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Cisco talks up products to /slow access/
Marc Merlin writes "This excerpt from Yahoo News tells it all:
(...) But according to marketing materials from Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq:CSCO - news), the No. 1 maker of computer networking equipment, cable companies will be able to work behind the scenes with sophisticated software included in Cisco products to slow down and limit access to selected Web sites. " As you would imagine, this has got the hackles of consumer groups up-Cisco brochures are saying that this stuff would allow cable companies to make competing sites appear more slowly then preferred ones. I'm speechless.
(...) But according to marketing materials from Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq:CSCO - news), the No. 1 maker of computer networking equipment, cable companies will be able to work behind the scenes with sophisticated software included in Cisco products to slow down and limit access to selected Web sites. " As you would imagine, this has got the hackles of consumer groups up-Cisco brochures are saying that this stuff would allow cable companies to make competing sites appear more slowly then preferred ones. I'm speechless.
Would it not be illegal to implement something like this in commercial practice and, if it's not, would the companies involved not be legally obligated to disclose usage limitations. It seems like in one case you violate anti-trust laws against your competitors while in the other case it's false advertising. I don't think any of the big providers are going to be dumb enough to try this kind of thing. It's like selling someone a car that only runs correctly on Exxon gas. It'll run on Ammaco, but at half the speed?
I don't think so!
I suspect that Cisco will charge extra for the highly advanced routers that slow down access to certain points.
It reminds me a lot of unleaded gasoline being more expensive than leaded gasoline (for those of us who remember leaded gasoline). They would charge you extra to not put the lead in.
Rob added line wrap to the list of features many many months ago. Use it. Love it. Save Netscape the extra burden of rendering those
tags.
> That's been the debate with > newsgroups,too,because ISPs who want to filter
> alt.sex.littlekids are worried that they'll lose > the tariff price if they do.
I don't understand this sentence. Unless something has radically changed recently, filtering newsgroups is totally uncontroversial. First, ISPs can filter by simply not carrying whatever newsgroups they please on their server. That gets rid of an "alt.sex.littlekids" right there.
Now you were probably talking about filtering posts within an uncontroversial newsgroup. In general the objectionable posts would be off-topic in most newsgroups, so the solution is to wait for the newsgroup regulars to do their own policing. In the short-term most of these off-topic postings qualify as spam, so simply honor the cancels of the spam killers. In the long-term regulars in a newsgroup overrun with such spam will often band together to moderate, a perfect filter.
Established internet service providers (ISPs) and consumer groups fired a salvo today at AT&T efforts to block equal access to cable broadband internet connections, publicizing Cisco Corp. company brochures for software used by AT&T's @Home network describing features that can be used to block or slow access to competitors' web portals. http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/wr/story.html ?s=v/nm/19990729/wr/tech_internet_1.html (.)
l ?s=v/nm/19990729/wr/tech_internet_1.html
1 7971 (,) quoting AT&T's chairman and CEO C. Michael Armstrong in a story released today:
1 8386 (:)
AT&T defended in major part by claiming that it has no interest in providing content as part of its @Home service. "We are not in the content-management business; we're in the network management business," said spokesman Mark Siegel. http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/wr/story.htm
However, that AT&T claim is at odds with simultaneous AT&T press releases. See e.g., http://www.andovernews.com/cgi-bin/news_story.pl?
"We will work hand-in-hand with Excite@Home's management team and Excite@Home's other cable partners as we continue to develop our strategy to bring Broadband Internet access to millions of American consumers. Our shared vision includes forming commercial relationships with content and portal companies who want to use our broadband networks for promotion, marketing, commerce or other specialized services."
Andover News also reported today on an illustrative agreement that was just signed. http://www.andovernews.com/cgi-bin/news_story.pl?
"Under terms of the agreement, Electric Artists will work with AT&T, including its a2b music(SM) initiative, based on AT&T Labs technologies, to develop and implement an unparalleled e-commerce platform for digital distribution and marketing of music via the Internet and AT&T's distribution networks. Electric Artists will assist AT&T in developing comprehensive music industry strategies and establishing key relationships with music companies, artists, and others to further position AT&T as the world leader in the emergence of a new 'digital' music industry."
The ISPs will probably pick up on the glaring inconsistency to generate more press. Stay tuned for further developments.
pem@televar.com
Quote: "When people who don't belong in a particular situation become involved in a way which changes the nature of how it functions, the system begins to decay."
Amazing how this has happened to any platform that you 'advocate' - the Amiga, now Linux...
Ah well - Arc's posts are always libelous - and it's great to be able to laugh AT him.
Oh - Arc - checked out Progapapa - looks like more Arc's Packs. So Original!
The problem with your comments are that they are ignorant. The issue to which countless magazines are referring to is called Quality of Service (or QoS). This merely speeds up access to certain types of traffic, rather than to certain users or destination sites. While it would be possible to slow access to some sites by specifying a huge bandwidth to other sites, it would only apply to sites with immediate adjacency to the router at this time.
Bay Systems?
...
How about Bay Networks? Oh no wait, make that Nortel Networks.
Wellfleet + Synoptics = Bay Networks
Northern Telecom (Nortel) + Bay Networks = guess.
These guys buy each other out way too often.
So, you think that Cisco is going to disable QoS?
WHAT?
Replace "Cable Company" with Employer here.
Are we saying that we shouldn't let Cisco sell a box which allows a company to manage their own ******* bandwidth?
SHEESH!
The way people respond to stuff just amazes me.
QoS is tool, good or evil is not a trait of a tool, it is a human trait.
Hmm... does that mean that I could accelerate my access if I knew someone up at the cable co?
or just create a new internet called "GNU internet" or something. And ditch than name "Information Superhighway" cos its shit to be honest.
Everyone will have to donate satellites, trunk lines, phone exchanges etc.
Probably not plausable.
And anyway , with the web going even slower,
I dont think i'll notice the difference between it going at a snails pace or a snail with respitory problems.
Brad
And it's even better if you know somebody at the
phone company.
Charles manson wanted a gun, I just sold it to him. come on I think it is fair to blame cisco becuase they are giving in to unethical demands.
wake up your dreaming......
Oh, come on. Quality of Service metrics are integral to business LAN and WAN routing, and are being rolled out across ISP networks to provide services like Voice over IP. If Quality of Service is inherently evil, then we should all be howling for the dismantling of the ATM forum, who designed a protocol DESIGNED to offer different classes of service.
okay all you quote-o-maniacs
You know the words of wisdom.
So whatcha really gonna do about it?
- Steve Chaney
(gunhed@earthlink.net)
You must be college edumacated.....LOL
SlashDot does not do that any more...is not PC with ANDOVER.NET.....Soon you'll see ads for cicso and M$ here :(
Gee can we make some more inept analogies, how about we discuss what it is like in the context of what it IS ACTUALLY LIKE ??? or we can pussy-foot around and say it's like your mother when she makes you go to school and learn...oh your's did not...
Once again, SlashDot jumps to all the wrong conclusions... What the features in question do is giving preference to certain types of data and/or data coming from or going to certain locations. For example, streaming data usually gets preference over web pages.
This is *good* and *necessary*...
