P2P Bandwidth Hogging the Net 539
zymano writes "zdnet has this article about bandwidth hogging p2p." I'm sure we'll see more rate limiting in the future and per-gig charges. The article says 60% of ISPs bandwidth is P2P, and that seems high to me, but not unrealistic. Besides, since most broadband is pretty seriously hamstringed in the upstream department, I'm not sure where they can go with this.
Two words: Metered Bandwidth (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm blocking p2p on my network (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't take many stupid users to hog a pair of T1 lines. It also doesn't help that the p2p system are designed for maximum leach of available nodes.
Re:spam? (Score:5, Insightful)
Assume each spam eats 5K of bandwidth. Now think about how much bandwidth is used by searching other p2p nodes, the returning results and finally receiving a 5MB song (or ~700 MB DIVX movie/ISO/etc). Their figure of 60% may be inflated a bit but I don't doubt that the number is close.
Interesting business plan (Score:5, Insightful)
2. Complain that customers are using their high-speed internet
What are they called? (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems to me that these ISPs are Internet Service Providers. If people are using bandwidth why are they complaining? I'd also like to know why they think file sharing will triple next year.
It says this in the article but if they want to stop people from using "all" of the bandwidth and pull them off the all-you-can-eat plan. There's a problem with this though. Who will accept having a limit on their internet access? I know it drives me nuts when the dumbasses on my floor download 10-15 movies a night between them all and I can't get a single SSH session to behave without some serious latency, but I'd rather deal with pulling their cables out of the wall than dealing with an ISP limiting my use of their services when they previously were not.
What's wrong with per gig charges?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So what (Score:2, Insightful)
Now maybe you think the bandwidth prices ISPs pay shouldn't be so high but that's another discussion entirely.
So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Would it be used if it weren't for P2P? Or would it just sit idle anyhow? There is gobs of bandwidth available on the backbones. Miles and miles of dark fiber. What's going on here is the broadband ISPs business models are collapsing. They count on selling everyone tons of bandwidth but then only a fraction of it being used or for very short periods of time. If everyone signed on and started transferring all they could, ISPs would become hopelessly bottlenecked.
I say, pony up and add the bandwidth, too bad. As for everything besides ISPs (upstream providers) there is no shortage of bandwidth. If there is, it's a regional problem and all that is needed is to turn on a new strand of fiber and add a few gigabits, problem solved.
Finally, it's not P2P... its CONTENT. It doesn't matter that its people transferring files to other people. The new variable here is there is GOBS of multimedia CONTENT available for people to download. It doesn't matter where it's coming from. P2P has just made it practical and realistic to download as much as we can now.
It's hard to see sometimes... (Score:4, Insightful)
Considering how well freenet does for not infringing on your resources too much (try setting it to 10K down and 5K up on a DSL line and you won't even notice it's there) it boggles the mind why anone bothers with Kazaa at all.
Re:spam? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm all for P2P being used for legitimate distribution of files but I cetainly don't agree with use of bandwidth being used for illegal file sharing of copyrighted materials and willing to bet a vast proportion of P2P files sharing is illegal files.
If P2P continues to be used for this purpose on this scale there is going to be a serious backlash and the minority of legit P2P users are going to get burned.
Re:Two words: Metered Bandwidth (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:P2P with super nodes - centralization (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:spam? (Score:5, Insightful)
The sad thing is that this isn't FUD, but the IP Fascists like the RIAA and SOCAN in Canada will use it as leverage in their battle.
BTW, a whole lot of the non-P2P traffic is used up by protocols like IRC, FTP and NNTP... for filesharing purposes. Fileservs on IRC, the classic FTP warez/pr0n server, and the plethora of "free" software, porn and music on USENET still have those other sources chipping in significantly. P2P is the easiest to use, and therefore more accessible to the majority, hence its dominance over traffic consumption.
