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."

Comments

Glad to hear this.

[suck_burners_rice]

It was quite clear to me all along that this whole throttling issue revolved around the agenda of some nasty people who want to lock the world in to their way of doing things, and had nothing to do with use of bandwidth or any other legitimate issue. I'm glad this is coming out.

Re:Glad to hear this.

[sedmonds]

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.

Re:Glad to hear this.

[Anonymous Coward]

They're like OPEC. They don't even try to hide behind phoney legitimacy anymore, They're basically saying, "We don't have to rape you, but we will, and you're going to bend over and LIKE IT!".

False.

Since when has "and LIKE IT!", in relation to the customer, ever entered into any telco (or OPEC) executive's mind?

Re:Glad to hear this.

[billcopc]

I know everyone's debated this topic before, but why wouldn't we (as a nation) buy out Bell and convert it into a federally-mandated non-profit ? It's precisely the kind of long-term asset that benefits society as a whole - a perfect candidate for socialization.

34 billion dollars, in the grand scheme of things, ain't all that much when 34 million citizens stand to benefit. That's $1000 per Canadian, but that 4 billion in annual profit would come back to us, which means the purchase pays for itself in 8-9 years. There's no finance minister that can squeeze that much money that quickly; certainly not the inbred albino monkeys we've had lately.

Re:I knew it!!

[aikodude]

get 'cher fresh hot torches here! can't go to an angry mobbing without fresh hot torches!!!

Let's see...

[Monkey_Genius]

1. Advertise unlimited Internet.
2. Throttle customer bandwidth.
3. ?
4. Profit!
Business for the 21st Century 101.

Article is pure shit

[RockMFR]

The blog linked to is pure shit. Here's a link to the actual article:

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/06/25/tech-caip.html

Is "I told you so" appropriate?

[zappepcs]

I've said it before, saying it now. There is NO reason to believe anyone in business who cannot show WHY they need legal help, or rights to invade your privacy to protect their business. There has never been proof by the **AA that file sharing is harming their businesses. There has never been proof by any ISP that P2P is harming their businesses. Without proof, what they wish to do is nothing less than criminal.

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=592247&cid=23904147
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=588163&cid=23844923

Sure, they can say, oh it's our network and that's what we are going to do with it, however, in the interests of the national GDP/economy we have to consider ISP infrastructure as vital to the economy now, both of the US and the world. Any shenanigans on how it is run are of vital business interest to business concerns other than the ISPs themselves.

P2P is simply being used as the pike that gets network monitoring in the door. No, I have no actual proof of that, but if it were the danger that it is said to be, there would be plenty of evidence. Some of that evidence would be people complaining on the Internet about how slow their ISP is.

Now, add to that the fact that these same ISPs have a vested financial interest in using more of your bandwidth than you want them to in order to provide the triple-play and quadruple-play service packages that stock holders are counting on for revenue.

There are the two reasons for finding something to blame/fear in order to ease the pain of making the changes to the network at consumer's costs. Sure, some think that right, but they squandered the money/tax incentives etc. they have already been given and still do not provide anything much better than they used to.

They have a technological problem and need someone/something to blame. For better or worse, they chose P2P because it's already scapegoated by the **AA. I don't think this plan is going to work out so well.

Just my opinion

Re:I knew it!!

[grim4593]

From www.bash.org:

DmncAtrny: I will write on a huge cement block "By accepting this brick through your window, you accept it as is and agree to my disclaimer of all warranties, express or implied, as well as disclaimers of all liability, direct, indirect, consequential or incidental, that may arise from the installation of this brick into your building."
DmncAtrny: And then hurl it through the window of a Sony officer
DmncAtrny: and run like hell

Re:I knew it!!

[Sponge Bath]

There's no justice like angry mob justice.

Re:Nothing new

[Hijacked Public]

1) RTFS
2) RTFA
3) Discover that existence of anything more than tiny pockets of congestion is just a bunch of bullshit, and that not only have you been lied to about P2P being a problem, you've been lied to about the whole goddamned problem
4) PRICELESS

Harm done.

[twitter]

Bell's data shows that unrestricted P2P creates no congestion in better than 95% of their networks. Schemes to "filter" P2P will slow down 100% of their networks. It is obvious that either:

1. They are incompetent. They are going to create a problem to solve one that does not exist. Or
2. They are liars. Their goals and reasons are different from those stated.

My bet is on #2.

Re:Harm done.

[Smidge204]

While I would also tend to vote #2 here, those two options are not mutually exclusive.

=Smidge=

Re:Harm done.

[Guspaz]

You're completely incorrect because you're completely ignoring Bell's criteria for a line being considered congested.

First, their thresholds: They consider anything over the following utilization thresholds to be congested:

DS-3 61%, OC-3 84%, OC-12 and OC-48 90%.

Second, they determine usage and congestion by taking samples every 15 minutes. If five samples return percentages over those limits in a 14 day period, the line is considered to be congested for the entire 14 day period.

Their percentages are actually not all that bad; they're a useful guideline for when it's time to turn on another link. Their methodology for MEASURING the usage, on the other hand, is completely flawed. A two-hour long DDoS attack one afternoon might mark a slew of lines as congested for two entire weeks.

Further bolstering the fact that they've chosen their measurements to make the issue seem worse than it appears is that despite the supposed congestion on a given percentage of their lines, they only have about 4000 ATM cell loss events network-wide each month. This is out of the trillions of ATM cells flying around their network every month, they only drop a percentage so small that my calculator resorts to scientific notation trying to calculate it.

