isp traffic shaping / prioritization

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turtl3

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Wannabe Geek

Topic # 29842 21-Jan-2009 11:51

before i cancel my wired broadband plan with woosh because they have started prioritizing my p2p downloading to a measly 35kBps

can people give me some idea what the other isps do in this area? a list of isp's, plans and prioritization would be great

i've looked an nzconnections.net, but that doesnt report prioritization ( it would be good if they could add it ). if i get enough replies i'll send it to nzconnections.net

i must say i dont agree with the rationalization that it means more users get a fairer share of the "pipe"

whats the difference between downloading 1000Mb at 200kBps for 83 mins to 35 kBps for 8 hours? at 35kBps i'm one pissed off customer, at 200 kBps the usage is the same as someone streaming a movie ( they don't get prioritized but the same arguement applies ie one user is getting too big a share of the pipe ), the same total amount of data is downloaded

thanks

Ragnor

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Reply # 191048 21-Jan-2009 13:49

Woosh is pretty well known in the community for below average performance and speed. It does not suprise me at all to hear they have applied a cheap and nasty solution for p2p traffic.

Typically ISP's don't pay for data in per GB like consumers (in NZ) do, they pay for sustained bandwidth in terms if MBit/s or GBit/s for international traffic.

An ISP has to buy xyz Gbit/s of international bandwidth in order to provide a reasonable service during peak time when the highest number of their customers are using the internet (typically from 5pm till midnight).

ISP's don't buy bandwidth 1:1 to users connection rates that's simply not economically viable. most ISP's operate on a ratio of anywhere from 25:1 to 100:1. For example say an ISP has 100 customers who are connected to the exchange at an average of 5Mbit each, the ISP doesn't buy 500 Mbit of international bandwidth there's no way they could afford to operate like that, an ISP with a 100:1 contention ratio actually only buys 5Mbit that's shared between those 100 users. Think of it like traffic flowing on a motorway, if there are 100 cars travelling south you would never build a 100 lanes south, you build 5.

p2p can suck up all available international bandwidth in peak time and adversly affect regular usage. Bit Torrent actually exploits flaws in tcp/ip's congestion control mechanism to achieve such high download speeds (lots and lots of half open connections) at the expense of other users.

Many ISP's price data use to restrict usage and/or apply traffic management and shaping. Smart traffic managmenet is generally a good thing. Gaming, voip and other time sensitive traffic should be priority over downloads. Active users should generally get a fair share of the available bandwidth each. Lots of ISP's are doing smart stuff in this area like p2p caching servers.

However applying a straight rate shape to p2p all the time smells of cost cutting at the expense at of the users performance. Basically it's a hack job to cover the fact they aren't paying for enough bandwidth for peak demand.

turtl3

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

Reply # 191078 21-Jan-2009 15:28

thanks for the reply

i've tried to argue this one with the customer services rep. he didnt seem to understand or wasn't interested.

peak time typically starts around 4pm ( according to woosh )

because of not wanting to have to buy too many top ups i was usually only downloading from 0900 to 1130 at about 200kBps - well outside of their peak hours

now because of their limiting i am downloading from 0900 to 1830 at 35kBps, 2.5 hours into their peak hours

any recommendations for an isp that has a more reasonable / smarter prioritization policy?

cheers

Anarkist

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Reply # 191174 21-Jan-2009 23:12

Ragnor: Woosh is pretty well known in the community for below average performance and speed. It does not suprise me at all to hear they have applied a cheap and nasty solution for p2p traffic.

............

However applying a straight rate shape to p2p all the time smells of cost cutting at the expense at of the users performance. Basically it's a hack job to cover the fact they aren't paying for enough bandwidth for peak demand.

Great post. Smack, bang on the money.

Telecom, Vodafone and TelstraClear while perhaps being the pricier of the lot do not (to my knowledge) have any aggressive form of shaping.

I use Xtra and I have had 100% of my connect rate (5mbit) available to me whenever I have needed it, and I go through 60-70 gig a month. I also regularly see others pulling 10-12mbit of P2P traffic down without issue as well.

Please note: Any posts, comments, or contributions in this forum are posted by me as an individual acting in my own right and do not necessarily reflect the views of any company I work for, clients I've consulted for or anyone else.

lurkerbelow

11 posts

Geek

Reply # 191264 22-Jan-2009 12:22

p2p can suck up all available international bandwidth in peak time and adversly affect regular usage. Bit Torrent actually exploits flaws in tcp/ip's congestion control mechanism to achieve such high download speeds (lots and lots of half open connections) at the expense of other users.

This is true. Typically P2P users make up about 20% of the active user base. However around 50-60% of packets across a network are P2P related. P2P apps generally consume as much network resource as they can due to number of open connections.

Many ISP's price data use to restrict usage and/or apply traffic management and shaping. Smart traffic managmenet is generally a good thing. Gaming, voip and other time sensitive traffic should be priority over downloads. Active users should generally get a fair share of the available bandwidth each. Lots of ISP's are doing smart stuff in this area like p2p caching servers..

I dont know of one ISP in NZ that does this. I suspect certain legal issues arise when ISP's are holding possibly copyrightable material on there own servers.

However applying a straight rate shape to p2p all the time smells of cost cutting at the expense at of the users performance. Basically it's a hack job to cover the fact they aren't paying for enough bandwidth for peak demand.

I hear they remove the cap in the early hours of the morning.

Ragnor

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Reply # 191302 22-Jan-2009 14:00

I think the larger ISP's like Telecom and Telstra simply have enough scale and enough mom and pop users who use <5gb data per month that are still paying $40-50 /month to simply have a much larger amount of international bandwidth available.

I sync at 4-5Mbit (not cabineted yet) and I pretty much always get my maximum download speed even during peak time on Telstra PDQ (as long as the other end is fast enough).

raytaylor

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Reply # 191407 22-Jan-2009 23:04

lurkerbelow:

I dont know of one ISP in NZ that does this. I suspect certain legal issues arise when ISP's are holding possibly copyrightable material on there own servers.

I think slingshot has a p2p cache. Not sure though.
Any ISP with Akamai and the Ono plugin for Vuse is pretty good at improving speed.

I know in the states, it is ok for isp's to cache illegal content so long as they dont have any bias on what is being cached, or they dont look at it. Its because of the users that the data is being cached in the first place and becomes the customers responsibility. I dont know how this would work in nz though.

Ray Taylor
Taylor Broadband (rural hawkes bay)
www.ruralkiwi.com

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Ragnor

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Reply # 191423 23-Jan-2009 00:37

p2p caches don't cache the full file or store the data in file format. Even section 92 excludes ISP's for being liable for content stored in caching servers.