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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.'
I use UPC in Austria. I don't think this is anything new. They been fucking with my bandwidth for ages.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
I thought Net Neutrality was to prevent ISPs from filtering and controlling content, not protocols and speeds?
Torrents updated to now support P2P over HTTP.
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!
After all, where did the term "going Dutch" come from?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Huh ?
A Dutch provider messes with the network ?
What are they smoking ?
I don't like filtering by protocol: I would get pissed off if my ssh sessions were slowed down.
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.
What's to stop me from using port 80 for things other than http?
Not a god damn thing that's what.
You can't take the sky from me.
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/
I know from internal sources*, that at the beginning to middle of the decade, Jubii was so successful in Denmark, that they were able to put the following rule on the providers:
Either you give us money, or your users won't be able to access our site.
Of course this was not strictly caused by the providers, but it was certainly not neutral.
___
* I don't think that it was ever a secret. (For obvious reasons.)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
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.
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.
Everyone have heard the phrase: "1% of the user base who abuse our network".
But the strange thing is, the "abusers" are still using their internet at less-then or equal to their cap.
They pay for X Mbs/sec and when they actually use somewhat close to that amount suddenly they are abusing it?
So exactly how can you abuse a network while following the ruled laid out when you purchased the use of it?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Packet inspection. Unless of course you encrypt the data 100% both ways but then they just block port 80 because you aren't allowed to run a web server.
People talk about using TOR, etc. for P2P but at least last I checked they specifically request that you NOT use TOR for those purposes as it puts too much strain on the network.
Could you provide a reference? I tried digging through The Telecommunications Act of 1996 (available here). Looking through the combined 335 page behemoth (Communications Act of 1934 as amended by the Telecommunications Act of 1996), I couldn't find the needle in that haystack.
I've heard different numbers over the years for different parameters. For example, that some phone companies strive for "five 9s" service. That is, 99.999% of the time, when you pick up the phone, you'll get a dialtone. That service level though is still built assuming a given usage model. I've tried googling several different terms but have turned up no reference on the specific point of what the minimum capacity is for a CO relative to the neighborhood it serves, or between the CO and the next level up.
That said, my point still stands. If everyone in your neighborhood picked up their phone and tried to make a call, some non-trivial, non-zero percentage of them would not get through.
Program Intellivision!
Is it really 1% of the user base consuming a huge portion of the bandwidth? That figure gets tossed around a lot, and I wonder if it's true.
We decry 1% of world citizens controlling 90% of the world's assets (substitute your favorite estimate for the 90%), and 4% of the world's people (USA) consuming a vast amount of the energy of the world.
Do we not care about the disproportionate internet usage because the /. community are the ones doing the consuming? Theoretically, without P2P, would the "experience" for Joe six-pack be better? Or not?
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.
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.
I know nothing of their 20Mb service, but I've had 4Mb. After downloading 1GB of data, my downstream was capped at 512kbps for the rest of that 24 hour period (note that if I finished my distro download at 23.59, that meant 1 minute of capped use).
Right now I'm with AAISP, who offer ADSL2 in my area. I have 100GB evening, 2GB daytime useage per month at whatever speed I can get on my connection, frequently over 8Mb. I work during the day, so this works out very well for me.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/