...and why do we pay them? (Score:5, Insightful)
1. I pay my ISP for bandwidth according to the contract they offered. How I use that bandwidth is up to me. The way this article makes p2p...or any other 'bandwidth hogging' protocol...sound 'bad' because it 'costs ISP's money' is silly! I paid for the bandwidth. Don't complain when I use it.
2. A metered connection would be OK by me. But the ISP better give me more sophisticated mail blocking options than I get today.
My opinion: I'm happy to pay for what I use, but don't ask me to pay to make up for the deficiencies of your business plan or try to send me on a guilt trip because, as a consumer, I actually exercize the terms of my contract!
with all due respect to ISP's... (Score:5, Insightful)
I know, you could always say that the service isn't intended to run at high-bandwidth 24/7, but that doesn't really matter. If P2P traffic is going to annoy you, either filter it, cap their bandwidth, or upgrade your hardware.
The thing is, P2P is just internet traffic. Why leave all that room unused? The internet isn't an emergency communications medium, so using 95% of the available bandwidth isn't really anything bad. It just means that more fat pipes need to be added. But just because P2P is P2P isn't a good enough reason.
Re:What's wrong with per gig charges?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Step 1) Distribute DoS zombiebot to everyone you can
Step 2) ???(Take out someone with metered bandwidth)
Step 3) Profit..or lack there of.
Of course, I'm just generalizing all the bad stuff you really don't want to pay for. Spam, Broken downloads, DoS, etc.
Re:This is good news for telecom (Score:3, Insightful)
I thing your more likely to see them gunning for the bandwidth hogs than upgrading the network. I'm willing to bet the majority of P2P use is for sharing illegal materials. It only takes some sort of deal between the telecoms + RIAA + MPAA to start pursuing the distributers of the copyrighted materials and wham RIAA/MPAA happy, carries happy as the backbones and existing infrastructure doesn't need upgrading.
It's gonna happen. There's no way thay are going to allow situations like "http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/29
Freeloaders are going to kill P2P if things continue.
The business model of the ISPs need to change. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a problem with the business models of the ISPs, not the way the bandwidth is being used.
ISPs at some level buy bandwidth in Gigs/Teras transfer/month. Charging users a flat fee for access to a pipe that can use too much bandwidth only makes sense if you know most users wouldn't use the service intensively.
When users only ran clients for http, smtp, and (just maybe) news, that was a valid assumption, and helped make AOL as big as it is. But that's not going to work if nodes start acting as servers as well as clients, like they were designed to.
If you run a website or any other colo'd server, you get (say) 40Gig transfer into the bargain, and pay extra for anything over that.
If ISPs throw in the first 5 gigs with their DSL subscriptions, and make customers pay extra for more transfer, 90% of surfers will never incur extra charges, and will probably pay costs similar to current rates. The rest should pay for what they use.
article author is on drugs (Score:3, Insightful)
The main theme of the article is a complaint about how much file sharing is costing the ISP.
Sorry? You sell a service (internet connectivity). People want that service, or else they wouldn't be buying it. Then you turn around and complain that it costs you money to provide said service?
Now that is an idea. Let's open a store and complain that shipping all those goods in from the warehouse is so expensive.
I don't really see this.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Might i add i believe its P2P sharing and gaming that made people want DSL..
I Don't Get It (Score:5, Insightful)
Gaming?
News?
Pr0n?
Trading stocks?
I thought that the whole idea was that you take what you can in an unregulated medium. Lower your expectations accordingly, but benefit from the ubiquitous nature. In other words, no consistency of quality of service, but almost guaranteed ubiquity.
I don't know. My ISP gives me a wide open connection and nice latency. The rest is out of my control.
The thing I don't see from this finger waving is the following: Nobody says, "If we lower spam by X%, then we can guarantee a better Internet experience for everyone else by Y%. If we get rid of file sharing by A%, then we can guarantee B% better service/speed/latency for everyone else. Also, we'll be able to lower everyone's cost by Z%." Until I see some numbers, it's just all relative. Who's to say what I do on the Net is any more redeeming than anyone else? They paid. I paid.
