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.
that's a lotta emails! (Score:5, Funny)
18% Porn
12% Spam
6% RIAA "Cease and Desist" Emails
4% KaZaa Client Software
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to downloading the complete works of Engelbert Humperdinck [allmusic.com]
Mike
Re:that's a lotta emails! (Score:5, Funny)
According to RIAA, the other 40% is used by students using all other available protocols to download copyrighted material.
Bubba says hold the phone!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
DotCom Delusions (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, it's more like a business with mega expenses without any profits. P2P and unlimited 1Mbps+ broadband service is a prescription for certain failure.
Consider this: Call up Sprint, AT&T, MCI, etc. and ask them what their price is for a DS3, including loops. You'll probably end up with something around $500/month. per Mbps. Negotiate a bit and you might get below th
the real breakdown (Score:3, Funny)
Lots of dark fiber (Score:4, Informative)
1.) Thanks to WorldCom inflating growth figures (that's what got them into trouble) for nearly 10 years, there is a tremendous amount of fiber lines just sitting there doing nothing. Don't believe the hype, there is enough base infrastructure in the US to give every body a T1 or better (but then we wouldn't need phones, cable/satellite TV, radios, etc...heh). Wireless meshes are popping up all over the place (in cities anyways) that also can allow joe average to distribute broadband content (within the mesh). The next 10 years, eveything will shift to some form of wireless (just wait til the RIAA and pals start going after spectrum rules...man the fur is gonna fly)
2.)If they (Broadband ISPs) want to control traffic, just sell service with a QoS agreement. I would rather have a business line (at the same price I have a consumer line) with 24x7 guarantied bandwidth at a lower rate than I have now for download (say 768/768).
Whoops, on the subject of spam. The last company I worked for spam cost the company over $2 million dollars a year in bandwidth (hard to filter BEFORE it hits your gateway).
Re:that's a lotta emails! (Score:5, Interesting)
I find it hard to believe P2P is using "as much as" that much of the total bandwidth. What is the average, not the peak usage? "As much as" implies a maximum throughput which is not sustained.
My first question is what use is acceptible for the number one spot in bandwidth usage? What about CD image downloads (650MB each), porn (ISPs are probably too embarassed to mention what % this is), forwarded emails with attachments, search engine spiders, and so on?
Next, if the P2P bandwidth carried 95% legal content, would there be an issue here if a peak of 60% bandwidth was used? Is this really about the bandwidth?
Are those who share their files via P2P really bandwidth hogs, or are those who download the files the bandwidth hogs? Merely providing the files for download would produce zero bandwidth (aside from protocol overhead) otherwise.
Near the bottom of the article, they say that intra-ISP and intra-country bandwidth is the most expensive and is what must be kept under control. So what brings us all together should be regulated? Maybe they don't like how free the Internet is, unless portraying freedom and unlimited access helps them sell more services through their commercials.
Re:that's a lotta emails! (Score:3, Interesting)
Um, yes it is 'that expensive'. I pay £100 a year for more student 10Mb/sec connection.
Say I hypothetically (ahem) downloaded southpark and simpsons every week (since the uk keeps showing reruns), then how much that cost me?
Not to mention my changing tastes in music, and various movies. I also (hypothetically) get
spam? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:spam? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:spam? (Score:5, Interesting)
One afternoon the network was crawling. Our remote site was complaining the VPN was atrociously slow. The connection to the web was slow, and our firewall was blinking like mad.
I reprogrammed iptables to block a few key ports and a few subnets where the P2P master nodes live and it was like a shadow was lifted from the network.
Re:spam? (Score:2, Funny)
Back in my day I had to write games in BASIC, on a 4.7Mhz computer with no hard disk and 128K of RAM. And I was grateful
Yeah, but did you do it while walking uphill in the snow, barefoot?
Re:Quit the crying (Score:4, Funny)
(I can hear it now: You had a mother? I was sold to the circus, and only had an evil clown who hit me all the time with a mallet.)
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: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.
Two words: Metered Bandwidth (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Two words: Metered Bandwidth (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Two words: Metered Bandwidth (Score:3, Interesting)
That isn't necessarily true, and it's intutive that the opposite would be true.
