ISPs Hate P2P Video On-Demand Services 231
Scrumptious writes "CNET is running an article that highlights the problems associated with video on-demand services that rely on P2P technology to distribute content. The article points out that ISPs who throttle traffic on current generation broadband, and negate network neutrality by using packet shaping technology, are hindering any possible adoption of the services offered nervously by content companies. Many broadband consumers are unaware of how hindered a service they may receive because of the horrendous constraints enforced by telephone network operators. This was a topic widely covered in 2006 in the US, but is now practiced as a common method within the United Kingdom."
No way (Score:5, Funny)
Inconceivable!
Re:No way (Score:5, Interesting)
However, video p2p services don't have to suffer this way. The service provider is being shit by not preferring local peers over distant peers. If they recoded their applications to take explicit measures to route the majority of traffic within an ISP's address block then it would escape traffic shaping and throttling which happen at the interface to the network.
So the ISPs wouldn't lose money, and the punters could watch their porn. So whose fault is it now?
ATTENTION!!! (Score:3, Funny)
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Well, American ISPs aren't thrilled about P2P software either. I have reasonably fast 6MPS downstream, but my upstream is throttled to a small fraction of that by my ISP. I don't use P2P applications, but because of the nature of my job, I do often have to transfer large, uncompressed video files, and the paltry upstream bandwidth is a real hindrance.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
It's all about peering arrangements. (Score:5, Interesting)
ISPs in peering relationships want to get rid of packets. so generally, if you have two ISPs, A and B, and A is sending a lot more traffic to B than B sends to A, A is going to be paying B for the privilege of "getting rid of" packets.
If two ISPs are sending each other around the same amount of traffic, they have an even peering arrangement. Typically no dollars are exchanged in this scenario.
This means that when you, as a broadband customer, upload, your ISP has to "get rid of" the packets you are uploading and send them to other ISPs. If a lot of your ISPs customers generate tons of upstream bandwidth, the other ISPs that yours pairs with will start demanding some money in the peering arrangement, since they receive more traffic from your ISP than they send to it.
Heh, this is difficult to explain without it becoming confusing, but the gist is... Upstream bandwidth is expensive. Downstream bandwidth is cheap. In essence, those who generate traffic subsidize those who receive it.
This model sucks, but it's why we likely won't see more than a megabit upstream cheaply in the states anytime soon.
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If network B requests data from network A, network A won't be the ones to have to pay for it. That's like charging the person receiving a telephone call.
By the way if you want to pay me to get rid of your packets I meter
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It should be noted that TFA is talking about British ISPs.
In finest Slashdot tradition, I didn't read TFA. However, there are honest ISPs in the UK who make clear what the limits are, and offer unlimited packages for more money. I'm on an unlimited package and paying about $60/month (versus ordinary ADSL packages at the same nominal speed, which go from free - $30/month these days), and given the amount of stuff I download and upload I would really know if there was a limit.
What I'd really like is
Re:No way (Score:4, Interesting)
Not really a problem. I've been thinking this for a little while: ISPs need to raise their rates. This "illusion" they're fostering can be as damaging for them as it can be annoying for their customers, but marketing doesn't want to charge above some magic figure they've conceived because they think everybody will ditch them for the alternative (or just ditch broadband, a thought gives them cold sweats.) Seriously, capitalism means charging a reasonable rate for a reasonable service, not position a multi-million dollar company on the bleeding edge of survivability.
I think the average joe will go for it, too. A variety of services, such as phone , entertainment on demand, and information all can be had through one pipe, yet we're really paying for a lot less.
Before I get flamed to hell, yes I understand that most ISPs are money-grubbing idiots who want to protect a shitty business model. I still think most of us are paying a lot less than what we're really getting.
