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First European Provider To Break Net Neutrality
Rik van der Kroon writes "Major Dutch cable provider UPC has introduced a new network management system which, from noon to midnight, for certain services and providers, caps users' bandwidth at 1/3rd of their nominal bandwidth (Google translation; Dutch original here). After the consumer front for cable providers in The Netherlands received many complaints about network problems and slow speeds, UPC decided to take this as an excuse to introduce their new 'network management' protocol which slows down a large amount of traffic. All protocols but HTTP are capped to 1/3 speed, and within the HTTP realm some Web sites and services that use lots of upstream bandwidth are capped as well. So far UPC is hiding behind the usual excuse: 'We are protecting all the users against the 1% of the user base who abuse our network.'"
'We are protecting all the users against the 1% of the user base who use our network.'
There must be more intelligent ways of handling this. For instance, someone who downloads more than so many GB a day can be throttled or capped individually. That shouldn't be too hard, I think.
-- Cheers!
I thought Net Neutrality was to prevent ISPs from filtering and controlling content, not protocols and speeds?
Couldn't they instead perform a kind of load-balancing based on the actual bandwidth being consumed by each customer, regardless of protocol or destination? As far as I'm concerned, that's the only way to do QOS without violating the principle of network neutrality.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
But it's a one year contract wich ends in a few months goddamn! a well, let's look for a new isp.
Move along now, nothing to see here!
It's really not a joke, I suspect something like this will happen.
The only way they'll be able to completely stop torrents and warez downloading would be to cut off internet access entirely.
Never underestimate nerds who want to fix something, even if they have to resort to TCP/IP over Carrier Pigeon.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
In the short time that I've been UPC customer, I have been thoroughly dissatisfied with their service. Too many outages, and a paid helpdesk who weren't competent enough to do anything but reading from scripts. Quite the difference from when I was with XS4all- slightly more expensive, but what a difference. Competent people there (met them at HIP back in '97). Never needed the helpdesk as the connection *just worked*. Always. Now that I live abroad, I've got similar experiences. Goodbye BT- I hope you've learned that throttling my bandwidth by 95% isn't the way to go. Vote with your wallet, people- reward good customer service.
Actually, UPC is an American company, and they don't have a very good name in Holland for reasons such as this one.
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
They actually have decent infrastructure.
The problem is that recently UPC started selling up to 120mbps (EUR 70,- per month) connections in a market were nobody can even come close to that. ADSL maxes out at 20mbps. In their advertisements they make that speed a issue.
In a market like this you can expect the kind of customers you draw in with an offer like this are the ones who actually want to use that speed. Knowing that, making such an offer anyway and then apply bandwidth throttling is nothing short of fraud.
Someone mentioned that they would be upset if their SSH sessions slow down. Well, just tunnel ssh over http http://dag.wieers.com/howto/ssh-http-tunneling/
They want to cap me to 1/3, then I'm only going to pay 1/3 of my bill. Sure they want to blame (illegal) file sharing for the increase, but that's not the only thing that uses large amounts of bandwidth.
How about sharing homemade pictures, movies, music, free games, software, etc, not to mention playing games, uploading other types of files not via http, how about ftp, ssh, some other network, etc...
Some of the several games I play the maps can be 50 megs or bigger, the same goes with patches, hell I've seen some patches that are bigger than a couple hundred megs, oh and what about demo's and such, not to mention getting full games, like through say steam or some other provider, a demo I got was like 600 megs, and several full games are easily greater than 2 gigs, most being around 4 gigs or so, so gaming is easily an excuse (not that you should need one in the first place) for using high amounts of bandwidth and transfer.
At least they aren't complete idiots from what I read and don't throttle http, because then how am I supposed to watch my 10,000 youtube videos per day?
Oh and don't get me started on them investing in a better infrastructure, no no that'd cut into their precious bonus's to much, that's one reason right there that most if not all suits (read executives) will ever have any respect from me, because to them it's all about their bonus's and the grunts (read anyone below them) are only fodder for their meat grinders.
Why is common sense called that if it's not common?
60 down and 1 up is a joke. There is no way that you are going to be able to effective use much more than 10 mbps down with only 1 mbps up.
And since when did net neutrality have anything to do with traffic shaping? Net neutrality is when all destinations are treated equally, not all protocols.
If you are on a net that has both tcp and udp traffic (the entire internet) you are already making protocol choices.
Someone's missing the point of net neutrality.
Net neutrality means: if I have network access, and some guy has network access, we can connect; the ISP treats my connection the same regardless of WHO I'm connecting with. It doesn't mean the ISP cannot differentiate the quality of the connection based on HOW we connect.
This is something else: they are varying quality based on HOW they're connecting to others (what protocol). Note that it's not an outright ban, only a rate limit in order to prioritize of HTTP traffic. The only problematic part is the throttling of upload-intensive services. However, it is not a net neutrality issue as long as they are throttling solely on the amount of bandwidth consumed by a service, rather than who pays them most money to have his service unthrottled.
Remember: Net neutrality is not about unrestricted BitTorrent for everyone. It is about the Internet not turning into cable TV. It is about stopping ISPs colluding with content providers so that they can charge you or deny you access to your favorite websites, in order to ram their own inferior ad-infested versions down your throat. It is about being able to connect to everyone without seeking permission of your ISP or paying extra. It is about Internet access being a binary variable: either you can connect, or you can't. No limited service plans where you can connect only to the ISP's webmail and search engine, and all other webmails and search engines are blocked unless you 'upgrade'. No 'premium sites' you can only use if your ISP has a deal with the content provider that you cannot opt into or out of.
If you are dissatisfied by your ISP blocking or throttling your favorite website or service, by all means complain. But do not conflate traffic shaping with net neutrality. It muddles an already complex issue, and harms our chances to win this battle.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
Yes that's right, KCN charges $58/month for (truly) unlimited 1gbps symmetrical connections.
Now allow me to quote a news release from a couple of months ago: "The next step towards ever breakneck speeds is commercialisation of 10 GBPs fibre optic deliver. Telecoms firm Oki Japan has successfully tested a 160 GBPs long-distance, high-speed optical connection that delivers the equivalent of "four full movies" worth of data every second. Oki expects it to be commercialized late next year maintaining Japan's bragging rights for some time to come."
No that's not a typo. That really is 10 GB per second. I just wanted to put things in perspective before discussing this European ISP.
Now here's the real issue, that for some odd reason none of you seem to realize. This European ISP is claiming that 1% of its users abuse its network, ruining it for everyone else. This has never been confirmed or reviewed by independent third parties. This ISP has never been forced by the government to reveal its actual network data. If you've been following the kerfuffle with Bell Canada as well as the "special access lines" issue in the US, you would understand just how ridiculous this scenario is. For example, when Time Warner attempted to implement usage based billing, caps, and overages, they talked about how "expensive" managing and upgrading their network was. They then turned around and reported RECORD PROFITS during a huge recession to their investors, and their financial statement to the SEC revealed the money they invested into their network had actually DECREASED for the last two years. That these ISPs can bemoan the expense of managing their network while making obscene profits and never revealing raw network data to the government or an independent third party is beyond preposterous.
Next, peak load and congestion are NOT managed by caps. Caps are meaningless restrictions on users, because congestion actually occurs at peak hours of usage. So Grandma watching her youtube video at 7pm is just as guilty of causing congestion as Mr. Bittorrent User. ISPs purchase bandwidth from backbone providers based on their users' bandwidth usage. They purchase bandwidth at the 95th percentile of peak usage. The idea that they would have to restrict bandwidth consumption by 1/3rd to meet consumer demand is completely illogical.
In addition, cable companies and telecoms engage in periodic "cycles" of upgrades to account for inevitable increases in bandwidth usage at their various nodes. They have to keep up with the increases in usage by "splitting" those nodes. When a provider decides to implement throttling of protocols, this allows them to delay upgrades for a single cycle. However, from then on they are essentially *stuck* with their throttling, and they are still forced to upgrade every cycle at the same rate as before. Throttling is thus a meaningless attempt to stem the tide of bandwidth consumption.
Furthermore, backbone and middle-mile providers consistently talk about how cheap bandwidth is becoming. The pace of the internet's expansion has slowed to an extremely manageable 30%/year (as opposed to 200%/year during the mid 90's). Bandwidth has become cheaper and cheaper because internet speeds increase according to Moore's Law (http://www.physorg.com/news151162452.html). Part of this has to do with improvements in router technology that occur as components shrink.
The issue is, and always has been, the last mile. For cable providers, however, "splitting a node" to increase bandwidth provisions to a particular area is not a large expense, especially when you're talking about a national provider.
The point I'm trying to make is that there is no evidence to back up this ISP's claims. When
I guess they've never heard of a little country in Europe called Great Britain.
Yes, a country where net neutrality has been broken for nearly 3 - 5 years now. Not only that, but in the UK the government has declared no interest in net neutrality and has given ISPs the green light to do what they want.
Originally OFCOM, the telecommunications watchdog in the UK stated that it would be unacceptable if ISPs took it to the level of slowing down certain companies sites over others, but even that stance seems to have changed now as they appear to be considering allowing ISPs to hold the BBC to ransom forcing them to pay for the bandwidth they already pay their ISP for and their users already pay the threatening ISP for.
Britain is not unique in this respect in Europe either, it happens in many other countries here, I can only guess the submitter lives under a rock in his home country and now this has happened has woken up and started to take notice crying blue murder to the world. Unfortunately, the rest of us have been trying to fight the destruction of even the slightest hope for net neutrality in Europe for a few years now.
Isn't it great when people only cry out when something suddenly effects them? This is why things like this happen in the first place, because no one gives a shit about potential issues. If people across Europe had made a loud point about breaking of net neutrality earlier on it could've been stopped and wouldn't be creeping from country to country as it is now.
The OP has no idea of what network neutrality actually means. The cited case has nothing to do with commercially or politically biased censorship, and everything to do with managing system resources to ensure fair access for all subscribers. I'm sure the OP would be amongst the first to complain if (s)he were to fall victim of unfair resource assignment and congestion that results from inadequate bandwidth management.
The OP should consider attending Network Engineering 101 before posting ill informed tripe.