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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.
let me break down the other 40 percent of the bandwidth for you:
18% Porn
12% Spam
6% RIAA "Cease and Desist" Emails
4% KaZaa Client Software
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to downloading the complete works of Engelbert Humperdinck
Mike
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?
As much as we all hate to admit it the "all-you-can-eat" days of the buffet are almost over. Metered bandwidth is coming and thos who use the most will pay the most.
It doesn't take many stupid users to hog a pair of T1 lines. It also doesn't help that the p2p system are designed for maximum leach of available nodes.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
As if gigantic movies and games along with lots of music files utilize more bandwidth than the 100kb of text and pictures per webpage.
-Reid
I'm guessing there's some creative making-up-of-numbers going on. If 'they' (the anti-internet people) had their way, the breakdown would be as follows:
60%: p2p traffic
30%: Spam
20%: Kiddie porn
_________________
110% evil.
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.
P2P uses 60% from the available bandwidth, Windows Update uses 45%. That leaves ... uhm ... less than nothing for all the other stuff?
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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.
"In a follow-up, we've also uncovered that 60% of home electrical use can be attributed to television usage. Now, we go live to Jack McDuh..."
"Thank you, Beavis...apparently, the majority of home electrical usage is going to things like watching television, playing video games, or playing music on a stereo. I have with me Mr. Mxlyplk, the general manager of ConEd for this region. Tell us, Mr. Mxlyplk, what can you tell us about this discovery?"
"Well, Jack, it's rather shocking. All along we assumed that home users were using our electrical output to cure cancer or develop space travel or something like that. But apparently, people who dutifully pay their monthly fees for a utility think they can just use it any way they want to, for any old purpose!"
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
1. Get consumers to pay lots of money for high-speed internet
2. Complain that customers are using their high-speed internet
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.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
It seems to me that these ISPs are Internet Service Providers. If people are using bandwidth why are they complaining? I'd also like to know why they think file sharing will triple next year.
It says this in the article but if they want to stop people from using "all" of the bandwidth and pull them off the all-you-can-eat plan. There's a problem with this though. Who will accept having a limit on their internet access? I know it drives me nuts when the dumbasses on my floor download 10-15 movies a night between them all and I can't get a single SSH session to behave without some serious latency, but I'd rather deal with pulling their cables out of the wall than dealing with an ISP limiting my use of their services when they previously were not.
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!
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Why is it a bad thing? I mean, saying your access will be cut off if you go over a limit is one thing, but charging you in proportion to what you download/upload seems perfectly reasonable to me. What could be simpler to grasp than "you get what you pay for"? Do you pay for fuel for your automobile "per month" irrespective of how much you drive? Or pay the same amount when you step into a restaurant irrespective of what you consume? Why should bandwidth be any different? It costs the ISP money, and obviously they should recover those costs from the users, in proportion to the usage.
The economics don't work when more than a very small number of people become heavy users...and that's exactly the situation that has resulted from widespread P2P application usage. The prices are calculated based on the assumption that most users will check their mail and browse CNN, MSN, and Yahoo...and that's all.
Now maybe you think the bandwidth prices ISPs pay shouldn't be so high but that's another discussion entirely.
Would it be used if it weren't for P2P? Or would it just sit idle anyhow? There is gobs of bandwidth available on the backbones. Miles and miles of dark fiber. What's going on here is the broadband ISPs business models are collapsing. They count on selling everyone tons of bandwidth but then only a fraction of it being used or for very short periods of time. If everyone signed on and started transferring all they could, ISPs would become hopelessly bottlenecked.
I say, pony up and add the bandwidth, too bad. As for everything besides ISPs (upstream providers) there is no shortage of bandwidth. If there is, it's a regional problem and all that is needed is to turn on a new strand of fiber and add a few gigabits, problem solved.
Finally, it's not P2P... its CONTENT. It doesn't matter that its people transferring files to other people. The new variable here is there is GOBS of multimedia CONTENT available for people to download. It doesn't matter where it's coming from. P2P has just made it practical and realistic to download as much as we can now.
How people can live with services like Kazaa. Turning it on literally flatlines your net connection to the point where web sites take forever to load, especially if you are the one person in 52,000,000 with actual files to share. My experience with a shared NTL 1mb cable connection was that as soon as the guy upstairs fired up Kazaa anyone else trying to use it was shafted - even e-mail was only arriving at around 2-3K/sec.
