Sprint Is Throttling Microsoft's Skype Service, Study Finds (fortune.com) 84
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: Sprint has been slowing traffic to Microsoft's internet-based video chat service Skype, according to new findings from an ongoing study by Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts. Among leading U.S. carriers, Sprint was the only one to throttle Skype, the study found. The throttling was detected in 34 percent of 1,968 full tests -- defined as those in which a user ran two tests in a row -- conducted between Jan. 18 and Oct. 15. It happened regularly, and was spread geographically across the U.S. Android phone users were more affected than owners of Apple Inc.'s iPhones. The finding is particularly troubling because Skype relies on Sprint's wireless internet network, but the app also provides a communication tool that competes with Sprint's calling services, the researcher added. "If you are a telephony provider and you provide IP services over that network, then you shouldn't be able to limit the service offered by another telephony provider that runs over the internet," David Choffnes, one of the researchers who developed the app used to conduct the survey, said. "From a pure common sense competition view, it seems directly anti-competitive."
Well (Score:3, Funny)
Re: Well (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
You're going to try to blame a Trump appointee's actions on Obama? Pathetic. Republicans ran out of ideas a long time ago, but you could at least put forth a little effort.
Re: (Score:1)
Something....something...Tea Billy Caucus...
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Obama appointed Pai because the rules forced him to appoint a Republican due to two Democrat appointees already serving. It was the Republicans that put him forward as a candidate (and as a Verizon shill), and it was Trump that appointed him chair.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There were multiple factions all pushing to get what they wanted; Doctors and hospitals wanting to charge what they liked - some were barred due to their high prices with no obvious improvement in quality of outcome or treatment. Insurance companies wanted to charge what they liked. Those with existing insurance wanted to keep their rates exactly as they were with no loss of cover. Those without insurance wanted all conditions to be covered, even the rare expensive ones.
Nobody was going to budge from their
Re: (Score:3)
We've never in the past needed legislation for every minutiae of regulation. It was assumed that the legislation was there to enable the regulatory bodies or to provide guidelines and that the regulatory bodies would then faithfully and honestly conduct the business that they had been set up to do. History did not prepare us for the possibility of a slash-and-burn administration intent upon the destruction of all regulations, since this had never been the stated goal of any political party.
Re: (Score:2)
If regulations are not thorough enough, then companies will find loopholes that allow them to violate the spirit of the regulation while technically still complying with the terms.
Laws and regulations are like any complex system, except lawyers are paid a lot of money to find and exploit flaws in the law, whereas people who find such flaws in software (ie basically doing the same thing) are branded criminals.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
And Obama appointed him because he was required to have a political mix on the committee and could not have only Democrats.
Of course, part of the problem comes from appointing industry insiders, and it's a problem that's been around for a long time and is hard to resolve. Part of the cause here is that if you want experts in a certain area then those experts are inevitably industry insiders. Ie, if you want knowledgeable banking regulators then your pool of candidates are going to be bankers, which leads t
Re: (Score:2)
I don't understand why the parent comment is currently modded 'funny.' It's all that really needs to be said on the subject.
As a consumer, it's nice to know which providers are throttling which services. But as news, this ain't it. From the summary:
"If you are a telephony provider and you provide IP services over that network, then you shouldn't be able to limit the service offered by another telephony provider that runs over the internet," David Choffnes, one of the researchers who developed the app used t
Neutrality of networks! (Score:4, Funny)
Wow, it's almost like there should be some sort of regulation to prevent a carrier from discriminating against traffic or services. You know, to enforce then neutrality of networks or something like that. Maybe we should all contact the FCC to suggest this:)
Re: (Score:2)
Such laws require much political cooperation and so are very slow to come into existence. But congress DOES enact such legislation. The trouble is that the telecommunication industry and market have changed much faster than congress can keep up. The previous congressionaal FCC legislation on this issue was when the internet was relatively new and the mobile phone sector was small. The bill is very long (well, not long for a bill but long for an average citizen to read, parse, and understand), and covers
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There is something worse than Skype for Business?
