Bittorrent To Cause Internet Meltdown 872
Gimble writes "Richard Bennett has an article at the Register claiming that a recent uTorrent decision to use UDP for file transfers to avoid ISP 'traffic management' restrictions will cause a meltdown of the internet reducing everybody's bandwidth to a quarter of their current value. Other folks have also expressed concern that this may not be the best thing for the internet."
File Service Protocol (Score:3, Interesting)
"They" said the same thing about once popular File Service Protocol (http://fsp.sourceforge.net/) way back when the net was young, pre-Napster, and before any massive internet infrastructure investment was made...
Re:fairness (Score:5, Interesting)
There's no way that BT's protocol could be as sophisticated as TCP, given its 30+ years of development. Most people don't appreciate how amazingly well TCP's flow control works in terms of maximizing link utilization in a way that is fair to all network users. We really don't need is an arms race of new, greedier protocols.
TCP gets a lot of credit it doesn't deserve. It enforces bad design -- most client/server applications should be either stateless or session-based, rather than connection-oriented. Anything that even vaguely resembles a streaming application shouldn't even consider TCP. Finally, TCP's connection model is almost guaranteed to be suboptimal for any application that does require one.
What are the odds that HTTP, FTP, SMTP, and BitTorrent will all work optimally over TCP? Slim to none, and none is still waiting for Nagle.
Total bullshit (Score:4, Interesting)
UDP does not guarantee delivery. If ISP's want to, they can simply start dropping UDP packets once the total amount exceeds a certain threshold. This should be almost trivial to implement.
Sure, just blindly dropping all types of UDP packets will also degrade VoIP services etc, but certainly this does not need to impact "the entire speed of the internet".
Since VoIP and other "normal" uses of UDP do not need terribly high bandwidth, the problem can be easily solved by imposing a maximum UDP throughput per IP and simply dropping any UDP packets past that limit. That way, VoIP will still work just fine but other services "abusing" UDP will just be effectively capped by the unguaranteed delivery.
I'd love to see lawsuits about this as well, as UDP does not guarantee delivery so you would hardly have a basis to complain when ISP's drop such packets, especially as long as they deliver *most*, but not necessarily all such packets.
Re:Well Duh (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds like the ISPs should have used the tax incentives we gave them to increase network capacity and reach to, you know, increase network capacity and reach. If they had done that years ago to keep pace with the growth of their network traffic, they wouldn't be in this situation.
But no, of course, it has to be the person who uses their connection's fault.
I pay for a pipe. My ISP should take no interest in the source or destination or type of service connections in this pipe. Anything else is just allowing the system to be used abusively.
It isn't appropriate for legitimate bittorrent users to be driving other TCP off the network.
The only way the BitTorrent use can drive other users off to the network is if the ISP's network is misconfigured or is being overutilized due to too much overselling (you have to have some overselling, not everyone is on 24/7). ISPs that have their shit together will have their network designed to handle expected and future traffic growth such that all of their customers can use what they paid for.
you just want to bully other people out of their bandwidth so you get more
They paid for their bandwidth and I paid for mine. I have a cap on my connection speed; they do as well. The only difference is that their YouTube videos load instantly and my BitTorrent transfer is knee-capped. Who is the bully here?
This isn't the right way for BitTorrent to move forward
What is the right way to move forward? Accept that there are two levels of Internet traffic: "clean, good, wholesome non BitTorrent traffic" and "dirty, evil, corrupting BitTorrent traffic"?
About time to meter usage?? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:fairness (Score:5, Interesting)
To say that TCP is optimal at dealing with congestion is to say that individual packets are always a good representation of the data blocks being sent and received at the application level, and that best thing that any application can do when expected data doesn't arrive is to wait on it to be retransmitted, with the network layer queuing up all subsequent intact packets.
Once again, this behavior is guaranteed to be completely wrong for anything but toy command-line applications that fit on a single page in the back of a musty-smelling manual.
Re:fairness (Score:5, Interesting)
Not really. You would need that if you were transferring a file from one computer to another. But Bittorrent scrapes together little bits of file from lots of other computers. If a packet is lost here and there, that bit of file is naturally requested again, probably from a different machine. That's just a consequence of the way Bittorrent works.
That behavior needs to be driven by some timing and retry logic. Also, hosts need to determine how fast they can fire these UDP packets at each other. Those are the most basic fundamentals of transmitting bulk data over a packet network. You really would be reinventing some subset of TCP.
