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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.
this sounds like a FUD attack against P2P. I think of the amount of spam that my ISP has to filter and then the spam that slips through. How much ISP bandwidth goes to spam?
One ISP I saw was meeting its customers half-way. There was a flat rate to use the service, which came with a monthly bandwidth allowance. There was a charge for every additional GB of data, but once this reached a certain limit (approx. equal to rival ISP's subscription charges) then all additional data was free. Light users paid a flat rate, medium users paid a flat rate and a little more in those busy months and heavier users paid a maximum. The ISP would benefit as users would be less willing to download data they did not really want, if they could save money by not doing it. In short, everyone's a winner.
My company resells bandwidth to a few other companies and local governments. P2P apps were getting to be a real problem about 1.5 years ago, so I talked it over with the bosses and the clients and we all agreed it was best to lock down the common ports used. Easy enough of a decision as it was highly unlikely any user would come up with a valid business case requiring access to these services. We'd been looking to increase our link capacity and fee schedule to account for the bandwidth loads we'd been seeing...but we didn't have to once we shut the P2P stuff down. I saw an immediate drop of about 50% of daytime traffic and 80% after hours. If it weren't for music and radio streams (which we do not currently block), that daytime number would probably have been a little larger.
"all-you-can-eat" days of the buffet are almost over
Eh, I wouldn't go that far... if anything, I'd expect the "all-you-can-eat" rates go up, but I don't see telcos and ISPs abandoning the idea any time soon.
Additionally, if metered rates do in fact go into effect, we may be on an accelerated path to widespread deployment of wi-fi clusters in more populated areas as a means of circumnavigating the limitations.
Personally, I'm optimistic. History shows humans to be fairly resistant to various roadblocks being thrown at us, so should your prognosis come true, I'm sure we the geeks will find a way around it somehow, wi-fi or otherwise.
Have EVDO, will travel.
60% isn't too high... When I first started looking into P2P usage on our campus, maybe a year and a half ago, it was using around 95% of our bandwidth during the day. I was amazed. We restricted some P2P just so we could have a usable Internet connection, but P2P still took up somewhere around 2/3 of our outgoing bandwidth. So finally we implemented bandwidth caps - 750MB per user per day, which I think is fairly generous, but it's enough to usually prevent one user from killing everyone else's network performance.
It doesn't take many stupid users to hog a pair of T1 lines.
It doesn't take p2p, either. All you need is someone trying to download the latest RH9 ISOs over the office T1 while another someone is streaming music from shoutcast/icecast/"insert other-streaming-service here". People need to learn that business and pleasure don't mix, and that they will be hunted down like animals when they abuse the privilege of using business resources, be it internet or otherwise. Especially if the admins know those people to have high-speed internet connectivity at their homes.
Have EVDO, will travel.
If anyone actually read the article they would realise that the study was done by someone who makes P2P blocking devices. The figure may be right but given the source I would treat it with a whole barrel load of salt. The solution could be to block ports and types of traffic but that cuts down on the usefulness of broadband. If the ISPs were aloud to house p2p servers they could cut down on their upstream bandwidth but there is no way they would be aloud to, so the media pigopolists are the ones costing the ISPs money.
I have no problem with metered bandwidth. But if you do meter my bandwidth, let me do what I damn well want to do with my metered bandwidth.
I find it simply amazing that the Comcast disallows any type of server on their system, yet turn their head when it comes to P2P clients (I guess by calling it a "client" you're really not running a "server"). I am forced to operate under the radar so I can run a mailserver that gets maybe 10 e-mails a day, and a text-only webserver that gets a handful of hits when the sun is up, yet my next-door neighbor can run Kazaa all day long (presumably because it's a "form of entertainment" rather than something truly useful).
IF ISPs go back to metered bandwith almost universally, they are going to be INNUNDATED with complaints that spam and getting hacked with viruses and worms are eating all the customers bandwith. I can see thousands of suits over this almost immediately. And the legit streaming providers will get slammed as well, people would be outraged that they couldn't use the internet along the lines of those flashy commercials with tunes and video. It will also affect what remaining internet advertising that exists, because people will turn off images before they give up surfing hours over using up their "allotment" of bandwith.