So? (Score:2, Insightful)
Blah. Who cares what people are doing with their bandwidth? If you take away P2P, it'll be VoIP, or Streaming Video IM, or some new Immersive FPS with massive requirements. Give people bandwidth, they'll find a way to use it... Duh.
Nipok Nek
Re:What's wrong with per gig charges?? Well.. (Score:4, Insightful)
It would be a perfectly reasonable thing if that was what was advertised and that was what I purchased. But it isn't. The ISP's in particular the cable and DSL isps advertised unlimited hi speed internet, in order to lure customers away from their old dial up providers. Nothing wrong there except now they want to change the rules midstream. Now they have the users.. The users are using the system they advertised, as they advertised it, and they wish to up the rates.
If they'd advertised a metered plan, and I CHOOSE to purchase that, then fine.. but thats not the case. Those who remember the old Hughes DirectPC program may remember that they did exaclty this. Advertised unlimited service and then started limiting bandwith for high volume users. A class action suit ensued (which Hughes lost) forcing them to buy back the system of any (that was all of them) dissattisfied customer
In addition, do you think they will drop the rates for low volume users? Remember it doesn't cost them any more to operate, its just a question of who uses how much. No, this is simply a ploy to juice the rates, and as a result juice their profits.
I sure hope not... (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, the key selling point was that I knew what I would pay for my internet connection every month. The performance wasn't the issue. Now IF they decide to go back to the old ways of charging me per minute/MB/whatever I'll just cancel my subscription with them. I really don't mind if they cap my bandwith more, just make sure that the bill that comes every month is the same amount.
Naturally I'll have to reconcider if they cap it too much and charge too much.
And yes, I am a very modest user of bandwidth.
This is what happens if economists get too much power. Bastards.
Re:What's wrong with per gig charges?? (Score:1, Insightful)
If someone eats at your table, THEY pay for their meal.
When I get spammed, why do I pay for their use of my bandwidth? When it's a flash-only site, ore REQUIRES cookies for no good reason, why do I have to pay for it? When they have glitzy web pages, why do I pay for their advertising?
If you are going to cap, cap UPLOAD.
Bubba says hold the phone!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:true (Score:3, Insightful)
Nevertheless, from a pure technical POV, P2P wastes bandwidth. As in efficiency. How much bytes traverse the wire to download 100 MB via FTP? via HTTP? via scp? Compare that to P2P. Add the traffic for searches. Add 50% overhead because half of your downloads never complete or have to be restarted half-way through.
That's what I mean with "waste". Most large ISPs don't pay for bandwidth by the byte anyways, they peer. But if the total demand goes up, you have to widen the pipes, and that's expensive.
Re:I'm blocking p2p on my network (Score:3, Insightful)
If your network can be reduced to a crawl just by someone running wget(1) then it is the network that needs fixing. I don't mean you have to rush out and buy more bandwidth just to satisfy the users, but what bandwidth there is should be shared out robustly so that one user can't break stuff for the others.
Internet access... (Score:5, Insightful)
The web is becoming more decentralized, and P2P is a the cause. Its not quite as general purpose as the rest of the web yet, but its extremely useful if you just want to find a file...
Within 20 years, children won't know the concept of a "server". They will only know of the web as more of a neural network, with the connections shifting from here to there and back again!
Re:What's wrong with per gig charges?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Second, the problems with metered bandwidth. First off is viruses. Many DDoS worms could actually force you to hit your maximum upload capacity for an entire month, which is a problem that is far too common on the internet but absolutely never happens with the food at your restaurant, the gas in your car, or the electricity in your home. Couple that with manually activated worms being used by script kiddies and the lack of an itemized bill (what are they going to do, list every file you downloaded in a month?) and your bill could be worthy of dispute every month. Since you would never know exactly what your entire family may have downloaded, you'll have a problem arguing that a hacker probably stole $10-$30 worth of bandwidth from you, but your ISP will have no problem taking your money.
