem to have more of than their customers) to change the system.

Re:Berman

[Anonymous Coward]

At my university...

I'm sorry, but for $25,000 a year the students deserve all the bandwidth I can use. Stop your whining and do your damn job.

Until TCP/IP comes up with a more fair bandwidth sharing protocol, I'm with cutting P2P down. It's simply not fair to other people on the network.

No, what's not fair is the amount of incompetence the school's IT department expresses. At any real school, no student should have that much time to kill during the day. Your IT department does not meet the needs of the university. Your corporate management is not allowcating a realistic budget, and your independent departments are doing a pathetic job academically challenging the students. There. Eat flaimbait, you troll!

DAISNAID

P.s., your school is run by a bunch of one armed monkeys wearing purple smocks.

Re:Berman

[CashCarSTAR]

The problem isn't the hardware, it's the software.

Modern P2P software is very very messy TCP/IP wise. It wastes a lot more bandwith than it actually uses. Like it or not, it's a necessary evil right now. When P2P software makers finally make the software not so messy, then I'll bitch and complain.

Re:Berman

[extrasolar]

I'm sorry, but for $25,000 a year the students deserve all the bandwidth I can use.

At least you're being honest.

Re:Berman

[reflector]

As a sysadmin its a major headache to try and deal out bandwidth fairly.

so, what you're saying is, you're lazy and don't want to do your job right.

I don't care what you do with "your" bandwidth, as long as it doesn't effect mine.

it's affect, not effect.

i don't care that you breathe oxygen, as long as it doesn't decrease the amount of oxygen left in the world for me to breathe.

All you P2P advocates people are selfish and greedy.

really? i upload about 100x as much as i download. how is that greedy? it actually costs me money for the electricity to leave my pc running all the time, but i do it anyways, even though i'm hardly ever downloading anything. i do it to help other people, and to benefit society by (hopefully) depriving the riaa of income. so, are you still going to claim i'm greedy?

i think the truth is quite obvious - you're just mad that this use of bandwidth isn't going to be helping out *you*.

How much more responsive would the net be without P2P?

how much more responsive would the net be if we could get rid of all women/blacks/hispanics/old people/insert any other group you can think of here ?

It's simply not fair that I can't run a small personal website simply because a lot of horny P2P need more material

life's not fair. and you know, i really don't feel sorry for you at all.

also, your assumption, like the rest of your post, is false. i don't download or share porn.

God think about other people for once.

i think about other people all the time - when i share files, when i check them for correct filenames and to test that they work, and when i hash them and enter them into the bitzi.com database.

i guess what you really mean is, 'think about ME for once'.

Re:Berman

[dubious9]

so, what you're saying is, you're lazy and don't want to do your job right.

You give me something that will effectively block or limit all P2P traffic with 100% accuracy. It's freakin' impossible man, especially because the biggest users also know how to get around roadblocks.

it's affect, not effect.

Yes I'm a terrible speller. Sue me.

really? i upload about 100x as much as i download. how is that greedy?

I don't buy your sense of altruism here. I was however targeting users of P2P on networks, where its use will serious degrade performance for other users. If you buy your own bandwidth, then don't come complaining when your ISP comes knocking at your door. Life's not fair, and you know, I really don't feel sorry for you at all. And you? You're probably just proud because you have a lot of quality stuff other people want.

i do it to help other people, and to benefit society by (hopefully) depriving the riaa of income.

What friggin pie in the sky idealism. Benefit society? By sharing music? Are you real? Get off your high horse man.

i guess what you really mean is, 'think about ME for once'.

Yeah, your right, when i don't have enough bandwidth even to do a rlogin to work from home, I feel mad because I look at the traffic, and I'm sure it's 50% P2P. Like I said do whatever with your bandwidth as long as it doesn't effect[sic] mine. I also defend all the other people on my network that are using their bandwidth for better reasons than grabbing their newest favorite artist's album.

Re:Berman

[reflector]

You give me something that will effectively block or limit all P2P traffic with 100% accuracy.

good. you shouldn't be trying to block p2p traffic. putting limits on how much bandwidth each person uses is reasonable, however.

I don't buy your sense of altruism here.

what's not to buy? i'm just stating a fact.

What friggin pie in the sky idealism. Benefit society? By sharing music? Are you real? Get off your high horse man.

you have a narrow view of p2p. sure i share some music, but other useful things as well - books on philosohpy, programming manuals, star office (which sun no longer has for free on its website), adobe acrobat (which other poor students can't afford to dish out $500 for), just to name a few.

high horse? i dont think so. i'm not claiming to be better than anyone else - i'm just happy to be able to do something to help other people.

I also defend all the other people on my network that are using their bandwidth for better reasons than grabbing their newest favorite artist's album.

speaking of high horse...

so you think that you're more important than other people, or that your use of the network is more justified than other people (which you've made a blanket assumption about what they are all using their bandwidth for)? perhaps while you're at it, you should rant about how other people shouldn't be allowed to use the phone lines unless what they're using the phone for is at least as important as what you're using it for. isps are called common carriers for a reason - they don't engage in narrowminded judgemental notions about who is using the network for what. everyone should have equal access to the network, to the phone lines, to drive on the highway, etc., without any consideration about what they're using it for.

Re:Berman

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, your right, when i don't have enough bandwidth even to do a rlogin to work from home

Ahh... there's your problem right there. You should SSHing, rlogin is old and busted.

Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

While an interesting solution on the part of the ISP, it will definitely increase the number of "leechers" on file-sharing systems.

And hopefully this will lead to the end of systems like Kazaa. While I have no problem with peer-to-peer file trading systems, Kazaa is run by a bunch of crooks (like most of these companies) that are hell-bent on filling your PC up with spyware and crapware. I personally hope they die a fiery death. The network is nice, the company is not.

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

Then use KazaaLite.

Re:Excellent

[yukster]

Why not try kazaa lite? All the fun none of the spyware...

Re:Excellent

[glesga_kiss]

As an alternative to the Kazaa network, try WinMx. I prefer it, once you read some guides, such as this one, it's much more powerful than Kazaa. You have much more control over how it works.

Re:Excellent

[Slashdot Junky]

How about just buy the audio CDs and actually listening to all of the artist's songs instead of only tracks 1, 5, and 8 that you heard on the radio or saw on M-"Videos No Longer"-TV.

Re:Excellent

[NineNine]

I tried WinMX once. It was so impossibly difficult and convoluted, I just nuked it. If companies like Kazza can make their programs very, very simple, why can't WinMX? There's really no excuse for such poor design. Kazaalite does everything I need it to do, and it does it pretty damn well. It's even better now that they have the participation levels in place.

Re:Excellent

[The J Kid]

Why not try giFT with the included openFT plugin.

This uses a own network based on the Fasttrack design, and has lot's of nice sharing users on it.

Recomended.

Re:Excellent

[whereiswaldo]

I'm not sure what you're saying here. Cut off your nose to spite your face?

By that logic, we should simply shut down the Internet because of all the bad things that can be accomplished by it.
The way this is going, all the 'net will be good for in 10 years is advertising and spying on us in our homes.

Re:Excellent

[zonker]

i'm wondering when the last time you ran winmx was... i'm not going to say they are great ui designers, but i think my grandmother could make it work w/o my help. perhaps you should take another look at a recent version.

Re:Excellent

[NineNine]

I remember having to pick servers, and connect to multiple servers, and having to get a list of 'em from somewhere and blah blah blah. It was a royal PITA compared to Kazaa where you click "Search", type in what you want, and click on what you want.

Re:Excellent

[Wingnut64]

Hell, why not just send them money?

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

I do, but the network is still dependent on Kazaa/Sharman (the company).

Re:Excellent

[glesga_kiss]

Ah, that was back when it used the opennap networks. Those days are long gone now, check it out. As I've said in another post, it has much more options than Kazaa and you can really tweak it to get excellent performance, if you know what you are doing.

I hope my ISP doesn't do this...

[darkov]

...it'll ruin my sex life.

Re:I hope my ISP doesn't do this...

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you will have to upload less often or in smaller amounts.

Re:I hope my ISP doesn't do this...

[Anonymous Coward]

What, you masturbate to a list of highspeed uploads in your P2P application?

Re:I hope my ISP doesn't do this...

[darkov]

...it'll ruin my sex life.

Jeez, get a life man. More importanltly, what I'd like to know, is why are ISPs hell bent on pleading poverty in respect to bandwidth and network usage in a period when bandwidth is arguably cheap. All over the place I hear about telcos going broke becuase they overbuilt massive networks in readiness for the broadband revolution and now they are supposedly willing to pay you to take it off their hands.

Are ISPs so bereft of ideas that this is the only way of relieving customers of their money? Can't they add some value somewhere?

Re:I hope my ISP doesn't do this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, don't you?

Cor, look at that 400 k/sec file go!

Re:I hope my ISP doesn't do this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you replying to your own comment and acting like you are talking to a different person?

Re:I hope my ISP doesn't do this...

[buswolley]

Probably it is his evil twin who jumped on while Darkov went to the bathroom. Gosh, didn't you know about evil twins?

Re:I hope my ISP doesn't do this...

[dubious9]

Network capacity and bandwidth are two different thing. The teleco all overbuilt network capacity. You need, however, lots of expensive equipment to put data on the lines. Bandwidth is NOT cheap. If you want dedicated bandwitdh be prepared to send ten times the $40 dollars a month for average cable/dsl access. Again, bandwidth is not cheap, it actually quite the opposite.

Otherwise how can you justify people still buying T1's? They are only 1500 kbps. Answer: all of that 1500 kbps is yours and nobody else can bring it down. In your contract it's garunteed that you get 1500.

Cable/DSL networks are shared bandwidth (cable is share in your neighborhood, DSL at the ISP). It makes sense to me that they are trying to be fair bandwidth wise. P2P sucks up bandwidth. Then they get calls from customers that HTTP access is slow. People do work on HTTP. Poeple don't do work on P2P networks. Who is madder when performance sucks?

Thus, then who do ISP cater to? When something has to go, which is it? Yes, P2P

Re:I hope my ISP doesn't do this...

[darkov]

You're actually right. Except he's not my twin. I'm much better looking.

Re:I hope my ISP doesn't do this...

[whereiswaldo]

A lot of things suck up bandwidth. Why pick on P2P? Linux ISO's take a lot of bandwidth.. let's outlaw downloading of those?

And since when is upstream bandwidth more expensive than downstream bandwidth? They make it sound like you can download all you want -- just don't upload anything. Costs the same thing.

Re:I hope my ISP doesn't do this...

[Blkdeath]

A lot of things suck up bandwidth. Why pick on P2P? Linux ISO's take a lot of bandwidth.. let's outlaw downloading of those?

But Linux ISOs don't take up bandwidth 24x7x365 while people leave their computers running with XYZ FileSharing App loaded in the taskbar at all times, whether they're using it or not. I'm reasonably certain that most of the popular filesharing apps have "Start XYZ With Windows" checked per default on installation; and we know how well Joe Average Consumer reads the screens they're clicking through on software installation, right?

Just remember that every file they download immediately becomes a candidate for upload by one, ten, or a thousand people.

Re:I hope my ISP doesn't do this...

[whereiswaldo]

Just remember that every file they download immediately becomes a candidate for upload by one, ten, or a thousand people.

That's an excellent point. Surely there's another, less offensive, way to curb excessive P2P usage without banning it outright? Let's say, limit the amount of upstream bandwidth that can be used in a certain period of time. Over that, and the connection gets throttled to 2KB/second or something.

Get a T1

[yerricde]

I'm waiting for the "I'll pay more for the bandwidth I'm eating up but uncap my bandwidth" service

It's called a T1 line.

Re:Get a T1

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but T1's are rather expensive, and also a bit slow. I think they're symmetric with a 1.5Mbit capacity. My (capped) cable modem has 2Mbit downstream already.

Re:Get a T1

[Minna Kirai]

Not really. With T1 you pay for all of the bandwidth you could potentially use in a month. Whether you actually transmit something into each of the frames you buy isn't normally computed into the price.

There's room in the marketplace for power-user level service priced between T1 and existing cablemodem/DSL offerings. It should have a much lower total throughput than T1 (unless you decide to authorize a big penalty for exceeding the quota), but the peak rate should be faster. ("I want that 210 megabyte game demo, and I want it now. Then I'll log off for 6 days to play it.")

private enterprise

[Servo]

Within limits of course, they can do whatever they want. This will either hurt them by losing too many customers, or make their network better for all involved. I can't see it making a huge difference anyway. Worst case, they lose a small percentage of people who will be upset by their decision, IMHO. I don't see it making a huge impact on bandwidth either, since people will still be leeching away. Most *my* bandwidth goes to downloading, not uploading.

Re:private enterprise

[thasmudyan]

No, i don't think such action would hurt any provider. After all - even if 10% of your customers are P2P guys and even if they all left, that would really mean that you're left with the juicy 90% of your audience. Because these 90% are just moms and pops who don't create more network load than a modem user on a lazy day. Those are the people that make broadband very profitable. Not the other 10%, they produce a negative income situation because they use 80% of the network's bandwith. Screwing them and finally disconnecting them is actually good business sense.
So, enough with the percent ;-)

PS: don't get me wrong, I'm not a "good" broadband consumer either...

Re:private enterprise

[Servo]

Read thru all of my comment. In the end, I really don't see them negatively impacted. Simply limiting uploads won't help them out either, bandwidth wise. You still have them downloading.

This seems to be more of a ploy for legal reasons, than bandwidth. By disabling uploads, they won't have to deal with requests to shut down accounts of those offering files.

Re:private enterprise

[Ost99]

It all depends on what service they claim to sell. Unless it is explicitly stated in their terms of service that they may block any incomming trafic and block any port they see fit, they cannot do this. Most ISP's require users to sign on for atleast 1 year, if they change the service (and it was not stated explicitly in the contract that they can do it) the contract is void. Or better yet, they could be stopped from doing it before all outstanding contracts have run out.

My ISP gave me a router with a DHPC server, NAT and a firewall. They gave me the password to the admin user on the router, and a two page instruction on how to open ports on the firewall, and set up NAT servers. Their examples included running a web and ftp server on one pc, and opening ports for p2p apps for another pc. They won a customer for life.

- Ost

Re:private enterprise

[yukster]

Wow! Who is your ISP? That rocks!

Re:private enterprise

[Ost99]

Nextgentel (in Norway).
2Mbit/640kbit for ~$65.

- Ost

Re:private enterprise

[Alex Thorpe]

I don't know about you, but when I use LimeWire, my upload bandwidth is usually maxed out by 4 to 6 uploaders, while I'm hoping that one or more of the many downloads I've requested actually starts to move. I had a file downloading from 3 servers at 0K/sec last night for the entire period I was online.

Actually, the way it's been working, even one uploader will get at least 12K of my 16K upload bandwidth; it just splits it evenly among each uploader. Meanwhile, the downloads are at 0K or around 0.7K most of the time, save for those rare occasions when no one is uploading from me, when it might reach 15K or so. (my DSL can reach 140K with regular FTP)

Sorry for the rant, but it's been building up for months.

Re:private enterprise

[Servo]

If you read the article, they have a clause that says the service can not be used to "serve" files. They have asked those who do use P2P to stop using the upload feature. Seems fair enough, really.

Re:private enterprise

[digitalsushi]

Even though they're still downloading, you have to admit, with them not all uploading, their ISP doesnt so much view them as a field of hungry high speed servers, who all want a piece. Even if all an ISPs customers were leechers, and the ISP was able to handle it, by limiting their uploads to a very small amount, you have just saved half of your aggregate bandwidth.

As an ISP, I have to admit that doing this to avoid legal reasons is a good idea, although it's a band aid, lazy, and irresponsable. Sometimes you gotta do these things when you're understaffed and cant pay a legal department to do it the Right Way.

Re:private enterprise

[damien_kane]

save for those rare occasions when no one is uploading from me, when it might reach 15K or so.

That's because you use ADSL, what is commonly used for residential DSL.

The way it works is that your DSL modem can both upload and download, but not at the same time (it's not full duplex). On top of that, the required ACKs use badwidth in the opposite direction of traffic. If your upstream bandwidth is maed out by P2P or FTP leeches, you have no bandwidth left for ACKs.

Re:private enterprise

[wandernotlost]

It won't hurt them in the short run, which seems to be all most companies think about these days. In the long run, the type customer they're shutting out will bring about the competitor that will crush them.

