FW: ISPs slowing P2P traffic...

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1

Joe Greco wrote:
> Time to stop selling the "always on" connections, then, I guess, because
> it is "always on" - not P2P - which is the fat man never leaving. P2P
> is merely the fat man eating a lot while he's there.

As long as we're keeping up this metaphor, P2P is the fat man who says
he's gonna get a job real soon but dude life is just SO HARD and crashes
on your couch for three weeks until eventually you threaten to get the
cops involved because he won't leave. Then you have to clean up
thirty-seven half-eaten bags of Cheetos.

I have no idea what the networking equivalent of thirty-seven half-eaten
bags of Cheetos is, can't even begin to imagine what the virtual equivalent
of my couch is, etc. Your metaphor doesn't really make any sense to me,
sorry.

Interestingly enough, we do have a pizza-and-play place a mile or two
from the house, you pay one fee to get in, then quarters (or cards or
whatever) to play games - but they have repeatedly answered that they
are absolutely and positively fine with you coming in for lunch, and
staying through supper. And we have a "discount" card, which they used
to give out to local businesspeople for "business lunches", on top of it.

Every network has limitations, and I don't think I've ever seen a
network that makes every single end-user happy with everything all the
time. You could pipe 100Mbps full-duplex to everyone's door, and someone
would still complain because they don't have gigabit access to lemonparty.

Certainly. There will be gigabit in the future, but it isn't here (in
the US) just yet. That has very little to do with the deceptiveness
inherent in selling something when you don't intend to actually provide
what you advertised.

Whether those are limitations of the technology you chose, limitations
in your budget, policy restrictions, whatever.

As long as you fairly disclose to your end-users what limitations and
restrictions exist on your network, I don't see the problem.

You've set out a qualification that generally doesn't exist. For example,
this discussion included someone from a WISP, Amplex, I believe, that
listed certain conditions of use on their web site, and yet it seems like
they're un{willing,able} (not assigning blame/fault/etc here) to deliver
that level of service, and using their inability as a way to justify
possibly rate shaping P2P traffic above and beyond what they indicate on
their own documents.

In some cases, we do have people burying T&C in lengthy T&C documents,
such as some of the 3G cellular providers who advertise "Unlimited
Internet(*)" data cards, but then have a slew of (*) items that are
restricted - but only if you dig into the fine print on Page 3 of the
T&C. I'd much prefer that the advertising be honest and up front, and
that ISP's not be allowed to advertise "unlimited" service if they are
going to place limits, particularly significant limits, on the service.

... JG

2

Joe Greco wrote:

I have no idea what the networking equivalent of thirty-seven half-eaten
bags of Cheetos is, can't even begin to imagine what the virtual equivalent
of my couch is, etc. Your metaphor doesn't really make any sense to me,
sorry.

There isn't one. The "fat man" metaphor was getting increasingly silly, I just wanted to get it over with.

Interestingly enough, we do have a pizza-and-play place a mile or two
from the house, you pay one fee to get in, then quarters (or cards or
whatever) to play games - but they have repeatedly answered that they
are absolutely and positively fine with you coming in for lunch, and staying through supper. And we have a "discount" card, which they used
to give out to local businesspeople for "business lunches", on top of it.

That's not the best metaphor either, because they're making money off the games, not the buffet. (Seriously, visit one of 'em, the food isn't very good, and clearly isn't the real draw.) I suppose you could market Internet connectivity this way - unlimited access to HTTP and POP3, and ten free SMTP transactions per month, then you pay extra for each protocol. That'd be an awfully tough sell, though.

As long as you fairly disclose to your end-users what limitations and restrictions exist on your network, I don't see the problem.

You've set out a qualification that generally doesn't exist.

I can only speak for my network, of course. Mine is a small WISP, and we have the same basic policy as Amplex, from whence this thread originated. Our contracts have relatively clear and large (at least by the standards of a contract) "no p2p" disclaimers, in addition to the standard "no traffic that causes network problems" clause that many of us have. The installers are trained to explicitly mention this, along with other no-brainer clauses like "don't spam."

When we're setting up software on their computers (like their email client), we'll look for obvious signs of trouble ahead. If a customer already has a bunch of p2p software installed, we'll let them know they can't use it, under pain of "find a new ISP."

We don't tell our customers they can have unlimited access to do whatever the heck they want. The technical distinctions only matter to a few customers, and they're generally the problem customers that we don't want anyway.

To try to make this slightly more relevant, is it a good idea, either technically or legally, to mandate some sort of standard for this? I'm thinking something like the "Nutrition Facts" information that appears on most packaged foods in the States, that ISPs put on their Web sites and advertisements. I'm willing to disclose that we block certain ports for our end-users unless they request otherwise, and that we rate-limit certain types of traffic. I can see this sort of thing getting confusing and messy for everyone, with little or no benefit to anyone. Thoughts?

