Georgia Tech's ShaperProbe Detects ISP Traffic Manipulation

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Ars Technica: "Two researchers at Georgia Tech can tell you exactly how American ISPs shape Internet traffic, and which ones do so. Bottom line: of the five largest Internet providers in the country, the three cable companies (Comcast, Time Warner, Cox) employ shaping while the telephone companies (AT&T, Verizon) do not — though that fact is less significant for the user experience than it might first sound."

Re:Cue the cable company bashing in 3...2...1....

[Squiddie]

Their network runs on public land. They are also granted exclusivity by local governments. I think that regulation is in order.

Re:Question

[ozmanjusri]

Is shaping the same as throttling?

Sort of.

Online, shaping and throttling are something network companies do to customers. In meatspace, throttling is what customers want to to to network company executives.

HTH.

Re:Cue the cable company bashing in 3...2...1....

[bondsbw]

Since when is exclusivity a free market solution?

Re:Question

[L4t3r4lu5]

It's car analogy time!

Shaping is like putting a bus lane / car pool lane on the motorway / freeway; Buses and car pool drivers can move through quicker, at the expense of car traffic having one less lane on the motorway, much like VOIP would be given priority over BitTorrent, or somesuch, but the cars and buses are all capable of going at maximum speed (should traffic allow).

Throttling is like variable speed limits. In the interest of keeping traffic moving freely across the whole motorway, the speed of heavily trafficked areas is slowed down so it doesn't cause congestion. 70MPH becomes 50MPH in the same way that 10Mbit becomes 2Mbit.

Data caps are like a bastard child of toll roads; You've driven a certain distance on this road which is covered by vehicle excise or fuel tax, now you have pay a toll. To travel further on this road, you pay more tolls. You can drive only so far each month on the toll roads for free.

HTH.

Re:Cue the cable company bashing in 3...2...1....

[muridae]

If the cable company wants to operate without oversight, then they can buy back the copper that the government paid them to install, and pay me and other land owners for the right to run their service across my property line. Until such time that they do so, and as long as they continue taking advantage of government assistance, they can and should answer to government regulation.