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[ NNSquad ] Re: P2P resource taking (was Re: pcap files of the Comcast forgeries?)

Brett Glass wrote:
At 11:21 PM 12/19/2007, Lauren Weinstein wrote:
Hmmm.  Well, as long as we're using the buffet analogy, how about this one:

A satisfied customer of the buffet posts a message to a buffet-fans
mailing list, and suddenly the buffet owner is faced with crowds of
"heavy" eaters, who tend to eat much more than the average customer,
but are not violating any rules of the buffet by eating as much as
they do. Rather than put a specific announced limit on the amount
anyone can eat -- or raising prices -- the buffet owner watches
people eat and when he personally believes someone has eaten too
much, starts to harrass that person so that they won't keep going
back for more food.

Not analogous. Firstly, people who are heavy eaters ALREADY frequent
buffets, so the owners of a buffet have to factor this effect in from
the start. It's not something that suddenly happens because of
publicity.

However, if the owner of the buffet finds that he is losing money even
though people are not smuggling food out, it IS appropriate for him
to raise prices, limit the number of return trips to the buffet, or stop doing "all you can eat" and sell the food by the pound. (Some cafeterias actually do this. I remember that when I spent a summer at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory as a college student, their concessionaire
did it that way.)

The problem, though, is that in the case of Internet access people really, really want an "all you can eat" buffet. Any ISP who doesn't
offer it will go out of business. What's more, in the case of P2P,
the smuggling is automatic -- more effective at commandeering resources
than a human could be. It is designed to clean out the buffet extremely efficiently -- before legitimate customers even get a chance
to eat! So, the proper thing to do is to stop the food smuggling.
I'm not sure the buffet analogy holds up well. It's not clear that P2P use is really equivalent to smuggling. But you've definitely focused in on the real problem: US customers (I can't speak for elsewhere) demand and "all you can eat" product but at prices that (apparently) are below the cost of what it would take to deliver. And if I would continue to use the flawed buffet analogy, I think Brett would agree that every "all you can eat" place usually has their rules posted. I'm from Philadelphia, but at the moment I'm Las Vegas, and out here all you can eat sushi is a very popular thing. Many more sushi restaurants offer it here than where I live. But each has its own rules, and they generally seem to be well documented (usually printed on each page of the menu, as different rules may apply to different types of food). No sashimi allowed at most places (but allowed at some). No sharing with someone who isn't also on the all you can eat plan. Etc.

But the ISPs in the US don't publish many bandwidth related rules in their TOS. And those rules that they do publish are very anti-Internet IMO. Running "servers" (whatever that is; see X) is commonly prohibited among the top tier (RBOC/cable) ISPs. This annoys me of course, since I run a very, very low bandwidth system with mostly email and a little web traffic. But it limits my ISP choices.

I'm afraid that even though I'm a "minimal government" person, since we're talking about already regulated businesses with limited competition (there are only so many coax, copper, fiber and high-bandwidth RF connections available to a given home, and they're all regulated to some degree), the answer is going to have to involve some form of regulation. Perhaps NNsquad could provide ISP "rating" tools that will help consumers "shape" behavior of ISPs through full public disclosure of the buffet policies (albeit forced disclosure since they may not be able to do things in secret once we're armed with the right tools). But I'm beginning to have my doubts. There isn't enough competition, and the FCC's rulings and direction as of late seem to be away from supporting choice. Without choice, an informed consumer who knows the real TOS still can't take his or her money and go elsewhere. There's nowhere better to go. You can't seek out that sushi place that allows sashimi on their all you can eat menu because there won't be enough competition to cause such places to exist.

But hey, let's prove me wrong! If enough people have the right tools, and public outrage grows and is given media attention, even the FCC and state PUCs may have to do something for us, their "actual" bosses. Lately, though, they seem stubborn enough to stand up against even Congress.

Now, that said, just what sort of all you can eat buffet are we looking for? Going back to Brett's requirement that ISPs in the US *must* offer unlimited plans: that's not true. Most plans have rate caps (726/128 for 2nd tier DSL, usually, for example). But Brett's essentially informed us that those are "burst" rates, not to be consumed 100% of the time or he'll collapse. So therein lies the problem to be solved. Just what are you buying. What are the caps. What protocols and ports are blocked or interfered with. And these should be documented on the all you can eat menu. It's one thing to have rate caps, and bad enough that I have a hard time finding an ISP that doesn't block port 25 (won't get into the philosophical spam debate), but now we have PSP and other traffic interference of secret unspecified techniques, sometimes with bugs in the equipment.

And just how is using P2P software stealing from the buffet if there are no rules posted? You're just using the bandwidth you *thought* you paid for. The menu didn't say anything about "only in short bursts; no constant eating."










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.

You can still tell that P2P is going on via a customer's usage patterns,
just as the owner of the buffet can tell that a user is taking far too
much food even though he doesn't know which food the consumer is eating
and which food he's smuggling out.

The only difference between encrypting everything and not doing so is
that the ISP cannot de-prioritize or selectively throttle the P2P. So, he is forced to take harsher action than before. He must throttle EVERYTHING, or boot out the user. (Raising prices is not a realistic
option, since customers already complain that they want to pay less for
broadband.)

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, 

That's a bad analogy. If you're going to use an airline as an analogy,
it would be better to talk about customers abusing an "unlimited luggage"
policy, or sprawling out on multiple seats, or smuggling stowaways
on board.

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.

Again, Lauren, encryption will not do a thing to solve the problem.
In fact, it will exacerbate it by forcing ISPs to throttle ALL traffic,
with hard limits, raise prices, and/or aggressively boot users off of
their networks for overuse. Is that what you want? It's surely not what consumers want. What you are championing will not solve the
problem but rather will escalate the war between ISPs and rogue users, with the innocent and honest ones caught in the crossfire.

--Brett Glass