Let's see ... how would you recommend visually displaying to your bitchy customer the fact that their 250ms lag time happens 3 hops into Sprint's network, rather than in the network you own and have routing control over? ES-fucking-P? I'm glad I don't have to take calls from idiots like you anymore.
One of my friends works at a cable ISP.
The big problem they have is that half of the subscribers use their line to read news,yahoo, cnn, sport results and others web pages while the half use their connections to install warez ftp servers or to download 24h/24.
So the warez guys make it virtually impossible for the rest of the subscribers to browse the web.
This could also be considered a Denial of service,
and in this case, cisco routers limiting traffic from or to certain users would SOLVE the problem.
Sometimes beeing too paranoid makes you see good things as bad things.
I can see circumstances under which this kind of tactic can be justified. The best circumstance I can site is when a new major release of software suddenly appears on line.
.gz version of the whole tarball is smaller than an IE5 install.
I recall that a couple of years ago when Microsoft released IE4, my current employer's ISP suffered severe performance problems due to the number of parallel downloads of IE4 from the various distribution sites. If the ISP had inhibited some form of quota at the time, I may have been able to work.
I can imagine simillar problems occurred when IE5 was released, and on a larger scale. AFAIK, for the release, Microsoft in their wisdom only have one FTP site for the whole world.
I also believe similliar things happened when Linux Kernel 2.2.0 shipped, but with more FTP sites, and the fact that by that stage a good number were patching from pre-release or 2.1 kernels, the problem was not so big. And even a
More recently, whilst attempting to obtain the latest BZIP2 source code, the home page, hosted by Demon was down due to the ISP having bandwidth limitations. Annoyed me as I tried to grab it all weekend.
It was still Manson's deal to shoot it. If his record was clean, any resonable gun dealer would sell it to him. Gun dealers, just like Cisco, just like the Open Source community deal in a business that involves tools that can easily be used for bad things. That is the way life is. No one is perfect, but everyone has to make a living somehow. You can't see the future, you have no idea what your clients will use your tools to do.
point well taken. I would love to see a copy of the sales brochure in question. Anyone who could get their hands on it, please post it or mail it to netpuppy@discombobulated.net
Cisco has traditionally sold QOS in IOS as a means of a) allowing for voice and video over IP or frame-relay networks by raising the priority of such traffic, or b) allowing mission-critical networking services higher priority in switches and routers than web traffic or icq or low-priority packets.
If Cisco's marketing has spun QOS as a way to screw your users, that is not a good thing.
I agree, you need a clue man. If Cisco had a near monopoly my job would be so much easier. You've got a MILLION different companies out there doing everything Cisco does and more, and cheaper for that matter.
This may just be another stupid idea that is aimed at marketers that see themselves as "corporate warriors". Once users find out that access to certian sites is being crippled they'll either flock to another service (as there will be more high-speed services in the future) or circumvent it... I use Sympatico's ADSL service as an example, I use it, port 80 is blocked because they want you to go through thier slow cache server, so I use a different faster cache server on another port.
Although, this may actually have applications. If you don't want your site to get hammered you can set this up to slow down the flow just slightly to individuals, as to allow for a better distribution of the bandwidth.
Jesus Christ! You people and your hatred for any corporate entity that makes money. I work with Cisco product all day long, and the reason why 80% of the internet runs on their hardware is because they offer a packed-to-the-seams set of features in IOS that allow you granular control over every conceivable aspect of the bits flowing through their hardware. QOS is one of those features. Yeah, bombard their web site, call and complain, send email 'till your fingers fall off. You might as well call Ford and whine that the fuel injection system in your monster truck THROTTLES FUEL BANDWIDTH TO YOUR CYLINDERS and is the equivalent of highway robbery.
Seems to me that it wouldn't take long until someone considers an ISP's bandwidth throttling of traffic to their site to be construed to be a form of a denial of service attack, and the throttled site owners will get nasty and deploy lawyers to deal with the problem.
You are not going to blame the Ford motor company if someone uses a Ford to run your friend over. You are going to blame the jerk who used the Ford to do it.
That would depend. If Ford built a feature into their cars that was specifically designed for making it easier to run people over, and the Ford salesman touted this feature and sold the car knowing it would be used to run somebody over, then Ford and the car dealer would share civil liability and would at least be accessories to the murder.
IANAL, but I do watch "Law and Order". Claire Kincaid was a total fox.
All,
o ster/990712ef.htm
(ahem.) @home is already doing traffic shaping. See article here. http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayNew.pl?/f
let's see:
4 rt001a0601.chi-il.concentric.net (206.83.91.145) 40.444 ms 42.414 ms 40.2
67 ms 42.615 ms 43.923 ms 46.105 ms 41.326 ms 42.749 ms 42.642 ms 46.180
ms 46.035 ms 46.103 ms 40.452 ms 44.827 ms 44.974 ms 41.583 ms 43.869 ms
43.707 ms 42.914 ms 43.663 ms
5 us-il-chi-core2-f5-0.rtr.concentric.net (207.88.48.33) 46.021 ms 51.275 ms
46.002 ms 51.829 ms 48.154 ms 42.780 ms 46.020 ms 43.811 ms 43.822 ms 4
2.738 ms 46.192 ms 45.956 ms 46.023 ms 44.836 ms 47.350 ms 48.289 ms 49.3
88 ms 46.040 ms 45.077 ms 49.424 ms
6 us-dc-wash-core1-a0-0-0d6.rtr.concentric.net (207.88.0.105) 70.731 ms 72.6
88 ms 72.126 ms 70.577 ms 71.835 ms 71.932 ms 72.016 ms 69.578 ms 74.788
ms 71.305 ms 67.614 ms 68.463 ms 68.476 ms 75.492 ms 70.573 ms 68.687 ms
72.927 ms 74.266 ms 70.818 ms 71.844 ms
7 hspr.washington.dc.se.us.psi.net (38.7.139.1) 108.000 ms 113.176 ms 111.4
30 ms 112.343 ms 109.193 ms 178.579 ms 115.732 ms 120.498 ms 175.270 ms 1
68.729 ms 118.449 ms 114.089 ms 118.335 ms 113.374 ms 113.469 ms 124.854 m
s 115.835 ms 167.579 ms 110.122 ms 111.211 ms
8 * ne.esc.psi.net (38.1.4.9) 140.796 ms 145.550 ms 147.406 ms 183.416 ms
135.946 ms 129.158 ms 143.924 ms 142.907 ms 125.960 ms 137.094 ms 143.762
ms 145.070 ms 124.858 ms 130.545 ms 130.193 ms 152.962 ms 124.791 ms 138
.348 ms 125.908 ms
9 204.6.118.106 (204.6.118.106) 197.843 ms 196.437 ms 202.605 ms 198.833 m
s 202.556 ms 203.470 ms 197.907 ms 194.594 ms 201.166 ms 212.616 ms 208.0
21 ms 195.849 ms 198.921 ms 204.832 ms 194.319 ms 193.519 ms 205.888 ms 2
20.250 ms 197.886 ms 198.120 ms
10 154.32.3.4 (154.32.3.4) 205.602 ms 205.689 ms 202.381 ms 212.525 ms 199
.099 ms 205.713 ms 201.326 ms 207.109 ms 201.087 ms 200.049 ms 194.805 ms
194.942 ms 201.897 ms 201.281 ms 204.616 ms 201.486 ms 209.194 ms 207.968
ms 207.926 ms 201.265 ms
11 ci251.22.london1.uk.psi.net (154.32.22.251) 202.707 ms 214.455 ms 219.218
ms 214.762 ms 212.638 ms 201.261 ms 227.220 ms 208.974 ms 205.936 ms 202
.524 ms 213.473 ms 200.727 ms 206.521 ms 215.863 ms 231.659 ms 212.458 ms
213.727 ms 210.201 ms 202.527 ms 203.485 ms
12 * *
telnet www.imvs.com 80
Trying 195.152.231.45...
