NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: Costing P2P and other ISP data streams
At 08:30 AM 3/24/2008, Neil Davies wrote: >From the neutrality standpoint lets not call this P2P traffic - that is too emotive about its content. Let's call this scavenger traffic - it is bulk transfer traffic that the end user has no particular time constraints over getting transmitted (it might be backup traffic, it could be microsoft patch traffic, etc). The important property is that it should get there sometime, the movement of the traffic should have no effect on the end-user's other network traffic (i.e VoIP still works, the normal web browsing continues smoothly). It is a background, non-intrusive, data movement service. Neil: Unfortunately, BitTorrent and similar P2P programs do not operate as "scavengers." Rather than working slowly in the background, these programs attempt to hog the foreground. (See George Ou's excellent article at http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=1078.) And P2P users protest the slightest attempt to throttle their connections; hence the complaints when Comcast engaged in MILD tactics to mitigate bandwidth hogging by BitTorrent. If it really were a background service, we could find a way to work it in at a reasonable price, as you mention. But since BitTorrent, Vuze, and similar companies are greedy and will not "settle" for this, I do not think that anything will be practical other than blocking their attempts to take our bandwidth. --Brett Glass