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Bell's Own Data Exposes P2P As a Red Herring
dougplanet writes with news from the Canadian-throttling front: "As ordered by the CRTC, Bell has released (some) of its data on how torrents and P2P in general are affecting its network. Even though there's not much data to go on, it's pretty clear that P2P isn't the crushing concern. Over the two-month period prior to their throttling, they had congestion on a whopping 2.6 and 5.2 per cent of their network links. They don't even explain whether this is a range of sustained congestion, or peaks amongst valleys."
Anyone else find it funny that the article links to a video in it's "rgbFilter podcast"? Could it be that the explosion of streaming video is one of the real causes of network congestion, not a few "copyright infringes"? Never!
Capping transfer per month at ridiculously low levels is not necessary though, they get plenty of money to pay for what people use, and lets face it, this is a quasi-socialist ISP environment, people who barely use their connections are paying for those who use the connection all the time.
Might not be fair, but the ISPs have nothing to complain about, they have been taking peoples money without having to provide much in return to most of them for a long, long time.
FYI, the bandwidth Bell is traffic shaping, which this case arises out of, is (1) not Bell customers (Bell simply provides the last-leg of the DSL connection - the DSLAM, I believe) and (2) not using Bell's backbone internet connection.The traffic is from, for example, Teksavvy (ISP) customers to the Teksavvy backbone. Bell is just an intermediary.
I suggested in the last slashdot report that isp's like Bell should be forced to disclose, using standard measurement methods, the specs on their system so I will know what I am buying. There is no magical mysterious tech here on this thing called the internet. Bell and others should be forced to disclose and not be allowed to fleece their customers with smoke and mirrors. Just like when buying stereo equipment, the law does not allow those companies to misrepresent peak and continuous power etc., There is absolutely no difference. I want what I pay for and I should have ways to see if I'm getting it.
Seeing as it appears Bell was giving us a song and dance and I'm sure others have done similar. I will now take this a step further. This would ensure they are giving us what they claim to be selling. I suggest their networks be monitored by a regulatory body directly. I would even suggest a public channel be open so customers may check for themselves. As a start, why not something similar to the Internet Health Report website for example http://www.internethealthreport.com/ but of course tailored to the individual ISP' internal networks. How else are consumers to know if they are being lied to or cheated regarding this product they are being sold. The public are discovering albeit slowly that internet is just another product and service. Plugging the holes stops misrepresentation just like the power available from my stereo amplifier.
Teksavvy gets last mile copper, and DSLAM to peering location at 151 Front St, in Toronto from Bell. If they had peering at each CO and remote, then Bell really would have no justification to impose throttling. Bell is claiming that some network links between the DSLAM and edges of their network are inadequate. What's particularly greasy is that Bell negotiated transit bandwidth agreements with third party ISPs, and then pulled this throttling crap on them. So Teksavvy negotiates a multi-year agreement with Bell for X Gbps transit, so that they can serve their clients during peak hours and be prepared for anticipated growth of their subscriber base. After being locked into transit contracts, Bell starts throttling during peak hours, thus changing the bandwidth that Teksavvy would need during these hours. Further, they don't provide third party providers information about WHICH clients are throttled, putting third parties at a further disadvantage for planning bandwidth needs. The Supreme Court of Canada just cleared the way for the sale of Bell to interests which are financing the sale to the toon of 34 billion dollars of new debt for a company with annual profits of about 4 billion dollars. I'm not at all surprised that Bell is electing to spend a relatively small amount of money on throttling boxes, rather than making any real investment in infrastructure.
An ISP in Japan will also soon be throttling their user's bandwidth.
Yes, they are creating an upload cap of 30GB per day. Not per month, per day .
I for one, welcome our Japanese ISP bandwidth capping overlords! Please?
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius. -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
And they got mighty supporters. Imagine someone being able to create a network without having to shell out millions if not billions just for the infrastructure. In fact, a halfway well off person can start an internet TV network.
A worldwide TV network, just to make matters worse (for those that oppose it, that is).
Can you see how not only established TV networks but also governments don't really like that idea? It's already bad enough that Al Jazeera spills counterpropaganda against Fox, now imagine anyone being able to do that. Worldwide.
