I'm not claiming that squashing P2P is easy, but apparently Comcast has been successfully enough to generate national attention, and the bandwidth shaping providers are not totally a lost cause. The reality is that copper-based internet access technologies: dial-up, DSL, and cable modems have made the design-based trade off that there is substantially more downstream than upstream. With North American DOCSIS-based cable modem deployments there is generally a 6 MHz wide band at 256 QAM while the upstream is only 3.2 MHz wide at 16 QAM (or even QPSK). Even BPON and GPON follow that same asymmetrical track. And the reality is that most residential internet access patterns reflect that (whether it's a cause or contributor, I'll let others debate that). Generally ISPs have been reluctant to pursue usage-based models because it adds an undesirable cost and isn't as attractive a marketing tool to attract customers. Only in business models where bandwidth (local, transport, or otherwise) is expensive has usage-based billing become a reality. Frank -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Crist Clark Sent: Monday, October 22, 2007 7:16 PM To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: RE: BitTorrent swarms have a deadly bite on broadband nets
On 10/22/2007 at 3:02 PM, "Frank Bulk" <frnkblk@iname.com> wrote:
I wonder how quickly applications and network gear would implement QoS support if the major ISPs offered their subscribers two queues: a default queue, which handled regular internet traffic but squashed P2P, and then a separate queue that allowed P2P to flow uninhibited for an extra $5/month, but then ISPs could purchase cheaper bandwidth for that.
But perhaps at the end of the day Andrew O. is right and it's best off to have a single queue and throw more bandwidth at the problem.
How does one "squash P2P?" How fast will BitTorrent start hiding it's trivial to spot ".BitTorrent protocol" banner in the handshakes? How many P2P protocols are already blocking/shaping evasive? It seems to me is what hurts the ISPs is the accompanying upload streams, not the download (or at least the ISP feels the same download pain no matter what technology their end user uses to get the data[0]). Throwing more bandwidth does not scale to the number of users we are talking about. Why not suck up and go with the economic solution? Seems like the easy thing is for the ISPs to come clean and admit their "unlimited" service is not and put in upload caps and charge for overages. [0] Or is this maybe P2P's fault only in the sense that it makes so much more content available that there is more for end-users to download now than ever before. B¼information contained in this e-mail message is confidential, intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If the reader of this e-mail is not the intended recipient, or the employee or agent responsible to deliver it to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any review, dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please contact postmaster@globalstar.com