I think what he's trying to say is the TCP connection often gets dropped completely, for example the host just goes offline, or is bogus and transmitting false data. Bittorrent needs to account for this anyway by re-requesting packets from the network, so they have implement the retry logic differently that TCP anyway.
Re:fairness (Score:3, Interesting)
You're right. That's the real problem. ISPs are hacking vertically-- all BT traffic -- when they should be hacking horizontally:
I support a greedy node algorithm. Everyone starts with their burstable line, and the more you utilize, your cap slowly lowers until you reach a guaranteed minimum bandwidth threshold.
At the end of the day, greedy users will be greedy users. And if BT goes offline, they'll migrate to something else. And if I suck 100gb of crap off usenet in a month it's no different than 100gb of BT crap in terms of network stress.
Burstable lines make sense. It's a concept as old as timeshare. But if somebody is constantly "bursting" they need a governor on their line.
Re:A little extreme there, don't you think? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:A little extreme there, don't you think? (Score:5, Interesting)
"that Car Dealer thing is a terrible analogy. With the ISP model, everything you do with the 'bandwidth' you paid for goes through *their* systems first - "
Which is bullshit, consider the post office, I order something online from a retailer, does this give the shipping company or government the right to open my mail and packages because it passes through their facilities? It's bullshit plain and simple. They don't have a right to watch and monitor what you send. It's just another cash grab disguised as "helping the consumer"
Re:Everyone wants a piece of the pie... (Score:5, Interesting)
16 linecards at 50k each, for 800,000. Lets call it a cool mill in asset costs.
30k subscribers paying $20 each a month. $600,000 a month. $7.2 mill a year.
Yeah, I can see how the initial sticker value of a 2 router closet is going to a road to ruin for most ISPs.
I don't think ISPs are cash cows by any means, once you consider opperating expenses and labor. But a $1 million dollar switch station can be easily amorted out over a 5 year loan when the ROI on that million is quite solid.
-Rick
Re:A little extreme there, don't you think? (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree but I wouldn't say it's as much like buying a car from a car dealership, it's more like leasing the car for a term. They can set the cap on the milage you can take it and they can put in a governer and charge you more if you damage the car removing the governer or go over your alloted. But your point is that they shouldn't be able to limit how you use it, and I don't think there is anything in the contract saying that they can. They don't have any right to decided what is a proper use of your bandwidth that you are allocated. They can't all of the sudden decide to limit how much to use.
At the end of the month if your over your limit that is set(cap) charge them more. If they are only allowed 50gigs of data and they have more charge them per gig or meg or however you want to spell it out. It's not like they are uncapping their connection and stealing bandwidth from the stream. They are using their bandwidth that was given to them to the fullest potential. It's not their problem that the ISP decided to oversell their bandwidth. Thats like saying four people can have 100 dollars having 200 and when Billy spends his 100 dollars accuse him of stealing from the other 3 because theres only 100 dollars between the last 3.
Re:A little extreme there, don't you think? (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with bittorrent, is that it's MORE convenient than watching TV the old fashioned way. All the benefits of TIVO, except that I can use my computer (and keyboard) to specify which shows I want. I don't care which channels are broadcasting them, they just appear in the downloaded folder. I can watch from any computer in the house (or outside with a laptop). There are no DRM restrictions.
Re:fairness (Score:4, Interesting)
Wow, you got close to what I think is the solution. Every ISP can provide two virtual networks to each user. Where the edge of the ISP network sits; that point where end users are attached, it is possible to use routing to run BT traffic down one pipe and all else down another pipe. In this respect, BT traffic would not melt down the network or hog the connections of others in the neighborhood. If there is only 2.5GB/s available for BT et al, then only BT et al users suffer when it is full.
OMG, network design 101. hmmmm if I were an ISP, I'd set that up and explain that is how the new service works. The new P2P network is limited in bandwidth and your neighbors are the ones to blame if it is clogged. Yes, this even applies to businesses, co-op networks, ISPs, the lot. It minimizes infrastructure upgrades, and provides service as perceived by the end user, not as shaped by central routing equipment. You might think of it as an HOV lane, to use a car analogy.
Secondly, if networks were not oversold so much and under-designed so often, this would not be a problem. I really don't care how you slice it, this is a problem because of poor decision making by service providers. They wanted everyone's business (still do) but are not designing their networks to handle the traffic. When they build new roads these days, the build them so that extra lanes can be added in the future when needed. Why isn't that happening on ISP infrastructure?
