| From an ISP Hi Everyone,
I am the network Administrator for a large ISP in Alberta. I run day to day operations including the administration of network traffic.
In reading the posts in this discussion, I'm blown away by the lack of common sense of some of the writer's of these posts. For those who don't know, every customer buys their internet connection from the ISP, and the ISP has to buy their internet feed from somewhere. While it would be nice to have an unlimited, open connection, with unlimited throughput, and unlimited monthly traffic... That is not possible.
When you think about how the Internet works, it's somewhat of miracle how well it works. There isn't really any one company that runs the internet. There are no internet police (for the most part). The internet is one giant network, that involves every country on this planet, and millions of people's hard work (burying fiber and creating websites). With that Said, we have to work together to keep it working properly, and efficiently. If everyone who had a computer suddenly started trading movies online, then every ISP would have to either expand their Infrastructure (widen their roads), or prioritize the traffic flows. Today's ISPs have amazing infrastructures in place and network professionals should be thanked as a whole for their growing expertise in the internet. However, the Infrastructure can't grow as fast as the growing usage of the internet, and thus, the growing usage of File-sharing programs like Bit-Torrent. Obviously, the #1 use for file-sharing programs is illegal use. The growing popularity of MP3's, DivX, illegal software, and other high-demand downloads has put a large strain on ISP backbones. While most of the uses are illegal, there are obviously also legal uses. But most legal uses are not nearly as bandwidth-consuming as the illegal ones. With that said any company in the right mind would not use a program like bit-torrent for their legitimate use.
Maybe that will convince you to delete your copy of Bit-torrent and sign-up for I-tunes, and go out and purchase all the software you need, rather than download it. (Wouldn't that be the day? I'm not even going to do that)
There is no point in blaming the ISP's because as someone said in a previous post, they're not in the business to put a smile on your face. They're in the business of being in business. Luckily, most of the time that means making the consumer happy. However no company is going to allow something to happen that is eventually going to put them out of business.
Think of it like this:
This situation is a lot like the government not allowing semi-trucks to be in a lot of residential neighbourhoods. There just isn't the room for big trucks to be taking shortcuts through people's front yards. They need to stick to the highways where they have to be weighed before entering/leaving a city. If they are overweight, they are penalized. |
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TELUS
join:2004-02-16
TELUS | "My broken logic senses are tingling!"
So why not limit bandwidth strictly for WWW/POP3/SMTP?
And place a filter on image/video files as well at the gateway, they can be used for "illegal purposes"
If you're the network administrator and you don't like [X], route it to [Y]. Go ahead. Do it. |
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 ManatriteShattered Reflection
join:2003-03-02
Canada
 ·Shaw
| reply to ALBERTA ISP
you are missing the point. Wasn't the purpose of introducing the traffic shaping to stop users uploading through bittorent? Since when are we talking about "downloading illegal stuff" that is the main cause of network congestion? The reason people are complaining because they cannot "download" which had an adverse effect from limiting upload bandwidth from BT.
I can understand why they did this but they need to somehow allow users to fully utilize whatever available bandwidth when it comes to downloading stuff via BT. They already did part of their job by limiting upload which partially cleared congestion. |
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| reply to TELUS
Re: From an ISP Lower your damn speeds if you can't handle the burden. Don't advertise such speeds as 5MB down and 640KB up if you can't handle the increased demand.
Bandwidth for ISP's gets cheaper with time. It doesn't get more expensive unless you keep offering higher and higher speeds to your end users, stop feeding people bulls**t.
»Backbones Getting Cheaper
If they pushed things too far, too fast, that's their fault. Users should switch if they feel mistreated, plain and simple. Don't bitch, switch. I would gladly switch to lower bandwidth with less restrictions if I started getting hit with this garbage. Take action against heavy users, don't cap EVERYONE so severely. Jerks. |
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| reply to TELUS
What are you talking about? How would limiting bandwith strictly for WWW/POP3/SMTP or image/video files make a difference if everyone else got unlimited P2P bandwith?
Not that I agree with his part of a company using bittorrent for a legitimate use. It does have some advantages for software distribution that can be used in a legal way. Such as valve's steam for distribution of Half-Life2. One can only hope they made changes to the bittorrent protocol to make it unique to their software distribution use. And hopefully that will allow ISP's to separate the two from regular bittorrent traffic.
In the end, your ISP is out to make money. And to do that they have to keep their cost down. One way of doing that is keep from having to spend more money on bandwith. That's the main reason they have a terms of service, to cover their ass, not your's.. |
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TELUS
join:2004-02-16
TELUS | Brown2:
Yes, and guess what?
