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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."
If you build a better mousetrap someone will fling a couger at you.
You don't want your customers actually using the stuff they're paying you for, after all.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
many uses other than what everyone assumes it is good for, namely movie piracy.
- Game Demos
- Software updates / upgrades
- Free / Legal Videos
"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.
--
make install -not war
with teh Telephone System, returning the advantage to the communication providers
by filtering the words Cocaine , Heroin, Ganja, LSD, Skunk, PCP, Speed, Crystal Meth
as they are used by people using the telephone system to conduct illegal conversations
filter my torrents and i will sue you for NOT filtering childporn
if you want to give up common carrier thats fine, but be aware YOU WILL be held to account for anything illegal i find on YOUR network
Use steganography. Basically you could send images with extra encrypted data tacked on the end; can the product detect that??? And if some unlucky admin type looks at the image, they get to see goatse in all his glory, but don't see the encrypted data hidden in the image.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Wow, stunning efficiency, or bad statistics.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
That just adds to bandwidth issues!
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
Easy. All traffic is slowed down by default. If the traffic is digitally signed by a Microsoft trusted computing device then it's allowed to travel faster through the pipes. All other traffic is slow pr0n.
Tell your friends about xenu.net
Well, to their defense, if they didn't oversell their prices would be quite higher.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
They shouldn't be allowed to advertise (and charge a premium for) 3-5+ mbps service if they're going to actively prevent their customers from using it.
If car manufacturers operated like ISPs, they would sell 300 horsepower cars with shoddy transmissions, then limit them to 150hp so they wouldn't have to deal with the warranty repairs.
"However, those who feel this all amounts to an imminent war between the users and the ISPs over BitTorrent... "
A war? You gotta be crazy. If my ISP doesn't provide me what I'm paying for then I'm either dumping them or suing. It's that simple. There's not going to be an "war" over my ISP usage at my home or my business. I'm going to get what I pay for, or they can speak with my attorney (and yes, I do use my attorney for little stuff like this).
To the people who just have a home ISP and may not have much choice, I say: don't worry about it. Somebody will come in to provide the service eventually. Competition ensures that it'll happen. With wireless getting a little bit more useful every day, I think that we'll soon have some competition amongst ISP's again, soon.
What happens when the States get 'real' broadband with fiber to the home. Torrent activity would more than double in my opinion.
I suppose the only way they can really do this is by analyzing the high level protocol transactions and by keeping tabs on particular IPs and their behaviors. Pretty flimsy.
All of this could probably be pretty easily foiled by having Bittorrent mask what it's doing by sending noise once in a while to throw these tools off.
Execute? [Y/N] _
Storm
A group of hackers are Coming up with a work around.
In the mean time i wonder if Allot Communication's "traffic management device" can withstand DDoSing.
They sure as hell are going to piss alot of people off with their scumware.
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
Isnt it illegal to read any part of encrypted data accross the internet? (with certain exceptions, ie: NSA actions/warrants, etc)
Why don't ISPs that worry about their net usage outside their network just mirror shit?
Would it be really hard to throw together a 1TB file store with the latest patches, demos, ISOs and the like?
That way the customers can get stuff inside the network and the ISP doesn't have to worry about upstream net usage.
OMG it's like I'm smart and all.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
This is funny...last month, I downloaded one linux distro via torrent, it was a dvd iso, can't remember the file size, let's say 4.5GB for argument. The other squillion terabytes I grabbed all came from my ISP's own news server, about a zillion hours of not-so-legal content, all provided at full speed by the guys who'd like to throttle my legal torrent traffic? If ISPs were that concerned about traffic, they'd close some of the zombie hosts on their own networks sending out billions of spam emails a day.
1. Linux ISOs
2. Maiet's "Gunz" which INSTALLS or UPDATES as it downloads data via Bittorrent
3. Bittorrent is used to transfer many of the game demos found on legitimate sites
4. I use it personally to share things I make and OWN.
In short, the ISPs are about to shoot themselves in the foot, again. Except this time, I think if I sue, I'm going to ask them in court "Whatever happened to that infrastructure upgrade that was supposed to come from 200 billion of our tax dollars?"
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Look, I use Bittorrent and it's great. But I also run an ISP.
The thing is, bandwidth isn't cheap. People bitch that ISPs "oversubscribe", and that we can't really deliver our advertised bandwidth to everyone all of the time. This is true, but how do you think we manage to sell people 5Mb connections for $40/month? Do you know how much 5Mb of bandwidth costs and ISP? It's a lot more than $40. In the market I'm in, we pay THOUSANDS of dollars for that much bandwidth.
The real problem is that bandwidth is too expensive in this country, thanks to the likes of AT&T and MCI and all the other big players. They've got tons of unused fiber lying around, and it costs them next-to-nothing to use it, but it still costs the end-user (in this case, the ISP) a hell of a lot of cash.
Not "first".
"Fist".
Up you ass.
About elbow deep.
(let's see, will this one be modded: Troll? Flamebait? Off-Topic? The suspense is KILLING ME!)
I have noticed that once the upload stats get to about 10 gig or so my dynamic ip expires about every 2 hours. Before I started using btdownloadcurses my ip would change about once every two weeks. Remote access in terms of my dynamic ip address was rarely a problem. Granted this is only an observation, yet I still assume categories of customers are made by upload stats. This caused me to script ipshow. ATT, go screw yourself and your "sticky ips", I am not running ebay here, I just want access to my computers.
I remember when Knoppix 5 came out. The official mirrors weren't carrying it yet, it was offloaded to other sites to try and get the feeding frenzy over with. So I downloaded it at the request of my boss and then left my computer to seed for the weekend. I served out 1.2TB in 48 hours. Would have been higher too, but I was capping my upstream. And I was only one of hundreds of seeders (though in fairness I was the top seeder).
I just don't see how else a not-for-profit group is going to get fast distribution of something that big for cheap. If you look at web hosting you find that bandwidth of that order is not at all cheap. However, BT let us all share the load a little.
I'm sure people do sue it for illegal purposes but I tell ya what, it has made getting free legal software so much easier. Gone are the days of waiting around on a slow ass FTP that seems like it's being run out of some guy's broom closet (which is probably where it is being run). I find on most Linux torrents I can get 30+mbits/sec no problem.
you're making me cry.
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.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Why do I get the feeling that ISP's spend way too much time finding ways to curb speeds and restrict usage, just so they can keep claiming speed ratings to sign more people up?
