Telecom says newsgroups and Jabber are P2P - and ratelimits them
Jonathan Ah Kit tipped me off about Telecom's new traffic management, which is part of its Fair Use Policy (FUP) that has been introduced with the Xtra retail Go Large and Wholesale Broadband Service (WBS) equivalent plans.If you have a look at the long list of peer-to-peer applications that will be traffic managed on the Go Large plan, you'll see two strange entries: NNTP and Jabber.
NNTP or network news transport protocol is if you like a precursor to the web and often referred to as newsgroups. By really stretching the definition, it could be said that NNTP can be used for exchanging files. However, the binary newsgroups in which this would happen are becoming very rare; most NZ ISPs do not carry them because of the large amount of traffic they generate.
However, the blanket choking of NNTP means the text-only groups like nz.comp, nz.general, etc, will also be ratelimited. Granted, slowing down the traffic matters less with text-only groups because the messages are smaller, but still, why is Telecom doing this? Xtra killed its NNTP service earlier this year, and now Go Large customers using non-Telecom hosted newsgroups will find themselves surfing with the brakes on.
Likewise, Jabber is an Instant Messaging protocol first and foremost. Google Talk uses it for instance. I'm sure there are Jabber clients that can do file transfers, but who in their right mind would use it for P2P? If Telecom's going to slow down Jabber, why doesn't it do the same with MSN/Live Messenger, AOL AIM, Yahoo and Skype to mention a few?
Apropos the Go Large plan, the Computerworld editor and I got a nastygram from Telecom over a story about the new Go Large plans not really being unlimited.
Telecom's view is that because the plan has no data caps between midnight and four in the afternoon, it can be called "unlimited" and sold as such.
However, "unlimited" has an absolute meaning - without limits. If you look at the terms for the Go Large plan, there are several limits:
- Between four in the afternoon and midnight, you cannot use more than 700MB a day.
- If you use more than that, you will be put into a "sin bin" for a week, with other high volume users.
- The upstream is limited to 128kbps, which means you're unlikely to ever achieve the unconstrained downstream speed.
- Peer-to-peer plus Jabber and newsgroups are ratelimited.
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Comment by MarkC, on 30-SEP-2006 12:10
"By really stretching the definition, it could be said that NNTP can be used for exchanging files."
It doesn't require any stretching at all.
NNTP rivals bittorrent for filesharing.
Over 2TB (2,000GB) per day of new content is posted to newsgroups.
Downloads from a premium server cost <~$0.40/GB.
http://www.ghacks.net/2006/07/17/newsgroups-the-ultimate-p2p-alternative/
Telecom are right in ratelimiting NNTP.
Comment by MarkC, on 30-SEP-2006 14:45
Juha: "even the non-binary groups?"
No, they shouldn't ratelimit non-binary groups, but it might not matter much anyway.
Orcon used to ratelimit NNTP connections (to their own server) to 5kB/s and text groups worked fine (or at least, they were fast enough: propagation was a problem on their old server.)
(If you could edit my last post to read: "$0.40/GB" - missing "0" - that would be good.)
Comment by MikeE, on 30-SEP-2006 16:07
What was their justification in sending the nastygram? You can hardly call their service unlimited .. I mean there are freakin limits on it!
Comment by sbiddle, on 30-SEP-2006 18:47
"Only one percent of customers are expected to be subject to the FUP, Papich says, and reiterates that the purpose of the plan is to assist low to moderate traffic users. "
If Telecom believe this is the case and that only 1% of users will be subject to the FUP then why even bother with it?
Comment by dueprocess, on 30-SEP-2006 23:38
The wonders of a competitive free market see Telstra competing with Telecom to be the worst.
Telstra/Clear/Paradise rate limit their newsserver by giving it a monthly quota.
When the quota is exceeded the international feed stops until the 27th of the month.
Last month, September, it ran out on the 19th.
Comment by kitset, on 2-OCT-2006 13:06
I currently use ihugs broadband service that gives me an "on-peak" and "off-peak" rate. Peak being 10am - 2am, a total of 16 hours. Telecom are stating their peak as 4pm - midnight, 8 hours. Surely the peak time for both companies must be more or less the same. Any ideas why the big difference? As an aside, it seems a little on the nose to call a period two thirds of the total a "peak"!