The old statistic is that 2% of users make up 50% of network utilization. If true, that means metered access would result in 98% of users paying half as much, and only 2% of user going elsewhere. Personally, that sounds appealing to me, and I imagine the subscriptions would skyrocket if people heard they could get broadband (hence free their phone-lin
Re:Two words: Metered Bandwidth (Score:3, Informative)
I am.
Probably 98% of the people pay a flat fee for local calls
Um, no. Not outside the US. In most countries, metered local calls are the absolute norm. Which makes flatrate broadband internet access all the more attractive.
Re:Two words: Metered Bandwidth (Score:5, Interesting)
Eh, I wouldn't go that far... if anything, I'd expect the "all-you-can-eat" rates go up, but I don't see telcos and ISPs abandoning the idea any time soon.
Additionally, if metered rates do in fact go into effect, we may be on an accelerated path to widespread deployment of wi-fi clusters in more populated areas as a means of circumnavigating the limitations.
Personally, I'm optimistic. History shows humans to be fairly resistant to various roadblocks being thrown at us, so should your prognosis come true, I'm sure we the geeks will find a way around it somehow, wi-fi or otherwise.
Metered bandwith might help stop spam and worms (Score:5, Interesting)
It would also really embarrass a lot of people when they demand to see where they "used up their bandwith" and after the ISP logs are presented with the urls it turns out to be tons 0 porn, back to the "Well! I never! I must have been hacked, YOU fix it Mr. ISP or OS vendor, it's all your fault" and etc.
It's not a can, it's a case of worms. It might happen though, given the RIAA and MPAA efforts in lobbying, and "we need CYBERSECURITY' and whatnot. Bandwith caps, severely restricted ports, etc.
I think we are in the wild wild west days of the net, I expect something like these severe restrictions combined with increased costs. It's the nature of political reality and really big brand money now. And even if a few major ISPs hold out, they'll eventually go under if all the rest of the ISPs are back to making money with their restrictions and filtering efforts. Isn't the very large bandwith more or less a similar priced commodity now? Once you get far enough upstream it's roughly the same, or am I wrong on that? If it's similar, there's no way the unlimited flat rate providers could compete with the limited but significantly cheaper providers, if they are paying the same bulk rates.
Re:Metered bandwith might help stop spam and worms (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think those few ISPs will go under, because I don't think the other ISPs will be making much money with restrictions and filtering efforts. Then again, it all depends on skillful marketing.
The way I see it, the fewer of those unlimited ISPs are around, the more popular they will become, even if they impose otherwise unimaginable restrictions such as p2p filtering. My current ISP limits me to 10GB combined in/out / month, and charges per every gig over limit. If I could for example opt for a plan that keeps my rate the same, removes the cap but blocks all p2p ports like kaaza (sp), gnutella etc., I'd switch. Even though I don't come close to using up the bandwidth I'm given right now (at least I don't think so). It's the principle of things. I don't need to have access to p2p networks. I'm willing to give up that freedom voluntarily (as opposed to a host of others, which would be OT here). You can bet your internet that the minute my ISP raises prices and/or imposes additional port blocks to those they have in place already (25, 443) without offering me an alternative, I'll start looking for alternatives. Very quickly. And if I don't find any, I'll suck it up and go back to dial-up. Let them drive away their customers. Let them issue earning report warnings to their stockholders. Let them burn a bit. I'll come back when they change their ways.
Re:Metered bandwith might help stop spam and worms (Score:3, Informative)
I moved my firewall to a new machine last night, and after maybe only 12 hours of letting it sit I saw that it had received 24mb of traffic on the external interface. On the internal interface, only about 4mb had been moved, which means there was 20mb's of crap hitting that machine. I suppose if I had a metered c
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:Two words: Metered Bandwidth (Score:5, Interesting)
I find it simply amazing that the Comcast disallows any type of server on their system, yet turn their head when it comes to P2P clients (I guess by calling it a "client" you're really not running a "server"). I am forced to operate under the radar so I can run a mailserver that gets maybe 10 e-mails a day, and a text-only webserver that gets a handful of hits when the sun is up, yet my next-door neighbor can run Kazaa all day long (presumably because it's a "form of entertainment" rather than something truly useful).