Another problem is that programs don't come with usage labels. My refrigerator, hot water heater, washing machine, dryer, etc. all come with stickers telling me how much power they use. Return to Castle Wolfenstein, IRC, e-mail spam, and streaming media do not. Again, this is where bandwidth is different than food, gas, and electricity. I know how much food I want to eat and how much it costs. I know how much gas my car uses and how much I need. I know how much electricity the appliances in my home normally use and how much my bill should be. Bandwidth, on the other hand, could produce a completely different bill each month for reasons that the customer probably won't understand, and which could be the result of worms and script kiddies.
If the broadband ISPs want to switch to a metered service business model, then that business model will not be fair to the consumer until a legal mandate is made forcing every program that uses the internet to reveal its bandwidth usage in the same way that a home appliance has to have its electrical usage marked and cars must have their fuel efficiency marked. It also won't be fair until computers are just as easily secured as walking around the side of your house and making that there isn't an electrical cable leading from your house to your neighbor's. Unfortunately that breakthrough is being held back by the first crucial step in its implementation: teaching a pig to fly.
We've been threatened with metered bandwidth since Napster was released, possibly for good reason and possibly because it was just a convenient way to justify squeezing more cash out of us, but I've unfortunately never seen anyone truly analyze the problems that it has, and why it might not be waiting for us in the future after all.
Re:article author is on drugs (Score:1, Insightful)
Customer : "I've ordered and payed for a Radio/CD/DVD/5.1 amplifier combination with speakers a couple of weaks ago, and all I got was this cheap battery-fed radio, one that fit's in the palm of my hand
Sales-person : "You where not *actually* thinking you would get that expensive device, where you" (braking down laughing
Customer : "But
Sales-person : "Sorry, but actually delivering it would mean we would not profit enough. Be gratefull we actually gave you *something*."
Somehow this makes me think of theft
Make P2P prefer local links (Score:3, Insightful)
Nobody seems to have picked up on the most intelligent point in the article... if P2P software was biased towards same-ISP connections, it could dramatically bring down the cost. If it was further biased against international connections, that would help too...
Are there any P2P clients doing this?... 'use our client and your ISP won't get upset' might be a good advertisment...
Re:I'm blocking p2p on my network (Score:3, Insightful)
And for the record, the system did not "break". No more than a road breaks when it is full. I am not running a day care center, these are all adults. We can expect them to behave as such in the real world, why not on the network as well?
P2P IS the web... (Score:2, Insightful)
Are we seeing a simple shortsightedness on the part of ISPs?
The internet is used to share bits. Are "they" saying that it's getting out of hand?
I shall laugh in astonishment...
Heh hehe?
Re:Two words: Metered Bandwidth (Score:5, Insightful)
This is silly. There are ISPs who are dealing with this problem just fine. I use Xmission [xmission.com] and I am an admitted P2P user.
1. 12GB per month limit, and extra bandwidth costs $10 a pop.
2. You're warned when you're about to go over the limit and then your connection is throttled after that to prevent extreme-overusage.
3. They have easy to use tools for checking on your usage.
4. UNMETERED usage from midnight to 7:00am. It certainly encourages me to do all my downloading at that time.
Instead of treating their customers as enemies, they treat them AS CUSTOMERS. They don't send surprise $1000 bills and snicker in the background when the customer calls to complain. They NICELY inform the customer of the problem. Customers who are aware of their usage, are willing to pay extra and/or appreciate the "heads-up" about their over-usage. Customers who are not aware of their usage get the chance to find the problem.
The result of this geek-friendly ISPs efforts is that it is one the most popular ISPs in Utah. Every "computer guy" in the state tells his friends that XMission the is coolest ISP out there.
