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AT&T Could Cut Off P2P Users
malign noted that AT&T has stated that using P2P on their 3G wireless network is grounds for disconnection. The lobbyist told congress "Use of a P2P file sharing application would constitute a material breach of contract for which the user's service could be terminated."
It could widely open the door for such clauses in regular ISPs contracts...
While this may be oppressive, at least users now know where they stand.This has to be better than an invisible, 'if we think you're using too much we may slow you down, and then lie about it repeatedly' policy.
Not to say that both are mutually exclusive, of course.
Is crushing a suspect's child's testicles illegal?
John Yoo: "No, [if] the President thinks he needs to do that."
As long as they're clear about what they are and aren't selling for $XX.99 per month, they're free to not sell whatever they don't want to sell.
(The mistake that the ISPs made was in claiming to sell YYY Mbits/s 'unlimited' and then not actually providing that.)
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Who would want to try and P2P anything over 3G, anyhow? I regularly end up using my cell as a tethered modem for EDGE when I have no other service available, and even if I had 3G, I don't see any situation where I'd be forced to rely on my cell for internet that I would just absolutely have to get on some P2P network. I'd rather just surf and check email with a connection less than DSL/Cable.
It could be that the only purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others.
By selectively banning accounts for certain types of traffic, AT&T has effectively disqualified themselves from the safe harbor provisions. All that someone needs to do is download some pics of kiddy diddling and AT&T could be sued to oblivion for providing child pornography. Safe harbor ONLY applies when the ISP doesn't bias network traffic.
3G wireless data networking is a service with very limited total bandwidth. It has a premium price, and is primarily targeted at business users.
We're talking about AT&T.
You know, the people with the exclusive deal on the iPhone...
You're trying to tell me that those millions of iPhone subscribers are business users?
Maybe "3G wireless data networking" was "primarily targeted at business users" by AT&T, but they got the iPhone and with it comes the non-business masses. Not to mention that 3G is not "primarily targeted at business users" anywhere else in the world.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Super, this is an easy way out of any ATT contract. Fire up a P2P client and you are out of your contract with no termination fees. Cool.
AT&T can certainly change their contract as they deem apropriate. I'm pretty certain that's become a common practice. But A lot of you decriers of 'FOUL' are kind of missing the point.
The whole "Legitimate" reason for using P2P / BitTorrent whatever is to try and ensure that there will be more bandwidth for a desired file than will be availible by any one provider.
That is to say, now adays files are so large and there is so much demand that unless you have oodles and oodles of upstream bandwidth, someone is going to get denied access because of too many users. (any of you who may remember ftp archives like WU) or downloads that are much slower than that 8Gb fiberline you just had run the last mile to your house.
It's the same philosophy that you all bitched about when you'd say MS Windows expands to fill all resources. Just because you can use P2P doesn't mean you should. A lot of you are savvy enough to know how to limit the number of upstream clients you can provide for. But in general uncontrolled P2P will consume as much of your upstream as it can while your downloading your Pr0n.
Anyone who plays WoW will know their P2P is vicious, and this is from a company with the most popular MMORPG in the world, Billions of dollars a month from user fees and such and they have to use your network to help spread their updates?
So cry if you get thumped by the 'Corporate Giant' trying to keep the hard working hacker down. It's not about unlimited data, it's about people using tools that crush everyone elses fun using that service.
Think about it, you paid to move data for yourself up and down that line, P2P makes you a data dealer for 2 - 100's more all on that one line you are paying for.
Probably blew my Karm but oh Well.
DS
Are you sure about that, In my area we have a few cell phone companies, but in the places I need to travel to (out in the countryside) there is only one company with any service.
I have tried ATT, tmobile, sprint, etc. None of them functioned where I work, except for one....
Verizon.
I hate verizon's phone choices, I hate their restrictions, etc. But I simply do not have a choice.
I'm sure there are places where the same is true about att.
