ISPs slowing P2P traffic...

Lasher, Donn DLasher at newedgenetworks.com
Mon Jan 14 17:40:21 UTC 2008


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-nanog at merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog at merit.edu] On Behalf Of
David E. Smith
Sent: Sunday, January 13, 2008 12:03 PM
To: nanog at merit.edu
Subject: Re: ISPs slowing P2P traffic...


>The wireless ISP business is a bit of a special case in this regard, where
P2P traffic is especially nasty.
>It's not the bandwidth, it's the number of packets being sent out.... 
>I still have a job, so we must have a few customers who are alright with
this limitation on their broadband service.

Speaking as a former wifi network operator, I feel for guys who are doing it
now, it's not an easy fence to sit on, between keeping your network
operational, and keeping your customers happy. In our case, we realized two
things very early on.

1. Radio PPS limitations appeared far sooner than BPS limits. A certain
vendor who made 3Mbit SSFH radios, which could carry about 1.7Mbit with big
packets, choked at about 200kbit with small packets. Radio methods of
traffic shaping were completely ineffective, so we needed a better way to
keep service levels up.

2. P2P was already a big challenge (back in the early Kazaa days) so we
found hardware solutions (Allot) with Layer7 awareness to deal with the
issue. Surprise surprise, even back in 2001, we found 60% of our traffic
from any given 'tower' was P2P traffic.

We implemented time-of-day based limits on P2P traffic, both in PPS and in
BPS. Less during the day (we were a business ISP) and more during the night,
and everybody was happy. 

Never once in 5+ years of operating that way, did we get a customer
complaining about their speeds for P2P. In fact, more often than not, we'd
see a customer flatline their connection, call their IT guy, explain what
the traffic was, and his reaction was "Those SOB's.. I told them not to use
that stuff.. What port is it on?? (30 seconds later) is it gone? Good!! Any
time you see that, call me directly!"

In the end, regardless of customer complaints, operators need to be able to
provide the service they are committed to selling, in spite of customers
attempts to disrupt that service, intentional or accidental.





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