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Virgin Media UK Begins Throttling P2P Traffic

Posted by Soulskill on from the jig-is-up dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The ISP which advertises itself as 'The fastest in the UK' and offers speeds of up to 100mbps has said it needs to throttle file sharing traffic to prevent slowness in other areas such as online multiplayer gaming. Trialing of the new traffic management plans commenced on March 2 and will only apply to upstream traffic, therefore download speeds will be unaffected. The clampdown will apply on top of the existing traffic shaping Virgin Media has in place and will affect all packages, including the previously unmanaged 100mbps deal. This policy, which applies to all broadband packages, is restricted to P2P applications and Newsgroups (which are commonly used to distribute large amounts of data)."

19 of 220 comments (clear)

  1. welp.... by CSFFlame · · Score: 4, Interesting

    And this is why all traffic should be obfuscated, if not encrypted. The ISPs have no business knowing what the content of the packets going across their wires are.

    1. Re:welp.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      tcptraceroute hotfile.com (usual port 80)

      XX manc-bb-1b-ae0-0.network.virginmedia.net (62.253.187.178) 15.334 ms 13.543 ms 17.212 ms
      XX know-core-1b-pc200.network.virginmedia.net (195.182.178.150) 14.972 ms 14.482 ms 15.388 ms
      XX wb7301a.network.virginmedia.net (62.30.0.204) 16.185 ms 14.264 ms 16.043 ms
      XX h3.hotfile.com (74.120.10.111) [open] 16.225 ms 15.056 ms 15.300 ms

      traceroute hotfile.com

      XX manc-bb-1b-ae0-0.network.virginmedia.net (62.253.187.178) 14.269 ms 39.439 ms 14.050 ms
      XX know-core-1b-pc200.network.virginmedia.net (195.182.178.150) 17.034 ms 16.912 ms 17.596 ms
      XX wb7301a.network.virginmedia.net (62.30.0.204) 14.581 ms 16.816 ms 17.377 ms
      XX brhm-bb-1a-ge-720-0.network.virginmedia.net (62.30.249.46) 18.815 ms 21.178 ms 19.656 ms
      XX 168.ge-1-3-3.mpr1.lhr2.uk.above.net (213.161.65.149) 30.848 ms 31.543 ms 30.107 ms
      XX above-ntt-2.lhr2.uk.above.net (64.125.12.134) 33.592 ms 29.077 ms 33.319 ms
      XX ae-2.r22.londen03.uk.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.77) 24.697 ms 25.470 ms 25.507 ms
      XX as-0.r22.nycmny01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.3.254) 119.334 ms 123.381 ms 107.119 ms
      XX ae-0.r23.nycmny01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.3.73) 127.396 ms 104.020 ms 124.070 ms
      XX ae-1.r20.asbnva02.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.9) 103.490 ms 128.170 ms 109.354 ms
      XX as-1.r20.dllstx09.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.3.42) 147.037 ms 168.994 ms 137.006 ms
      XX ae-2.r07.dllstx09.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.3.67) 147.517 ms ae-7.r08.dllstx09.us.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.154) 142.261 ms ae-2.r07.dllstx09.us.bb.gin.ntt.net
                  (129.250.3.67) 136.803 ms
      XX xe-0-4-0-4.r08.dllstx09.us.ce.gin.ntt.net (157.238.224.174) 150.740 ms xe-0-4-0-3.r07.dllstx09.us.ce.gin.ntt.net (157.238.224.142) 155.470 ms xe-0-4-0-
                  4.r08.dllstx09.us.ce.gin.ntt.net (157.238.224.174) 151.680 ms
      XX h3.hotfile.com (74.120.10.111) 153.151 ms 151.471 ms 150.152 ms

      what's that skippy? a 'transparent' network monitoring box looking at all the web traffic going to hotfile.com you say?...

      Its Virginmedia, we're used to this sort of shit from them...

    2. Re:welp.... by Fatal67 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Encrypted p2p traffic looks just like encrypted p2p traffic. Most dpi vendors already have fingerprints for it.

    3. Re:welp.... by FutureDomain · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You can encrypt the port numbers, but not the IP packet. We need a good encrypted transport protocol that encrypts everything except the IP header and maybe a session id (so each session can use its own keys). ISPs will know what computer each packet is going to, but not the content, port number, sequence number, etc.

      --
      Hydraulic pizza oven!! Guided missile! Herring sandwich! Styrofoam! Jayne Mansfield! Aluminum siding! Borax!
    4. Re:welp.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      IF they're selling it based on bandwidth. Sure. If they're selling it as unlimited they're false advertising.
      If they can't offer the bandwith they say they can to everyone in their advertising, then they should fix that. Or, don't offer what they can't provide.

    5. Re:welp.... by OeLeWaPpErKe · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There is also the other argument ... http traffic (the first 10 kb of a connection, say), dns, gaming traffic, ... is highly interactive, and generally it will result in massive slowdowns when even a minute amount of this traffic gets dropped. Result : just about every customer complains.

      Long http downloads, p2p traffic, ... is not interactive -at all- and nobody will be very upset if you drop all of it for 5 minutes.

      So giving the interactive traffic absolute priority over the non-interactive traffic (ie. "throttling p2p (and all other large downloads)") is exactly what you'd want to do yourself on your own connection anyway to optimize the subjective speed of your internet connection. Treating p2p, with max downloading speed, the same as other traffic will make all other traffic (esp. http) horrendously slow.

    6. Re:welp.... by grahamm · · Score: 3, Informative

      You can encrypt the port numbers, but not the IP packet. We need a good encrypted transport protocol that encrypts everything except the IP header and maybe a session id (so each session can use its own keys). ISPs will know what computer each packet is going to, but not the content, port number, sequence number, etc.

      Such a protocol already exists. It is called IPSec using ESP in transport mode.

    7. Re:welp.... by strack · · Score: 4, Insightful

      i think you mean they can sell good speeds to everyone by "fucking lying like the lying bastards they are". and connecting you to "kinda sorta parts of the internet that we approve of" and you are right. bandwidth isnt free, which is why people *buy* the internet service that is *advertised*, and anything else is theft by deception. what we call 'fraud'

    8. Re:welp.... by mxs · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And they can just throttle all traffic then. Look, these are consumer level service that they're selling. It's not guaranteed, and you're not buying dedicated bandwidth. If you really want that, get a business level contract with dedicated bandwidth. It will just cost you a lot, but that's how it works.

      That MAY be how it MAY work, but if I am being sold an unmetered, unfiltered connection in advertizing, I damn well better get an unmetered, unfiltered connection. If you are selling me an unmetered, unfiltered connection, you damn well better provide that. It's fine if you don't want to. Really. Just don't lie to me about it. I may then be able to compare your offering to others fairly.

      Bandwidth isn't free, and the only way ISP's can sell good speeds to everyone is by "overselling" it. It's a technical limitation, there's not much they can do about that. I rather take a burstable 100mbit than guaranteed 1mbit anyway. If you want the latter, get it with a business contract.

      You have gotten a lot of koolaid from your ISPs. Sure, bw is not free -- but also not as expensive as it is made out to be. There is such a thing as peering. There are such thing as caches. There is such a thing as proper network planning. It speaks volumes that they are shaping the upstream bandwidth primarily. (And even larger volumes that they are shaping usenet -- where they are decidedly not "just" shaping upstream -- hell, they could be either peering with major usenet providers or *gasp* provide their own servers and keep all that juicy traffic in-house).

      I'd go so far as to say that the cost is mostly incurred in the "last mile" -- i.e. the part where providers would have to invest money.

    9. Re:welp.... by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3, Informative

      It depends on what they are doing. If they're putting peer to peer traffic in a high-bandwidth queue, and other stuff in a low latency channel, then I don't think anyone will mind. For VoIP traffic, you need about 5MB/hour, but ideally you want guarantees of latency under 100ms and jitter under 20ms. For BitTorrent or a large HTTP download, you want as much throughput as you can get, but a 2 second latency with a 3 second jitter is fine (as long as the TCP window settings are sensible). It doesn't sound like that's what they're doing though - they're just putting peer to peer traffic at a lower priority than everything else.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    10. Re:welp.... by mxs · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There is also the other argument ... http traffic (the first 10 kb of a connection, say), dns, gaming traffic, ... is highly interactive, and generally it will result in massive slowdowns when even a minute amount of this traffic gets dropped. Result : just about every customer complains.

      Long http downloads, p2p traffic, ... is not interactive -at all- and nobody will be very upset if you drop all of it for 5 minutes.

      So giving the interactive traffic absolute priority over the non-interactive traffic (ie. "throttling p2p (and all other large downloads)") is exactly what you'd want to do yourself on your own connection anyway to optimize the subjective speed of your internet connection. Treating p2p, with max downloading speed, the same as other traffic will make all other traffic (esp. http) horrendously slow.

      The difference being that you can decide for yourself what you value more and what protocols you want to prioritize. There is absolutely nothing wrong with shaping traffic on your own premises if you so choose. There is something inherently wrong with the provider choosing what is good and what is not for you. Most providers now sell Voice over IP telephony connections as well (get your landline and your internet through the same pipe kind of deals). Skype, as you recall, is an inherently P2P protocol. It would be a damn shame if the traffic shaping just happened to hit Skype, wouldn't it ? Or another messaging/VoIP/cam-service ? I mean surely no conglomerate would ever do such a thing to make their own offering appear to be better, right ? There are legal P2P TV stations too (Zattoo et al). It would be a damn shame if they stopped working right, wouldn't it ? Better get the triple play offer from your ISP, guaranteed bandwidth to the TV server ! Wouldn't it also be a shame if YouTube was constantly buffering and no fun to use at all ? (this happens a lot with the biggest provider in Germany -- they don't call it shaping, they simply don't peer or upgrade their external pipes to those AS).

      If you sell me the service you advertise, I can do all the shaping I want on my own and get the experience I am looking for. If you don't, you are defrauding me.

  2. Translation by mjwx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Virgin Media: Well we haven't upgraded our infrastructure and now we are having problems with sheep leaving our oversubscribed networks. They even have the gall to complain to regulatory authorities about us. So we think we can solve the problem by limiting a certain type of traffic which competes with one of our other business units.

    You can expect VOIP and Youtube to be next.

    This is why the Aussie NBN is a good thing, private providers will never upgrade the network if it has a choice.

    --
    Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    1. Re:Translation by wjh31 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Virgin media have just finished rolling out 50Mbps download, just started rolling out 100Mbps. and are in the process of doubling their upload speeds, so I call bull on you.

    2. Re:Translation by Chocky2 · · Score: 4, Informative

      I think you may have been listening to BT's marketing department too much if you think the problems lie with Virgin not upgrading their network, being oversubscribed, or offering poor performance.

      Last week's Ofcom report on broadband speeds

    3. Re:Translation by timbo234 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      In the case of Australia plenty was done to provide real competition, and we now have tons of ISPs strongly competing against each other. The problem was that the underlying physical network was owned by the privatised formerly-government monopoly and there was no realistic way for someone else to run their own cables to every home and business in the country, thus we have the NBN. A public monopoly providing fibre is better than a private monopoly providing shitty copper cable, slow speeds and stingy bandwidth limits.

      --
      Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.
  3. let's review... by WillyWanker · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Remind me again why net neutrality is a bad thing?

  4. Welcome to the new improved internet by mysidia · · Score: 5, Funny

    High speed, super fast 100 megbit speeds (some restrictions apply *[1])

    [1]: If you actually try to transfer a lot of data over your high-throughput connection, your effective transfer speed will be reduced back to dialup speeds.

  5. "overselling" it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    more like fraud/misrepresentation/mis-selling and its wholesale in the sector. Any other item has to be 'as described' and 'fit for purpose'. ofcom let them all of with a slap on the wrist about it because it was 'prevalent' in the industry. As a watchdog with the teeth to do something about it thats unacceptable.

  6. Not True by Spad · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Firstly, they've been doing this since before Christmas and it doesn't just affect uploads but does appear to be largely port-based throttling. It's pretty poor at "identifying" P2P traffic and a lot of people have had problems with gaming performance since they started trialling it.

    Secondly, this is what happens when you have a race to see who can claim to have the "Fastest home broadband", as has happened in the UK. When Virgin's top package was 10MBit, they didn't have any traffic management in place, but as soon as they jumped it to 20MBit to "beat" the ADSL providers offering 12MBit, they introduced their "STM" system for management and it's only got worse as they've jumped to 50MBit and now 100MBit. Yes, they've been upgrading their network infrastructure, but not fast enough to cope with the "upgrades" in speed that they're offering their users.

    Finally, and probably sadly, they still offer one of the better broadband connection packages in the UK because, while they are increasingly crippling your connection for large parts of the day, at least they're open about it and when it's *not* being crippled it's better that 99% of the ADSL alternatives.