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[ NNSquad ] Re: Economics of P2P (was Re: Re: Net Neutrality vs. Illegal Acts)

at least some of the ISPs are interested in finding ways to limit user flows (in both directions and regardless of protocol) when the shared link is congested. They are looking for reasonable formulas to allow sharing of available capacity. They even recognize that when the link is not congested, traffic flow shaping isn't needed. They also note that users should pay for access to capacity (roughly speaking "maximum committed rate" in the old Frame Relay speak) so a user expecting to be able to move data at up to 10 Mb/s should pay more than one expecting to be limited to 5 Mb/s, for example.

While I have not thought through all the implementation implications, one might wish for a couple of choices:

1. dedicated capacity (no one else on the link) - you would pay a premium for that
2. up to X capacity (for varying values of X). for X1 > X2 one would expect to pay more for the X1 maximum rate. in the presence of congestion and perhaps also oversubscription by the provider, one might expect to have access to relatively more of the available capacity as a subscriber to X1 vs X2, but that the available capacity might actually be less than X1 in the presence of congestion caused, in part, by oversubscription and a coincidence of traffic (outbound into the Internet or inbound from it).

The providers might even allow bursting beyond the subscribed limit when the shared link is uncongested since the cost to the provider for this is de minimis and it allows a user to experience the higher- than-subscription rate and might lead to subscription to higher maximum data rates. At least one carrier offers a kind of "turbo" mode in which the provided rate is much higher than the subscription rate for a short period of time, which acts sort of like a free sample of the higher speeds available.

vint




On Mar 22, 2008, at 2:23 PM, Nick Weaver wrote:

On Sat, Mar 22, 2008 at 9:49 AM, Brett Glass <nnsquad@brettglass.com> wrote: 
At 09:30 PM 3/21/2008, Bob Frankston wrote:

C'mon -- what does P2P's legality matter then? Why do you mention it at all?

Because it emphasizes the fact that P2P IS NOT NECESSARY. It's not necessary
for free speech. It's not necessary to give users access to ANY service or
content. It is only SOMEWHAT useful to thieves who want to cover their tracks
(and if they knew better, they'd know that they can still be found). In short,
it is not necessary for ANY legal purpose; blocking it or prohibiting it would
only thwart illegal activities. And for that reason, it is not only perfectly
reasonable but a good idea to block and prohibit it. 

I have to disagree here somewhat.

P2P data transfer can be used for legitimate purposes.  In this case
it is massive cost shifting and far less economically efficient
overall, but its still legitimate usage.

EG, rather than spending $.18/GB through S3 to deliver a video, the
provider spends nothing and the consumer's ISP probably spends an
additional $.40+/GB.  Scummy?  Yes.  Legitimate: HELL YES!


However, and there is a big however:

IF said P2P protocols were "super friendly", that is, friendlier than
TCP, really only using unused bandwidth rather than filling the pipe
(and resulting in congestion), THEN P2P could be economically
efficient for all involved, because it would only transfer on
noncongested links.

The problem is really that if there is NO congestion on a link, then
the extra bandwidth use does cost the ISP $0.00 in many arrangements.
Which is the pro P2P bulk transfer argument.

But if there IS congestion (and current P2P will happily cause
congestion) then it has significant cost because it crowds out other
flows.

Bittorrent, with its many concurrent TCP streams, is particularly bad.
If you as a client says "BitTorrent gets 100 kbps", it WILL takes 100
kbps pretty much no matter how much congestion there is and WHERE the
congestion is (local link, provider uplink, whatever), at least until
the point where the only thing significant you are fighting with is
the other users of BitTorrent.

This is also why WoW updates are generally considered "glacially slow"
compared to other torrents, dispite popularity.  Blizzard must
deliberately throttle these heavily to allow customers links to still
be usable.  Thus bulk P2P transfers resulting in poor performance for
everybody else, the need for traffic shaping, and the cost of
provisioning more bandwidth.

And when most of the people are on, there will be congestion.  So a
"only free bandwidth" P2P bulk transfer would limit P2P transfers to
"at night background" rather than "when you want it".

And to get to a model where there is "worse than best effort" flows,
where "all drops first" behavior, requires significant rearchitecting
of the current infrastructure.  Agressive traffic shaping on the part
of ISPs can get close.


Given that we probably can't clean-slate the Internet, to the "Hands
off all P2P", or even just "Hands off not DMCA-ed P2P" crowd here, ask
yourself which would you prefer:

1)  Per-bit pricing, to make it clear to the users what the cost is,
and shift the cost all the way to the users.  Which will probably be
agressive enough that it limits the P2P business model.  Do you want
to spend an extra $.50 to get it from a P2P provider instead of server
provider?

2) User bandwidth caps, and probably agressive enough that it prevents
the P2P business model.  (Limit the 5%ers to 15% of the bandwidth
rather than 50%).  So you can only download 10 hours of 720p HDTV a
month before your net cuts you off?

3) Agressive traffic shaping so that identified P2P flows are always
lower prority than all other traffic, which will result in P2P flow
rates vastly slower than current, which will limit the legitimate P2P
business model by degrading performance compared to HTTP for most
users/usages.

4) Agressive per-user traffic shaping so you can still hoze yourself
with P2P, but the more bandwidth you use, the lower priority your
traffic is so that other users don't experience congestion.  Which
would probably be worse for user experience that 3, because now your
web surfing also slows down.


Because its got to be one of these, if ISPs are forced to carry P2P
bulk transfers and bulk transfers grow beyond just piracy (where the
ISP could cooperate with the MPAA and do a DMCA-takedown regigm), but
extend to legitimate content in a significant way.