| [Hang on folks, this one got long as I ranted away...]
Finally, somebody's talking about the physical reality behind this instead of ranting about "rights". While I find the big pseudo-monopolies in Canada frustrating as hell, and I'm quite certain they're raking in excess profits thanks to this advantage (whatever they may claim about their margins), the reality is that you're not buying 3-5 Mbps of download or 384 kbps of upload bandwidth to do whatever you want with at all times, and your contract tells you that (sort-of). You're buying an averaged, time-shared piece of a smaller aggregated pipe. Typical systems are designed with a 50:1 ratio (though that's been dropping), meaning that if everyone had a 5 Mbps service and tried to max it simultaneously, you'd each get about 100 kbps, regardless of what data was flowing. I'd argue that they're not actually selling at "less than intended rates" either, I'd say it's at "exactly intended rates", but the usage model has fundamentally changed and users are not really aware of those "exactly intended rates".
What makes P2P traffic require special consideration is the impact it has on upload traffic. Residential internet infrastructure was designed primarily with web surfing and e-mail in mind, or more generally, a "client/server" relationship where the user is always the "client". That's why you have 5 Mbps download bandwidth but only 384 kbps of upload. P2P is nasty because it drives larger volumes of upload traffic (from the seeding servers) than the network was intended for.
A similar thing happened with dial-up traffic over the POTS (Plain Old Telephone System), which changed the assumed usage model and nearly broke the network. They eventually adapted (somewhat), but that problem is effectively what drove the development of separate data networks.
The problem is infrastructure. Networks (and computer systems generally) become unstable and inefficient when they're highly utilized. (Think about what happens when you run too many apps simultaneously on an underpowered machine running XP - much slower than if you had run each process one-at-a-time.) If the ISPs just let P2P traffic run wild, enough users would eventually bring the entire network to it's knees. Then you'd be complaining about how slow EVERYTHING runs, rather than just P2P.
This problem could be solved by competition, if a competitor could actually go out and build an independent network that allows them to sell a GUARANTEED 384 kbps of upload service. The trouble is, that would cost billions of dollars and you'd probably have to pay $100+/month for that service. This is like a Service Level Agreement (SLA) contract that large companies pay hundreds or even thousands of $$$ / month for (e.g. T1 service). What you're getting for $10's / month is a "best effort" service, without any real guarantees.
"Competitive" ISPs are just buying service off of the same two infrastructures (Bell DSL and Roger's Cable), so they can't really change the physical realities, they can only play games with subscription ratios, pricing, etc.
Basically, the residential service you purchased wasn't designed for P2P traffic. If you want P2P (or to run servers for commercial purposes, etc.), SLA services are available - for a price that you won't like.
The other problem is mass consumer behaviour (yes, us, at least to an extent), and a fundamental marketing mistake. If Bell advertised "100k/30k guaranteed service (with burst speeds up to 5M/384k)" while Rogers advertised their "Up to 5M/384k" service, who would win? Very few people have the attention span, time, patience or background to read and understand the full details. Heck, I only finally read the details of my Roger's contract to write this e-mail  However, as SIX said, a big problem is that the ISPs don't really make any effort to explain any of this, and you certainly won't find any "guaranteed" minimum level of service. That's partly because there is virtually no way to measure or track these things effectively if somebody wanted to complain anyway. Again, that's what big, expensive SLAs are for. Residential service probably should never have been advertised in terms of specific data rates in the first place, though it's hard to avoid.
Now I know it sounds like I must work for an ISP, but I don't and I'll re-iterate that a lot of what they do pisses me off as a consumer. I just know something about their infrastructure and the reality of network costs. The alternative to managing P2P traffic through rate-limiting is to redesign the network to handle it. If it weren't for the parallel problem of P2P service being used mostly for "illegal" or at least "questionably illegal" content, I suspect Bell or Roger's would already be building and offering a P2P-friendly service at a somewhat higher cost (possibly throwing in rate-limited server support too). Heck, maybe they are. But right now, your $40 "5 Mbps" service is what it is, and I'm afraid the carriers don't have a lot of options other than to try to manage the traffic at that price point.
Of course, I could be wrong and the Internet could actually be built out of tubes with stuff flowing through it...
Note: The existence of that quote is why I have very little faith in the U.S. government taking the lead on any of this stuff.
A "good" net-neutrality arrangement will prevent ISPs from anti-competitive behaviour (i.e. VoIP service), while allowing them to manage network traffic for varying levels of service. Charging different rates for different types of service (i.e. P2P vs. web and e-mail) is perfectly reasonable and something you're already used to. You pay different bills for Cable TV, Internet and Phone service, right?
Current management of P2P traffic reflects the concept of "fair use" (where all users get roughly equal levels of access to resources), which then opens the door to different service levels at different prices. Thus, you could subscribe to a "web and e-mail" service for $20-$30, or a P2P service for $60. Average users get lower prices, while P2P users get what they want and pay for the costs to provide it.
Now, I'd also like to see all of those prices drop %20 with some real competition, but that's a separate topic...
(and yes, the idea that I'm actually defending Bell and Roger's does make me ill just on general principle) |