David Smith
MVN.net

3

Joe Greco wrote:

As long as you fairly disclose to your end-users what limitations and restrictions exist on your network, I don't see the problem.
    
You've set out a qualification that generally doesn't exist. For example,
this discussion included someone from a WISP, Amplex, I believe, that listed certain conditions of use on their web site, and yet it seems like
they're un{willing,able} (not assigning blame/fault/etc here) to deliver
that level of service, and using their inability as a way to justify
possibly rate shaping P2P traffic above and beyond what they indicate on their own documents.
  

Actually you misrepresent what I said versus what you said. It's getting a little old.

I responded to the original question by Deepak Jain over why anyone cared about P2P traffic rather then just using a hard limit with the reasons why a Wireless ISP would want to shape P2P traffic.

You then took it upon yourself to post sections of our website to Nanog and claim that your service was much superior because you happen to run Metro Ethernet.

Our website pretty clearly spells out our practices and they are MUCH more transparent than any other provider I know of. Can we do EXACTLY what we say on our website if EVERY client wants to run P2P at the full upload rate? No - but we can do it for the ones who care at this point. At the moment the only people who seem to care about this are holier than thou network engineers and content providers looking for ways to avoid their own distribution costs. Neither one of them is paying me a dime.

Mark

4

[snip]

As long as you fairly disclose to your end-users what limitations and
restrictions exist on your network, I don't see the problem.

You've set out a qualification that generally doesn't exist. For example,
this discussion included someone from a WISP, Amplex, I believe, that
listed certain conditions of use on their web site, and yet it seems like
they're un{willing,able} (not assigning blame/fault/etc here) to deliver
that level of service, and using their inability as a way to justify
possibly rate shaping P2P traffic above and beyond what they indicate on
their own documents.

In some cases, we do have people burying T&C in lengthy T&C documents,
such as some of the 3G cellular providers who advertise "Unlimited
Internet(*)" data cards, but then have a slew of (*) items that are
restricted - but only if you dig into the fine print on Page 3 of the
T&C. I'd much prefer that the advertising be honest and up front, and
that ISP's not be allowed to advertise "unlimited" service if they are
going to place limits, particularly significant limits, on the service.

... JG

Yep.

"In the US, Internet access is still generally sold as all-you-can-eat, with few restrictions on the types of services or applications that can be run across the network (except for wireless, of course), but things are different across the pond. In the UK, ISP plus.net doesn't even offer "unlimited" packages, and they explain why on their web site.
'Most providers claiming to offer unlimited broadband will have a fair use policy to try and prevent people over-using their service," they write. "But if it's supposed to be unlimited, why should you use it fairly? The fair use policy stops you using your unlimited broadband in an unlimited fashion-so, by our reckoning, it's not unlimited. We don't believe in selling 'unlimited broadband' that's bound by a fair use policy. We'd rather be upfront with you and give you clear usage allowances, with FREE overnight usage.' "

The above (and there's much more) from:

If I was a WISP, I'd be saving up for that DPI box.

--Michael

5

a message of 61 lines which said:

To try to make this slightly more relevant, is it a good idea,
either technically or legally, to mandate some sort of standard for
this? I'm thinking something like the "Nutrition Facts" information
that appears on most packaged foods in the States, that ISPs put on
their Web sites and advertisements. I'm willing to disclose that we
block certain ports [...]

As a consumer, I would say YES. And FCC should mandates it.

Practically speaking, you may find the RFC 4084 "Terminology for
Describing Internet Connectivity" interesting:

   As the Internet has evolved, many types of arrangements have been
   advertised and sold as "Internet connectivity". Because these may
   differ significantly in the capabilities they offer, the range of
   options, and the lack of any standard terminology, the effort to
   distinguish between these services has caused considerable consumer
   confusion. This document provides a list of terms and definitions
   that may be helpful to providers, consumers, and, potentially,
   regulators in clarifying the type and character of services being
   offered.

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4084.txt

6

Stephane Bortzmeyer (bortzmeyer) writes:

> that appears on most packaged foods in the States, that ISPs put on
> their Web sites and advertisements. I'm willing to disclose that we
> block certain ports [...]

As a consumer, I would say YES. And FCC should mandates it.

  ... and if the FCC doesn't mandate it, maybe we'll see some
  self-labelling, just like the some food producers have been
  doing in a few countries ("this doesn't contain preservatives")
  in the absence of formal regulation.

Practically speaking, you may find the RFC 4084 "Terminology for
Describing Internet Connectivity" interesting:

  Agreed. Something describing Internet service, and breaking it
  down into "essential components" such as:

  - end-to-end IP (NAT/NO NAT)
  - IPv6 availability (Y/N/timeline)
  - transparent HTTP redirection or not
  - DNS catchall or not
  - possibilities to enable/disable and cost
  - port filtering/throttling if any (P2P, SIP, ...)
  - respect of evil bit