VERY interesting piece on Gizmodo about 'Bandwidth Hogs'

Forums › New Zealand Broadband › VERY interesting piece on Gizmodo about "Bandwidth Hogs"

macuser

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#52672 5-Dec-2009 11:07

Have a read, its really good http://gizmodo.com/5419179/is-the-bandwidth-hog-a-myth , Also, will New Zealand implement "Net Neutrality"?

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#279517 5-Dec-2009 11:49

Good article. I guess it's basically saying that there are no real needs for an ISP to manage traffic?

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jpollock

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#279559 5-Dec-2009 16:02

I recommend reading the Slashdot discussion on the story:

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/12/04/1518221/Hunting-the-Mythical-Bandwidth-Hog?art_pos=15

Since TCP != IP, and many of the high bandwidth protocols ignore TCP running on top of UDP, or even just IP alone. Some even assume that packet drops do not signify congestion, invalidating the entire premise (SCTP).

In other words, the guy doesn't have the answer.

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sbiddle

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#279560 5-Dec-2009 16:20

I beg to differ totally. His logic has to be some of the most flawed I've read for some time.

Simonm

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#279581 5-Dec-2009 19:00

sbiddle: I beg to differ totally. His logic has to be some of the most flawed I've read for some time.

I agree. His logic is lacking in so many ways.

I think this graph easily disproves his opinion that there are no internet hogs:

Source: Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Haruka Saito, Counselor for Telecom Policy, Embassy of Japan

Source: Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Haruka Saito, Counselor for Telecom Policy, Embassy of Japan

macuser

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#279590 5-Dec-2009 19:43

Simonm:
sbiddle: I beg to differ totally. His logic has to be some of the most flawed I've read for some time.

I agree. His logic is lacking in so many ways.

I think this graph easily disproves his opinion that there are no internet hogs:

So your showing that on that day in Japan a significant amount of data was P2P, thats ok, I don't think anyone really argues with that. What I think is the point is, that we pay for "As fast as your line can allow" which still isn't accurate as it's not as "fast as MY line can allow" it's as fast as ISP's can provide. If they had the infrastructure to support every single connection simultaneously at full line speed, we wouldn't have this problem. Managed traffic is to make up for an ISP's shortfalls.

sbiddle

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#279596 5-Dec-2009 20:02

macuser:
So your showing that on that day in Japan a significant amount of data was P2P, thats ok, I don't think anyone really argues with that. What I think is the point is, that we pay for "As fast as your line can allow" which still isn't accurate as it's not as "fast as MY line can allow" it's as fast as ISP's can provide. If they had the infrastructure to support every single connection simultaneously at full line speed, we wouldn't have this problem. Managed traffic is to make up for an ISP's shortfalls.

You can have a broadband connection that guarantees you a connection speed as fast as your line allows. You just have to pay for it.

I'm sure you'll be happy with paying somewhere around 10x what you currently pay for your internet connection to guarantee an ADSL2+ connection with CIR that matches your line speed? No? Didn't think so.

Managed traffic is nothing to do with ISP shortfalls, it's about managing traffic to ensure that traffic that needs to be prioritised is and doesn't suffer. As we enter a VoIP world traffic management is essential for any ISP.

jpollock

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#279602 5-Dec-2009 20:16

Net Neutrality has many definitions, and depending on the definition can cause easily exploited holes.

Me, I like the following ground rules:

1) All my bits are treated the same, regardless of protocol. You can throttle my entire link, but you don't get to throttle my FTP session (unless I give you explicit, revokeable permission).
2) All the bits going off-net down one pipe are treated the same regardless of destination.
3) ISPs publish minimum bandwidth guarantees at local, national and international PoPs.
4) ISPs run common speed tests systems, allowing verification of the guarantees.
5) ISPs don't filter, modify or inject data into my data streams (rewriting proxies, NXDOMAIN hacks, etc).

Open questions:

1) Should ISPs be allowed to give preferential treatment to their own servers on the local network? (TNZ with VoIP and Tivo servers). To local mirrors of remote sites?
2) Should ISPs be allowed to run multiple links into the backbone, and sell preferential access to bigger links?

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jpollock

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#279604 5-Dec-2009 20:21

BTW, that graph doesn't say anything about bandwidth hogs. It's data in aggregate for Japan. It needs to be broken down by source and destination IP address in order to have a purpose in the discussion.

All you can see in the graph is the usage of a couple of protocols and the relation between traffic usage and time of day. The patterns make sense, since the usage would drop off while the people are at school/work.

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sbiddle

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#279607 5-Dec-2009 20:31

Usage charts from Japan can also show different results to elsewhere in the world due to the fact so much of their traffic is domestic - there is very little Japanese language content hosted outside of Japan.

