Cox Communications and "Congestion Management" 282
imamac writes "It appears Cox Communications is the next in line for throttling internet traffic. But it's not throttling of course; Cox's euphemism is 'congestion management.' From Cox's explanation: 'In February, Cox will begin testing a new method of managing traffic on our high-speed Internet network in our Kansas and Arkansas markets. During the occasional times the network is congested, this new technology automatically ensures that all time-sensitive Internet traffic — such as web pages, voice calls, streaming videos and gaming — moves without delay. Less time-sensitive traffic, such as file uploads, peer-to-peer and Usenet newsgroups, may be delayed momentarily...' Sounds like throttling to me."
This has been envisioned for quite a while... (Score:3, Informative)
Don't confuse things! (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, the technology could be the same, but let's keep the issues separate. After reading about this stuff for a while now it hit me that there is confusion. I am starting to wonder if the confusion is on purpose.
One issue is over subscription. Unless a company is large enough to have lots and lots of peer connections, your ISP is probably over subscribes their upstream connections. This is fine, because on average traffic goes in bursts. The problem is that everything starts to break down once you have a small pool of people running P2P 24/7. These people are just as greedy as the ISP's they complain about. They want a huge "dedicated" pipe, but have others subsidize it. I have no issue with someone like Cox de-prioritizing their traffic so that the people that just want their Vonage to work don't get squashed out. This is a temporary solution because the ISP will eventually have to up their pipe speed.
The other issue is granting certain companies privileges on a network and penalizing other companies they don't like (e.g. penalize Vonage and prioritize a VoIP partner). This should be illegal. This is a clear case of violation of neutrality. At the same time, the company should be able to directly peer with a company (say a VoIP provider) without violating the law. This may seem unfair, but peering has been a perfectly valid way of reducing traffic on a transit connection.
The last issue is traffic caps. I don't think there should be a law against it as long as the company is upfront about it. Putting caps on traffic allows ISP's to maximize their over subscription and cater to people that want low cost Internet service. We *want* people to afford Internet services. The market chooses. If you are a big user of P2P, then you will have to go with another ISP that does not have caps. You may have to pay more for this privilege... sorry, but that is how things go. The market must have a way to manage scarcity of resources. If you want more of a resource, you will have to pay for it even it if looks the same (e.g. 5mbit from Cox versus 5mbit from FiOS).
Don't confuse QoS with net neutrality. As long as the QoS is applied equally, then it should be perfectly fine.
Re:QOS (Score:3, Informative)
Why should they only prioritize known good traffic? Why not just throttle known bad traffic (when there's congestion)?
Did you read my post about how prioritizing one protocol isn't the same as throttling all other protocols? I don't want my ISP throttling any of my traffic. In my opinion, none of my traffic should be considered "known bad traffic" by my ISP. On the other hand, it makes a lot of sense to prioritize traffic that they *know* is sensitive to delays.
Its not completely unreasonable (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Don't confuse things! (Score:5, Informative)
You keep saying this. Why do you assume that most people even have the option to switch and even switch to an ISP with "bigger transit connections"? I live north of Atlanta, GA and I have two options: Bellsouth DSL and Comcast cable. The highest plan I can get with DSL is 1.5Mbps, Cable 12Mbps. Oh ya, I can also choose to get a phoneline with Bellsouth and pay some third party for DSL over Bellsouth's lines (none of the 3rd parties will do naked/dry DSL). Guess which one I go with.
Not only this, but you somehow expect other companies to decide to lay down some expensive fiber of their own to compete with these ISPs, when the current ISPs had taxpayer money to help them. This is why we, the people, should be able to have a say in this or the invisible hand of the market is gonna bitch slap us all. The ISPs need to upgrade their stuff, with the money that we are all giving them, and stop wasting money on finding out solutions on throttling people. It's possible, other countries have 100Mbps+ connections for their citizens.
Re:So.. (Score:3, Informative)
When the superbowl halftime show starts, there is a visible drain on water resources across the country. Due to these spikes, the water provider simply cannot maintain full water pressure, and overall water pressure suffers. If they were to maintain full pressure, they would need to greatly overbuild the system for normal usage, and everyone's water bills would double or more.
Same thing with the internet. Most people use network resources in random bursts (with certain trend-lines throughout the day). If you have enough bandwidth for all of your customers to have a saturday evening without hitting max, you've provided a solid level of service. However, when one person on a switch can consume the full bandwidth of a T1 , and attempts to do so all the time, it's bad. When you have apartments full of people doing that, there is simply no way that can be maintained at the asking price range. I remember when a network that I was helping to administer was brought down in 2002 because one computer was in direct communication with 5,000 other computers, and the computers innocently started DDOSing us with requests.
A full T1 with dedicated bandwidth used to cost 500 dollars a month (probably less now). A cable modem that gets used sporadically and in bursts costs about 50 dollars per month. Almost anyone who really wants one can still get a dedicated T1 installed in their home, but few people do. It just isn't worth it. On the flip side, properly explaining the intracacies of selling shared bandwidth takes pages and pages of explanation... pages that you actually did recieve when you signed up for the service, and which is about as efficient as you can do it.
How much are they overselling is another question, but if done correctly people will (and have been) jumping at the overall price difference without any noticeable difference in service.