As the new ISP conglomerates alienate the very customers that helped make their new products viable - the early adopters - they drive these customers to find new providers that support more interesting uses of the technology, rather than simply catering to the lowest common denominator in order to maximize profits.

I just hope it happens sooner rather than later.

Re:private enterprise

[Alex Thorpe]

Thanks, I was sure that uploads were limiting downloads, if not exactly why. I'd figured that there must be ACKs, but I never realized that I was half-duplex.

Re:private enterprise

[rhizome]

This will either hurt them by losing too many customers, or make their network better for all involved.

Well, the problem is that there are more than two options. One other scenario is that the ISP does not lose customers, their network stays the same, and it becomes the p2p community that loses though the tragedy of the commons. Already (on a t1, to counter your "ADSL" reply elsewhere) I can't get at 99% of the things that I'm searching for because there are always 60 people in the queue and seemingly most of the source nodes do not leave their machines on 24/7. So there are tons of leeches who don't even share anything, which now that I think about it is a fourth alternative in this scenario: the users give the record and movie industries what they want by assuming the role of pure consumers who don't share. Oh sure, there are 6 or 7 people pulling from me at any time of the day, but look at my backlog of ~100 songs that have been sitting their for a week. I cut people off who aren't sharing anything.

Re:private enterprise

[Ost99]

Still doesn't justify cutting ports at random.
So no, not fair enough.

- Ost

Re:private enterprise

[Servo]

I don't use Limewire, but I know in other app's you can limit the available bandwidth and max users.

Re:private enterprise

[Servo]

How does enforcing a policy you agreed to when signing up, translate to cutting ports at "random"?

Re:private enterprise

[Alex Thorpe]

LimeWire does, too, but so far I've just limited the upload bandwidth to about what I think the physical limit is. This resulted in uploaders getting equal portions of my bandwidth. Since it seems that my connection isn't full duplex, perhaps I should limit it to half that.

Re:private enterprise

[Servo]

What about max connections? I have Kazaa (Lite) and have 10 download and 2 upload concurrent.

Re:private enterprise

[Alex Thorpe]

LimeWire defaults are up to 3 uploads to the same person(which I change to 1); up to 8 uploads, regardless of bandwidth(I change to 3 or 4), and up to 20 if the bandwidth is available(I change to 8). I could be stingier, but if everyone does it, everyone gets slow.

Re:private enterprise

[Patersmith]

Most *my* bandwidth goes to downloading, not uploading.

Consider this, though. When you download, it only downloads until you get the whole file. When you make files available for upload, it never finishes until you remove the file or stop it from being available. Folks with 24/7 connectivity, I suppose, could be responsible for consumption of a very considerable chunk of outgoing bandwidth.

Re:private enterprise

[nolife]

I respect the way the are going about this and the fact that it is in the EULA. The bottom line though is people are using the bandwidth they thought they were paying for. What if everyone started sending files via email, irc, through an instant messenger or usenet? These things have been around for years but mostly behind the scenes, when they become the easiest way to get files from A to B they will be used in one form or another. Do you start cutting back on those? Eventually the ISP will have to tackle the real problem. Advertising something they can not afford to deliver. Browsing the WWW at 49kbps over a modem compared to a CM/DSL is not really much different, why pay 3 to 4x a month for that.

Re:private enterprise

[Ost99]

If you bothered to read the policy, you'd see that they do not reserve the right to filter and/or block ports and trafic. So the users DID NOT AGREE to anything other than not running a server and not violate third party copyrights.

Whether a p2p client is a server or not i irrelevant, the only option available to the service provider according to the policy the users agreed to, is revocation of service.

And after studying the Acceptable Usage Policy a bit more in detail, I wouldn't recommend their service to anyone.

This company is into the business of CENSORSHIP!
From the "PenTeleData Internet Access Acceptable Usage Policy": The personal use of or commercial distribution of vulgar language, sexually suggestive language, obscene language, obscene images or vulgar images which are transmitted, posted, or displayed are prohibited to traverse any PTD system or any system accessible through PTD.

I mean, how can you defend such a company at all?

- Ost

Re:private enterprise

[pod]

Still doesn't justify cutting ports at random.

No, it's not at 'random'. The ports targeted are specially selected, they're not picked by throwing a dart at a protocol map.

Re:private enterprise

[Anonymous Coward]

DSL is most definitely NOT half duplex, just as a regular voice phone line is not half-duplex.

Leachers?

[evil_one]

Not leachers, NOOO!
I mean, really! Leachers? What next? They won't pay for the Software/Movies/Music they're downloading?
What? What do you mean piracy is the driving force behind P2P?!
I thought it was that information wants to be free!
What? IRC and Usenet already do that PLUS everything P2P delivers?
Who woulda thunkit?

Re:Leachers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sheesh, there you go, just blatantly stating the truth!. What do you expect, of course you're going to get modded down. Now start pretending like a good boy and maybe you can have your karma back. We'll see.

Seriously, I just love how the editor gives himself away by bemoaning "leechers". They're only a problem for traders in illicit materials anyway, so who the fuck cares??

terrible dillema

[jacquesm]

Just think of it, being a merchant that has to tell his/her customers that they can not buy so many goods from them. After all ISP's are nothing but value added bit resellers...

So, what will happen ? Well, there are other merchants. Looks like these guys just shot themselves in the foot.

Re:terrible dillema

[Anonymous Coward]

So, what will happen ? Well, there are other merchants. Looks like these guys just shot themselves in the foot.

No, there are not other merchants. These guys are a local monopoly.

The Chimera of Broadband...

[Angry White Guy]

I don't understand the business planning that went into the broadband market. The adopters of broadband got broadband not just for faster net access, but for more. These companies catered to that, with commercials showing video conferencing, highlighting music sharing and telling the public that the sky's the limit. Now that they have a customer base, they are telling us that they lied, that we are only supposed to be looking at web pages. They attempted to control the stream by adopting adsl and asymmetric cable, proxy servers on their own network, and it just isn't good enough! Is access to internet backbones that expensive or are we getting hosed as consumers here?

Re:The Chimera of Broadband...

[aaarrrgggh]

The problem is that P2P is an inefficient use of bandwidth. Lots of traffic for little "gain". Furthermore, people don't realize just how much bandwidth it sucks up because they just leave it on in the background.

The solution ultimately is for an ISP to permit P2P within their network (maybe even promote it?), possibly cache some external data or common searches, and block downloads from outside their network.

Is there any proxy server applications to cache P2P data at the perimeter of an ISP?

Re:The Chimera of Broadband...

[Anonymous Coward]

"We" referring to whom?
I assume you refer to Americans. In certain Asian nations like the one I'm in right now, broadband is cheaper than modem use and there are no major restrictions enforced on what you do with your connection. I'd say the US consumers are being hosed. But the rest of the world doesn't care.

Re:The Chimera of Broadband...

[freeweed]

The business planning was simply this: can we sell more than we have? Just like dial-up ISPs used to have 10x the customers to phone lines. My cable ISP, much as I love the service, gave me grief about 'excessive use' recently. I sent off a very nicely worded e-mail stating that on all of their advertising, they say their service is 'unlimited'. Here's part of the response:

"Unlimited access" in an Internet account context refers only to time
duration limits. Traditional Internet providers often include weekly,
daily, or monthly time limits on usage and are not designed for 24 hour
"on-demand" usage. The Shaw High-Speed Internet service places no such time
limits on usage, and a user of our service is free to connect their computer
to the Internet 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Activities that use large
amounts of the bandwidth can negatively impact the speed of your connection.

I don't know just who they think they're kidding, but I haven't had an ISP in the past 6 years who limited me in terms of duration. Neither does their real competition (DSL). Picking some $4.95/month 10 hours local ISP as the standard to compare against is NOT logical - but this is how they weasal out of their 'unlimited access' lie.

They've way oversold their product and they continue to lie about the service - unfortunately it's not like there's much else in the way of competition :(

Re:The Chimera of Broadband...

[silas_moeckel]

More correctly they have underpriced there product and are looking for ways to get that back inline. A 1mb a sec pipe average per month costs 100 ish if buying in bulk (like hundreds of gb) from a major tier one and thats without figuinging anything for there network. So DSL sould realy cost a few hundred a month. Now there is no reason why there companies just dont trafic shape the snot out of there networks get the P2P sharing to slow down and prioritize other protocals. It's technicay feasable granted anybody with a brain ran away from working for there companies technicaly once they have cut there teeth.

Re:The Chimera of Broadband...

[WolfWithoutAClause]

The problem is that P2P is an inefficient use of bandwidth. Lots of traffic for little "gain".

P2P has been with us since the very earliest days of the internet. P2P is NOT inherently inefficient. However a lot of implementations of P2P are inherently inefficient.

Trust me, you do not want the ISP fiddling with your traffic in some nefarious way in their network.

Re:The Chimera of Broadband...

[wandernotlost]

Yes, I just love how they redifine english words for the purpose of advertising. Somehow they find a way to limit even the unlimited. Must be, er, innovation.

Free* Internet Access!!!!!

* - Free refers to the customer's ability to use the service without a straightjacket and legirons. The cost to the customer is $9.95/minute.

Re:The Chimera of Broadband...

[Turbyne]

5 words:
Class Action False Advertising Lawsuit

Re:The Chimera of Broadband...

[40000]

Without large file transfers, broadband isn't much different to what was there before it. Like we're all going to use it for downloading some legal pay-per-listen crap from Real networks.
My flat-rate dial up ISP has just told me that I can't use their "off peak" service for more than 4 hours a day.
Can't the "broadband" (the term ADSL is rarely mentioned these days, probably because asymmetric is not a consumer-friendly word) ISPs provide a service which is a ~100K DSL which has unlimited use if they are so worried about bandwidth costs? In some ways it would be better to have a good 24 hour connection with some improvement in speed rather than a broken >500K connection. At least it would free the telephone line for voice calls while allowing P2P at transfer rates which people can put up with.

Re:The Chimera of Broadband...

[Angry White Guy]

I think that what these broadband companies should be doing is putting together a strong traffic policy and implementing it. Traffic shaping at the border routers, multiple access points from their networks to the rest of the internet, and adding value added services to their own networks. The days of merely supplying internet are over, it's time to add value added services, almost to the point of AOL. Build a strong network infrastructure, host as much as possible locally, and they could serve their customers better while keeping their own recurring costs down.

Do they really need to even filter the uploads?

[Palos]

A majority of the people receiving this will probably just disable their uploads because they don't know any better. I'm sure there will be ways around it, but for the majority of the users I'm sure this letter, and a simple filter will probably get rid of a reasonable amount of traffic. It would be funny if this was just ended up being a strongly worded warning and they didn't even implement any filters, but most users turned off their file sharing :)

Perfect? No. Effective? Maybe

[akincisor]

While I am perfectly confident that this will prompt the innovative (read desperate) users to develop a workaround, some time now things like this will make the work required to work around them too much for most. This will kill all P2P apps, even the ones that don't violate copyrights. The irony is that the people who pirate professionaly will probably benifit from this.

I wonder what lengths people will go to share files illegaly, and when the ??AA will realise that there are reasons for this desperation other than that people like to break the law. Good music and competitive pricing will be the only way to kill piracy.

Re:Perfect? No. Effective? Maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

The result will be an opaque net, where the transport will not be informed about any more than that there is data flowing. Ports and application headers will be inside the encrypted stream, end of story. IPSec is built into Windows XP. Providers really shouldn't interfere with the data they are transporting, neither limit nor block, because by interfering, they remove planning capability. Can't see what's going through your wires, can't plan for the future, right?

Re:Perfect? No. Effective? Maybe

[wandernotlost]

The irony is that the people who pirate professionaly will probably benifit from this.

The people that "pirate"* professionally aren't fucking around with P2P. They're buying a CD and mass-producing it, which isn't hindered in the least by any of the mechanisms the industry claims to be putting into place to prevent "piracy."

Honest and ethical business practices are what will get me to start buying music again. I don't spend money on CDs anymore because I believe that what the music industry companies are trying to get away with is deplorable.

* I know piracy is easier to say than "obtaining through illegitimate means," but using that term is really only contributing to the music industry's fraud. People downloading music on the Internet aren't plundering ships on the high seas, they're trying to listen to music by the most convenient means. There are lots of things that I can do with music available through P2P that I can't do otherwise. There are many songs/artists that I've found through P2P, by searching for lyrics and downloading songs until I find the one I was looking for. This would have lead to my buying many more CDs than I otherwise would have, if I wasn't so opposed to spending my money on depriving the world of a just copyright system.

Inevitable

[mao che minh]

How pointy hairs over at that cable company had their pockets lined, I wonder? Well, it is their business, and if it is in their business's best interests to prevent their customers from using P2P internet technologies, then that's how it has to be. It would be moronic to say that the vast majority of P2P users are not using it to trade copyrighted material - it's becoming a social norm. I suppose it was only a matter of time before something like this happened.

I just hope that my ISP doesn't implement similar "defensive" measures - you never know, it might effect my SETI contributions somehow, or even the legitimate file swapping I do with people all over the planet.

Re:Inevitable

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a crappy cable company in NE PA with their main office in Palmerton. Believe it or not, they were one of the first ISPs in the nation to roll out cable modems.

Something you have to realize about that section of PA is that it is almost like a third world country..literally! One ex-employee from there used to refer to Prolog as Gulag... Oddly enough though, they've been at the forefront of most things dealing with broadband, g'figure.

Bait and Switch...I thought only car dealers did this, oh well. Look at it this way, on top of it all, those poor bastards there have to put up with heavy metal pollution. Do a google search on "Palmerton zinc pollution" and you'll see that restricted ISP access is the *least* of their worries there! Some sections of the town look like the surface of the moon because nothing will grow there without imported topsoil.

Re:Inevitable

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess there goes the chances of good medical cures
developed from distributed computing.

I hope one day one of the decision makers doing this gets cancer and wonders why there is no cure or why the research slowed.

Re:Inevitable

[buswolley]

Profit. Damn it, its not al;l about profit, even though our economic system says it is. It is about dignity, principles, fairness, freedom..oh and profit.

Yes I'm living on Mars. But thats where I want to be. A better way to live life is waiting there. Ever read Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson?

Do we need regulation?

[tshak]

Utilities (and I consider broadband a utility just as much as electricity or water) should not be able to control what you do with bandwidth. What they can do, is sell you a limited amount of bandwidth. If my provider is giving me 1.5Mb/down, and 256kb up (burstable), then it shouldn't matter if I'm using it all day or not. Filtering packets based on what you're doing is, in my opinion, like the telephone company saying that I talk to my Uncle too much on the phone so they're going to block his number.

I have no problem with the enforcing of copyrights, but that is not (and should never be) the ISP's job. We all know that this has absolutely nothing to do with the ISP's "respect" for copyrights, rather, this is simply about saving money by limiting bandwidth usage.

Re:Do we need regulation?

[Anonymous Coward]

When was the last time you were able to push water BACK into the pipes at your house? Upstream filtering is the simple, safe, and healthy thing to do!

Re:Do we need regulation?

[kmweber]

Your ISP is a private entity; therefore, it has every right to decide the terms under which its products and services are offered. If you don't like those terms, you're free to go elsewhere or do without altogether.

Re:Do we need regulation?

[jdkane]

If my provider is giving me 1.5Mb/down, and 256kb up (burstable), then it shouldn't matter if I'm using it all day or not.

Imagine if they gave us a bandwidth that actually suited our monthly transfer volume. Then we would get like 5.3Kb/down, and 3kb up, to allow us to use our full monthly 5GB volume if we were always on. Hey, that's like a dial-up modem!

Re:Do we need regulation?

[buswolley]

Lets see. Downstream=Entertainment ie. Decadence.

Upstream=Sharing ie. a better community.

They want to turn the internet into the big E channel. Entertainment only. Fuck them. The internet is the last hope of us ever becoming a free people.

Re:Do we need regulation?

[Mike1024]

Hey,

If my provider is giving me 1.5Mb/down, and 256kb up (burstable), then it shouldn't matter if I'm using it all day or not.

The problem is they don't sell you all the bandwidth; they have a comtention ratio of (say) 40:1. They buy a 1.5Mbps backbone linkup, and let you use at for 1/40th of the time. You get the (non-sustained) speed of a 1.5Mbps backbone linkup, for 1/40th the cost (plus a little profit). This provides what most consumers want: Fast, small transfers, and occasional fast large transfers.