You want an easier time with bandwidth? Stop selling and promising your customers a perticular speed with your service. Drop it down a notch, then maybe you'll have enough to go around, rather than claim something and then spend the next 2 years trying to figure out how you can throttle my torrent traffic so that granny across the street can still download family reuinion e-mail at 5 mbit.
Cocksuckers.
Windows has more viruses because linux has more virus coders.
My isp doesn't seem to care how you're using your bandwidth... it just restricts it to 728 MBs... total up and down. It isn't to bad since they throttle it back to about what my DSL at home is (around 700 Mbps). The first day I used 3 GB. Of course, this is because they were the lowest bidder at my apartment complex.
You also have to consider that consumers want things real cheap, often cheaper than is affordable. Big lines (like OC lines) cost a lot of money. So you need to have a good number of subscribers per line to make it work, if you are to charge those people a low amount. That means that bandwidth can be scarce.
One option people have is to just get better service. I personally went with Speakeasy. They don't block or throttle your connection in any way (they claim they don't, and I haven't detected any). You can host servers, whatever you like. However, it's more pricey than lower grade service. I drop about $130/month to get 6m/768k DSL with 8 static IPs. But, I've never had it fail to work at the highest speeds, and they are true to their word, I do a TON of upstream with those servers and I've never heard a peep out of them or seen my connection throttled at all.
Net access is just another area where you get what you pay for. Sure, I could offer people 100mbit net access for $20/month and just lay ethernet to their houses (we are assuming I had the permits here). However at that price, I couldn't guarantee 100mbits of upstream for each subscriber. Hell I'd be lucky to get 10mbits of upstream for all subscribers.
Seriously, if they aren't using some relatively advanced techniques to detect the transferrs (like pattern matching, hueristics, etc.) then all they have to do is alter their encryption schemes and there go those caps.
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
Instate a law that says "In any advertisement of their service, ISPs can quote a maximum bandwidth no greater than the lowest mean data rate permitted by any throttling technique or other restriction imposed on the communications of the consumer, both for upstream or downstream."
This way an ISP couldn't advertise a 5Mbsp down / 1Mbps up service if they restricted your torrents to 2Mbps down (on average) through throttling.
If ISPs can selectively "throttle" Bit Torrent downloads what is to stop them from throttling child porn, hate sites, drug transactions, etc. Doesn't this fly in the face of the "safe harbor" legislative provision that ISPs are not responsible for the content on their networks? I think if someone were to point this out it might give the ISPs pause if their precious safe harbor provisions were in danger.
What about all that dark fiber that was laid before the dot.com bust? Can they be required to either light it, or sell it? There's all kinds of bandwidth waiting to be turned on when needed. But too many players would rather keep the Internet limited -- and expensive. Seems to me they're subject to government regulation. Would this qualify as gouging?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
And the people create the government to protect us from abuse by big business, when we don't write government off to corporate manipulation.
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make install -not war
Here in Australia, most ISPs do provide a fairly large mirror of stuff (although they don't put enough effort into keeping them up to date). You pay for a certain number of GB downloaded per month, and traffic to the ISP's servers is not counted towards this limit.
Why operate on this structure? Well, bandwidth outside the country is mostly controlled by the gang of four. And the prices for it are nothing short of extorionate. $1/GB is considered good. Bandwidth to the ISP's own servers is virtually free, however, so they don't charge their customers for it.
Because of this, ISPs tend to encourage anything that uses their networks. If i'm downloading 100Gb/month then my ISP loves me for it, because i'm paying them upwards of $120/month for the privelage.
You are assuming that the DSL ISPs aren't throttling traffic at the higher level of their network. You are wrong in that assumption. DSL is no panacea to cable oversubscription and traffic-shaping.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I would think they would watch traffic patterns and throttle based on usage and necessity. If one user has a constant stream of traffic and another user just has the occasional blip, Tap the QOS settings for the constant user down a peg or two. If there is a conflict, his traffic will always lose, and if his web browser is less responsive, he'll probably expect that given the ammount of traffic he's generating.
On the other hand, throttling bittorrent traffic when the pipes are all empty is just unnecessary.
I've noticed that when using bt my traffic spikes for a few seconds, then is throttled down by 25%, Understandable--but why all the time, even when I know there is no contention for the trunk.
Of course, after building apps to do stuff like this for 15 years, I admit it's a heck of a lot of work to get something deployed and reliable that can mass-configure a netowrk for this type of thing, espically for a smaller operator.
You know, it's not often someone calls me stupid... or immature... or claims I'm unlikable.... I'm generally forced to laugh at this point.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!! I like you. You're funny. Even if you ARE a useless AC.
Naw, seriously. Post as a real human. Pussy.
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Customers getting what they paid for? Are you nuts?! That's communism! You pay for 6mbps per second, you should be happy with 768kbps. People having the freedom to use bit torrent and the privacy of encryption, what kind of collectivi-er, confiscationli-er, what are you, one of those SWARTHY PEOPLE?!!!
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
I'd love to have 728 MegaBYTES of bandwidth from my ISP.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I signed up for unlimited bandwidth. That is the deal we made. There was nothing in the contract about not using what I paid for. How is it an "honor system" that I should know not to use what I contract for? If they had even mentioned such a system in their ads or contract, I could see your point. Why are they allowed an implied "honor" system to sell the same bandwidth over and over, and the claim I "ruin" it when I use what I pay for?
>What about all that dark fiber that was laid before the dot.com bust?
Most of it isn't lit because it can't do multiple colors, only one. It also has crappy connectors in the middle, so it isn't all that fast. Those cards for thier routers are expensive, if they are going to light up a new path they want it to be worth the money!
-nosebreaker.com
It doesn't have to be done like that. If the rates don't reflect actual market costs, that's on you. Charge people what it honestly costs for bandwidth. If people scream, then the situation will get changed at the backbone providers..either on their own, or by force of regulation.
As it stands, you are getting screwed by having unhappy customers already, and being forced to indulge in deceptive if not dishonest business practices. Even better, you're taking the heat at both ends (unhappy customers, plus possibly opening yourself to lawsuits or regulation) while being a patsy for the backbone providers. You're taking the bullet in the posterior twice for their greed.
You may think "Gosh, if I did that, the competition would screw us by advertising higher (false) speed/bandwidth." I don't think so. If you gaurunteed a specified amount of data transfer/bandwidth for a given price, (especially if you dared other providers in your marketing to match your deal) I think you'd get a LOT of customers that are *tired* of being lied to by every other provider.
