I see your point. The main problem I see with the traffic shaping or worse boxes is that comcast/ATT/... Sells a particular bandwidth to the customer. Clearly, they don't provision their network as Number_Customers*Data_Rate, they provision it to a data rate capability that is much less than the maximum possible demand. This is where the friction in traffic that you mention below happens. I have to go check on my broadband service contract to see how they word the bandwidth clause. Bora On 10/22/07 9:12 AM, "Sean Donelan" <sean@donelan.com> wrote:
On Mon, 22 Oct 2007, Bora Akyol wrote:
I think network operators that are using boxes like the Sandvine box are doing this due to (2). This is because P2P traffic hits them where it hurts, aka the pocketbook. I am sure there are some altruistic network operators out there, but I would be sincerely surprised if anyone else was concerned about "fairness"
The problem with words is all the good ones are taken. The word "Fairness" has some excess baggage, nevertheless it is the word used.
Network operators probably aren't operating from altruistic principles, but for most network operators when the pain isn't spread equally across the the customer base it represents a "fairness" issue. If 490 customers are complaining about bad network performance and the cause is traced to what 10 customers are doing, the reaction is to hammer the nails sticking out.
Whose traffic is more "important?" World of Warcraft lagged or P2P throttled? The network operator makes P2P a little worse and makes WoW a little better, and in the end do they end up somewhat "fairly" using the same network resources. Or do we just put two extremely vocal groups, the gamers and the p2ps in a locked room and let the death match decide the winnner?