Why Australian Telco's Plan To Shape BitTorrent Traffic Won't Work

New submitter oztechmuse writes "Australian Telco Telstra is planning to trial shaping some BitTorrent traffic during peak hours. Like all other telcos worldwide, they are facing increasing traffic with a long tail of users: 20% of users consume 80% of bandwidth. The problem is, telcos in Australia are already shaping BitTorrent traffic as a study by Measurement Lab has shown and traffic use continues to increase. Also, the 20% of broadband users consuming the most content will just find a different way of accessing the content and so overall traffic is unlikely to be reduced."

Comments

Pareto, I hate you.

[Lisias]

I don't like this measure (it's what my provider does to me), but it works.

I have a limited amount of data each month to use at my full connection's bandwidth. When I overflow it, my bandwidth is throttled down.

This consumption can be monitored using my cable modem's MAC (or my phone's imei) , and the values are settled by contract.

Speaking frankly, It's a shit. Now and then I must restrain myself from downloading (now) that HD movie. But, hell, this works as a measure to prevent this situation.

Re:Pareto, I hate you.

[vlm]

If you don't like it, then build your own fucking network. I hate people that think they are entitled to full utilization of a network they don't own just because they pay a monthly fee.

Here let me fix that for you

I hate people that think they are entitled to full utilization of a network they don't own just because they pay a monthly fee based on advertising claiming they have unlimited access.

The standard /. car analogy is I bought a car based on the advertising assumption that I could drive it any time I want 24x365. I'd be pretty pissed if I found my garage empty one day and it turns out they've been renting it out to 3rd parties behind my back, after all most customers don't use their cars 24x365 and its industry standard in the crooked fine print to profit off renting customer's cars to 3rd parties, etc etc.