ISPs slowing P2P traffic...

Mark Radabaugh mark at amplex.net
Sun Jan 13 15:55:54 UTC 2008


The vast majority of our last-mile connections are fixed wireless.   The 
design of the system is essentially half-duplex with an adjustable ratio 
between download/upload traffic.   PTP heavily stresses the upload 
channel and left unchecked results in poor performance for other 
customers. 

Bandwidth quotas don't help much since it just moves the problem to the 
'start' of the quota time. 

Hard limits on upload bandwidth help considerably but do not solve the 
problem since only a few dozen customers running a steady 256k upload 
stream can saturate the channel.   We still need a way to shape the 
upload traffic.

It's easy to say "put up more access points, sectors, etc.) but there 
are constraints due to RF spectrum, tower space, etc.

Unfortunately there are no easy answers here.   The network (at least 
ours) is designed to provide broadband download speeds to rural 
customers.   It's not designed and is not capable of being a CDN for the 
rest of the world. 

I would be much happier creating a torrent server at the data center 
level that customers could seed/upload from rather than doing it over 
the last mile.   I don't see this working from a legal standpoint though.

-- 

Mark Radabaugh
Amplex
419.837.5015 x21
mark at amplex.net




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