If all the users run P2P clients, they will either face a 40x increase in costs, or each user will get 1/40th of the speed.

Ultimately, if you want a 24/7 1.5Mbps backbone linkup, you have to pay the whole cost, which is HUGE (or at least, it is in my country).

Too many people running P2P constantly create a 'tragedy of the commons' situation, where normal users get bad performance. If the ISP wants to discourage people from doing this, that is entirely within thier rights.

Just my $0.02,

Michael

Re:Do we need regulation?

[ealar dlanvuli]

The internet is the last hope of us ever becoming a free people.

Holy shit dude...

That is the most retarded sentance ever muttered. Ever. Peroid.

Please eat a gun.

Re:Do we need regulation?

[Anonymous Coward]

ok I instantly regreted posting that. Remove my last sentance. Thanks.

Re:Do we need regulation?

[devmike]

Fair enough, let's not control what you do, but if you want real bandwidth, then let's talk.

Here's what we do at our ISP:

Normally we charge only for the bandwidth used. Our calculation for burstable connections is as follows: Samples are taken on your port approximately once a minute.

Each month the incoming and outgoing samples are sorted in ascending order. The 95th percentile entry in each list is examined. The higher of the incoming or outgoing figures is your monthly Burst rate.

And we charge you by your burst rate. This is fair policy, but you may not care for what the cost of your actual burst is.

Think on the order of $1000 per megabit total burst rate. How does your 1.5Mb RESIDENTIAL ADSL sound now?

Re:Do we need regulation?

[buswolley]

Retarded probably. But hey I am an optimist, and a little desperate for a free intelligent society. The internet broke so many established rules, opened so many eyes, and so many movements, ie.it definitely helped the open source movement. There is so much potential in it. And I fear that if it dies away, we, the people will never get another chance to break out of this shit hole world we live in, that is, before it all breaks down on its own.

Big Brother

[Ashish Kulkarni]

What is scary is that this is possibly the start of something like Big Brother. I mean, I pay the ISP for MY net usage, not what he thinks is appropriate for me. I can agree with higher charges for P2P (heavy leeching causes slow networks here) but interfering in any way pisses me off. Soon they'll protect us from porn, terrorist propoganda, etc. and before you know it, you have a media oligarchy which controls all aspects communication, just like in the feudal ages.

Re:Big Brother

[kmweber]

Your ISP provides the service; therefore, it has the moral right to decide the terms under which the service is offered.

Besides, your ISP isn't the government. If you don't like it, you can always go elsewhere or do without altogether.

Re:Big Brother

[0x0d0a]

What the hell does Big Brother have to do with ISPs? 1984 probably has more misused ideas than any other book of all time. You're comparing a private company that has decided to discontinue offering a particular unprofitable service to save themselves money...to a state-controlled regime.

Re:Big Brother

[Anonymous Coward]

when will you people read and realise this is NOT protection against porn, or illegal trading, its the isp is running out of bandwith from this activity, and it isnt cost effective to upgrade there connections. you can go bitch and moan about how your paying for "Internet access" and not filtered blah blah blah, but your the ones paying $39.99 or $49.99 a month and costing the company over $200.00 a month in bandwith fee's. not to mention making your fellow neighbors on the isp's internet expierience less enjoyable becouse you avsolutly had to have the latest doomIII alpha leak

Re:Big Brother

[Ashish Kulkarni]

Your ISP provides the service; therefore, it has the moral right to decide the terms under which the service is offered.
Besides, your ISP isn't the government. If you don't like it, you can always go elsewhere or do without altogether.

Often, you have no alternative ISPs or ISPs which provide exactly same TOS (only diff is price). Also, ISPs over here (in India) block certain services of other ISPs (eg. voice telephony) or some arbitary sites, as and when they wish and you have no say in it. Plus, the government is heavily into the telecom field over here...

Re:Big Brother

[kmweber]

Again, "you can always decide to do without altogether"...you just have to decide what is more important to you. You do not have a "right" to Internet service--especially at the expense of the rights of service providers to decide the terms under which their service is offered. ISPs, businesses, and the world as a whole owe you precisely NOTHING.

I'm not familiar with the situation in India--are ISPs there government-run or simply regulated? Both are equally evil; I'm just curious.

Not a common carrier anymore

[Minna Kirai]

Funny, they've decided to block their users from contributory copyright violation, while still letting them download all the MP3s they want.

But one legal defense ISPs use against charges of copyright infringment themselves (and a bevy of other crimes) is "We just move the data from one side to another- we never know what's inside it". That's why USENET still has its binaries groups moving at full tilt- ISPs don't want to get into a position of accepting/rejecting individual blobs of content.

For one thing, the workload would be enormous. For another, they'd begin serving in an editoral role, and have some responsiblity for the content they do let through. And some attorneys general will be happy to attack them with "you didn't reject it, so you must've accepted it, so you're a party to the crime!". (I can particularly imagine someone in a music-industry consitutency doing this)

Of course, per-file (checksum/watermark?), per-newsgroup, or per-filename blocking is a far cry from the simplistic protocol level denial this ISP is doing. They're still a common carrier for a while (denying data not by its contents, but by its format and packaging).

Although this change won't immediately hurt the availability of files on P2P filesharing (P2Pfs) much, it could be the start of a trend where all ISPs might block outgoing sharing. Leading to a chase where the P2Pfs software takes refuge inside one unblocked port and unfiltered protocol after another...

A race like that could (in 10 years or so) chase P2P programs entirely onto other allowed procotols, maybe even something like email messages. As the disguising of the P2Pfs packets becomes ever-more sophisticated, the only way to detect them will be to read more and more closely into every user's transmission. At some point, you become a real censor.

Re:Not a common carrier anymore

[reptilian biotech]

side note, our local smallvile cable isp cut all the binary newsgroups, not just the major ones- since I run the local computer store, I have been telling everyone to just get adsl from verizon, same price, faster connection - hell, 45 bucks for 500/100 on an unstable network? im sending the folk to the super isp now I guess, against my inner me, but bandwidth is bandwidth.

blah, had to bitch to someone.

Re:Not a common carrier anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

It's simple. By saying they are going to start filtering P2P sharing, they have already voluntarily given up their common-carrier status.
After all, you can't say "we can't filter that because we don't look at it" while filtering things based on what they are.
This ISP may not have realized it, but the next time someone complains of kiddy-porn on their newsgroups, this ISP can now be held liable for it.

Re:Not a common carrier anymore

[Sabalon]

It depends on how they block it. If they are blocking based on port or a whole protocol, then I don't think that'd assume they know what the content is. It's a big difference between "drop all packets on port 1214" and "drop any illegal mp3's being uploaded."

I wonder about supernews...a while ago they dropped the alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.early-teens/pre-teen s (it's amazing what people complain about in support groups). Does that now make them more liable about the content going across? I'd think that'd be more close to loosing common carrier than just port blocking.

Re:Not a common carrier anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, they already have a TOS against running "servers", and they are just enforcing it against P2P hosts. That's why they are prohbiting upload only.

Re:Not a common carrier anymore

[anthony_dipierro]

Funny, they've decided to block their users from contributory copyright violation, while still letting them download all the MP3s they want.

Distribution of a copyrighted work without a license is direct copyright infringement. Downloading, on the other hand... Well, no one's going to be able to prove it, since if they upload it to you it's entrapment. That's why I only download mp3s, never upload them.

Re:Not a common carrier anymore

[ProfessorPuke]

It might be entrapment, but its not as if that is illegal- cops do it all the time. What I mean is, American police can get away with committing the English definition of "entrapment", if they don't meet the strict legal definition of entrapment.

Basically, when they take you to court, the prosecutors have an additional burden to show that you had a pre-existing inclination to commit the crime, before the undercover cops spoke with you. That's not very hard if they can find evidence of prior violations when searching your home & computer after the arrest.

If cops want to, they can use entrapment to get you arrested and have some search warrants made. If fruits of those searches are enough to indict you, then the District Attorney can completely ignore the entrapped offense, and just focus on the earlier violations.

Fortunately for you, today's undercover cops aren't interested in puny busts like this. Someday that could change...

Re:Not a common carrier anymore

[anthony_dipierro]

Basically, when they take you to court, the prosecutors have an additional burden to show that you had a pre-existing inclination to commit the crime, before the undercover cops spoke with you. That's not very hard if they can find evidence of prior violations when searching your home & computer after the arrest.

I'm not sure how they would prove prior violations beyond a reasonable doubt since they can't prove I didn't obtain those other mp3s legitimately or under fair use. Actually it'd be quite an uphill battle proving that my downloads themselves weren't fair use, or that they weren't legally copied onto an audio CD-R under the Audio Home Recording Act.

Also, you mention an arrest, but I seriously doubt that downloading a single mp3 would fall under criminal copyright law. That would require probable cause (for the arrest) that the download was made "for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain, since I don't download more than $1000 worth of music in a 180 day period." Since the police have no way of knowing if I already own the CD, if I'm just downloading for a school project, etc., they aren't going to get that probable cause to make the arrest.

Fortunately for you, today's undercover cops aren't interested in puny busts like this. Someday that could change...

I guess anything's possible, but I seriously doubt the FBI is ever going to concern itself with small time mp3 leeches.

Ultimate irony.

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine if you will, a future in which US P2P users leech off foreign servers --but at a price. That would be bizarre, but it's altogether plausible. America buys back its culture from overseas.
Ha ha ha. Suckas.
Yeah, vote Repbulican. Go Go Go!

Because...

[mindstrm]

What you bought was Internet access, not "filtered access with only some ports available".

It's about the principle of the thing. I want IP transit; nothing more.

Re:Because...

[AKnightCowboy]

What you bought was Internet access, not "filtered access with only some ports available".

It's about the principle of the thing. I want IP transit; nothing more.

No, what you bought was low-priced commodity Internet access. If you want IP transit, nothing more, then you need to buy a T1 or other business class service. ISPs have every right to limit these low priced services in any way they see fit to stop leeches from causing service problems for other users. If you buy a business class line with a SLA then you can go and bitch.

Re:Because...

[Minna Kirai]

No, what you bought was low-priced commodity Internet access.

Read through the IETF RFCs for a few months, and you can extract the definition of Internet Access. It means that if a computer has Internet Access, it can open any 16 bit port and send TCP or UDP to any other host which also has Internet Access. (If some packets get delayed or randomly dropped, it still counts. But block them entirely, and they can't reach The Internet anymore)

Ask Metcalf, Cerf, or Berners-Lee and they'll tell you the same.

To advertise "Internet Access" and then only provide a subset of it is misleading, and if regulators were more tech-savvy they'd fine many ISPs for false advertising. If carriers think they can pick and choose what ports and protocols to allow, then they should rename the service to "HTTP Client / Email / IM access" and at least be forthright about it.

Re:Because...

[buswolley]

Mod this parent up. There is so much false advertising out there, that is never challenged. I hate it.

Re:Because...

[MrPerfekt]

Odd... It didn't say low-priced commodity Internet access when I signed up!

Re:Because...

[Anonymous Coward]

BS. The IETF RFCs are not part of your customer service agreement and neither are they legally binding documents. The customer service agreement basically says ISPs get to do what they want. Live with it, or don't buy their service.

Re:Because...

[Anonymous Coward]

This company has a bad history when it concerns customer privacy. One of it's owners/affiliate companies Ridge Ridge Cable once removed "The Last Temptation of Christ" from the national feed of a pay channel. This raised a National stink and many customer complaints. This is a rather well known event in First Ammendment circles...

Re:Because...

[mindstrm]

Really? Where is "Internet" defined as this?

I got into this business a long time ago, adn only in the more recent years have many ISPs "decided" that it is "their duty" to start filtering things.

It used to be just IP.

Okay.. some isps might filter some ports for some users, we'd do that way back when, at the users reqeusts, to help them out... or maybe temporarily do a global one to stop some worm in it's tracks... but it was temporary.

Re:Because...

[Blkdeath]

Odd... It didn't say low-priced commodity Internet access when I signed up!

On a related note, the dealer didn't tell me that the $400 new car I bought was a "low-priced commodity vehicle" either!

Re:Because...

[Blkdeath]

What you bought was Internet access, not "filtered access with only some ports available".

It's funny - when the thousands upon thousands of @Home customers were having their filesystems walked all over by malicious types at large, I didn't hear many of them talking about "the principle of the thing".

From a business perspective, blocking the three ports that make 95% of their customer base potentially vulnerable to attack is a better solution than pleasing the 2% of customers who, for whatever reason, want these three ports open (to, I would assume, run a non-standard service on. After all - you wouldn't actually run SMB on the live Internet, would you?)

From my personal point of view, I'd love to see these people schooled on just how vulnerable Microsoft products can be without protection and how they are not qualified to put a computer on the Internet 24x7 without the assistance of a qualified professional; but that doesn't do the broadband ISPs any good.

Re:Because...

[Anonymous Coward]

The term you're looking for is Internet Access Provider. This is what AOL/Prodigy/etc. used to be known as.

Re:Because...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can put anything in a contract, but that does not make it legal.

Re:Because...

[mindstrm]

Yes.. and I don't dipsute that a network provider taking action to prevent a widespread problem, like trying to stop a worm, is good. If people are vulnerable, it's good...

but I should be able to tell them to TURN OFF any filtering on MY connection if I want; or better, I should be able to turn it off myself.

Wht I mean it it should not be forced on me without question.

If some new worm is going rampant, heck, I might be vulnerable... I don't mind if they do something about it to try to help... along the lines of "traffic N is being filtered on your connection due to blah blah, go to this url to turn it off when you have corrected the problem"

But.. transparent web proxies screw up queries, blocking ports to make it a pain to use some apps is wrong, and forbidding "servers" is rediculous. If they want to charge for bandwidth, let them.

Re:Because...

[Blkdeath]

but I should be able to tell them to TURN OFF any filtering on MY connection if I want; or better, I should be able to turn it off myself.

That would be well and good, providing that it were viable to apply the filter at the end points of each and every individual connection. But consider that for every range of ports for every customer one additional firewall/router filter rule is required. Else, for every exception they would have to add a rule before the filters themselves. That becomes exceedingly difficult in a network that makes use of dynamic IPs. So what we'd have in order to satiate a customer (again, one paying a very small price for the bandwidth they're receiving. If you don't believe me, call ISP Business departments and price out T1s, T2s, business ADSL, SDSL, HDSL, etc.) is giving out static IPs, or creating some form of 'intelligent' firewall ruleset that groks for the current IP from a customer database and updates the firewall rules on a continuous basis.

It's been said before, but I'll say it again - if you want "just IP", get a business connection with an SLA and block only the ports you want to block with your own firewall. You can't expect business level service with a consumer product. The same is true in all other industries just as it is in IP. The fact of the matter is the majority of any broadband ISP's customer base requires some form of protection, because against the advice of those who know better people DO enable shared, full-access drives and printers. We generally convince our customers to use an internet router (one-port for individual computers, or four-port for LANs) to add a hardware layer of protection, but our client base is only but a (very) small portion of that of both types of broadband Internet in our area.

Re:Because...

[mindstrm]

8 years ago it wasn't hard to have filter sets that could be selectively applied PER ACCOUNT on a livingston portmaster w/ radius. I doubt it's any harder today.

The filters were applied when the user signed in, removed when they signed out.

You make tracking ip addresses sound HARD or something.

I know all about the relative price of internet connections; that wasn't my point. My point was that residential internet service should still be internet service; it's bandwidth that costs, let them charge for it if they like, but don't filter shit if I don't want it.
You don't block my phone and tell me I can't call some people; you charge different rates depending on what resources I'm using (where I am calling).

So you basically think "go get a better connection" is the answer? I already KNOW I can do that; what we are talking about is having consumer ISPs clean up their act, and to give clean, pure Internet access to EVERYONE. Why? So application developers don't have to deal with a bazillion STUPID FILTERS.

nope

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as they dont block urpmi im safe with mandrake! (i use cooker, and it really bleeds)

spread spectrum

[devonbowen]

Someone needs to develop a spread-spectrum protocol for network ports. Spread the data across lots of ports and have it intelligent enough to adjust if a port or set of ports is being filtered. With the packets encrypted, they'd never be able to filter again.

Devon

Re:spread spectrum

[Anonymous Coward]

PGP desktop secure VPN (at all good P2P stores).