Ignorant much? (Score:5, Interesting)
The author of this article could have called or emailed Bram Cohen before writing this article, but then he wouldn't have had such sensational tripe to garner page views. If he had, he would have known that he has got it completely wrong. The switch to uTP is actually to make BitTorrent traffic more friendly to Internet traffic. You see, BitTorrent is trying to sell a content delivery service based on their client and the #1 complaint from their customers (businesses with content to deliver) and their customer's customers (end users) is that the BitTorrent DNA client seeding/downloading in the background hurts the performance of other applications. That's unacceptable if you're trying to sell an unobtrusive alternative/complement to traditional CDN.
Yup, good ol TCP is what is causing the problem. That's because BitTorrent breaks the assumption in TCP that one application needs only one TCP stream to do its work. To solve the problem BitTorrent acquired advanced congestion control techonology and it's inventors from "Plicto." The congestion control technology lets BitTorrent work without causing crazy latency for other applications on the box. BitTorrent is the responsible party here, recognizing the need for congestion control and implementing it in their protocol. Compare that to the author of this article who saw that BT was using UDP and assumed it was a naive attempt to get around ISP blocks.
The people who work at BitTorrent are smart enough to know that you can't beat your ISP by making a new protocol. The ISP sees all and can control all, even if it may lag behind the changes. That's why BitTorrent has been working to make changes where it can make a lasting difference, in the political layer of the network.
Re:A little extreme there, don't you think? (Score:3, Interesting)
You know what I'd like to see happen? Deliver the throughput that I pay for. If I exceed that throughput, charge me for whatever I use in excess of my allotment, or cut off my service. Whatever the terms of my contract state.
My ISP charges me a fixed rate for a fixed amount of throughput (100 GB per month). If I and everyone one else try to download large files during peak times, our transfer rates will suck. Just like everyone getting on the freeway at the same time to drive to work causes traffic congestion, or those same people all firing up the air conditioner at the same time when they get home from work may cause brown outs.
Do you want the utility company to decide how you can use the electricity that comes in to your house?
My traffic is just as "legitimate" as yours. We're both just moving bits of data. Why should your bits take priority over mine?
Re:fairness (Score:5, Interesting)
TCP does work well, and certainly the axiom about those who don't understand TCP being condemned to reimplement it badly is a valid one. However, it is the wrong tool for many modern applications. If you're writing networking code and you find yourself fighting TCP's behavior, it's not necessarily your fault.
The developers of BitTorrent have long since passed the level of play where they're better off using TCP/IP because "well, because that's what you're supposed to use." My objection was to the naive canonization of TCP as an all-purpose protocol that's somehow magically superior to any protocol that the application can implement on its own behalf.
"Because it's the most router-friendly protocol" is also no excuse. Applications that aren't a good fit for TCP often abuse the protocol, e.g. by disabling Nagling and tinkering with other parameters in an effort to make it work more like, well, UDP.
Those developers didn't reimplement TCP badly, but they might as well have, as their efforts are likely to have the same effect.
IETF ALTO (Score:3, Interesting)
Both BitTorrent and Comcast are working in the IETF ALTO [ietf.org] working group, which is intended to improve the use of bandwidth and other resources by P2P.
Having been in these sessions, it is clear to me that BitTorrent has no interest in melting down the Internet and is well aware of the implications of what they are doing. Note that if worse comes to worse, UDP can be blocked too.
Re:fairness (Score:5, Interesting)
Except that one of the cool things about UDP is that it doesn't have to get through, so your router can drop all it needs to if it starts saturating your bandwidth. UDP has no guarantee of reliability at all.
I think going to UDP would be cool for another reason: there's not all the setup and teardown for connection. If 200 people each request the same block from me in a minute, do I really want to have to go through something like 'hi can I talk to you, what port should I use, hey here it comes, do you have it, ok, I'm done talking to you go away', or should I just shovel it out? If packets get dropped en route or mangled, do they not each already have enough hashing provided by the .torrent that should indicate they're bad, and to re-request?
Re:fairness (Score:5, Interesting)
You could make the opposite argument: the cool thing about TCP is it automatically retries and resends any dropped packets, so your router can drop all TCP traffic if it needs to.
Overselling peak bandwidth is fine (Score:5, Interesting)
Mislabeling it is not. If you sell 1MBps with a 25GB/month cap, then you need to be advertising your "1MBps peak bandwidth, 0.01MBps constant bandwidth" service, not misleading your prospective customers.