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,
Re:Two words: Metered Bandwidth (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to work on the helpdesk at a small ISP. We decided to get into ADSL, since we were losing a lot of dialup customers to high-speed (like, when I left we had half the customers we had when I started). It ended up being a lot of headaches -- dealing with the Big Telco, learning how to debug connections, figuring out how the network was set up (don't even get me started) -- but the biggest thing was dealing with people's preconceptions about bandwidth.
We went through another company for our ADSL, rather than dealing w/Big Telco, and we got charged for bandwidth -- anything over a gig per customer per month. But you can't go around saying that your customers only get a gig per month, 'cos very few other companies even mention that. So we upped it to 1Gb up, 5Gb down. The idea was that most people wouldn't even get close, and those that would, would shoot right over and pay for the rest, at $20/Gb.
For the most part, that was true: most people never did get close; the ones who went over tended to go 'way over, and we'd send 'em bills for a thousand dollars (no lie). But have you ever dealt with anyone handed a thousand-dollar bandwidth bill? My sympathies if you have.
There were two things working against us and everyone else who wants to switch to metering bandwidth:
- Like I said, no one else does it; most advertising just skirts around the issue.
- Most people have no concept of bandwidth use, or have a sense of scale about it, or understand how much something like KaZaa can use, or how to keep bandwidth usage down to a dull roar.
It's that last one that really gets people, I think, and I can understand it. You're using your computer, doing the computer thing and downloading mail, checking a website, grabbing some songs, and alla sudden BAM! you get a thousand-dollar bill for this...this invisible stuff that they say you used, even though you already paid your $34.95 plus tax for the month! No wonder we had angry people on the line.And another thing that just occurs to me: it's really hard to explain how much a gig is, or isn't. It's a fair question from someone checking out your service: You offer x bandwidth per month, so how much is x? But it's nearly impossible to offer a real answer ("It's as long as this here piece of string"), so we offered bland platitudes ("For most people it's never an issue.").
I realize that not everyone was innocent, and we found it hard to believe that anyone could possibly use up 75Gb in a month and not know what the hell they were doing. But even if someone does understand what we were talking about, factor #1 kicks in: Shaw/Telus/Whoever doesn't charge me, so why are you?
We cut deals, of course -- better to get some than none, better to keep a customer than lose one, and the $20/Gb charge had a lot of leeway built into it. And then we tried calling people up once we noticed they were above, say, 4Gb for the month. But eventually the boss told us that if these people left -- the ones using the really insane amounts of bandwidth -- that was fine. We weren't going to get the money (no matter that they signed the agreement), and it would cost too much to either keep 'em on or pursue the matter. They'd quit, and we'd let 'em go.
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.
Re:Two words: Metered Bandwidth (Score:3, Interesting)
50 bytes per request * 10 requests per second * 60 * 60 * 24 * 30 = over a Gb.
Sure, the
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:I'm blocking p2p on my network (Score:5, Interesting)
It doesn't take p2p, either. All you need is someone trying to download the latest RH9 ISOs over the office T1 while another someone is streaming music from shoutcast/icecast/"insert other-streaming-service here". People need to learn that business and pleasure don't mix, and that they will be hunted down like animals when they abuse the privilege of using business resources, be it internet or otherwise. Especially if the admins know those people to have high-speed internet connectivity at their homes.
Re:I'm blocking p2p on my network (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'm blocking p2p on my network (Score:3, Interesting)
Secondly, our id10t users have a tendency to store these megalithic file on their desktop. Windows tries to suck the whole thing down when the log off, and copy it back when they log on. In the process, they fill the drive where the roaming profiles are stored.
Finally, there is a certain level of expectation administrators have about the manner in whi
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?
Re:I'm blocking p2p on my network (Score:3, Interesting)
My experince has been that you can't simply block certain TCP ports because alot of the clients automatically reconfig themselves for port 80.
