August 22, 2007
Why we need it, 2
Ahhhh yes. Yet again the magic of telecom rears it’s head in the legacy arena. This time it’s our cable everyone loves to hate — Comcast. To wit:
Last year we had a discussion whether traffic shaping is good or bad, and ISPs made it pretty clear that they do not like P2P applications like BitTorrent. One of the ISPs that joined our discussions said: “The fact is, P2P is (from my point of view) a plague - a cancer, that will consume all the bandwidth that I can provide. It’s an insatiable appetite.”, and another one stated: “P2P applications can cripple a network, they’re like leaches. Just because you pay 49.99 for a 1.5-3.0mbps connection doesn’t mean your entitled to use whatever protocols you wish on your ISP’s network without them provisioning it to make the network experience good for all users involved.”
That’s right, Comcast is now blocking BitTorrent traffic and seeds. My observation — either fire marketing and legal departments or fire the engineers with the Poison tables. You advertised, to each customer, their availability to a certain amount of bandwidth. To the customer that means this time or any time day or night. I don’t see no Posion table in my contract. So if the customer is using bit accelerators to move traffic that is YOUR problem not the customers.
And boys, there is more, not less competition coming. You throttle me, I am off to the next carrier I can find.
Filed under Comcast, Time Warner by Dr. Dog
Comments on Why we need it, 2 »
I should start by saying that I work for a company that specializes in bandwidth shaping technology. We work with smaller ISPs (as well as with other networks — schools, libraries, offices, etc.) and from this experience I’ve found that there really are cases where traffic shaping is a must. I don’t know about providers like Comcast, but a few heavy downloaders can negatively affect the service of the majority of customers in the case of a smaller ISP. And in some circumstances, if the ISP is brought to its knees by heavy downloading, the other customers are left without any high speed Internet access and no other alternatives. At the same time, the ISP might not be able to afford to purchase additional bandwidth, leaving them with a choice: shape, discontinue service with the heavy users, or fold. The idea behind shaping is not to punish people who are using bit torrent or p2p, but simply to provide all customers a certain degree of service. The way it works with our technology, Netequalizer, is that shaping occurs only when the network is congested — a point that is defined by individual administrators. But, if say only 75% of the bandwidth is being used, shaping doesn’t happen at all, no matter what time of day it is. Of course, administrators can fine tune the settings to work beyond the default mode, but in the end, it’s just a matter of providing equal access and being fair.