Re: (Score:1)
Oh come on, if anyone wants to provide a service that chews a significant portion of a cell sector, such as a 2-4 Mbits/sec of bandwidth. Take a few thousand CPU cycles and encode it in a way so it is not identifiable to the
Re: (Score:1)
Re:They get what they want (Score:5, Informative)
Fortunately for you Americans, your government has been paid by the ISPs to never have to deal with a free market ever again.
Oh, and you also have to subsidise their network upgrades.
It's a way of keeping profits private while socialising the expenses.
Re:They get what they want (Score:5, Interesting)
That's how the market works. Businesses are free to buy what they can afford, including government rules to help their bottom line.
At that it is probably inevitable in a market as the market rewards the most efficient, and it is more efficient to buy laws then to actually produce a better product.
In theory democracy could counteract this, but you need a functioning democracy.
Re: (Score:2)
I wasn't thinking of it in quite that way, but you're right.
In other news... (Score:2)
66% of Skype calls were not throttled.
Why were only some calls throttled? Enquiring minds want to know!!!
Re: (Score:2)
Beyond that, these sorts of external tests have absolutely no way to tell the difference between a congested uplink somewhere in the specific network path between Sprint and Skype versus "throttling." It's entirely plausible, and fairly likely, that no targeted throttling whatsoever is even occurring.
You compare the speed of straight Skype vs Skype over a VPN. If the VPN is consistently faster, then Skype is being throttled. If they're both consistently slow, then its network congestion.
Re: (Score:2)
To be rigorous, you would also want to compare it to Skype over an uncommon obfuscated protocol, and you would want to compare it to other VOIP programs. This would rule out VPNs being prioritized and all VOIP services being deprioritized. Though I don't mean to imply that that type of prioritization is okay.
Re: (Score:2)
You're right that the more comparisons the better.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
This.
I used to work for Sprint on cell tower performance. Each sector has limited bandwidth. If a sector has a high number of subscribers or if traffic exceeds a bandwidth threshold, they may throttle services. This can be to ensure all customers have lower latency, or to prioritize latency sensitive applications.
If you had a wide open pipe, without throttling, bandwidth hogs would ruin things for everyone else. Throttling isn't always a bad thing.
Re: (Score:2)
Its how you react to the slow down, who you blame. If it is intermittently slow and useless, would you blame the backbone, your ISP or the app. So they adjust the fucking with traffic to target the app, all the time and your a likely to blame the network, some of the time and you blame the app. They can also do disconnects, hey they can interrupt the call and serve an ad, they can crap all over it now, any way they want to.
Re: (Score:2)
That's a who lot of effort, to what benefit for Sprint? (They don't compete with Skype, after all.)
Do ceullular companies still make money off calls? (Score:2)
The finding is particularly troubling because Skype relies on Sprint's wireless internet network, but the app also provides a communication tool that competes with Sprint's calling services, the researcher added.
Do cellular companies still make money off of phone calls? It seems hard to find a non-unlimited calling plan these days, and I doubt I make even 30 minutes of calls a month
Skype quality (Score:2)
Well ... Skype itself seems to do some self-throttling.
Most my Video Skype calls, no matter the network, are like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Does anyone know a good site for testing this? (Score:2)
*It is quite possible that SFTP is an exception. To a deep packet inspection appliance a new encrypted TCP stream is created on a port the appliance knows nothing about. Almost every other TCP stream can be classified by the server port or by the initial handshake.
Everyone Against Net-Neutrality Please Die (Score:1)
Playing fair (Score:2)
Microsoft has NEVER wanted to play fair. Surely they are not now crying about Sprint not playing fair?
Nope. Microsoft is not crying about this. They don't even care. They know that an uneven playing field makes it harder for newcomers so they are happy even though this is hurting them. It is better for Skype to never make a profit or even just die than to let the playing field be fair.
Note that it is not Microsoft that noticed or said anything about the throttling.