Connected to www.imvs.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
^]
Tells me quite a few things. I'm going from boston to chicago to dc on my isp, in about 70 ms, and then passing off to psi. PSI adds about 30ms latency at mae east or their private DC interconnect, and then I pick up another 100-110 ms latency going to london. Total time before somebody filters icmp, about 210ms. Good time for standard connectivity across the pond. Telnet to 80 on the server, and you know that icmp is being dropped at hop 12. There's no sign of packet drops, and no problem. If I was losing 6 of 10 ICMP at the handoff from concentric to PSI, I would know that there was a saturated peer, call my ISP, and bitch. If I was losing 3-5 of 10 between hop 8 and 9, i would figure it was going on a saturated link across the pond. If I was fine through hop 11 and http was slow or unresponsive to the end destination, I would know that there was either congestion on the web server link to it's ISP, or that the server itself was dropping connections.
Pretty simple, man.
Not sure of that one....but John Henry said "Give me liberty or give me death"
Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!
- Patrick Henry (1736-1799) Speech in the Virginia Convention, March 1775
humor \Hu"mor\, n. [OE. humour, OF. humor, umor, F. humeur, L.
humor, umor, moisture, fluid, fr. humere, umere, to be moist. See
Humid.] [Written also humour.] 1. Moisture, especially, the
moisture or fluid of animal bodies, as the chyle, lymph, etc.; as,
the humors of the eye, etc.
Note: The ancient physicians believed that there were four humors
(the blood, phlegm, yellow bile or choler, and black bile or
melancholy), on the relative proportion of which the temperament
and health depended.
2. (Med.) A vitiated or morbid animal fluid, such as often causes
an eruption on the skin. ``A body full of humors.'' --Sir W.
Temple.
3. State of mind, whether habitual or temporary (as formerly
supposed to depend on the character or combination of the fluids of
the body); disposition; temper; mood; as, good humor; ill humor.
Examine how your humor is inclined, And which the ruling passion of
your mind. --Roscommon.
A prince of a pleasant humor. --Bacon.
I like not the humor of lying. --Shak.
4. pl. Changing and uncertain states of mind; caprices; freaks;
vagaries; whims.
Is my friend all perfection, all virtue and discretion? Has he not
humors to be endured? --South.
5. That quality of the imagination which gives to ideas an
incongruous or fantastic turn, and tends to excite laughter or
mirth by ludicrous images or representations; a playful fancy;
facetiousness.
For thy sake I admit That a Scot may have humor, I'd almost said
wit. --Goldsmith.
A great deal of excellent humor was expended on the perplexities of
mine host. --W. Irving.
Aqueous humor, Crystalline humor or lens, Vitreous humor. (Anat.)
See Eye.
Out of humor, dissatisfied; displeased; in an unpleasant frame of
mind.
Syn: Wit; satire; pleasantry; temper; disposition; mood; frame;
whim; fancy; caprice. See Wit.
Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
everybody's routers are configured to give lowest priority to icmp traffic. It still gives you a valid indication of the saturation level of any given backbone link, because if your times are slow or you lose packets, it is because the pipe is full and they are being dripped. and it gives you a total view of a customer-provider-interAS-destination link. if the customer complains of performance, you isolate the area that is performing poorly. if you own the misbehaving link, you either route around it or throw more bandwidth at it. if someone else owns it, there isn't jack you can do, because they advertise their routes to you and you take them. but maybe they teach that in helpdesk 105.
traceroute is the easiest and most comprehensive way to find and isolate areas of saturation.
ISPs can already do whatever they like with your traffic (I know - I am with an ISP :-) so the point is moot. Actually, that's a very usefull feature of the IOS.
:-)
The "newspeople" at yahoo certainly don't know anything about managing bandwidth, but it's something many ISPs do. When you can't afford upgrading your backbone to terabit speeds, you manage what you have
That's all it is. Of course you can use technology for evil purposes, but this is not news.
...slashdot gets a letter from Paul Allen's Evil Cable Empire(tm) demanding demanding a monthly payment of $666 US bogoDollars to insure that the high speed hosting that slashdot pays for each month actually has an impact for xxx Million PAECE(tm) users.
...as for the rest of the internet? Well, they're just going to have to figure out how to jerk-off with less bandwidth (can animated ascii porn be far behind?). Say this is the end of the world as 90% of the internet knows it.!
as an aside, the real goal of such technology isn't to insure web sites are slow, just other VoIP providers... but then slashdot readers aren't very good at think laterally.
Microsoft has been doing this for a while I believe. I noticed a couple of years back when I was still doing some testing with Internet Exploder and Netscape that when you visit the Microsoft web site with navigator it seems to go noticeably slower. I think that they were sending IE users to one server and netscape users to another.
There are no stupid questions -- only stupid people.
access-list 100 permit ip any host 1.2.3.4 access-list 100 permit ip host 1.2.3.4 any access-list 101 permit ip any host 4.3.2.1 access-list 101 permit ip host 4.3.2.1 any access-list 102 permit ip any host 2.2.2.2 access-list 102 permit ip host 2.2.2.2 any priority-list 1 protocol ip high list 100 priority-list 1 protocol ip low list 102 interface Ethernet0/0 (or bri/ser whatever) priority-group 1 traffic-shape group 102 16384 2048 2048 1000 This example works on virtual every cisco IOS router on the internet. (Yes, the . part in slashdot :) When buffering (!! this means that if bandwidth is high enough, there is no effect) packets from or to 1.2.3.4 are prioritized before packets from ot to 4.3.2.1. The traffic shape limits the bandwidth to 2.2.2.2 to 16kbit/s Personally I would not mind linking low priority to sites listed in parental control or adult content directories. Now I am thinking of it, is there a sort of DNS service like RBL that lists adult sites? Would be handy.
--What I'd be worried about is the 'behind the scenes' abuse of this stuff. Cable companies could play with various types of filters and slow-downs for whatever reason, and the consumer won't know. I mean.. we can't be calling 1-800-roadrunner every time a website is 'slow' or down. You'd never be able to prove it. IMO, this SUCKS.
You know, right now any ISP can *restrict* access to the competitions sites if they felt like it... The poor users (i.e. the unsuspecting public) gets screwed again... Of course, things like slowing sites won't matter in 10 years when average homes have a 100Mbit connetion or higer...
I suscribe to the RoadRunner Service in Maine. I took a tour of their compound and they explained that the user's upstream is 2meg/sec split between about 50 households and the downstream 15 meg/sec for each 150 people/households. each geographic area had its own router, sun box, and Toshiba Authentication System (perhaps you've seen the term 'tas' in your dhcp hosts hostname?).