Re:spread spectrum

[0x0d0a]

That would be almost completely useless. The whole point is to fade into the background noise of network traffic. Your suggestion is one of the absolutely stupidest things you could do in terms of attracting attention. It would set off port scan detectors, anything measuring bandwidth used by an arbitrary protocol (which has logged no traffic for the thing for months, probably) would go off, any programs looking for corrupted packets of a particular type would set off warnings...

Re:spread spectrum

[IamTheRealMike]

IIRC that is exactly what Kazaa does. It's impossible to block on a port by port basis as it simply switches to different ports, and all the traffic on the FastTrack network is encrypted. You can still get to it though, despite being encrypted FastTrack traffic has recognizable headers and traffic signatures. Often places like universities use packet shapers to try and eliminate it. Unfortunately this has the effect of often massively increasing latency, killing multiplayer games. It can also knock out legitimate traffic.

The simplest solution is simply to place upload caps. You wouldn't eliminate all p2p users, but that's OK, you just want to hit the guys who constantly upload stuff 24/7.

Re:spread spectrum

[mr. methane]

Most of the time I can get up a good rant about how awful it would be to ban encryption, but then I realize that people don't want to use it to improve the lives of others, they just want to use it to download porn and pirated software.

The funny thing about giving people liberty is ...

[bizitch]

You never know what they're going to do with it ... like trade files.

How about..

[Anonymous Coward]

2 machines, 1 proxy router and one normal machine.

ADSL and CABLE connected to the proxy router (3 NICs) and connect that to ur normal machine and use it as normal. 2x bandwidth etc?

Ironic

[perfects]

> it will definitely increase the number of
> "leechers" on file-sharing systems.

Does anybody else find it ironic that a community that is based on file-sharing would use the term "leechers" as a disparaging term?

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It's common practice these days to use a carefully-chosen word in order to inherit a negative -- or positive -- meaning "by association".

"Leech". Yuck! That can't be good.

"Sharing". Gee, that sounds so... nice, doesn't it? It must be ok.

Re:Ironic

[glesga_kiss]

The name "leeching" precedes p2p. You need to go back to beginings of the FTP/usenet days to see it's origin.

Re:Ironic

[Alex Thorpe]

Not at all. There's a difference between Sharing and 'downloading all night without allowing uploads'. The latter is selfish and antisocial.

Though some days, when nothing I request will even start downloading, I feel like a 'reverse-leech'.

Does any of theyre employess...

[Anonymous Coward]

use this service cuz im sure they use P2P also. :D

I bet they use other ISPs :D

Already effectively done...

[Fnkmaster]

I had to disable my roommate's Kazaa uploads the other day. AT&T BroadBand has set up their bandwidth throttling to be so severe that even with Kazaa set on max 2 uploads and supposedly throttled at 24kbps, it was causing severe latency problems with our net access. In particular, I was getting 1 second - 2 second pings in Counter-Strike, web access was crawling, and everything just felt slow as shit. No problems since I disabled it.

Of course, even with the throttling set to 24kbps, it still looked like there was over 32kbps going upstream. I don't like being a leech, and I'd love to share some bandwidth to a reasonable degree, but with such tight limits on our upstream bandwidth, there's not much I can do. Also, my old strategy (when I wanted to play Counter-Strike or latency was being problematic, I'd just block port 1214 at our router) doesn't work any more because new versions of Kazaa do crazy port-hopping stuff to prevent being blocked. No choice but to disable it entirely.

I guess my point is that there is blame to go around here. Companies like Kazaa need to provide better throttling in P2P products (there is no way to throttle to less than 24kbps... that's fucking retarded) and need to ship with throttling enabled to avoid flooding networks. And ISPs should realize that blocking is retarded - it will just piss customers off. Bandwidth throttling is okay, but give us reasonable limits. My service shouldn't slow to a crawl just because I am using 24kbps of upstream (ATT Broadband), and my service shouldn't get disabled for 60 seconds because I open a lot of connections (Verizon DSL - doing a server refresh in Counter-Strike makes the connection throttle and then shut down after polling a couple thousand servers, and it won't come back to life for 60 seconds).

Crippling the software I choose to run is unacceptable, and if you do it, I will be forced to shop elsewhere.. err... you have a monopoly. I guess I'll just have to take it in the rumpelstiltskin. Never mind.

Re:Already effectively done...

[TeddyR]

The issue is not just the number of downloads... Thare are other settings that would affect your bandwidth. Example: The supernode setting and if you are sharing any files....

As soon as your node becomes "live", you may be getting hundreds of query requests (searches...etc); This is made worse if you have a NAT/PAT router. This is because your node is advertising that it exists {remmember, it is seeing the OUTSIDE Public address as the sourse of the connection]; other nodes try to connect to it... but cant reach it so the connection has to time out first... {at up to 2 mins for a tcp port to time out].... this can mean thousands of connections opening to your public IP. If the isp throttles based on incoming connections, then your modem may disconnect...

Re:Already effectively done...

[glesga_kiss]

Companies like Kazaa need to provide better throttling in P2P products

Try WinMx, it has good throttling/limiting options.

My service shouldn't slow to a crawl just because I am using 24kbps of upstream

You could be saturating your upstream, which will always trash your downstream. When downloading a file over TCP, every packet must be confirmed as "ACK'ed", meaning you received the packet correctly. If your upstream is working overtime, these ACK packets get queued, and the download slows as the server lowers the TCP window, which is the number of packets to send before waiting for acknowledgement. This is how the internet handles flow-control.

If you are finding problems, I'd recommend getting a rooter/firewall that can do throttling with traffic shaping. Once you have a system that prioritises ACKs, games and http over the p2p traffic and limits the upstream to 90-95% if your maximum, you should never really notice that p2p is running. In theory.

Re:Already effectively done...

[dmarx]

If you are finding problems, I'd recommend getting a rooter/firewall that can do throttling with traffic shaping. Once you have a system that prioritises ACKs, games and http over the p2p traffic and limits the upstream to 90-95% if your maximum, you should never really notice that p2p is running.

This sounds like a good idea. Can anyone recommend a firewall that can do this that runs on WinXP?

Re:Already effectively done...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, my school put an upstream bandwidth cap on the dorms - we can download as fast as we like, but th combined upload speed of the dorms is limited. Presently, it is so slow uploading that games are not playable online. Most bandwidth tests show an average upstream of a bit less than 33.6k modems, BUT the problem is that it bursts - 10k/sec, 0k/sec, 0k/sec, 10k/sec, so that a "realtime" use such as a game doesn't work.

I don't want to be a leech, but I'd rather be a leech than contribute to making a network unusable.

Re:Already effectively done...

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you looked at the QOS thingy that comes with XP? I wonder what kinds of options it has/how to use it.

Re:Already effectively done...

[glesga_kiss]

An old PC, 160+ Mhz CPU, two network cards and one of the custom-designed linux firewall distributions.

Cheap, highly customisable and constantly getting updated by the linux community. Plus, all PCs on your network get the benefits of the firewall, plus NAT and DHCP automatically.

Re:Already effectively done...

[PhreakOfTime]

AT&T BroadBand

theres your problem. AT&T is a cable company, They have a vested interest in PUSHING you content, not you going off and finding your own content. Cable broadband has become the equivelant of what AOL was back in the day, a way for the masses who dont know any better to get access to the net. After just a little research you will quickly find out that the services the phone companies provide in DSL vastly outpreforms anything any cable company will offer you

This is what the cable company told me when I had service; "we offer web surfing and email, anything else is NOT gauranteed". The phone company was totally opposite of this attitude, their response; "We provide the connection, any servers or services you want to use or set up are your responsibility" Im not let in on any cable company biz, but Ill tell you when I upload on DSL, the only lag caused is by the basic architecture of the TCP/IP stack, not some BS restriction put there by the cable company to make you not want to upload by slowing any downloads to a crawl

Since most people only care about how much something costs, cable will continue to be the AOL of the broadband world. But Im starting to get sick of people whining about something that is in the agreement that is signed upon start of service. Oh, you didnt think it was important to read those 25 pages before you signed up, basically cable lets you have port 25,80, and 110? Too bad.

oh, and when the cable company tells you that uploading is a drag on their network, remember that they ALREADY send 60+ streams into your house in MPEG-2 format simultaniously. So on that logic, since they are assuming its a drag on THEIR network when someone downloads from you when your not there, remind them its a drag on your pocketbook that you pay for channels you cant watch all at the same time, and ask them if they have any 'suggestions' about charging you ONLY for the channels and time you actually use the TV.

Chamillion is a better word.

[twitter]

The Telecomunications act of 1996 made DSL possible and services started from there, but entrenched intersts have been working to undo that. Since then the local Bells and ATT have worked to choke the upstarts as they represented serious competition to their planned long distance voice services and "internet" offerings. The local bells not allowing these upstarts information and equipment access, as required by law, has gone unpunished and indeed has been forgiven. ATT bought a large portion of @home cable and insured it's demise. Entertainment companies and other large publishers have joined the chorus that helped destroy "internet" service as we know it. What you are left with are expensive "services" that will only get worse as the survivors purchase backbones for pennies on the dollar and keep them shut down until they can figure a way to make money off them for themselves. It's not going to work and they will all lose money when they are circumvented AGAIN, but you won't be a part of it their plans.

Why does PenTeleData prohibit ProLog Express Internet customers from uploading through file-sharing applications? -Serving files from a residential account - whether FTP or file-sharing -- is a violation of the Acceptable Use Policy.

"Internet" service without servers is not an internet. Good luck to them blocking ftp. AOL uses port 21 for it's instant messenger program. Unless AOL changes that, or they can distinguish traffic, their block will do little good.

I already hate my cable company as they have violated my Acceptable Service Policy. The day they block FTP is the day they lose my static IP charges. The day I have a choice in providers is the day they lose me.

Give-Take

[stevejsmith]

This may be obvious, but it's still pissing me off. Cable and DSL companies have just been taking and taking without letting up anything. They raise the prices, they kill our static IPs, they lower our uploads, they kill our web space, but they never give anything back! Never, "Oh, let's raise the cap," or, "oh, let's give them back their static IPs." Eventually broadband will just become so empty that it will be useless. Geeks will begin to see the use of shared T1 lines, and the rest will soon follow.

Re:Give-Take

[Anonymous Coward]

nope.. not when a T1 to an ISP is around $1600/ month.... [dont forget the local loop costs... etc...]

Re:Give-Take

[wadetemp]

This may be obvious, but it's still pissing me off. Cable and DSL companies have just been taking and taking without letting up anything.

Then why are you still paying for this service? You are not powerless to solve the problem. Cable/DSL is not an essential life function.

Re:Give-Take

[stevejsmith]

Because there is no other option. 56k is actually just as, if not more expensive (service and extra phone line). In it's hey day, broadband was amazing.

What are you talking about, "not an essential life function"? It is, too! Do you use broadband? Well, even if you don't, I know many people that would be lost without it.

Re:Give-Take

[Nicolas MONNET]

A T1 is 1.5mbps, my company pays around 5000 IIRC for a 34Mbps link (traffic included) in Paris. Looks like your ISP is being ripped off.

Re:Give-Take

[andy209]

Everyone needs their own t1 line, how much are those anyway? and will the price ever go down?

Re:Give-Take

[stevejsmith]

"Everyone needs their own t1 line..."

Coming from the same thread as somebody saying that I don't need broadband...

Re:Give-Take

[stevejsmith]

Now I'm wondering, how come T1s cost so damn much? 1.5MBit isn't that much. My cable connection can do something like 256KBit for around 50 USD.

Do T1 lines offer 1.5Mbit upload?

Re:Give-Take

[Zebbers]

a t1 is usually a contracted permanent line with a gaurantee to run at 1.5 24/7 up/down back/forth side/side.. A cable modem is always shared with other local subscribers in the loop and has no provisions for gauranteeing uptime or speed.

Attention

[soreno]

All your bandwidth are belong to us.

Don't sell what you don't have to sell?

[Corvaith]

It seems to be more and more common, these days--companies that are selling more resources than I actually have.

If you tell me that my connection will go a certain speed, I should be able to use that speed all night and all day if I want to, because that's what I'm paying you for. Counting on the idea that I won't use those resources you provide me is not, in my opinion, a good business model.

Yet, internet providers of all types use it. Web hosts give you insane amounts of disk space... and then, surprisingly enough, their disks start getting overfilled when people start using more than just a tenth of what they pay for.

If these places want to limit the bandwidth, they ought to be saying that right off the bat. "For this monthly fee, you get X mb of downloads, and Y megabytes of uploads, at speeds up to Z kb/sec."

That way, people can start using what they have sensibly. "Okay, I know I only have this much upload, so I won't share files on these P2P networks." Or maybe they'll just share smaller files, or only share a few days a month, or whatever... it's their decision, now, what to do with the resources they've paid for.

I think depending on under-usage has always been dangerous, and it was only a matter of time before something came along that started encouraging everyday users to actually make use of their broadband connections.

Re:Don't sell what you don't have to sell?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an ISP in a small rual community, and I sell my customers on an SLA that basiclly says that Basic Service gets you 250megs per day of high speed transfers. Once you exceed this amount, you become eligible for dynamic bandwidth throttling. So if the network has idle bandwidth, you get all you need. If not, you are throttled so that other users who are still underneath their quota can burst at full speed and you get proportionately less. If 250mb unthrottled is not enough, you can pay me for more.

I think most users, even heavy gamers and the like, will find this system acceptable. It enables you to receive the service you're paying for. No more 5'oclock slowdown, or waiting till after 2am to do your work because the cable is so overloaded, my SLA makes it my job to ensure you can get your allocation _when you want it_. The dsl and cable providers have no such sla - they just sell these high speed connections, throttle them %100 of the time, and let the users bitch when it's "slow", but never agree at all to any particular speed or anything. That allows %5 of the users to suck down %95 of the available bandwidth, to the determent of the other network users. What crap.

Re:Don't sell what you don't have to sell?

[BrookHarty]

I have friends overseas who pay little (5-25 bux) for high speed dsl, the catch is, they only get about 20 gigs of transfers included.

Really, for 25 bux you cant expect a T1 for that price. I pay 102 bux for a 144K line, thats a little more than market price for that portion of a T1. I'm running the sys-admin package from covad that allows me to run servers, unfiltered, extra ips, unlimited transfer cap. Checking dslreports you could buy service that is market value. A 768/768 business dsl for servers for about 150-200 bux a month, a 1500/1500 for 450, or a 7000/1500 for 1500 a month.

Its strange, some ISPs will try sell you a 56K frame relay for 200 bux a month, while you can get full T1 for 600 with unlimited transfers from others. I once had a 10mbit line for 3500 a month with unlimited transfer charges. You can chop that up and resell it, and make a nice profit.

Really what we need is tiered pricing that each level has unlimited transfer charge. Then the people who want really high speed transfers will pay for it. Look at how many people upgraded to higher speeds on cable modems, lots of people want high speed and will pay for it.

Re:Don't sell what you don't have to sell?

[Anonymous Coward]

This kind of thinking is idiotic.

One of the axioms behind packet switching, is that there are great savings when bandwidth is shared. This depends, of course, on the fact that subscribers do not use their alloted amount of bandwith at the same time. Because of the sharing, everyone benefits. As a subscriber, you benefit from lower cost because only a fraction of subscribers are using significant bandwidth at a given moment. To guarantee everyone their alloted bandwidth 24/7 would mean that the network, as a whole, would be way underutilized. Your Internet bill would be many times higher as a result.

Having said that, ISPs do need to carefully engineer their networks so that the bandwidth capacity they advertise is available a high percentage of time to any user on demand. (This is kind of like the phone companies making sure that everyone can make a phone call when they want to.)

The two main issues with P2P.....

[SwedishChef]

are bandwidth usage and copyright legalities. Taking the last issue first, as an (admittedly reluctant) ISP, we don't have the financial resources to fight RIAA and MPAA over the alleged copyright violations of our users. No small ISP does, and few large ones do (or would be willing to fight them off even if they had the funds). We don't get daily demands to disconnect users for alleged copyright violations, but we do get them weekly and following up takes our time and costs us money. When it gets to the point where we'd have to hire employees to handle the load we would either have to raise our prices (and our margins are razor thin now to compete) or implement the exact policy we see here.

