Net Neutrality: Telecom interference

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#51610 8-Nov-2006 13:42

Filterer: Anyone care to shed some light on exactly how they do their traffic prioritising?
Based on ports? keywords like HTTP GET and POST etc?
Done on a datastream or on individual packets of data?

"Deep packet inspection" I believe, similar to what BellSouth put into place in the US.

Juha

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#51617 8-Nov-2006 14:31

Filterer: Anyone care to shed some light on exactly how they do their traffic prioritising?
Based on ports? keywords like HTTP GET and POST etc?
Done on a datastream or on individual packets of data?

L7 traffic management. This is the application layer in the OSI model.

Fraktul

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#51653 8-Nov-2006 18:56

This would be based on application PDU pattern analysis coupled with a similar approach taken with SPI in identifiying traffic flows based on ip souce/dest, trasport later details etc to assist the identification of the information extracted from the application pdu by putting it in context of a traffic flow.

Very CPU intensive.

juha:
antoniosk: Hmmm, if I were cheeky I would say that a telco could leave their current infrastructure intact (in all it's glory), and build a new service based on new technology. It would be relatively empty, have nice dedicated backhaul, and you could charge a shedload more for it without going down the path of building an expensive backbone middleware control system. And ensure you kept the service level up and ignored the other one (just let it slowly die). Achieves a two-tier service by stealth.

Ooops, it's called OneOffice, isn't it ?

Heh. To be fair to Telecom, isn't OpenOffice being offered to wholesalers as Unbundled Network Service?

Not sure how equivalent to OO it is though.

Have you read the UNS SLA's Juha? I would suggest I can get better network performance metrics out of a dialup modem in Kaitaia.

Compared to OO SLAs (pretty crappy anyhow) they are worse, so its not an equivilent product in my eyes.

Also UNS is currently limited to shdsl supply of 2mbps symmetric where as OO is not.

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#51655 8-Nov-2006 19:20

SimonMcCallum:
bradstewart: Simon McCallum is a well known as being odd and very anti-Telecom. There is no huge surprise to hear this from him.

Hi Bradley,
It is somewhat strange that you attack me rather than talking about the issue. The debate over net neutrality is quite important and that you would dismiss the issue because of the person raising the topic is unfortunate. Perhaps you would like to discuss the topic instead of me. Though I am also happy to discuss my own opinions, but that would be an entirely different thread, or even forum .

The existence of neutral plans is actually part of the argument. Up until this point you have been charged on the quantity of data and the speed that you access those packet. The net neutrality debate is saying that the line provider should not look inside the packets and decide how to serve that data. The underlying network should be neutral to content. If Vodafone were offering free movie downloads from their site, telecom could limit all the xtra go large customers accessing the site. This is the sort of situation you end up if you do not discuss why a lines company is looking at the content of the packet.

This is already happening in South Korea, and they tried it in Norway.

There is no difference between the p2p packets and other packets, why should the broadband provider be allowed to charge differential pricing.

They already have a congestion limiting policy in the fair use part of the plan, so what exactly is traffic management attacking?

Simon

Simon what you say has some merit however I would point out a few flaws if I may.

There is a difference between a p2p packet and other services potentially, p2p packets are likely to be at the MTU value for the transmission path where as VoIP data for instance is not. If you get down to lower capacity links where serialization delay can be significant then this can degrade service. This is why telcos went with ATM in the first place, for its small cell size. Granted in todays networks serialization is less of a concern however for queuing purposes, RED curves etc I would suggest packet inspection and identification can ultimately be benefit to users. If they choose to opt out of this, and I do think this option should be given, then their data is treated as non time sensitive by carriers networks.

Identification for the purpose of shaping is quite a bit different obviously but again is interconnected with the above CoS issue. If you do not choose to have packet inspection then all uninspected data should be treated as PIR best effort, eg how it is currently in most cases. I do not advocate shaping to provide improved performance for customers when it can easily be turned to ulterior motives.

In summery, packet inspection for CoS if you have option of opt in=good.
Traffic flow shaping=bad.

All IMHO of course.

antoniosk

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#51661 8-Nov-2006 19:53

juha:
antoniosk: Hmmm, if I were cheeky I would say that a telco could leave their current infrastructure intact (in all it's glory), and build a new service based on new technology. It would be relatively empty, have nice dedicated backhaul, and you could charge a shedload more for it without going down the path of building an expensive backbone middleware control system. And ensure you kept the service level up and ignored the other one (just let it slowly die). Achieves a two-tier service by stealth.

Ooops, it's called OneOffice, isn't it ?

Heh. To be fair to Telecom, isn't OpenOffice being offered to wholesalers as Unbundled Network Service?

Not sure how equivalent to OO it is though.

Fair call. The service they built is 2mbps atm circuits wherever their frame relay network goes. Which wouldn't be so bad if they were'nt pushing so hard to grandfather frame ....

