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Cox Communications and "Congestion Management"
imamac writes "It appears Cox Communications is the next in line for throttling internet traffic. But it's not throttling of course; Cox's euphemism is 'congestion management.' From Cox's explanation: 'In February, Cox will begin testing a new method of managing traffic on our high-speed Internet network in our Kansas and Arkansas markets. During the occasional times the network is congested, this new technology automatically ensures that all time-sensitive Internet traffic — such as web pages, voice calls, streaming videos and gaming — moves without delay. Less time-sensitive traffic, such as file uploads, peer-to-peer and Usenet newsgroups, may be delayed momentarily...' Sounds like throttling to me."
...sucks Cox!
...describes the executives at the company.
Sounds like QOS to me.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Are they purposely referring to priority traffic as "time sensitive" as opposed to "delay sensitive" just to make the average joe think this is better? Don't get me wrong - as a network design engineer I'm all for prioritizing latency sensitive traffic like VoIP or streaming video. Just don't treat Cox's VoIP any better than Skype's or Vonages... This whole Net Neutrality thing is a bummer. I like the idea of democratizing traffic - but only of the same type. No way in hell should FTP or BitTorrent have the same priority as VoIP.
"A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding."
Unless they've decide to throttle /. traffic too
The same technology may give them the capability to do all sorts of mischief, but I don't see a problem with prioritization based on application. If they prioritize their own VoIP but somehow keep dropping or delaying Vonage packets, that's a problem. That's just an example, of course.
It shouldn't.
They sold us both a product with a given set of expectations, in this case a reasonable amount of bandwidth. We should both be able to get what we paid for.
Or, put another way, why should my porn download suffer for your Warcrack addiction?
Or, put yet another way, why should either of us give a damn how over sold or under financed Cox is? They should give us both the product they advertised, sold, and (almost) delivered.
A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.
Umm.. thats not throttling, it applying QOS (Quality of service) Throttling would slow your traffic all the time, where as this applies prioritization to data that needs it. Packets have a qos field that says the priority they should be given..
Im glad there is a telco that will respect QOS - I've wasted a week with a voip problem, only to learn that the telco was shaping traffic and discarding everything above 3mb without paying attention to QOS Flags.. Allstream charges more for this!
Or, put another way, why should my porn download suffer for your Warcrack addiction?
Because, done correctly, it provides a massive improvement in service for games and voice, with a small reduction in service for downloaders.
As for them overselling, if they had to be totally honest about how much bandwidth is available to each customer, they would have to say 'Total Bandwidth / Number of Customers = Your alotted bandwidth'. It would be next to nothing, and even more meaningless than the ideal maximums that they use for advertising now. That being said, perhaps they should be forced to make that data available to prospective customers, it would certainly influence my choice.
If they don't want egg on their faces, they better do this right.
They better be completely transparent about what does and does not get priority.
They better be completely transparent about any "special rules" like "no more than 128kb/sec will get preferential treatment" - that's more than enough for 2 simultaneous 2-way audio channels.
They better be completely transparent if they make "additional priority traffic" a premium-charge option.
They better use common sense when determining what is and is not "priority." "If it looks like real-time, treat it like real-time unless the customer is above his real-time quota, then use more discerning measures" is a good rule of thumb. Another good rule of thumb is "only throttle as much as necessary, no more" so that bits fly without delay during times of no congestion.
They better listen to their customers and be willing to admit if they make a mistake.
If they fail do do all of these, they will get some major backlash.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
As long as the P2P apps and file transfers can run at full speed when nothing time sensitive is using the network, this is the RIGHT way to do things.
As long as they're using QOS techniques instead of throttling parts of the network that are not under duress, it's fine with me. As long as they're not prioritizing one party's packets over another's of the same protocol (Vonage vs Cox's self-branded VOIP) it's fine with me.
It seems foolish to expect a consumer ISP to provide 100% of the advertised bandwidth 100% of the time. If you need it, there's a certain expectation that you can get a professional line with some established guarantees there. It's widely known that the bandwidth is oversold, and while it's their responsibility to work out some of the congestion, it's not their responsibility to provide bandwidth for 100% of their customers to be uploading at 100% of their available bandwidth.
Both IPv4 and IPv6 headers have fields for the priority of the associated data...
NOT ALL TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT IS BAD YOU FUCKTARDS!