If you could convice someone to let your performance not be hindered by others you could possibly get the bandwidth that RR claims you have access to in their commercials.
Maybe this is wrong, but as i understand what they said... if you killed all of your neighbors who subscribed to the same cable modem service you did and lived in roughly the same geographical region it would enhance your browsing experience. -matt
What 'freedom of internet'? You have great freedom. Freedom to choose your provider, or start your own! There is no shortage of places to get bandwidth.
If those who bring you ultra-high-speed access, you cable company, decide to run things differently, to restrict access to different things, in effect, do defing what 'internet' access IS for you, then you are free to go elsewhere.
access-list 100 permit ip any host 1.2.3.4
:)
access-list 100 permit ip host 1.2.3.4 any
access-list 101 permit ip any host 4.3.2.1
access-list 101 permit ip host 4.3.2.1 any
access-list 102 permit ip any host 2.2.2.2
access-list 102 permit ip host 2.2.2.2 any
priority-list 1 protocol ip high list 100
priority-list 1 protocol ip low list 102
interface Ethernet0/0 (or bri/ser whatever)
priority-group 1
traffic-shape group 102 16384 2048 2048 1000
This example works on virtual every cisco IOS router on the internet. (Yes, the . part in slashdot
When buffering (!! this means that if bandwidth is high enough, there is no effect) packets from or to 1.2.3.4 are prioritized before packets from ot to 4.3.2.1.
The traffic shape limits the bandwidth to 2.2.2.2 to 16kbit/s
Personally I would not mind linking low priority to sites listed in parental control or adult content directories. Now I am thinking of it, is there a sort of DNS service like RBL that lists adult sites? Would be handy.
Unfortunately the marketing guys grow new heads when you chop one off. Bummer.
I thought the quote was:
Get me a beer, and where's the remote?
>:-/
It's been around, but I don't any ISP has limited bandwidth to some sites less and some sites more! Limiting it to every site is fine. Making it different depending on the site is not.
yes, the feature has been there for years, and is augmented by rate limits, QOS metrics like RSVP +wfq or wred, and countless other tweaks. If you wanted to get down and dirty, you could probably configure an extremely low priority for all traffic off of your AS, and be done with it.
John Henry was the man with the hammer. Patrick Henry was the revolutionary war statesman. Paul Bunyan was a giant man with an ax, and Babe was his giant blue ox.
Everything clear now?
You guys are all up in arms about Cisco and their evil, evil, features in IOS...
Traffic Shaping and Quality of Service support is in your god damned beloved Linux Kernel. Should we all stop supporting linux now that Linus and his merry band of hackers are trying to help out cable companies and evil Shadow Governments of the world?
It is so easy to get some people worked up.
It is obvious that this is the way things are
going. A company that controls the bandwidth
can do what they want with it. I'm sure that
the larger ISP's already do this to a certain
extent with route selection. This just takes
it to the next level - a single router being
able to cause the slowdown.
Some more related things that will happen:
- Internet Explorer will work faster with NT web
servers.
- UUNet will route traffic faster for windows
web browsers.
How could you regulate against these kinds of
things? I don't see any way... consumer education
is the only thing that will help.
Actually without the traffic shaping feature
most large web sites couldn't operate *now*.
What do you think stops people from ping flooding
T1 web sites from their multimegabit cable
connections?
See the NANOG14 proceedings for how @Home use
traffic shaping to defeat the flooders.
Original poster here. I should get off my ass and get an account.
I don't know the financials. I have never been involved in the provisioning or costing side of the circuit game while working at ISPs. I do know that you get a tariffed price of X dollars per circuit if you are providing clear pipe access, I think both from the local (or competitive) exchange carrier and the long-haul carrier. This applies to your customer aggregation circuits as well as your backbone pipes, afaik. Anyone who could enlighten further would be appreciated. You don't get that price if you filter access in any way. That's been the debate with newsgroups, too, because ISPs who want to filter alt.sex.littlekids are worried that they'll lose the tariff price if they do.
As long as this is the case, unrestricted net access is most profitable, because your backbone and aggregation circuits are cheap.
The mention of DSL and other technologies is used as a reference point to compare services. If I can get a clear connection that allows me to do whatever I want with my circuit (I have 384k SDSL) I will pay for it, even if some guy wants to sell me RoadRunner instead. It's a buyer's market.
I currently get my DSL from Concentric Networks, 'cuz I like their backbone better than Bell Atlantic's. My phone service is from Bell Atlantic, and my cable comes from Media One. If Media One offered me phone and cable for cheaper than BAT phone and Media One cable, I'd use that. If they offered me restricted cable modem net access on top of that, i'd tell them to piss off.
We should be arguing for choice in high-speed net access, rather than trying to villify one service because of their policies. For all I know, there are parents out there who would love to have 'net access that filtered questionable material without them having to use some additional software. Fine. Not me. As long as I have a choice, I'm happy.
I'm curious to hear what George's qualifications are. I work on the Internet team at a major corporation and can say that we do the same thing using software and a proxy server that the Cisco hardware can do. All major companies do. And they've been doing it for years.
Now you might say that that is a business and that inappropriate sites need to be blocked from businesses because they reduce productivity. But you know what? Lots of AOLs web traffic is buffered at proxy servers. They could do the same thing using software that Cisco hardware does. Cable providers could do it to. Most people wouldn't know the difference. And they all could be blocking and controlling traffic right now.
The people from the advocacy groups mention that this is a monopolization of the Internet by the cable companies, and they blame Cisco. Notice none of them are mentioning the ISP that blocks the "adult" web sites and practices filtering on it's end. Granted that consumers can choose not to use this service but the point remains that it still restricts the "open" Internet.
But the fact is that this is a common capability. If you want to break up Cisco for doing this, attack these as well:
As you can see, Cisco isn't the only one doing this. And to blame them is to skirt the real issue. That issue is your ISP. If your ISP is blocking and you didn't tell them to, then tha'ts their fault. Cisco and all the other companies that provide blocking (with hardware or software) are providing a tool. If a company abuses it, your issue is with the abuser, not the maker of the tool.
I think it was John Henry who said, "the Big Bend Tunnel on that C & O road a gonna be the death of me, Lord, God, Going to be the death of me."
Not only that, but after reading Small Gods (by Terry Pratchett), I have a tendency to scream and start running whenever I see an eagle.
How about a tortoise as a National Symbol?
Here's the thing.. I'd like to read the contract for service for any cable company who would use this technology. They could eventually end up with a law suit on their hands unless they worded it carefully..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
It's been done. I worked on a product to limit bandwidth to certain routes more than others - specifically, you could buy say 512k European access, and 256k World access, and 128k national access - all down the same link. No magic - just work around a few Cisco bugs, and it works.
Hmm .. seems to me like more and more of the freedom the internet used to have is being thrown out the window by corporate people getting involved ...
wonder if we can place the internet and related stuff under GPL
bain
Sanity is a majority vote.
Whereas the U.S.A. has the oft-glorified (yet, correctly identified as a scavanger) bald eagle, Canada's national symbols are a rodent and a leaf.