Taking the bandwidth issue, most ISPs have separate accounts available for people who wish to "serve" files. In the days of dial-up most people didn't have the bandwidth for serving files or the static IP required to get to them. This is no longer true. P2P made a static IP irrelevant; people found you through a central registry of users and broadband gave you enough bandwidth to move packets fast enough to make the file exchanges possible. Suddenly the ISPs, which normally have to pay for bandwidth both ways, were faced with much higher charges for *their* links to the 'net.

If you think that P2P doesn't greatly increase bandwidth usage you haven't seen the MRTG graphs I have. When we did the engineering for 3 providers we could watch the effect of one user making available a popular new movie (like "Harry Potter"). It was dramatic! Bandwidth would often jump to the caps and stay there for hours at a time, drop down and then jump back.

An ISP buys bandwidth at a set guarenteed rate with the proviso that short bursts of usage above that rate wouldn't be charged for unless it lasts for longer than a minimum (agreed upon) amount of time. P2P changed this so that suddenly ISPs were faced with uplink bills of twice their usual amount!

Look at it from their point of view. How would you like it if you offered a room for rent and discovered that the new occupant was doubling your power, water and garbage bills? My guess is that you'd toss them out on their ear or make them pay for the excess. ISPs are in that position regarding bandwidth.

The combination of the litigation exposure plus the bandwidth costs will make every ISP look closely at making the same changes that this one has. They won't have much choice unless something else changes the equation.

Re:The two main issues with P2P.....

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a network engineer for a (somewhat) small ISP. We track bandwidth utilization by protocol using cisco netflow data. I generate reports that analyze the percentage of our backbone traffic that gets utilized by different protocols and basically 50% of our traffic is HTTP, 30% is Peer to Peer (Kazaa, Morpheus, Gnutella, Etc). If I thought this were an issue I would not start filtering the content, as that can lead to all kinds of issues with common carrier status. However, that is not to say an ISP is helpless to cut down on the amount of P2P traffic that passes through your network, calling the top 25 bandwidth eaters and reminding them of our AUP has been pretty effective in controlling growth of P2P traffic.

Other options than plain filtering would include rate limiting. If you just rate limited p2p type traffic at your network egress you could easily control P2P traffic to an overall acceptable percentage of your aggregate network bandwidth.

We closely monitor the amount of bandwidth used for these types of applications, and may be forced to take action at some point in the future... But consumers who want full T1 service without the T1 pricetag can move to a competitor because they cost us money. There are reasons why Business class service is more expensive, and if a residential customer wants to use their connectivity like a business then they should be paying the business rate or move to a provider who isnt in business to at least break even from their customers.

Those of you interested should check out Flowscan @wisc.edu

Re:The two main issues with P2P.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. If you have a bill problem, either rate limit the traffic (and setup proxy caches for HTTP) or adjust your business plan. Don't blame users because you oversell your bandwidth. If you guarantee 1.5Mbps/128kbps then you should expect 1.5Mbps/128kbps traffic.

As for your roomate problem, either you have an agreement on splitting costs, or you install meters.

Litigation is irrelevant as ISPs are common carriers.

Chamillion is a better word....

[Anonymous Coward]

...for what? Haven't heard that one before.

Chameleon? As in, A Spell for...?

fair measures for the times

[jdkane]

PenTeleData seems to be taking a very fair approach to a multitude of issues brought about by P2P file sharing. We may want to complain that they don't have the right to disallow us P2P, but on the other hand they seem to be doing a good job of protecting their users from the legal ramifications of P2P. Obviously they are not seeking out and prosecuting users who share illegal files. A warning followed by an account shutdown is pretty easy compared to the real legalaties that could be brought against the user.

This Big Brother crap is over the top. The ISPs are protecting themselves from legal ramifications. They probably don't really care about the users that much .. the benefits brought about by PenTeleData covering their own butts just filter down to the users which is arguably good. No Big Brother entity is pushing anything here like propaganda. The two ideas don't correlate well at all, except that a few angry users are making over-the-top comments because they'll say anything to garner arguments for getting their precious P2P back.

A world without free flow of P2P access! We've had our cake and ate it too. Expect the world to change. Maybe something better will come about.

Giving bandwidth and taking it away -- that's another meaningless argument. Just as you have to pay for your bandwidth usage, so does your ISP. Do you think they get it for free to give to you? Most purchase bandwidth from other companies.
Maybe the price of gas shouldn't increase either. Maybe the gas station should pay more over time, but never pass those costs onto the drivers. It doesn't take a business mind to see the problem here.

I certainly am willing to pay more to use P2P while it's still here. However there is increasingly more focus on the law surrounding illegal P2P content. How much longer will be *want* to use P2P, even if we can? How many of us are already in future legal battles that we don't know about yet?

The idea about encrypting the content is cool. It's already being done over at the FreeNet Project, but it's so slow! However leave it up to somebody to sooner or later write a P2P app on top of the FreeNet network.

What if ISPs close all unusual ports to prevent against P2P? Well then somebody can write encoders/decoders that work over normal ports like ICQ, HTTP, etc. and format that file parts in that protocol. Wouldn't that be cool.

However what starts to freak me out is no matter how many times P2P succeeds at getting around the barriers, those barriers exist for many reasons -- many are legal reasons -- and soon that may come down on P2P users like a tonne of bricks. And I certainly don't want to be there when it happens. Nobody does. It's seeming like more of a gamble each day.

Cable is only burstable

[yerricde]

Yes, but T1's are rather expensive

What do you expect for a consistent connection (i.e. not really 14.4 kbps burstable to "cable" speeds)?

and also a bit slow. I think they're symmetric with a 1.5Mbit capacity. My (capped) cable modem has 2Mbit downstream already.

But what's its upstream cap? Some cable monopolies cap uploads at 28.8 kbps, the same as dial-up. Without a reasonably symmetric connection, you'll get branded as a "leech" on the p2p networks.

this is like california energy crisis

[zogger]

--I am betting this is like cal energy crisis. artificially high prices brought about by artifically manipulated supply "numbers". Now I honestly don't know if the middleman bandwith "traders" exist or not like the "spot market" for the middleman profit leeches do with electricity and natural gas, but I am more than suspicious of this bandwith crunch and cost. Ya it's expensive, here's the solution, the cable/phone/whatever call them DATA companies are still protected monopolies most areas. If they got rid of the monopoly, then *perhaps* there would be some competition, especially "last mile". I mean really, home many cable television companies got their monopoly status back in the 70's? Their cables aren't paid for yet? How long are they going to be able to milk that excuse cash cow? And the local telcos? How long are they going to be paying for the same copper they ran back in 1948? Wazzup with that noise?

There needs to be an easier way to get fat pipes to people's homes and turn the internet "on" more, just like the interstate highway system finally made it feasible to drive cross country at a decent average speed and on decent roads, so do we need some better amount of bandwith AND people should not be restricted from hosting at home, that's just ridiculous. p2p and hosting restrictions is like the us post office or fed ex saying only packages in, no packages or letters out. That's nuts, so are these restrictions. But we won't KNOW until there's honesty in accounting back in US business, I go from a default position now they are all liars, cook the books, skim money and cry poverty. I am sorry to have that opinion, but recent revelations with big US corporate "ethics" and honesty leave a lot to be desired.

There's no way to discuss this rationally without VERIFIABLE numbers to use -bandwith/cost/middleman-whatever, all that we have to look at is vaporware accounting numbers. The ONLY verifiable number we have to look at is the end run highest retail price the individual pays, after that it gets into accounting voodoo.

Re:this is like california energy crisis

[sedmonds]

The problem with 'they' just moving in and removing the monopoly is that the infrastructure costs are so high as to prevent a company from getting a return on their investment anytime in the forseeable future. You can blame the current bandwidth providers all you like, but the 'they' thats supposed to come along and save you are the ones to blame.

Its not cheap running fibre, or new cable, or new copper all over the country, up and down every block. Not only is it not cheap, but getting permission to run new lines through peoples lawns, back yards, alleys and whatnot is not an insignificant hurdle.

Maybe its just me, but I think that forcing companies that -did- shell out the bucks for infrastructure to share with every Tom Dick and Harry is a pretty lame solution. Most other areas of the economy a company gets to benefit from their cost outlays, why shouldn't telecomms?

Re:this is like california energy crisis

[zogger]

--I'm actually more interested the next step up. fully aware of mom and pop telco and broadband isp's costs and needs, I'm more talking about this alleged bandwith cost. And you are talking about new startups, I am more talking about the older long ago established providers. and the reason I am is that they DID make money and WERE granted monopolies long ago, when the plauying fieeld was level and perhaps company B *might* have done a better job. but, no way to tell now, is there? All we have is their word they did the best job and the costs are reasonable. Duh, if there's one car company that's what cars costs, let's just have one car company established by law. With the established local telcos and cable providers, this is the case, it's *illegal* to do "new" AFAIK.

Yes, it's tricky, 10 water delivery utilities, each with their own pipes? ya, silly, I see your point with data pipes as well, I just have a "suspicion" that a big part of the cost is inflated way beyond normal, similar to how the cal electric bill was artificially inflated. And I'm really asking, because I DON'T know. maybe a better idea is to have RAW DATA PIPE being put up for bid by local areas, then installed, then a SEPARATE arrangement so that various providers could provide connectivity and bandwith? The pipe becomes "commons" just like the road structures are mostly. That's just a wild card there.

I see the refrain "well then, just you go get your own T-1". OK, swell,why is it they go around the country from 400$ to 2000$? Uhhh, why is this again??? I _don't_know, jiss asking. And just saying "supply and denmand"is not an answer, I want(would like) a bit more meat of an answer than that. Is there actualy a reason for such a large discrepancy? And who provides the larger pipes so that whomever local can supply you with a T-1, and what do they cost and is that a realistic price to pay as opposed to install cost? There's NO way to really tell for joe average consumer way down the food chain here. Oil-we sorta got an idea at least what a barrel goes for, wheat, it's easy to see what joe wheat farmer gets as opposed to a loaf of bread (hint, farmers get squat,middlemen snarf the profit big time)? How much does that really cost compared to what is charged?

To most people, past their immediate net-connection, there's no way to actually SEE what might be a good price or not. I have no idea how many middlemen are involved in my bandwith pricing structure. Is every step necessary, or is their redundancy and perhaps just graft? I don't know, really.

"Someone" someplace is sorta telling a whopper, all through the mid to late 90's we heard on and on and on about massive bandwith going in, huge amounts, but for the end user low level consumer, we are told now it's so very expensive that you can't do this or that, etc. What happened, all that stuff just evaporate or what? did it get ripped out of the ground? It's like 100 new interstate hiways were built, but we are told now they don't exist, that's just an old myth, and all that's available are these old two lane blacktop toll roads. Huh? Who's telling the truth, and what IS the truth, the gestalt, not just the local isp, the big picture. sorta like this --> Who GETS most of the bandwith money now? where DOES the fat pile of bucks stop? I see the statement of "data" we are supposed to believe that isps are all broke from bandwith costs, so who charges them, and who charges the next guy, and why is it expensive still after these gazillion miles of new fiber got put in? WHY is bandwith priced as it is, and is it a legit market or a controlled/obfuscated market with the details kept hidden on purpose, ie, are there more enron-esque revelations that might come forward? And last, is it TIME now to revisit cable providers local monopolies? Has it outlived it's usefulness and novelty? Might it be better to open the market back up, so at least there is a THREAT of competition, which might make the exisiting companies seek better ways to provide better services at better prices? Right now they have little incentive to do more than coast, yes? Sat tv sorta helped, but that has been adopted way more in rural areas that never had cable nor where they likely to, again, local governments "allowing" cable monopolies but not "mandating" coverage for all inside their muncipality/area-they let the cablecos pick and choose where they would go, whereas the copper pair telcos were mandated to provide service to all comers inside their area. That's a big difference in protected monopolies. I know of so many people want just a dang choice of channels, they can't even get that, pay for stuff you don't want drives the cost up. If I buy a new car I don't want ten rtadios in the thing, drives the cost up for stuff I don't want or need. Same with provided content, it's lame, and it'slame from zero competition mandated by "law". Maybe if they didn'tplug up their cables with useless stuff hardly no one wants bandwith might be cheaper, free up some cash to lay more cable/fiber to more homes? I dunno, but ya got to admit it's a thought with some merit.

Yes, I know it's sort of several questions mixed together, sorry. I think they are all legit though.

And don't get me going on the FCC and air waves bandwith and who gets what for why and how much, sheesh, there's another great rant topic. heh

Actually...

[0x0d0a]

The power company does care, to some degree, what' you're doing with your power. If you use juice in massive surges, i.e. causing brownouts in your neighborhood, then letting it go back to normal, they will be on your ass.

One reason that companies that use huge amounts of electricity over short spans of time (like electric arc furnaces or something) generally have to have made special arrangements with the power company...and sometimes they're simply restricted from using said electricity.

Re:Actually...

[tshak]

Right, but this has to do with the volume of electricity. Again, I have no problem with ISP's either A) capping my bandwidth or B) charging me for additional bandwidth usage. The power company does not care if you are powering a computer or heat lamps for growing pot.

Re:Actually...

[Andrewkov]

Maybe I should shut off that hydroponic lab in my basement...

In other news...

[skajake]

Due to congestion on interstate highways, and increased road construction costs, Illinois residents will be limited to driving TO their home. Road blocks will be set up to ensure they do not depart from their home... Local authorities state that as more and more people are blockaded in their homes, road congestion will become less of an issue..

Re:In other news...

[wadetemp]

This analogy is actually supposed to be applicable?

1) ISPs have voluntary terms of service.
2) Paying for/using a particular ISP is voluntary.
3) If not being able to upload files over P2P affects your life in any real way, I am very sorry. Maybe you should have thought a little harder before accepting #1 or #2.

Re:READ THIS AND WEEP

[WetCat]

Piracy is when armed men take over a ship. Sending bytes through the net is a sharing of intellectual information.

Does anyone smell a rat?

[El Jynx]

I'm beginning to wonder if the RIAA and the MPAA might be behind this in exchange for filling some fat director's chair with wads of dough - the fact that this will skim down P2P sources can't have been overlooked, and I'm sure the RIAA loves the smell of that. Time will tell, but if other ISP's adopt this method we may be looking at the recording industry's first real pokes below the belt.

Jynx

Re:Does anyone smell a rat?

[Quazion]

Paranoid rings a bell ?

They just want to save bandwidth, bandwidth is expensive these days. But it wont help unless they are gonna filter every packet on every port out, since people will find a new way to send the p2p info over the network, you cant keep it in nor out.
Welcome back to reality :)

Quazion.

In the UK

[Anonymous Coward]

FAIRADSL, one of the cheap adsl providers, has also put restrictions on p2p. Well you can always pay more to STEAL!

"Sharing"

[MacAndrew]

Well, the merry file sharers are sharing, in a voluntary association amongst themselves -- I'll show you mine if you show me yours, or even if you don't -- as opposed to the victimized copyright holders. So maybe you want the term "cooperative leeches" or "distributed leeches"? Or, the proven old term "pirates."

Point well taken. Thievery by any other name would smell the same. But no one wants to be called a hypocrite, least of all by themselves.

I realize this may provide an unintentional springboard for speeches by the piracy rationalizers. To being it back sharply on-topic, if the broadband providers do need to contain costs I'd rather they try to single old the illegal uses first. (If they're doing this just to maximize profit, then we have a market failure.)

Back when VCR's were introduced to the public it was argued they would be used to violate copyright, but because the courts found VCR's had legitimate uses as well (your nephew bar mitzvah, etc.) they were not per se illegitimate.

Re:"Sharing"

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you have market failure. You're a fucking genius.

Lets pay to do nothing!

[MrPerfekt]

I'm so tired of ISP's whining about subscribers using bandwidth. If we can't use it, then what are they selling? "Bandwidth costs" blah blah blah, well, you should've use a little better formula when computing your prices.

On the bright side, this irresponsibility may once again give rise to smaller ISPs. Especially with wireless technology advancing daily, it may be time to dethrone greedy cable ISPs. At least, I can only hope.

Re:Lets pay to do nothing!

[devmike]

small ISPs can't really afford to be competitive against the big'uns, especially if they're about to get a big influx of customers trying to avoid the download caps from their existing ISP.

Someone still winds up stuck with the bill being sent out from a backbone.

Re:Lets pay to do nothing!

[anthony_dipierro]

Yeah, it's kind of like the post office. They won't even let me send my horses through the mail. "Handling costs" blah blah blah. You should've used a better formula when computing the price of a stamp!

