NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: P2P resource taking (was Re: pcap files of the Comcast forgeries?)
On Dec 19, 2007 10:21 PM, Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com> wrote: > > What would ISPs do, I wonder, if large numbers of people set up > their own virtual networks using continuous or semi-continuous stream > ciphers? Continuous ciphers are systems (traditionally popular in > government and military circles) that send continuous encrypted data > whether there is meaningful content at that moment or not. The > purpose is to deny the adversary both meaningful traffic analysis > and content. > > I'm not recommending this course of action, but to the extent that > ISPs behave like overbooking airlines that promise seats and then > don't deliver, resourceful users are going to move increasingly to > encryption wherever possible. It *will* happen. The only question > is how quickly this transition will occur, and to a significant > extent ISPs can influence this by their own actions. They would kill it, of course. Easily and quickly. This is the problem with crypto, it doesn't prevent traffic analysis. You can only add cover traffic and relax latency constraints, not remove it. Since the problem from the ISPs perspective is heavy flows, all the encryption magic in the world can't stop the ISP from disrupting the heavy flows. As for the good Doctor's example, Bittorrent is not any more efficient a way then downloading it from the academic's web site: you have the same number of bits crossing the Internet, and since you have only a few clients and almost no persistent clients, almost all the traffic comes from the seed anyway, and for multi-gigabyte to terabyte data sets, far less efficient then tossing a disk in the mail. What he seems to be complaining about is that there is no centralized solution with good usability properties. P2P in that case is a red herring.