To wit: the beaver and the maple tree.
In Liberty, Rene
"traceroute" sends packets to a UDP port it hopes isn't in use; it doesn't send ICMP Echo packets. (Perhaps those discussing ICMP packets being dropped or restricted are thinking of NT's "tracert"?)
Never mind, the TTL exceeded or port unreachable reply would still get hit if ICMP packets are dropped, even though the outgoing UDP might not get hit.
If marketing people were allowed to design cars, we'd all be driving coal-powered tricycles that only ran on tuesdays.
But they'd all have great adjustable cup holders that expand to hold a Big Gulp, and oversized vanity mirrors.
Oh yeah...and you'd have to relicense your car from the manufacturer every year or it would stop working!
I think it's his .sig
The technology's morally neutral - for example, CAR is used to limit bandwidth consumed by Smurf attacks (presumably a good thing), but this same technology is (or could be) used to limit bandwidth to certain unaffiliated websites.
:).
This is not really very different morally to using firewalls and access lists - you can use them to block access to certain websites (probably bad) or to block access by crackers to your domain (probably good, unless you are a cracker
'Ethically questionable'... OK, how about if the same bandwidth limits are used to ensure that one cable modem user doesn't consume all the available bandwidth for 200 homes on a given segment? To make this pointed, what if this bandwidth limitation makes it possible for VoIP packets carrying an emergency services (911, 112) call to be carried over the same net? (I know people won't use cable phones for emergencies, it's a hypothetical example!)
The point is that quality of service and class of service technology can be used to guarantee or to limit bandwidth to or from any IP address, with any IP protocol or TCP/UDP port, etc - it's down to the user of these features (and your perspective and values of course) as to whether the resulting effect is morally good or bad.
Astonishingly, this is exactly like IP itself, which can carry hate material just as easily as charity donations...
IPv4 was standardised in RFC 791, which defines 6 bits of priority information (3 bits precedence, 3 bits type of service) in what was known as the TOS byte, and is becoming known as the DiffServ field.
IPv6 is renaming this field to Traffic Class, I think, but adding no new features - DiffServ will work fine on IPv6 as well. The only new QoS feature in IPv6, IMO, is the Flow Label, which is a longer field used to quickly classify individual flows (e.g. a VoIP call) in RSVP (which is a finer-grained way of requesting absolute bandwidth/latency, rather than just 'better treatment' a la DiffServ.)
Some links on QoS and DiffServ:
- Linux-DiffServ - working code for 2.2+ kernels:
http://lrcwww.epfl.ch/linux-diffserv/
- QoS Forum - general information: http://www.qosforum.com/
- Orchestream Links page - http://www.orchestream.com - has links on RSVP, DiffServ, etc.
No this is nothing like that...
Traffic shaping is part of the protocol, and is sometimes necessary. Cisco is merely utalizing sleazy marketing tactics to pawn off this feature for all the wrong reasons. There has never been anything to stop people from doing this in the past, except that they were ignorant to the fact that it could be done.
- Dan
And you should get yourself an account, AC. First intelligent post I've seen in their thread.
D.
Something that needs to be addressed in all of this, if they start implementing preditory bandwithrestrictions - they will lose the "common carrier" leagle coverage. They then could be sued for ANY content that comes across the wire, or lack there off.
--
James Michael Keller
"Linux is not our destination, it is simply the open road to tommorow"
-- ultra1
Let's get email address & voicemails & start the 'Ol /. effect !
Tired of being another body in the flock? Linux ! We are not sheep anymore.
Dang...someone beat me to the reality check.
To add just a bit to this point...you can do the same thing with just about any product...its not just Cisco...and since we have a significant Linux leaning here, you can even do the same in Linux. The latest incarnation is called Class Based Queuing I believe. You also might see some of the same features listed as Traffic Shaping (Packeteer has been doing this for a *long* time), and there's probably some other names that I'm forgetting.
I do think (from what I've seen..haven't seen the actual press release) that Cisco's Marketing department hosed this one up, but the technology is just a tool, and just like a hammer is a tool, it can be used for good (building a house for the homeless) or evil (bashing in someone's skull).
This very same tool that Cisco is talking about and everyone is up in arms about is also being used by many ISPs to prevent ICMP ping floods or SYN attacks and the like from killing connections. This very same tool that can be used for anti-competitive purposes can also be used to prevent abuses.
Jeff
You might not sue but you sure get paid big if you're a company and they cause a loss of connection - ie through a cut in the line. They you get to send a bill to your service provider saying "We lost this much because of your stupidity. Pay" And they do.
Fellowship 9/11
LOL
:)
Yeah, it was actually *Patrick* Henry...
We just got hit with the UCITA and now we are getting hit with Cisco's marketing droids bending the traffic on the net so they (the ISPs) can cause traffic jams (or denial) to sites they deem undesirable. Has the world gone mad! The internet community (we the users) has to come up with a way to "throw a wrench into the works". We have to make it clear that this kind of invasion will not be permitted. I will vote with my $$$. I do not expect utopia on the net but the ability to manipulate things is getting way out of control.
You must realize that they can take this a step further. Suppose you are an internet backbone company and you have an ISP also. You can just as easily setup the software to slow down you're competitors. Who is to say that the links are not busy.
--
Those who control the information, control the power!
Neil Cherry - Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
Why stop there, Cisco? Why not build and sell devices who's sole purpose is to ping-flood and mail bomb your competitors?
:) Now you can add the internet to the body count, if Cisco or companies with the same intentions have their way. Questions about wether or not it would even be _legal_ for Cisco to do such a thing aside, the fact that they're even considering it speaks volumes about the company, and their ethics...or lack thereof.
:)
Somebody should dump 5,000 barrels of petroleum tar into Cisco's parking lot and see how much they enjoy being "slowed down" by someone else.
This is what happens when the suits, marketing bozos and other parasites get involved in things they really have no business in. I dont think I need to convince anybody that giving marketing people a controlling hand in how a network performs (and ignoring the engineers in the process) is a bad idea..If marketing people were allowed to design cars, we'd all be driving coal-powered tricycles that only ran on tuesdays.
When people who don't belong in a particular situation become involved in a way which changes the nature of how it functions, the system begins to decay. It becomes corrupt, and ends up being twisted into something that it was never intended to be. Don't believe me? Have a look at the judicial system..the music industry.. Or hell, just look at MS-DOS.
Oh well. Theres always Juniper Networks.
Bowie
PROPAGANDA
Bowie J. Poag
Keep in mind that bandwidth isn't free. Without the ability to manage QoS you have a situation where the greedy can make things bad for everyone else.
This becomes a real issue when you are looking at high bitrate datastreams like streaming video. At todays prices, high quality video over the net is prohibitively expensive (8 mbs for TV quality high action video is not cheap).
That sort of backbone bandwidth can't be had for the price of a cable-modem connection, yet cable modem providers may want to offer such services. To do so at a price point that is affordable, they have to build local caching&reflection for the content, to keep traffic off their backbone connection.
The final peice is to allow high bandwidth streams between customers and distribution centers, where costs are well controlled, and disallow it between customers and the iternet at large.
If you don't like it, don't get a cable modem. Hell, if you don't like it, build your own local and global fibernetwork and give away access. If you can find a way to make it work, I will gladly contribute my time to making it happen.