Even people that one would think are pretty clueless tech-wise are smart enough to know they've been getting screwed by their ISPs. Ask any comcrap or AT&T or most any large providers' customers if they think their ISP gives them a good deal, and watch eyebrows (and ires) rise.
If nothing changes, guess what? Nothing changes. The backbone providers aren't about to change...why should they? They have a great patsy in place...you!
Cheers!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
No, I'm saying that your bandwidth isn't shared on your IP block with other cable subscribers. I said nothing of traffic shaping, and neither did GP.
You're limited by the bandwidth your block can get between the home office and the wider internet, but they do have far more bandwidth to burn than the cable line to the home office does. Meanwhile, on cable you have this restriction too, in addition to the bandwidth sharing.
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Advertise what you actually sell: Connections that can be UP TO 5mb...with a hard floor like .5Mb
Blar.
It's sadly true. It's even more sad that no elected official will ever do anything about it, except make it worse (for the consumers; better for them, as they get money flowing in from lobbyists).
we actually use the bandwidth we're paying for. This is outright ridiculous.
We're not paying ISPs for a broadband connection to sit there and not use it. Being in the business for many years, I understand the concept of overselling but as a consumer I wouldn't and won't stand for an ISP's blatant denial of service to me which I paid for.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
Some cities bill water by the size of your pipe.
Some bill by usage.
Some do both.
Most ISPs bill only by the size of your pipe.
Maybe it's time to add terabytes/month to the equation.
Of course they'd have to figure out a way not to charge you for spam and other unwanted traffic or there'd be consumer riots, Congressional investigations, etc.
Another solution is to make your pipe smaller, say, dialup speed, after you've exceeded a per-day, per-week, or per-month quota.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I saw other posts saying the same thing about ISP's hoping that you don't use all of your available bandwidth, and overselling the service, and my question is this:
If I buy say 25 acres of land, and I sell 1 acre parcels of this land, normally valued at 1,000 dollars per acre to 50 people at 750 dollars per acre (to give a good deal and sell my land), in the hope that they don't use it all, how long do I have before I go to jail, and how much of a jackass am I for counting on the fact that no one will try to use thier full acre?
I got nuthin
I don't get why ISP don't apply this to their customers, it would be perfect, or am I missing something?
ISPs oversell bandwidth to consumers: If they sell you 1 MB/s then they might have 1 MB/s for every 50 customers they serve. Now with a token bucket that fills at a rate of 10 to 30 KB/s, depending on demand, and has a capacity of perhaps 1 GB normal users would generally have full speed almost all the time, while heavy users would be limited to the bucket fill rate, unless they save up some tokens.
Furthermore it's a standaard traffic shaping algorithm, so I would guess the ISP's equipment could easily handle this.
What am I missing?
they're filtering a service. There's still no distinction in what you send, just how you send it. This is like saying ISPs can't filter spam without giving up common carrier. You want to send one or two unsolicited emails, ok then. Send 1 million? Then we've got a problem.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Except given the nature of big government and inherent human corupptability, that never works. Ever.
OK, here you go:
Dear customer/potential customer,
At present, you pay a flat rate for your broadband, but the costs we incur in supplying your service increase with usage. If you are up/downloading 10x as much as most customers because of your heavy broadband use, then you are costing us more than those others. With a flat pricing model, that cost is being passed on to all of our customers equally. We don't believe this is fair to the vast majority of our customers, most of whom don't make such heavy use and simply want an always-on connection with a reasonable download speed.
In recognition of this, we are giving our customers the option to decide between two alternative pricing schemes. One of these will be introduced within the next six months, at which point we will stop offering our existing flat-rate service.
For option (a), we have a tiered approach. Light users can have a max 512Kb/s connection and a monthly bandwidth cap of 1GB, for $5/month. This package is suitable for most people who use the Internet primarily for e-mail, web browsing/e-shopping, and Usenet newsgroups. Medium users can have a max 2MB/s connection and a monthly bandwidth cap of 4GB, for $15/month. This package is suitable for most people who make somewhat heavier use, such as on-line gamers or those who download occasional multimedia content. Heavy users can have a max 8MB/s connection and no monthly bandwidth cap, for $200/month. This is the only appropriate standard home user package suitable for those who run continuous, high-traffic services such as peer-to-peer file sharing or web servers linked from Slashdot articles.
For option (b), we will simply charge a fixed fee per megabyte up/downloaded, keeping the total income we receive across our entire customer base constant. We expect this to result in a cost reduction for light users of up to 90%, little change for medium users, and a tenfold increase in charges to heavy users.
Please select the option you prefer and we will go with the majority vote. For those who require guaranteed download speeds and no bandwidth cap, the same leased line services we offer to businesses are also available to private customers, with prices starting at only $1,000/month (installation charges apply).
Kind regards,
Your ISP
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
It's easy for a router to distinguish traffic that "looks like" web traffic from traffic that "looks like" typical torrent traffic.
It's not practical yet to distinguish child porn, drug sites, and hate mail except on a whack-a-mole basis.
The technology is coming. Someday, they will be able to identify an unencrypted image as "likely child, likely porn" and flag it for human review to send to the police, or simply drop it. Ditto hate mail and drug sites where those are illegal.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
No, especially in our big government, the people's ability to have our rights and interests protected is most of the way it works. That's one reason why the breakdowns are so big: corporations and the corrupt politicans they love have got to exploit their opportunity to the maximum when they can, to return on their long investments opening the opportunity.
Believing that our government never, ever works the way the people need it to is exactly the kind of writeoff that enables corporations to exploit it, and us. It's their main means to that end.
--
make install -not war
It's a good thing the ISPs are doing this, since it's important that Ted Stevens gets his e-mail without delay.
Here in Brazil many broadband ISPs guarantee you a MAXIMUM of 10% of the bandwidth you contracted. Meaning: you get something that's announced as 2 Mbps connection and that usually works at that speed, but which could drop to 200 kbps (in peak hours, for example, or for whatever reason the provider thinks is deserved), and the ISP wouldn't be required to improve the situation at all. Nice guys, eh?
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
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.
You forgot:
3. ?????
4. PROFIT!!!
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
when IPTV becomes more ubiqutous, or when more people start watching news, music videos, etc. online. Yahoo! music streaming, anyone? iTunes, anyone?
IPTV is set to evolve soon, too, to where a Comcast user in Los Angeles can subscribe to a provider streaming from Texas. Episodes of TV shows can be seen online now, and whole libraries are going to be coming online.
Bittorrent's just a big shark in a really really big ocean of bandwidth problems about to hit you like a tsunami.
The backbone will get stronger or new markets won't emerge. Apparently in this day and age, the market has right of way.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
If you don't want to cry and whine when someone actually makes use of the "unlimited" aspect of some service that you offer for a fixed price, then don't offer it in the first place!
Know what? P2P,Bittorrent are some of the biggest reasons why more and more people sign up for internet and shell out $$.Thats why ISP's allow them.They know it. Its in their own interest that they wont turn away those customers.
Wincopy
At the ISP where I used to work, we really didn't give a rip what you did with your pipe so long as it didn't cause us problems :)
So, if you were using Bit Torrent (or KaZaA or gnutella or....), we didn't care so long as MPAA/RIAA/BSA/**AA didn't send us a notification of infringing content. If we received such a notification, we would send a warning to the infringing customer. If said customer continued pirating software/movies/whatever, we would continue to send warnings to the customer until either the customer learned how to not get caught or the *AA's would send a subpoena request. While our AUP's stated that we *could* terminate a user's account for copyright infringement, I can't think of a single case where we actually exercised the option.
The bottom line is that dictating how a customer uses the pipe is a waste of time and resources. For me (as an ISP) to tell you (as a customer) how to use your connection just involves me in a never ending arms race and annoys you. So why bother?
Basically, as has already been mentioned, the biggest reason that ISP's get upset with file sharing is because it taxes networks that weren't designed for 24/7 usage from so many customers. Rather than trying to restrict what *protocols* are used on networks, I suspect that, some time in the future, ISP's will begin charging the same way almost every other utility does: charging per unit of bandwidth consumed, possibly with a flat fee until some cap is reached, and then a price per unit of bandwidth consumed after that.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Exactly. And of course the ISP apologists chime in with the "bad analogy--you can get in trouble for overselling goods, but not services" nonsense. Of course, what they are overlooking is that it isn't somehow "less of a crime" to oversell a service, it's just harder to get caught.
The hollowed principle that the ISPs were relying on was the ancient "but I didn't think I'd get caught" defense.
If somebody takes money from people for X, be it a good or a service, and then blocks them from getting what they paid for in order to resell it to others, they are committing fraud. Period.
--MarkusQ
Yes I do think of others, but that is a completetely moot point.
When I buy a milkshake or soda at the local fast food shop, whatever size I order, I expect it to be full. If they are running low I still expect them to fill the cup or give me a refund. It would completely unacceptable for them to say, "we are running low, can you please share your milkshake with the next 20 people in line?" If they sell me a medium size drink, I want and *expect* a filled medium sized drink. If they screwed up and didn't order enough supply to meet the demand, that is their f***ing problem, not mine. They should learn to manage their business better, or put signs up that say, "we reserve the right to only give you half of what you paid for."
The only time this would be different is we were on a desert island somewhere and had to share in order to stay alive, and had enough to keep us all alive. But we are not talking about that, we are talking about purchasing a product in a capitalistic economic system. I earn my money so that I can spend it on the things important to me. Charities are important too, but my internet connection is not a charity. Nor is it an outlet for someone's socialistic/communistic tendancies. We can debate whether an ISP connection is a luxury or necessity, but that is not the point here... what is, is that the ISP connection is a commercial product. It is something that is paid for, and I expect what I pay for.
As others mentioned, if the ISP wants to sell a maximum burst 1, 3, 6, whatever Mb/sec rate, then they should advertise just that. If they say they are selling me an 8 Mb/sec pipe, then that is what I want. I get charged more for that than I would if I ordered a 256 Kb/sec pipe. If they want to sell by bandwidth, then they should do that.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
BitTorrent traffic by nature is very easy to spot. A large number of connections, mostly idle with short messages being sent every 30-120 minutes and a couple dozen connections with pretty constant upload and/or download. So this product appears to do exactly what the encryption extension was predicted to force, filtering based on traffic analysis rather than packet analysis.
That is one of the reasons why I've resisted implementing this feature in my client, and still feel rather ambivalent even though someone has provided a (clean enough, considering how ugly the extension is) patch for it. It won't even provide the only redeeming feature it could have had, that of actually _encrypting_ the connection properly.
- These characters were randomly selected.
baseball bat with razor blades glued on
I have seen this at least 3 times in the last day. Where is it coming from?
768Kbps == 6MBps
as
768*8 = 6144KBps or 6MBps.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
...using the Good and Proper outlets for such content, i.e., the co-branded ones with integrated advertising. You can't have them running off willy nilly, trying to decide what content is important to them without guidance.
You see, it doesn't matter what's important to the customer *now*; eventually, they will tearfully see the Light and come to appreciate the wise guidance bestowed upon them by the anonymous bandwidth throttlers.
Pi Ran Out
Bittorent is increasingly being used for legitimate purposes. Warner Bros. is looking at bittorent to legally distribute movies.
Cable companies also provide a similar service in the form of on-demand movies and pay-per-view programing.
By throttling bandwidth to bittorent clients, under the guise of "network performance", they effectively eliminate a competitor's service in the market.
You know what behavior is called? It's called abusing a monopoly, and anti-trust laws exist to prevent just that sort of behavior.
I won't be long for lawyers to start licking their chops.
-ted
What fight? At my old ISP we just limit problem users to 20-30 concurrent connections at a time. Any more and we disconnect the connections at random.
During normal use, there are two situations where a person would hit more than 20-30 connections:
1. Running P2P software that is SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED to get past throttles (eMule)
(and 1b. Running poorly designed / configured P2P that is designed to create 300 - 500 connections at a time. Often related to 1a.)
and
2. They are infected with some form of virus and their system is going crazy.
Since we certainly don't support #2 and #1 causes our entire network's quality of service to go down, we have a responsibility to our other customers to prevent #1.
Best thing is, they reboot, do a speed test, speed test comes up well within acceptable range. They open uTorrent or eMule, they get 0 - 0.5k a second because the connections keep getting reset. "Oh? It's slow again? That's odd, lets do another speed test... please reboot..."
Encrypt it all you want. An ISP thinking ahead more than a few seconds doesn't have to packet sniff to throttle you.
Sorry but this doesn't sound credible. How would the ISP be off the hook after giving you an unrestricted connection? Also, when people have been sued by **AA in the past, there was never an understanding between the customer and the ISP that the provider would block certain kinds of traffic and that would legally shield the users (I'm inferring this based on the discussion you describe in your post). Which ISP do you have and who did you contact there?
I would like to know how I can tell if such throttling is happening.
I use the latest Bitcommet Client and no matter what I set for upload/download rates I never break about ~ 80kb (or is it KB) download speed. No matter if I am downloading ~10 files simultaneously or just 1 or 2 popular files. "Health" is always >1500%
I have tried several web speed tests and my cable speed is indeed the ~ 5Mbit/s DL / 0.5Mbit/s UL that I am purchasing.
I am using XP, XP firewall and a recent model linksys router. I have configured port forwarding on the router and Bitcomments reports that it is happy and not struggling behind a firewall.
I would appreciate any thoughts or suggestions. - I was wondering if there is any reliable Bitcomment speed test that can be performed?
You miss the fact that people talk and even sometimes use the Internet to compare rates. Price rules about 90% of the decisions in the US, maybe more like 99%.
So, if an ISP is charging "realistic" rates they will have zero customers - losing them all to SBC-Yahoo DSL at $14.95 a month. If SBC-Yahoo claims "50 times faster than dial-up" and your ISP claims "your bandwidth will depend on what is available and might be only 10 times as fast as dial-up" how long will clueless Joe Sixpack stick around before switching to the ISP that tells him what he wants to hear?
There are no points for being honest when it doesn't count. In this case only people using P2P applications and BitTorrent clients are pounding on their connection 24x7. So they are the only ones that notice. Joe and his web browsing doesn't really care as long as it is fast.
(a) The fact that the ISP oversells their bandwidth isn't my problem, just as I don't feel personally responsible when someone gets bumped from a flight I'm on because United overbooked.
(b) I'm aware that most ISP contracts specify that basically the ISP has zero responsibility to provide you anything close to the service they're advertising. I view this as a cop-out and it reeks of false advertising. Just like I can't tell you that your car gets 110 mpg (tiny disclaimer: while going downhill in neutral) when I'm trying to sell it to you, I believe this sort of deceptive sales should be illegal.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
I am paying $40 for a junky service and I can't get a better service because Verizon signed a deal with my apartment complex. Verizon avenue just blows and that is the only broadband internet I can get. What happened to innovation? Why are we paying these absurd prices for crap?
A start would to roll out FIOS or any other system than DSL or cable. They have been testin FIOS in Texas for god knows how long and it STILL hasn't rolled out to other places. That is only the start. I want to see telecos go after gigabit transfer rates here. Maybe we wouldn't have such a problem wiwth bandwidth if they actually spent money to upgrade their systems and upgrade their lines. There should be no reason why we have to pay an absurd amount for oc3 or above. The public just takes it up the ass because we have to, until these old farts die out of the telecos.
no you don't. while technically still there the upstream bandwidth limitations vastly overshadow the local contention unless you are on a block full of 1337 d00dz. in which case you find out who some of them are and set up a wireless mesh for 54MB unlimited transfer access to warez, porn, and music.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
What is it that caused all that torrent traffic? People sharing and collecting coredumps on a massive scale perhaps?
Privacy is terrorism.
Ok - has any body seen or touched this new tool, NetEnforcer? All this coding back and forth here on /. is taking time away from one of you brilliant "coders" creating a "work around" to fix this potential problem. Someone? Anyone? Bueller?
Don't look at me, I don't hack or code.
When a Ball Dreams, It Dreams it's a Frisbee.
If an ISP wants to sell a 3 Mbps service but wants to oversubscribe it by 10x, that's fine. But then they should advertise it as 3 Mbps at 10% saturation. Instead they advertise and sell it as 3 Mbps, then use secret criteria to determine who they try to kick off their service for "overusing" it. Lately they've started adding (very, very) fine print stating you're not supposed to use all that bandwidth 24/7. But the whole thing would sit better with the public if they were just up-front about it.
The solution isn't to throttle BT traffic.
The solution is to make movies and other things that make up significant portions of the BT traffic available on the Internet to begin with for prices people will pay, likely through BT, but from the actual providers. This way the movie makers make money from the downloads and can help offset the cost of traffic and it decreases pirate traffic.
Also, since we're all talking about traffic, has there been any statistical analysis of traffic increases from when World of Warcraft pushes out a 100 MB patch?
Why does everyone should have broadband? Because it helps get a higher quality of life. Maybe like TV or washing machine?
Broadband make the Internet accessible and easy to use (try maps.google.com without broadband)
So the question is: Everyone should have broadband, can they use it for what ever they want?
There should be a way to reason with everyone? I mean should you use it 24/7 ?
What about speed caps for long transfer? I think my ISP is doing just that.
Small files get downloaded at 800kb/s. But Long transfer gets cap at about 400 or 300kb/s
Would that be a solution?
Also, why have a single point of failure for the Internet (the server you are trying to reach)
more and more people get Inet access theses days, so more and more people access the same sites (I'm talking about the slashdot effect) If Bittorrent were to be integrated into the browser that would never be a problem, would it ?
I think that all download over 500 megs should be done using BT protocol or similar.
why? in euorpe and asia they have crazy faster speeds for crazy lower prices..
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
Dear ISP's
STOP THROTTLING MY BANDWITH YOU BASTARDS! If everyone's connection is slow maybe that should signal to you that you need to add more capacity.
No objection to the business model. Why, then can't you just be honest, and say something like:
"Up to 3MB/sec transfer rate (your actual average download speeds will be less,
probably closer to 1.2MB/sec over an hour or so)."
I'm sure some marketing dweeb will make this shorter and sweeter (and a lawyer would make it horribly longer), but a little transparency would be welcome.
"To the people who just have a home ISP and may not have much choice, I say: don't worry about it. Somebody will come in to provide the service eventually."
Well I've had the telephone company and the cable company for about 10 years in my area. Currently i subscribe to the cable company because a few years ago the telephone company started blocking ports 80/53/25, so i switched to the cable company.
I'd love to live in the magical universe that you live in where there are infinte choices and the great market will provide all the answers, but then i woke up in the real world with the monopolies cockslapping me all the way to the bank.
But then i guess you ARE right. Maybe in 10 or 20 more years, someone will come along and offer better service. I mean *eventually* is a long ass time right?
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
But then you'd need a new protocol; the current one doesn't have much free space. Or you could add it to the data portion of the packet, but then you'd have more overhead and less useful data.
