P2P Bandwidth Hogging the Net

zymano writes "zdnet has this article about bandwidth hogging p2p." I'm sure we'll see more rate limiting in the future and per-gig charges. The article says 60% of ISPs bandwidth is P2P, and that seems high to me, but not unrealistic. Besides, since most broadband is pretty seriously hamstringed in the upstream department, I'm not sure where they can go with this.

Comments

It's a realistic number

[oneiros27]

As an employee at a university, I can tell you that in fact, those numbers are realistic.

Unfortunately, with the port-hopping ability of some of the newer p2p networks, restricting their usage, or giving them a lower class of service than other protocols is exceedingly difficult.

The real problem in our case is not so much the people downloading, but as we have a rather fat pipe to the internet, we're seen as very favorable download farm for people to grab files from.

This is good news for telecom

[Kombat]

As a former Nortel Networks employee, I am glad to hear this type of news. Part of the whole reason for the telecom meltdown was predicted demand that never materialized. The growth of traffic was unfolding as expected, but in a quest for better profits, the telecom companies decided to curb demand instead of increasing supply. So instead of expanding backbones, they capped downloads.

They can only do this for so long. With the rollout of large-scale gaming networks like Sony's and Microsoft's (for the X-Box), the demand will keep growing, one way or another. Sooner or later, the Qwests and MCIs are going to have to bite the bullet and buy some terabit optical switches. They're going to have to open up their wallets, and then we should start seeing a rebound in the high-tech market.

So support your high-tech buddies! Saturate your network connection, make your ISP feel the bandwidth pain, nag them to upgrade! :)

true

[Tom]

It's a fact. I work for an ISP. 60% is a conservative figure, we've seen more than that at times.

Thing is: P2P wastes tons of bandwidth. The continuous searches, all the broken or incomplete downloads, not even to speak of the overhead.

60% Usage

[mustangsal66]

We have a 45Mb DS3, we are a cable modem service provider. Watching the traffic I can confirm, that from about 3pm until 10pm 60+% of our traffic is from P2P clients. Thats only the traffic we can track. Kazaa 2 can use port 80, and only gets reported as web traffic.

I see kazaa 2 traffic mostly. but also edonkey, kazaa 1, napster, and others.

Less then 1% of our users use 85% of the bandwidth. They're alloted 1Mb/s download, and they use it constantly.

Economics of IP bandwidth cost

[puzzled]

I've posted on this so many times I've written it up and placed it in my journal

http://slashdot.org/~puzzled

Here it is again briefly:

A T1 has 24 x 64kb channels. Getting one from a top level provider like Sprint or UUNet will cost about $1000/mo or $40/channel/month.

A 256kb DSL link is four channels and costs about $40/mo. Four channels times $40/mo = $160/mo cost for the ISP. I realize the average math skills of slashdot readers are about eighth grade level, so I'll finish it for you - $40/mo revenue minus $160/mo cost = -$120/mo. This is what happens to ISPs when people doing file sharing of any sort leave their retail connections running 24x7 and consume bandwidth in a wholesale fashion.

Its not about the MPAA or RIAA, evil scumbags that they may be, its just simple cost that is going to do in file sharing. Stop being a whiny end user and pay for some quality bandwidth, or shut the *(&@$(%*&@#$% up about it already.

Re:Actual bandwidth usage of an ISP

[joeboo]

Ellacoya Networks also makes a switch that, like the packeteer device, uses signature detection to determine if a flow is p2p or not.

Before we started to use their switches, p2p traffic accounted for 65% of our network traffic (both inbound and outboud). By placing p2p limits on the upstream (or outbound) portion of internet pipes, we were able to reduce that to 40%.

When Ellacoya introduced signature detection in their 5.0 release, we were able to catch Kazaa2 flows which reduced our p2p usage to 30%.

Not only has this saved us a tremendous ammount of money (we don't have to keep buying pipe), but we were able to keep the cost down for our customers that don't use p2p, or care.

Another use for the switch is usage-based billing. People scoff at usage based billing, but it evens the billing field. Look at the grandmother that uses her connection to send emails to her kids, and then look at the kid down the street. Both pay the same ammount, but one uses 95% more bandwidth. A recent study that we did here concluded that 5% of our users use 90% of the available bandwidth.

So, what is fair? Limiting bandwidth-hungry applications to the point that they are no longer useable, or charging the customer that wants to use that application his fair share of the costs of delivering the service?