Shaw's competitor offers unlimited bandwidth.
If a company wants to limit, why not limit everything?
Point DoubleClick to their own servers, for instance. |
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Reviews:
·Charter
| reply to ALBERTA ISP
Re: From an ISP Ok let me see if I can dumb it down for you. Very few people here do not understand that an ISP must pay for their bandwidth used however lets keep it simple.
If I open a restaurant and I sell people a fixed meal for a fixed price. This is described on the menu. You usually get what you pay for, ie, you order a Whopper you get something vaguely resembling a hamburger for the price mentioned on the menu.
If I open an all you can eat buffet, then I should by all means be ready to accept that for every 5 people who come in and eat a normal meal, there will be one who comes in and eats 6 steaks. Its part of good business sense. Or at least common sense.
As an ISP selling broadband you should realize that mom and pop are less likely to pay for broadband because of the increased cost of the service if all they are doing is emailing the grandkids. Therefore your business client is more likely to be the power eater consuming the 6 steaks. Therefore you need to correctly market yourself as a per plate seller rather than a buffet. After all isn’t it fraudulent to offer an unlimited buffet and then see how much someone is eating and ask them to leave or eat less? I feel it is and this is why people get so #$@#$@ mad about this. If your clientele has to few normal eaters and too many power eaters then admit that you cant sell to everyone as a buffet and correct your business model, not put fine print on the placemat of every table and expect everyone to live with it.
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The difference between foresight and hindsight is only a matter of when you bother to think things through. |
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| reply to TELUS
Re: What are you talking about? Telus, what is your point? You keep saying random bits, but you don't seem to have a point to what you say. Are you just trolling? |
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| reply to rahlquist
Re: From an ISP Normally when people go to an All-You-Can-Eat buffet, they are not presented with a contract that explains the terms of service for their dining session. Nor do they pay a monthly fee and get to stay there 24x7xMonth.
Internet users however ARE presented with a contract that explains the ToS and as well usually says the ISP can do whatever they want to an extent.
What is the deal with analogies on here? I have not seen one analogy that actually applies to how this works. |
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TELUS
join:2004-02-16
TELUS | reply to Brown2
Re: What are you talking about? Essentialy.....
Don't make promises that you know you can't keep.
Or.....
Don't say you have a superior service when you're crappier than someone else. |
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| reply to ALBERTA ISP
Re: From an ISP quote:
Maybe that will convince you to delete your copy of Bit-torrent and sign-up for I-tunes, and go out and purchase all the software you need, rather than download it. (Wouldn't that be the day? I'm not even going to do that)
what for? we live in canada. voluntary file sharing is legal for us according to the last ruling that i heard about in the canadian courts. the copyright laws are different here, much to the dismay of many american companies and orginizations. as long as you are not selling the copyrighted material, or forcing others to listen/watch, its ok.
quote:
There is no point in blaming the ISP's because as someone said in a previous post, they're not in the business to put a smile on your face. They're in the business of being in business. Luckily, most of the time that means making the consumer happy. However no company is going to allow something to happen that is eventually going to put them out of business.
youre on the money on this one. if you abuse my service, and creating problems for others on the network by causing disruptions, you should be peanalized for it. this is going to make the high usage guys irrate, but there IS a limit to what is reasonable for bandwidth usage [sorry, its true]. sure, backbone prices are coming down, but the demmand for bandwidth is going up [hence the drop in backbone pricing].
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im familliar with the Ellacoya equipment that Shaw is using. it really is a fantastic piece of hardware. this thing does quite a bit, you can impose both downstream AND upstream rates [not just per port], and change those rates at a given time of day. if shaw is simply using it to lower the boom on the BT ports, this is probably the wrong way to go about things. why not just limit the upsteream to a lower number? this is where the backbone will take the hit, so lowering the upstream makes sense. and you can change the rules at low usage times, so things can speed up at non-peak times of the day.
for any isp still currently using a packeteer or some other rate limiting equipment, look at what ellacoya networks has to offer. it has far more capabilities than im mentioning here.
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| If this is all shaw uses their Ellacoya for they should go back and look at the manuals to see what they can really make it do. As previously stated Ellacoya's equipement allows for throttling of bandwidth at selected times, by simply applying their throttling rules to certain degrees at certain times of day they can keep their overall average down while creating a minimized impact to performance for the user for in this case bit torrent. By keeping their average down they save coin an are able to provide better service in other areas at the cost of the service they are trying to slow down.