It would also really embarrass a lot of people when they demand to see where they "used up their bandwith" and after the ISP logs are presented with the urls it turns out to be tons 0 porn, back to the "Well! I never! I must have been hacked, YOU fix it Mr. ISP or OS vendor, it's all your fault" and etc.
It's not a can, it's a case of worms. It might happen though, given the RIAA and MPAA efforts in lobbying, and "we need CYBERSECURITY' and whatnot. Bandwith caps, severely restricted ports, etc.
I think we are in the wild wild west days of the net, I expect something like these severe restrictions combined with increased costs. It's the nature of political reality and really big brand money now. And even if a few major ISPs hold out, they'll eventually go under if all the rest of the ISPs are back to making money with their restrictions and filtering efforts. Isn't the very large bandwith more or less a similar priced commodity now? Once you get far enough upstream it's roughly the same, or am I wrong on that? If it's similar, there's no way the unlimited flat rate providers could compete with the limited but significantly cheaper providers, if they are paying the same bulk rates.
It's not like p2p apps are actually "hogging" anything. Have you ever tried to load a webpage and gotten a "Sorry, the internet is too busy" error? P2p is simply using what is there. If there were no p2p applications, that bandwidth would just be sitting there unused.
Of course, with things like college campuses, with limited bandwidth, then yeah, I can understand where the complaint comes from. But just the internet in general? Come on.
It's so annoying that actually using the available resources is considered such a bad thing. Like complaining because there's so much traffic. Don't bitch because so many people are using your freeways, build bigger freeways! That's what they're there for.
I used to work on the helpdesk at a small ISP. We decided to get into ADSL, since we were losing a lot of dialup customers to high-speed (like, when I left we had half the customers we had when I started). It ended up being a lot of headaches -- dealing with the Big Telco, learning how to debug connections, figuring out how the network was set up (don't even get me started) -- but the biggest thing was dealing with people's preconceptions about bandwidth.
We went through another company for our ADSL, rather than dealing w/Big Telco, and we got charged for bandwidth -- anything over a gig per customer per month. But you can't go around saying that your customers only get a gig per month, 'cos very few other companies even mention that. So we upped it to 1Gb up, 5Gb down. The idea was that most people wouldn't even get close, and those that would, would shoot right over and pay for the rest, at $20/Gb.
For the most part, that was true: most people never did get close; the ones who went over tended to go 'way over, and we'd send 'em bills for a thousand dollars (no lie). But have you ever dealt with anyone handed a thousand-dollar bandwidth bill? My sympathies if you have.
There were two things working against us and everyone else who wants to switch to metering bandwidth:
- Like I said, no one else does it; most advertising just skirts around the issue.
- Most people have no concept of bandwidth use, or have a sense of scale about it, or understand how much something like KaZaa can use, or how to keep bandwidth usage down to a dull roar.
It's that last one that really gets people, I think, and I can understand it. You're using your computer, doing the computer thing and downloading mail, checking a website, grabbing some songs, and alla sudden BAM! you get a thousand-dollar bill for this...this invisible stuff that they say you used, even though you already paid your $34.95 plus tax for the month! No wonder we had angry people on the line.And another thing that just occurs to me: it's really hard to explain how much a gig is, or isn't. It's a fair question from someone checking out your service: You offer x bandwidth per month, so how much is x? But it's nearly impossible to offer a real answer ("It's as long as this here piece of string"), so we offered bland platitudes ("For most people it's never an issue.").
I realize that not everyone was innocent, and we found it hard to believe that anyone could possibly use up 75Gb in a month and not know what the hell they were doing. But even if someone does understand what we were talking about, factor #1 kicks in: Shaw/Telus/Whoever doesn't charge me, so why are you?
We cut deals, of course -- better to get some than none, better to keep a customer than lose one, and the $20/Gb charge had a lot of leeway built into it. And then we tried calling people up once we noticed they were above, say, 4Gb for the month. But eventually the boss told us that if these people left -- the ones using the really insane amounts of bandwidth -- that was fine. We weren't going to get the money (no matter that they signed the agreement), and it would cost too much to either keep 'em on or pursue the matter. They'd quit, and we'd let 'em go.
