ISPs slowing P2P traffic...

Greg VILLAIN nanog at grrrrreg.net
Thu Jan 10 11:37:42 UTC 2008



On Jan 9, 2008, at 9:04 PM, Deepak Jain wrote:

> http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/TenFold-Jump-In-Encrypted-BitTorrent-Traffic-89260
> http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Comcast-Traffic-Shaping-Impacts-Gnutella-Lotus-Notes-88673
> http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Verizon-Net-Neutrality-iOverblowni-73225
>
> If I am mistakenly being duped by some crazy fascists, please let me  
> know.
>
> However, my question is simply.. for ISPs promising broadband  
> service. Isn't it simpler to just announce a bandwidth quota/cap  
> that your "good" users won't hit and your bad ones will? This  
> chasing of the lump under-the-rug (slowing encrypted traffic, then  
> VPN traffic and so on...) seems like the exact opposite of progress  
> to me (by progressively nastier filters, impeding the traffic your  
> network was built to move, etc).
>
> Especially when there is no real reason this P2P traffic can't  
> masquerade as something really interesting... like Email or Web  
> (https, hello!) or SSH or gamer traffic. I personally expect a day  
> when there is a torrent "encryption" module that converts everything  
> to look like a plain-text email conversation or IRC or whatever.
>
> When you start slowing encrypted or VPN traffic, you start setting  
> yourself up to interfere with all of the bread&butter applications  
> (business, telecommuters, what have you).
>
> I remember Bill Norton's peering forum regarding P2P traffic and how  
> the majority of it is between cable and other broadband providers...  
> Operationally, why not just lash a few additional 10GE cross- 
> connects and let these *paying customers* communicate as they will?
>
> All of these "traffic shaping" and "traffic prioritization"  
> techniques seem a bit like the providers that pushed for ubiquitous  
> broadband because they liked the margins don't want to deal with a  
> world where those users have figured out ways to use these amazing  
> networks to do things... whatever they are. If they want to develop  
> incremental revenue, they should do it by making clear what their  
> caps/usage profiles are and moving ahead... or at least  
> transparently share what shaping they are doing and when.
>
> I don't see how Operators could possibly debug connection/throughput  
> problems when increasingly draconian methods are used to manage  
> traffic flows with seemingly random behaviors. This seems a lot like  
> the evil-transparent caching we were concerned about years ago.
>
> So, to keep this from turning into a holy war, or a non-operational  
> policy debate, and assuming you agree that providers of consumer  
> connectivity shouldn't employee transparent traffic shaping because  
> it screws the savvy customers and business customers. ;)
>
> What can be done operationally?
>
> For legitimate applications:
>
> Encouraging "encryption" of more protocols is an interesting way to  
> discourage this kind of shaping.
>
> Using IPv6 based IPs instead of ports would also help by obfuscating  
> protocol and behavior. Even IP rotation through /64s (cough 1 IP per  
> half-connection anyone).
>
> For illegitimate applications:
>
> Port knocking and pre-determined stream hopping (send 50Kbytes on  
> this port/ip pairing then jump to the next, etc, etc)
>
> My caffeine hasn't hit, so I can't think of anything else. Is this  
> something the market will address by itself?
>
> DJ

Hi all, 1st post for me here, but I just couldn't help it.

We've been noticing this for quite a couple years in France now. (same  
time Cisco buying PCUBE, anyone remember ?).
What happened is that someday, some major ISP here decided customer  
were to be offered 24Mb/s DSL DOWN, unlimited, plus TV, plus VoIP  
towards hundreds of free destinations...
... all that for around 30€/months.

Just make a simple calculation with the amount of bandwidth in terms  
of transit. Let's say you're a french ISP, transit price-per-meg could  
vary between 10€ and 20€ (which is already cheap isn't it ?), multiply  
this by 24Mb/s, now the 30€ that you charge makes you feel like you'd  
better do everything possible to limitate traffic going towards other  
ASes.
Certainly sounds like you've screwed your business plan. Let's be  
honest still, dumping prices on Internet Access also brang the country  
amongst the leading Internet countries, having a rather positive  
effect on competition.

Another side of the story is that once upon a time, ISPs had a  
naturally OUTBOUND traffic profile, which supposedly is was to good in  
terms of ratio to negociate peerings.
Thanks to peer-to-peer, now their ratios are BALANCED, meaning ISPs  
are now in a dominant position for negociating peerings.
Eventually the question is: why is it that you guys fight p2p while at  
the same time benefiting from it, it doesn't quite make sense does it ?

In France, Internet got broken the very 1st day ISPs told people it  
was cheap. It definitely isn't, but there is no turning back now...

Greg VILLAIN
Independant Network & Telco Architecture Consultant






More information about the NANOG mailing list