Considering how well freenet does for not infringing on your resources too much (try setting it to 10K down and 5K up on a DSL line and you won't even notice it's there) it boggles the mind why anone bothers with Kazaa at all.
Beep beep.
I bet it is a bandwidth hog. It may be more swtreamlined on the communications side, but if you are transferring a 700 MB ISO, then ther eis not much you can do about it. That will still take up a lot of bandwidth!! The simple fact of the matter is streamlining the communications will help, but the bandwidth will still be used.
Great Linux Site
1. I pay my ISP for bandwidth according to the contract they offered. How I use that bandwidth is up to me. The way this article makes p2p...or any other 'bandwidth hogging' protocol...sound 'bad' because it 'costs ISP's money' is silly! I paid for the bandwidth. Don't complain when I use it.
2. A metered connection would be OK by me. But the ISP better give me more sophisticated mail blocking options than I get today.
My opinion: I'm happy to pay for what I use, but don't ask me to pay to make up for the deficiencies of your business plan or try to send me on a guilt trip because, as a consumer, I actually exercize the terms of my contract!
um... why sell the customer bandwidth that you don't want them to use?
I know, you could always say that the service isn't intended to run at high-bandwidth 24/7, but that doesn't really matter. If P2P traffic is going to annoy you, either filter it, cap their bandwidth, or upgrade your hardware.
The thing is, P2P is just internet traffic. Why leave all that room unused? The internet isn't an emergency communications medium, so using 95% of the available bandwidth isn't really anything bad. It just means that more fat pipes need to be added. But just because P2P is P2P isn't a good enough reason.
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.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Frankly, this only proves that the "statistics" about the internet that are constantly being bandied about are pure SWAG (Some Wild Ass Guess) cooked up to support the agenda of the reporter. In recent articles, sorry I'm too lazy to get the links, we have heard that spam accounts for 60% of internet traffic. We have also heard that porn accounts for 60% of internet traffic. Now we hear that p2p accounts of 60% of internet traffic. At 180% one must wonder how there could possibly be any other type of traffic on the internet.
The fact of the matter is that due to the distributed nature of the internet, no one knows what the actual usage breakdown is. Even if you were able to classify all of the traffic that passes through MAE East and West, it still would not be an accurate reprisentation of all internet traffic.
Wait a minutem, wait a minute.....
Haven't ISPs like Earthlink, AOL, and the US Government been saying in this whole Spam(tm) battle that "Spam takes up over 50% of the Internet bandwidth?"!
Lets see: 50% Spam + 60% P2P = What internet are they using?!
"Engineers do the work of man, Physicists do the work of God"
I'd prefer not to hear the ... it's a business expense that you must pay arguement. I have built my business on the model I am in right now at the prices I pay right now. It works perfectly. If ISPs want more bandwidth then there's optimizations and measures for stopping scam site hosting and SPAM mail that they could do.
A post above had a good point - should TV's cost more because they use up a significant portion of the electricity - after all, more electricity, more damge to the environment and more cost to the Power company!
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
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.
This is a problem with the business models of the ISPs, not the way the bandwidth is being used.
ISPs at some level buy bandwidth in Gigs/Teras transfer/month. Charging users a flat fee for access to a pipe that can use too much bandwidth only makes sense if you know most users wouldn't use the service intensively.
When users only ran clients for http, smtp, and (just maybe) news, that was a valid assumption, and helped make AOL as big as it is. But that's not going to work if nodes start acting as servers as well as clients, like they were designed to.
If you run a website or any other colo'd server, you get (say) 40Gig transfer into the bargain, and pay extra for anything over that.
If ISPs throw in the first 5 gigs with their DSL subscriptions, and make customers pay extra for more transfer, 90% of surfers will never incur extra charges, and will probably pay costs similar to current rates. The rest should pay for what they use.
it's not free, either. if it all gets used up, what happened to the network's forward planning?
Seriously, whatever he's smoking, I want some.
The main theme of the article is a complaint about how much file sharing is costing the ISP.
Sorry? You sell a service (internet connectivity). People want that service, or else they wouldn't be buying it. Then you turn around and complain that it costs you money to provide said service?
