BitTorrent swarms have a deadly bite on broadband nets

Tue Oct 23 00:16:08 UTC 2007

>>> On 10/22/2007 at 3:02 PM, "Frank Bulk" <frnkblk at iname.com> wrote:

> I wonder how quickly applications and network gear would implement
QoS
> support if the major ISPs offered their subscribers two queues: a
default
> queue, which handled regular internet traffic but squashed P2P, and
then a
> separate queue that allowed P2P to flow uninhibited for an extra
$5/month,
> but then ISPs could purchase cheaper bandwidth for that.
> 
> But perhaps at the end of the day Andrew O. is right and it's best
off to
> have a single queue and throw more bandwidth at the problem.

How does one "squash P2P?" How fast will BitTorrent start hiding it's
trivial to spot ".BitTorrent protocol" banner in the handshakes? How
many P2P protocols are already blocking/shaping evasive?

It seems to me is what hurts the ISPs is the accompanying upload
streams, not the download (or at least the ISP feels the same
download pain no matter what technology their end user uses to get
the data[0]). Throwing more bandwidth does not scale to the number
of users we are talking about. Why not suck up and go with the
economic solution? Seems like the easy thing is for the ISPs to come
clean and admit their "unlimited" service is not and put in upload
caps and charge for overages.

[0] Or is this maybe P2P's fault only in the sense that it makes
so much more content available that there is more for end-users
to download now than ever before.

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