Did you use a layer 4 analyzer/blocker thingy?
Re:I'm blocking p2p on my network (Score:5, Interesting)
Muhahahahaa.
I also know that nobody on our internal network should be HOSTING information. I use a Linux box to do the firewalling via IPMasquerade, so all of the traffic has to pass through that box. I periodically sniff packets using etherdump, and look for outlying info.
For added added safety, I also run nmap periodically to sniff out what workstations are running p2p software. When I find them I sic the helpdesk on them like wolves.
Re:I'm blocking p2p on my network (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'm blocking p2p on my network (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I'm blocking p2p on my network (Score:3, Informative)
Nice troll. I do have one bullet left in my mod gun right now, but I have decided to let you off with this warning.
Not everyone who uses p2p is illegally sharing copyrighted works. I have a p2p node that stays slammed offering completely legal and non-porn content. I host linux distros, stuff related to Orbiter space flight simulator [orbitersim.com] (free), and stuff that gets slashdotted. (People still download the Starship Exeter videos).
The node runs slammed 24/7, and I've had to implement traffic control [lartc.org] to be ab
Surely you jest.. (Score:5, Funny)
As if gigantic movies and games along with lots of music files utilize more bandwidth than the 100kb of text and pictures per webpage.
60% ? (Score:5, Funny)
60%: p2p traffic
30%: Spam
20%: Kiddie porn
_________________
110% evil.
Re:60% ? (Score:2)
Not necessarily. I work for one of the numerous Cambridge Colleges, and I know that several of them have 80%+ of P2P traffic. We have somewhat less than that, but thats because we're slightly more aggressive with our policing. It is a real problem, and it's certainly not decreasing.
Alternative to per-GB charges... (Score:5, Interesting)
Alternative per-GB charges.. but then there's eBay (Score:3, Informative)
I'd prefer not to hear the ... it's a business expense that you must pay arguement. I have built my business on the model I am in right now at the price
60% from P2P + 45% from Windows Update?? (Score:5, Funny)
60% not so unrealistic (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:60% not so unrealistic (Score:4, Funny)
This just in! (Score:5, Funny)
"Thank you, Beavis...apparently, the majority of home electrical usage is going to things like watching television, playing video games, or playing music on a stereo. I have with me Mr. Mxlyplk, the general manager of ConEd for this region. Tell us, Mr. Mxlyplk, what can you tell us about this discovery?"
"Well, Jack, it's rather shocking. All along we assumed that home users were using our electrical output to cure cancer or develop space travel or something like that. But apparently, people who dutifully pay their monthly fees for a utility think they can just use it any way they want to, for any old purpose!"
While this is funny, the truth is: (Score:3, Interesting)
So really, ISPs want to be the electric company of our data. The more you use above what they deem 'nominal' you pay a demand fee for and an increased fee over the guy down the street that lives off of one light bulb that is on only one hour a d
Is email considered Internet traffic? (Score:2)
My theory is that companies like inktomi and akaimai like to push big numbers around - and they QUITE enjoy PrOn emails that promote quicktime movie downloads etc.
Personally, I think Yahoo and M$ (Hotmail) should be required to subsidize some bandwidth because of the aforementioned bandwidth hogging solicitations that generally propagate on their s
Interesting business plan (Score:5, Insightful)
2. Complain that customers are using their high-speed internet
It's a realistic number (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, with the port-hopping ability of some of the newer p2p networks, restricting their usage, or giving them a lower class of service than other protocols is exceedingly difficult.
The real problem in our case is not so much the people downloading, but as we have a rather fat pipe to the internet, we're seen as very favorable download farm for people to grab files from.
yeah, reality is a bitch. (Score:3, Funny)
True! and there's no way to throttle the Dean's XP desktop, no matter how many times it's owned.
"What?" He'll ask. "You let hackers break my computer? You are so fired!"
Better not mention it.
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.