Why is it that every form of bandwidth throttling is seen as evil? There are some good, legitimate, reasons for managing traffic flow across a network. While most of the pukes on Slashdot may be hugely inconvenienced by having their latest pirated copy of software X, or DVD rip of 'I love it in the ass' over BitTorrent slowed down, there are people who are trying to use the same pipes for more normal activity. Who cares if it takes an extra five or ten minutes to download that file. I'm much more annoyed when a VoIP call, or streaming video gets choppy.
Whether you mod me -1 Troll or -1 Flamebait or not, you know you agree with me, at least in part.
Because you're both paying for the same service. You are no more entitled than any other customer.
www.isoHunt.com
Time Warner has been able to provide me with consistent bandwidth that is not infringed upon by my neighbors downloading large files ( ok, so its usually me downloading large files not infringing on my neighbors bandwidth ).
So if Cox's competition can do it, why can't they?
If Cox cannot deliver what they advertise why can't they be sued for false advertising?
If Cox would just upgrade their infrastructure they wouldn't have this problem, not only that but they would have happier customers and less upset former customers.
So the basic idea of business that Cox seems to be unable to comprehend is that if they invested in their business then they would actually get more customers.
Instead Cox is going the MBA route of if they f*ck the customers then the customers will bend over and take it or leave.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
I'm no more interested in the quality of another customer's service with this product than any other -- when I go out to eat, I'm not going to let them overcook my steak to be sure they get your souffle just right. Why should this be different?
On the overselling, why should they be allowed to be anything less than totally honest? Again, just because its internet doesn't make it special.
As a further point, if you expect them to do it correctly you must have been dealing with some cable company other than mine.
A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.
As for them overselling, if they had to be totally honest about how much bandwidth is available to each customer, they would have to say 'Total Bandwidth / Number of Customers = Your alotted bandwidth'.
Yeah, I think some of the complaints about "overselling bandwidth" can be slightly silly. It's as though people assume that ISPs are going to just drag a cable to your house that connects directly to "the Internet" without going through any switches or routers or anything else that could become a bottleneck at any point.
I do believe that when an ISP advertises a X Mbps connection, you should be able to test your connection to nearby servers and find that you're getting something very close to X Mbps almost all the time. If they say you have "unlimited" usage, then they shouldn't be allowed to turn around and say, "Well, you've gone over your 10 GB cap, so we're cutting you off." Expecting ISPs to guarantee a X Mbps connection to everything all the time as though you had a direct X Mbps connection to whatever server you want to connect to-- it's just not going to happen. That's not how this stuff works.
Your market has choice? Because my market has just Cox and AT&T/BellSouth. BellSouth offers underpowered, overpriced DSL service if you sign up for a one-year contract for an overpriced local phone line. As for Cox, this is a conversation I had with their salesperson:
I came in here to make just this point. File sharing is rightly low priority traffic, and if their bandwidth is getting tight during internet rush hour, I'd expect them to prioritize accordingly.
Honestly, would you rather your downloads slowed down fractionally, or your streaming music/video/phone getting unbearably choppy? Extra lag in your online games? Yuck.
Though yea, if they start throttling it all the time and just constantly saying, "Whoa boys that traffic is sure mighty high today HA HA HA," then yea, they need to pay.
(Disclaimer: I have only Cox and AT&T where I live, and I hate both of them for various reasons, but Cox is awesome compared to, for example, Comcast).
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
"Latency-sensitive" would be a better term. P2P can tolerate a packet arriving half a second after it was sent (even batter than a regular HTTP download, in fact), and assuming they are pushing out packets at a steady rate you shouldn't notice a drop in your kbps. However, I know from experience that WoW and VoIP are very painful to use if you have a half-second delay.
Yes, the technology could be the same, but let's keep the issues separate. After reading about this stuff for a while now it hit me that there is confusion. I am starting to wonder if the confusion is on purpose.
One issue is over subscription. Unless a company is large enough to have lots and lots of peer connections, your ISP is probably over subscribes their upstream connections. This is fine, because on average traffic goes in bursts. The problem is that everything starts to break down once you have a small pool of people running P2P 24/7. These people are just as greedy as the ISP's they complain about. They want a huge "dedicated" pipe, but have others subsidize it. I have no issue with someone like Cox de-prioritizing their traffic so that the people that just want their Vonage to work don't get squashed out. This is a temporary solution because the ISP will eventually have to up their pipe speed.
