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ISPs Experimenting With New P2P Controls
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."
give increased speeds when you don't leave the network. downloads will complete faster, so less peering will be done.
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
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!
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.
Support multicast. If you build it, they will come and make a multicast P2P program on top of it, relieving your backbone connections of all the redundant connections.
Here's how media companies will kill the free internet we all know and love:
"Legitimate" media caches and disruption of all other P2P traffic only makes step one worse. They will continue to slow the rest to lower than their heavily filtered networks can deliver. The result will look like broadcast media does today, one big corporate billboard, instead of a free press. Part of censorship is shouting louder than others.
Yeah, I've said this before. As long as ISPs have the same story, so will I.
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!!
Isn't this just what alt.binaries was doing for the ISPs? Local caching? And they just got rid of those.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
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!!
Having a local cache server, while it does spark privacy concerns, is actually probably the best solution they've come up with yet. ISPs won't have to spend a great deal of money on upgrading infrastructure, and users don't get shafted by reset packages. It's something of a compromise between doing it the right way (upgrading everything) and the wrong way (strangling the users).
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
I don't know why people keep getting hung up on legal vs. illegal content; the law clearly says that ISPs have no copyright liability for their caches:
http://www.bitlaw.com/source/17usc/512.html
I'm told I get 10 MBPS. As far as I'm concerned, that means 10 MPBS 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for as long as I pay my bill. Any effort to throttle that back and I sue for false advertising.
I piss off bigots.
I hate to applaud AT&T on anything, but they have made a ginuwine commitment to a nuetral network refusing to partake in shaping until forced by legislation or until they find a solution that dosn't hurt their customer base. All it takes for traffic shaping to fail is for one person so not do it...then everyone goes to that one person. At the same time AT&T is rolling out increased infrastructure. I upload consistently at 112 kps almost 24/7 (I backup 10 gig files almost daily to colocated servers). My clients cable provider disconnects their internet if excessive upstream is detected...it seems like this is more of an issue for the cable companies rather than dsl providers becuase DSL providers sell dedicated BW as opposed to portions of shared BW (like cable does).
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
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!
P2P shifts costs of distribution from central servers and spreads the load out among the downloaders. This is *helpful*, and it is more equitable given that the marginal costs of data copying is near zero - pushing the price of downloaded content lower and lower.
The pricing seems like such a non issue. The elephant in the room is that companies like Comcast are making a killing, taking a ton of money selling services that largely go unused. many service businesses over sell their capacity to ensure high usage rates, but broadband has taken it to an absolute extreme.
The obvious and easy solution is for providers of cable and DSL services to price their offerings according to usage, and when it comes to bandwidth, the accurate solution is 95% billing: you use a ton of bandwidth, the customer gets charged more. They don't really want to do this though - they make a lot more money buying in bulk and selling little access services for much higher rates than the bandwidth used.
One huge upside of changing the pricing system for home Internet to 95% billing is that you don't have to go metering and capping bandwidth to homes. People could get an *extremely* fast connection, but if they utilize it fully 24/7 then they get billed a high rate. This is not that complex a concept to implement technically.
You should be allowed to use the bandwidth you paid for as you please. It's not your ISP's business what you decide to do with what they sold you. Whether it's downloading via BT, or watching video on Hulu, no one else should be trying to decide which are Good Bits and which are Bad Bits.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I have Comcast, and I've never experienced any traffic shaping or throttling.
Their policy, now that it's no longer P2P specific, seems sane.
Two conditions have to be met for them to throttle your traffic:
1) You have to be one of their heavy heavy users. By heavy, I mean torrenting 24/7.
2) The network has to be congested at that moment.
If granny next door can't check her email because you're downloading/uploading pron all day every day, they reserve the right to throttle back your connection until the congestion clears. Seems fairly reasonable.
Also, it's far, FAR better than than the capped, $1 per GB plan that Time Warner Cable is piloting.
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."
No, but it will be a good "proof" for the argument against P2P. Akin to "See? We have caches with all the legal P2P content and yet no decline in P2P traffic. So it's proven that P2P is mainly used for illegal means".
Yes, I know it's no proof. Tell your congressman, not me.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If my ISP promises me 4mbps download and unlimited traffic that should mean that I can download up to about 1TB per month (450KB/s 24hours a day for 30 days). If they want to limit me to, say, 100GB/month then this amount should be indicated somewhere in the agreement and should not be advertised as "unlimited".
If the network is congested I expect an equal share of the available bandwidth. Actually, I should get a share of the available bandwidth that is proportionate to my max bandwidth. For example, in a congested network I should get four times as much bandwidth as the person paying for 1mbps connection.
ISPs can do whatever they want (for example throttle P2P) just say so in the advertisement or at least when someone asks about it.
I am happy because my ISP appears not to limit my traffic (although I usually download only 100-200GB/month peaking at about 500GB/month)
P.S. why do I have to insert br tags to make a new line?
If I'm serving up ad-supported content I don't want my content cached unless I can count the viewers so I can bill my advertisers.
If I'm serving up restricted-access content I definitely don't want it cached unless it can be done in a secure way.
If I'm serving up content subject to change I don't want it cached unless I can guarentee some level of up-to-dateness.
Having said that...
It's in the interest of "big content" to cooperate with "big pipe" to improve the customer experience. Happy customers are more likely to come back for additional products, which means more ca-ching! for everyone.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I recommend they add a valve to everyone's internet pipe. If they become troublesome, you simply close their valve down a little bit to stop the flow of the internet through the pipes.
We are one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. Back to you with the weather, Bob!
1) Set a price ($1 a gig, minimum $50 a month).
2) Allow competition from providers in your area.
3) Observe the speed/bandwidth increase since it is being paid for.
4) Then observe the price drop as competition brings it down.
Without competition, you can't have this and will exceed your bandwidth eventually.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
These issues are complex, but going by the article summary I'm not sure we're all on the same page.
It sounded (to me) like they're looking for ways to maintain internet traffic, but help alleviate some of the costs of that traffic by using caches. Just because you pledge to allow certain levels of users access, it doesn't mean you have to provide them with that functionality in the MOST expensive way possible.
If they want to brain storm on ways to improve the means, I say have at it.
Also I see nothing wrong with having certain users paying a higher fee for using a higher percetange of the system. It doesn't make any sense for somebody that likes to browse html at broadband speeds to be placed in the same category as a differnt person that likes to download 2-3 new dvd-quality movies a day.
I'm quite happy with my unlimited service. After taking one ISP's (almost) top 8MB package and quickly (within days) getting cut off for overuse, I switched to a UK ISP (entanet reseller) that offers a truly unlimited connection at 2MB, albeit for a *little* more than usual. I know they mean it, because their other packages list transfer limits like 320GB per month off peak, and this one simply says n/a under those columns. Just in case, I saved a copy of the package comparison page though.
You CAN still get a decent product, if you don't accept the B.S. products and keep looking.