Can P2P applications learn to play fair on networks?

Tue Oct 23 11:18:01 UTC 2007

On 22-okt-2007, at 18:12, Sean Donelan wrote:

> Network operators probably aren't operating from altruistic  
> principles, but for most network operators when the pain isn't  
> spread equally across the the customer base it represents a  
> "fairness" issue.  If 490 customers are complaining about bad  
> network performance and the cause is traced to what 10 customers  
> are doing, the reaction is to hammer the nails sticking out.

The problem here is that they seem to be using a sledge hammer:  
BitTorrent is essentially left dead in the water. And they deny doing  
anything, to boot.

A reasonable approach would be to throttle the offending applications  
to make them fit inside the maximum reasonable traffic envelope.

What I would like is a system where there are two diffserv traffic  
classes: normal and scavenger-like. When a user trips some predefined  
traffic limit within a certain period, all their traffic is put in  
the scavenger bucket which takes a back seat to normal traffic. P2P  
users can then voluntarily choose to classify their traffic in the  
lower service class where it doesn't get in the way of interactive  
applications (both theirs and their neighbor's). I believe Azureus  
can already do this today. It would even be somewhat reasonable to  
require heavy users to buy a new modem that can implement this.