To most users this IS the internet..

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be such a blowhard.

==

If carriers think they can pick and choose what ports and protocols to allow, then they should rename the service to "HTTP Client / Email / IM access" and at least be forthright about it.

-45, Trite

[MacAndrew]

Henceforth there will be an exponentially increasing fine schedule for use of this phrase and its uninspired derivatives.

Sorry. :)

Re:-45, Trite

[Anonymous Coward]

*Yawns* - Fuck you.

Large scale events are rarely singular.

[El Jynx]

When a decent-sized company proposes change, there's seldom just one reason for it. No doubt they're also interested in the bandwidth, but they'd be fools not to consider all aspects of their options to see if they can't make an extra buck; I know I would. That's what they do in those impressive-looking meetings where everyone wears ties, drinks water and snorts coke during toilet breaks. Maybe, maybe not.

Jynx

LOL!

[Anonymous Coward]

I do ask that people pay for the software, but I've put years of work into it...

Please don't steal my software, but you can use it to "share" files that you don't own with people you don't know! Well, you can "share" any file but this one.

What this could mean

[FearUncertaintyDoubt]

I've noticed that the RIAA is leaning away from aggressive action against people downloading music, i.e., people who are engaging in activity that the RIAA generally wants, i.e., consuming music. Their measures are against distribution; going after super-nodes, file sharing programs/services, and copy prevention (keeps you from uploading it, but does nothing to stop downloading once a copy is out there).

Having goofed by declaring war on every kid who downloads a song, we're going to see more of the shift both in tactics and rhetoric to those who distribute. Perhaps they will be demonized as "dealers" or even "pushers" who entice wide-eyed young would-be ConsumerCitizens into filthy pirates.

So how does this work, since many, if not most, downloaders are also uploaders? Shut down uploading, be it via technology (blocking ports, DRM, copy prevention-enabled CDs), legal means (suing super-nodes and people who break technological means), and PR (portraying uploaders as the real villains). Now, you've still got uploading, but it's confined to a subset of people who are really committed to uploading. I base this on the assumption that a lot of people upload because all it takes is a checkbox -- it really doesn't cost me much time, effort, or worry. If you have to start fooling around with ports, worrying about a subpoena showing up, and losing your job for being branded a "pusher", maybe I just uncheck that little box that says "share files".

So now we've separated the hard core from the fringes. This hard core is small enough, evil enough, and important enough that it is worth the cost necessary to stop (shutting down accounts, legal action, hacking their hard drives, etc). And now without the hard core, the fringe will starve. The mistake of the attack on Napster was that there is now no central distributor to strike. It looks like a gradual movement toward coalescing the mass of distributors back to a short list of targets.

Will this strategy work? Some of this may have to do with how much people care about their ability to upload. If my uploading is shut off by my ISP, do I care? Do I raise a fuss, or do I say, oh, well, I can still download. Maybe the RIAA is saying quietly to the ISPs, look, just block the uploads, and nobody will complain about that. And now you don't have to worry about a lawsuit from us anymore. Everybody wins (wink wink).

Re:What this could mean

[Archfeld]

I don't know about you, but If someone on WINMX is DL from me and they have nothing to share I cancel them. The only exception is 56k or lower connects that take very little bandwidth from me. Realistically you can't expect a decent upload from a 56k line so I am willing to cut them some slack. But if you pull more than a few k/sec from me and don't have things offered you will get canceled. Lots of people are like that.

Re:What this could mean

[FearUncertaintyDoubt]

Not a bad idea, but that only works while you are sitting there monitoring your connection. I think a lot of people leave their PC up and sharing all the time (I'll leave it on for days at a time occasionally).

Your comment makes me think that a feature could be added to P2P programs to say "no download for non-uploaders" or "limit bandwidth for non-downloaders to x bps." That would let people who want to discourage freeloaders be able to effectively do that.

ISP's != Charity

[asv108]

Well when I worked for a local pa dialup isp circa 96, I would say nearly 90% of our users were only connected for less than an hour a month and during that time they would check e-mail and browse the web a little.

I bet most of these broadband isps have business plans that depend on most of the users using the service very sparingly, but when non-techies start leaving P2P programs on, their bandwidth costs go through the roof. Broadband costs MONEY, the #1 goal of an ISP is to make a PROFIT, not share pr0n with the rest of the world.

Stop complainning and switch to freenet

[Anonymous Coward]

why not move to freenet - here's the link to install it on your machine http://freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/twiki/view/Main/ WebHome

Re:READ THIS AND WEEP

[MrPerfekt]

... or it means you're a flaming anonymous troll, one of the two.

Re:READ THIS AND WEEP

[glesga_kiss]

The thin wires that make up the internet are not designed for so much traffic

Then add more wires. Or are you still finding 640K of RAM enough for you?

PenTeleData's Harsh Terms

[willpost]

Server Operation: Dial-up and high speed access customers are not permitted to knowingly operate information servers of any type. Servers include, but are not limited to, Web servers, FTP servers, Mail servers, IRC servers, etc. Any customer accounts found knowingly operating a server of any type may face immediate and permanent revocation of service. If customers wish to operate any type of server, contact Commercial Sales to establish a Commercial Dedicated account.

Commercial Postings: Commercial postings, those for monetary gain whether for profit or non-profit, via e-mail, newsgroup postings etc, except those in which it is specifically permitted, is prohibited by PTD.

Commercial Use: Web pages provided as part of the Internet Access Service are for residential use only. PTD prohibits commercial use of these Web Pages. The offending page must be altered or removed upon a warning being issued or access to it will be denied. This includes but is not limited to commercial advertising, commercial banners, etc. Commercial web pages are available at additional charges. Information can be found at info@ptd.net.

Obscene: The personal use of or commercial distribution of vulgar language, sexually suggestive language, obscene language, obscene images or vulgar images which are transmitted, posted, or displayed are prohibited to traverse any PTD system or any system accessible through PTD. Obscenities may result in the immediate and permanent termination of your customer privileges. These activities may border on criminal depending upon circumstances and could result in Federal, State or Local Law Enforcement involvement.

Customers are responsible and are solely legally accountable for all liability including but not limited to defamatory comments, copyright and trademark violations. Residential home pages are not to contain profanity and obscenities. The substitution of alternate characters in place of letters for profanity is not permissible. Residential Home Pages may not contain banner advertisements promoting commercial or monetary gain.

Unacceptable Content for Residential Home Pages

The following are prohibited:

1. Advertising products or services by non-profit entities (such as Charitable Organizations, Professional Societies, Service Groups) as well as for profit entities.
a. Display of Advertisements, including banner exchange services.
b. Conducting raffles, lotteries, or contests.
c. Pages that are patently offensive, as determined by PTD, including but not limited to bigotry, racism, hatred and profanity.
d. Pages that promote physical harm or injury to any group or individual.
e. Pages that contain nudity, pornography or obscenities of any kind.
2. Pages that promote illegal activities including but not limited to hacking, cracking, warez, denial of services, phreaking, etc.
3. Password only and restricted access pages.
4. Pages with hidden images or pages.
5. Pages with unauthorized third party copyrighted, trademarked, service marked, or trade secret materials.
6. Use of the page that would otherwise violate the PTD Acceptable Usage Policy or Service Agreement.

Re:Berman-Shake a fist.

[Anonymous Coward]

" I find it ironic that the very elements the Bourgeois Elite employ seem to dethrone them, time and time again."

Really? Care to give any recent examples of these "Bourgeois Elite" being torn asunder? It's one thing to talk tough, it's quite another for it to be reality. So far it looks like the big corps in all aspects of our lives, have the upper hand. Our CD's are high priced. Big food corp's like ADM have a strong grip on our food. Drug corp's charge arms and legs for our drugs. And in all this, our very protectors (elected leaders) are impotent. So what are we going to do about the Broadband/Media conglomerates? Shake our fists at them, and say "Never more!"? Supply and Demand only works on a market that has a balance, otherwise you have anarchy vs totality (Us vs Them). Great if you want social and economic upheavel, and in the long run will work (Collapse-Rebirth). However you better fasten your seatbelts because it's going to be a very rough ride, and the only certain outcome is that change is inevitable.

Personal Views

[XenoPhage]

First off, I work for Penteledata. However, I have no authority to speak for the company in this matter. As such, these opinions are mine.

There are a lot of views that can be taken on this matter. From an ISP view, ISP's need to protect themselves from the current "regime" of money hungry corporations. It seems that due to copyright laws, a company can and will do anything in their power to prevent anyone from breaking those copyrights. In a way, they're right. And, in a way, I think they're wrong. But of course, this isn't about them being right and wrong.

From the perspective of service, it is in an ISP's best interests to serve all of the customers equally. Due to the "always on" way that cable and dsl work, customers are prone to leaving their computers running 24 hours a day. Or, maybe they're leaving them on while they're at work so they can download everything they have queued... Either way, because P2P sharing is a 2 way system, while they're downloading, someone else can be downloading from them. The may not intend to become a download spot, but they may. This uses up bandwidth within the ISP's network, decreasing the available bandwidth to the rest of the customers in the network.

Yes, ISP's can limit bandwidth, but then customers complain about that. ISP's usually have an AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) and in the case of Penteledata, it strictly prohibits "residential" customers from running servers. While those servers may be "free" and the customer does not benefit financially from them, if ISP's allow this, then those customers that do benefit financially from running servers have a rock-solid argument against purchasing a commercial account.

There is also the security standpoint. As you know, security on one system can affect everyone else. Nimda, Code Red, and others caused widespread problems for more users that were not infected than those that were. Allowing residential customers to run servers opens up many security holes. While there are some very smart residential users out there, I'd have to say that the majority don't know what it takes to secure a system. Thus, they get infected, and attacks launch from their systems. It would be extremely hard, and, IMHO, unethical to try and screen users abilities before allowing them to run servers.

Some ISP's take the stance to prevent users from running servers, both to protect themselves, and to protect the users.

ISP's may lose customers over this, and they may gain customers because of it. There will be those customers that will find workarounds and continue the file sharing. I'd probably do the same thing myself. Although, I can honestly say that I don't use these P2P programs for many reasons. The point is that the ISP needs to protect itself and do what it can to protect it's customers.

I work each day designing networks, writing software, and troubleshooting problems. The software I write allows us as an ISP to better monitor the traffic patterns on the network. It forewarns us when we hit bandwidth limits and gives us a head start on alleviating those limits. It allows us to quickly see DOS and other attacks. All in the interest of keeping the customers running as smoothly and with as much bandwidth available as we can.

We take measures to contain any problems as quickly and as efficiently as possible. If this means turning off a customer while the customer deals with the problem on their side, then so be it. I think we've had a great deal of success with this.

I think a lot of people have blown this way out of proportion. ISP's will do what they need to protect both themselves and the customer. They will also do what they need to enforce the rules they've set forward. Upon signup, each customer has given their consent to obey the AUP... I doubt most customers read that document. But, just like EULA's, they are there...

Again, my views are not representative of the company in question. My views are my views. And just as a point, I'm no big fan of EULA's, AUP's, etc. But, without them, some users feel they need to take advantage of the services they're getting, not caring who they cause problems for.

PTD, like any other ISP has it's flaws. But overall, as a provider, I think they provide above average service. I use them at home, and I have no real complaints. I have the same service as any other residential customer and I'm expected to follow the AUP as well.

Re:Personal Views

[Anonymous Coward]

> As for the price difference between residential > and commercial cable, I'm not compeltely sure.. > I don't think it's that drastic though...

The price difference is pretty much a non-issue. The real problem with commercial accounts is the band offered. If I'm not mistaken, the commercial accounts offer 150/150... oh but you can run servers. Run servers on what!? 150/150!? Might as well just get 2 dialup accts & use shotgun.

For something like 5 years, I have been PLEADING with you guys to offer different tiers of service. The term "once an innovator" from the original story is perfect for PTD. Leading edge technology backed up by bleeding edge mentality.

On the topic at hand, I really don't have a problem with them strongly discouraging users from running p2p apps. And I still say most of the rest of their users wouldn't mind either if they ran a half decent usenet server. It's time to face facts: people don't run p2p stuff because they woke up with an overwhelming desire to send porn & mp3s to someone they don't know in some other country on the other side of the globe. They run them because they wanna get porn & mp3s for themselves!! Fix the damn news server so they can get what they want on your internal network (kinda sorta like free bandwidth for you) and just MAYBE, when you do get around to blocking ports, no one will friggin even notice!

TheBigZ - not anonymous or a coward, just to damn lazy to create an acct.

Re:Personal Views

[Bake]

The ISP's should just say "NO".

They are not at fault when users do illegal stuff. They share about as much a part of the "crime" as, say, the bus company/driver if a "user" of the bus service deals drugs while riding a bus.

Re:Personal Views

[Ghazgkull]

The basic idea of the internet is that of a distributed network filesystem. Discouraging your customers from contributing to the content of that system is to encourage them to become leeches. If it weren't for the people who make content available (including some of your customers), the internet would be a
much less valuable resource.

Your policy makes the internet less useful for all of us, including your
customers. Your income is predicated on the fact that the internet is useful
to your customers. Discouraging users from making content available on the
internet will only hurt your business in the long run.

Re:Personal Views

[XenoPhage]

(My views, not the companys, blah blah ...)

Ahh... But, we're not preventing those users from adding content in any other way... We are merely preventing them from becoming servers, willing or not. Think about it, most users don't realize that by downloading anything on a P2P program makes it immediately available for others to download it from them.

I read another post about the costs of running an ISP and the vast difference in cost vs bandwidth for a dial-up and a broadband connection. The post makes wonderful sense. ISP's are all but giving away bandwidth at this point. It may not be intentional, but they are. And the realization is quickly setting in that people are actually going to use that bandwidth. ISP's, as a result, are rushing around trying to gain some semblance of control.

I don't know how the AUP for PTD is exactly worded. Again, I don't deal with that aspect of the company. However, in the past, AUP's for dial-up customers stated things such as "Persistent connections over a 24 hour period are probibited" ... Basically, if you were "always on", you were breaking the AUP. Why? Because this was considered a commercial service. Well, broadband connections are always on. In fact, in the world of cable, it's not easy to prevent a user from being on 24/7 ... It's not something we want to do, either. But, I don't think the intention of giving a residential user a 800k/800k connection was that they would max that bandwidth all the time. It allows users to burst to that max for a short time.

When a DS1, DS3, OC3, etc is sold, it's to a commercial customer. In that sense, we expect that the customer is going to use all of his/her bandwidth. We monitor the node to ensure that there is sufficient bandwidth for all the commercial connections and increase this if needed.

I personally find my connection to the internet extremely useful. I don't run any servers either ... no FTP, no Telnet, no SSH, no P2P ... I use the internet quite a bit as well...

it's not really p2p anymore, is it?

[cel4145]

Additionally, PenTeleData may soon implement filters to prevent ProLog Express customers from uploading files to peer-to-peer networks. ProLog Express users who download files from peer-to-peer networks will not lose their ability to download, but once the filters are in place, you will lose the ability to upload files to the peer-to-peer networks.

imagine, a p2p network where everyone can only download, not upload--there's something wrong with this picture :)

As technology gets cheaper, we get hosed more..

[thenarftwit]

Technology improvements follow moores law with it getting cheaper and cheaper with every passing day..and these companies have the nerve to tell us what to do with the high speed sevices we buy off them, they also have the nerve to use this cheaper technology to monitor what we do.. it's time they were told what to do and use that better technolgy to provide better service for us. It's also about time that the holdover of data bit pricing that is lovinglly worshipped by these big companies was thrown out too, it's not the 1950's with expansive telephone service (voice only), it's the 21st century with exponentially growing technolgy of fiber optics (most installed fibers currentlly not used) where technolgy allows increasing amounts of data to be put thru fibers. So the excuse that it's expensive to send data bits thru an ISP network is crap, it's getting cheaper all the time with no end in site, it's time to dump this obsolete pricing model and move on..

P2P sharing letter from PTD Management

[Gangrif]

This is a copy of a post that the Manager of PenTeleData's Cable Support Department posted to PenTeleData's general news group in responce to the above mentioned p2p sharing letter.

I am not going to get into any discussion about this, I am going to just state the purpose of that letter which has been take wrong by only about 1% of the customer base from what I have seen.

