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Another Inventor of the Internet Wants To Gag It
MojoKid writes "Lawrence Roberts is just another guy with the title: 'Inventor of the
Internet' in news articles. According to Wikipedia, he's the
father of networking through data packets. And he's
turned his attention to everyone's favorite data packet topic: Peer-to-Peer
file sharing. He's established a company called Anagran, and says their devices
can sort out which file transfers on the tubes are P2P, and — you guessed it — can throttle them in favor of other, more 'high-priority' traffic."
An upstart? Trying to destroy Gore's legacy?
I suppose the internet is unprotected while Gore's off riding moon worms...
Giving DNS, HTTP, etc. a higher priority than torrents is fine with me - I do that with my router.
This has to be the most ridiculous article in the history of slashdot.
"Lawrence Roberts is just another guy with the title: 'Inventor of the Internet' in news articles."
That's right, just another guy. Who just happened to be the Program Manager and principle architect for the initial design and construction of ARPAnet.
Look at the over 4,000 channels of content (much of it in hi-def) legitimately distributed via miro.
Kevin Smith on Prince
I am all of it. Like it or not, data costs money. I don't want to continuously support people who download more stuff than me. The people that download the most (in terms of bytes) are the people that steal movies and music. I buy my movies, and I buy music; and use the internet for sharing of information and gaming. The problem will only get worse when HD movies get on P2P networks. So, good luck to these guys.
Seriously - what's wrong with wanting e-mail, IM, VoIP or other packets to be ranked as higher priority? So this device the guy is fronting can detect encrypted P2P traffic - is that what is now equal to "gagging the Internet?"
Of course, Evil Corporations(TM) can use this for Bad Things(TM), Bush administration must be somehow involved, this will cause the Earth to spin off its axis, etc. But with Comcast et. al. already throttling P2P, what is it that this guy is doing that's so evil? As long as they aren't blocking P2P entirely, I'd rather get my e-mail in a timely fashion that speed up my ISO downloads which aren't time sensitive.
"95% of all Slashdot
He must have blew all his creativity years ago and realized that, if you can't be part of the solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem.
Old people are old. Whether they helped create the system we work with today or not. First, p2p isn't the ridiculous bandwidth hog we all though it was (compared to legit streaming video). Second, p2p was designed as a means around previous circumvention measures. Future circumvention measures will have to change things pretty radically before they will be able to effectively throttle only p2p traffic.
DPI? encrypt. Throttle anything encrypted? Piss off lots of banking and e-mail customers. throttle based on header info? Spoof the headers.
I'm not arguing that it is pointless. just very hard and liable to have a greater negative net effect for non-infringing users than we would anticipate. Nevertheless that does not stop companies from doing things that will eventually be deemed not in their self interest.
Didn't the recent Bell stats ( http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/08/06/27/007209.shtml ) show that p2p isn't actually the problem? so why should it be throttled in favour of 'higher priority traffic'
And so does Cerf, and all of the other co-called inventors, and fathers. They got us into this mess.
Someone needs to sort out egalitarian access, hopefully some visionaries and NOT a large group of non-vendors, so that the process can be as inclusive as possible.
My suggestion: two channels, one for QoS-respected traffic, the other free-for-all. The QoS channel costs you, per period time. The free-for-all is all you can eat. Vary the mix you want to purchase, or offer at your free hotspot or WebbieTubeBar. You get what you pay for, no more, and less if you don't use it.
The pontiff approach ain't working.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
applying simple heuristics based on the packet protocol (TCP, UDP, etc), port number, whether either the sender and destination are large commercial sites, etc.
In other words, it could be similar to what a screening router in a firewall does, only it throttles instead of drops.
Seems to be getting hit by filtering. So they are attacking legal forms of high volume, low priority traffic.
There was an article a few days ago about a man with an $85,000 phone bill, something VOIP could cure if we could trust it to work consistently.
If the ISPS can "lower" priority on some packets can't they just raise the priority of VOIP and html requests. Eventually P2P would mimic them (and in the meantime it would blend with other traffic so it shouldn't take a significant loss.
A lot of ISPS have a "heavy traffic lane" high latencies but unlimited throughput, that is probably the wrong solution why not a "low traffic lane" to support the small fast transfers (IM,VOIP,SSH).
If they can sniff the general hidden packets for patterns that show it's p2p it should be easy to find the stuff that isn't p2p.
Perhaps I'm slightly biased here, because I usually see P2P being used to transfer large data files (e.g. Linux ISOs), but it strikes me that certain types of traffic should have a priority.
Think about it: downloading something like an ISO or video is somewhat different than downloading the various bits and pieces of a web page or streaming video or making a phone call via VoIP. Network congestion or throttling for the former is not really an issue since it does not diminish service. You will get your data, even if it takes twice as long. Yet most people won't want to wait a couple of minutes for a web page to download, won't want to watch their video screech to a halt as it buffers more data, or deal with horrendous amounts of distortion due to higher compression on their VoIP call.
Now there is a problem with this technology: it could just as easily be used to block as to throttle. And that is what we should really be concerned about. Alas, if we go around freaked out about throttling low priority traffic our larger concern (blocking) will probably lack credibility in the eyes of policymakers when that time comes. And it will come.
Be smart about the battles you pick.
Some alternate scenarios:
Kevin Smith on Prince
The selection criterion won't be copyright infringement, but based upon supplier. Peer-to-peer includes gaming; the agenda here is to force out small-time and co-operative endeavors that challenge 'push' delivery of media.
Ordering packets according to criteria as regularity verses simple bandwidth is another matter, but sensible QoS is no-one's agenda; it is rather used as a point of leverage for the transparent interest of particular parties.
Wikileaks, no DNS
e-mail? I can't think of a lower priority packet...
If our current private internet entities fail to realize that there can be no universally determined difference between one data or another, we need to either regulate or take that power from them.
There is no 'more important data'. That term is a relativistic concept that bears no actual meaning when read by anyone but the original believer. What is more important to one person is worthless to another.
The internet is a well established virtual representation of public interaction. It has many intricate elements, all of which should be preserved in the aspect of freedom. There is no universally determinable difference of importance between one data or another; the quality is only relative.
---------
Anyway, if these companies want to place values on data, we need to exercise our ability consumers and citizens of this country to tell them WE DON'T AGREE WITH WHAT YOU SAY IS IMPORTANT.
I'd hate to see it, as it would probably be worse, but we could probably socialize the whole internet in the U.S. Take all those companies and acquire all their assets through some form of virtual eminent domain, etc.
Our failure to achieve our very popular goals of freedom in the US will most likely fail due to LOBBYING. Our desires as a majority are easily ignored. Hold your congressmen responsible. Write them and tell them what you want.
People of America: Take Control Back. Spread truth, refuse corruption, and get off the goddamn couch.
In today's world there is so very little the individual can do to change laws that favor big businesses. This is simply those individuals reacting to laws that they cannot change, by finding ways to do what they believe they should be allowed to do.
In the end, the absurd laws and the p2p about negate each other, so I'm not in favor of people trying to "fix" p2p unless they are also undertaking a fixing of the laws that are providing p2p with justification.
Examine the situation from a different perspective. In the wild west there were small towns that didn't have effective law enforcement or court, and there was a wide measure of "mob rule" / rioting when a big business started running the town, getting the laws of that town changed to their favor and owning the local judges. Sure, you can work to dissolve the mob, but that doesn't really fix the problem. If you're truly interested in fixing the problem, you have to deal with the mob and the company (and it's effects/actions) that's causing the mob to be necessary. If all you work against is the mob, you've only made things better for the minority.
We've been trying for years to fix the laws and it just keeps getting worse. Then came along p2p and suddenly all the injustices were dealt a serious blow. It's still nowhere near even, but it's taken a big enough bite out of the injustice that the "mafiaa" is looking to beat down the newly formed resistance against it. Can't say as I blame them, they've got a sweet thing going and don't want to lose it. But I'm on the losing side of the issue so I'm rooting for the underdog.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Oh, the virtual circuit guy. I interviewed with Telenet when they had 13 employees, so I met him in the 1970s. Telenet HQ was in a big mansion-like house. It seemed too weird to succeed, and I didn't want the job.
The virtual circuit vs. datagram battle is almost forgotten now, but it was a major issue before fiber optics provided vast cheap long-haul bandwidth. Remember, the ARPANET backbone was only 56Kb. Long-haul leased bandwidth was incredibly expensive through the 1980s.
If the backbone bandwidth is the constraint on network traffic, congestion management of a pure datagram network is very tough. I had to run such a network in the early 1980s, which is why I have all those classic RFCs and papers on network congestion. We figured out how TCP should play nice to avoid congestion collapse, and how fair queuing could give the network some defenses against overload. That was enough to make a network of reasonably-well behaved nodes not doing anything with real-time constraints behave.
In the days of congested backbones, virtual circuits were looking like the future, because they were more manageable. Bandwidth could be assigned at connection setup, and each connection throttled. Tymnet and Telenet worked that way. That approach became obsolete when local area networks became widely used; none of them were virtual circuit, so the backbone had to be at the datagram level. Then fibre optics came along and saved the backbone.
We still don't really know what to do when the backbone is the bottleneck and latency matters. "p2p" file transfer isn't the problem, though. HDTV over the Internet is the problem. There isn't enough backbone bandwidth to support the world's couch potatoes with real-time HDTV streams.
Microsoft at one point proposed a system where real-time HDTV would be multicast, while video on demand would be heavily buffered. That could work, but multicasting with bandwidth guarantees requires more centralized control than the Internet usually has today, which is probably why Microsoft and parts of the broadcast industry liked it.
The "p2p" thing is a side issue. The big issue is going to be who gets to throttle whose HDTV streams. The cable guys want really, really bad to charge extra for those streams, regardless of who originates them.
Snake-oil liniment of the pioneers.
Folks you may not know what you want, you may not know what you need, but I can guarantee you, my Anagran-oil will cure what ever ailments y'all got from clogged up Internet pipes to tube-pipes so tight that a family of pencil-dick politicians could not touch all sides with a collective hard-on.
Buy my Anagran-oil for what ails you, and you will never need to fix your infrastructure, invest in broadband contraptions, or do anything that will cost far more than my distinctive hue, fragrant taint, well proven performance Anagran-oil.
Get it now, get it cheep, get it before you go to sleep with any more infrastructure and broadband nightmares.
The above oh21 comment is open content for any corporatist marketeer or politician to use (they can even take credit for the comment). Take it to the board room or chambers to help convince fools of your personal concern in piss-poor USA telecommunications and comical interpretation of QoS broadband/bandwidth.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
The problem is, what users expect is long-baseline fairness (measured over minutes to hours) evaluated between users.
What the network provides is either nothing (UDP) or short baseline fairness (measured over round-trip-times) evaluated between flows.
Thus everyone benefits if the short flows from the light users are given priority, as they don't have to wait but it has almost a trivial effect on the big heavy users.
I don't like one aspect of his solution, however, is that it focuses on apps first and then users, when it should be the opposite: focus on users first then applications.
Test your net with Netalyzr
I deal with transfers of very large (sometimes as much as 100 gb) video files. The most practical solution we've found for sharing those files between editors, colorists, digital effects artists, etc. if they are not in one centralized location where a LAN can be used is P2P. Having that throttled will be a big blow for us.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
Do you want a postal service to decide how quickly to deliver letters based on their content?
I don't know about you, but that's absolutely horrifying.
You may not always get what you paid for, but you will always pay for what you get (an expansion of Heinlien's TANSTAAFL principle).
Enjoy the ride, until you truly have to pay for what you get. Any New York lawyer will tell you "unlimited" anything is physically impossible and, thus, merely a marketing term. Your plan is "virtually unlimited," especially when compared to 2.4 kbps dial-up.
Increasing reliance on VoIP makes it essential to grade services and throttle in a reasonable fashion.
Invenio via vel creo
thats network based application recognition features in Cisco routers.
This whole story is just CRUFT.
Echoing what others wrote, it's good when people can do it to themselves, and it's bad when people do it to others. Yet I can't help but think this is exactly what I want, and so I'll probably find myself cheering it on.
Seriously - what's wrong with wanting e-mail, IM, VoIP or other packets to be ranked as higher priority? So this device the guy is fronting can detect encrypted P2P traffic - is that what is now equal to "gagging the Internet?"
How can you tell if someone is using a secure SSL connection for work related purposes (Email, large file transfers, terminal services) and someone that is using SSL for bit torrent?
And how can you tell the difference between someone downloading the latest torrent of a Linus or BSD distro for their company server for his work and say someone downloading movies?
And for the person downloading movies, how can you tell if they are downloading documentaries for a presentation for their job (or maybe research, media etc) that is completely legal and authorized versus someone who is downloading illegal movies?
And if you can't, why would you take away preference to people not legitimately using P2P even and give it to those who quite possibly are illegally downloading using some old fashion method like FTP?
I'm just saying... If encrypted properly, you can't tell what people are downloading unless you are seeding. So they only solution would be to punish everyone regardless of its legitimacy.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
The original case I believe was to charge the providers the bigger percentage for their bandwidth. At that time the providers were the universities, the businesses, etc, the people that provided the average user with the content. You see that even today when you compare your network connection's upstream and downstream. My DSL is 936 up and 1536 down. My cable is 2k up and 20k down. And those lines cost 2-4x as much as non business lines that have really crappy upstream without too much less downstream.
But now with p2p, everybody can contribute to upstream. And they are losing their revenue stream because they are used to 1% of their customers consuming 80% of their resources. My upstream is your downstream. So they don't care if your downstream triples. Just so long as my upstream doesn't go up, you can't download from me any faster. ;)
But now there are so many others that can upstream. Not faster, just more OF them. And as a result, YOU can download faster. And this requires an overall increase in network capacity.
So why should the people contributing a little more upstream than usual, which is allowing you to DOWNLOAD faster, cost only them more? Makes ya think.
It's not about p2p. it's about people using what they're selling. They want to sell you a service and not have to provide it. It's like buying a member card from a health club. At any given day there are maybe 5% of the members AT the gym. What do you think would happen if there was some big advertisement in town for the health benefits of a particular new workout? What would happen if now suddently, on average, 20% of the members were at the gym?
They'd flip out. Not enough space, not enough machines, lines at machines, customers pissed off, gym pissed off. And they'd want to start raising rates of course. The reason is they have totally oversold their service, and now the public is taking more advantage of what they paid for, and it's biting them. This isn't YOUR fault any more than it's MY fault, if we're both members. They've oversold their service. Now lets say I'm one of the people that decides to go in there every DAY? My card says I can come in any time. So does yours. But you're only in there once a week.
So I should have to pay EXTRA now? I don't think so. I paid for this card, it says I can come in anytime.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
If postal services charged a flat rate, this might be a reasonable analogy.
As it is, I pay for every single piece of mail that I send. And, amazingly enough, if some piece of mail has more "priority" than another, I can pay more for it to be delivered more quickly.
I hope him and Al Gore enjoy blowing each other. I couldn't care less if this guy worked for ARPA or not, doesn't mean any of his opinions mean squat to me or should to anyone else. If he's who he claims to be, then ARPANET was something completely different than what the internet has become today -- and besides all that, he's just trying to peddle his 'wares and pandering to the IPSs -- so he can effing bite me. Get lost, grandpa; go tend to your lawn and leave the rest of us alone.
I know who/what I'd like to throttle, but TCP/IP packets aren't one of them.
I'm paying loads for my internet connection, it's my desire to use it how I like, whatever time of day or night. Stop telling me how I should use my connection, go build more backbone and local capacity that you've been scrimping on installing all these years.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
How can you tell if someone is using a secure SSL connection for work related purposes (Email, large file transfers, terminal services) and someone that is using SSL for bit torrent?
You can hazard a guess using traffic analysis. Bit torrent (and other P2P apps) use a different pattern of connections to normal browsing because the torrent clients also act as servers for many simultaneous external clients, and it's very difficult to conceal that, even if the content of the connections is hidden by encryption. (Of course, such analysis cannot detect the legal status of the data being transferred. Not unless the EVIL bit is set in the packet headers...)
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
P2P traffic throttling is just the wedge. It is intended to legitimize throttling. If the telcos get this accepted, the next step is to throttle traffic of big sites who don't pay the telcos extra for their traffic to have priority. Goodbye Vonage, etc..
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
You should come to Europe, we don't have bandwith problems. Maybe because our providers actually work on improving the tubes available instead of finding way to shape the traffic more to their likeness.
If the USPS become deluged with junk mail, to the point that the average piece of mail was "degraded" by 2-3 weeks, wouldn't you want the USPS to offer a way to prioritize your rent check to arrive in a more reasonable time? Some applications are flat out *unusable* when the link is congested, because everything has equal priority today. Other applications can tolerate this congestion more easily, so why not exploit this fact and make everything work as well as it can when things are congested?
How can you tell if someone is using a secure SSL connection for work related purposes (Email, large file transfers, terminal services) and someone that is using SSL for bit torrent?
You look and the mean and variance of packet sizes and interpacket time delays going in each direction, plus the entropy of the data and the server-to-client traffic ratio (or difference, forget which). That's what these guys (warning: mp4 video) did.
And as an ISP and not just a man in the very middle, you can count the number of connections which have a similar set of values for these ten parameters.
All this reminds me of the Bush Administration when they said "Weapons of Mass Destruction" that is why we need to go to war. Americans got scared and they backed the false accusations. We see the same technique all over the world now - people create false accusations, spin the media behind it, create a sense of urgency, and if the regular joe out there decides this is valid, he (along with other millions of sheep) will give this unjust cause a backbone, allowing it to proceed. It is only because of people like you that dissect the false cause and show its cancer to the rest of the people/sheep, that do not care to seek the truth themselves, that a lot of these false causes get shut down before they can even lift off the ground. To you all, I salute you, and thank you for not exercising your new American freedom - Freedom from Thought
Why does it matter? The intent (ostensibly) is to ensure latency-sensitive applications (e.g. VoIP) are still usable when links become congested. Random Bittorrent transfers can easily accommodate a few extra seconds of delay. Your VoIP phone call cannot. Bear in mind that QoS only matters when links become congested. When a link is congested, *something* (everything, currently) has to be degraded. QoS simply allows the network operator to specify what gets degraded less. IMO, sacrificing bulk data transfers in favor of interactive traffic is generally in everyone's best interests, but I can understand how people would get squeamish if there is the possibility that this could eliminate P2P at all. If I had an easy way at home to ensure that my web browsing, SSH, etc., were all responsive even though I had a bunch of bittorrents going, I'd love that.
Indeed, but ten years ago you would have been using ISDN (or whatever the equivalent is in the US) in a point to point manner. In Soho in London even before then someone set up a localised IP network for exactly that purpose which could provide 2Mb/s if the studios were willing to pay for it. You'll still be able to shift data, just don't expect to do it over public networks.
What you're describing is prioritizing (QoS, bandwidth shaping). Unfortunately, Comcast, Bell, et al have been engaging in unnecessary traffic throttling, and lying about it saying that they were merely prioritizing. So it's understandable that people are now getting upset any time they hear that prioritizing is going on. It could be just prioritizing. Or it could be another lie to take your money without providing you the service (bandwidth) you contracted and paid for.
However, much like DRM technology, people will ALWAYS find a way around this kind of thing.
If it's based on packet inspection, they secure the packets. If it's based on connection patterns, change the connection patterns. If it's based on ... the list goes on.
The only thing this technology ensures is that the people who are passionate about what they want to do will educate themselves.
Do you want the postal service to charge different amounts for different levels of service?
I don't know about you, but to me that seems like a really good idea.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
How can you tell if someone is using a secure SSL connection for work related purposes (Email, large file transfers, terminal services) and someone that is using SSL for bit torrent?
Volume of traffic alone is enough for most, and really if they throttle large file transfers in addition to p2p, that's hardly a bad thing.
And how can you tell the difference between someone downloading the latest torrent of a Linus or BSD distro for their company server for his work and say someone downloading movies?
You can't; but that isn't important. The point of throttling large file transfers and p2p and so on is to ensure that other more time-sensitive stuff gets through on time. If your legal p2p distro takes an extra minute or two to download to ensure a bunch of voip calls don't get scrambed, that is a perfectly reasonable allocation of the isp's resources.
And if you can't, why would you take away preference to people not legitimately using P2P even and give it to those who quite possibly are illegally downloading using some old fashion method like FTP?
What makes you think preference would be given to large file transfers over ftp?
I'm just saying... If encrypted properly, you can't tell what people are downloading unless you are seeding. So they only solution would be to punish everyone regardless of its legitimacy.
Its not 'punishment'. To use a car metaphor. Its the equivalent polite traffic, regular cars and trucks pulling over to the side of the road to let emergency vehicles by, and gigantic slow moving tractor trailers moving someones house pulling over to let regular cars by when they get piled up behind it.
Its only 'punishment' if they get blocked entirely, or throttled back far more than is required for the higher priority traffic to get through.
So like anything it can be used for evil, but its not inherently evil, and it even has some perfectly good uses.
If I, as an ISP user, can determine the QoS algorithm, that's a different story. But when the providers of the service have a financial incentive to favor categories of content that they sell, QoS is not being done in my interest. It's just a way of further degrading and limiting a service that I paid for. That's manipulative and slimy. Please look at how cellular providers operate for a nice preview of that dystopia.
Most ISPs already advertise packages on the basis of bandwidth but penalize customers who actually use it, so there's plenty of reason to distrust them in making any decisions on which content should be favored. Hint: if they're making a buck on it, it will have higher priority. If it's costing them money, lower. Nothing to do with what you want or need. Big ISPs don't give a shit about your interests.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
You mean "to their liking". "their likeness" means "their image".
Not flaming, just pointing out the difference.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
It sucks whenever that horrible word rears it's ugly head. "THROTTLE." Ugh! It hurts the most just after the "R". I agree that the internet should be free, but let's face it: It's not.
From my understanding, various entities actually own and maintain different parts/sections of the Internet. So when you pay your ISP for internet access, you should only be entitled to whine about the parts of the internet they actually control. It amazes me to think how many people seem to believe they have a true "end to end" connection through their ISP to every computer in the world! The sense of entitlement they exude is almost nauseating. If the route your connection is taking to "GothicKitty42" (a legitimate business associate in Denmark) is being throttled as it passes through Briton, feel free to take control and re-route your own path through the internet. Oh wait... You're too busy watching that DVD you just burned. You certainly can't be bothered to monitor your own QoS when you're paying as much as you do for that broadband connection!
And here's where I actually have to take issue with Bit Torrent type clients. While they don't overload a centralized server, they actually make less efficient use of the network as a whole since everything usually finds its way through the same old trunks of copper and fiber time and time again. All those little packets swimming around like a puddle of sperm looking for an egg... It's a redundancy nightmare of exponentiating proportions.
I'd love to see how some of these people would react if tomorrow they woke up with a peer to peer mesh network instead of their current arrangement. I bet they'd cuss to no end whenever they saw traffic freeloading through their node. They'd probably be racing to the computer store and buying software to shake off those pesky packets so they could get the most out of their internet connection.
But that's just my opinion.
Blessed with all the brains that God gave a duck's ass, and twice the charisma.
Having worked for an ISP, I can tell you. The problem isn't prioritizing traffic. It's capacity and scaling.
If you are a small ISP with a OC-3 and you have 1000 lines, that means if all lines are active, each one would only have an average speed of 6Kbps.
That's not very good. The problem is, in the UK, an OC-3 from BT costs £20,000+.
People buy broadband for cheap (£8-£15/month), and expect spectacular results. It just can't happen.
All networks seem to be oriented towards the idea that 90% of the DSL lines will be idle most of the time. With the advent of BBC's iPlayer and more streaming video, this network model falls flat on its face.
they already do... first class mail, media mail, magazines, etc. are shipped using different priorities based on their content.
Neutrality from the ISP side has been up too frequent regardless of if it is e-mail spam filtering, Throttling of bandwidth, content restriction or other limitation as to what you can use the Internet for.
See e-mail as an example - It was thought that the ISP's should filter our mail to prevent junk mail, but we all know that does not work well. The reason is easy; your needs are unique for you. Imagine the pharmacists needing e-mail confirmation of pills and drugs he must order/want to be informed of, the doctors needing to communicate the symptoms of a decease with his pears and drugs to help it, the anti-virus developer needing samples of fresh viruses, the system administrator needing... The list goes on and on... The ISP simply cannot make general rules as to what constitute spam.
The same holds obviously true for what you will use the internet for. Should your ISP prioritize Vonage above Skype or Gizmo? Xbox games over PS3 sites and games? What about online video rentals from Netflix vs. Blockbuster, or what about online football/sport live programs above online live concerts etc, or even worse - the Xbox game above your online video rental/live online concert, or visa verse? The list goes in reality on forever - the ISP cannot possibly prioritize according our needs any more than they can generally filter spam.
As with spam there is an easy solution: Let US do the filtering! Simply give us an interface on the ISP side to prioritize what we deem important to us. Complicated? Not really at really. whereas some of us do want more complicated throttling such as prioritizing packets such as ACK, it should be easy for end users to simply visit a page such as my_preferences..com and add such as the domain of my mail provider on top of a list of priorities, the game sites I use above everything, increase the priority of all communication with my video rental provider, decrease the priority of torrents and block access to sites deemed inappropriate for my children.
Someone here on /. commented some smaller mom and dad size ISP's already do offer these kind of services to their clients! I hope this to be true, and will be looking out for this now!
Note that the Internet must stay neutral - else expect to see service problems due to live football broad casts prioritized to your neighbor above your simultaneous online concert / video rental / online game. Note 2: Your neighbors can prioritize without harming you simply by letting each and every one of us prioritize the what is sent from the ISP, while keeping network neutrality. There is a win-win for everyone except the big name ISP's that really want to prioritize their own / their partners video rental / games sites / other content above that of everyone else.
You think your VOIP is more valuable than my HTTP or XYZ? Then you pay more for it!
If you want our provider to prioritize some of _your_ traffic over _mine_ - you should be paying extra (or suffering some other way) for these high-priority (in your point of view) packets. It doesn't really matter what kind of traffic is your favorite.
Or any of the other shenanigans ISPs are trying to pull over on people. Just block the entire ISP from Google.com. See how long it takes before the weight of support calls crushing them and customers leaving in droves makes it unprofitable to mess with traffic.
All that would really do is offer a sneak peak of the inevitable anyway if they keep on this track. Once P2P is locked down and all nice and cleanly precedented in court, what do you think they'll throttle next? Traffic to "non-partner" sites, and then come the DNS redirects. "Oh you meant google.com? Well we have a deal with MS so it goes to MSN.com first and then has a tiny flash overlay in the corner that prompts if you really meant google.com, which IE conveniently blocks as 'popup spam' by default now."
I've read the arguments on both sides of net neutrality, forcing this kind of thing stifles sandbox development of new tech. But the alternative would seem to be worse.
The scary thing is, the government is already taking a side, and if you want to know which, just watch for "think of the children" arguments.
I'm surprised nobody's written a doomsday scenario book about this with a silly title, like "P2P: An Inconvenient Packet. How ISPs and the Government are planning the death of the Internet as we know it."
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
Seriously - what's wrong with wanting e-mail, IM, VoIP or other packets to be ranked as higher priority?
Honestly? Of the three, you're on crack if you want IM or email to be high-priority. Is it critical if packets get delayed and have to be retransmitted for email VoIP? YES. But e-mail and IM packets can wait in line, go over the cheap route, fail the checksums and get re-transmitted, etc.
Do you want a postal service to decide how quickly to deliver letters based on their content?
I don't know about you, but that's absolutely horrifying.
Actually virtually all letters you send are a single application of 'first class mail'.
Read up on the postal service, you might be surpised that in addition to first class mail, there are several other classes. In the US there is first class, periodicals, standard mail, bulk mail, parcel post, media mail (book rate), priority mail, registered mail, express mail, postal money orders, and a variety of other services and options.
Different 'applications' have different rates, delivery time gaurantees, etc.
Right now, ISPs are starting to do the same thing.
Interestingly, by not charging a differential rate, but still sorting by application they are creating a problem for themselves, if they prioritize voip and de-prioritize p2p, the p2p people are going to try and have their p2p masquerade as voip. And we already see this happening...this is the game of cat-mouse we are currently dealing with, and its only going to get worse. And if bitcomet or whatever figures out a way of dodging the latest ISP throttle by having their traffic look like voip and gets the highest download speeds the p2p crowd will jump all over it to the detriment of everyone involved.
QoS can't work if the ISPs apply it, but don't charge for it. Misbehaved applications/users/developers will try to get their traffic into a higher QoS class and use its performance advantage as a competitive advantage.
The solution to the problem is in fact to charge different rates for different service classes. voip will be more expensive than http/pop/imap/smtp/im, which in turn will be more expensive than ftp/p2p. Voip will get through faster and at higher priority, http/pop/imap/smtp/im/irc will be a level below that, and then bulk p2p/ftp/streaming hidef video/etc will fill up the rest of pipe. Ideally rather than have the ISP choose the QoS level, applictions can choose their own.
So SSL users should be able to pick what QoS level to use -- so if they are using p2p they can choose bulk to keep costs down, or choose real-time if they are doing voice communications.
That's what inventors of the Internet are supposed to do. He's as likely to succeed as he is in filtering all P2P, and its far more glamorous anyway.
Do you have Broadband ?.. what would warrant you to have broadband as opposed to dialup ?
A big advantage of broadband over dial-up is that the first packet you send doesn't have a two minute latency while the modem connects.
Yes and you pay fort that elevated service. That's not the idea of packet shaping. Under their scheme, you pay the same amount for access and THEY decide which traffic (letter content in my analogy) is most important.
Naturally, I'm not talking about bandwidth limits or paying for "preferred" transmission of your packets.
How can you tell if someone is using a secure SSL connection for work related purposes [...] and someone that is using SSL for bit torrent?
A large file transfer to or from work won't have both endpoints on home service levels. Business-class Internet costs more for a reason.
I buy my movies, and I buy music
If you were buying a movie over the Internet using something like iTunes Store, would you want the download to be throttled?
This is 9+ year old technology that he continually repackages.
Caspian Networks was founded in 1999 based on this very concept. It failed as a large router, then it failed as a traffic management platform, and now it's rearing it ugly head again. I would say the "third time's a charm", but I've lost track of actually how many iterations we've seen over the last 9 years.
Here's the original company's site from 2000:
http://web.archive.org/web/20000711075418/www.caspiannetworks.com/company.html
Here's a page from 2002 that starts discussing QoS and "differentiated services"
http://web.archive.org/web/20021207223724/www.caspiannetworks.com/solutions/services.shtml
If it's based on connection patterns, change the connection patterns.
The pattern is one user on a residential service plan connecting to several others on residential service plans. How would you change that?
Yes and you pay fort that elevated service. That's not the idea of packet shaping. Under their scheme, you pay the same amount for access and THEY decide which traffic (letter content in my analogy) is most important.
'content' is a tricky word. They are looking at the packets and traffic patterns to categorize their 'application', not to derive meaning from their payload.
In post office terms that would be akin to a world where we all dumped all of our mail at the post office in identical envelopes and they tried to separate out the first class mail from the periodicals by looking inside, and by looking at how many you dropped off and where they are going. They want to know if its a letter or a magazine in the envelope, they don't want to actually read either. Naturally if its encrypted they =can't= read it, but based on volume and flow patterns they can still reasonably accurately gauge application.
Ideally, you could just stamp the envelope with its classification, and then they wouldn't have to open them to figure it out. The trouble with that, as I said previously, is that in a system where its all the same price, everyone will just stamp 'express maximum priority' on all their mail.
So the ISP has a choice, they can continue to transmit all your mail at one rate, but you submit to letting them categorize it as best they can. Or you pay extra for priority traffic and they no longer need to look at it. If you want to send bulk mail priority, and your willing to pay for it, that's your prerogative.
Which do you prefer?
Old people are old.
And Longcat is long.
DPI? encrypt. Throttle anything encrypted? Piss off lots of banking and e-mail customers. throttle based on header info? Spoof the headers.
An ISP throttles any home user that connects directly to several other home users. How would you get around that?
Exactly right. It will become a mess of who pays for what and why for one simple and moronic reason IMO. If 20% of users can use 80% of bandwidth of the infrastructure of an ISP, then that ISP is negligent and unable to provide the services they have sold. I believe this to be false advertising and poor business practices. Trying to blame P2P or any other protocol or Internet activity for the bad planning and crap capacity of the ISP is like blaming Honda or for traffic congestion on I95. It is simply stupid.
This problem should be addressed objectively. Only yesterday Bell's own data did not support the bandwidth usage claims made by this company. This company has a financial incentive to skew facts and figures, and they have.
The ISPs have shot themselves in the foot with a very large gun, and this is a small bandaid to try to fix the missing foot problem. They have made up a problem in order to justify charging us all more so they can pay for equipment to sell us content from.
Don't believe me? study the problem a bit more, from the ISP's 10K statements to marketing brochures and what stock holders are told. The bandwidth shortage is a ruse so they can bump you and I off of it and they can replace our traffic with pay-for content that they will then sell us in triple and quadruple play service packages. The net neutrality thing backfired on them, this is tactic number two in their bid to control the content from distribution through the actual use of it. I'm certain someone has some interesting information about how much the **AA et al have contributed to various P2P problem chicken little's across the country.
Where is the data in countries with heavy P2P usage showing anything like the 5%/80% rumor?
sigh....
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Mod parent up! This is a smart approach that has not occurred to most people.
That is not priority based on content. It is priority based on how much was paid to deliver it. Unless you are claiming that they are opening mail to see what is inside and delivering the "important" mail quicker.
The previous poster mentioned the multiple connections, but there's also the minor fact that if you're torrenting a "600 MB ISO image" (cough) down you're also UPLOADING said image to other users at the same time. (Unless you're a leech.)
So in the HTTP case you downloaded a "600 MB ISO image" (of Iron Man), using 600MB+ of bandwidth. In the torrent case, you probably used 900MB minimum counting the download and uploads to other torrents, and more like 2,400MB minimum if you started the download and let the torrent run overnight while you awaited your movie... er, ISO.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
AppleTV downloads off Akamai's edge network.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Media mail is for books/cds/videos only and runs off the assumption that this mail is not as urgent as first class mail. Shipping non-media mail as media is considered mail fraud. There price of media mail is lower due to it's decreased priority; however, the service was introduced to cater to the perceived non-urgency of media content, not simply to offer a third class for all mail.
I've said it before, but the best solution is charging on a per-K/M/GB basis. Further, the best solution with the fewest disruptions to most legitimate traffic is to charge more (or place caps) on UPSTREAM traffic. DSL and cable traffic is largely asymmetric anyway, with downstream to the home faster than upstream.
So just recognize that fact, and charge more for it. Doing so will slowly starve off P2P traffic as more and more people leech and as more people throttle their torrents. Do you think most people are willing to pay their ISP more so that OTHER people can get free music and movies?
And don't, BTW, talk to me about "legitimate" BT traffic. What little there is can be handled in other ways. We seemed to get by just fine with business and university mirrors BBT (Before Bit Torrent).
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
time to get your gay porn, you linux and steal your faggot music. keep on sucking those dicks you fucking thieves.
thanks for the heads up cowboyfag.
I know that the "Al Gore Claimed to Invent the Internet" thing is used in a lighthearted way, but he never made that claim
If the government told you that you can go as fast as you want
Roads without speed limit signs (and there are a lot of them, at least here in NY) are limited to the state speed limit (55 in our case).
He didn't say or even imply otherwise. He came up with a hypothetical analogy which said " if [my emphasis] the government told you that you can go as fast as you want".
You can argue that this is or isn't a good analogy, but that's beside the point.
You'll complain that 99% of people don't get "ticketed" but that still doesn't change the fact that you were abusing the service. That 6 mbit or 10 mbit pipe isn't designed to be used at full capacity 24/7 by each subscriber, it's designed [etc]
You can argue all you like that their system isn't designed to be used like that. I'll mostly agree with you- we all know that most consumer broadband services couldn't deliver if they were used to their true "unlimited" capacity.
:)
But again, this is beside the point- you *can't* accuse people of "abusing the service" if it was sold as "unlimited". Even- no, *especially*- if the limitations were stated via some obscure, vaguely-worded small-print in the contract, or some handwaving reference to a "see elsewhere" weasel-worded "fair use" policy.
Many ISPs promoted their services as "unlimited" because it sounded better, even though this relied upon most people not using anything like the full capacity they were given. If this situation changes, it's *their* problem for overselling something they can't deliver, not the customers' for "abusing the system". I'm not going to come up with another trite analogy to illustrate that
Frankly, I've nothing against the principle that (much) heavier users should pay for what they use and not expect to be subsidised. I'm not even entirely opposed to QoS being used so long as it's applied in a relatively neutral and fair manner, and doesn't lead to "second-class citizen" Internet access. I'm only opposed to it when used as some BS excuse to coerce user behaviour, favour the ISPs' vested interests and/or cover-up and weasel out of the limitations of an oversold Internet service, as it is at present.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
An ISP throttles any home user that connects directly to several other home users. How would you get around that?
How do you tell the other end is a home user if it is outside the ISP?
DNS-based IP lists help ISPs identify IP address blocks assigned to home users.
Many ISPs promoted their services as "unlimited" because it sounded better, even though this relied upon most people not using anything like the full capacity they were given. If this situation changes, it's *their* problem for overselling something they can't deliver, not the customers' for "abusing the system". I'm not going to come up with another trite analogy to illustrate that :)
All advertising tells you only partial truths to entice you to buy... and my ISP did it as well. They advertised "UP TO 100x faster than dialup" and as soon as I subscribed, I found out that it was 2 Mbit. Many of us complained and the ISP weaseled out by saying they only promised speeds UP TO 100x faster than dialup, not that you would actually get speeds 100x faster than dialup.
Of course, that fact was nowhere in the TOS I signed... but there was a line claiming that the ISP couldn't guarantee my maximum speed and that they have the right to change the TOS at any time without consent (ok, illegal under most state laws, but paying your bill amounts to acceptance of the new terms).
The people who insist that they have a full blown, pipe with no limits at all are the ones clinging to the advertising rather than the contract they likely signed. Those people also seem to dislike advertising more than most people as well, so you'd think they'd naturally be cynical about the claims.
I'm also guessing by your u in "behaviour" that you aren't American... are advertising laws are much more lax than many countries. As long as the claims are somewhat true, even by convoluted logic, they're usually not "false advertising." Again, see the "UP TO 100x dialup speed" claim of my ISP. Still, at the end of the day, caveat emptor. I didn't trust the salesman to tell me what was in my cell phone contract, why would I trust an advertisement to tell me what's in my ISP contract?
Stop Koolaid Politics
All advertising tells you only partial truths to entice you to buy...
In this case, the small print effectively nullifies and renders false the claim that the service is "unlimited". It's misleading to the point of lying.
The people who insist that they have a full blown, pipe with no limits at all are the ones clinging to the advertising rather than the contract they likely signed.
And you think that isn't grounds for criticism of the company?
Still, at the end of the day, caveat emptor. I didn't trust the salesman to tell me what was in my cell phone contract, why would I trust an advertisement to tell me what's in my ISP contract?
As I said, in this case, the contract doesn't merely expand upon or add restrictions to the advertisement's claim, it basically nullifies it.
I don't know how you feel about misleading advertising, and consumer protection in general. I live in the UK where there are generally stronger laws about this than the US, and I'm quite happy with that. IMHO, the lengths to which a consumer (as opposed to a business) should reasonably be expected to go to to find out such things should not be excessive (e.g. on page 37 of a contract in impenetrable legalese) relative to the prominence of the claims in the advert.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
P2P: Why is it that we fight so hard to continue stealing as efficiently as possible? Sure, I use it legitimately from time to time, but I'd say 90% of my P2P traffic is ill purposed.
HD-over-IP: A swimming pool that hundreds of millions of people all try to enjoy at once will _always_ be yellow. There must be regulations.
There is just no way to make such social phenomenon like the internet, equal, no matter how you play the cards.
Bear in mind that QoS only matters when links become congested. When a link is congested, *something* (everything, currently) has to be degraded. QoS simply allows the network operator to specify what gets degraded less.
But this is still stupid. First off, you don't want the ISP deciding things like that because then they decide that their VOIP service is more important than your VOIP service. On top of that, you don't need to futz about with traffic types -- just look at how much bandwidth people are using. If user A is sending 400kb/sec of [whatever] and user B is sending 64kb/sec of [whatever] and you need to cut 50kb/sec, you cut it out of user A's bandwidth until he's down to user B's level and then you cut both. It doesn't matter what application which user is using at all -- but if user B is using VOIP then he's fine, and if user A is using VOIP then he's clearly also using something else and he can get his own traffic shaper to make sure his important packets get priority over his own unimportant packets based on the priorities he assigns himself.
My service contract was only one or two pages long... it definitely wasn't excessive, though it did contact legalese weasel words and lots of disclaimers, in addition to statements like I'm not allowed to run servers (which, I have since day 1 and they've never complained about it). There was also no fine print, everything was in a standard, consistent font size.
The advertising is definitely misleading and I'm sure would violate the laws of some countries, but the rules are more lax in the US, just as your libel laws are different than ours. The commercials don't define exactly what is "unlimited" and the ISP can simply say the connection/availability itself is unlimited; That is, it is always on and available for use even if the usage itself is limited. Thus, we end up with misleading, but not unlawful advertising.
Pretty much every Slashdotter who claims their service should be unlimited because the commercial says so should know better especially since so many work in the IT industry. They're using the commercials as their excuse for behavior they know crosses the line of acceptable use. Just because I invite you to a party with unlimited food and drink doesn't mean you get to move in with me, eventually, you have to go home or I'm going to throw you out.
Stop Koolaid Politics
Upgrade your last mile networks fuckers! The free market will destroy you otherwise.
Seriously - what's wrong with wanting e-mail, IM, VoIP or other packets to be ranked as higher priority?
What's wrong is that different people will disagree on which protocols should get priority over the others. Clients who are heavy users of streaming video will want streaming video to get priority, while clients who rely on VOIP for their phone service will want that to have priority. ISPs preferences would also come into play: for instance, ISPs with a vested interest in POTS will want VOIP to get less priority than other protocols -- which they would happily do if it didn't get them in trouble with the FCC.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
IM and, especially, e-mail don't need to be high priority.
VoIP is an interesting hack, but if you need a low latency voice connection, why not use an actual phone line? Probably because you're trying to save money.
I have no objection to paying for what I use, but throttling is just an excuse to charge me extra for not using their "preferred partners". That bothers me because it can change the entire nature of the internet and turn it into a private club.
WHERE you do qos matters!
if its my line and I choose to put voip ahead of ftp (say), that is MY right. fine.
but what if the ISP puts some guy's ftp ahead of MY telnet? or throttles my traffic *because* its from me and not just based on whether its 'fast/interactive' or 'slow/batch'.
qos is fine when you give me all of my line's bandwidth and *I* decide what piece of the pie each protocol gets. but when you starve *MY* line for overselling (under-provisioning) reasons, then it really is evil.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
You may be an IOTI (Inventor of the Internet), but you're not helping here, Sir. The Internet exists to ship bits around in a reasonably efficient, highly redundant, manner between connected computers. You may already know this. What those users desire to ship between themselves is none of your d@mn business any more than we should have roadblocks on the Interstate searching cars for pirate DVDs, or confiscating and imaging iPods at the international border.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
You seem to be assuming that ISPs have any idea what the other end of the wire is.
Then how do spam filters block mail that comes straight from home IP addresses? See DNSBL.
Let's face it, they advertise the internet as an UNLIMITED, CONTENT-NEUTRAL SERVICE.
Rerouting for congestion is done automatically with algorithms, and that congestion has nothing to do with the protocols used. Every packet contributes to congestion, not just "p2p".
Did I mention the whole concept of the internet is based on "anyone-to-anyone" (p2p) communication.
I'm so sorry these people have a problem with their customers using the internet for it's primary purpose.
If these companies and certain government agencies were not out to censor the internet, this "over-redundancy" in bit torrent and its ilk wouldn't be necessary.
Finally, stop spewing this fallacious idea that "light users" are being substantively harmed by "heavy users"
By nature, the light users only use traffic in short bursts. They load their e-mail, go to google once or twice a day, and log off. The idea that these people will see any substantive harm from those brief activities is ludicrous.
this is not like taxation, where the money can always be used elsewhere. these light users don't use their line's capacity, and they don't care where the rest of it goes
If the ISP's oversold it's the ISP's PROBLEM, NOT MINE, NOT THE p2p user's or the 24 hour gamer's. THEY PAID FOR THEIR BANDWIDTH, AND ACTUALLY USE IT. YOU CAN'T BLAME THEM FOR THAT.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
P2P: Why is it that we fight so hard to continue stealing as efficiently as possible? Sure, I use it legitimately from time to time, but I'd say 90% of my P2P traffic is ill purposed.
HD-over-IP: A swimming pool that hundreds of millions of people all try to enjoy at once will _always_ be yellow. There must be regulations.
First, your subjective judgment on p2p is not something I agree with. I think the companies are reaping what they sow with the unjust laws the continually buy. I say more power to file-sharing, and even though I highly doubt it will happen, here's hoping the companies claiming "harm" go under.
Second, NOTHING says hd has to go over the internet. The inventors and funders of the internet never said "I make this in the hope that one day fat slobs all over red america can tune into 'cops HD' over this network".
There are purpose-built networks specifically optimized for tv. If you want real-time video delivery, use those!