They're solving the bandwidth problem by nicely EDUCATING their customers, not berating them for their ignorance. People just don't know that internet usage is a mix between their electricity or water bill and their phone bill. Once they understand how the system works, they become much less of a problem.
The internet is new, and just like phones, it is going to take 10 or 20 years before people really understand how it works. Give them time, and stop sending $1000 bills. The customer is not the enemy.
Ok, I'll bite. (Score:5, Insightful)
I use this feature and have never had an unexpected cease (I expect things to be a little slow when I'm dl'ing linux ISOs) in my bandwidth due to Kazaa.
It's not p2p that's the problem, it's stupid people using p2p that's the source of our woes.
Re:Two words: Metered Bandwidth (Score:3, Insightful)
See the difference? Kazaa in essence allows you to do what the big media companies want you to do with your connection - suck down content of various kinds through the fast pipe they provide you with. Not all that different from cable tv. At the moment, much of the content people are downloading (or uploading for that matter) may be illegal, but they are working on that. They want to remain the main providers of content on your connection
Essentially, they are trying to control the technology so that it suits a projection of their business model. I think they have some kind of long range plan, anyway. Lord knows what they would be able to leverage in order to put it into effect - I don't even use the Road Runner startup page or any other service that is supposed to be provided to users beyond the bandwidth, but they might roll out something.
Or looking at it another way (minus the corporate control conspiracy theory), when broadband providers were just starting out, they had no Acceptable Use Policies and allowed pretty much anything. The result for cable modem providers was a disaster, with a couple of people running Hotline servers that sucked up all of the backbone bandwidth for entire towns. They want to make sure that kind of thing never happens again, hence the draconian AUP provisions against running servers of any kind. Viewed in light of cable modem providers early history, I can understand how these people view anything called a 'server' as potentially threatening their whole model of bandwidth reselling. They may not consider p2p in that league yet, but if it causes as severe a disruption as the first broadband Hotline servers did, they will start prohibiting it as well.
Really, the problem is that all ISPs, broadband or otherwise, operate by selling more bandwidth then they actually have in order to make a profit. There is nothing wrong with doing this, as long as their estimates of how much bandwidth people will actually use versus how much they will pay for correspond well with reality. Apparently, broadband ISPs have not gotten the formula right yet. One could argue convincingly that this is because the nature of the service they are offering is different than previous dialup ISPs. In essence, the economics of broadband are different - people use it differently than dialup when it is available. Therefore it is impossible to simply assume the numbers associated with dialup scale up proportionately to broadband.
So the broadband providers are going to have to change their business models.
Re:Two words: Metered Bandwidth (Score:2, Insightful)
P2P is not the problem, $1000 T1s are the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
...33MHz 486 PCs were $1500. Now you get a 2GHz P4 for half that (or less even). (price/performance increase: around +12,000%)
...16MB of RAM cost $500. You get 2GB of much faster RAM these days. (price/perf: +12,800%)
...office LANs were 10-base-T (or worse). Now you'll get gigabit-ethernet for the same prices. (price-perf: +10,000%)
...a 100MB hard drive was $200. Now you get a 200GB drive for that that transfers 10X as fast to boot. (price/perf: +200,000%) (!)
... T1 line cost a business ~$1000 a month. Nowadays, it's... the same.
Why is it that every other aspect of the computer industry has dropped so dramatically in price/performance, except this one?
It's because Telcos can charge $1000 for a T1, and businesses will pay. The Telcos could run fiber and offer OC3 or OC48 service for the same price and still be profitable, but why bother? Sprint and UUNet sit there price-gouging ISPs, but of course it's the end users who are bad for using the bandwidth they are sold.
For the record, I use IRC extensively for file trading, and I probably use 15GB of bandwidth a week or more on my 768/128 DSL connection. I'm sure I am costing Verizon money but it's their own fault. Until they demand better rates from the backbone providers they are only screwing themselves.
Re:that's a lotta emails! (Score:1, Insightful)