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

Posted by timothy on Tuesday February 5, 2013 @01:44AM from the locking-doorknobs-on-revolving-doors dept.

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."

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Dont need to reduce overall traffic by jabuzz · 2013-02-05 02:00 · Score: 4, Interesting

The problem the telcos have is not the total volume of traffic but to use a car analogy the "rush hour" effect. If by traffic shaping they can push the 20% to move some of their downloading outside the peak times, then it means they don't have to buy bandwidth that is going to sit unused 90% of the time.
If the 20% all did their downloading overnight it would not be a problem.