This is good news for telecom (Score:5, Informative)
They can only do this for so long. With the rollout of large-scale gaming networks like Sony's and Microsoft's (for the X-Box), the demand will keep growing, one way or another. Sooner or later, the Qwests and MCIs are going to have to bite the bullet and buy some terabit optical switches. They're going to have to open up their wallets, and then we should start seeing a rebound in the high-tech market.
So support your high-tech buddies! Saturate your network connection, make your ISP feel the bandwidth pain, nag them to upgrade!
Re:This is good news for telecom (Score:2)
Now that's ok for stag films, but uploading high-quality divx dumps of stuff available at the video store is dumb. 8 hours is not worth it to me to wait to see a flick. The Blockbuster is around the corner, and the dingy shack with the plywood windows isn't that much further.
Come one nerds, at least leave the house for something!
Re:This is good news for telecom (Score:2)
I still leave the house for beer and work.
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
What's wrong with per gig charges?? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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 b
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 not redundant, it's spare capacity (Score:3, Informative)
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.
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.
...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.
true (Score:5, Informative)
Thing is: P2P wastes tons of bandwidth. The continuous searches, all the broken or incomplete downloads, not even to speak of the overhead.
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
Re:true (Score:3, Informative)
>the wire to download 100 MB via FTP? via HTTP? via scp?
>Compare that to P2P.
It vaires considerably been filesharing systems. My rough guess based on watching various p2p clients, including primary/supernode traffic, not including TCP overhead, assuming long term use is
gnutella/0.4 1-2Gbyte traffic for 100Mb download
winmx/kazaa/G2MP 150-250MB
edonkey 120MB
If you compare to the www you need to consider how many
web searchs and pages pe
Statistics. (Score:3, Interesting)
The fact of the matter is that due to the distributed nature of the internet, no one knows what the actual usage breakdown is. Even if you were able to classify all of the traffic that passes through MAE East and West, it still would not be an accurate reprisentation of all internet traffic.
Cornell Univeristy Stats (with graphs, etc) (Score:3, Informative)
Cornell had 60% outgoing and 50% incoming traffic as filesharing. Lots of pretty graphs, etc. on those pages.
Wait a minute! (Score:5, Funny)
Haven't ISPs like Earthlink, AOL, and the US Government been saying in this whole Spam(tm) battle that "Spam takes up over 50% of the Internet bandwidth?"!
Lets see: 50% Spam + 60% P2P = What internet are they using?!
Re:Wait a minute! (Score:3, Funny)
if (subject == piracy) {
banwidth = compare_to_arpanet(bandwidth);
prices = inflate(prices);
return;
}
My own experience (Score:4, Interesting)
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 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.
Biased study? (Score:5, Interesting)
60% Usage (Score:5, Informative)
I see kazaa 2 traffic mostly. but also edonkey, kazaa 1, napster, and others.
Less then 1% of our users use 85% of the bandwidth. They're alloted 1Mb/s download, and they use it constantly.
what's your point? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not like p2p apps are actually "hogging" anything. Have you ever tried to load a webpage and gotten a "Sorry, the internet is too busy" error? P2p is simply using what is there. If there were no p2p applications, that bandwidth would just be sitting there unused.
Of course, with things like college campuses, with limited bandwidth, then yeah, I can understand where the complaint comes from. But just the internet in general? Come on.
It's so annoying that actually using the available resources is considered such a bad thing. Like complaining because there's so much traffic. Don't bitch because so many people are using your freeways, build bigger freeways! That's what they're there for.
Customer Annoyance Will Drive Metered Bandwidth (Score:3, Interesting)
Most ISP subscribers don't kow what P2P is, much less spend their day tolling the net for mp3's and movies. But, if they decide that P2P is ruining their use of the Internet, metered bandwidth will be an easy sell. P2P users will be painted, with some credibility, as "a bunch of kids" downloading "stuff" no one else cares about.
Economics of IP bandwidth cost (Score:5, Informative)
I've posted on this so many times I've written it up and placed it in my journal
http://slashdot.org/~puzzled
Here it is again briefly:
A T1 has 24 x 64kb channels. Getting one from a top level provider like Sprint or UUNet will cost about $1000/mo or $40/channel/month.