Here are the facts:

A. Nothing is being changed. It is only in the maybe phase and at this time have no plans to implement it. Hopefully just getting the word out will take out one factor in issues that affect all cable broadband providers, not just PTD.

B. People who have the uploading enabled on these programs are allowing people to use the bandwidth. B.1 and this can happen even if they are not personally using it.

C. We are just trying to get the word out that if people are not personally actively using the upload to turn it off, as it does affect the network. Why should we waste bandwidth on someone from say Florida when our customers could be using it. And all because someone either forgot to turn it off when they were done, or do not even know its on.

D. No one here at PTD is trying to tell anyone what to do with their connection. The government not PTD sets the laws as far as copyrights and other issues, if we get legal notice to terminate an account we will do it. This is not a decision we make we just follow the law.

E. Your speeds that your complaining about have been directly tied to these kinds of programs sucking down your bandwidth and its most likely being used by someone outside our network.

F. I am not concerned at this time about the server part even thought that is a legitimate issue. All we want is for people who are NOT PERSONALLY using the upload part to just turn it off. It will help everyone. We have watched the general flow of traffic and have confirmed that these programs are causing 50% of all speed issues.

G. No we are not out of bandwidth, this is only a way to cut down unused traffic by people who are not Prolog Customers.

H. We care about our customers and are only trying to maintain as much as possible the best most consistent service possible, and this letter was meant just to get the word out to people who may not even know what is happening and to ask people who do understand to work with us on this. Use the upload when you personally need it, but do not leave it on all the time so the bandwidth can just be left on like a water faucet, kind of like water conservation. Why waste it? We want it for our customers not theirs

I. If these programs are not setup right your computers could have major security holes in them and your personal files could be available to the world.



This is all I am going to say about this I hope this puts some peoples mind at ease. Our main goal is to get rid of wasted bandwidth so you OUR customers can use it.

I apologize if the intent of the letter was misunderstood in anyway.

Please if you have any legit questions not flames email me and I will gladly answer them. All flames will just be deleted by me with no response.

Think what you will, a lot of people are blowing this letter out of porportion.

Re:P2P sharing letter from PTD Management

[Xaoswolf]

I've seen places where the T1 connection has been made slower than a 28k Modem due to file sharing. The company makes a valid point.

Re:P2P sharing letter from PTD Management

[Sacarino]

You would think that a letter from someone in management would at least be written properly. Why would you compose a letter representing the company without doing some checks/proofing on it... ?

RAGE AGAINST TEH MACHINE!!1

[Trespass]

Go back to Kuro5hin, with the other socialist wannabes. This dump is for libertarian wannabes.

Re:Personal Views residential

[Anonymous Coward]

So how about telling us the cost for a cable modem where you could run a Quake server or a home page with an Apache or IIS server?
Do they jackup the $30 residential to $300 for "business" service?

Re:LOL! (but not ROTFL)

[turnstyle]

You make a vaild point, but it doesn't really apply. Andromeda isn't a vehicle for anonymous file sharing, and I'm concerned by such behavior for exactly the reason you mention.

In fact, you'll see that the post immediately above yours is asking for me to add a 'universal search' to Andromeda - there isn't one now, and I don't intend for there to be one, as that's not what it's about.

Most people use Andromeda to access their own collections remotely over the network.

Independent bands also use it to share their files.

There are indeed legitmate uses for making files available over the network, and that's what I've been trying to do all along.

Bandwidth quanta

[skookum]

The problem in general is this: For many years, most ISP customers were on dialup. For a long time, the status quo was that you paid about $15 to $25 and in return got about 25kpbs - 45kbps. Then xDSL and cable was offered, and that price ratio suddenly went off the map. The average fee approximately doubled to the $40-$50 range, while the (peak) bandwidth jumped 10x-30x. As an ISP, suddenly you are receiving much less money relative to the amount of bandwidth you must provision.

But there are other factors as well. In the days when dialup was king, it was common to have a single T1 for an entire ISP, perhaps a few thousand users, I don't know the exact numbers. Anyway, if you do the math you soon realize that no ISP with half a brain provisions their bandwidth with the expectation that every possible user is transmitting at full blast constantly. I think a common rule of thumb is around 100:1 or so, i.e. the actual bandwidth available is 1/100th of what would be necessary to support every connection at full speed. This worked fine, since most people did not leave their dialup connected all the time and even if they did they were not transmitting constantly.

This changes with broadband. People do leave their broadband connection connected all the time, and with programs like Kazaa (which will remain running, minimized to the tray, even if the user clicks the "close" icon on the main window) it is not uncommon for sustained constant throughput to occur. The reason of course is that things that were unreasonable under dialup are now possible, like "sharing" full movies, warez images, etc. (I use quotes around sharing because it's still piracy, no matter how you spin it.)

So my point is this: the revenue:bandwidth ratio is about 5 to 15 times smaller, and people's fundamental usage patterns have changed drastically. This is why ISPs are in such a precarious position, and why they appear to be enacting such desperate policies... because they're hurting. Even if you account for the fact that bandwidth has gotten cheaper (although not by factors of 10!), it does not alter the equation.

Certainly, it's partly their fault. The aspects that are hurting them the most, the vastly higher BW and constant availability, are precisely those that they advertised the most. In that sense, it's their own fault. I see this as another facet of the late 90s tech bubble, in that management of these ISPs was more concerned with getting new technology out there and bragging about the number of customers then they were with sound financial decisions.

Anyway, I think the way we will make it work is with tiering. The current situation is ludicrous: you have dialup at one end and full speed cable/dsl at the other. I know some ISPs have limited forms of price tiering, but the key word is limited. What we need is a plan that costs about $30 and is intended for the majority of internet users -- burstable high speeds for surfing and gaming, but on average a very low duty cycle. Cap it at around 500kbps burst and implement some form of traffic shaping to enforce a low total throughput, like 1GB a month or something. This is the plan you parents and non-hardcore friends use, and the ISP makes a decent profit. Use this to subsidise the $50 plan that allows more flexibility. Unfortunately you will never be able to offer a service that allows a continuous full rate transfer for $50 a month -- if you want this, check out a fractional T1, and expect to pay much more. So don't expect it from any consumer grade ISP, even if you can currently do this without repremand. It just doesn't work that way. Sorry.

Re:Bandwidth quanta

[Anonymous Coward]

1 GB a month? I download 10-15 GB on dialup, upload 5-10 GB (15-25 GB total throughput), and pay CDN$25/month including taxes (probably about US$17). The phone line is another $25/month, but I'd still need a phone line to call people even if I had a broadband connection.

Why would I pay almost twice as much for a connection that gave me less than 5% of my current throughput? (I assume your $30 price was in US dollars - and if it's for cable modem service, you'll probably need to pay an extra $10 if you don't subscribe to basic cable.) Capping is still better than charging per gigabyte, like some providers do - but if the cap is anything less than 20 GB, I'll stick with my unlimited dialup connection. If my provider ever sets limits on my dialup connection, I'll switch to another one. Unlike broadband connections, there is actually some competion between dialup ISPs.

Re:Bandwidth quanta

[pjp6259]

I don't think it's fair to say it's "piracy" any way you spin it. It's copyright violation anyway you spin it.

"Piracy" is a spin term originating with the content providers, and I think it is less accurate than "sharing."

The economic reason for this

[Nkwe]

A lot of the discussion here seems to resolve around the issues of the RIAA, our rights, their rights, how could they?, I am gonna do xxx to get around this, etc.

The real reason around this particular ISP is wanting to block or reduce uploads may actually be cost.

My ISP (DSL-Only) told me that their upstream providers charge them by the amount of data they upload. The more upstream bandwidth they are allocated, the more it costs them. Download bandwidth does not have as a significant impact on their cost. My ISP (and I think most others) compensate by weighting the upload cost more heavily then the download cost to their customers. My ISP charges the following for bandwidth: (These numbers don't include the phone company charge for the DSL circuit, just the ISP portion.)

$17.99 768k/128k
$26.99 1544k/128k
$26.99 384k/384k
$47.99 1544k/384k
$47.99 784k/784k

Note that at the two options where the prices are the same the different amount of bandwidth you get is not symmetrical (at $27 you get a delta of 1160K down and 256K up, and at $48 you get a delta of 760K down and 400K up.)

Perhaps the motive of the ISP in question is simple economics: If they discourage uploads then they reduce their upstream costs, and can make more money or pass the savings on.

As a side note, my ISP rocks. They don't block any ports; they don't have any usage restrictions (other then you have to be legal, and can't resell bandwidth with a residential account); I always get the full bandwidth I pay for; they offer static addresses and routable subnets; and they are a small, independent company. Imagine that.

Re:The economic reason for this

[stubear]

shhhhh..this is /. If you report facts here I'll have to report you to the proper authorities. Quit spreading truths and start spreading lies and innuendo. If you start spreading truth, /. will become useless as no one will want to read their crap and the comments made by most of the users here.

Re:The economic reason for this

[twifkak]

I used to have an ISP like that (even provided a dialup shell, and unlimited storage space, which was useful for downloading huge files on a modem), but then they got bought out by Quantum, who got bought out by Monumental Networking Services, who got bought out by Verio, who got bought out by NTT. Somewhere along the line, they started sucking.

Where do you live? I wanna live there, too, now :)

Re:The economic reason for this

[null-sRc]

my ISP rocks too... $65 canadian a month .. so thats like 40ish USD.. and i get

2.5mbps down
768kbps up
5 static ip's
+webspace,emails, misc crap

i get full speed all the time, i've done uploading around 10gigz a day for awhile and they never bugged me about it =)

yet.. they are a large, privatized corporation... imagine that.

Not for long...

[NineNine]

I don't see it making a huge impact on bandwidth either, since people will still be leeching away. Most *my* bandwidth goes to downloading, not uploading.


For people using FastTrack (Kazaa, Kazaalite, etc.), there's a new thing in place that gives you a "participation" rating based on how often and how much people download from you. People get paired up with people with similar ratings. While not perfect, it's a great step in the right direction to get rid of leeches. Leeches can still leech, but soon they'll only be able to leach from people with 28.8K modems, or they'll have to wait a good bit for the files they want.

Re:Not for long...

[pod]

For people using FastTrack (Kazaa, Kazaalite, etc.), there's a new thing in place that gives you a "participation" rating based on how often and how much people download from you.

Which can be easily faked by, effectively, uploading to yourself. There are even tools to let you do that easily.

P2P? You've volunteered as a guinea pig

[Anonymous Coward]

I run a small wireless ISP and I'm studying for my Cisco Certified Internetwork Professional. I happen to be working the QoS and multicast portion now - any customer silly enough to fire up Kazaa is volunteering for whatever queueing method I plan on playing with that day.

Seriously folks, Tier 1 T1 == $1,000/mo, each 64k channel is about $40, a 256k customer with P2P on costs me $160/mo and pays not more than $35 for the service. You better believe I stomp on 'em quick when I notice them.

'merkin acronyms

[Snafoo]

Slashdot eds, you might consider using headlines more accessible to non-americans. When I saw this story I thought, "What? The Palestinian Authority is restricting P2P? Terrorist bastards!"

Re:READ THIS AND WEEP

[dubious9]

Theres too much piracy and YOU know it. It also sucks up far to much bandwidth. The thin wires that make up the internet are not designed for so much traffic. FairADSL in the uk is al so restricting p2p. But there are a lot of legimate places to get stuff online so stop p2ping, its why DRM/crippled cds/padallium is happening!

If this post is at -1, it means that the mod supports piracy.

Yes your currently at -1, yes I happen to agree with you. As I have stated here P2P is unfair to other people that are using the network for more valid reasons. By valid reasons I mean work/homework is more important than downloading porn/music etc. I like P2P but untill we can come up with a way to divide bandwidth more fairly, the bandwidth hogs have to go. If you have your own dedicated bandwidth, then by all means, use P2P and leave it on all the time. For the rest of use that are using shared reasources (regular DSL, cable, university dorm networks etc.) P2P is unfair to all others on the network.

Re:Personal Views residential

[XenoPhage]

FYI : These are my opinions, not necessarily the opinion of the company, yada yada yada ...

Actually, I don't think we've busted anyone for running a quake server, provided it isn't a 24x7 server... While we probably could do this, I don't think they really consider it necessary. Blocking FTP, HTTP, P2P, and other such services is done for 2 major reasons. 1, it chews up bandwidth very quickly should that site become popular. 2, a large majority of the FTP site (especially) are there for Warez. Of course, we can't block everything and users can always change the port the service runs on.

There is a valid third reason as well. Port scanners can quickly find open ports on a users machine. That user may have put up an FTP server for innocent purposes, but, not knowing security, they've opened up a server that can be compromised. We see this often enough on commercial servers where the admins should "know better" ... Most residential users don't think twice about security before running an FTP server. Simple hack, and suddenly there's an unauthorized server running. Most of the time the user won't even notice! They'll call complaining that service is slow... It isn't until we've done some investigating that this hole is found.

I see the need for some users to have the ability to FTP files to/from home, use remote desktop/VNC to get to their home machines, etc. But, by and large, the majority of the users suffer for those users that abuse the system or just don't know enough to protect themselves from getting abused.

I *think* users have access to a web server where they can put up home pages. I can't say for sure because I'm an engineer. I don't know what exactly is included with residential packages, but I'm fairly certain a website is in there...

As for the price difference between residential and commercial cable, I'm not compeltely sure.. I don't think it's that drastic though...

It's more a matter of what is causing the most problems. If everyone suddenly started running game servers and it was chewing up huge gobs of bandwidth, they'd probably start getting blocked. Who knows, if P2P matures some more and the software gets to the point where users can make informed decisions about how to use it, we may remove the block. Right now, though, they're extremely popular, and, as such, cause many headaches for traffic engineering and security control.

Re:Berman-Shake a fist.

[dolo666]

So far it looks like the big corps in all aspects of our lives, have the upper hand.
Well it would seem that according to Berman, the big corps are going the way of the dinosaurs IF they get in the way of progress. Supply and Demand. Should people see P2P as the answer, which they have, then anyone who is directing traffic against P2P could be in trouble. However I'm not suggestion that P2P is progress. What I'm suggesting is that should the world choose to embrace P2P as progress, then woe to anyone opposing it.

Why do you think the RIAA is putting so much force into their opposition of P2P? I think it's because they are aware of how hard it will be to fight P2P if the public embraces it fully. They are aware that if they can nip it in the bud, they can keep on trucking.

Is that what you want?

The economics of a broadband ISP

[da_anarchist]

Why is it that no ISP can provide true broadband (something like 1.5 Mbps up / 1.5 Mbps down) at a price point that would ensure wide market acceptance, say $50. A T1 line costs on the order of $1000-1500, so lets say a T3 with 28 times the capacity costs $20000. Ok, so with this we have 43.25 Mbps of bandwidth (howstuffworks.com). If we charge $50 per user to break even we have 400 users. Everyone still gets at least 100 kbps up/down even if every single person is maxing their connection. Ok, so obviously we want to turn a profit so we decide that we'll allocate 700 users to this one T3 line. Assuming a 10$ (20%) overhead per subscriber, we still have a profit of $8000 (50*700-(10*700+20000).

Lets see, now even if each subscriber is downloading their porn, N'Sync mp3's etc the total bandwidth per subscriber is 60 kbps or about the speed of a 56k modem. However its more likely that say only 100/700 customers will be fully using their bandwidth at one point, so average total bandwidth ends up being about 430 kbps, a little less than the average DSL dl rate, but much higher than the usual 128 upload cap. So given the high prices for bandwidth on the ISP's end it seems that 1.5 Mbps up and down is not a possibilty at 50$ but that the ISP should have no problem selling 512 kbps up and down without restrictions on servers and the like for 50$. After all, they can afford to provide the 512 kbps of bandwidth per subscriber, so why restrict it? Going out on a limb, I'm sure that with higher speed connections on the ISP's end (OC3, OC12, etc.) comes even greater economies of scale allowing them to profitably offer 768 up and down without restrictions. So why doesn't this exist in the United States? 30% profit (8000 / (20000 bandwidth + 7000 overhead)) doesn't seem that bad!

Conclusion, it must be those damn telco and cable companies preventing a competitive market. Deregulation to break up monopolies is a good thing, folks!

Re:The economics of a broadband ISP

[Anonymous Coward]

Bandwidth isnt the only cost though, so your margin shrinks quite a bit when you start calculating the other costs of doing business, also you are considering just bandwidth costs you arent even calculating the loop costs to each customer.

Re:The economics of a broadband ISP

[devmike]

he's right...a t3 requires connection equipment, and let's say you're gonna try and set up a VLAN or something...that requires copper, dry line, whatever, that costs...by the month.

You need to pay someone a good wage to administer this, in fact several people to deal with complaints when suddenly everyone IS downloading the new linux ISO or new movie or whatever.

Say 3 support guys at least 25k a year for them, rental fees for dry lines...don't know, not terribly cheap say 2k for the year, equipment, electricity, maintenance...it goes on...bigger than you thought huh?

Who cares?

[siliconjunkie02]

Really folks, does this REALLY effect you? All the software in question is junk/spyware. The intentionally build it to not allow you to really restrict uploads by not providing good controls or it ignoring them. I routinely have to kill my girlfriends limewire to make SSHing from work barable. It saturates my upstream and kills the connection speed. The instant I kill it, things are good. We are victims of poor software design more than anything else. While I dont advocate ISPs blocking anything I can see their point. Like it or not it still thier network that they more or less rent you time on. Don't like it? Use another. Broadband is not a 'right' (yet). I used to have DSL that the ISP used QoS to rate limit me after I downloaded more than X amount. They were upfront about this and their prices did refect it. Its a resonable solution.

Why hate P2P?

[Lost Engineer]

What is the Internet?
If these ISPs get their way, the Internet will turn into nothing more than a corporate sponsered content delivery system. The only use of the net by their customers that they feel is legitimate is the WWW, which is mostly a one-way system. Any kind of sharing violates their acceptable use policy, and I'm willing to bet they're not the only one. They want to set up a two-level system, with content providers who pay more and consumers who pay less but contribute nothing. Banning P2P is just the first step in insuring corporate domination.
Of course, if we, the consumers, insist on the right to share, ISPs and corps won't have a leg to stand on.

Ugh. Not PTD.

[eamber]

I was a subscriber of PTD.net (PenTeleData) about 7 years ago. Theirs service was horrible. Their customer service was some of the worst I've ever dealt with -- it's actually not shocking at all to see that they've sunk to this level.

No P2P = More Customers

[Anonymous Coward]

Just over a year ago we decided to block P2P upload and download - we are an ISP. Many people told us it was suicide and all of our customers would switch to our compeditor here in town. I though you might be interested in the results one year later.

Amoung dozens of reasons to block P2P, one outstanding reason is that P2P expands to fill all available bandwidth. There are technical reasons for this based on how servers are chosen to download files from, but regardless of why or how, both an individual's bandwidth and that of the ISP is quickly saturated. Doubling our bandwidth solved the problem for only a couple weeks after which P2P traffic had expanded to use up all the bandwidth again. Everyone complained about slow Internet when they had bought fast Internet.

So we blocked all known P2P ports and many P2P company server sites. The responsiveness of our network immediately improved. And some customers, fewer than we expected, switched to our competitor. As we expected, the quality our competitor's network quickly went in the toilet.

The end result? Our competitor lost far, far more customers to us than we had to him. And, nearly half of those who had switched from us to our competitor switched back. One customer switching back put it simply "There is more to the Internet than P2P." We now have easily twice the number of broadband customers as our competitor.

I wasn't surprised by the result. ISP's have long known that if they rank their dial-up customers by time online and kick off the top 5% they will double their profits and the remaining 95% of customers will praise them. Indeed, I know one ISP who does exactly that, charges an extra $5 per month to the rest of his customers for his premium service, and is laughing all the way to the bank at all those ISP's who are afraid to get rid of the customers abusing their service.

Re:No P2P = More Customers

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, anonymous poster and no name or place of said ISP's mentioned. Credibility? I think not.

but the Internet *IS* P2P

[Baki]

Network protocols such as SNA require different types of nodes, some are servers/concentrators or whatever they are called.

The Internet Protocol, in contrast, was designed to be not dependant on centralized components, and any node on the Internet (i.e. anything connected to it that has an address) can send and receive packets to any other node on the net.

The Internet has always been "P2P" long before the word even existed. And it shall remain that way, whether ISP's like it or not. Except if they remove any incoming connections for all of their clients. That would make many applications impossible, including all server-type applications (such as running your own webserver, mail server, ssh login server etc).

Any P2P protocol could "hide" using ever changing ports, or using say the SMTP port (e-mail) and talk its own P2P stuff over that. Better even, you could tunnel all of it over SSH (port 22), noone could ever find out what you're doing, and an ISP could never detect it and block only file swapping programs without blocking any server activity (including ICQ, netmeeting and other widespread popupar applications).

There is only one rational solution: If they are really bothered by upload volume (most ISP's pay their upstream providers not for download volume, but only for upstream (why???)), they must provide metered access, at least for upstream. Above some limit you have to pay the cost price per megabyte; not nice, but not unreasonable either.

Obvious solution

[IamTheRealMike]

Of course, if ISPs really wanted to put a long term solution for this in place, they'd get off their backsides and put IPv6 into place. All modern operating systems support it, and with IPv6 comes decent IP Multicast.

This whole situation has been caused simply because a network stream is a 1:1 thing. If you make it a 1:many connection then suddenly you have far more efficient use of bandwidth, because if you're an ISP and 100 users are downloading a file, you only have to receive it once on your incoming link, instead of 100 times.

Of course, you'd still have P2P file sharing, the reason that people use Kazaa is not because it's the best way of moving information around (it's not), it's because it's anonymous and you can't be taken down for it. Safety in numbers, safety in anonymity. If there were suddenly large pirate music servers transmitting albums on rotation via multicast 24/7 they would be much easier targets.

Multicast has lots of other legal uses of course, that's what I'd want them for. But I can see that it'd help solve this situation. So come on ISPs, where are the v6 routers?

Is Groove Included in the Ban?

[linuxislandsucks]

Is Groove included in the ban? Groove is P2p as well..would not want all those management types that work from home to go unwanted and not banned :)

Port 80--Why not?

[incog8723]

I'm not a networking expert or anything, but to subvert the ISP/lobbyist's fight against P2P, couldn't the P2P software just use port 80? It seems to me, that unless someone is running a web server on the machine they use for P2P, that using port 80 or 21, or something, would effectively prevent the ISPs from denying service.
I understand that an http client or server running simultaneously would disrupt the traffic, but isn't there a way to do filtering or something?

I'm sure I haven't thought this out completely, because I'm sure this would have already been done if it would work. However, I'd like to know why it couldn't.

Not trying to be an idiot. I just am.

Re:Port 80--Why not?

[blogan]

Because some ISP's will redirect all traffic bound for port 80 to a proxy server and handle it that way. So now you'd need to implement the P2P protocol over HTTP instead of just IP.

Huh?

[tkrotchko]

"ISPs have every right to limit these low priced services"

It seems this is your opinion, correct?

all for pest(Kazaa) control!

[elchuppa]

For me at least, this is a pretty clear cut issue. If file sharing programs like Kazaa2 make it impossible to provide a high quality broadband service at a reasonable price, than an ISP can legitimately remove it. Ultimately I believe their customers will thank them for it. Your choice. You can join an ISP which allows P2P, where you get 10K downloads at 5am. Or you can join an ISP where a customer agreement precludes the use of Kazaa2 and performance meets the monicker of 'broadband'. Personally I opt for the second option. Ever since Kazaa2 came out my ISP's service has been severely affected. Now that they have started implementing some blocking, I am back up to the 1-3 MBPs Up and down.... much better than the 200K I was getting before. Ultimately, strong control of bandwidth sharing should allow all ISP user's to use whatever internet service they want without unfairly affecting the bandwidth of others. I actually am surprised that there is that much difficulty in accomplishing this now, apriori it seems like a relatively simple task.

nice job there

[Anonymous Coward]

on a related note, ducks may exhibit homosexual tendancies. We don't have any facts, but we guess 95% of the population is included.

Wtf is the point of saying "I don't have any factual data" and then guessing a value. Just guess.

Re:Management fluff

[octalgirl]

C. Why should we waste bandwidth on someone from say Florida when our customers could be using it.

This argument slays me. FTPing or P2P or whatever, to someone is FL is no different than being a Verizon customer and making a long distance call to an AT&T customer in another state. These companies wanted to jump on the bandwagon and offer this service, so they will just have to figure it out. I am sick of commercials that show space shuttles lifting off and music and video being downloaded, only to have these newbie ISPs get very upset when you actually do any of that! Providing internet is marching its way toward being no different than other utilities. Did POTs lines get overloaded way back when? Of course. And they have spent decades improving the phone system. And yet, in a catastrophe like a hurricane or 9/11, the phone lines can still get overloaded from too many people trying to check on loved ones.

E. Your speeds that your complaining about have been directly tied to these kinds of programs sucking down your bandwidth and its most likely being used by someone outside our network.

More BS. I know of no broadband ISP that had the foresight to offer tiered services from the get-go. And Napster was out long before cable and DSL finally made it to the general public. They didn't pay attention to the demand and the market and what it was all about, and they are complaining about it. They jumped onto something that was already in existence, and completely underestimated how they would handle the demand.

I. If these programs are not setup right your computers could have major security holes in them and your personal files could be available to the world.

Typical defensive stance - when you can't come up with a good answer, threaten them and change the subject. I am tired of hearing it from the RIAA or anyone else who wants to hit the below the belt like this and try to use the customers ignorant fear to coerce them into doing something. It's unethical and deceitful. Can running FTP cause a security breach? Yes. Can P2P programs of the world junk up your computer with adware and such. Oh yes. But it is not the ISPs place to dabble here. Anyone willing to run these things needs to be prepared to educate themselves.

in other news.. we have some bad analogies

[dubbreak]

i hope you're not serious. This doesn't apply at all unless Illinos has cars that pilot the roads themselves creating traffic w/o the owners' knowlege. Due to computer illiterates in my area leaving programs such as kazaa and the likes running i have gone from uploads caps of nothing to 115 kb/s => to 60 kb/s and now around 50 kb/s. Why? Because some people use all the available upward bandwith all day. The worst thing is when the customers are approached they have no idea (other than their computer was running a little slow ever since they put that program on). a better analogy would be someone leaving the water running all day ("yeah but i pay for the water!") Yeah, but you aren' using the resources so you are just wasting them! Of course i this day and age in N/A it's all about me me me and my "Unlimited internet access" and i'll use all the bandwidth i want cos i payed for it. Video conferencing is now a joke with all the clutter and if i actually want a file from a friend i'm back to having it burned if i can't find a server (50kb/s is a joke, i've had shits faster than that)When you are used to 200-500kb/s slowing down just isn't really an option. If blocking these services speeds up my uploads so be it cos i can find other sources for music and videos.

Re:in other news.. we have some bad analogies

[reflector]

Due to computer illiterates in my area leaving programs such as kazaa and the likes running

grow up. just because someone leaves a p2p app running all the time doesn't make them computer illiterate. you can insult people all you want, but it doesn't make your statements true.

i leave my p2p app running pretty much all the time. i do this not to benefit myself (i don't often download), but to benefit others, with the added side benefit of depriving the riaa of revenue.

Good ol' PTD, at it again...

[Chordonblue]

Heh.. I was a customer of these guys for 3 three years. Their earliest cable modems (the old Zenith black box jobs) only did 500K bps (which in 1994 was THE shit!), but had NO manageability. The amazing thing was, PTD offered this service in Lancaster County, PA - Amish Country - one of the most unlikeliest of areas. When I moved to D.C. 2 years later, even THEY didn't have decent cable service until 2001!

As a result, PenTeleData ended up coming up with some sort of rule that you couldn't download more than 128K bps over a 3 hour period. The per minute charge for overuse was unbelievable (it would have even made British Telecom blush).

I bitched to them about it. First of all, there was nothing in our original agreement about "overuse". Secondly, how would I know when this seemingly arbitrary limit had been reached? The thing was, there was no telling Microsoft to not send me the newest beta of W2K at over 128K bps. Finally, we reached a reasonable agreement whereby I would try to do any extreme downloading after hours, and if they needed the bandwidth they would simply throttle me back or cut me off.

About 2 months later, I went on a midnite downloading frenzy (on Napster) and suddenly {Snap!} I was cut off. Or so I thought. I soon discovered only Napster didn't work. Then I tried downloading off of various web sites. After a few minutes... {Snap!} Port 80 was dead. Later, and under VERY heavy use, I lost IRC, Newsgroups, and FTP. Basically, I had them manually shutting off ports all night. Yes, it was spiteful, but I was annoyed. ;)

At any rate, at the end of the month, I received a bill from these folks and it was well over $800! After arguing with management over this bill (and threatening physical presence - always helpful when dealing with xenophobic phone people), they "remembered" our email conversation and let the bill slide. After I hung up the phone, I took the modem back and haven't dealt with them since.

People in this area can now get DSL (www.jazzd.com) and I can tell you from my experience that it's better and faster than even the cableco's newest modems. Also, they haven't made any stupid bandwidth limitations.

At any rate, I'm both amused and saddened that PTD is still trying to enforce the unenforceable. Either they need to get better bandwidth management tools, or a better management.

Throttle less than 24kbps

[Anonymous Coward]

(there is no way to throttle to less than 24kbps... that's fucking retarded>>

Indeed, especially for those still stuck on dial-up.
You can edit the registry to throttle it lower. Find Kazaa in the registry, and under transfer there's an UploadBandwidth setting. It might reset every time you try to change your options in Kazaa though.

Implement QoS

[HBI]

I don't buy this guy's statement at all. If they want to restrict bandwidth utilization do it actively. Take control, restrict users bandwidth, and STOP ADVERTISING that you get a fat pipe if they don't want to provide the bandwidth that they are claiming to provide.

Basically, they are lying to the public and running a pyramid scheme with their bandwidth. THEY DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH. P2P wrecks their little scam, so they threaten law-abiding citizens who are paying for their damn service.

The bastard who wrote that letter should be hauled outside and shot. Where the hell are the consumer advocates when you need them?

bah

[Anonymous Coward]

If you guys think this is bad, you should look at broadband in Australia.
They cap ports without even telling their customers. Just about every P2P program is capped. IRC is probably next.

Re:Berman-Shake a fist.

[MonsterChicharo]

Corrupt governments screw the whole equation.

Airlines, anyone?

Broadband Reality Check

[Anonymous Coward]

Its really simple math. Real bandwidth, the kind you seem to feel your entitled to costs about $500-$1000 per meg. The cost of the data connection is many times more expensive then the old traditional phone line because so much of the infrastructure has to be redone with newer equipment, with a shorter lifespan. (whats one meg today when in 5 years you need 10meg).

You can not expect an ISP to take your $50 and give you $500 of service. The assumption used in most business cases with broadband is that you will be able to get a 100:1 ratio for bandwidth to user. This ratio was actually pretty accurate a year ago, but in the last 6 months it has been slowly eroded by P2P programs, Kazaa is the current #1 killer.

Currently, I know of an ISP where Kazaa traffic accounts for almost half of all broadband traffic, its even 4 times more then web traffic. Fundamentally, it also represents the smallest group of users. So, you now have 100 customers using 25meg of traffic (a 4:1 ratio).

This is not even the worst part. These are the early adapters, there are users who are not using Kazaa, and their not using it is the only thing that makes the Kazaa users available. The thing that scares all ISPs out there is what do they do when Kazaa or similar P2P networks become common on all systems.

I guess the question for you is, which alternative do you want to have, since it will eventually come down to these 3

1) support and promote your ISP's attemtps to improve the efficiency of these P2P networks with caches.
2) Pay more realistic prices that truely reflect the costs involved. Remember, while evil companies want profit, profitless companies just go away.
3) Stop using P2P completely, either voluntary or by force.

I would love to see any other suggestions people could come up with.

note to self...

[Anonymous Coward]

change internet service... need to download porn from kazaa... must downlaod porn from kazaa...

wow

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a true rebel!

Another brilliant post

[Anonymous Coward]

generated by the Slashdroid 6000!

FORMER Office fellow

[Modern_Celt]

Around the office, when he did work with us, he was known as "Mr. Winkie".

Re:FORMER Office fellow

[Modern_Celt]

Oops, I did forget to mention that he was employed by the ISP in question.

Last Post!

[alpg]

The Analytical Engine weaves Algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard
loom weaves flowers and leaves.
-- Ada Augusta, Countess of Lovelace, the first programmer

- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...