Now that is an idea. Let's open a store and complain that shipping all those goods in from the warehouse is so expensive.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
..Most people i know don't spend their lives on the computer downloading.. It takes maybe 20-30 minutes to download everything they want, then they go burn it and do whatever.. a few days later they do it if they need more.. Its not some massive constant event.. Not to mention most people sharing are doing it on home DSL connections.. my upstream is 25k :( It takes alot of time to download crap but its not going as fast.. I don't see this being a true reason for bandwidth loads
Might i add i believe its P2P sharing and gaming that made people want DSL..
I've left to find myself. If you happen to see me, please, keep me there until I return.
What's SUPPOSED to be hogging the bandwidth? Spam and file sharing are now the bad boys. Is there some scale that we are supposed to use to place a value on data? Who decides?
Gaming?
News?
Pr0n?
Trading stocks?
I thought that the whole idea was that you take what you can in an unregulated medium. Lower your expectations accordingly, but benefit from the ubiquitous nature. In other words, no consistency of quality of service, but almost guaranteed ubiquity.
I don't know. My ISP gives me a wide open connection and nice latency. The rest is out of my control.
The thing I don't see from this finger waving is the following: Nobody says, "If we lower spam by X%, then we can guarantee a better Internet experience for everyone else by Y%. If we get rid of file sharing by A%, then we can guarantee B% better service/speed/latency for everyone else. Also, we'll be able to lower everyone's cost by Z%." Until I see some numbers, it's just all relative. Who's to say what I do on the Net is any more redeeming than anyone else? They paid. I paid.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
GASP! People are actually USING their bandwidth? They're not supposed to USE it! It's just supposed to SIT THERE! How are the ISP's ever going to make money if people actually USE their networks?
Blah. Who cares what people are doing with their bandwidth? If you take away P2P, it'll be VoIP, or Streaming Video IM, or some new Immersive FPS with massive requirements. Give people bandwidth, they'll find a way to use it... Duh.
Nipok Nek
Why choose white shoes?
Why is it a bad thing? I mean, saying your access will be cut off if you go over a limit is one thing, but charging you in proportion to what you download/upload seems perfectly reasonable to me
It would be a perfectly reasonable thing if that was what was advertised and that was what I purchased. But it isn't. The ISP's in particular the cable and DSL isps advertised unlimited hi speed internet, in order to lure customers away from their old dial up providers. Nothing wrong there except now they want to change the rules midstream. Now they have the users.. The users are using the system they advertised, as they advertised it, and they wish to up the rates.
If they'd advertised a metered plan, and I CHOOSE to purchase that, then fine.. but thats not the case. Those who remember the old Hughes DirectPC program may remember that they did exaclty this. Advertised unlimited service and then started limiting bandwith for high volume users. A class action suit ensued (which Hughes lost) forcing them to buy back the system of any (that was all of them) dissattisfied customer
In addition, do you think they will drop the rates for low volume users? Remember it doesn't cost them any more to operate, its just a question of who uses how much. No, this is simply a ploy to juice the rates, and as a result juice their profits.
If privacy had a tombstone it would read "We did it for your own good" . -- John Twelve Hawks
When I got my broadband (DSL) I bought it for one specific reason. Flatrate. I want to be connected at all times. I don't live in America mind You, so the concept of telephone flatrate is a bit too hard to grasp for our ISPs.
.haeger
Anyway, the key selling point was that I knew what I would pay for my internet connection every month. The performance wasn't the issue. Now IF they decide to go back to the old ways of charging me per minute/MB/whatever I'll just cancel my subscription with them. I really don't mind if they cap my bandwith more, just make sure that the bill that comes every month is the same amount.
Naturally I'll have to reconcider if they cap it too much and charge too much.
And yes, I am a very modest user of bandwidth.
This is what happens if economists get too much power. Bastards.
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
Bandwidth is measured in base 2 so the maximum is 128%. Your email and browsing are tapping from the other 23%.
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.
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.
Why worry? Each of us is wearing an unlicensed "nucular" accelerator on his back.
Sig changed for readability by G.W.
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.
