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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.'"
Technically, "net neutrality" refers to the traffic being completely agnostic about what a packet is--phone, video, http, etc.
Most of the insidious scenarios painted by the loss of neutrality do relate to content filtering--ie, Comcast makes a deal with Amazon and gimps the connections to, say, Powell's dodgy enough customers just think Amazon is the place to shop.
If it's really as described in this case, for bandwidth management, I personally don't think it's all that scary. There are issues about transparency, and for some users this might mean their ISP isn't providing sufficient bandwidth anymore. But IMHO it's not automatically different than simple changing the maximum bandwidth available to a customer.
On the other hand, if a AT&T gimped VOIP to knock Skype out of business, or Comcast filtered video so you needed their cable services, you could get filtering-by-protocol that was just about as evil as the content filtering.
Kinda like the old overbooking of flights.
I used to see the excuse:
We overbook our flights to save you money because some poeple don't show. So for that 1% that hurt our business we have to lie and sell you a service that we cannot possibly deliver on.
Just like the ISPs that overbook their network by selling a service that they could never deliver if all the poeple decided to show up at once and try and use their tier of 10/1.5 or whatever they pay for every month.
So the bet that not everybody will use the service doesn't pay off when some people regularly try and use what they have purchased. They get turned away at the gate or get 1/3rd of the service they paid for or even just get cut off. All for paying for a service and thinking that they have a right to use it.
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
Funny that. Is the 1% P2P users, or is the the new breed of people watching video's online? If I remember the last graph that Teksavvy tossed out of their current breakdown of net traffic, people watching streaming media of all types accounted for around 50% of their net traffic.
Om, nomnomnom...
Errr, what? Seriously, I'd do some research first - unless you're using really small TCP packets, you should easily be able to manage 20:1 if not 50:1. With a non-acknowledged protocol such as UDP, you can increase that to over 100:1.
Just because you're using a vastly inefficient method to download your "must-have" illegal TV-rips, doesn't mean we get to blindly accept your facts.
And of course, everyone in that 1% has to be someone abusing the network.... There is no such thing as a household with multiple people using different computers wanting to watch legal videos.
Something that always amazes me is that a university with 20,000 students on a 100mbit (or sometimes less) line can manage to do network shaping, etc. correctly but ISPs in even small towns cannot.
One major thing that the university I go to does: you have to OPT IN to file sharing access. No big deal, you just say I need it for whatever legal reason and they activate it.
This would also reduce the random kids connecting to file sharing networks (their parents, in theory, would have to activate it).
It would also reduce the number of people who break into some unsecured wifi network to download because there wouldn't be as many networks that had the ability to file share.
We have that in Belgium too. Once you're over your bandwidth "allowance", you pay extra; or in parts of 5/5GB (which you need to readjust before the end of the month or you'll get rebilled as you're "altering your plan") or something as x /x KB.
Once users get through their monthly usage, they are presented to "continue surfing at broadband speed" (most expensive and per KB's), "expand monthly usage" or "continue at 56K".
People overpay alot for it with this system, some plans only have 20G which isn't too much for a month. If you take into account you pay 20 for "1 Mbps | 1GB" up to 60 for "25 Mbps | 60 GB" (current exchange rate between and $ is 1 to 1,4)
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Read the summary again: they aren't throttling all traffic for a given protocol; they're throttling traffic based on what site it's to. This nicely sets the stage for the next phase: charge said sites to un-throttle traffic. Fortunately said sites can play the game too and put up a special page to users connecting from this ISP explaining that the site is slow because the ISP is making it so, and that they can get better service by switching ISPs.
No, /. (and most net-savvy user websites) gets pissy when they go after the 1% because after all, they agreed to X Mbps, they should get to use that 100% of the time.
Whether that argument is right or wrong, the two situations combined (the one in this article and the one I'm laying out in this post) equate to a catch 22 for the ISP. The ISP's only remaining choice is to drastically lower promised speeds, but that's a marketing disaster, and really a technical one as well, since most people do sometimes use the top speeds, but don't do so regularly - makes them happy to have it available when needed though.
Actually, I get pissy because I purchased a connection advertised as an "unlimited" connection at a certain speed. "Unlimited", as in, "without limit". When they then turn around and say "There's a limit", but still advertise the service as "unlimited", their advertising is not truthful.
If ISPs want to sell limited internet connections, they have every right to do that, but they should advertise them as such.
I also don't buy the "We build our infrastructure for anticipated usage..." bit. If this "1%" of users routinely exists, you factor them into your anticipated usage when deciding how much you need to build. Then, you build enough capacity for actual anticipated usage. You don't just ignore those users, hope they go away, and then be shocked and claim to need to throttle when your capacity doesn't meet your demand.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.