Practically every ISP should be overselling peak bandwidth; because people don't all use it at the same time, your only choices are to let them use as much as they can (overselling) or to throttle them. But both peak and aggregate bandwidth are important; if you're not providing much of the latter you shouldn't get to imply otherwise.
Re:A little extreme there, don't you think? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you took the current ISP business model to any other industry you'd be laughed out of town, yet they get away with it.
Cough...fractional reserve banking...cough
Metered QoS (Score:2, Interesting)
SCTP (Score:3, Interesting)
p2p applications should switch to SCTP.
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2960.txt [ietf.org]
Re:why (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not that it's harder to throttle. It's that if a network is a mix of TCP and UDP traffic filling up the capacity, the TCP will back off, and the UDP won't. In fact, with a crappy back-off protocol in a UDP application, the TCP will continue to back off until almost nothing is left, while the UDP grows and takes it all over. UDP was not intended to be a peer of TCP, but a tool to help. Using UDP to transfer large files in this manner makes as much sense (from a network design logical stance) as using ICMP. Sure, it could be done (embed data in the ping packets), but why? TCP exists to do this, and already does it well. UDP should be left for real-time appliations only where lost packets could never be usefully recovered, and some light-weight low-use applications like TFTP.
All capacity will be used sometime. If there's a backbone problem and smaller links carry more traffic there could be bottlenecks. Maybe we are just talking about the access to someone's house, and that's easier to clog. Whatever it is, the issue is that the Internet will experience congestion. It has to, that's the way these things work. What matters is what happens when it is full? With more UDP and less TCP, TCP will generally suffer a greater impact. At the heart of it, that's the real issue. Yes, they should have enough capacity to hold the traffic almost all the time, and people won't be filling their tubes all the time either. But this is a design issue that would be true no matter what the capacity is.
Re:A little extreme there, don't you think? (Score:5, Interesting)
Excellent analogy.
Selling a clearly marked service "
- "5mb/sec, 50gb/month"
- "1 air transfer to new york, you and 20kg of stuff, this friday at 0800"
then they oversell their capacity based on statistical analysis and when their statistical model fails, which it will always do, statistically speaking, they tell you
- "you bandwidth hog, we bill you on a backdated, horribly expensive business plan AND cut you off from now on AND never deal with you again. And if you sue, we tell everyone about your midget porn"
respective
- "We are totally sorry you cannot take this plane, take a later plane with an upgrade to business class OR take a hotel on us OR take some hundred dollar compensation"
And I was always furious about airlines doing this. Now it turns out they're actually pretty sensible about this matter and pure angels when compared to other businesses.
Re:A little extreme there, don't you think? (Score:3, Interesting)
Civil disobedience in modern society just gets you in a lot of trouble.
Stupid Rosa Parks and her civil disobedience. Could have avoided all that hassle if she had just given up her seat......
Re:A little extreme there, don't you think? (Score:5, Interesting)
The real world of us grown-ups outside the Soviet Union is not about real actual costs and real actual usage, it is about contracts and contractual compensation.
Which is the reason why a bottle of Coke costs 1 dollar at the store and 20 dollar at a fancy restaurant.
Which is the reason that all the people flying with you in an airplane all paid a different price for their seat.
If you abolish that, you help people in the short run, but instantly abolish freedom of contract as the basis of any and all successful economies.
But that's too far out to mention here, because in this country, we have laws of commerce which basically just say "a contract is a contract is a contract" albeit in a hundred different clauses.
Which brings us back to your post: company A offers a contract to the general public explictly stating "x mbit/sec and no other limits for the low low price of 10 dollars per month". When General Joe Public accepts this contract, Company A and Joe are in a binding contractual obligation with each other, out of which neither can escape for non-serious reasons without serious lawful consequences.
Company A didn't sell "a reasonable and sane share of x mbit/sec, while we define what 'sane' actually means" just as Joe Public didn't pay with only a part of his 10 dollars.
If that wouldn't be the case, we would have an economy where every partner in a contract could give as much or as little as he wanted. This may work for money donations on Christmas and candy on Halloween, but is no basis for an economy. That's why we write down contracts since the Middle Ages and have contract lawyers a dime a dozen.
If you object to that, I will gladly sell you my new car for which YOU pay full retail while I deliver only a glossy brochure, three wheels, a tiny spare wheel and a bag of seat stuffing. And then terminate my contract with you telling all the world how greedy YOU are.