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Re:No way...Cox Comm in SD does it (Score:2, Insightful)
This $hit pisses me off. I went YEARS with no break in services (ok, except during very heavy rains when ALL of cable went out). So one day I decide to try out Limewire. Things are good for a few months. THEN! I start dropping connection all the time. I call their tech support and they SWEAR they don't traffic shape. "Your cable modem is 5 years old, it's time to buy another one", is what I'm told. Bull$hit. I couldn't go 2 DAYS without a dropout when I had Limewire and/or XBOX360 (playing on-line)
Re:No way...Cox Comm in SD does it (Score:5, Interesting)
At my company we have have a single aDSL connection that we share through a NAT Linux router. When I started using eMule, everything was OK... until a coworker started using eMule as well, which made the internet connection practically dead for everyone in the office until we shut down the mules. We tried lots of tinkering with the connection settings (lowering the max number of connections, connections per minute, etc.) and eventually found out that many people shared more or less the same problem, but we could never solve it.
The combination of bit torrent + eMule also showed the same symptoms through the same router... but when tried through the same provider with a different setup (direct connection to a Windows 2000 workstation) it ran perfectly. I never found the reason to this problem, but evidence points more towards the NAT router and P2P connection handling than to the ISP.
I also had some problems when connecting to certain sites and certain POP3 servers (timeouts) which I eventually traced to the MTU size configuration, after the most painstaking diagnose you can imagine... modem connected to windows worked fine, windows through NAT Linux router didn't... this is a sort-of common problem with PPPoE connections and bad routers or heavy firewalling, which looks like your internet connection is acting up, but is probably your own fault or that of the server you're contacting.
Morale: There's lots of things that can go wrong with TCP connections, and it's usually very hard to diagnose since you hardly get a look at the full picture. ISPs are not always as incompetent or evil as we assume.
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Thanks for the reply. I really am looking for alternative explanations, but it's hard to believe anything else when the only common denominator is P2P (during bad service).
You mentioned that you found it to be your router. Did rebooting the NAT-enabled router have any effect? If it were some sort of configuration or MTU problem with the router, I'm not sure, but I'd think rebooting the router might do something. In my case, it did nothing. All I had to do was reboot the cable modem. My Belkin wi-fi
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Your cable modem is 5 years old?? My cable modem started being spotty when it was 1.5 years old... a tech came out, and he said that they routinely replace that model of cable modem for other customers when it gets to be 1 year old (I guess they don't make them like they used to...). It turned out the tx/rx power levels were just a little too low, and we found a splitter we could remove, which boosted the power levels up to acceptable levels. But he said that it's getting more routine for cable modems t
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Odds are to 'hack' (aka, bring up the web console) into your router, you need to directly connect your PC to it, set your PC ip address to 192.168.100.2/255.255.255.0, and open a web browser to http://192.168.100.1./ [168.100.1] If that doesn't work try 192.168.10.x.
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Fact is- they make a profit or they go out of business. Either bandwidth gets cheaper or you will be paying more for service in the future as these bandwidth intensive
Spurious Analogies'R'Us (Score:2)
Now, instead of your spurious attempt, let's try an analogy that actually bears some resemblance to what we're seeing here.
They promised and you paid for a bandwidth of 3,000,000 chickens per month along their toll road, and when you had thirty acres and were only shipping 30,000 chickens per
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Not just phone companies (Score:2)
Yeah, WISPs are still a small percentage of online users, and often the last resort for people too far out
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I think you mean "customers trying to get what they think they are paying for". I agree that this is mainly the ISP's fault for making misleading claims, but a wise customer will realize there is a difference between guaranteed service and "best effort" service. Guaranteed service costs more.
ISP hate users that use bandwidth (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't really blame the ISP's as providing full bandwidth to all would be overly costly and ridiculous given the original traffic patterns but they are going to have to adapt to the new data patterns of their subscribers or lose to those who will provide it.
Re:ISP hate users that use bandwidth (Score:5, Insightful)
They could also charge for transfer used above an allowance (as most hosting companies do).
No, they want to carry on pretending that they are providing a service that they are actually not providing so that all the suckers (also called customers) will be willing to pay for higher bandwidth. If they realised that supposedly higher bandwidth services would just improve page download times a little bit, most people would be quite happy with sticking to the cheapest 1mbps ADSL they can get.
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That's an easy one: better to cap transfer speed than to cap amount of data (explicitly). Pose the question this way: would you rather get everything you want now, with the risk of not being able to get anything until "next month," or have a constant stream flowing (albeit more slowly) that you can turn off and re-purpose later?
If I "made the mistake" of downloading CentOS DVD's 10 times in the first we
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Clearly, you are on the side of BIG DOWNLOADS rather than small packets. Citrix users, game players, etc. want less latency and better consistency than just GIMME ALL I CAN GET. Don't forget there is more than one philosophy for the worth of an Internet connection.
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Sure. I switched over to one of those. The actual numbers I don't recall[1], but here's a sampling of SBC/ATT's services.
JoeSixpack Service: 384 Kbps to 768 Mbps
Regular Service: 768 Kbps to 1.5 Mbps
SuperDeluxe Service: 1.5 Mbps to 3.0 Mbps
Originally, I opted for the Regular Service. I typically got the maximum 1.5 Mbps, and life was good.
After a year or so, the service started to degrade to around 768 Mbps, so I said
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I hope that it will slowly make the backbone providers put more and
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Then maybe they should advertise it as such. I haven't seen a single add anywhere for an ISP that says web page and email use only. I personally wouldn't mind these policies if the the companies were up front and said "Bandwidth limited" rather than "
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You and I understand that. The ISPs understand that. Grandma does not. Joe Sixpack does not.
When ISPs offer unlimited service, the majority of people presume that really means "unlimited". Thus, we most certainly can blame the ISPs, for deceptively (if not outright "falsely") representing their services.
Traffic shaping is net neutral (Score:5, Insightful)
ISP's will not discriminate against packets based on their origin.
ISPs need to do traffic shaping to remain competitive. Let's not try and take away any truly valuable tools from them in our fight to keep the Internet free.
Re:Traffic shaping is net neutral (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to say, I really don't care for the attempt in the summary to rally the Slashdot troops around the call of Net Neutrality, when NN really doesn't have anything to do with it.
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How cute for you but I think that VoIP traffic is completely unnecessary. I already pay for a land line phone as required by my DSL. However, I don't like to pay for videos and I think that your VoIP calls should be able to take a
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I agree with you in that giving priority to some types of traffic, VOIP then lower say actual web browsing, then lower yet, p2p downloads. Meaning all 3 packets come in, route VOIP to the next hop first, then immediately route the other packets.(yes I know there are other types of traffic, I'm just using these 3 as examples)
However I think they are talki
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I haven't touched much Cisco equipment lately, but what you can do is limit the amount of traffic that a certain protocol uses. So if you have a 100Mb pipe, you can limit P2P to only say, 1Mb of that
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General priority-based processing just says that all packets are buffered for at least X ms, and if during that time more traffic arrives than can be de-queued, certain packets are preferred when de-queuing. This is incredibl
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4) Packets involved in general real-time web use (e.g. loading web pages)
5) Packets involved in non-real-time communication (e.g. email, voicemail, videomail, etc.)
6) File downloads/FTP
7) P2P services
P2P services rate last because they tend to suck up a disproportionate share of network resources, and because people tend to leave them running for long periods of time. And because a disproportionate share of the traffic is illegal file-swapping anyway.
I know someone is now going to popup and tell m
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I don't see how being competitive has anything to do with it when, in most cases, there is no competition to compete against.
Says who? (Score:2)
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- Force content providers to pay to access the ISP's customers
- Charge
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Both source discrimination and type discrimination are that: DISCRIMINATION. They have been discriminating by another factor for years (direction: upload/download) and it's NASTY that I can't upload my web site under reasonable time.
It's simple, really (Score:3, Interesting)
Or maybe this emerging set of content providers will band together fight the ISPs because they constitute a threat?
Then again, maybe a big media conglomerate will merge with AT&T to screw us all...
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Perhaps it's time for ISPs to actually deliver what they sold us! It's not the consumer's fault that the telcos aren't charging enough to cover the expenses of providing what they promised.
Government-protected monopolies (or government-owned monopolies, depending on where you live) do not get my sympathy.
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If they don't tell you ANY of that in any of their documentation, they are misleading you and your complaint is valid
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But it's not my problem, as a customer of my ISP. They've sold me 6mbps/1mbps service, with no caveats about where I'm getting data from or sending data to. In my case, I actually had to sign a contract to this effect.
At that point, I frankly don't care what their costs are for providing me bandwidth. They should presumably have figured that out before selling it to me at the price I'm paying.
Note that I'm not anti-corporation, nor do I feel they shouldn't be making money, nor do I feel ripped of
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Depends how they filter the traffic. If they specifically say "traffic from domain yyy.tld has higher priority" then it's against network neutrality. Instead, they may do "if traffic has the evil bit set, it has higher priority", which can then be considered as a type of traffic that's filtered less, it isn't considered netwo
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It wont require a media company for companies like AT&T to screw us all. In fact I doubt that AT&T wants to be a media company but rather would like to take their existing infrastructure, dump the net neutrality, and become a competitor to cable companies via IPTV and continue to be a carrier rather than a provider.
The way in which carriers like AT&T are going to screw us all is by discriminating network traffic so they can f
Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm curious as to your reaction.
The Problems of False Advertising (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, if you sell someone a car and tell them it gets 1000 mpg, but in reality this is only achievable when the car is pushed, don't be surprised when they call you out for fraud when it doesn't perform as advertised.
In my opinion these state-sanction monopolies need to be checked hard, and held accountable for every single dollar given them for fiber upgrades that have never materialized despite huge budget and schedule overruns.
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When the advertisment says "Up To 5 Mbps" and you get 2 Mbps, they are providing what is advertised. In reality, they are guaranteeing you won't get more than 5 Mbps. They count on the fact that consumers either ignore the "Up To" or read it to mean "very close to". It is certainly misleading, bu
multicast (Score:3, Insightful)
Solution (Score:4, Interesting)
No go (Score:2)
Should they start throttling based on target IP, net neutrality is the next issue they face. And if that doesn't work, well, set up a TOR server and
New Math (Score:5, Funny)
Re:New Math (Score:5, Funny)
In Soviet Russia, website downloads YOU!
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Opinion Piece Based On Little Evidence (Score:4, Interesting)
But no evidence is offered to justify this statement. How do they know that ISPs are doing it to limit illegal sharing? Is it not far more likely that they're doing it to save on bandwidth. In which case, no-one's being treated as a criminal, they're being treated as bandwidth-hogs. An issue worth discussion, but an important distinction, I think.
They oversold, so they hate it (Score:5, Interesting)
Network need for consumers vary widely. Some happily browse news sites and that serve just text. Some are bit torrent users. High time ISPs charge consumers by MBytes of data transmitted. They can offer cheapo services for people with low bandwidth needs, may be even as a loss. Those who download bit-torrents and movies will pay for the bandwidth they actually consume. Once the revenue of ISPs depend on actual data transmitted, they too will encourage and help people who transmit/recieve lots of data. It will be a good thing once the ISPs wake up and smell the coffee I mentioned earlier ;-)
Even in India they are able to meter the data transmitted and charge by the Megabytes. So it should not be too difficult for the ISPs to do it. But some things India does are very hard to believe. The mobile phone rates are something like 2 cents per minute with free incoming calls. And the mobile phone companies have a 40% margin! My brother-in-law executes on line trades with a commission of some 15 Rupees, or 35 cents US. How can they do that and stil be profitable?
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Frankly I've never understood why in the US all the ISPs only give "unlimited download" accounts. In Canada, from what I can tell, they offer different packages for different needs. For instance, Videotron offers:
20 Gb download and 10 Gb upload - $40/month (source [videotron.com])
Unlimited upload and download - $65/month (source [videotron.com])
It's a very simple system. Most users opt for the basic package (20 Gb down and 10 Gb up is plenty for most people!) and the "p
Re:They oversold, so they hate it (Score:5, Insightful)
Because people don't like surprises on their bill, don't want to estimate how much they've used, don't want to be calculating the cost of everything they want to do, and don't like to screw around with a complicated connection when simpler ones are available.
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I've currently got 8/0.8 ADSL (fullt g.dmt) and there are no caps at all, I even know of ISPs that don't block a single port (but they do send out abuse warnings to customers caught running spambots and also shut them down if they get more than one report of spam).
Basically the whole "charge for use" thing seems to be something that greedy american ISPs do to maximize profits..
/Mik
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ISPs vs Consumers (Score:4, Insightful)
They've been collecting extra money for years by selling us bandwidth we haven't used. They should use that as investment in more capacity to cover their obligations.
This is just another whining ploy by ISPs to force Network Doublecharge, claiming "Qos" is necessary because increased capacity won't work.
Just like in the 1990s the telcos tried to charge everyone extra for "data lines" and "data modems" because they were finally forced to deliver the local loop signal they sold, and were legally required to deliver for decades, but had cheaped out to make extra profit. And just like they whined that they couldn't deliver lots of DSL, or any other whining to protect their cartels from investing their perpetually record profits into delivering the product they're selling.
They're lying again, even the little ones who just want to be in the club with Verizon and AT&T. They should get kicked in the ass again, just like before. Every time that boot flies at them we finally get some innovation and improvement, even though they don't get their guaranteed exorbidant profits.
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Newsflash for y
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Second, I used to be an ISP, from 1995-1998, then I just collected the profits through 2001. So I know what I'm talking about.
Meanwhile, even the telcos' own research demonstrates that increasing capacity is a better ROI than is QoS, and it's a better solution to congestion. As we just heard presented to the public in a Network Neutrality hearing by the NY City Council which actually legislates these policies, including the home turf of Verizon.
People like me, and even
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When's the last time you spent $2.5M of your money because nobody else was going to provide high speed service to the sparse Canadian back-country population? I'm gues
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newsflash for you: companies are supposed to provide the service they advertise, barring fine print, and sometimes even then. it is not (or shouldn't be) legal to advertise a connection as 20mbit and only provide 3mbit.
if I'm paying for a 10mbit line, i expect to get approximately 10mbit of bandwidth, regardless of what I'm downloading with it.
if they cannot provide that, they should upgrade their systems or not advertise something they canno
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Truth in Advertising (Score:3, Interesting)
SUE (Score:2)
Welcome to the desert of the real (Score:5, Insightful)
For years, they've been touting high speed connections, trying to upsell Joe Average to 3, 4, 5, 6 mbit service. They know full well that the vast majority of Joe Average's internet usage is viewing web sites, sending emails, and streaming porn ten minutes at a time. In other words, they're selling him 6 mbit service for images and text down, text and clicks up. They know Joe Average is only actually using his pipe for a few hours a day, when he's not at work and not asleep.
Of course, they've succeeded in getting a lot of people to pay more money for more bandwidth that they don't actually use almost ever. Which, in a surprise to no one except the ISPs, means that new services are cropping up that actually use the bandwidth people have been sold.
So now they don't like it. Whoops.
It is to be hoped that enough people - enough Joes Average - want to use the new services like VOIP and "legitimate" P2P that the ISPs will actually face market consequences for overselling bandwidth, throttling upstream speeds, and shaping traffic to favor the stuff that's ISP-approved.
A few geeks bitching about asynchronous connections and random throughput caps just doesn't make a dent in Charter's bottom line. A bunch of people being told that despite CBS' promises, they can't download Survivor 2718: Mariana Trench because their ISP won't let them may actually bring some pressure.
Overselling is a great profit method right up until people start trying to use what they've bought. Ponzi schemes are always terrific moneymakers until your suckers^W customers try to cash out.
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Argument... (Score:2)
I once got into an argument with a former ISP admin.
It went along the lines of this:
Him: You can't just download massive amounts of data from bittorrent etc.
Me: Why not? All the ISP's talk about "unlimited" broadband, by that very definition they aren't limiting it.
Him: But they have to pay for that bandwidth.
Me: Yeah? And I pay for them to provide me a service that is unlimited as advertised, if
Real World Example (Score:5, Interesting)
All encrypted traffic is now throttled just because it's encrypted. All non-encrypted traffic is throttled if it smells like P2P of any kind.
If this hasn't happened in your neighbourhood yet -- just wait: it's coming, zone by zone.
Thank goodness for Usenet.
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It was rather funny when I turned in my modem at the rogers store and to
Fake example (Score:2)
I recently tried to download "Elephant's Dream" (the open-source 3D blender project) via BitTorrent
This is more like "I finally found something legal on BitTorrent, so now I can complain." Right.
It's easy enough to download Elephant's Dream [blender.org]. There are nine mirror sites. And if you download one of the streaming formats, you don't even have to wait for the download to finish.
It's a beautifully rendered, but otherwise unimpressive short film. It's more of a demo reel for Blender.
Dumb Rebuttal (Score:2)
Your idea that I'd have to stretch to find a legal download is ignorant. I live in Canada.
Usenet Choking (Score:2)
P2P is the wrong tool for the job (Score:2)
This stuff should be using plain old http or ftp, with a cache (e.g. Squid) at the ISP. Every one of these multi-gigabyte files should be transferred over their expensive upstream pipe once, and stored on a RAID of the cheapest $YOUR_LEAST_FAVORITE_BRAND hard disks they can get.
"Content companies", stick to the basics. And if you are sending the wrong headers, then you part of the problem. If you do it right, the ISPs will see what's in their best interest and start using the correct tools to handle it,
Obfuscation and Encryption will be their Undoing (Score:2)
it's just economics (Score:2, Insightful)
Most users don't need the kind of service which slashdot users expect. If users are prepared to pay more, there are options for them - AAISP [aaisp.net.uk] is one example. However the vast majority don't want to pay more than around £15-£25 ($30-$50) per month which (given the margins involved - BT take £8 per line and then wholesale bandwidth at what works out at around £.90 per GB IIRC) simply doesn't allow the ISPs to provide a decent amount of bandwidth.
When it comes down to it, they'd rather
Broadband Britain is screwed (Score:2)
Meanwhile, other ISPs have little incentive to compete, and are simply staying slightly ahead of BT with slightly lower prices. NTL used to be about the best, with 10Mb speed
so they don't like how people use it? (Score:2)
"our" issue with p2p apps (Score:5, Interesting)
Someone earlier used an analogy: 'Let us say I run a restaraunt and have been selling "all you can drink" coffee but I had been providing only thimble size cups.' Good start. Our problem isn't that you bring your own cup. Our problem is that you're sitting near an open window, and ordering a dozen coffees at once. Large ones. And handing them out to everyone walking along.
We don't mind providing the bandwidth to our legitimate users, that's why we're here. We have a problem paying for bandwidth to provide services for people who aren't our constituents or customers. We're especially troubled by that because we suddenly become the focus of all those 4 letter groups that we love to hate here, who come knocking on our doors because they seem to think we're "enabling" copyright theft or "serving" it. And our lawyers, like every other lawyer in the world, don't like these discussions because they don't KNOW that what we're doing will be a slam dunk in court and then they get cranky with us.
So we don't mind the concept of p2p. I assume you're doing things legally because you're all moral people, right?
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