A 256kb DSL link is four channels and costs about $40/mo. Four channels times $40/mo = $160/mo cost for the ISP. I realize the average math skills of slashdot readers are about eighth grade level, so I'll finish it for you - $40/mo revenue minus $160/mo cost = -$120/mo. This is what happens to ISPs when people doing file sharing of any sort leave their retail connections running 24x7 and consume bandwidth in a wholesale fashion.
Its not about the MPAA or RIAA, evil scumbags that they may be, its just simple cost that is going to do in file sharing. Stop being a whiny end user and pay for some quality bandwidth, or shut the *(&@$(%*&@#$% up about it already.
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
stupid complaints. (Score:3, Informative)
I remember back in 94-95 era, people started to complain that "this web thing is eating all our bandwidth" People complained that it was slowing down email, usenet, and IRC. It was a hog, all those images.. yada yada yada...
Now that the average connection is a factor of 10 faster than it was in 95, someone invented an application to utilize that bandwidth.. *SHOCK*
One of our local campus admins talks about how we double our campus backbone connection every 2 years.. we had about 200mbit when i started 2 years ago, now the plan is to get a 3rd provider, and jump to 400mbit before the next school year starts. _IF_ we can afford it. (yay for state budjet problems)
In another 5 years, people will forget all about P2P, because it will be background noise compared to the ********* protocol. Whatever they think up when 100mbit fiber starts to get rolled out.
If you want to really see what is in the works, look at Internet 2 projects. Our campus has 655mbit to I2, and it's already too slow for some of the research. Plans are in the works for a few gbits.
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!
Well, they've killed all the local resources... (Score:4, Interesting)
I also know that the University prevents people from sharing stuff over network shares (there are some internal DC hubs if you know of them, but few do). So what do people do, even though it's probably on the local network ten dozen times already? They go on KaZaA or whatever and get it from somewhere else, making for a helluva inefficient bandwidth usage.
And if they start really cracking down on normal P2P users, I imagine most will move to Freenet or something like that, sending it 10x around the world to anonymize where it came from and who's getting it.
If you force people to go halfway around the globe to get what's next door, well surprise surprise. It takes bandwidth. Lots of it, too.
Kjella
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...
The DSL provider here does traffic-shaping... (Score:3, Informative)
They're very up front about the metering, and it *is* much better than pay-per-minute over phone. Their calculation of how many pages you can view per month can't possibly include any lame flash sites, but other than that it's a straight offer. However, the other big competing company basicly said something like "we'll never offer metered connections, unlimited all the way" and they've earned a lot of customers on that, not sure how many *profitable* customers though...
Kjella
Overusage throttling is a good thing (Score:3, Interesting)
Throttled, mind you - not cut off.
I've been hanging on to an email from the Vuln-dev list for ages that links to the UIUC bandwidth policy, because I think it kicks that much ass. A fair policy that keeps the heavy users from choking the others out, but still lets you get in the big DL's if you need them.
Unrestricted Class (10Mb/s): By default, connections are in this class. The connection is not artificially throttled or limited.
Restricted Class A (128kb/s per flow): When the Internet traffic of an IP address reaches 80% of the limit (600MB), the IP address (computer) will be rate-limited (throttled) to 128kb/s per flow.
Restricted Class B (32kb/s per flow): When the Internet traffic of an IP address reaches 100% of the limit (750MB), the IP address (computer) will be rate-limited (throttled) to 32kb/s per flow.
Restricted Class C (512kb/s aggregate): When the Internet traffic of an IP address reaches 150% of the limit (1125MB), the IP address (computer) will be rate-limited (throttled) to approximately the speed of a 33.6 modem (about
"Q: Will I ever get shut down for traffic?
A: The current "rate-limiting" system does not turn off ports it just slows down your connection. However, rooms and computers may still be turned off for many other reasons (viruses, copyright, abuse of the network, and for very large amounts of traffic as determined by the CIO's office)."
That progressive degradation sounds great to me. Just alter the breakpoints and you can have different plans for business/residential too.
Anyone rolled something like this out? Any pointers?