But does the government care? Hardly.
The international association of razorbat trolls?
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
I've been on Roadrunner 15/2 cable for a year now, $60 a month and i have yet to drop under 16.5gig A DAY uploaded over bittorrent (set max at 200kB/s).
your ISP is a cheap ass for limiting you to a set amount up a month to by throttling you for certain types of traffic, get a better one.
and don't complain that "its the only one in my area so i can t get another one."
look in the phone book, theres several dozen ISPs right there, all more than willing to sell you service.
17 in my area and in the middle of nowhere.
My ISP gives me 20M/1M unthrottled DSL for 30 euros a month. I can max it all the time with no problem. They also sell dedicated boxes with 100Mbps ethernet in their datacenter, unlimited bandwidth, 1G RAM 160G HD. If you look into their infrastructure, well ... they did what it took. It took a lot, but they're profitable. The thing is, they did'nt spend much money on marketing or advertising -- they did, however, invest a lot in R&D. They designed their own set top boxes, DSLAMS and hosting appliances. They bought out or rented gigs after gigs of backbone.
In the end, trying to castrate your users is going to cost you a bit of money, and more importantly, a lot of credit.
I guess I was a bit ambiguous... I meant the total MBs transferred, not the speed. After you use 728 (up + down), then they cut down on your priority. Sort of like a tiered internet, but it doesn't discriminate against what you're running, just by total downloaded/uploaded.
You need to stop the monopoly on backbone bandwidth and make sure ISPs spend the money they use on throttling equipment to upgrade their backbone instead. Petition, go to the press or whatever you do over there. Sweden: 100mbit/s down, 10mbit/s up for $44/month, $0 initial cost. Not a single nordic ISP on Azureus wiki over ISPs that throttle BT traffic. In 2005, 9% of the swedish households had an ethernet LAN (TP or fiber) connection (2004 the number was 6% so it's growing fast). Myself i have a fiber into my house with an 100mbit/s converter attached to it. I live in the north of Sweden, 30km from the nearest city, "in the middle of nowhere".
So, Bittorent represent 70% of the internet traffic, spam 50%, slashdot 20% and I get 0% in class for saying that 100% isn't the max anymore! Kin
Did you read anything of this entry? It's about the ISPs trying to restrict encrypted BitTorrent usage. ISPs don't want people to use bandwith hogging applications/protocols (P2P), because they're all overselling, and such downloading customers use too much bandwith for their current pricing.
avoid those isp's!
azureuswiki, list of bad isp
Same discussion goes arrount in emule, obfuscation may be enabled there in next version:
List_of_Bandwidth_throttling_ISPs for emule
I think you're looking in the wrong place for the cost.
The cost of you saturating your pipe would really not be in the upgrades necessary to the local infrastructure (at the subnet level), it would be in the additional cost to their ISP (assumedly one of the Tier-1 providers).
The switches at the head-ends of the local cable "exchanges" (whatever they call exchanges in cable parlance) are probably more than capable of pushing 5-6 Mb/s per customer, continuously. Where it gets problematic is as you start aggregating that kind of traffic through the network. If an exchange serves 500 customers, and each of them want to pull 5 Mb continuously, then you're talking about a 2.5 Gb backhaul; if you have an actual connection to the Internet for every 5 local exchanges, that means you'd need to buy a 12.5 Gb/s x 24/7 pipe from the Tier 1 provider. To do that, you're talking Real Money.
What I suspect the problem is, and why you can't use all the bandwidth that Comcast advertises to you, is because Comcast only itself buys a fraction of the connection to the global net that it would need, in order to provide that level of service.
The bottleneck probably isn't down at the local level, it's up where Comcast's network meets the rest of the Internet; they're not peering, they have to buy transit from another provider, thus they have an incentive to try and discourage people from using too much traffic.
The best solution to this, IMO, would be to have two separate limits on traffic, one limit (say, 128kb/s continuously, or an equivalent amount of burst traffic, maxed at 6Mb/s) for packets that actually need to transit to the global net, and another limit for packets that never leave Comcast's copper (6Mb/s continuously). This could be expressed either as a distinct amount of transfer per month, or as rates.
Using those figures just for an example (128kb/s continuous global, 6Mb/s continuous local), you'd be able to push approximately 40GB per month onto the public net, and 1.9TB per month on the Comcast network. (I think I did my math correctly...)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I think this is a big part of the problem. Buying transit is expensive, when you're talking about significant amounts of continuous traffic (non-burst rates); you think that a 10Mb connection is relatively slow, but buying a pipe that would let you use that 10Mb connection all the time, saturating it, and give you a decent QoS is not cheap -- thousands of dollars a month, probably. I think most people would be stunned to figure out how much a "real" internet connection actually costs.
Whether the backbone providers are "ripping off" the tier 2 and 3 providers, is arguable. They're the ones with the massive overhead expenses to cover, but on the other hand they seem to be making a lot of money...but who can blame them, when they own the lines? The cost isn't in the routing, it's in the lines and the associated maintainance (backhoe fade, anyone?)...it takes a huge amount of infrastructure to get your packets from NYC to LA in 100ms.
I guess if you don't like their pricing, see if you can get a few billion dollars of capital and run your own long lines, and try to compete. It's not as though there's only one backbone provider, either -- there is some competition in that market, at least.
The real problem that I have is not the service being provided by Comcast/et al to end users. For $40 a month, you get what you pay for, and it's not that much. I just dislike the way they advertise it. The average person is not that smart, but he's not entirely stupid either; if you're advertising burst speeds, then say they're burst speeds.
When you buy one of those $500, 1Mb connections, they don't advertise it as being "1Gb internet!!" just because that happens to be the maximum burst speed, they advertise it at the continuous-throughput level, or they state both: 1Mb continuous, 1Gb burst. By refusing to advertise and price their home plans this way, Comcast and the rest of the home-broadband providers have only themselves to blame when people get upset.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I'm with you, no more analogies on ./. Analogies on slashodot are just like petrol on ice cream, it ruins it.
If we pay for a connection advertised at a certain speed, we should get that speed. If the company has "over-subscribed" then they need to upgrade their equipment to handle the services they offer.
Didn't most of these companies get billions in dollars from our Govt. for infrastructure upgrades?
Pretty much every other country in the world has higher speeds, for less cost, and NO throttling. Right?
Governments are formed for the ostensible purpose of protecting against external threats, not from any threat posed by "big business".
