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ISPs Experimenting With New P2P Controls

Posted by Soulskill on from the diamond-in-the-rough dept.

alphadogg points us to a NetworkWorld story about the search by ISPs for new ways to combat the web traffic issues caused by P2P applications. Among the typical suggestions of bandwidth caps and usage-based pricing, telecom panelists at a recent conference also discussed localized "cache servers," which would hold recent (legal) P2P content in order to keep clients from reaching halfway around the world for parts of a file. "ISPs' methods for managing P2P traffic have come under intense scrutiny in recent months after the Associated Press reported last year that Comcast was actively interfering with P2P users' ability to upload files by sending TCP RST packets that informed them that their connection would have to be reset. While speakers rejected that Comcast method, some said it was time to follow the lead of Comcast and begin implementing caps for individual users who are consuming disproportionately high amounts of bandwidth."

14 of 173 comments (clear)

  1. Perhaps it's time for by fohat · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ISP's to quit offering unlimited service, or stop overselling what they have. What's the point of having a 15 or 20 Megabit downstream, when I can only download 50 Gigabytes of traffic per month? Because i'm sure as hell not going back to renting my porn from the video store...

    --
    Is there heaven? Is there Hell? Is that a Tuna Melt I smell?-Primus
    1. Re:Perhaps it's time for by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's a bit like having a 300hp car but only fuel for a mile.

      Yay for car analogies! But this one at least works.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    2. Re:Perhaps it's time for by Propaganda13 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ISP: We offer "unlimited" internet access.
      Customer: Sweet! *starts downloading*
      ISP: Oh, we didn't mean you should use it.

      They advertise a low price and a high speed, then oversell to get that price then reduce the high speed because of it. Hmm, methinks they need more truth in advertising.

  2. Apply traffic shaping per-user, not per-service by spazdor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is all we need. The problem is not that the providers aren't giving us enough bandwidth (they aren't). The problem is that they care what we spend it on.

    --
    DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
  3. This is no good... by Vectronic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ok so, my ISP (theoretically) wants to keep the data my neighbour has downloaded, incase I want to download it to.

    Yet, obviously these caches will have to be legal content, which means filtering out illegal content, which means they will be tracking everything I download, and thus, can force me to 1) pay more for this, 2) notify appropriate authorities, 3) limit my interaction with the rest of the world via the internet.

    Although as stated in the article/summary its supposedly "temporary" but this means that ISP will have to start gathering massive amounts of storage, inevtiably making one ISP better at this than another, and hey fuck it, lets just have one ISP... and the internet just becomes Wikipedia.

    I honestly can't see any benefit to this, it seems to just end up with steralization whichever way I look at it.

    1. Re:This is no good... by taniwha · · Score: 4, Insightful

      well all that's potentially happening is that your ISP is joining your torrents but only serving those in particular IP ranges, but really really fast - to me this is an added benefit, I'd probably choose an ISP that carries the latest kernel downloads locally - it's not really any different than a html proxy cache (except that because the torrents are crypto corrected an ISP can't inject ads into them)

    2. Re:This is no good... by Vectronic · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah I'm aware of that, and I agree completely, the problem is can you actually see an ISP (outside of smaller, barely making a profit, looking for clientele please join us ISPs) doing that so honestly?

      That was sort of my point, in the immediate conclusion it seems like a great idea, but it gives far too much power to the ISP, or even more power to the government to control what the ISP can do.

      It will make sponsored content (Windows Update, Fox News, etc) the primary purpose of the cache after awhile, it is a business after all.

      People without the money to pay ISPs or Governors, or whatever to get their content approved for cache, will be on this lesser accessed, slower WWW, making it a pain to get real information or media, and since people are fundamentally lazy, they will inevitably give in, and just go with "what works, right now!"

  4. I've got a good solution.. by plasmacutter · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How about they roll out the infrastructure we paid for with our tax dollars, then not apply any "controls".

    you know, a proper, neutral internet that fulfills the promises they made again and again to our government officials when they were given grants, local monopolies, etc. etc.

    --
    VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
  5. alt.binaries by bassakward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Isn't this just what alt.binaries was doing for the ISPs? Local caching? And they just got rid of those.

  6. and who says p2p control is necessary? by plasmacutter · · Score: 3, Insightful

    how about we also have http controls, and mms controls, and...

    oh wait those are not being continuously vilified by the MAFIAA, who also own the news.

    --
    VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
  7. Let's see how this works... by Kazoo+the+Clown · · Score: 5, Insightful

    1. Cache known legal content to improve download performance.
    2. Significantly reduce performance of content with "unknown" legal status.
    3. Result: legal content gets preferential treatment so legal downloading performs better.
    4. Non-"neutral" treatment completely justified by the war against contraband.
    5. Hit content providers for kickbacks, those that don't pay get their content treated as "unknown" legal status.
    6. PROFIT!

  8. The Fraud of the Cable Companies by Nom+du+Keyboard · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The fraud of the cable companies -- and I'm talking about you, Comcast -- is that you say these people are clogging up our cables so that no one else can use them as we've promised everyone can. Yet money completely solves this problem. Pay for a more expensive business account and suddenly, with no other changes at all to your local cable loop, you get higher bandwidth and caps and somehow are no longer killing their system.

    Tell me Comcast: Just how did your cable suddenly get better once you start charging me 2X to 5X as much as before?

    They're just a bunch of fsking liars!

    --
    "It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
  9. Re:total bandwidth used, not downloaded by plasmacutter · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I mean I doubt you grab the calculator everytime you download a file, or a webpage is finished loading...

    My ISP tells it somewhere on the web interface for my account settings. Moreover, the web interface to your ADSL modem probably also shows it somewhere, at least since the last reboot.

    ah, and I'd trust my ISP for accurate metering. it is in their best interest to provide you the full service, right?
    --
    VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
  10. Re:total bandwidth used, not downloaded by Vectronic · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yeah, the ISP usually has a meter, but like Plasmacutter said, you trust it based on what?

    And yes, most Modems, and also Routers have some sort of tracking... my modem doesn't however (Motorola SB5101), only various statistics about the signal/frequency/channels/Hz/etc...

    And my router (D-Link EBR-2310) has WAN and LAN packet count, however does not say anything about the size of the packets.

    Granted both are cheap pieces of shit, but so are most for home use...

    And your OS can track it to some degree aswell, but what if you restart and forgot to write the last amount down?

    But, I was just saying, how do you know that what you have sent and received is only what was necessary? it could easily be fudged intentionally, inadvertently by poor hardware, etc, or by miscalculations on any one of those steps. It's not accurate enough to really base a service on, at least not so strictly 12 GBs Maximum, it's like charging telephone calls per syllable, it would be an approximation because of different languages, accents, etc.