When all this broad band stuff came out all the chit chatwas about this great new mulitmedia experience. We were told the internet would be for everyone. So, sounds to me like the whole sales pitch was dishonest if P2P file sharing is unacceptable. And really, BroadBand has really never become BroadBand here in Georgia, USA anyways. With the pathetic upload capacity, it is like a phone system where I can listen all I want, but can only speak back 2 seconds every minute.
HenryJamesFeltus.com
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.
Your local electric providor just keeps charging away per Kw/h of electricity you use, and if you have a higher 'demand' for said electricity you get charged extra for daring to need more electricity than what they deem as a 'nominal' usage during that time period.
So really, ISPs want to be the electric company of our data. The more you use above what they deem 'nominal' you pay a demand fee for and an increased fee over the guy down the street that lives off of one light bulb that is on only one hour a day.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
Yes, but don't let your own usage patterns cloud your judgement! ;-)
When net congestion gets bad enough to annoy ordinary businesses and people, they will be chasing their ISP's to fix it.
Most ISP subscribers don't kow what P2P is, much less spend their day tolling the net for mp3's and movies. But, if they decide that P2P is ruining their use of the Internet, metered bandwidth will be an easy sell. P2P users will be painted, with some credibility, as "a bunch of kids" downloading "stuff" no one else cares about.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
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.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
Here's a bandwidth chart of a medium sized UK isp: Zen, P2P is a pretty sizable chunk of the whole with HTTP not far beind.
Back in the day....
I remember back in 94-95 era, people started to complain that "this web thing is eating all our bandwidth" People complained that it was slowing down email, usenet, and IRC. It was a hog, all those images.. yada yada yada...
Now that the average connection is a factor of 10 faster than it was in 95, someone invented an application to utilize that bandwidth.. *SHOCK*
One of our local campus admins talks about how we double our campus backbone connection every 2 years.. we had about 200mbit when i started 2 years ago, now the plan is to get a 3rd provider, and jump to 400mbit before the next school year starts. _IF_ we can afford it. (yay for state budjet problems)
In another 5 years, people will forget all about P2P, because it will be background noise compared to the ********* protocol. Whatever they think up when 100mbit fiber starts to get rolled out.
If you want to really see what is in the works, look at Internet 2 projects. Our campus has 655mbit to I2, and it's already too slow for some of the research. Plans are in the works for a few gbits.
The ISP business is quite similar to how airlines overbook flights assuming people will not use their allotted amounts. There will always be people that use more and a lot of times, the connection will lie dormant. If you were to pay for the actual charge of having all your bandwidth, you'd be paying a lot more than $50 a month.
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
(I can hear it now: You had a mother? I was sold to the circus, and only had an evil clown who hit me all the time with a mallet.)
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Imagine the year 1995... I'm sure somebody said "60% of all ISP traffic is HTTP, with the remainder being FTP and GOPHER".
The web is becoming more decentralized, and P2P is a the cause. Its not quite as general purpose as the rest of the web yet, but its extremely useful if you just want to find a file...
Within 20 years, children won't know the concept of a "server". They will only know of the web as more of a neural network, with the connections shifting from here to there and back again!
Online Starcraft RPG? At
Dietary fiber is like asynchronous IO-- Non-blocking!
True! and there's no way to throttle the Dean's XP desktop, no matter how many times it's owned.
"What?" He'll ask. "You let hackers break my computer? You are so fired!"
Better not mention it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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
Nobody seems to have picked up on the most intelligent point in the article... if P2P software was biased towards same-ISP connections, it could dramatically bring down the cost. If it was further biased against international connections, that would help too...
Are there any P2P clients doing this?... 'use our client and your ISP won't get upset' might be a good advertisment...
In short, the "cheapo" alternative here is .. hmm I don't remember exact speed, think it's 1024k/256k but at a max of 1Gb/mo, if you pass that you are throttled to 64k (ISDN speed) or can buy more (at a premium). Personally I got the 1024/256k/unlimited use at $100/mo, and I don't feel any shame over running it at 100% 24/7 either.
They're very up front about the metering, and it *is* much better than pay-per-minute over phone. Their calculation of how many pages you can view per month can't possibly include any lame flash sites, but other than that it's a straight offer. However, the other big competing company basicly said something like "we'll never offer metered connections, unlimited all the way" and they've earned a lot of customers on that, not sure how many *profitable* customers though...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Cornell had 60% outgoing and 50% incoming traffic as filesharing. Lots of pretty graphs, etc. on those pages.