AT&T doesn't say unlimited on the laptop plans, they state 5GB.
p2p is a beast on a bandwidth limited network. It doesn't back off properly when there is congestion, and just hammers until things start to break.
3G wireless connections are NOT the place for p2p. As such we shouldn't be counting them when we count broadband availability. I have a Cable modem at home and work, and a T1 at work. Plenty of places to do p2p without clogging the 3G network.
It's not a matter of not caring, it's a matter of lack of choice.
In my neighborhood the choices for internet access are Comcast or Dialup. Verizon provides phone service for my neighboord(Houston metro area) but they don't offer FiOS, let alone DSL.
I'd love to switch off Comcast as until recently they'd been throttling my connection to less than dial-up speeds after exactly 2 minutes of a video conference via iChat. No P2P was involved, just iChat. I use iChat to keep in touch with my parents,my dad's job took them out of the country, and my brother, who lives in central Wisconsin.
Even though they've stopped the throttling in the past few weeks I'll be leaving Comcast as soon as FiOS is available because Comcast lied to my face, "we're not throttling", whenever I'd call about the iChat issue.
Screw that. It maybe their network but I have issues with them plastering signs up saying unlimited internet 60 bucks a month. Then sneaking in some shit in the contract written in flyspeck 3.
My story. I almost signed up for this 3G bullshit from AT&T. I asked the sales monkey what unlimited meant. He said it meant I could do anything with no limits, just what it said. I played 20 questions. I ask him could I watch unlimited video over it. He said yes, no limit. I ask him about running VPN on it 24/7. Same answer. I stated that I sometimes use bittorrent to download openSuse DVD iso, 4.5 GB. He nodded and said no problem.
So the fucker lied didn't he? He said to me point blank I could use p2p over the network but the contract woudl state I can't? This is the BS I have issues with. In the end I didn't get the service. Something about the way the sales monkey smiled.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
Ironically, the entire point of a phone is to stream continuous audio data. It's weird that they would forbid that data from being sent over IP, but it is okay to send it over whatever protocol is used for voice communications.
Look, I have made attempts to use it for legitimate reasons (like a linux ISO download) and it overloads the system (probably given the latency over HSDPA, as well as the retries and concurrent connects to the "cloud").
Sorry, they just bog down the system to the point of uselessness (and that is from the client), so I can't even imagine how bad it is for their cell aggregators.
On a side note, had it worked, the second problem AT&T would have is that they've not bulked up their infrastructure enough at cell towers to handle full-on 3G traffic. I swear to God that I get only ISDN-ish speeds for internet surfing at airports where there's probably the highest concentration of HSDPA traffic in the area. Of course it is THEIR problem and THEIR false advertising for improperly selling a service that they did not allocate enough backend bandwidth for, not mine.
Well, it's their network, but it's using radio frequencies which are leased from the public. They're part of a small group of carriers which have exclusive rights to certain blocks of frequencies. The limitations of the available bandwidth stop this from being a freely competitive market. As such, it is reasonable to discuss whether or not their policies are appropriate. If we collectively feel that their policies are inappropriate, then we should change the terms of the spectrum lease when it comes up for renewal to limit what they are allowed to do or require them to do certain things.
Essentially, they're our tenants and if they aren't using our property in a way we find acceptable, we should change the lease. Now, while the current lease is in effect, it's their decision how to use the bandwidth within the bounds of the current lease. But it's perfectly reasonable for us to discuss whether or not we like what they're doing. Bandwidth leases are not given out blindly. They frequently have conditions attached to them which are meant to promote the general good. There's certainly nothing wrong with discussing a requirement that bandwidth used to provide internet service be free from user policies which restrict which applications can be used on that service.
EDGE-capable phones, when receiving a phone call, disable EDGE and transmit voice in plain GSM mode.
3G phones, however, have enough bandwidth to send (higher-quality) voice data over the 3G network, in either ATM/AAL2 or IPv4/RTP mode (technically, VoIP.)
OP was referring to WoW using bit torrent to distribute updates.