BitTorrent Ponders Releasing World ISP P2P Speed Report

Mark.JUK writes "The San Francisco-based inventor of the hugely popular peer-to-peer (P2P) internet file sharing protocol BitTorrent has revealed that it is considering whether or not to release the broadband performance (speed) data for more than 9,000 ISPs around the world. The technology company claims that the data forms part of its new project, which is sadly still in the very early stages of development, but could one day give consumers a near real-time perspective of how their ISP is performing. It wouldn't just cover P2P traffic either, with BitTorrent also tracking general HTTP transfers too. BitTorrent claims that its service can, for example, display that most UK ISPs 'aggressively throttle BitTorrent traffic after 6 p.m. at night,' with speeds suddenly going 'off a cliff.' Suffice to say that such information could prove to be very useful for consumers and advocates of Net Neutrality."

Comments

Considering?

[slaxative]

Consideration of performing an action is news now?

Forget advocates how about consumers in general

[RichMan]

Perhaps people would like to know tha the 10Mb/sec speed advertised by their provider is only available from 4am to 6:30am on weekdays.
These actual usable bandwidth numbers should be general public knowledge. It would enable consumers to make valid choices and perhaps make providers do some real provisioning to support their advertised bandwidths.

Dumb comment

[GooberToo]

Suffice to say that such information could prove to be very useful for consumers and advocates of Net Neutrality.

What a stupid thing to say. It doesn't offer any insight as to why bandwidth may have gone off a cliff. Net Neutrality is not the same thing as responsible QoS! Get that through you heads!

After 6pm, Internet traffic for most ISPs goes through the roof. With it, latency and available bandwidth are typically negatively affected. With a responsible QoS, which is still fully Net Neutral, its easily possible to explain services such at BT "falling off a cliff." After all, if you give it a low priority, which reasonably it should, other users may simply be driving it "off the cliff."

Me, like most every reasonable person in the world, certainly does not want to have You Tube, general web browsing, email, IRC, streaming music, game playing, or any of a number of other services negatively affected because Joe down the street is downloading his fifth illegal movie for the day, especially when he's likely to watch it later, or getting his next WoW update. Some things require an interactive level of performance - some others do not. BT, by definition, is a service which should receive a low priority in any QoS infrastructure.

Net Neutrality is about ensuring company X doesn't get premier service at the expense of its competition. Its not about ensuring reasonable QoS to ISP customers. Please stop conflating the two.

Now having said all that, there may be other things are work here, but there is nothing in the article which suggests there is anything controversial going on. As is, things are reasonably explainable with traditional usage trends and a reasonable desire to maintain a reasonable QoS to customers.

Re:Dumb comment

[shuz]

After 6pm, Internet traffic for most ISPs goes through the roof. With it, latency and available bandwidth are typically negatively affected.

Internet traffic tends to look like a perfect curve that starts an upward trend around 700-800 for a given timezone and increases in a consistent patterned manor until 12 noon. There is a slight dip between noon and 1300 a second peak from 1300 till 1400 and a steady decline until 2300 to midnight. The decline from midday until midnight is slower but from all my experience in web traffic I don't see an increase in traffic after 1800 compared to the rest of the day.

Re:why?

[commodore6502]

I don't understand why everyone always says "the US sucks" and "other countries are better" (or words to that effect). Is this a case of thinking the Grass is Greener on the other side of the fence?

Because it isn't true. Here is how the US compares to other continent-spanning nations/federations. Maybe I'm biased but I don't think second place is a bad place to be:
Mbit/s
12.3 Russian Federation
10.3 US
10.0 EU
9.3 Canada
8.0 Australia
5.7 Saudi Arabia
4.8 Brazil
3.8 China
3.4 Mexico

Mbit/s (EU versus US member states):
29 Lithuania
26 Latvia
24 Romania
23 Netherlands, Sweden
18 Portugal
17 Germany
16 Bulgaria, Denmark
15 DE, Belgium
14 Luxembourg, MA, RI, VA, WA, Hungary, MD, France
13 NY, Finland, NJ
12 NH, MN, Estonia
11 Austria
10 Slovakia, Czech, UK, Spain
8 Slovenia, Malta
7 Poland
6 Ireland, Georgia, Greece, Turkey
5 Cyprus
4 Italy
3 Greenland