Two comments:
1.) Thanks to WorldCom inflating growth figures (that's what got them into trouble) for nearly 10 years, there is a tremendous amount of fiber lines just sitting there doing nothing. Don't believe the hype, there is enough base infrastructure in the US to give every body a T1 or better (but then we wouldn't need phones, cable/satellite TV, radios, etc...heh). Wireless meshes are popping up all over the place (in cities anyways) that also can allow joe average to distribute broadband content (within the mesh). The next 10 years, eveything will shift to some form of wireless (just wait til the RIAA and pals start going after spectrum rules...man the fur is gonna fly)
2.)If they (Broadband ISPs) want to control traffic, just sell service with a QoS agreement. I would rather have a business line (at the same price I have a consumer line) with 24x7 guarantied bandwidth at a lower rate than I have now for download (say 768/768).
Whoops, on the subject of spam. The last company I worked for spam cost the company over $2 million dollars a year in bandwidth (hard to filter BEFORE it hits your gateway).
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
Isn't this just what the web is now? I mean, would it be better if everyone just searched downloadables from html pages?
Are we seeing a simple shortsightedness on the part of ISPs?
The internet is used to share bits. Are "they" saying that it's getting out of hand?
I shall laugh in astonishment...
Heh hehe?
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
What's really been irking me lately is the fact that EVERYONE has overlooked the bandwidth cap option in Kazaa's preferences.
I use this feature and have never had an unexpected cease (I expect things to be a little slow when I'm dl'ing linux ISOs) in my bandwidth due to Kazaa.
It's not p2p that's the problem, it's stupid people using p2p that's the source of our woes.
Of all the Universal Constants, here's one I know: Nice guys finish last
What is amazing about the Dot Com mentality ...is this concept of a business with mega profits that doesnt come with mega expenses.
Actually, it's more like a business with mega expenses without any profits. P2P and unlimited 1Mbps+ broadband service is a prescription for certain failure.
Consider this: Call up Sprint, AT&T, MCI, etc. and ask them what their price is for a DS3, including loops. You'll probably end up with something around $500/month. per Mbps. Negotiate a bit and you might get below that a bit - maybe even down around $200/mo. per Mbps if you buy enough capacity. Now, turn around and sell that same sustained Mbps/month for $35-$40 to a cable modem user.
Good business? Don't forget, you've got local transmission, switching/routing, customer support, billing, fixed costs/backoffice, equipment capital & depreciation, etc. So, for $500/mo/Mbps or so, you're making big profits on that $35/mo. customer?
Now, excuse me, but shouldn't providing BANDWIDTH be a primary focus of an ISP.
Actually, you're in the minority of broadband customers. More than 80% want fast web pages and quick email. That's not directly corrolated to bandwidth (caching servers, for instance, and high performance local network, can provide for those).
Since you're obviously not paying true bandwidth costs, and aren't in the majority, expect to pay your fair share or be pushed off of your provider's network.
(Like, you can buy this nice car, but dont drive it more than 2 miles a day!)
Actually this is a good analogy. You're not buying, but renting a car. You want the $22 discount rate, but want to put 1,000 miles a day on it and drive it 90 MPH with a load of bricks in the trunk. Try doing that at National or Budget. You'll get the same answer as your broadband provider.
There is something inherently criminal in this DOT COM men tality, where you are supposed to make money without hard work and the providing of a real, tangible service.
The only thing criminal (not quite... incompetent is a better word) is providers that advertise unlimited service but don't provide it.
*scoove*
Provided it's clearly stated before you sign on the dotted line, I'm 100% OK with being throttled if I use too much in a day.
.32% of the bandwidth in the unrestricted class).
Throttled, mind you - not cut off.
I've been hanging on to an email from the Vuln-dev list for ages that links to the UIUC bandwidth policy, because I think it kicks that much ass. A fair policy that keeps the heavy users from choking the others out, but still lets you get in the big DL's if you need them.
Unrestricted Class (10Mb/s): By default, connections are in this class. The connection is not artificially throttled or limited.
Restricted Class A (128kb/s per flow): When the Internet traffic of an IP address reaches 80% of the limit (600MB), the IP address (computer) will be rate-limited (throttled) to 128kb/s per flow.