In short, they've pretty much made up the issue. Their figures when taken at face value don't indicate significant congestion (5% of lines congested? Why not just purchased a handful more lines?), when examined based on their methodology appear to be garbage data, and when compared against actual packetloss caused by congestion, is proven to be completely non-existent. Bell has zero actual network congestion, their own ATM loss data backs that up.

Disclaimer: I'm not a network engineer, and so I might be talking out of my ass. But I think that common sense can play a role here; their methodology makes it trivial to declare a line as congested, and having 4000 instances of ATM cell loss on a network in a month with millions of customers (and trillions of ATM cells sent per month) doesn't seem particularly bad.

The agenda: The internet makes cable obsolete

[some damn guy]

It's easy to see why Comcast wants to limit customers. Peer-to-peer sharing is the scapegoat. If people think they can download as much as they want all the time, they might start thinking of their computers like the TV. Oh wait, they're already starting to.

Seriously, the day when you can ditch cable altogether is very very near (okay already here for me). Even without pirating anything. Seriously, the networks know the way the wind is blowing. Everything will start going online- it already is. Sure, the cable companies want to bring you the "on-demand" world, but they want to own it. But they're losing control and they're scared and they are starting to do stupid stuff... "WHAT? you watched Netflix ALL NIGHT?? ARRGGHHhh..."

They are realizing they have two businesses- content delivery and connectivity. Now they have to compete with the likes of Apple, Google, and Netflix for the former (among others). Recording industry 2.0. Their business model is a genereation away from being obsolete (well half is). The other half is just fine, and they really should have split the company along those lines, but probably can't for regulatory reasons, at least without further damaging the TV business.

The best course of action is clearly to blame the pirates and bury their heads in the sand.

Re:How funny

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

(or is 5 percent a lot?)

I would say that depends on if it's the five percent I am in.

load of BS

[roman_mir]

In revealing the details, Bell explained in an accompanying letter that "while these numbers may seem low to the average lay person, they are significant to network traffic engineers such that it is important to consider the number of congested links in the proper context." - of-course, the context being that Bell would like to make more money from various throttling schemes as well as from their new IPTV stores.

If only a single link in the network is congested, end users may still experience slowdowns or dropped connections, the company said, - of-course, especially if you throttle these connections.

because the situation is similar to the road system -- where if one major artery is backed up, all connected roads will also have problems. - of-course they conveniently omit the fact that the Internet is designed to route around damaged/congested areas.

And in other news...

[Moekandu]

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?

Re:And in other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

-2, Jealous

Re:How funny

[rcw-home]

Queueing Theory says that around 70% utilization is when delays occur.

Delays occur whenever anything is waiting in an output queue instead of being immediately transmitted. This could happen at very low average utilization levels if multiple sources all try to send data across a link simultaneously. The delay time is a function of the number of bytes waiting to be transmitted and the transmit speed.

Retransmission delays occur when the output queue gets full, the router drops additional packets as they come in, and the TCP connection hangs until the retried packets come through (700ms for the first one, much more for subsequent dropped packets). To avoid compounding the problem, output queues on routers are typically sized to something a fair bit less than 700ms.

Bank needs to repay you.

[freedom_india]

The bank needs to repay you the money they let Bell steal.
If a bank allows money to be withdrawn from an account of a deceased person, then the bank is liable to put the money back WITH interest and penal charges.
Once a person dies, the bank needs to legally freeze the account to prevent any deposits or withdrawals (esp. withdrawals).
Only the estate or the nominee can withdraw (not deposit) ALL the money from the account in one single operation.
Nope, the bank cannot unilaterally close and send you a check for the same. If you are the legal heir, you need to either prove by way of nomination OR successor OR court orders asking the bank to pay you the money.
The check that the bank cashed and the Direct Debit, if both happened AFTER your dad died, are not valid. In a court you WILL prevail, plus the bank has to pay a nasty fine.
But BEll cannot be held liable. You were not in a contractual relationship with Bell.
Order the bank in writing stating facts and giving them 7 days to repay you with interest.
If the bank fails to respond, file a criminal case stating fraud, and simulatenously ask the court to rule in your favor citing your dad's death certificate and date of debit.
The court usually will not want to hear from the bank because if the debit happened AFTER death then any legal arguments are moot.
Get a court order making the bank pay you.
If you want to play real nasty, send the order by ordinary post undistinguishable from other letters (after all banks hide their rate increases in same way) to the bank's registered office (NOT the branch). Those morons at the registered office will have no clue and throw away the letter. (Assuming you have given a deadline to pay you from date of letter do next steps).
Approach the court again whining pitifuly (yes it pays) that the Holy Judge's order was disobeyed (get the same judge) by an unruly bank.

The judge will ask what you want to do next.

This is most important: Now the culpability of the bank is established as defying court orders (your money now plays a second role. Judges don't like to see anyone defying their orders). Request the court grants you permission to seize and auction the bank's nearest branch's assets to get your money back. The judge will accept this.

Go with a sheriff and his posse to the branch, and now you are legally authorised to rob the bank. You can shut down the doors, throw out customers, restrain staff, seize cash from tills, auction PCs on the spot (better yet, arrange a few friends to be there for the auction to get bank's PCs at HUGE discounts). Sell ALL their stuff to get your money back: Remember, your goal is to first bankrupt the branch. Don't seize cash. Seize the hardware, valuable furniture anything that the bank needs to run its branch. Sell it on doorfront with sheriff standing by for a dollar or whatever you like.

The bank will try to move mountains to get the order overturned. So do it quickly, very fast. Get some 100 friends to suddenly appear, bid for the assets, and block the traffic to prevent their lawyers from reaching you to serve you a STOP SALE order they can get from a sympathetic judge.
Good luck