I could well see that some governments don't really like that idea one bit.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Having been paid in full to have an ailing father's Bell service switched over, a friend of mine is now having to fight Bell to get some money back. They cashed the cheque immediately, then, after his death used their direct deposit privilege on the old boy's bank account to pay themselves twice.
And they're making the family deal with the problem through the bank rather than refunding or crediting the phone bill of the survivor.
If Bell Canada had a totem, it would be a rabid, starving rat.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
That's why YouTube was so highly valued. Anyone can/will be able to have their content distributed anywhere in the world. It's a simple business model, you give us the content but don't necessarily give away ownership, we distribute it for you free, we keep all the ad revenue.
It's brilliant, because your revenue is proportional to how much you distribute the content. Low interest content generates little money, but little cost, and vice versa for the popular stuff.
It still seems like a novelty because the video quality is absolutely hideous, but a few generations from now it will be very good, and decades from now, our eyes will be the limiting factor and quality won't even need to improve further. We're basically there with audio already (too bad so many people still think 128k mp3s sound good).
This is 1.0. In the future, everyone gets their own TV show. If you get really popular (for free), you better believe you'll be able to get a cut of that ad revenue too. Why? Because You Tube is going to have a lot of competition....
In comparison, the tiny Netherlands with all that cheese and those cows seems to have a lot of consumer ISPs to choose from. Here's a partial list:
Alice Comfort
Argeweb
12move
Abel Telecom
CompuServe
Concepts
DDS
Domestix
EDPnet
Fiberworld
Filternet
GreenOnline
HCC Net
Het Net
InterNLnet
KPN ADSL
Orange
Planet ADSL
Primus
Qfast ICT
Quicknet
Scarlet
Solcon
Speedlinq
SpeedXS
Studenten.net
Supersnel ADSL
Tele2 ADSL
The One Hosting
Tiscali ADSL
TweakDSL
Unet
Vastelastenbond Internet+bellen
xsDSL
XS4ALL tip
ZIEZO.biz
Even bloody Compuserve (yes that one!) will sell you 20down / 1up ADSL for 19.95 euros a month. For another 5 euros a month they'll add PSTN phone termination and a DID. 30 euros monthly for 20 mb down is most typical now. And little traffic shaping if any, to my knowledge.
In fact providers such as XS4all make a political statement against such practices, when they can under legal and contractual agreements, as they do with their statement of privacy too.
For more complete info: http://adsl.startpagina.nl/
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
in socialist Sweden, we have shitloads of examples of government owned monopolies doing very well, and when they got sold out to the private sector, all of a sudden they start effing people over for profit. The electricity market is a very good example of this.
i find your lack of faith in science disturbing!
What obviously no-one can ask is "just how bad is 2.6% congestion", never mind 5%
Well, as a network engineer, I can tell you this : it's VERY bad. This number means that some of their core lines were inoperable 1/20th of the time due to p2p.
The target number in any network, in case anyone doesn't know, is 0%. Congestion == line down. It creates unacceptable and unworkeable slowdowns.
And let's not forget that this congestion was created while they were upgrading their lines as fast as they could.
By destroying P2P traffic they are doing it to some traffic that has a large part of the traffic volume in their networks and see what happens. P2P has probably been chosen as a legitimate target since it has a considerable amount of "illegal" or "gray" data which in turn means that the number of companies that are affected and buying services from the ISP is lower. Which in turn means that the risk of costly legal suits are held at bay.
So the P2P corruption is mostly a test, not the real deal.
The true reason is that they want to keep the customers to themselves and just tell their customers that they will only get good video if they buy it from them and not any independent vendor.
And this means that everybody has to sit and watch the movies and TV channels that the ISP provides and nothing else - with injected commercials and other crap.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I am a network engineer. 90% is a really high threshold for calling something congested. Also, 15 minute averages are better than a lot of measurements I've seen, but are far from perfect - lots of "microburst" type activity can cause a noticeable loss in performance over a much shorter period than that.
Bittorrent-type flow patterns do tend to cause microburst issues - it might be that Bell CA needs to implement some more fine-grained measurements to see whether the thresholds are still the right ones for them.
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