Long distance telcos have done something along these lines: they used to (maybe still do) block access to a competitors 1-800 number for calling card calls. It just goes to show that when companies get too much control they end up as parasites (e.g. insurance companies) and cease to earn their profits.
The last time I checked, Cisco was sucessful, partly because they do a good job of meeting the needs of their customers.
I plan to direct my anger at the people who choose to use these features, not the people that build the tools.
first off, who the hell said that the FCC was going to break up CISCO??? this was about the cable operators....
;-)
anyway, Cisco is just implementing a feature than *nix (or at least Linux) has had for a while, the ability to favor some traffic over another... this is prefectly legitimate, even though it COULD be abused... (which is the point of the Consumer groups, that without open access, the cable companies will have vast content-control powers...)
I am about to move into a house with some friends, we plan to use QoS to make sure that some more important services do not get interrupted by web-surfing, and to make sure that every one gets AT LEAST their fair share of the bandwidth (as much as available, but no less than X)
(yes we have enough bandwidth to care
Grrr. my nick is "Forward the Light Brigade"...
????
the consumer groups are talking about open access re: cable...
QoS is not a prob unless it is coupled with a monopoly in the inet access department...
Grrr. my nick is "Forward the Light Brigade"...
Yeah, Lucent just bought some new company called Nexabit networks, they make routers that can move 1.4 terabits per second. Lucent is about to jump over cisco in terms of speed.
The last paragraph of the item noted that you can use the technique of fast access to your site / slow access to your competitor's in order to "encourage" adoption of your own service.
Hmm. This makes me think of all the times that I've pulled up a banner-infested page only to spend 15 seconds reading the ads while the rest of the page loads.
Well, maybe it is a coincidence.
This is nuthing like that
Its more like ford installing emp guns in all there new cars and shooting an emp at all passing chryslers.
Those People Who Are Crazy Enough To Think That They Can Change The World Probable Can
As stated elsewhere, this software has been available for a while, and can actually be very useful. QoS enables you to guarantee a particular information rate for a connection. For videoconferencing and other real time activities this is essential.
As for the 'finding the optimal path' BGP4 ( the routing protocol used on most of the Internet ) doesn't select routes depending on the speed or available bandwidth of a particular route...
-- I'm drinking myself to sleep again...
From an end users point of view, there's not much you can do.
But that doesn't change the point that traceroute is not very helpful as a diagnostic tool, as it can all too easily show 'problems' that don't actually exist...
E.g., as I mentioned above, routers that silently drop ICMP packets...
-- I'm drinking myself to sleep again...
Isn't this pretty much the same as IPv6 having the ability to set priority levels for certain packets ? As I understand it your ISP will be able to give a higher priority to packets that originiate from certain locations...ie. customers who are paying a little extra to get better performance. Meanwhile the average schmoe gets a lower priority and spends more time waiting.
Actually,"Class-based queueing" is the name of one of a number of scheduling mechanisms used in QoS(Quality of service)-enabled routers. Others include Strict Priority Queueing, Weighted Round-robin etc.
"Traffic shaping" refers to the practise of queuing traffic at originating hosts or intermediate nodes so that it is less bursty.
Both mechanisms are part of the implementation of the Differentiated Services architecture (RFC 2475)
- telly_o "at" softhome "dot" net
The rate-limiting feature of cisco routers
currently allow to 'slow down' the sessions
with specific source or destination. there is
no magic in it, nor it is a 'hidden feature'.
it can be used for various purposes. in fact
it works really well (I've spent the last few
days playing with it). I'm sure other routers'
vendors have similar features.
Grunt. Oink, oink.
I really hate to say it, but I'm forced to think of a cartoon from "Bloom County" some years back, where Opus the penguin is trying to book a flight to Cleveland or some such, and the person on the phone from Megacorp Airways (something like that) is extremely rude and demands $2000 for the ticket. So Opus gets steamed, calls a competitor, and the same person answers the phone...'cos Megacorp bought 'em all out. And btw the price is now $3000. And say "please", poophead.
I can't help but think that once one ISP starts doing this, they all will follow, just because of the old lemming instinct--they would perceive their competitors using this Cisco garbage as having an "advantage" and would want it also. Even though AT&T claims they won't use it, it's probably only a matter of time.
*sigh*
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
Go ahead and slow things down Cisco. The more you do the better my employer's product does (my employer, FlowWise Networks, makes a router accelerator which will offload virtually all of the traffic off of a router and switch it at wire speed with zero configuration. It's fun to watch a router go from a limit of 300K packets per second to 3 million packets per second in just a few seconds. Oh, and there's no rate limiting either.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
QoS/CoS are used to provide better service to certain classes of applications or certain users.
This kind of technology is required fo quite a few technologies to work well. VoIP, streaming audio/video.
It is not an evil technolog. QoS is in linux, windows2000, most routers, many switches. This technology is vital to the growth of the net.
This technology will let you say: I want to pay an extra $20 a month and get better service across your backbone. Or I want my quake traffic to have priority over my email. Or I want to dedicate 128k of this cable modem link to this video stream.
This does mean the net becomes unfair. Too bad. It's unfair now. If you connect to UUnet, you can get access to content not available elsewhere. AOL? same thing, @Home? yep. As an Epoch customer I can't access that @home content. Oh well.
ISPs are not in the game of blocking their customers access to online content. If they start to do this they hit all kinds of legal and PR problems.
Check out some qos related site like:
http://www.qosforum.com
if you want to read up on what this technology is good for, not the FUD running around this group.
The answer is to implement appropriate QoS solutions. This does not target the abuses of the users causing problems. This targets selected sites outside the company's network. It is not marketed as a QoS solution, it is marketed as a way to ensure preferential treatment for content providwer partners.
No, this would be the same as those things if ford salesmen went out and sabotaged people's crysler's so that they Did break down more often and get worse mileage.. or if your neighbors snuck in while you werent home and switched out your ram for smaller chips so that your computer Did run slower than the one they wanted you to get. The whole point here is that the companies get to control what you're allowed to see. It's not that if you go to their website they extoll their product (which is expected), it's that if you try to go to any Other site it stops you.
Dreamweaver
"If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -- MLK, Jr.
They nearly have a monopoly, and now they're exploiting the web surfing public even more!
Break them up!
George
The GNU internet would also have domain names like
slashdot.--organization
and
linux.--commercial
In addition, the protocols being used would be slightly incompatible with users using programs meant to be on the Internet.
Sites that require paid membership will be forced to also have an availible no-cost version, including sources to all the CGI scripts.
"I'm speaking generically, because the telecomm and media industries are already intertwined in this realm. ATT owns cable companies, and MediaOne is providing phone services. "
;)
How right you are; AT&T owns MediaOne.
...or is at least in the process of buying them out. Anyone know if that deal has been completed yet?
"Bang, bang," said the gun.
"Ugh, ow, my ass," said the evil Cable CEO.
"Please, I have a wife and kids!" said the CISCO marketing guy.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
Frankly, I do. I'm about to pass out here.