Abuses by government has been orders of magnitude worse than any abuses by business.
The average person uses nowhere near the bandwidth of his connection, and that allows them to charge cheaper rates by overselling.
The average person's broadband connected computer is pumping out spam and DoS attacks, which is why 85% of the world's spam comes from them.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
You miss the fact that people talk and even sometimes use the Internet to compare rates. Price rules about 90% of the decisions in the US, maybe more like 99%.
So, if an ISP is charging "realistic" rates they will have zero customers - losing them all to SBC-Yahoo DSL at $14.95 a month. If SBC-Yahoo claims "50 times faster than dial-up" and your ISP claims "your bandwidth will depend on what is available and might be only 10 times as fast as dial-up" how long will clueless Joe Sixpack stick around before switching to the ISP that tells him what he wants to hear?
There are no points for being honest when it doesn't count. In this case only people using P2P applications and BitTorrent clients are pounding on their connection 24x7. So they are the only ones that notice. Joe and his web browsing doesn't really care as long as it is fast.
You have some valid points. However, I still believe that more people than you apparently believe would still see through the hype.
As far as internet price comparisons, if they're using something like the popular "broadbandreports.com" or "dslreports.com" sites, then they are already pretty "clued in". If they're not clued in, those sites will educate them if they read any of the info there.
As far as combatting the marketing hype, that would require some hardball counter-advertising. Perhaps something along the lines of:
"Don't fall for the high-speed claims of [insert competitors' name]! They won't gauruntee you the *actual* speeds and *actual* amount of data you're allowed under their "secret limits"! *They* will cut you off for using more than what they think you should, and *THEY WON'T EVEN TELL YOU HOW MUCH THAT IS!!* Switch to [insert honest-Co.s' name], the one that actually gives you what they promise, and will actually *tell you* what you get for your money!
Dare [insert competitors' name] to gauruntee you in writing the amount of data you can transfer each month without penalties or "down-throttling" like we do! They won't! They think you're gullible!
Don't go for a ride on their 'Dis-Information Super-Tollway!'"
IANAM, (I am not a marketer) so get a real advertising marketer to write you a hard-hitting campaign..possibly even including daring the competition to *gauruntee* the amount of data transfer allowed per billing cycle at a *gaurunteed* average minimum speed.
After "Joe Sixpack" sees/reads/hears that for a while, he'll start thinking "Why *won't* these other ISPs spell out what I'm getting for that money?". At that point, you've gained a new customer. If you can drive home the other ISPs' dishonesty, most will switch if they can do so without too much hassle.
Maybe I'm too optimistic. I find it hard to believe, however, that even the most clueless user wants to deal with a dishonest business, if that dishonesty can be pointed out to them, and there is an alternative honest business available.
Cheers!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
"We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed."
"At the start of each new U.S. Congress, in January of every odd-numbered year, those newly elected or re-elected Congressmen - the entire House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate - must recite an oath:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.
This oath is also taken by the Vice President, members of the Cabinet, and all other civil and military officers and federal employees other than the President."
We have rights that we create governments to protect. From anyone. The British king is little threat these days, but many corporations threaten our rights daily. We use our government to protect us from them, or we're done.
We have ways of protecting ourselves from government, too. Saying government abuse is worse than corporate abuse is a false choice: we don't want either. Giving up on the bases you are citing just hands us to corporations. Why would we do that?
--
make install -not war
The service provider sells their service as "up to 500k/sec" or whatever. Now, if because of the capacity of the network sometimes you don't get that full bandwidth because it's saturated, that's fine unless it happens a great deal of the time. The issue here is that the ISP has no technical limitation (total bandwidth capacity) that's limiting your bandwidth. They are making the decision to intentionally not deliver that bandwidth. It isn't even that all of a sudden demand exceeds supply and they need to expand their pipes. It's that they've deliberately decided not to deliver what they led the consumer to believe that they would.
Does this imply that if you had not used this unthrottled service, then they would act as a barrier and protect you from civil proceedings? Somehow, I doubt it...
Actually, being an ethically run business (believe it or not!), we oversubscribe, but do our best to ensure that if you want all the bandwith you've subscribed for, you can have it. We just expect that you won't be running it at full blast 24/7.
Our outside pipe is big enough so that, under normal circumstances, we never have service-wide slowdowns from exceeding our available bandwidth. We also take every step we can to not limit based on service-type (the only exception we have at present is for usenet, and we have an overall speed cap to our outside usenet servers--not per customer). We would like to prioritize latency-sensitive traffic, but that's not a bad thing at all, I don't think.
We flat out don't reduce connection speed just because some one actually uses their available bandwidth.
Many other ISPs do happen to do all those nasty things. I'm just glad I don't have service from them.
I've got no problems with my ISP having some sort of limit to let them make a few bucks. As much as I like to complain about the cost of hi-speed cable internet, I know that if I was to run it at max 6Mbps 24/7 there's no way they would make any money.
Specific filters for Bittorrent bug me though, they're not a long term solution. The next step that BT programs will take is to make BT traffic look like VPN or HTTPS traffic -- then what? They're going to severely throttle VPN or bank website access? Sooner or later it will cost them customers in the long run.
IMHO, "all" that ISPs need to do is throttle by volume of data by hour. Say, the first 400MB in any one day gets through without any throttle, then start throttling down to say, 100MB per hour. Then leave the taps wide-open at night. It's FAR easier to throttle based on overall data useage rather than by specific protocals. And an open and clear system will let people figure out their useage appropriately. In my case, I'd schedule my VPS backups for off-hours.
(IANAL)
Bullshit. Read the terms of the contract. EVERY SINGLE ONE has a clause that says that they can terminate it without cause, unless you get into higher grade Commercial contracts for longer terms for much, much more money.
You'll also find that most of them have clauses in there to deal with "abuse" of the service or network, and "abuse" is how THEY define it, not you.
To them, "abuse" could be you running Torrents 24x7 and saturating their network.
Don't kid yourself, the contract you entered into is written TOTALLY in their favour, not yours. For that matter, I bet 99.9% of the subscribers have never even read the thing, never mind understand what it says.
$0.02 (CDN)
Here in australia, ISPs have a pricing model and setup that reflects the fact that bandwidth isnt free and that they have to pay for it.
If US ISPs had bandwidth limits (like aussie ISPs do) and made the high bandwidth users pay for what they use, then they wouldnt need to cut back on bittorrent.
