ISPs Experimenting With New P2P Controls 173
alphadogg points us to a NetworkWorld story about the search by ISPs for new ways to combat the web traffic issues caused by P2P applications. Among the typical suggestions of bandwidth caps and usage-based pricing, telecom panelists at a recent conference also discussed localized "cache servers," which would hold recent (legal) P2P content in order to keep clients from reaching halfway around the world for parts of a file.
"ISPs' methods for managing P2P traffic have come under intense scrutiny in recent months after the Associated Press reported last year that Comcast was actively interfering with P2P users' ability to upload files by sending TCP RST packets that informed them that their connection would have to be reset. While speakers rejected that Comcast method, some said it was time to follow the lead of Comcast and begin implementing caps for individual users who are consuming disproportionately high amounts of bandwidth."
Perhaps it's time for (Score:5, Insightful)
Apply traffic shaping per-user, not per-service (Score:5, Insightful)
This is all we need. The problem is not that the providers aren't giving us enough bandwidth (they aren't). The problem is that they care what we spend it on.
This is no good... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok so, my ISP (theoretically) wants to keep the data my neighbour has downloaded, incase I want to download it to.
Yet, obviously these caches will have to be legal content, which means filtering out illegal content, which means they will be tracking everything I download, and thus, can force me to 1) pay more for this, 2) notify appropriate authorities, 3) limit my interaction with the rest of the world via the internet.
Although as stated in the article/summary its supposedly "temporary" but this means that ISP will have to start gathering massive amounts of storage, inevtiably making one ISP better at this than another, and hey fuck it, lets just have one ISP... and the internet just becomes Wikipedia.
I honestly can't see any benefit to this, it seems to just end up with steralization whichever way I look at it.
Here's a better idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Support multicast. If you build it, they will come and make a multicast P2P program on top of it, relieving your backbone connections of all the redundant connections.
I've got a good solution.. (Score:5, Insightful)
How about they roll out the infrastructure we paid for with our tax dollars, then not apply any "controls".
you know, a proper, neutral internet that fulfills the promises they made again and again to our government officials when they were given grants, local monopolies, etc. etc.
alt.binaries (Score:5, Insightful)
and who says p2p control is necessary? (Score:4, Insightful)
how about we also have http controls, and mms controls, and...
oh wait those are not being continuously vilified by the MAFIAA, who also own the news.
usage-based pricing (Score:1, Insightful)
Even better: make the pricing also destination-based and time-of-day-based, and suddenly, P2P software will care about locality and peak hours, solving the traffic issues.
As an ISP, if you bill the user exactly what it costs you, then the user will minimize your costs because he minimizes his! You also end up charging your "problematic" users appropriately (or losing them) so you don't mind them, and you win against the competition because they lose money on people who find their plan cheaper, and they lose the customers who find your plan cheaper.
Instead ISPs use convoluted pricing schemes so they run into all kinds of problems and need this telecom conference to help them.
I say, make the pricing scheme as accurate as possible, and let the market forces solve the problem.
Comcast is a little cry baby (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's see how this works... (Score:5, Insightful)
2. Significantly reduce performance of content with "unknown" legal status.
3. Result: legal content gets preferential treatment so legal downloading performs better.
4. Non-"neutral" treatment completely justified by the war against contraband.
5. Hit content providers for kickbacks, those that don't pay get their content treated as "unknown" legal status.
6. PROFIT!
Re:This is no good... (Score:5, Insightful)
The Fraud of the Cable Companies (Score:5, Insightful)
Tell me Comcast: Just how did your cable suddenly get better once you start charging me 2X to 5X as much as before?
They're just a bunch of fsking liars!
Re:total bandwidth used, not downloaded (Score:4, Insightful)
My ISP tells it somewhere on the web interface for my account settings. Moreover, the web interface to your ADSL modem probably also shows it somewhere, at least since the last reboot.
Re:Perhaps it's time for (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a bit like having a 300hp car but only fuel for a mile.
Yay for car analogies! But this one at least works.
Re:This actually isn't as bad as it looks... (Score:3, Insightful)
Answer me one question before applauding the idea: How are they going to discriminate between legal and illegal content without looking at what you're downloading?
Re:This is no good... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah I'm aware of that, and I agree completely, the problem is can you actually see an ISP (outside of smaller, barely making a profit, looking for clientele please join us ISPs) doing that so honestly?
That was sort of my point, in the immediate conclusion it seems like a great idea, but it gives far too much power to the ISP, or even more power to the government to control what the ISP can do.
It will make sponsored content (Windows Update, Fox News, etc) the primary purpose of the cache after awhile, it is a business after all.