Why an IP T1 still costs $1k/month (Score:3, Informative)
Lets investigate the reality behind a typical Sprint T1 install at $1,000/month.
A T1 is composed of several components, the first being the local loop to the CO. You've got two or four copper wires buried in the ground, an NIU on the customer end and some sort of gear in the central office. This costs $285/month for on net to off net termination in my city and that is a pretty typical number.
Once you get to that termination gear you've got to negotiate the LEC's metro optical network to reach the point where they interconnect with the ISP's equipment. Despite being #53 in terms of population nationally my city doesn't have enough Sprint T1s on my ILEC to qualify for its own DS3 mux so my Sprint T1 gets drug forty miles south west to our provincial state capitol. This is non trivial, but its priced as part of that $285/month.
Once you get to the ISP's edge equipment you're probably getting 'back hauled' cross country to some location where they've got a Cisco 12000 series or some big Juniper box. You should be reading "WAN line costs", "hardended telco facilties costs", "depreciation on equipment you *can't* get at Best Buy", etc, etc.
This gets you to the ISP's network and their customers. Somewhere, out there, they peer with other top level carriers, and that is how you get to the global internet.
Besides not being able to buy the gear at Best Buy you can't *hire* the geniuses needed to make it all go from behind the counter of a local McDonalds. If you want someone who can pour piss out of a transit autonomous system without refering to the instructions printed on the heel of a Cisco 12008 you pay. If you want someone to answer the phone when the customer calls you pay. Scale that up by ten thousand T1 customers and you can imagine what is required - a real live company, so large it must be publically held to receive the funding it needs.
Bandwidth is like real estate. You can get an address on Skyline Boulevard (Sprint or UUNet DS1), you can move in to section 8 housing at 2209 Jones Street and heckle crack dealers (DSL), or maybe you're upscale enough to get a doublewide at 64th and Grover (cable modem), but make no mistake about how the world is gonna be - you plant petunias in the 'hood (VPN applications), homey's pit bull(Kazaa) is gonna take a dump there the very next day.
Re:spam and p2p are more than all the bandwidth (Score:2)
Re:So what (Score:2)
It is quite amazing that some person or small group can easily get some hystaria going (if this takes off) over a style choice.
In this case, some group that does not "like" the p2p usage on the 'net because they prefer to use the net for some other reason. This is not new. There was some of this cackling when the web gained popularity.
Other examples: cars, fur, meat, makeup, baloons. This is by no means a complete list. For each item listed, some group wants it replaced with what they choose
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.
exactly, 'so what'! (Score:2)
Upload is slow, so what? Broadband was intended for faster web surfing, for video on demand, quick file downloads over ftp and http. That are relatively short time spans, in which you want as much KB/s as possible. If you run a P2P client and offer some interesting files, however, it's uploading at your maximum upload limit (either the one of your modem or a lower one you set in your preferences) 24-7. That more than compensates for the slow uplo
Re:60% sounds about right (Score:2)
Agreed. From speaking to my ISP, around 85% of bandwidth on his network was P2P at one point.
Re:P2P with super nodes - centralization (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'm cornfused (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Actual bandwidth usage of an ISP (Score:5, Informative)
Before we started to use their switches, p2p traffic accounted for 65% of our network traffic (both inbound and outboud). By placing p2p limits on the upstream (or outbound) portion of internet pipes, we were able to reduce that to 40%.
When Ellacoya introduced signature detection in their 5.0 release, we were able to catch Kazaa2 flows which reduced our p2p usage to 30%.
Not only has this saved us a tremendous ammount of money (we don't have to keep buying pipe), but we were able to keep the cost down for our customers that don't use p2p, or care.
Another use for the switch is usage-based billing. People scoff at usage based billing, but it evens the billing field. Look at the grandmother that uses her connection to send emails to her kids, and then look at the kid down the street. Both pay the same ammount, but one uses 95% more bandwidth. A recent study that we did here concluded that 5% of our users use 90% of the available bandwidth.
So, what is fair? Limiting bandwidth-hungry applications to the point that they are no longer useable, or charging the customer that wants to use that application his fair share of the costs of delivering the service?