Can P2P applications learn to play fair on networks?

Tue Oct 23 14:26:39 UTC 2007

On 23-okt-2007, at 15:43, Sam Stickland wrote:

>> 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).

> Surely you would only want to set traffic that falls outside the  
> limit as scavenger, rather than all of it?

If the ISP gives you (say) 1 GB a month upload capacity and on the  
3rd you've used that up, then you'd be in the "worse effort" traffic  
class for ALL your traffic the rest of the month. But if you  
voluntarily give your P2P stuff the worse effort traffic class, this  
means you get to upload all the time (although probably not as fast)  
without having to worry about hurting your other traffic. This is  
both good in the short term, because your VoIP stuff still works when  
an upload is happening, and in the long term, because you get to do  
video conferencing throughout the month, which didn't work before  
after you went over 1 GB.