Detruire

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#279634 5-Dec-2009 22:37

It's also worth remembering that that data is over three years old.

One heck of a lot of things change on the internet in that time period.

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cbrpilot

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#279823 6-Dec-2009 22:38

The author of said article is a little naive to say the least.

One could argue that there may not necessarily be a correlation between the amount of data downloaded, and congestion. I.e. if someone did all of their downloading outside of peak times, then yes they may not be causing congestion on the network. However this is rarely the case - most ISPs do not incentivise their customers to do high volume activities off peak - so why would you?

The author does not seem to understand that ISPs sell 'best-efforts' grade services. What this essentially boils down to is that contention ratios are a fact of life. They rely upon the fact that not everyone is online at the same time, and not everyone is trying to back up the Internet at the same time. By and large this concept works. What ISPs are saying is that the 'hogs' will use far more (at least an order of magnitude more) than your average punter. This places the ISP in an unenviable situation - either they increase the cost of the service for everyone, or they put measures in place to make sure that everyone gets a fair share of the pie.

But TCP does that already our author says!

If everyone had just one TCP stream open at any one time, that would be correct. But that is not the way we use TCP nowadays. Even your most basic browser will use >4 TCP concurrent TCP streams. If one TCP stream loses a packet or two, and therefore backs off, the other streams from the same user will quickly gobble up the bandwidth relinquished by the first. P2P is even worse (or better, depending on your point of view). You may have well over 100 concurrent TCP streams.

Imagine trying to browse the Internet using say 8 TCP streams, and having to fight with the 'hog' who is using 200. Who's going to get a bigger slice of the pie?

TCP is a wonderful protocol, but "I don't think they had Wookies in mind when they designed it". I.e. it does a pretty piss-poor job of sharing equally between users.

My views are my own, and may not necessarily represent those of my employer.

Ragnor

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#279923 7-Dec-2009 10:36

There are two sides to the coin, in my opinion...

Firstly (the bad):

ISP's partnering with specific content providers to zero rate, uncap, prioritise those specific sites is bad. It reduces consumer choice significantly in the long term eg: Telecom + Tivo. History shows us vertical integration of provider and addon service is nearly always bad for consumers because it reduces choices and increases prices.

ISP's prioritising their own addon services over competitors is bad. Example: Say you're using ABC's naked ADSL, they also offer a voip service but you want to use XZY's voip service instead. ABC shouldn't be prioritising their own voip over XYZ's service (or de-prioritising XYZ's voip). Making a distinction to favour only their own service is bad for competition and choice.

Really they should be prioritising all voip over other bulk traffic that's not latency sensitive.

Secondly (the good);

ISP's doing general prioritisation and management of traffic in order to ensure quality of service for time sensitive applications in broad categories is plain common sense.

I can't see how anyone can rationally argue against voip having higher priority than a p2p downloading or a large http download for example.

Voip, Video conferencing & Gaming > General Web & Email > Video streaming, Video on demand > p2p, large downloads.

As long as they stick to doing it by protocol and traffic type rather than by specific provider's services, prioritisation is good.. actually more than good practically essential.

jpollock

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#279936 7-Dec-2009 11:11

To further the discussion (just playing devil's advocate)... The problem with forcing ISPs to not differentiate between their own local traffic and generic traffic provides incumbents with legacy networks with an unfair advantage.

For example, TNZ is offering TV through their IP network.
TCL is offering TV through their cable network.

If there are network neutrality rules that say that TNZ is unable to prioritize their IPTV traffic, they are at a competitive disadvantage to TCL who is. TCL is able to prioritize the traffic simply by allocating more or less channels to the digital and analog TV network.

TCL basically has a 300+ mbps (number pulled out my rear) network pipe into your house. It's just that the majority of it is used as a broadcast data transfer. :)

The same comparison can be made with TNZ ADSL + POTS and WxC and ADSL + VoIP. TNZ has a dedicated 64kbps channel to support POTS, so why shouldn't WxC be allowed to do the same thing?

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RalphFromSnap

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#279941 7-Dec-2009 11:21

An article written by an American, to describe American Internet.

New Zealand is very different - this is hardly relevant to us and is incorrect when describing NZ ISP's infrastructure, connectivity and most important - our users!!

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Ragnor

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#280209 8-Dec-2009 00:33

jpollock: To further the discussion (just playing devil's advocate)... The problem with forcing ISPs to not differentiate between their own local traffic and generic traffic provides incumbents with legacy networks with an unfair advantage.

Yeah that's a good point about the analogue services and it's a given that all within network traffic/transit will always have a slight advantage.

I guess tha main concern is retstricting 3rd party services for no good reason other than it makes the competion for voip, on demand movies etc look worse.

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