Restricted Class B (32kb/s per flow): When the Internet traffic of an IP address reaches 100% of the limit (750MB), the IP address (computer) will be rate-limited (throttled) to 32kb/s per flow.
Restricted Class C (512kb/s aggregate): When the Internet traffic of an IP address reaches 150% of the limit (1125MB), the IP address (computer) will be rate-limited (throttled) to approximately the speed of a 33.6 modem (about
"Q: Will I ever get shut down for traffic?
A: The current "rate-limiting" system does not turn off ports it just slows down your connection. However, rooms and computers may still be turned off for many other reasons (viruses, copyright, abuse of the network, and for very large amounts of traffic as determined by the CIO's office)."
That progressive degradation sounds great to me. Just alter the breakpoints and you can have different plans for business/residential too.
Anyone rolled something like this out? Any pointers?
...33MHz 486 PCs were $1500. Now you get a 2GHz P4 for half that (or less even). (price/performance increase: around +12,000%)
...16MB of RAM cost $500. You get 2GB of much faster RAM these days. (price/perf: +12,800%)
...office LANs were 10-base-T (or worse). Now you'll get gigabit-ethernet for the same prices. (price-perf: +10,000%)
...a 100MB hard drive was $200. Now you get a 200GB drive for that that transfers 10X as fast to boot. (price/perf: +200,000%) (!)
... T1 line cost a business ~$1000 a month. Nowadays, it's... the same.
Why is it that every other aspect of the computer industry has dropped so dramatically in price/performance, except this one?
It's because Telcos can charge $1000 for a T1, and businesses will pay. The Telcos could run fiber and offer OC3 or OC48 service for the same price and still be profitable, but why bother? Sprint and UUNet sit there price-gouging ISPs, but of course it's the end users who are bad for using the bandwidth they are sold.
For the record, I use IRC extensively for file trading, and I probably use 15GB of bandwidth a week or more on my 768/128 DSL connection. I'm sure I am costing Verizon money but it's their own fault. Until they demand better rates from the backbone providers they are only screwing themselves.
I've built up so much character I have an alter-ego
Some whiny end user type responded to my post about the economics of being an internet provider with a brief rant on how technology should have brought the cost of a T1 down a long time ago.
Lets investigate the reality behind a typical Sprint T1 install at $1,000/month.
A T1 is composed of several components, the first being the local loop to the CO. You've got two or four copper wires buried in the ground, an NIU on the customer end and some sort of gear in the central office. This costs $285/month for on net to off net termination in my city and that is a pretty typical number.
Once you get to that termination gear you've got to negotiate the LEC's metro optical network to reach the point where they interconnect with the ISP's equipment. Despite being #53 in terms of population nationally my city doesn't have enough Sprint T1s on my ILEC to qualify for its own DS3 mux so my Sprint T1 gets drug forty miles south west to our provincial state capitol. This is non trivial, but its priced as part of that $285/month.
Once you get to the ISP's edge equipment you're probably getting 'back hauled' cross country to some location where they've got a Cisco 12000 series or some big Juniper box. You should be reading "WAN line costs", "hardended telco facilties costs", "depreciation on equipment you *can't* get at Best Buy", etc, etc.
This gets you to the ISP's network and their customers. Somewhere, out there, they peer with other top level carriers, and that is how you get to the global internet.
Besides not being able to buy the gear at Best Buy you can't *hire* the geniuses needed to make it all go from behind the counter of a local McDonalds. If you want someone who can pour piss out of a transit autonomous system without refering to the instructions printed on the heel of a Cisco 12008 you pay. If you want someone to answer the phone when the customer calls you pay. Scale that up by ten thousand T1 customers and you can imagine what is required - a real live company, so large it must be publically held to receive the funding it needs.
Bandwidth is like real estate. You can get an address on Skyline Boulevard (Sprint or UUNet DS1), you can move in to section 8 housing at 2209 Jones Street and heckle crack dealers (DSL), or maybe you're upscale enough to get a doublewide at 64th and Grover (cable modem), but make no mistake about how the world is gonna be - you plant petunias in the 'hood (VPN applications), homey's pit bull(Kazaa) is gonna take a dump there the very next day.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo