Bell Canada Official Speaks Out On Throttling 207
westcoaster004 brings to our attention an interview with Mirko Bibic, head of regulatory affairs for Bell Canada, discussing the ISP's traffic-shaping practices. This follows news we discussed recently that a class action lawsuit was filed against Bell for their involvement in traffic shaping. Bibic reiterates that internet congestion is a real problem and claims that the throttling had nothing to do with Bell's new video service. CBC News quotes him saying:
"If no measures were taken, then 700,000 customers would have been affected by congestions during peak periods. We want to obviously take steps to make sure that doesn't happen. So this network management is, as we've stated, one of the ways to address the issue of congestion during peak periods. At the end of the day, the wholesale ISPs are our customers and we generate revenue [from them], so we want to make sure we're serving them to the best of our ability as well."
Excuses. (Score:2)
Anyone else get a bunch of JavaScript errors form the CBC.ca site?... (Opera 9.27, XP, JavaJRE 6U6)
Damn Canadians! (Note: I am one)
This is what happens... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is what happens... (Score:5, Insightful)
For the vast majority of consumers, if they were forced to use an ISP that didn't "sell more capacity than they can deliver", e.g. an uncontended line, they would prefer not to buy internet at all.
The (sad, perhaps) fact of internet service provision is that without pushing contention to 10~20, prices would be beyond the average consumer's desire to pay for internet.
Re:This is what happens... (Score:5, Insightful)
The main problem with the current state of ISP's is that they *claim* to sell unlimited / no contention internet access and have no intention of ever delivering. Instead they throttle, block, apply qos, or otherwise impose a hidden limit on the bandwidth you are allowed to use.
If you want to limit the used bandwidth, go ahead. Just spell out exactly what those limits are in a contract with your customers.
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If you want to limit the used bandwidth, go ahead. Just spell out exactly what those limits are in a contract with your customers.
"Exactly" is a dirty word and non-existant concept in corporation-to-consumer contracts (especially terms of service).
See: "reserve the right", "may", "will do x for the stability/integrity of the network/product, etc.
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bullshit - DSL does .. EXCEPT speakeasy (Score:4, Interesting)
One exception: Speakeasy, who lied to me during pre-sales chat [flickr.com], stating I could use 100% of my bandwidth 100% of the time, and that they don't regulate their connections at all [flickr.com] -- ultimatley called me up and told me if I didn't download less than 100G a month, that they would terminate me.
They then had the gall to try to silence me with a threat of an early termination fee, and took many months to properly pay me back for the pre-paid month of service that I didn't get.
They are assholes. They should burn. But Patriot.Net? Capu.Net? Silcon.com? All great ISPs that let you do what you want.
Re:This is what happens... (Score:4, Insightful)
Mmm, no. They'd prefer to buy internet with speed appropriate for their desired price range.
For the ISP it's much easier to compete by marketing bullshit speeds they have neither capability nor intention to actually deliver. Competing on price would be much more of a pain, not to mention that the big guys lose the advantage of wider throttling gains than the smaller ISPs can achieve.
without pushing contention to 10~20, prices would be beyond the average consumer
It's not a question of contention, it's a question of labels. It would be entirely possible to sell exactly the same service as today, with the exact same infrastructure as today but with an accurate label. If the connection is throttled, fine, sell the connection as whatever the throttling is at. Consumers don't want that? Then let them go to the more expensive competitor that actually upgrades its infrastructure.
Re:This is what happens... (Score:5, Interesting)
No, I routinely hit peak throughput when serving heavy loads to clients all around the globe. I don't just hit it once either, there were times when all four of my boxes saturated their lines - 400mbit out, just for cheap little me. Meanwhile, I've visited local datacenters that have less aggregate bandwidth across their 50-60 cages, than I have in a half-rack.
So then, if the Dutch can sell me such plentiful bandwidth so cheaply, why can't these two-faced half-bred North Americans do even better with their big bucks and big business ? We had 10mb cable a decade ago. Where my fiber ? Where's my fucking fiber to the downtown high-density tech-capital home ?
Idiots, there is no other explanation. Lazy lying idiots.
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I can agree with that in regard to flying cars, we have enough problems with ones limited to the ground, and with flight it only added another dimensions, and exponential problems.
But, I dont really see how having more bandwidth would cause anymore damage... people would still use it for the same purpose, just more of it (information, music, movies, porn, maliciousness, et el)
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http://www.publicservice.co.uk/feature_story.asp?id=8447&topic=e-government [publicservice.co.uk]
Which basically sums it up.
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Oh yeah? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh yeah? Then add more bandwidth. Problem solved. Delivering as advertised is not a value added service!
Just an excuse (Score:5, Insightful)
We need to stop letting them get away with selling service to us that they cannot provide. As consumers we need to look towards other providers and build a market for service providers that don't pull these kinds of games. We also need to make it clear to these companies that their selling us services they cannot deliver is not acceptable to us. The only way they will ever get that message is through their subscriber numbers. As long as the big telcos and ISPs have the bulk of the customers they will never see the light until an exodus towards alternatives starts.
The only way that an exodus towards alternatives will occur is if we the people move in that direction and help the smaller companies build themselves up by moving to them.
This is all about overselling which has to be done to a certain extent but when the peak times cannot regularly be met then it is too oversold. Unfortunately consumers these days are sheep and will stay with these companies because they are cheaper/easier to get service from.
Re:Just an excuse (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem isn't oversubscription, it's that the capacity management policies of some providers haven't caught up with the usage patterns of the customers. During peak periods, something's got to give.
Given that there are no providers selling truly non-oversubscribed bandwidth today, would you rather that the providers change their advertisements to say that, or raise their prices to sell dedicated bandwidth?
Re:Just an excuse (Score:5, Insightful)
They know damn well the average usages of their customers, this is more a refusal to upgrade the infrastructure and blaming it on those who are serious users. Doing so would actually be competitive even and earn more business! what an idea!
If you are advertising XYZ service, it doesn't mean shoot anyone else in the foot in order to guarantee it.
If you can guarantee something by shortchanging the rest of your customers, thats not exactly a bargain.
How about use your government subsidies for what they were intended (which would actually generate more revenue) and not as profit margins?
In the end its the cable companies looking at short term revenue instead of long term
Re:Just an excuse (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Just an excuse (Score:5, Insightful)
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I keep seeing people write this, but I am unable to find good information to back it up. Are you repeating rumor, or can you substantiate?
Also, received tax breaks != "been paid".
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However, now that it needs to be upgraded, no further grants are forthcoming. Why would they be? People don't want to pay anything... much less more.
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The best I've seen is estimates of 1-2 billion in federal, state, and local funds to build out backbone which was later privatized.
Most of what I can actually substantiate is not a direct subsidy, but rather allowing telcos to add charges to phone (etc) bills in order to cross-subsidize internet. This is different from a government subsidy, since people can cancel their phone servi
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Re:Just an excuse (Score:5, Insightful)
For decades, Bell Canada was a goivernment-regulated monopoly with a guaranteed profit margin. In other words, the people over-paid for decades for phone service, thanks to government regulation. It was necessary at the time, but it should have had a sunset clause whereby the network would eventually revert to and be controlled by the public.
Remember, in Soviet Canuckistan, Bell throttles YOU!
Equality (Score:5, Insightful)
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You're not a financial accountant, are you?
Subsidy payments received do NOT affect the bottom line the same way as tax concessions do. Tax concessions are a reduction in below-the-line expense -- they do not affect the taxes owed by the organization. Subsidy payments are either income or reduction in above-the-line expense resulting in an increase of tax. Another option is to use the subsidy as an offset to the purchase/buildout of capital, in which case the
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I'm aware of the information in general, but cannot find anywhere an analysis with verifiable source documents.
Maybe I'm asking too much -- or maybe I've identified an opportunity for myself to create the same & publish.
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I *hate* that I find myself in the position of defending Bell, which has some of the worst business practices anywhere.
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Also, if a company can't provide enough service for its subscribers then it should divert some of the profits for building new capacity.
However, Bell Canada shows a growing profit:
http://teleclick.wordpress.com/2007/12/12/wireless-services-drive-46-increase-in-bell-canada-profit/ [wordpress.com]
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Otherwise I'm being lied to and cheated out of my money and time.
It's as simple as that.
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They know damn well the average usages of their customers
The average usage is fine. It's the top 2% of users that create most of the congestion.
If providing what they've sold is a problem because of those 2%, they need to specifically tailor their services "menu" to separate the 98% from the 2%. The problem is, they want to have their cake and eat it too: they want to offer unlimited transfers at high bitrates, but they don't want to increase capacity to handle a growing customer demand for what they promised in their ads. There are plenty of content-neutral technical measures they could employ that would do the trick. The only trouble is that the
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Also: They are doing this on third party networks those networks pay for guaranteed bandwidth between the customer DSLAM and the ISP's PPPoe Authentication equipment. That's on top of Bell getting half of the cost ($23 wholesale) of the revenue generated by each customer.
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Re:Just an excuse (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're confusing oversubscription and unsufficient capacity. Oversubscription is a good thing, it's the very reason we have switched networks in the first place.
The point is that a properly designed and sufficiently provisioned network should not suffer from congestion even if it is oversubscribed. If they've got congestion in their network core, then either they're doing their routing and scheduling all wrong, or they're underprovisioning their network.
Which is fine, as long as they explicitly sell it as ``underprovisioned service''.
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Most ISPs sell a connection that will reach up to Mb/s. In my neighborhood, the common number is 8Mb/s. But does that mean that the ISP has enough upstream bandwidth so that every single one of their 8Mb/s customers could download stuff at 800k/s at the same time? Not a chance in hell! In most cases, the ISP will have a
Re:Just an excuse (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, given that usage in general is never going to go back to the "email and text web pages" trickle of the late 90's and anyone with half a brain should realize this, what is an appropriate reaction by those who provide connectivity:
A) Build more capacity and adjust your rates accordingly to cover the cost
B) Choose a particular class of connection you "disapprove of" because it exposes the weakness of your network and throttle it.
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Telephone calls use 64KBps. Provisioning for peak times there is relatively straightforward - you just multiply the number of peak users by that figure.
Peer to peer apps, on the other hand, open up multiple connections in order to use all the bandwidth available to them. Additionally, this means that TCP "back-off" mechanisms help less with them than with single-connection apps.
End result of all this is that unless there's massive overprovisioning, p2p apps threaten to fill any pipe the ISP throws at it
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I live in California and after any significant earthquake this is exactly what happens. The telcos DO NOT have enough capacity for everyone to use the service at the same time. Granted, this happens less regularly than the traffic shaping at ISPs, but don't forget that your own example can suffer the same problem.
The POTS network is a perfect example of how it should work, though. The POTS network is oversubscribed, but not underprovisioned. If the only time it gives you a reorder tone (fast busy) is when the lines are clogged by jackasses calling 911 to report an earthquake (!) and relatives from Ohio calling their cousin to see if he's dead (?), then it's not underprovisioned, it's just experiencing extraordinary traffic.
Now, if you got a fast busy most evenings between 5-7pm just because there were a shitload
Shaping? Si. Throttling? No. (Score:5, Insightful)
If they were serious about addressing congestion, they'd prioritize traffic flows and be done with it. I don't think anyone would have a problem with putting P2P at a lower priority to HTTP. Of course, that doesn't help their master plan of billing content providers for tiered service, so they don't do it.
Re:Shaping? Si. Throttling? No. (Score:5, Insightful)
If other protocols were impeded, soon, all P2P would look like HTTP.
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What do you mean by "impeded"? I'm not advocating blocking anything in the slightest. However, you can prioritize highly interactive traffic (IM, HTTP, SSH) over bulk data like FTP or P2P transfers. This lets all the packets through, but doesn't make browsing impossible just because a tenth of an ISP's customers are downloading screengrabs of the new Indiana Jones.
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Impeding isn't "blocking". You could try a dictionary:
impede To retard or obstruct the progress of.
(The American Heritage® Dictionary).
However, you can prioritize highly interactive traffic (IM, HTTP, SSH) over bulk data like FTP or P2P transfers.
And then, as I said, very quickly P2P apps will start to mimic or run over "highly interactive traffic" so as not to be slowed down
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Impeding isn't "blocking". You could try a dictionary:
impede To retard or obstruct the progress of.
Take your own advice. A definition of "block":
Sounds damn near synonymous. Anyway, QOS is not the same as blocking or impeding in any way. With QOS, all the packets get through, just not at the expense of other traffic.
And then, as I said, very quickly P2P apps will start to mimic or run over "highly interactive traffic" so as not to be slowed down.
What would the advantage be? Why would the Bittorrent (or whoever) devs want to do that? There's a huge difference between bandwidth and latency, and optimizing bulk transfers for the best latency would be completely pointless.
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No, no, no. That's what Comcast is doing right now. What we want to do is leave everything unlimited, but prioritized. If it's 4AM and nothing's happening, why shouldn't a torrent get the full bandwidth possible? For that matter, if it's 4PM and everyone's out playing golf or something, why shouldn't that same torrent run at full speed then?
Exactly (Score:2)
Wanna reduce congestion? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wanna reduce congestion? (Score:5, Insightful)
a) sell slower links to their customers
b) sign up fewer customers (fat chance....)
c) expand the network
Double dipping from customers and content providers is not the way
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d) continue to rip off the customer because they can.
Looks like they picked d).
and leave us no choice, except to demand that the government take over the infrastructure and lease it out, not to the higher bidder, but to ones who will provide the best access. We need an alternative to the corporate ball and chain.
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Very good point. All those ads are currently served for free by the Bandwidth Fairy Guild, and it's unfair that Comcast has to pony up to carry that subsidized content.
a sort-of monopoly means they can be defeated (Score:4, Interesting)
That still gives Bell most of the revenues. (Score:4, Informative)
Looks like win-win for Bell. The get most of the revenues, and don't have to provide internet backbone bandwidth or tech support, they can now mess with your connection and don't even have to listen to you complain.
Bell gets about $20 out of $30 for just providing the throttled last mile. $30 out of $40 if you are on Dry DSL. So Bell gets to keep most of the money and they reduce over-head. I don't think they are going to be defeated by this.
I am with Vianet and being Bell throttled. I am canceling all Bell services (third party DSL, landline and long distance) and moving to Cable + VOIP.
I am actually denying Bell every penny of revenue they get from me. I will also tell them exactly why they are losing a long term customer and all associated revenues.
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I am with Vianet and being Bell throttled. I am canceling all Bell services (third party DSL, landline and long distance) and moving to Cable + VOIP.
Thanks for supporting the *other* evil empire :) IMHO Rogers is infinitely more evil than Bell. Rogers has been blocking P2P forever, long before Bell even started thinking of doing the same thing. You will also find Rogers prices to be ludicrously high, the networks even more congested, and the throttling even more draconian.
No, this isn't the time to cancel Bell, this is the time to hit up the CRTC, hit up your MP, and let me know exactly how unhappy you are with their lack of action. Organize write-i
Lesser of Evils. (Score:2)
I had a buddy test the theory. He got 250 kB/S using BT. I was getting 30 kB/s using DSL with throttling. That is faster than my unthrottled DSL speed. I can live with that.
Losing all revenue is going to have a much more significant impact on Bell decisions, than losing a bit of revenue and a pile of overhead. The CRTC won't do anything. Bell can easily fudge the network nu
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One of the tricks with Rogers is that BT download is (more or less) unthrottled, but upload is completely crippled. Have your buddy try it out.
That's one of the more insidious things that Rogers appears to be doing - they know even the average Joe will bitch and moan if their BT gets cut off, but nobody will notice if they can't upload. Kill trackers and BT in general by denying it seeders? Pretty ingenious.
Alternatives to Bell, and Bell's small print (Score:2)
One thing is worth noting is that nowhere in the conditions applied by Bell is there anything indicating throttling. If it is there I can't find it.
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In other news : Genetically modified pigs can fly (Score:3, Interesting)
traffic shaping only in peak periods? yeah right. (Score:4, Interesting)
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DL 5MB/UL 512KB
But it throttles that 5MB seemingly randomly, ocasionally I can get up to 600k/s download (using BT, HTTP, FTP, etc doesnt matter) other times 15k/s... noon, midnight, weekday, weekend doesnt matter... and 2 or 3 times a week, it just shuts down entirely for about 3 hours somewhere between 9PM and 9AM...
So i assume one of two things.
1. they don't know what they are doing.
2. they most likely dont know what they are doing.
They behave like an inf
typical bs (Score:3, Insightful)
And this DOES have something to do with their video site, you're launching a bandwidth intensive application which will be used during prime "congestion" hours. Disgraceful.
More lies (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r20567537- [dslreports.com]
Their ATM capacity is around 170 Gbit/s and their backbone traffic is around 125Gbit/s. They have 45Gbit of spare capacity and this is Bell's own numbers so who knows if they're inflated or not. Also, their DSLAM capacity is enormous so where exactly is the congestion? Maybe there are some DSLAMs that are congested but that's why you upgrade, not throttle your entire network and all 3rd party traffic over the ATM network.
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I dunno, the interwebs is pretty heterogenous.
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Exactly. What a lot of people forget is that those graphs are averages over time. The reality is that a network link is either idle or transmitting at full speed at any given instant, and its output queue is either empty or has packets waiting to go out. Another way of looking at an 80% full link on a 5-minute-average graph is that that line was pegged for f
What about transparency and accountability? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is, how will we ever know whether or not a particular provider is throttling traffic in a fair and neutral way for the overall benefit of its customers... or whether it is cutting deals to favor business partners... or certain industry segments (the RIAA and MPAA come to mind)... or even political parties?
If common carriers are allowed to do this, how will we know when they stop serving the public and start serving themselves... and how will we able to stop them?
They've chosen to solve their problem in a cheapjack, lazy, sloppy way that virtually guarantees future abuse.
Either way you cut it: it stinks (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Either way you cut it: it stinks (Score:4, Interesting)
At least the cable internet provider was never that stupid with marketing. It was always on a "best available" basis.
Off topic, but illustrative of what I think of Bell:
Now, the ONLY reason I use cable vs. Bell service is that Bell blocks port 25 -- both outbound and INBOUND. I tried it, and was lied to when I asked that exact question. They also will NOT unblock the inbound port for me, making the service useless. The only way to run a private mail service on the Bell network, using Bell services is... there isn't a way.
As a result of the direct lie, I was convinced to try the Bell service. I installed it, and... no email. After a few days I started investigating and discovered the port 25 inbound block. What a waste of time.
Rogers, on the other hand, doesn't block port 25 inbound (they now block outbound). However the Terms of Service explicitly state that I may not run servers. But... I have tried (and continue to try) to purchase business service from them. And they refuse to sell it to me (something about the service not being available in a residential area). I have informed them that I will continue to run these services, and will purchase the business service when they decide to make it available to me. At least Rogers doesn't bother me about it...
Caps? Yes Rogers has a cap. They even allow me to exceed the cap, and tell me how much it will cost. Bell? They have already directly lied to me.
After outright lies and misleading marketing we have lawsuits.
Economics 101 (Score:4, Interesting)
Bill per GB, and set peak and non-peak rates. Be transparent about it though. People should be able to see how much they have used at any time, receive alerts when they cross some preprogrammed levels, and even choose to throttle themselves down when they cross a certain number of GB per month, or just during peak hours.
Make people responsible for their usage, and give them the tools to monitor/control it, and you'll find this problem will fix itself.
The ILECs spend money on improvements every day (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Lobbyists
2. Campaign contributions
3.
4. Oh, ok, a few bucks now and then on basic improvements in areas where they can DEFINITELY get a profit on them in the short term.
Now, that all works very, VERY well to improve the company. The profit margins of the company, that is.
But the Incumbent local exchange carrier companies (the ILECs -- other wise known as TPC) in North America have spent so much money on discouraging competition through regulation that they have made their own business very expensive to run. They also have policies going back to the late 1800s of treating jobs as cogs in a machine with replaceable parts, so their labor relations are geared towards replaceability and strike-resilience. It's very inefficient.
And in a business where things can be automated up to wazoo, the ILECs are hamstrung by unions and their own evil need to have huge headcounts so that their lobbyists can pressure their unions to pressure the politicians to do as their lobbyists demand. Need for headcount reduces desire for automation.
You want more bandwidth? Push for campaign finance reform. Whenever you hear ANYTHING that a local ILEC wants from a politician, call your local reps and tell them you wont vote for them again if they vote for what the ILEC wants. Then, after any election, whether your anti-candidate wins or loses, call them and tell them that they didn't get YOUR vote because they voted with the ILEC.
Only by removing the best business model the ILECs have (preserving the status quo and gaming our democracy) will you get ILECs which listen to customers.
diffferent battles (Score:2, Interesting)
Since the traffic shaping controversy began, I've been surprised by the number of negative (towards Bell) comments I've heard about it. Not just from my
A website is slow -- is this that Bell 'throttling' I'
Bell absolutely should be allowed to throttle... (Score:4, Interesting)
They should also not be allowed to throttle wholesale bandwith that other DSL providers buy unless those providers agree to the throttling (and advertising restrictions.)
Re:Bell absolutely should be allowed to throttle.. (Score:2)
truth in advertising laws should kick in. They should only be allowed to advertise their DSL service at the lowest throttling speed. So if you buy service X that throttles protocol Y down to 20kb/s, then Bell should only be allowed to advertise that service as a 20kb/s service.
Most anyone without a service level agreement is paying for "Up to XMb of bandwidth"
All the ISP has to do is say "up to" and they've weaseled their way out of accountability.
Bell Canada on the other hand, used words that promised more than "up to" and I think they're screwed.
Re:Bell absolutely should be allowed to throttle.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Only in Peak Periods, eh? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is actually an issue for several of my clients who use P2P for backup purposes, etc. So I watch what is going on in terms of throttling. I can demonstrate that Bell Canada is throttling P2P at just about any time you care to mention, including 4 A.M. Sunday morning. Does Sunday morning sound like a peak period to you? Or does this smell like more B.S. (Bovine Scatology)?
Fortunately, this issue won't be affecting my clients for much longer at all. I have nearly completed a P2P application that does all its work over port 80, and as far as the ISP is concerned, the traffic will be indistinguishable from loading a series of web pages with large graphics.
I dare them to throttle HTTP.
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That's why I'm using jpegs. In fact these look like perfectly valid jpegs, right down to the beginning, end and size of the files. Only thing is the part in the middle is pure binary file transfer contents - the middle 99% or more. So - think they can decide what is a legitimate jpeg that's real vs. a legiti
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Incumbents love getting us lost in minutiae (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Incumbents love getting us lost in minutiae (Score:5, Informative)
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Huh? Where I come from, we charge the phone company for use of rights-of-way [ecnext.com].
P2P (Score:2)
Back in the day... (Score:2, Interesting)
when I had a single 56k dial-up connection that was shared among four computers congestion was the norm. In such an environment, even viewing a single web page often filled the available bandwidth. This made browsing from multiple computers at the same time nearly impossible. To counteract the issue, I implemented a single SFQ QOS on my router and within minutes after turning it on, the congestion was well under control.
Congestion primarily occurs due to more data being sent than can be received during a
cough, cough (Score:2)
How oversubscribed is Bells network? numbers... (Score:3, Insightful)
Think for a second how oversubscribed Bells network is. Here you can use Bells own claims. "5 percent of users generate 60 percent of its total traffic":
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080519-regulators-want-answers-from-bell-canada-on-p2p-throttling.html [arstechnica.com]
So how much are those nasty 5% capable of gobbling down?
If you max your cap that is 2G/day. Say all of it is in the peak 12 hour window (but actually heavy downloaders run 24/7).
So 1G/6hours. 167MB/hour = 45 kB/s. This is the most on average, that the theoretical bandwidth hogs can use. Bell advertises a service that is 10 times that speed. So if everyone was a peak user and only used it during the peak window, bells network is over-subscribed by 10 to 1 vs the evil bandwidth hogs.
BUT these are the evil 5% choking down 60% of the bandwidth according to Bell. How much does the other 40% (good users) average? So (60%) = 5% x 45 kB/s = 224kB/s, so (40%) = 150kB/s
So a "good" user averages 1.58kB/s, less than modem speed. If sold a 5mb/s connection (Bell advertises up to 7mb/s), they are oversubscribed about 300 to 1 on what they expect from users.
So is a 300 to 1 over-subscription fair? Perhaps bell should be forced to tell it's customers their target average usage for their network. In Bells case that seems to be 1.5kB/s average if used a lot by everyone. Is this adequate for a service sold as up to 7mb/s fast and never shared??
http://www.bell.ca/shopping/PrsShpInt_Perf.page [www.bell.ca]
"Consistently fast service that's never shared"
High speed always on, never shared internet connections are not the telephone service, with 5 minute hold times and 2 hours a week usage. This is multi-hour/day usage. Attempting to solve bandwidth problems by traffic shaping traffic you don't like is a never ending cat and mouse game that doesn't address the real issue: Over subscription of the network or a completely incorrect usage model. This has to be addressed regardless of any traffic shaping. What is next shaping youtube? Voip? VOD? How can this be justified when you start offering VOIP and VOD services.