________

Antoniosk

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#51662 8-Nov-2006 20:17

antoniosk: Fair call. The service they built is 2mbps atm circuits wherever their frame relay network goes. Which wouldn't be so bad if they were'nt pushing so hard to grandfather frame ....

I will admit to not having much telco industry experience, but looking at ATM versus Ethernet the choice is obvious. Fragmenting and multiplexing IP packets into 53 byte ATM cells I am guessing doesn't help jitter compared to a natively packet switched network.

edit: Juha "Deep packet inspection" or "stateful packet inspection" isn't anything more than a simple firewall these days.

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#51666 8-Nov-2006 20:50

The original rational behind ATM was to reduce jitter barf, when line speeds were lower having a 1500 byte data frame jump on the same line as your TDM voice network was not desirable. Now line speeds have increased serialization delays are mostly a thing of the past.

Fragmenting an IP packet into atm cells does not do much to jitter, its the overhead which is the issue, especially in smaller packets sizes...like you get in VoIP or TDMoIP ironically enough.

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#51677 8-Nov-2006 21:49

SimonMcCallum:

This is already happening in South Korea, and they tried it in Norway.

It's quite interesting what's happening in South Korea as they are playing out all the issues that we will face in a few years time. I saw this article on BoingBoing that highlights the net neutrality issue in a world of 100Mbps broadband.

CaptainEthernet

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#51760 9-Nov-2006 17:35

Telecom are using the same technology that Rogers Cable in Canada and a lot of US ISP's are using. The Allot NetEnforcer series of Layer7 traffic shapers. These are smart devices that can not only identify traffic types by reading header/port information, but they can recognise traffic patterns and shape the traffic automatically if it recognizes a pattern for say BitTorrent or Skype.

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#51870 10-Nov-2006 14:25

Interesting Simon hasn't replied here yet since last time, but I think he's too busy with a "minor problem".

Apparently since yesterday his phone is ringing non-stop. The whole day at work and I just got an e-mail now with this:

My phone issues continue. Last night it followed me home with constant calling from 6:51pm for at least 40 minutes before I unplugged the phone. It has stopped by 9pm. This morning my work phone is again ringing constantly. At this stage our ITS department is working with Telecom to try to find out what is happening. We can't block the calls as it has no identifying features.

I would like to keep the debate about Net Neutrality. Allowing telecommunication companies to decide what applications I can use having bought a level of service, is like having a taxi company deciding on road tolls for all other cars.

Well I will keep you all up to date with the saga. This is getting truly bizarre, I did not think net neutrality was such a sensitive issue.

So, conspiracy theorists, who is calling him non-stop? Lobbyist? Telecom? Someone here in the forums (not Brad, I checked already).

antigrav

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#51888 10-Nov-2006 15:42

Net neutrality will be gained either by legislation or by the nature of the internet routing around damage.
If your go on Xtra Go Large plan, and start a torrent with encrypted mode and only connect to a few people it won't detect it is Bit Torrent, or I you use an affordible encrypted proxy which bit torrent can also be run through, plus there is usenet (you can get encrypted usenet with binaries without too high a price) etc... and it is only BT that gives it's self away, other p2p methods aren't obvious at all once encrypted.

Plus any non neutral services will just not grow as much as the netural offerings because they limit any advanced use of the internet anyway.

Yes it should be put into law but ultimatly trying to restrict won't work, not in the long run anyway.

note: Anyone reading this thinking 'neat I can get around Go Large limitations...' why not just switch to woosh (DSL) flat rate, better in every way IMO.

Very good article Simon!
Very fast backpeddling Brad ;)

juha

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#51904 10-Nov-2006 17:26

freitasm:
So, conspiracy theorists, who is calling him non-stop? Lobbyist? Telecom? Someone here in the forums (not Brad, I checked already).

I reckon someone put him on the Republicans' robocall list...

Juha

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#51916 10-Nov-2006 18:50

CaptainEthernet: Telecom are using the same technology that Rogers Cable in Canada and a lot of US ISP's are using. The Allot NetEnforcer series of Layer7 traffic shapers. These are smart devices that can not only identify traffic types by reading header/port information, but they can recognise traffic patterns and shape the traffic automatically if it recognizes a pattern for say BitTorrent or Skype.

A Linux & Netfilter -based device! :-)
HTB or CBQ-ing people's skype & torrents! :-(

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SimonMcCallum

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#51967 11-Nov-2006 10:35

Well the constant calls stopped at 4pm yesterday. After both TV3 and the University talked to telecom. But guess what, go on you only need one....

Yep, 10am this morning the calls have started again. Does not sound like an accident on an auto-dialler to me. But I will ring telecom again and try and sort it out.

Well I will post to keep people up to date with this almost days of our lives like saga, I wonder if they will "egg my house" next or something. It is just really petty from whoever has targetted me.

Simon

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#51975 11-Nov-2006 11:47

Extremely disappointing that this has happened to you. I agree its really petty and hope that Telecom can find what/who is causing this.

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