People without the money to pay ISPs or Governors, or whatever to get their content approved for cache, will be on this lesser accessed, slower WWW, making it a pain to get real information or media, and since people are fundamentally lazy, they will inevitably give in, and just go with "what works, right now!"
Unlimited should mean unlimited (Score:2, Insightful)
If the network is congested I expect an equal share of the available bandwidth. Actually, I should get a share of the available bandwidth that is proportionate to my max bandwidth. For example, in a congested network I should get four times as much bandwidth as the person paying for 1mbps connection.
ISPs can do whatever they want (for example throttle P2P) just say so in the advertisement or at least when someone asks about it.
I am happy because my ISP appears not to limit my traffic (although I usually download only 100-200GB/month peaking at about 500GB/month)
P.S. why do I have to insert br tags to make a new line?
Re:Perhaps it's time for (Score:5, Insightful)
ISP: We offer "unlimited" internet access.
Customer: Sweet! *starts downloading*
ISP: Oh, we didn't mean you should use it.
They advertise a low price and a high speed, then oversell to get that price then reduce the high speed because of it. Hmm, methinks they need more truth in advertising.
Re:total bandwidth used, not downloaded (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, the ISP usually has a meter, but like Plasmacutter said, you trust it based on what?
And yes, most Modems, and also Routers have some sort of tracking... my modem doesn't however (Motorola SB5101), only various statistics about the signal/frequency/channels/Hz/etc...
And my router (D-Link EBR-2310) has WAN and LAN packet count, however does not say anything about the size of the packets.
Granted both are cheap pieces of shit, but so are most for home use...
And your OS can track it to some degree aswell, but what if you restart and forgot to write the last amount down?
But, I was just saying, how do you know that what you have sent and received is only what was necessary? it could easily be fudged intentionally, inadvertently by poor hardware, etc, or by miscalculations on any one of those steps. It's not accurate enough to really base a service on, at least not so strictly 12 GBs Maximum, it's like charging telephone calls per syllable, it would be an approximation because of different languages, accents, etc.
Some content doesn't WANT to be cached! (Score:2, Insightful)
If I'm serving up ad-supported content I don't want my content cached unless I can count the viewers so I can bill my advertisers.
If I'm serving up restricted-access content I definitely don't want it cached unless it can be done in a secure way.
If I'm serving up content subject to change I don't want it cached unless I can guarentee some level of up-to-dateness.
Having said that...
It's in the interest of "big content" to cooperate with "big pipe" to improve the customer experience. Happy customers are more likely to come back for additional products, which means more ca-ching! for everyone.
Re:This actually isn't as bad as it looks... (Score:3, Insightful)
They don't need to discriminate between "legal and illegal" any more than they do now for HTTP caches, which is not at all.
Re:p2p creates cost shifting (Score:1, Insightful)
Bits may be free-as-in-beer to you, but the peering arrangements that bring you those bits aren't free-as-in-beer to ISPs. When a Comcast user gobbles down a gigabyte of data from other Comcast users, Comcast doesn't have to pay transit. When that same Comcast user gobbles the data down from an AT&T user, the data flows across AT&T's pipes, and Comcast owes AT&T a few microbucks. Except that this happens in both directions, and bits are typically considered too cheap to meter, so typically "peering" arrangements are set up, wherein two ISPs agree to haul data for each other.
Problem is, if (due to a difference in the demographics of their customer bases) Comcast users tend to haul down, say, twice as much (or ten times as much!) data from AT&T's network as AT&T's users grab from Comcast's users, those peering agreements can, and will, be renegotiated.
So the solution, from the ISP's standpoint, is to keep as much traffic on the "LAN" (i.e., its own network segments) as possible.
And that's why (from the article summary) they want:
What I don't understand is why the very same ISPs are shutting down the very technology they're claiming to want to build. "Localized cache servers" have been holding "recent content" and serving it out to local customers on port 119 for decades.
As for the caveat that it be "recent (legal) content", from a copyright infringement standpoint, it's all "legal". ISPs cannot be sued for hosting infringing works so long as they comply with takedown notices. That was the intent (and the language) of the DMCA. MAFIAA gets the right to ask the ISP to delete files from the ISP's server. So long as the ISP does so in a timely fashion, the ISP cannot be sued for infringement.
The answer is to charnge per gig. (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Set a price ($1 a gig, minimum $50 a month).
2) Allow competition from providers in your area.
3) Observe the speed/bandwidth increase since it is being paid for.
4) Then observe the price drop as competition brings it down.
Without competition, you can't have this and will exceed your bandwidth eventually.