NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: Comments on NNSquad Purpose
At 04:21 AM 11/16/2007, Phil Karn wrote: >I think you should take a closer look at how Bit Torrent really works. I've had to. It's necessary, if one wants to stop its abusive behavior. However, it doesn't take a thorough study of BitTorrent to see some commonsense things. First of all, it's obvious that trying to grab lots of tiny pieces of a file from many sources -- negotiating connections with them, etc. -- absolutely must have more overhead than downloading it from one place. Therefore, BitTorrent simply CANNOT be more efficient than a simple FTP or HTTP download. There's just no way it can be. What's more, BitTorrent does insist that you upload as much as you download. Hence, the impact on your ISP (and on your own connection) of your attempting to fetch a file is doubled. A BitTorrent download may be FASTER than an FTP or HTTP download, but that's because (as you say yourself) BitTorrent steals bandwidth from other users' ISPs so as to send you the file faster than a single source might. And I say "might," because there's absolutely no way that BitTorrent could EVER be faster or more efficient than a hit on an HTTP or FTP cache at your ISP. [SNIP] >The effect is that the seed tends to send only one copy of each piece and the peers tend to share it among themselves instead of each asking the seed for their own copies. This makes much better use of the seed's limited upstream bandwidth. > >Isn't this better for the seed's ISP than to ban Bit Torrent and force him to send a full copy to each and every recipient? No, it's not. The "seed" should be paying its ISP for the bandwidth it's needing -- not stealing that bandwidth from other ISPs. If it's a legitimate content provider, it will be making money from the content and should be willing to pay for the resources it consumes to make that money. [SNIP] >>Very few people would send out baby pictures via BitTorrent. By far, >>the absolutely overwhelming majority of BitTorrent traffic is pirated >>music, video, movies, and software. > >That may be true, but it is still not 100%. 100% of my own Bit Torrent traffic is entirely legal, and I strongly resent the implication that I "must" be engaging in piracy simply because of the protocol I choose to move my material. It sounds as if you are attempting to muddy the waters by using a burglary tool in a situation where it is not necessary -- just so that you can attempt to claim that the burglary tool isn't always a burglary tool. [SNIP] >>I'm a service provider who is trying to make sure my customers get >>good service. My customers want me to prioritize real time traffic >>and de-prioritize non-interactive traffic such as file downloads. >>What's more, they don't want my upstream pipes to be congested by >>bandwidth hogs. > >Fine. I'd like to help you, because I'd like to have good service too. I think the same is probably true for most of your customers. This is best accomplished with a cooperative relationship between the users and the ISPs, not an adversary one. We actually have a very good cooperative relationship with our users. Only the ones who insist on violating our terms of service are troublesome. [SNIP] >If you don't want me to "hog" and "monopolize" your bandwidth, then I suggest that you build your own personal dedicated network and not sell it to anyone. I'm reminded of the South Park episode in which Eric Cartman bought his own personal amusement park. This is akin to saying that no one should open a restaurant if one does not want customers to attempt to invade the kitchen and eat all the food. The right answer, of course, is to eject any customer who tries that and serve the well mannered customers. >When you go into the network service business, your customers have the right to expect to use it. That's why they pay you. And when they pay me, they agree to a particular level of service and to terms of service. Those things are set so that I can eke out a small return for my efforts. If they want more than I have agreed to give them, they must buy more. They must not just try to take it. [SNIP] >But it is NOT reasonable for you to make, by fiat, value judgments about the relative importance of your customers' traffic based on their selection of protocols, or unsupported assumptions about the legality or illegality of their transactions. That is, quite frankly, outside your job description. No, it's not. And, again, I'm not making assumptions. I see all the hits on the "Pirate Bay" Web site (the most popular BitTorrent site on the Internet), where everything is blatantly and admittedly pirated. >You *should* give your customers the hooks they need to mark their traffic according to the importance that *they* (not you) place on it, and you should use these hooks as advice when deciding what traffic to discard when it is necessary to maintain a minimum grade of service to other users. They don't need to tell me. They can just allocate the bandwidth I give them. However, I will also allocate the bandwidth I buy so as to maximize the performance of my network. That's my right. >In sum, I simply cannot understand how such a hostile, adversary situation has arisen It has arisen specifically because people on this list, and elsewhere, want to abuse and exploit my network and intentionally cost me more than they pay me. What's more, they are lobbying to REGULATE my business so that I MUST allow these things. Again, we must say no to Internet regulation. --Brett Glass