Isn't this really the same as your local Ford dealership saying that Chrysler is more apt to break down, not get as good mileage, steal your money, etc
No, it's more like your Ford dealership making Chryslers move slower when they are nearby. Or, when you own a Ford, making all the Chyslers appear to move slower than they actually do.
---
END OF LINE
Could restricting access to certain parts be considered "moderating"? Could they be sued for illegal sites because of this?
---
END OF LINE
wasn't thinking
new to the game
Now how do you suppose you have first post when you are replying to someone?
Think a little....
Everybody keeps complaining about the moderation, but it's not as if the moderators are killing posts -- they just score them. I almost never look at or notice the scores. If you don't sort by them, they are practically meaningless. Who needs to loosen their panties?
Kook9 out.
The turkey would be a better national bird than the ornate buzzard-like bird called the Bald Eagle. Look into the habits of the bald eagle sometime if you like. They'd rather eat road kill than hunt for prey themselves.
When you see a screaming eagle in the sky, look for the other animal whose prey it is about to steal, or the compost heap it's about to land on and eat.
What is the name of the American joe that said "Give me freedom or give me death"?
I dunno, call me devil's advocate, I see a whole conglomeration of factors here
Though, I'm not to worried. I'm just gonna sit around on my but 'till wireless comes into the game. Then see them try to stop me. :)
Jonny Angel
Jonny Angel
rebel rousing technobilly
Skipped English Composition 101, eh? Subject, verb, object.
you guys are missing the point. the letter in question doesnt attack cisco, it tells the FCC that the capacity to control access to content ( which we all know QOS is capable off )poses a greater threat if cable is permitted to exert monopoly control over high speed cable modem access. If you only have one ISP which is owned by the cable company and it also co-owns most of the content on the site ( or has some financial interest in it ), there incentive to "discourage" access to the rest of the Internet. Cable has always fought to permit competitive content on its systems and it wants to take that model to the Net. Cisco's only mistake was writing a document that explained how its QoS could be used by cable to discriminate against the Internet content that they do not control.
Cisco is a technology company driven by client demand. This is technology which some client wants. Sure it could be used in a bad way, but almost everything can. The people who use it in a bad way are the ones that should be blamed not the people who create the tools. You are not going to blame the Ford motor company if someone uses a Ford to run your friend over. You are going to blame the jerk who used the Ford to do it.
Remember that openness in standards and such is not just for a home user. The cable companies, ISP's etc all want to be able to have as many options as possible.
Isn't this really the same as your local Ford dealership saying that Chrysler is more apt to break down, not get as good mileage, steal your money, etc?
Isn't this the same as your neighbours all saying to get a PC since a Mac is slower and not as good at doing things?
I'm not saying it's right by any means, I mean there should *definately* be some kind of userbase intervention done here (I seriously doubt a boycott could come into play) to let Cisco know that this is NOT acceptable.
Okay, I'll bite.
What would you use?
I use Traceroute myself and certainly wouldn't mind hearing about better tools.
D
----
Using a tunnel like this will NOT, I repeat, will NOT tell you whether or not your ISP is throttling back your traffic. The route that traffic takes from point A to point B may have nothing in common with the route from point C to point B. In other words, you may have the following situation:
;-). Just for kicks, I connected to work, which is a nice clean route thru USWest, BBN, and C&W. At work, we have a QWest connection in addition to a C&W connection, so from work to any QWest host was a clean route. So, by "tunneling" thru my workplace, I was able to get much better connectivity than by going directly.
route from A -> B sucks
route from C -> B is good
route from A -> C is good.
This is probably more common than people think. There are a handful of places on the Internet backbone which tend to get really clogged up. If your traffic happens to be going thru one of those points, your connection will suck. By using a tunnel to somewhere else, you may be avoiding that bottleneck and your connection will improve.
I actually ran into exactly this scenario last night. I am a USWest.net customer, and was connecting to a host on QWest. The connection was horrible, and a traceroute showed a long tortuous path thru a half a dozen providers (Hopefully now that QWest owns USWest they will begin peering
If you actually wanted determine whether or not your ISP was throttling traffic, you would have to take direct measurements. I'm not sure what the best way to do this would be, as it would depend on exactly how the ISP implemented it. Some software along the lines of traceroute or mtr might be modified pretty easily to take some measurements. Another possible approach would be to use forged TCP packets. Say you have host A using the ISP you think is throttling. You have access to another host B at a different ISP. A program on host B sends forged TCP packets that appear to be from various web sites to host A. On host A, you have a program which tallies up the received forged packets. Since all the packets are taking the same route, the packet loss rate should be the same no matter what the source address is. If the ISP is throttling, it should be pretty obvious. The one problem with this approach is that the ISP host B is connected to should be dropping the forged packets. Not that it isn't easy to find an ignorant or irresponsible ISP that will let you source forged packets...
As the original article states, this technology is not limited just to cable modem access. It can be used by any ISP using any access method (cable, DSL, dial-up, satellite).
Give this information to anyone and everyone that currently has or is thinking about getting internet access. Educate them about the alternatives. We need to make the providers understand that the public *will* switch to alternate access methods if this type of system gets implemented. Last, but not least, don't let this issue die without making sure that the ISPs understand that the public knows what they are up to.
Thanks,
UOZaphod
"The unicode stuff in the latest version is working fabulously well. My russian mafia friends are ecstatic."
Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death! - Patrick Henry (1736-1799) Speech in the Virginia Convention, March 1775
Now, there's the small problem that Patrick Henry was a monarchist...kinda odd when you think that the Yoo Ess of Ay coulda had a Prussian prince as King of America (he was invited but turned the offer down). And if Ben Franklin had had his way, we'd have had a turkey as our mascot instead of a bald eagle...and we came close to choosing German as our national language after the Revolution.
Just think. A German speaking, Prussian-monarch-ruled nation with a turkey for its emblem. Imagine your dollars (sorry, guess it woulda been "taler") with a big honkin' turkey on the back, with "EINS" in huge letters. And a picture of König Friedrich Wilhelm IX on the front. Odd...
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
Quality of Service and Class of Service are designed to make the net a better place to be. They have been implemented by Cisco, Nortel, Microsoft, Linux, HP, Extreme, (insert nearly every network vendor/os on planet).
I want to be able prioritize my real time traffic over my non-interactive traffic. I want my internet game packets to have higher priority than my email.
ISPs are going to use this technology to better manage the traffic flowing across their networks. They'd be stupid to start blocking access to content from a legal and PR nightmare standpoint.
This stuff has been around since the start of IPv4 (ToS bits, now Diff-Serv) and is finally being implemented.
Check out http://www.qosforum.com if you want actual information about these technologies, not FUD.
Or check out the ietf DiffServ, MPLS, or IEEE 802.1p/q pages if you want to see why so much effort has been put into these technologies by the standards bodies and the commercial and non-commercial OS/network vendors.
Note: I work for a company who tries to educate and explain new internet technologies. The website above is one that I am the network admin for.
That's what I'd name the software! I can't believe I'm about to say this, but shouldn't PBS try to get into the ISP game for unbiased/unrestricted access...no, wait, then we'd never be able to visit Republican sites. Hmmmm, tough nut to crack.
Smacks of American Bar Association, they've got to be behind it. No wonder the Phillip Morris site is slow this morning.