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
At the moment, every purchased service/product seems to bundle 'being lied-to' for free. I can't help wondering if 'they' will ever start selling that stand-alone. i.e. where the service one buys is 'to be lied-to'. Something like google's 'I feel lucky' button - you give us money and we arbitrarily choose what you get in return. woohoo!
Requiem for the American Dream
Yet another pioneer who lived long enough to see his technologies put to uses he disagrees with. He doesn't or isn't able to accept the social realities of later generations (in internet terms) working with the things made by his generation (of people, or scientists or whatever), in ways that aren't/weren't socially accepted by them.
This assumes trans-generational movement by individuals though, as some of his peers would go open-source-ishy with the later generations.
I personally think it's more subjective to assume that I know what a product, that someone else has created, is worth. Stealing is what it is. If you think something is poorly priced, either steal it, or pass. In the end, you really are a product of your actions.
You are absolutely right about HD not needing to traverse the public internet, but then, we also don't need solar panels stuck to our rooftops. It's more about convergence and evolution, not who-needs-what.
Pretty much every Slashdotter who claims their service should be unlimited because the commercial says so should know better especially since so many work in the IT industry. They're using the commercials as their excuse for behavior they know crosses the line of acceptable use.
You're implying that they should *know* that they're being misled by the company? Well, quite(!)
Some might say that it's the company's problem if they're intentionally fudging things behind vague and obscure policies.
Just because I invite you to a party with unlimited food and drink doesn't mean you get to move in with me, eventually, you have to go home or I'm going to throw you out.
That's a poor analogy, not least because you're comparing a social event (driven mainly by social rules and without much underlying legalism) with a business contract.
Most people understand the rules of parties, that they don't last forever, and (as you yourself implied) there's no contract, and the owner of the house/etc can throw someone out of the party!
Most people don't abuse the hospitality at parties because they don't want to be assholes. It's really not the same thing at all.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Seriously - what's wrong with wanting e-mail, IM, VoIP or other packets to be ranked as higher priority?
Well, there is no big problem with it since I'll just tunnel my P2P traffic through one of those services. It's merely a minor technical problem.
Pretty much every Slashdotter who claims their service should be unlimited because the commercial says so should know better especially since so many work in the IT industry. They're using the commercials as their excuse for behavior they know crosses the line of acceptable use.
No, We just expect them to live up to their promise, no more, and certainly no less. There is a very good reason I don't promise "Unlimited service calls" or even "Unlimited pop3 email accounts" in my business. When I say unlimited, I mean it. And expect the same of those who promise it to me.
Just because I invite you to a party with unlimited food and drink doesn't mean you get to move in with me, eventually, you have to go home or I'm going to throw you out.
As you well should. Parties are for a limited time.
If you however take my money for a period based unlimited food/drink service, (like some hotels for example) I expect to be able to sit in that bar all day for that complete period. And to be served everything on the menu, and not be told, "Sorry, even though they are on the menu and listed as unlimited, if you order steak and Scotch then we only serve it from 6:48-6:52, and only a quarter ounce each, then all you get is bread and water other times. Didn't you read the posting hidden in the kitchen?"
Hell, My ISP (Charter Communications) has been quietly blocking Bit Torrent, and wouldn't admit to it when flat out asked, and would rather take the issue all the way to tier three support then admit to it. Their final answer? "There must be something wrong with your cable, you'll have to call service." the only way I found out from them directly, (I already knew after some careful packet sniffing across multiple homes.) was when my company got a business line, and we started using BT to distribute video content.
I get pissed when a company wastes a week of my too short life!
Your Moon, Your Mission, Get involved! http://www.openluna.org
Shared links that are used for both telephone networks and computer networks already do this: regular phone channels are given higher QoS and use different protocols.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
In any case, what these appliances address -- and this is legitimate -- is not the legality of the material that's being exchanged but rather a machine's behavior on the Internet. Is it hogging bandwidth? Is it attempting to exploit vulnerabilities in Internet protocols to seize priority over other traffic? (This is what BitTorrent does; it exploits the fact that (a) there's no explicit congestion notification on the Internet and (b) the "fairness" in TCP is all on a "per stream" basis, so if one starts a very large number of streams one will get priority over another user with fewer streams.)
Another very serious problem for ISPs is that P2P is increasingly being used by content providers to shift the cost of Internet bandwidth from the content providers (who are already profiting handsomely) to ISPs (many of which already operate on razor thin margins as a result of price squeezing by monopoly telephone companies). Instead of running their own servers, these content providers (Vuze and Blizzard are two examples) turn their users' machines into servers, often without their knowledge and certainly without the ISP's consent. Since virtually all Internet users in the US have "flat rate" service, the cost of the bandwidth required to operate the server is shifted to the ISP. And since bandwidth at the edge of the network -- at the user's end of an ISP's home or business connection -- is far more expensive than bandwidth in an Internet co-lo, the costs are not only shifted; they're multiplied by a factor of 100 or more. Again, many independent ISPs in this country are barely getting by, and people often complain that there isn't enough competition; they simply must throttle or block P2P or there will be no choice at all.
Americans really have two choices: let their ISPs engage in bandwidth management (which is beneficial; it also stops bandwidth hogs from impacting your quality of service) or be faced with a monopoly or duopoly. See my recent testimony before the FCC at http://www.brettglass.com/FCC/remarks.html for more on this issue. It's important. If you opt for the "freedom" to do infinite P2P (and in this case, it's as in beer rather than in speech, because P2P is mostly used to get free movies and music and virtually never used for political speech), you'll lose your freedom to choose an Internet provider. And then the cable company and the phone company will have their way with you, which you will probably not like.
Quite easily actually: Someone using a secure SSL connection for work related purposes isn't going to open 15-30 connections to different servers & push data over all of them at the same time. For instance, I am sitting at my desk right now with 11 open ssl connections to different servers. At any given time, I am sending data on at most 3 of them. I am receiving data from 6 others since they are running monitoring scripts.
Flip this & look at a torrent. 10-30 connections open to different servers. A large number (usually at least 50%) will be transmitting data simultaneously. Another chunk will be receiving data only, and the last chunk will be both receiving and transmitting. This difference in traffic patterns is fairly easy to distinguish & hence filter.
This is true, in an encrypted P2P transfer, you cannot determine the contents.
Because a centralized protocol like FTP is self limiting. An FTP server is only going to push out it's maximum bandwidth & up to it's monthly allotment - this is peanuts in comparison to a P2P protocol sharing the same data amongst 10K people.
But how do you intend on communicating that user's priorities to the ISP (which is cutting 50kb/sec)? Rate limiting works by dropping packets. With your example and a "neutral" ISP, packets would get dropped without regard to service, so user A's VoIP calls would be dropped either way. The only chance this would work is if user A anticipated the throttling and cut back non-VoIP traffic voluntarily.