QUIC traffic throttled on AT&T residential

Thu Feb 20 21:45:46 UTC 2020

> On Feb 20, 2020, at 4:42 PM, Blake Hudson <blake at ispn.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 2/20/2020 1:10 PM, Jared Mauch wrote:
>> On Thu, Feb 20, 2020 at 10:57:46AM -0600, Blake Hudson wrote:
>>> On 2/20/2020 10:34 AM, Ca By wrote:
>>>> On Thu, Feb 20, 2020 at 10:19 AM Blake Hudson <blake at ispn.net
>>>> <mailto:blake at ispn.net>> wrote:
>>>> Dropping udp is not from a “best practice” doc from a vendor, it is
>>>> deployed by network ops folks that are trying to sleep at night.
>>> I get it Ca, I happen to be one of those network ops folks that likes to
>>> sleep at night. However, I've never thought it was a good practice to break
>>> applications in fun ways for my customers to discover on their own and I've
>>> never sold someone a 150Mbps package that actually only delivers 10Mbps for
>>> certain applications. Regardless of the intent, ATT and Cox's policies are
>>> not transparent, open, or neutral on this topic. This leaves us to speculate
>>> on what their intentions might have been and whether their actions are an
>>> appropriate response to any concerns they might have had.
>> 	I was responsible for deploying such policies in the past, going back as
>> far as the UDP/1434 filters I was forced to deploy due to persistent network
>> congestion.  Rolling these back took some time.
>> 
>> 	The same is true for UDP policers we ended up rolling out for NTP, chargen
>> and other activities.
>> 
>> 	Extending these to consumer side where the traffic often originated makes
>> sense until the devices can be secured.  You can blame the providers for deploying
>> filters, or not disconnecting consumers that have devices that can be exploited
>> or whatever other reason you believe.
>> 
>> 	As a network operator my goal was always to ensure customers receive
>> the traffic they expected, high rates of UDP were often not what they wanted.
>> 
>> 	Adusting the limits may be useful but I still think the question of
>> what rate of UDP traffic is acceptable is a practical one for the future.
>> 
>> 	- Jared
> 
> I think that's a fair statement Jared. How about this question: Would it be reasonable for one to presume that someone purchasing a 25Mbps internet connection might potentially want to send or receive 25Mbps of UDP traffic? I can think of a few (not uncommon) applications where this would be the case (VPNs, security cameras using RTP, teleconferencing, web browsers implementing QUIC, DNS servers, hosted PBX, etc).

I can think of many legitimate cases, but i think this is where you have internet for everyone and internet for the tech-savvy/business split that becomes interesting.

I’ve generally been willing to pay more for a business class service for support and improved response SLA.  The average user isn’t going to detect that 10% of their UDP has gone missing, nor should they be expected to.

- Jared