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Cable Packet Shaping Causing Slowdowns
knorthern knight writes "To counter P2P programs that encrypt their traffic to evade detection, Rogers Cable in Canada has apparently started degrading all encrypted IP traffic, according to a post on Michael Geist's blog. How many of you log in to work over a VPN or ssh-tunnel? How many get usenet news or email over an encrypted connection? This could be a problem for Rogers Cable customers. Geist, who teaches at U of Ottawa, has 'been advised that the University computer help desk has received a steady stream of complaints from Rogers customers about off-campus email service.'"
Use "brownouts" to shape traffic for "fair load" during peak times.
During non-peak times, when you can carry every bit at maximum speed, do it.
During peak times when you can't, then, for the next few minutes or hours, cap everyone at X bits per second, Y bits per minute, Z bits per 5 minutes, and so on so the leeches-of-the-moment get throttled down and people putting less immediate demand on the system don't notice any change. X should be as close to the normal maximum as possible. Y should be less than 60X or Z should be less than 300X, or both. This way, people just doing normal web browsing won't be impacted but I'll be slowed down if I dare to download all of kernel.org during a busy period.
If you combine charging extra for minimum guaranteed per-second bandwidth and charging extra for high-volume-per-month users with peak-demand throttling, then you can raise revenue and/or discourage people from demanding all-you-can-eat lobster buffet service at cup-o-noodles price.
Do NOT discriminate based on the content of the traffic, especially if you do not know what kind of content that is, i.e. because it is encrypted. That encrypted connection is probably me working from home thank you very much.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
When people complain about anything related to ISP surveillance, I always wonder how bothered they really are about security. If you're truly interested, you'll use an encrypted network, preferably an onion routing network, because you never know who is watching. My branch of civil rights activism is highly controversial and generally misinterpreted, so I always make sure that I route my traffic in an encrypted form through my ISP's routers
Sadly, some people really don't understand that the internet is NOT anonymous and that you must use other measures to achieve a reasonable degree of security.
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free" ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four
And if they slow it all down, sue them for not providing the level of service they promised when you signed up. The whole unlimited, high-speed broadband thing is such a fraud anyway, it deserves to land in court -- preferably sooner, rather than later.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
So why not offer GRADUATED pricing levels? 2 GB/month for $x. 5 GB/month for $2x. 10 GB/month for $10x.
Why not just pay directly for the bits themselves?
$1 per GB per month [say].
So that if you used 17.79 GB for that month, then your bill would be precisely $17.79.
It's pretty much the way the long distance companies have being doing it since time immemorial.
And if upstream bits are more precious than downstream bits, then bill accordingly: Say, $2 per upstream GB per month, and $0.50 per downstream GB per month [or whatever].
It's not at all clear to me why the free market [in the form of PRICING] can't take care of this stuff naturally.
You answered your own question.
The entire telecom industry is an absolute scam. Nothing comes close.
Go work in telecom for a while and you will be amazed. The focus is never on providing service or creating new products. It's always "how can we maximize return on our existing customers and infrastructure" and "how much can we leverage this incremental improvement"?
Invent something that costs 1/1000th of a cent to deploy and use? Let's price it at 10cents per use.
Handheld makers invent a technology that lets customers play music on their phones? How can we block them from loading their own music so that they must buy it through our storefront?
Convert your network to be digital, so now you can carry data as well as voice? Oh.. hold on there. It costs us less to move data than voice, but we should be charging 100-200 times more for this great new feature.
Don't let any ISVs run a service over your network. That's revenue that you should be getting from your customers directly. Yes, it would make our service more useful, but you can't have anyone else interacting with your customers.
I could go on and on for days (and I was only in it for four months!) It's an absolute scam.
Heath-care and banking are just blips on the radar compared to the telecom scam Goliath.