[Chapter-delegates] hmmm...

[Bob Hinden]

Fred,

On Sep 25, 2010, at 2:03 PM, Fred Baker wrote:

> Net Neutrality question. I have heard some pretty strident statements on this list to the effect that "ISPs should just let my bittorrent go and get out of my way". I wonder what people think about this issue - what happens when the ISP lets someone else's bittorrent go and gets out of their way, and as a result my service is impacted? Does the ISP have any requirement to ensure that I get what I'm paying for in my contract?

As you know it's complicated.  However, my answer is that if a class of application is causing an ISP to not be able to provide service to it's customers, it is fine for it to provide some controls to slow down that class of application.  What is not OK is to slow down it's competitors application and leave it's own version of that application alone.

I would also note that most customers do not have contracts with their ISPs that provide much of a guarantee of anything.  They say what a customer can not exceed, but they don't say what they can get.  

Bob


> 
> A relevant data point:
> 
> http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc5632.txt
> 5632 Comcast's ISP Experiences in a Proactive Network Provider
>     Participation for P2P (P4P) Technical Trial. C. Griffiths, J.
>     Livingood, L. Popkin, R. Woundy, Y. Yang. September 2009. (Format:
>     TXT=27920 bytes) (Status: INFORMATIONAL)
> 
> Begin forwarded message:
> 
>> From: Rodrick Brown <rodrick.brown at gmail.com>
>> Date: September 25, 2010 1:16:46 PM PDT
>> To: NANOG <nanog at merit.edu>
>> Subject: Online games stealing your bandwidth
>> 
>> I think most people are aware that the Blizzard "World of WarcCraft" patcher
>> distributes files through Bittorrent, however apparently a number of other
>> MMO companies (LotR, Lego) are apparently doing something similar but aren't
>> as upfront about it, and are installing Windows services which seed whenever
>> the computer is online. Game Companies Should Play Fair With P2P |
>> TorrentFreak<http://torrentfreak.com/game-companies-should-play-fair-with-p2p-100901/>
>> 
>> If you follow the links in the article people are complaining that the LotR
>> process has served 70gb in a week, others are complaining that the service
>> is resulting in 300ms pings, and unusable connections.
>> This is a very grey area it will be interesting how this issue unfolds in
>> the long run.
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> [ Rodrick R. Brown ]
>> http://www.rodrickbrown.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/rodrickbrown
> Begin forwarded message:
> 
>> From: Matthew Walster <matthew at walster.org>
>> Date: September 25, 2010 1:43:25 PM PDT
>> To: Rodrick Brown <rodrick.brown at gmail.com>
>> Cc: NANOG <nanog at merit.edu>
>> Subject: Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth
>> 
>> On 25 September 2010 21:16, Rodrick Brown <rodrick.brown at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I think most people are aware that the Blizzard "World of WarcCraft" patcher
>>> distributes files through Bittorrent,
>> 
>> <snip>
>> 
>> I once read an article talking about making BitTorrent scalable by
>> using anycasted caching services at the ISP's closest POP to the end
>> user. Given sufficient traffic on a specified torrent, the caching
>> device would build up the file, then distribute that direct to the
>> subscriber in the form of an additional (preferred) peer. Similar to a
>> CDN or Usenet, but where it was cached rather than deliberately pushed
>> out from a locus.
>> 
>> Was anything ever standardised in that field? I imagine with much of
>> P2P traffic being (how shall I put this...) less than legal, it's of
>> questionable legality and the ISPs would not want to be held liable
>> for the content cached there?
>> 
>> M
>> 
> Begin forwarded message:
> 
>> From: Jon Lewis <jlewis at lewis.org>
>> Date: September 25, 2010 1:56:21 PM PDT
>> To: Rodrick Brown <rodrick.brown at gmail.com>
>> Cc: NANOG <nanog at merit.edu>
>> Subject: Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth
>> 
>> On Sat, 25 Sep 2010, Rodrick Brown wrote:
>> 
>>> If you follow the links in the article people are complaining that the LotR
>>> process has served 70gb in a week, others are complaining that the service
>>> is resulting in 300ms pings, and unusable connections.
>>> This is a very grey area it will be interesting how this issue unfolds in
>>> the long run.
>> 
>> I haven't played any of these things, so I don't know what they put in the fine print, but unless LotR makes it clear that they're going to utilize your (i.e. players of the game) bandwidth to PTP distribute their software, I'd call that theft and unauthorized use of a computer network.
>> Are these companies not making enough in monthly subscriptions to afford Akamai or similar CDN services to distribute their software updates?
>> 
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Jon Lewis, MCP :)           |  I route
>> Senior Network Engineer     |  therefore you are
>> Atlantic Net                |
>> _________ http://www.lewis.org/~jlewis/pgp for PGP public key_________
>> 
> 
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