Re:A little extreme there, don't you think? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you lost a lot of credibility when you called a contributor to the WiFi and Ethernet specs an "industry mouthpiece".
Re:A little extreme there, don't you think? (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, one could block BitTorrent. It's possible. Of course, it would be re-written into a different form, that one would also need to block. And again. And again.
The general term for such a game is "arms race". It frequently continues until both participants are eliminated. You don't find either saber-toothed tigers or mastodons around anymore. And BOTH Athens and Sparta ended up conquered by Macedonians.
Personally, to me it seems fair to offer a fixed amount of service/month + a cost for extra service. AND TO MAKE IT CLEAR!!! Hiding things in blocks of text is not making it clear. And if they advertise unlimited service, then they are *emphatically* required to deliver on their promises, even though they can't possibly do so. There should be (are?) severe legal penalties for lying in your advertisements. They should be enforced.
I see the entire mess as companies trying to get out of living up to their advertising claims. I see no justification in allowing them to do so.
Re:A little extreme there, don't you think? (Score:3, Interesting)
Recently the hospital I work at got a call from the local power company asking us to run on genny for a few hours and sell them some of our excess juice.
Re:A little extreme there, don't you think? (Score:2, Interesting)
I didn't realize i was griping, but i'll address your points one at a time here:
Commercials yes i realize they make money from the commercials, why don't they just make their own torrents which include commercials? Personally i wouldn't mind a bit, it's not the commercial-freeness of the shows i see online that i like, it's that i can get an entire series all at once and not have to worry about missing an episode.
No TV/Radio/Internet without advertizing? I agree on the TV and the Radio, but i pay for my internet with cold hard cash, without advertising, there may be less content, but advertising has nothing to do with my internet connection, or are you saying that they subsidize the internet with advertising dollars that they make from cable?
Higher Prices yes, perhaps for some the prices will be higher, however if they were to offer many tiers of bandwidth then the prices might actually be lower (assuming that all programing and internet were through one connection) Here's an example. i use an average amount of bandwidth, and watch relatively few shows on cable, so adding the cable shows to my internet bandwidth would not really affect it much, for others however, they might not use the internet much and instead chose to spend countless hours watching some inane completely mindless utterly ridiculus cable programming (such as ESPN) for them, adding the cable would drastically increase their bandwidth and therefore they would have to pay more for it.
Other countries? first, i mentioned absolutely nothing about other countries, but what you say is probably true, and the reason for it is likely that the technology originated in this country therefore since it's been around awhile we now have an antiquated system whereas newly connected countries can put the highest quality systems in right from the begining. its the same reason why there are more cell phones vs landlines in Iraq than there are here. it costs money to change the systems, but at some point you have to do it if you are going to remain competitive.
Re:A little extreme there, don't you think? (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know where you live, but I can use electricity any way I want, how ever much I want.
The limitations are not from the electric company, but the buildings own infrastructure. Glass fuses are pretty old school. Probably not a good idea to have 3 computers plugged into the same outlet. But if I decide to run my own mini datacentre with AC and humidity control, in my own apartment, the electric company can not say anything.
A sudden spike in electricity usage is also not grounds for termination, but it can be grounds for a search warrant due to marijuana hydroponics, but that mostly applies to homes. And even then, if police discover you growing tomatoes instead, there is nothing the electric company can do.
Of course, if you're running a hydroponics growing operation, regardless of what you're growing, your electric bill will be pretty high. But hey, if I transfer 500gb of data in a month, my internet bill should be kinda high too.
I think the trick here is to find the right balance between dollars and bits and turn the internet into a utility. $1 / gigabyte is NOT a good balance. $0.10 / gigabyte might be. That's $50 on that month if I downloaded 500gb.
These are numbers pulled out of my ass here, but in my non-expert opinion, $0.10 to $0.20 / gigabyte of data transferred seems like a good rate, maybe ontop of a small set monthly rate for speeds. $5/month for 3mbps, $10/month for 8mbps, + $0.10/gigabyte transferred.
That seems fair to me.
Re:A little extreme there, don't you think? (Score:3, Interesting)
Last I checked, the USPS still asked if you were shipping anything dangerous, flammable, or perishable. They also employed a team of postal inspectors to handle cases of fraud, abuse, and other illegal activities taking place in the postal system.
So, yes; they do have the right to screen your mail.