Comment by Jonathan Ah Kit, on 3-OCT-2006 08:09
Thanks, Juha. Good points so far on the NNTP thing from others.
One thing just occurred to me -- didn't ihug get done by the fair advertising people for advertising 15gb of broadband that was really made up of 5gb peak only? I know there's fine print in Telecom's case, but is it enough, I wonder. I'm not sure.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3804683a11275,00.html
Partial quote:
Complaint against iHug advertising upheld 21 September 2006
A complaint accusing internet provider iHug of misleading advertising has been upheld.
M McNatty complained to the Advertising Standards Authority over an internet advertisement promising broadband internet with a 3GB download limit for $39.95.
However, Mr McNatty was told that he had exceeded his limit by 230 per cent, despite not yet reaching his 3GB.
Unbeknown to Mr McNatty, only 1GB was available during peak time with the other 2GB only available between 2am and 10am.
While I'm at it, what do people think of the new plans? I'm on the Adventure plan, and I'm not sure I'd want to stay on the equivalent full rate plan or get the chance to be rate limited on my Jabber account. OK, so Jabber is low bandwidth. I just don't like it getting rate limited along with P2P stuff on the grounds that it is (and isn't in truth) P2P...
J
Comment by Jonathan Ah Kit, on 5-OCT-2006 22:06
Quite. As far as I'm concerned, anything with a 'fair use policy' that's really a daily cap isn't flat rate and they should call it something else other than unlimited. It means one has to plan their usage, for another thing.
I'm gonna keep an eye on this one, yes...
Trackback by the power house, on 6-OCT-2006 21:34
Right, two things, while I should be doing work/finishing off at Women's Studies for the university year: my friend Donald Gordon is now King of Interface, or, put simply, a life member, and (in an unrelated madness) the open standards-based...
Comment by Alex, on 11-OCT-2006 22:35
I hope they don't slow down limewire oh and if you went on the internet of peak everyone would use it to avoid caps so I think it would still be slow i'm on adventure it goes at 32kbs off most websites not 420kbs but if you go no at 3am it goes at full speed see xtra ran out of bandwith 4000 users on a 1000 user cable you do the math
Comment by Joey Raynal, on 16-OCT-2006 09:18
I use Zultrax, At their site http://www.zultrax.com I understand they have privacy protection, making the traffic scambled. On http://www.slyck.com in the forums I read that if I just use a port number below 1000 Telecom cannot see if it is P2P or not. Just a lot of traffic.
Are they still capable of blocking me? For now all seems to work normal. Or am I just using a very unknown program, not in Telecom's list?
Anyway, till now it goes with fast speeds.
Comment by Adam, on 25-OCT-2006 20:52
Well guys great news for you. Just saw that my router was in training mode. I use to be on an old 2mb d/l and 192 u/l telecom plan which yep they shifted us to the "unlimited" plan. After seeing that my adsl modem had been in training i decided to speed test to see how much better a speed i would get.
I must say what i got suprised me. My new download speed instead of 240kb/s is now 269kb/s... So much for being unlimited. Last, I turned on Utorrent to see how much rate limiting they had put on, I now download at 20kb/s on bittorrent network instead of my old 240kb/s.
All i must say is this better change by tommorrow or i might as well shift to a different plan or isp.
Cheers,
Adam
Comment by Jordan Hutchins, on 30-OCT-2006 21:31
Please sign this petition!
Comment by Dpphatness, on 2-NOV-2006 15:34
You know, we probably should have asked about what they meant by ‘Max'. I was on the 3.5MBps plan, I've been ‘upgraded' to the Go Large Plan today. When I run the Download tester off XTRA's OWN WEBSITE it tells me I'm getting download speeds of 456.6kbps(0.45 Mbps)!
WTF?!?!