...and stop calling me 'Shirley'.
That's bull; access to the internet is access to the internet. You don't (and can't) sue when there's a network outage.
More to the point, there are a couple of valid uses for that kind of thing. First of all, ISPs in many areas of the world are forced to restrict access to sites to conform to local legislation. It's assinine but true. And it's easy to see that happening in America - the last decade of the Republican Party being a front for the Christian Coalition is more than illustrative enough.
Second, bandwidth limiting isn't exactly a new thing - it's used to determine quality of service. As a return for tv cable monopolies, cable co's have to devote a certain amount of broadcast to the public - public access television. It's not unreasonable to see that bandwidth might be treated in the same way - registered not-for-profit sites getting an allocated chunk. Or that pornographic sites be limited to a certain chunk (a weak second best to the point above, no doubt).
--
There is no premature anti-fascism. -Ernest Hemingway
If they claim to be an internet service provider and restrict access to any part of the internet then sue or bring charges of fraud. The internet is the whole thing. There is no right to rewrite reality.
IANAL
I agree
I first received my cable access, and I was restricted after the first month, they changed over their rules and all of us suffered. it was awful, and the worst part was that they had a monopoly in that area. I moved so I am fine now, but until someone can regulate the providers we can be screwed. The designers are not at fault, the providers are for sure...
First Post!
This feature is not new and it wasn't Cisco who started it. If companies wanted to do this then they would have done it with or without Cisco. Packeteer for example.
But all the same it is interesting that Cisco makes router configurations on higher level protocols. I thougth it's not their territory.
-Danny
There is a way to prove it. If you can get access to a linux box outside of the cable network, set up a tunnel to it, and make that tunnel your default route. Compare access times w/ and w/o the tunnel to a website you ssupect them to be throttling or blocking. If the tunnel is faster in spite of the extra hops, they are throttleing the connection.
In a related note, I discovered that Digex is silently proxying web access upstream from my provider using a prot redirector. Usually, it works OK, but some days it is overloaded and I can get faster web access thru the above mentioned tunnel.
Hasn't this feature (bandwidth throttling per IP) been in IOS for a long time now? Granted, almost every network tool has a potential for misuse, but panicking over a hyped-up Yahoo newsbit is silly. Besides, if the cable companies decided to do it, there's really no way to tell except to subpoena the router configs for every upstream node in the network. Not exactly a PHB-friendly tactic.
-- lk t lv ll th vwls t f wrds. T svs lts f tm t wrt bt ts pn n th ss t rd nd mks m lk lk cmplt dpsht.
Yes, it is very disconcerting that Cisco has found it serves their customers to provide such ethically questionable software. And of course it will be used for all the wrong reasons. But I think they (Cisco) have forgotten one of the fundamental rules of networks -- route around the glitches and find an optimal path through the maze. Unless the entire infrastructure is owned by a single controlling entity, no cable company, ISP, ASP or telcom can permanently limit bandwidth to/from any other entity.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -- Aurther C. Clarke
Frankly I think a little overreaction would be good for this issue. Most people don't seem to care that the same people who shovel crap over TV are going to try to lock us in to the same crap through the internet. At least this will get media attention.
I wasn't aware that ISP's are required to provide unrestricted access. Is this legally mandatted, or simply a policy of the backbone providers? Policies can change, especially when there is bigger money at stake.
The problem with assuming that the market will force providers to allow the freedom we expect is that it assumes that unrestricted net access is the most profitable.
That is not guaranteed! Big media is already paid billions by advertisers because they have a captive audience. What do you think is more profitable, selling real net access, or selling locked, proprietary content, loaded with ads, under the guise of net access? It is not in their interest to allow individuals the ability to publish on the net, because that is in competition with their own services.
And don't think competition from DSL and other technologies will change this. I'm speaking generically, because the telecomm and media industries are already intertwined in this realm. ATT owns cable companies, and MediaOne is providing phone services. They'll all follow each other's lead, doing whatever makes the most money.
I suspect the (US) courts would side with the offended party, as this surely meets most definitions of "anti-competitive".
Maybe such devices will end up being banned, but will be sold in a version where the feature is disabled, but easily restored, just like assault rifles...
I've known for a long time that the web sites mentioned on /. are orders of magnitude slower than the rest of the Internet. I always thought that this was to compensate for the audiences unusually long attention spans, and attention to detail. I saw this as a courtesy.
/. articles?
After all, good things are worth waiting for, so when I see that 'loading' bar zip back and forth across the bottom of my browser, I know I'm in for some good reading. And every time I get that little 'no response from server' pop-up, my anticipation just builds. The best sites, by far, are the ones that allow you ample time to get a coffee - and to indulge in the comforts of a physiological break. Sites like the 'world's smallest web server' are enough to make me pee my pants, and at work that would be embarassing. So I really do appreciate the significant delay these sites provide - as a courtesy.
So, you see, there's nothing to balk at in this new-fangled scheme. It's a value added for the customer. Sort of like PIII enabled sites.
But why invest in special hardware and software, when the CableCos could just submit the sites they want to slow down, as
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
OK, there is going to be a massive overreaction to this story. A few sanity checks.
... QOS metrics that prefer internal web sites to external (from the cable network) ones are already easily implementable, if not already implemented.
Cable Modem providers must provide unrestricted access if they are to recieve the pricing schemes that ISPs get for WAN circuits. As soon as they filter access, they aren't considered an ISP per se, and have to pay much higher prices for their circuits. This will self-regulate.
Cable modems are being treated by some providers as a LAN based technology, and the companies doing this (read Cox in Arizona) are filtering inbound access over certain ports, not allowing customers to run servers on the cable, etc. These inferior products will be edged out of the market by other technologies.
As soon as your ISP or cable provider decides that they can control your traffic, they can do a bunch of things that people wouldn't like
The moral of the story is that if you want leased-line style unrestricted access, you can dial up, buy DSL, or get a leased line. If cable providers don't want to play in the unrestricted access ISP field, then the free market will judge if it is a good idea. Don't blame the provider of the technology, blame the provider of the service that chooses to restrict your access.
When I left Cisco, I swore I would never attempt to teach IP routing to a clueless crowd ever again. Time to renege, I guess.
I have not seen the marketing materials Yahoo! is talking about. But I do know what a Cisco router (and a Nortel, Bay, etc) can do. One of the things it can do is prioritize or block traffic based on source/destination pairs, protocol numbers, whether or not its SYN bit is set, whatever. What I am seeing is that people somehow find fault in a router being able to do this. I'm speechless. Depending on the drugs you were smoking at the time, you COULD find fault with Cisco Marketing playing up this feature. This, combined with the fact that cable ISPs (let's not dance semantically here, shall we) are monopolistic entities by virtue of their infrastructure ownership, can be seen as quite nefarious. But can any of you goobers actually tell me that the fact that you can filter traffic on a Cisco router is, of itself, wrong? As an ex-member of Cisco Engineering (though not speaking for them) give me a goddamm break.
Your ISP can filter websites any time they want, by the way. The difference is that you have a choice in dial-up ISPs. You typically don't with a cable ISP, giving the latter much more leeway in the unethical things they can do.
The universe is bad enough without people poking it. -Mustrum Ridcully