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 funchordsHelloPremium,MVM
join:2001-03-11
Yarmouth Port, MA
kudos:5 | Several reasons why it won't happen •Tests conducted nationwide by Project Glasnost indicated that only Comcast and Cox – just two ISPs – were significant interferers with P2P uploads using the specific technique that the FCC ruled against. If only two ISPs were doing it, then it takes an incredible leap of logic to conclude that the entire ISP industry is going to be switching to overage fees tomorrow.
•Moore’s Law, and its corollaries, all indicate that technology grows cheaper, or its capability increases, by a factor of two every 24 months or so. Networking technology is no different. Has your broadband bill gone down by half? Is your ISP bringing you about twice the speed and capacity than it brought to you two years ago? If not, then its a good bet that your ISP's costs of delivering the same level of service to you have dropped during this time and they simply would rather not increase the network's capacity as fast as you would like them to.
•The trend is always toward flat rate. Dial-up Internet access – these were pay-by-the-minute plans first, then flat rate. AmericaOnline (AOL) had a per-hour charge, then went flat-rate. Long Distance was heavily metered, now most plans are flat-rate. Wireless telephone service was by-the-minute, and is quickly heading toward flat-rate. Once technologies like Internet Access are started, they become less expensive over time and eventually wind up to be flat rate.
•Consumption on IP is not easily metered. Dial-up, Long-Distance, and Cellular telephone calls are (or were) billed by the minute. MMS/SMS messages are billed by the message. It’s going to be difficult to find an agreed-upon standard for measuring by-the-byte Internet use. The Internet is a best-effort network, and not every packet that starts in your direction arrives intact. Sometimes it is dropped by the router just upstream from you, or sometimes it is dropped further up. Sometimes the packet arrives damaged and has to be repeated, and sometimes a repeat is not necessary (depending on the protocol). Sometimes the packets you receive or generate aren’t even yours – such as the traffic generated by Internet worms, the approximately 100 daily spam messages most Internet mailboxes get, or the ever-growing size of the ads present on most web pages. If Cable ISPs think that the per-subscriber support costs are high now, imagine the costs over billing disputes over undelivered or duplicated traffic! It's just not worth it.
•It’s an elephant-gun approach. The cable industry (and let’s remember, this is pretty much a cable industry yarn that’s being spun – AT&T and Verizon are not actually showing tremendous interest in it) reminds us that somewhere around 5% of the users are causing 95% of the problem. Those are the kind of numbers that Mr. Pareto would call a “no brainer.” So rather than retool how broadband is delivered to our nation, are we really to believe that we’re not going to first try coming to deal specifically with these 5%?
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Robb Topolski -= funchords.com =- Hillsboro, Oregon
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| said by funchords:•Tests conducted nationwide by Project Glasnost indicated that only Comcast and Cox – just two ISPs – were significant interferers with P2P uploads using the specific technique that the FCC ruled against. If only two ISPs were doing it, then it takes an incredible leap of logic to conclude that the entire ISP industry is going to be switching to overage fees tomorrow. Except for the fact that several DPI vendors and traffic shaping vendors exist, some of which are public companies with healthy revenues.
The Glasnost tests highlighted some specific uses of TCP Resets, which are of course used when network devices are installed in a so-called off-line or out-of-line mode. And the Glasnost method really was trying to root out one particular vendor method.
But what of the majority of networks, such as wireless data networks, which chose to install these as transparent, in-line or on-the-wire devices? A recent study in Europe found that DSL provider BT and other providers are not using resets but are instead throttling down P2P and all other non-web traffic at peak times. If what is probably the largest DSL provider in the UK is doing that, it is probably fair to say that some ISPs in the North American market are doing so as well. So these users may not get a reset to slow their P2P activity, they'd just see that traffic slowed down generally according to the SamKnows study.
Is there a similar study going on in the North American network? Or will rhetoric substitute for data collection? Perhaps the SamKnows model could be a good one to follow.
Reference 1: »www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/07···ottling/
Reference 2: »www.samknows.com/broadband/pm/PM···r_08.pdf (SEE PAGE 36)
From page 36:
However, in the case of both BT and Plus Net we see something rather different. Whilst the port 80 test performed very well at all times, non port 80 traffic drops to nearly 15% of the line speed on BT connections during peak hours. The cause of this can without doubt be attributed to traffic shaping – the practice of prioritising one type of traffic over another. The term “traffic management” is also frequently used by some providers.
Plus Net openly admits and advocates their traffic shaping policies on their website, so these results were to be expected for them. However, BT is not so forthcoming, and the breadth and scale of the activity is rather surprising. In fact, the same characteristics can be seen when looking at any of the BT connections we monitored individually – including business connections and also including two connections that were used only by the monitoring units we installed. This suggests that the policy is applied universally, regardless of product and regardless of usage volume. However, it should be noted that it is this shaping that likely helps their port 80 (HTTP) speedtest results to perform so well. Whilst some may see any form of traffic shaping or traffic management as a bad thing, if you are not a peer-to-peer user or a heavy downloader then BT’s and PlusNet’s practices will actually benefit you. Future work will examine how these policies affect other “interactive” applications, such as
SSH, VoIP and video streaming.