Packeteering boxes are hard to foil however so finding a way around it will be a challenge. The best way around packeteering is encryption, otherwise your traffic will still be picked apart and bittorrent packets say being moved on port 80 to try and disguise the traffic as web traffic will still be picked up as bit torrent traffic and rate shaped as such.
If ISPs are using packeteer boxes to target bandwidth abusers they should be focusing their efforts on real network abuse, like all the various rampant portscanners that exist on any broadband network. By using systems of the class that Ellacoya has to offer they can rate limit or even block out entirely traffic identified as abusive. Ellacoya allows for something called flow limitation which will reduce the number of TCP flows that can occur from one IP at a single point in time, an excellent feature to combat virus-caused network abuse.
Think of the size of your ISP, then think about how many users have virii on their systems that max out their upstream connectivity 24/7. If you do the math you can see that taking care of customers in this situation will save you an awful lot in terms of average monthly usage. Wouldn't you prefere that your ISP went after these people as opposed to users doing arguably legitimate tasks? Targetting a single P2P filesharing protocol is just a cheap bandaid solution that in the long run will produce aggrivated customers. As a network grows backbone connectivity needs to be expanded accordingly, Shaw is no doubt suffering from not taking the necessary steps to prepare for such growth. |
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| reply to smcallah
said by smcallah:Normally when people go to an All-You-Can-Eat buffet, they are not presented with a contract that explains the terms of service for their dining session. Nor do they pay a monthly fee and get to stay there 24x7xMonth. Actually, at some of them, they do. They tell you that you are not allowed to take food home, and to please always use a clean plate. Some of them you pay up-front before being allowed to entire the dining area, and if you linger for a while past when you are clearly finished with your meal, they will politely ask you to finish up your meal to make room for other customers that are waiting.
said by smcallah:Internet users however ARE presented with a contract that explains the ToS and as well usually says the ISP can do whatever they want to an extent. What is the deal with analogies on here? I have not seen one analogy that actually applies to how this works. I don't know, I thought that the "All you can eat buffet" analogy was pretty-much spot-on perfect, actually. |
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| reply to makewiththebits
said by makewiththebits:
Ellacoya allows for something called flow limitation which will reduce the number of TCP flows that can occur from one IP at a single point in time, an excellent feature to combat virus-caused network abuse. That's quite a clever feature. I like that idea. I could also see how XP SP2's new TCP connection rate-limiting "feature" is being possibly confused with that one, since the results would seem similar in practice.
said by makewiththebits:
Think of the size of your ISP, then think about how many users have virii on their systems that max out their upstream connectivity 24/7. If you do the math you can see that taking care of customers in this situation will save you an awful lot in terms of average monthly usage. That's a good point too. I wish more broadband ISPs would implement some sort of "quarantine" procedure for customers that are clearly infected with something, and cut them off from the rest of the network, or severely throttle their traffic so that it couldn't impose on other users.
said by makewiththebits:
Targetting a single P2P filesharing protocol is just a cheap bandaid solution that in the long run will produce aggrivated customers. As a network grows backbone connectivity needs to be expanded accordingly, Shaw is no doubt suffering from not taking the necessary steps to prepare for such growth. Clearly it sounds like that. |
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| I wish more broadband ISPs would implement some sort of "quarantine" procedure for customers that are clearly infected with something, and cut them off from the rest of the network, or severely throttle their traffic so that it couldn't impose on other users. If you have an opensource IDS like Snort for instance you can have snort forward alerts to an Ellacoya switch which could then redirect users that make web requests from an infected machine to a local webpage informing them that problems have been discovered from their system. You could even go as far in some cases as to tell the user the virus they have (if it has a unique footprint on the network) and offer them removal tools to fix the issue without even having to make or receive a single phone call. |
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Reviews:
·Charter
| reply to smcallah
You are correct, most times they do not present a contract in writing and neither does an ISP. I cant remember the last time I was given a writen contract to sign. Here again you come upon the difference between a click ok contract and a signature one which the legal systme wish washes on weekly.
Secondly the anology does apply because the 'all you can eat' is roughly quivelant to UNLIMITED internet access. What if GM said ok too many people with an extented vehicle warranty are running their vehicle too much so we are only going to let the vehicle run half the week because it costs too much to pay for the warranty repairs on those cars that get run too much?
Yes the aup says the ISP can usually do anything they want. My job description includes the clause 'and anything managment deems nessecary'. That doesnt include bending over for the boss.
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The difference between foresight and hindsight is only a matter of when you bother to think things through. |
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