macaholic
Premium
join:2003-08-31
Jackson Heights, NY
| reply to MacLeech
Re: I think it's interesting...
pssst they changed the TOS regarding p2p yesterday or today.... to coincide with the their "legal" bullshit. Just because its in a TOS does not make it good business or even FCC approved/legal.
--
"You don't subject minority rights to a referendum." Justice Minister Irwin Cotler of Canada | |
MacLeech
The one and only
Premium
join:2001-07-14
SoCal
| said by macaholic  :pssst they changed the TOS regarding p2p yesterday or today.... to coincide with the their "legal" bullshit. Just because its in a TOS does not make it good business or even FCC approved/legal. I haven't ever seen a cable ISP that didn't prohibit SERVERS in their TOS.
Comcast may have clarified it recently, but I'm sure it's been there for years.
...and don't try to even say that a P2P program seeding is not a server. | |
ISurfTooMuch
join:2007-04-23
Tuscaloosa, AL
| reply to espaeth
said by espaeth :If they can support the speeds they advertise for all but one application, is reducing the level of service for everyone still the best option? That makes no sense. Speed is speed. For example, 6/768 is 6/768 no matter what app is using it. Either you support a speed or you don't. To use an analogy, roads have posted speed limits. They'll say "55 miles per hour", not "55 miles per hour as long as you're riding a bicycle".
I've worked Internet tech support and also sold access, and the dirty little secret with ISP's, especially in the dialup days, was that bandwidth was oversold. You could take 56k of downstream bandwidth and run at least seven simultaneous modem connections off it without anyone noticing. Why? Because Web surfing is not bandwidth-intensive. Sure, a user could conceivably pull close to 56k, but they only did it in short bursts after clicking a link or entering a URL, as the requested page was coming in. Then they'd likely sit there for several minutes reading the page before they clicked a link to request more data. As long as the users connected to those modems weren't clicking links at the same time, no one was likely to notice. The only time this scheme started to fall apart was when users did things that used lots of data, like downloading files or accessing streaming media. This could be a problem, but most users didn't do these things too much.
However, that model has changed, at least as far as users are concerned. They want to use the Internet for more than viewing static Web pages, and the ISP's have encouraged this by advertising blazing fast speeds. Well, if you advertise an information autobahn, then you have to expect that users will want to use all that speed for bandwidth-intensive apps, and BT just so happens to be one of them. And the ISP's can't act as if they're innocent, since they've been pushing faster and faster speeds. What did they think people were going to do with all that speed? Surf the Web at 6mbps?
Besides, throttling BT is only today's problem as far as speed is concerned. What happens if Netflix begins to offer set-top boxes for movie downloads? What happens if someone develops a box to stream live TV channels over the Internet to subs' televisions? I'll bet that being able to watch channels that aren't widely available on cable or satellite will be popular with segments of the population. Or maybe video calling will become popular. The point is, these things will eat up lots of bandwidth. What will companies like Comcast do? Throttle all of them? Whether they want to admit it or not, the days of the Internet being used just for e-mail, IM, and Web surfing are ending. We may not be there just yet, but give it another five years, maybe less, and we'll see that day come. | |
macaholic
Premium
join:2003-08-31
Jackson Heights, NY
| reply to MacLeech
said by MacLeech :said by macaholic :pssst they changed the TOS regarding p2p yesterday or today.... to coincide with the their "legal" bullshit. Just because its in a TOS does not make it good business or even FCC approved/legal. I haven't ever seen a cable ISP that didn't prohibit SERVERS in their TOS. Earthlink, Roadrunner....
--
"You don't subject minority rights to a referendum." Justice Minister Irwin Cotler of Canada | |
ISurfTooMuch
join:2007-04-23
Tuscaloosa, AL
| reply to Dogfather
said by Dogfather :With so many people claiming to be downloading Linux distros, you would think they would have more than an asterisk for desktop market share LOL. First, many people download to try. They may or may not keep a given distro. When a new version of Ubuntu comes out, I'm sure a fair number of Mandriva users download an image to see what's going on on the other side of the fence. People want to know if they're missing out on something their distro isn't offering.
Also, some folks are on the verge of making the leap to Linux, but they may be waiting for just the right distro to come along.
Finally, many downloads are done by people upgrading to the latest version. They may do this because they want a clean install rather than upgrading an old version.
And although Linux on the desktop isn't widespread, many servers run it, and server admins are just as likely to get it via BT as are home users. | |
espaeth
Digital Plumber
Premium,MVM
join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN
 ·voip.ms
·Vitelity VOIP
·Callcentric
·VoiceStick
·ViaTalk
 ·Comcast
 ·Embarq
| reply to ISurfTooMuch
said by ISurfTooMuch :said by espaeth :If they can support the speeds they advertise for all but one application, is reducing the level of service for everyone still the best option? That makes no sense. Speed is speed. For example, 6/768 is 6/768 no matter what app is using it. Either you support a speed or you don't. To use an analogy, roads have posted speed limits. In order for statistical multiplexing to work, you can't be having apps use the connection 24x7. Name another legitimate app that has the same traffic profile as P2P?
said by ISurfTooMuch :Besides, throttling BT is only today's problem as far as speed is concerned. What happens if Netflix begins to offer set-top boxes for movie downloads? What happens if someone develops a box to stream live TV channels over the Internet to subs' televisions? I'll bet that being able to watch channels that aren't widely available on cable or satellite will be popular with segments of the population. Or maybe video calling will become popular. The point is, these things will eat up lots of bandwidth. What will companies like Comcast do? Throttle all of them? They don't need to throttle them all. For downstream only traffic like watching movies those transfers have a fixed duration. You download while you watch the movie or cache the movie, and then you're done. Same thing with video calls, unless you plan on having some kind of strange 24x7 video call going with someone.
Again, the issue is infinite duration transfers with P2P, where the app will keep generating traffic indefinitely as long as it is running. | |
ISurfTooMuch
join:2007-04-23
Tuscaloosa, AL
| Although movie downloads have a definite end, they have usage patterns that create problems in that usage will not be spread out evenly during the day. Many people will want to watch during the evening hours, so usage will spike during that time.
And streaming of live television and radio does not have a definite end. People will often leave a TV on for the better part of a day, even if they aren't watching it. They might even leave the set-top box on when they turn the TV off for the night, so data will still be coming in.
And I didn't even mention uses like audio/video surveillance, such as setting up cameras and mics to keep tabs on children and elderly family members. Once people figure out that an Internet connection can be used in that way, it will take off like gangbusters. And that kind of usage is almost all upstream data. Just wait and see the reaction when a company like Comcast tries to clamp down on that. It'll be a PR nightmare. | |
RadioDoc
58ef2c0
Premium,ExMod 2000-03
join:2000-05-11
·AT&T Midwest
| reply to espaeth
said by espaeth :Name another legitimate app that has the same traffic profile as P2P? Internet radio. Streaming video. Both of which are in direct competition with Comcast's own high-profit services.
--
Toolmaster of La Grange. | |
espaeth
Digital Plumber
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join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN
·voip.ms
·Vitelity VOIP
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| said by RadioDoc :said by espaeth :Name another legitimate app that has the same traffic profile as P2P? Internet radio. Streaming video. Both of which are in direct competition with Comcast's own high-profit services. Neither has the same profile.
1) The traffic is all downstream where capacity is greater (45mbps vs 9mbps)
2) The traffic is all in a single TCP session.
Internet radio is 128-192kbps. *yawn*
and unicast Internet video in its current form will never be able to scale large enough to matter. (There's not enough capacity at the content source for it to deliver anything other than niche content to a subset of standard TV viewers)
High definition video (HD-DVD / BluRay) did ~$250 million in sales last year. Next gen HD discs only comprise about 0.5% of the disc rental market, with DVD being the other 99.5%.
Internet video did ~$134 million. It's not a big enough chunk of users to worry about; the content providers will have scaling issues far before it becomes a problem for ISPs. | |
otis_sh
join:2007-05-04
Ann Arbor, MI
2 edits | reply to ISurfTooMuch
There's something called the Pareto effect aka the 80:20 rule. 20% of your customers buy 80% of your product. It happens with beer, for instance - approx 20% of the population (aka beer lovers) drink approx 80% of the beer. (Not exactly, but just approximately). I believe it's actually less than 20% drink more than 80%, IIRC.
Bandwidth hogs are essentially "internet fans" -- they love the internet like beer lovers love beer. Anyone who's been to business school knows (or should at least remember) what the Pareto effect is.
So it does make you wonder, doesn't it? Maybe this has nothing to do with _illegal_ bit torrents? Maybe this really is a clandestine effort to prevent legit "on demand" via BT?
BT certainly shows much promise, and Vuse may very well be on to something, and others may very well follow. Could it be true? Is the reason for the RST's actually to corner the on-demand market?
Anyone who knows anything about running ISPs knows that the bandwidth use is not proportional -- a small number of folks using a large percentage of the bandwidth -- how can you NOT know that? It's the Pareto effect, and it's everywhere. Almost all industry sectors have their "fans". Wine lovers, video game enthusiasts, baseball card collectors, amateur astronomers who purchase telescopes for hobby purposes... the list goes on and on -- health clubs, golf courses, frequent fliers... it's very often going to be a minority of customers generating the most "business", while other people only occasionally fly, and the vast majority never set foot in a health club.
What makes it such a big deal that broadband internet has its own enthusiast base? It's perfectly normal!
Vuse might very well be on to something here. This could totally be an anti-competitive thing going on, and the whole piracy thing just an excuse, just a front.
It may not even be the fear of "building out" the network. I mean, building out the network would pave the way for more expensive tiers - certainly a company that grows to the size that Comcast has grown to isn't afraid of investing in its own future!
I wouldn't be at all surprised if there's something more going on here than meets the eye.
You could even argue that the entire asymmetrical nature of residential broadband is another instance of the Pareto effect (most people download, only a few upload). It's a little low for the older technologies, but for the newer FTT* technologies, for instance, 1/6 is .167, as is 5/30. Both of them fairly close to 20%. | |
supergirl
join:2007-03-20
Pensacola, FL
·Cox VOIP
·Skype
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·AT&T Southeast
·magicjack.com
| reply to MacLeech
said by MacLeech :said by macaholic :pssst they changed the TOS regarding p2p yesterday or today.... to coincide with the their "legal" bullshit. Just because its in a TOS does not make it good business or even FCC approved/legal. I haven't ever seen a cable ISP that didn't prohibit SERVERS in their TOS. Comcast may have clarified it recently, but I'm sure it's been there for years. ...and don't try to even say that a P2P program seeding is not a server. I know Cox and Comcast prohibit servers. So, your analogy makes lots of sense to me.
When I was on Napster, the best people to download from where at Colleges since they were on huge connections. People would get warning letters from Comcast@Home for too much Upstream. When Napster was found to be illegal, I quit using such things. So, yes, sounds like you are seeding a server or it looks like that since you are giving out large files (called serving) just not communicating like IMing.
--
Saving the world keeps me busy. However, I find Earth very primitive from my home planet of Krypton.
-Supergirl | |
RadioDoc
58ef2c0
Premium,ExMod 2000-03
join:2000-05-11
·AT&T Midwest
| reply to espaeth
said by espaeth :1) The traffic is all downstream where capacity is greater (45mbps vs 9mbps) 2) The traffic is all in a single TCP session. Internet radio is 128-192kbps. *yawn* and unicast Internet video in its current form will never be able to scale large enough to matter. (There's not enough capacity at the content source for it to deliver anything other than niche content to a subset of standard TV viewers) High definition video (HD-DVD / BluRay) did ~$250 million in sales last year. Next gen HD discs only comprise about 0.5% of the disc rental market, with DVD being the other 99.5%. Internet video did ~$134 million. It's not a big enough chunk of users to worry about; the content providers will have scaling issues far before it becomes a problem for ISPs. You are assuming that everyone runs BitTorrent full-on. That's nice for your argument, as it is the most egregious p2p offender and the main talking point of your industry's assault on non-captive media, but does not address streaming media's continuous usage profile (both up and down, by the way, since it's not confined to just Shoutcast and many folks originate). I still assert that this is just a test and if Comcast can get their current "network management" procedures past the regulators it will be a very short walk to interference with other, less shady services. Like Netflix, Amazon and now Apple iTunes video downloading and streaming.
As many others have pointed out, there are much less draconian measures available for limiting BitTorrent upload bandwidth, as Cablevision has shown, but that does not really get the anti-competitive field plowed for future high-profit, captive crops. The best way to defeat your competitors is to prevent them from getting to your customers. That's where this is heading.
--
Toolmaster of La Grange. | |
pkarlos_76
join:2004-08-24
Edmonton, AB
1 edit | reply to supergirl
Hey Dude let me name a few legal services that use bittorrrent; Blizzard Software (World of Warcraft), Joust, and Vuze (see below for more legal uses). Hmm now lets see throttling encrypted traffic affects ALL SSL sites inluding your banking sites. Yep your computer is slow cause the browser pages load slowly, of course you'll BLAME Microsoft for it. I don't appreciate being called and treated like a criminal because your choose to forgo your constituional right to be innocent until proven guilty. So take your Anti pirate rant and stuff it till you do some research.
Here's an excerpt fromt he Bittorrent Wiki:
"Film, video and music
* BitTorrent Inc. has amassed a number of licenses from Hollywood studios for distributing popular content at the company's website.
* Sub Pop Records releases tracks and videos via BitTorrent Inc.[6] to distribute its 1000+ albums. The band Ween uses the website Browntracker.net[7] to distribute free audio and video recordings of live shows. Furthermore, Babyshambles and The Libertines (both bands associated with Pete Doherty) have extensively used torrents to distribute hundreds of demos and live videos.
* The creator of the BitTorrent protocol, Bram Cohen, at one time worked for Valve Software. Valve uses the BitTorrent protocol in their Steam media streaming frontend.[citation needed]
* Podcasting software is starting to integrate BitTorrent to help podcasters deal with the download demands of their MP3 "radio" programs. Specifically, Juice and Miro (formerly known as Democracy Player) support automatic processing of .torrent files from RSS feeds. Similarly, some BitTorrent clients, such as µTorrent, are able to process web feeds and automatically download content found within them.
[edit] Personal material
* The Amazon S3 "Simple Storage Service" is a scalable Internet-based storage service with a simple web service interface, equipped with built-in BitTorrent support.
* Blog Torrent offers a simplified BitTorrent tracker to enable bloggers and non-technical users to host a tracker on their site. Blog Torrent also allows visitors to download a "stub" loader, which acts as a BitTorrent client to download the desired file, allowing users without BitTorrent software to use the protocol.[8] This is similar to the concept of a self-extracting archive.
[edit] Software
* Many major open source and free software projects encourage BitTorrent as well as conventional downloads of their products to increase availability and reduce load on their own servers.
[edit] Games
* Blizzard's World of Warcraft video game utilizes the BitTorrent protocol to send game updates to clients.
* The game GunZ The Duel has a built-in BitTorrent client.
" | |
wingman99
join:2003-12-18
Bettendorf, IA
·Qwest.net
| reply to espaeth
said by espaeth :said by ISurfTooMuch :said by espaeth :If they can support the speeds they advertise for all but one application, is reducing the level of service for everyone still the best option? That makes no sense. Speed is speed. For example, 6/768 is 6/768 no matter what app is using it. Either you support a speed or you don't. To use an analogy, roads have posted speed limits. In order for statistical multiplexing to work, you can't be having apps use the connection 24x7. Name another legitimate app that has the same traffic profile as P2P? said by ISurfTooMuch :Besides, throttling BT is only today's problem as far as speed is concerned. What happens if Netflix begins to offer set-top boxes for movie downloads? What happens if someone develops a box to stream live TV channels over the Internet to subs' televisions? I'll bet that being able to watch channels that aren't widely available on cable or satellite will be popular with segments of the population. Or maybe video calling will become popular. The point is, these things will eat up lots of bandwidth. What will companies like Comcast do? Throttle all of them? They don't need to throttle them all. For downstream only traffic like watching movies those transfers have a fixed duration. You download while you watch the movie or cache the movie, and then you're done. Same thing with video calls, unless you plan on having some kind of strange 24x7 video call going with someone. Again, the issue is infinite duration transfers with P2P, where the app will keep generating traffic indefinitely as long as it is running. that's not the issue it's peak hours when all people are using there pc on the net | |
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