NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: Comments on NNSquad Purpose
At 10:28 AM 11/9/2007, Kevin McArthur wrote: >We were talking about akami and similar 'peering' services. Akamai is not a "peering" service. It is a pre-loaded caching service. Akamai maintains preloaded caches of data near the edge of the network in an attempt to speed up download and response times. And they do this with the full knowledge and consent of the ISP; I have seen the contracts that they sign with ISPs. >Peer-to-Peer (p2p) and 'peering' are distinct terms. Yes. >>They seem to have a problem with Verizon's revised terms of service, >>which describe explicit bandwidth and throughput caps. Why? >> >Because for the other reasons listed, Net Neutrality does not end here. I've not heard anyone is saying it should be illegal to set a bandwidth or transfer cap, or to bill for actual byte-neutral usage. I have. There were complaints on Dave Farber's list regarding Verizon's caps. >Its certainly not an argument we've asked the CRTC to regulate. In fact the opposite is true, we've made arguments to them that this should in fact be the way Internet is sold, and we've praised those companies like Bell Canada who have begun to price in this way. But ISPs have started placing caps/limits and are STILL interfering with traffic usage -- which is just wrong and potentially false advertising. They have to enforce the caps somehow! Also, in some cases, there are not just caps but prohibitions incorporated into the terms of service. In that case, it's appropriate and in keeping with the user's contract to stop the traffic cold (as with BitTorrent, Limewire, or GNUtella). I approve of Comcast's blocking and active termination of BitTorrent transactions, both because they are enforcing their terms of service and because, as a musician, author, and artist (when I get the time to do these things; I'm now devoting 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, to the ISP) I know that BitTorrent's primary use is to infringe copyrights and deprive folks like me of compensation. And, as an ISP, I know that BitTorrent is hurting my quality of service. I wish I could afford Sandvine. Alas, because they don't have pricing that scales down to a level that small ISPs can afford, I may have to write something equivalent. >It's a way to shift [the bandwidth burden] to the consumer No; it shifts to the consumer's ISP. It's a load on the ISP's network that would not otherwise be there. What's more, it induces the consumer to breach his or her contract. Besides constituting tortious interference with contract (the legal name for inducing someone to violate a contract), it also disrupts the network. >and have them participate in the distribution of content. It's not an assault on the ISP, and that's not it's purpose. When New Media uses bittorrent, it is mostly to improve distribution speeds, At the ISP's expense. And make no mistake: the expense is shouldered SOLELY by the ISP. The user (who pays a flat rate for service) does not pay more, but the ISP does. >allowing peers that are closer together to share the data between themselves instead of pulling it from a central server. They are becoming servers, which means that their owners should buy server bandwidth. We are more than willing to sell it to them, but they may not like the price that we have to charge to break even. Wholesale Internet bandwidth is expensive. >As for making it 'harder to stop' for illegal activity, this isn't one of the goals of bittorrent. Sure it is. And features such as MSE/PE are specifically intended to make illegal activity even harder to trace and stop. If you have any doubt that BitTorrent's primary use is illegal activity, go to the busiest BitTorrent site in the world -- thepiratebay.org -- and look at the "Top 100" page. Every one is illegal. In short, legal files are not even in the top 1% of TITLES, much less the top 1% of traffic. >It _might_ be a side-effect, but its certainly not the goal and everyone has the right to assume the technology will be used lawfully. Not so. If you possess a burglary tool, in many jurisdictions it is automatically assumed (and justifiably so) that it will be used unlawfully. >>They are not unable to invest -- they are unable to make a return on the >>investment or even break even. >> >There is no issue with delivering 50-60 gigs for a $40/mo service plan. That's about the limit. 60 gigs per month is 2 gigs per day. 2 gigabytes divided by 24 hours is 89 megabytes an hour, or 1.5 megabytes a minute, or 200 Kbps continuous. Which, as it happens, is exactly the rate to which Verizon states it will throttle users if they exceed a normal duty cycle. And at that price, they aren't making much money, if any. Backbone bandwidth at WHOLESALE costs from $100 to $500 per megabit per second per month. Do the math.... That means that 200 Kbps, continuously, costs $20 to $100 per month! (In our area, it is at the high end of that range.) And that's not including salaries, electricity, tech support costs, hardware, and everything else it takes to make our network run. We, as a rural ISP, would lose money at Verizon's cap, so our cap is 128 Kbps. Don't blame us for that; that's what it costs us. We are currently engaged in getting quotes for a new DS-3, and prices have gone UP, not down, since we sought quotes a year ago. You would think they would have gone down, but they haven't -- probably due to consolidation in the backbone fiber industry. (Level3 has taken over Wiltel and Broadwing, and SBC has taken over and "become" AT&T.) What do we do? Firstly, when our rules detect that a user is doing obvious P2P, we try to throttle just the P2P traffic (we know how the various P2P programs communicate) back to a relatively low bandwidth. If we see a general high level of usage (possibly encrypted P2P tunneled through a VPN), the entire connection is dropped to 128 Kbps. That keeps us from losing money... just barely. >If you want credibility in this area, then you'll have to make your costs public, and show the public a defensible financial argument. So far, there hasn't been one. I've shared quite a bit with you above. >I don't need a full 1.5 mbps pipe 24/7. If you are using BitTorrent, you will consume that much. Maybe more. Ditto if you become a Kazaa or Skype "supernode" or install Limewire on your machine. (You don't even have to be running it in the foreground; when you start your PC it will begin running in the background and start sucking bandwidth.) >A 10mbit pipe with 100 gig/mo cap would work fine for me. There's no solid financial reason that this type of over-subscription cannot be profitable in the $50/mo price range and properly provisioned. There absolutely is a solid financial reason. If you wanted to average 100 gigs per month, we could throttle you to 384 Kbps and let you run at that bandwidth continuously. You would then cost your ISP between $40 and $200 per month (closer to the high end, in our case) just for bandwidth! That's before other expenses (we have to pay techs to maintain the network, and you do want someone to answer the phone if you call for support, right?) and before we make a penny of profit. So, you should expect to pay substantially more than $50 per month. This is not rocket science. You can work it out on a four function calculator -- or on the back of a napkin, as I am doing as I type this. >If the argument is that because a minority of users want to use p2p for unauthorized copying, you need to charge me for a 1.5 mbps pipe; then you're simply incorrect and one of your competitors will figure this out and provide a properly provisioned service. Not so. See the basic calculation above. >No one is arguing that users are entitled to a full 1.5mbps pipe 24/7 ... thats quite correctly a leased line. You're asking for 384 to 400 Kbps 24x7 if you want to download 100 GB per month. Tat's a quarter to a third of a T1. Do the math from there. >What we're arguing is that ISPs should not be allowed to create a situation where they are a) gatekeepers and censors of content and applications It is not censorship to enforce our terms of service, any more than blocking spam or the Slammer worm is "censorship." >b) unaccountable for provisioning adequately You won't pay me to provision "adequately" (at least by your definition of adequacy). >and c) allowed to profit in from the resource scarcity which they have control over. We have no control over any "scarcity" of backbone bandwidth. We go to Sprint, AT&T, etc. and pay what it costs. The price is clearly higher than you would like (and also higher than WE would like.) Whether this is due to scarcity, market concentration, or legitimately high costs on the part of the backbone providers doesn't matter. We have no power to change it. We can only negotiate the best prices we can. >Surely this makes sense.... Please review what I've written above. Once you've done the math yourself, maybe you'll understand. --Brett Glass, LARIAT.NET