It may also surprise some to note that certain other ISPs are not demonstrating similar dips for non port 80 traffic. The possible reasons for this are numerous:
- They could be traffic shaping based upon volume rather than traffic type (as Virgin Media do);
- Their traffic analysers could be more intelligent or configured differently to those of BT’s and recognise that this was not real peer to peer traffic, and thus not shape it;
- They could not be employing traffic shaping at all – the equipment required to do this properly is very expensive.
said by funchords:• Moore’s Law, and its corollaries, all indicate that technology grows cheaper, or its capability increases, by a factor of two every 24 months or so. Networking technology is no different. It really depends where your congestion is at the moment, doesn't it? I would guess most ISPs are moving to 10Gbps, 40Gbps, and higher in their core. So then you have either access network congestion or congestion between the end office or DSLAM and the core. In both cases, my guess is that the process is rather labor intensive and physical.
So what about labor costs? Do we expect labor costs to decline along these lines as well? Are we advocating for people to take such pay cuts? Has it gotten cheaper to go through local permitting to dig up streets and pull fiber? Or do local zoning laws and construction costs increase over time? That highway that cost $2M to build 20 years ago may cost $200M now, for example.
said by funchords:• The trend is always toward flat rate. Dial-up Internet access – these were pay-by-the-minute plans first, then flat rate. AmericaOnline (AOL) had a per-hour charge, then went flat-rate. Long Distance was heavily metered, now most plans are flat-rate. Wireless telephone service was by-the-minute, and is quickly heading toward flat-rate. Once technologies like Internet Access are started, they become less expensive over time and eventually wind up to be flat rate. Wireless is a great example: it is now tiered. And where a few companies have trialed unlimited, they've ended up with tiered services. So perhaps you do not get a pure usage model like electricity, gas, or water, and instead get a wireless-style hybrid. Perhaps that is a healthy balance, and perhaps it won't work. Only the market will tell. But to expect a static pricing model over time is probably unrealistic - market dynamics constantly change and evolve over time.
said by funchords:• Consumption on IP is not easily metered. Dial-up, Long-Distance, and Cellular telephone calls are (or were) billed by the minute. MMS/SMS messages are billed by the message. It’s going to be difficult to find an agreed-upon standard for measuring by-the-byte Internet use. Except for the fact that the wireless data companies already meter by the byte and have tiered bandwidth plans. Or they include it for "free" in $100+/month plans. (My iPhone bill is killing me.)
said by funchords:•It’s an elephant-gun approach. The cable industry (and let’s remember, this is pretty much a cable industry yarn that’s being spun – AT&T and Verizon are not actually showing tremendous interest in it) reminds us that somewhere around 5% of the users are causing 95% of the problem. Those are the kind of numbers that Mr. Pareto would call a “no brainer.” So rather than retool how broadband is delivered to our nation, are we really to believe that we’re not going to first try coming to deal specifically with these 5%? So what if an ISP came up with a byte plan that was sufficient for 95% of users, and which would only affect that 5% of users? If you do not believe that this pricing method works, what other method would you propose to signal to that 5% of users?
Garth the Magnificent | |
 espaethDigital PlumberPremium,MVM
join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN
kudos:2
 ·Clear Wireless
| reply to funchords
said by funchords:• Consumption on IP is not easily metered. I think the entire web hosting and service provider industries would disagree with you on that.
ATT and Verizon have no problem billing my company based on MPLS network traffic consumption, and Verizon/Qwest/Sprint/ATT/Savvis have no problems billing us for our Internet consumption either.
The residential ISP sector is the only segment of the Internet that is not billed by rate or consumption. | |
 fatnesssubtleJanitor
join:2000-11-17
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| reply to funchords
said by funchords:•It’s an elephant-gun approach. The cable industry (and let’s remember, this is pretty much a cable industry yarn that’s being spun – AT&T and Verizon are not actually showing tremendous interest in it) reminds us that somewhere around 5% of the users are causing 95% of the problem. Those are the kind of numbers that Mr. Pareto would call a “no brainer.” So rather than retool how broadband is delivered to our nation, are we really to believe that we’re not going to first try coming to deal specifically with these 5%? Obligatory reminder: The "5% of users using 95% of bandwidth" (which I agree, is not exactly what you said) is not based on any study done by anyone. It's just a phrase uttered over and over with no basis in fact.
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Female monkeys often utter loud, distinctive calls before, during or after sex.. | |
funchordsHelloPremium,MVM
join:2001-03-11
Yarmouth Port, MA
kudos:5 | reply to espaeth
said by espaeth:said by funchords:• Consumption on IP is not easily metered. I think the entire web hosting and service provider industries would disagree with you on that. ATT and Verizon have no problem billing my company based on MPLS network traffic consumption, and Verizon/Qwest/Sprint/ATT/Savvis have no problems billing us for our Internet consumption either. The residential ISP sector is the only segment of the Internet that is not billed by rate or consumption. You are entirely correct, but their customers have the technical ability to verify what the meter says as well and deal with variances and buy in large bulk or deal with overages. These concepts don't translate very well to Mom and Pop America.
And the trends still are toward flat, even in those industries. At some point, it becomes too cheap to be worth metering and you have to pay a monthly flat fee to deal with the administrative and support costs of having an account.
--
Robb Topolski -= funchords.com =- Hillsboro, Oregon
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