Carousel is a lie!
Muhahahahaa.
I also know that nobody on our internal network should be HOSTING information. I use a Linux box to do the firewalling via IPMasquerade, so all of the traffic has to pass through that box. I periodically sniff packets using etherdump, and look for outlying info.
For added added safety, I also run nmap periodically to sniff out what workstations are running p2p software. When I find them I sic the helpdesk on them like wolves.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
While I don't see metered bandwidth as being too big a deal (after all, other household utilities are metered, and I wish my phone was one of them since I make maybe 20 local calls a month), I have to question the responsibility of the ISP in this situation. Recalling the days of Nimda and the 10 hits per second it was sending my web server at one point... Over the course of a month, those little requests add up:
50 bytes per request * 10 requests per second * 60 * 60 * 24 * 30 = over a Gb.
Sure, the 10-per-second was an extreme case, but even 1/10 that result is still unacceptable for metered bandwidth. What legal responsibility does the ISP have to keep their network from hitting you with spoof data and other such unwanted/uncontrollable-from-your-end packets? From what I've seen in the agreements people sign with ISPs, none. It always seems to be a "we can charge you what we want and cut off your connection when we want and you can do nothing about it" agreement.
What about if their network is having problems somewhere away from your node that causes packet loss? You have to transfer more data from your node because their network is losing alot of it. Do they charge you for that?
Metered bandwidth is fine if they can keep control over their service. The Internet is still going through alot of development and, honestly, I've yet to find an ISP that can handle it. Whether it's over-booking broadband and cluttering the network, having little or no security policies in place for dealing with infected user machines (or infected servers... AT&*cough*), or having a generally unreliable network, "bandwidth" is a big picture that includes a hell of alot more than the upstream/downstream between me and their nearest switch.
-cyber0ne
PS... does anyone have any references to actual court cases over metered bandwidth involving my concerns stated above, or any other similar concerns? I was discussing this same topic with a friend a couple days ago and we were interested to know if anyone's ever had to explain such technical terms to a judge before.
http://publicvoidlife.blogspot.com
Between P2P and Spam, I'm suprised we have any bandwidth left!
I find it hard to believe P2P is using "as much as" that much of the total bandwidth. What is the average, not the peak usage? "As much as" implies a maximum throughput which is not sustained.
My first question is what use is acceptible for the number one spot in bandwidth usage? What about CD image downloads (650MB each), porn (ISPs are probably too embarassed to mention what % this is), forwarded emails with attachments, search engine spiders, and so on?
Next, if the P2P bandwidth carried 95% legal content, would there be an issue here if a peak of 60% bandwidth was used? Is this really about the bandwidth?
Are those who share their files via P2P really bandwidth hogs, or are those who download the files the bandwidth hogs? Merely providing the files for download would produce zero bandwidth (aside from protocol overhead) otherwise.
Near the bottom of the article, they say that intra-ISP and intra-country bandwidth is the most expensive and is what must be kept under control. So what brings us all together should be regulated? Maybe they don't like how free the Internet is, unless portraying freedom and unlimited access helps them sell more services through their commercials.
Here (being Norway) you do normally not get a news server, even if you know what it is. Why? Because after a company got fined for carrying kiddie porn groups, they took that a sign that they had to be editors of content. The only way they could avoid legal liability was to shut it down, and so every major ISP did, or they completely crippled the group list.
I also know that the University prevents people from sharing stuff over network shares (there are some internal DC hubs if you know of them, but few do). So what do people do, even though it's probably on the local network ten dozen times already? They go on KaZaA or whatever and get it from somewhere else, making for a helluva inefficient bandwidth usage.
And if they start really cracking down on normal P2P users, I imagine most will move to Freenet or something like that, sending it 10x around the world to anonymize where it came from and who's getting it.
If you force people to go halfway around the globe to get what's next door, well surprise surprise. It takes bandwidth. Lots of it, too.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings