ISPs Fight Against Encrypted BitTorrent Downloads

oglsmm writes to mention an Ars Technica article about a new product intended to detect and throttle encrypted BitTorrent traffic. When torrents first saw common use ISPs would throttle the bandwidth available to them, in order to ensure connectivity for everyone. Some clients began encrypting their data to get around this, and the company Allot Communications is now claiming their NetEnforcer product will return the advantage to the ISPs. From the article: "Certainly, increasing BitTorrent traffic is a concern for ISPs. In early 2004, torrents accounted for 35 percent of all traffic on the Internet. By the end of that year, this figure had almost doubled, and some estimate that in certain markets, such as Asia, torrent traffic uses as much as 80 percent of all bandwidth. However, BitTorrent is an extremely important tool that has many uses other than what everyone assumes it is good for, namely movie piracy."

Comments

well, it only makes sense

[bunions]

You don't want your customers actually using the stuff they're paying you for, after all.

Re:well, it only makes sense

[iPodUser]

I agree. We pay up to $60 per month to have this great thing called broadband, and what do we get? Carriers wanting to restrict VOIP use, throttling Bittorrent traffic, refusing to guarantee any particular level of service, etc. A question for the service providers: Why do you think users sign up for the service? To check email? to browse a few websites? We could do that with cheap or free dial-up. These applications you are so quick to restrict are the reason that people signup in the first place! Instead of putting the effort and expense into creating hurdles for the users, spend the time and money on upgrading the infrastructure to support the increased demand.

Re:well, it only makes sense

[evilviper]

In the eyes of the ISP, they're selling you a 3Mb pipe for burst traffic,

It's a shame their ads and the terms in the contract THEY wrote-up doesn't have any mention of this inconvenient little fact...

The average person uses nowhere near the bandwidth of his connection, and that allows them to charge cheaper rates by overselling.

It also allows them to charge MORE EXPENSIVE rates, as the people using almost no bandwidth are being charged far in excess of what they need. If ISPs would just offer cheaper, lower-speed packages (perhaps with high-speed burst), there would be NO PROBLEM.

When your business model is a problem, you don't start violating your contracts to maintain that model.

Connections

[Doc Ruby]

"in order to ensure connectivity for everyone"

No, that's in order to continue selling people bandwidth they couldn't deliver, known to ISPs as "statistical oversubscription". Then when we want to get what we paid for, they take it away entirely. Unless you're watching the telco's own IPTV, which somehow has as much bandwidth as they need to sell it to you, for an additional charge.

Blocking competitive services to support ripoff monopoly business models is the reason telcos and other big ISPs hate Net Neutrality.

Two Choices

[Nom du Keyboard]

1: Shift to new encryption method.

2: Sue them under the DMCA for reverse-engineering and breaking the technological protection method used to protect your content.

Use either, or both, as appropriate.

Re:compare to land

[IDontAgreeWithYou]

uh... how about we ban analogies completely from /. Who's with me?!!

In the meantime, I will point out that the flaw with this particular analogy is comparing a service (broadband) to a physical object (an acre of land). You can oversell a service, but it doesn't work with physical objects. People tend to want to get their hands on a physical object and it becomes apparent very quickly that it's been oversold. Most of the time, users will be surfing the web or checking email. They won't be using their full bandwidth. When they do occasionally use their full bandwidth, most likely it will be available.

...seriously, who's with me?!!

Re:lol, moustrap, mouse

[letxa2000]

You know it's time to sell stock in a company when you see the company in a technical arms raise against the customer to deny the customer service. Great thinking, ISPs!

Re:compare to land

[IgnoramusMaximus]

It may be abstract and not quite as apt, but clearly the pipes and the elctrons being served are discrete units that can be measured for each user. So yes, there is a physical object here - it's just not as easy to see as an acre of land.

This made me realize that there is even a better way of visualisng the problem: think traditional telephone companies. They also provide, for a fixed monthly fee, unlimited access to the telephone network. If they operated on the same principle as the ISPs, you would get nothing but busy signals if more then 0.1% of people decided to call each other. Furthermore, if their response to the problem was like that of the ISPs, you would see people's calls being monitored and those made by teenagers would be terminated prematurely, because they make the system too busy for Grandma to call her grandkids. In other words: total nonsense. Instead the telcos of old did the only sane thing: expanded the switching capability until the odds of the system reaching its capacity were so small as not to impede its normal use.

ISPs simply believe that no sane rules apply to them because they operate in this magical, fantastic, cosmic, new wonder medium of Internet. Its time someone hit them with a sizeable clue bat and made their noses contact the firm ground of common sense, violently.

Re:lol, moustrap, mouse

[bky1701]

I don't really care, yanno? If they say "3 MB/s!!!!" then as far as I care, blocking anything form having that is nothing other then false advertising. If they don't want you to use your full advertised speed, then they need to stop saying they are providing it.