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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.
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.
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.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
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
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.
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.
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.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
--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.