Please note, I have NOT had time to test this over a number of time periods (I'm in the middle of exams) .. but you can rest assured after my assessments have finished I will be having some words with Telecon! I can understand some degree of speed fluctuation according to time of day, etc....but I find it extremely hard to believe that it would differ to this degree. Especially since I was getting 1Mbps+ speeds easily before.
Iterested to hear if anyone else has had the same experience.
Results from external download testers are even worse (183kbps!) Will blog with proof, etc.. after exams. Sounds like Telecon's up to its old tricks again...
Comment by bill, on 8-NOV-2006 09:41
Slow broadband frustrates customers
http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/882794
See article about capacity issues
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3820702a28,00.html
Comment by pendral, on 11-NOV-2006 09:03
You guys are complaining about something like that? After Telecom 'upgraded' me my download speeds for normal internet use have gone from an already slow 120kb/s (This is on a 3.5 MB plan and even after 3 complaints I've had no reply from telecom) to an aching 40kb/s average. As for bittorrent how does and average 6kb/s sound like for 'unlimited' speeds?
Comment by noooooooob, on 14-NOV-2006 10:36
Telecom is full of crap Im getting 10kb/s MAX for BT
Comment by Daniel, on 21-NOV-2006 19:53
The NZ broadband crisis can be compared to a brand new Boeing using fingernails for fuel.
Comment by Vegelixx, on 27-NOV-2006 23:23
Did anyone look at that list of limited p2p software that has been slowed down? You dont see iRC on there. im getting good speeds with it. approx 60-180k each night, depending on the bots im downloading from. you can always try for your stuff there.
Comment by Mine Ja, on 9-DEC-2006 18:40
Xtra's Test: Dl time: 2.437 secs, Size: 520 Kb, Est line spd: 1741.2 (kb/sec), Est line spd: 213.4 (kb/sec).
TestMyNet Test: Yr conn: 71 Kbps or 0.1 Mbps, You downloaded at: 9 kB/s, You are running: 1 times faster than 56K and can download 1 mb in 113.78second(s)
OpenOffice d/l with Opera 9.02: 7.4 kb/sec.
Screen shots & pdfs of web pages available to support the above. All run in a 2 minute period begining 17:30, 09/12/2006.
Many ph calls to Xtra support over a 2 week period - different story, questions etc each time. No nearer to fix. It all turned to sh*t the night I switched from that provider that sounds like a big porpise where speeds were excellent but the 25gb a month I needed was too expensive.
Go Large - large amount of bs.
Comment by Pat, Torbay, on 16-DEC-2006 09:37
My problem is not with speed, it's actually getting a consistent connection. I'm on Go Large. Since the last week in October my ADSL light intermittently goes out for 40 secs - 1 minute. I have been given all sorts of reasons from Telecom as to why this is happening and had an assortment of people looking at my line, my modem, my computer, the exchange etc. which has done nothing to change the fact that I still do not have a consistent service. Telecom now says that I'm not the only one having this problem and that there is no ETA for a fix and would I like "free dial-up" which would tie up my phone line, grrr. Are we going backwards instead of forward? Is there anyone else out there in East Coast Bays (or anywhere else) reading this who is having the same problem and/or can anyone advise me what to do about it? I would be grateful for any advice.
Pat
Comment by Pat, Torbay, on 16-DEC-2006 16:09
Thanks, Juha, much obliged for your advice. Someone at Transfield (Telecom's partner) agrees with you. Telecom, unfortunately, will not divulge any info on this nor will they tell me when it is likely to be fixed (after 2 months of calls from me).
Pat
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Comment by nic.wise, on 30-SEP-2006 11:28
http://xtraplans.co.nz/unleashed/plans_table.html
Word for word:
"Households that use the internet in different ways (sic). It's our best plan to keep everyone happy. No matter what the rest of the house has done, you can keep surfing and emailing at broadband speeds"
EXCEPT if someone moves more than 700meg in a night. Say, they download an ISO of Linux, or a new Vista build. Or one of your kids watches a few youtube videos, or downloads something.....
Telecom has to be joking. Their pro accounts are a joke, too. I'm SO glad I can get cable..... pity the rest of the country can't.
Anyone up for a false advertising claim - again!? Didn't they get kicked by this already?