It shouldnt matter if someone is talking over Skype or Vonage, downloading (legal or illegal) content from BitTorret, sending large files to their work over a VPN, watching videos over Google Video, YouTube, CNN or Disney or whatever else.
This is what is needed, high bandwidth users (regardless of what they are doing) should pay their way.
"Abuses by government has been orders of magnitude worse than any abuses by business."
Only because goverments are more powerful. A business the size of america with its own army would be a frightening thing to see. Big goverment will abuse everyone, while pretending that they are actually helping you. Big business will just abuse everyone.
"Power corrupts" is the golden rule. They only way to limit abuses of power, is by limiting the power. That is true for both businesses and goverment.
*Comps only reach 8GHz when cooled with CO2 to absolute 0 in a vacuum.
Great Intellect...
... 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.
First, they oversell. That is normal, but they want to "optimize" the network, so to speak. Just throttle the minority that is using it, and continue to lie and charge the majority. Easy, fast and painless. The solution, not the network your customers are getting.
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.
In Slashdot it is more appropriately to say "to help ISPs get more money for less". This is clearly a disadvantage for everyone but the ISPs, why are so many people advocating the "advantage".
From the article: "Certainly, increasing BitTorrent traffic is a concern for ISPs.
But don't everyone agree that MY traffic is MINE and MINE alone. The concern also.
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.
Nice.
However, BitTorrent is an extremely important tool that has many uses other than what everyone assumes it is good for, namely movie piracy.
Yup. By the way, most of the other stuff could be easily transfered over http and ftp. Except Linux CD-s, they are expensive to host.
Aren't we tired of so many wars? War on Drugs, War on Terror, not War on BitTerror? I suspect the only war actively waged is the war on innoscent people. Which nobody bothered declare, by the way...
Sure, but that doesn't the change the fact that what it's mostly used for is, in fact, piracy.
Here in Australia we have set quota limits on most plans. Once you've hit that limit, you're shaped (or have to pay extra). I quite like this idea, because it means my ISP isn't going to get whaled on by a few users that are downloading hundreds of gigs a month.
Advertising is not typically treated as an offer (at least, not in Canada; I assume the U.S. is similar). It's treated as an "invitation to treat". That's why we have separate laws about advertising, instead of just having everyone sue for breach of contract.
http://outcampaign.org/
If company A offered, say, 1 TB/month for $20 + $1/TB thereafter, and another company offered $30/month flat-rate and meant it, I'd go with whatever company was better suited for my needs. If company C offered $30/month for flat-rate but had unadvertised caps, and company A or B was in my market with substantially the same product, I'd jump ship in protest. Unfortunately, all the companies that sell the product I need in my price range act like company C. :(
Focusing on company A and company B:
You can bet that if *everyone* using under 11TB went with the first company, the 2nd's cost structure would go up and they'd either have to raise their rates or eliminate the all-you-can-eat price.
What's likely to happen is that some people would move to save $10/month but many would either stay out of inertia or would stick with the other company for reasons other than bandwidth, allowing the company to keep its all-you-can-eat pricing.
BTW, 1 TB/month is just an example, the actual limit should be high enough to satisfy whatever % of your customers you feel don't want to be "bothered" by per-byte charges. I would expect this to be 80-99% of customers for most ISPs in the next few years, perhaps lower as people grow used to paying by the byte.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The problem with bittorrent is only if bandwidth is shared on a per connection basis. Then users who make just a few connections get "squeezed out" by those with 50 active connections.
If an ISP is going to shape traffic, it should all be based on per IP shaping.
If bandwidth is shared on a per IP basis then it really doesn't matter so much what users run. If the torrent users get X bandwidth max, the other users will get X bandwidth max too. Fair. Of course if X turns out to be low, then the ISP has oversubscribed. Simple.
The assumption of course is one ISP customer per IP, and customers with more than one IP have paid more, so if they get more bandwidth that's still fair.
BTW here's where Linux is crap, it has this overcomplicated thing called "tc" and all that complexity doesn't make it easy for you to share out bandwidth on a per IP basis. You have to precreate a separate entry for each IP, and doing that is pretty unwieldy if you have lots of users.
Currently Bittorrent ONLY encrypts the headers not the data and it's with a specific type of low grade encryption that is easily detectable.
Eventually I predict that the Bittorrent clients will have to use SSL over port 443. When that happens it will look no different than any other encrypted web traffic.
You don't actually think encrption is that good? Do you? The NSA doesn't allow traffic they cannot crack. Grow up.
I found that the opinions and misunderstandings at the start continued on 'til the end. With no shift either way. Hogs want all they can get, and reasonable people dont think they need to take every possible bit of service out of their provider. Nothing changes. Being good Internet users makes things good for eveybody. Hoging bandwidth for low money flat rate service stresses the system. I'll save some bits and keep this short.
That's the problem. You're not using what you paid for. You're using MORE than you paid for. You're right that you don't know this, or what exactly you've paid for, and that's a serious problem. Also, I don't recall seeing the words "unlimited" in any networking advertisement in years, as this problem has been going on since around Y2k. It's just implied by the lack of stating bandwidth cap.
Your argument is one of ignorance, that since you don't know what the limit is, you should be unlimited and can use whatever you like. That's like saying that since there is no wording on the newspaper box that you can only take one newspaper per purchase that you can take them all. There is often an implied limit on things.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
A 3 meg pipe may in fact allow your email or web pages to load faster. Potentially 3x faster, especially if they are large pages, large downloads, large emails, etc..
In case you missed it, a 1 meg pipe is 1 megabit PER SECOND while a 3 megabit pipe is 3 megabit PER SECOND. That's 3x faster.
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If a business claimed a monopoly of legitimate violence over America, and proceeded to enforce it, then it would be a State.
In the real world, however, the largest corporations own comparatively very little, and aren't much interested in claiming a monopoly of legitimate violence, as that tends to piss off potential customers.
I think most ISPs are happy to see high bandwidth users leave their service, they probably lose money on them. I agree that the big users should be made to pay something reasonanble considering they are using a large portion of an ISPs bandwidth.
In Canada most if not all cable companies have caps of 60-100GB/month and charge aroun 1-$5/GB after that. which seems reasonable, even if the speeds they offer allow for much more that that (fastest cable ISP offers 16mbps service). There are many though ISPs that do not cap and do not throttle bit torrent, the biggest being bell but they own their own cross country network which cable companies no doubt pay to connect to...