The other issue is granting certain companies privileges on a network and penalizing other companies they don't like (e.g. penalize Vonage and prioritize a VoIP partner). This should be illegal. This is a clear case of violation of neutrality. At the same time, the company should be able to directly peer with a company (say a VoIP provider) without violating the law. This may seem unfair, but peering has been a perfectly valid way of reducing traffic on a transit connection.
The last issue is traffic caps. I don't think there should be a law against it as long as the company is upfront about it. Putting caps on traffic allows ISP's to maximize their over subscription and cater to people that want low cost Internet service. We *want* people to afford Internet services. The market chooses. If you are a big user of P2P, then you will have to go with another ISP that does not have caps. You may have to pay more for this privilege... sorry, but that is how things go. The market must have a way to manage scarcity of resources. If you want more of a resource, you will have to pay for it even it if looks the same (e.g. 5mbit from Cox versus 5mbit from FiOS).
Don't confuse QoS with net neutrality. As long as the QoS is applied equally, then it should be perfectly fine.
I tried to submit this here, but it's still pending after a week.
Cox has an auto blocking mechanism for P2P.
http://videotechnology.blogspot.com/2009/01/cox-blocked.html
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
I'm no more interested in the quality of another customer's service with this product than any other -- when I go out to eat, I'm not going to let them overcook my steak to be sure they get your souffle just right. Why should this be different?
They didn't sell you a steak and me a souffle. They sold us both a buffet. All of the other customers get their food as normal, but I'm a big fat guy. Instead of taking my plate, sitting down, and eating, I stay up at the buffet and eat there without even putting the food on my plate. I'm in the way of others trying to get food and eating most of it myself. Now the management is going to make me get in line to eat rather than stay at the buffet.
If you want your steak, you've got to get a dedicated line.
P.S. Hometown Buffet is gross.
Its not necessarily throttling but prioritizing data. Some of it is simply time sensitive, I work on SATCOM and a 2-3 second delay can really put a hamper on the ability to communicate. VOIP traffic is relatively small bandwidth, in reality so is web browsing. On top of that web browsing is (theoretically) click, read, click read so there's going to be even less of a demand from such users. Done correctly they could keep P2P traffic and large FTP transfers at nearly the same rate. Ping times don't completely dictate your bandwidth.
Good leaders run toward problems, bad leaders hide from them.
When Comcast did this, it didn't "slightly inconvenience" P2P, it made it take well over a year to download an Ubuntu image.
Of course, Cox's implementation may vary.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
When the superbowl halftime show starts, there is a visible drain on water resources across the country. Due to these spikes, the water provider simply cannot maintain full water pressure, and overall water pressure suffers. If they were to maintain full pressure, they would need to greatly overbuild the system for normal usage, and everyone's water bills would double or more.
Same thing with the internet. Most people use network resources in random bursts (with certain trend-lines throughout the day). If you have enough bandwidth for all of your customers to have a saturday evening without hitting max, you've provided a solid level of service. However, when one person on a switch can consume the full bandwidth of a T1 , and attempts to do so all the time, it's bad. When you have apartments full of people doing that, there is simply no way that can be maintained at the asking price range. I remember when a network that I was helping to administer was brought down in 2002 because one computer was in direct communication with 5,000 other computers, and the computers innocently started DDOSing us with requests.
A full T1 with dedicated bandwidth used to cost 500 dollars a month (probably less now). A cable modem that gets used sporadically and in bursts costs about 50 dollars per month. Almost anyone who really wants one can still get a dedicated T1 installed in their home, but few people do. It just isn't worth it. On the flip side, properly explaining the intracacies of selling shared bandwidth takes pages and pages of explanation... pages that you actually did recieve when you signed up for the service, and which is about as efficient as you can do it.
How much are they overselling is another question, but if done correctly people will (and have been) jumping at the overall price difference without any noticeable difference in service.
The ______ Agenda
On the overselling, why should they be allowed to be anything less than totally honest?
I think it's you who's not being totally honest by pretending to be mislead about the overselling, and wishfully pretending your $40/month cable bill entitles you to saturate that connection 24/7.
I've read the Comcast agreement. I've skimmed the Cox agreement. I don't see anywhere where it says you can saturate that connection. I don't even see much advertising that would mislead a less-technical user into thinking that.
Can you cite any actual examples of dishonesty on the part of an ISP?