[George76]

Totally_lost said:

If you believe you can operate an ISP with free bandwidth costs, please do so. Tell the rest of the ISPs where you are going to get free access to the backbone, and I'm sure that all that can will follow. A small ISP pays about $400 for each 1.5MBit/sec T1 they oversubscribe to their customers. A big ISP near a major peering point can get a volume discount with a high speed fiber connection, that is still far from free (see another posters comments about the cost he pays for servicing his 3000 customers). More importantly, look at his cost analysis for providing dedicated 1.5mbps service to all his DSL customers. Certainly not free, at you wrongly assert above.

I didn't say bandwidth was free to ISP's. What I stated (perhaps not clearly enough) was that ISP's have already paid for whatever bandwidth access they have to the internet backbone, thus whether 1% or 100% of the ISP's bandwidth is used each month is immaterial. The ISP will be paying the same amount for access regardless of how much the subscribers use.

[Totally_lost]

George76 writes: "I didn't say bandwidth was free to ISP's. What I stated (perhaps not
clearly enough) was that ISP's have already paid for whatever bandwidth
access they have to the internet backbone, thus whether 1% or 100% of
the ISP's bandwidth is used each month is immaterial. The ISP will be
paying the same amount for access regardless of how much the
subscribers use."

There are several things wrong with this arguement ... the first is the "you have already paid for it" ... which is wrong, as it has to be paid for each month, and as such has real value just like money, so allowing customers to take more value than they pay for is a real economic loss when that same bandwidth will provide goodwill for the majority of customers and lead to word of mouth sales from the excellent service -- rather than lost customer from poor service. The second is the idea that the ISP "will be paying the same amount, regardless how much subscriber use", as some high speed internet connections are billed 95% percentile (metered rate) so that burst capacity is always available and the ISP only gets charged for what is actually used, so it's a total error to assume the ISP pays a flat rate for bandwidth (our coop had a 95% percentile connection for 5 years). Third, when customers are complaining about a slow internet connection and have a faster alternative, they will pickup and leave ... which forces the ISP to purchase additional capacity ... that is a real cost increase for increased use by heavy users.

Your argument that the heavy use doesn't impact the ISP bottom line, is imply wrong.

[Totally_lost]

Martin wrote: "
The customers don’t know the details, they just know they are usually
being lied to. So naturally, the customers hate their ISP’s. But that
shouldn be."



The issue here is also an interesting problem where a corporation like BitTorrent, Inc making false respresentations about their product, and heavily using Advocate Mouthpieces like this author (and yourself) to spread FUD against ISPs suffering from BT's use. The strategy is to discredit the ISP and redirect anger away from BT users which are causing the problem. The technical flaws in BT are so severe, that it doesn't take a rocket scientist to discover the reasons why BT is a horrible technology choice.

Let's start with some of BitTorrent, Inc's false statements on their web site:

1) http://www.bittorren.../whatisdna.html "Courteous: DNA will never slow down your computer or Internet
connection. DNA operates in the background without impacting other
applications that share your network connection, whether they
reside on your computer or on others."

I can not think of any real world case this is even remotely true. Comcast even presented a strong case that as few as 15 BT users impacted the service of the other 450 users on the same node. In our coop, a single BT user trashes service for the remainder of the cooperative. -- that invalidates the "or on others" part of this claim. The second is, that a single BT client and server starts up a few dozen TCP connections and runs them at, or near, your network connections speed. This will, and does, increase latency and lower available throughput for all other users on the home network both during downloads and after when it's server is doing uploads - check it for yourself - use DSL speed reports or other bandwidth checker. The statement "DNA will never slow down your computer or Internet connection." is simply false as fact. The reality is that sometimes it may only slow it down some, and othertimes quite a bit, depending on the type of network connection you have. If you have a wireless connection to your home from your ISP, then the increased use from the BT server uploads is a severe traffic increase on your network connection, that will noticibly impact your homes network performance (and other ISP customers sharing the same wireless links and access points). A great easy to run test on your own home's wireless network, by looking at performance before, during and after a large movie download and how that impacts network latency and available bandwidth to other wireless nodes in your home.

The real beauty of BT's strategy of discrediting ISPs for throttling, is that the BT users then blame the ISP for the slowness that BT causes because of this on the ISP, even when it's a technology problem with half-duplex networks. At that point, the ISP can tell the truth, and the users are convinced they are being lied to by the ISP ... when the lie was BT's from the start. Since the BT FUD discredits the ISP, and BT is claiming to be the good guy, it's easier to ignore BT lies like this.



2 ) http://www.bittorren.../whatisdna.html "How does DNA work? DNA automatically accelerates your favorite web sites and
software by downloading in parallel from multiple sources. During
and for a short time after each download, your computer helps
distribute what you download. In return, you get faster, more
reliable downloads and access to richer content. Only files that you recently
downloaded will be made available to others."

The reality is that this is only partially true, and then only part of the time. The best classic corporate lies are those veiled in a half truth, and BT milks this very well.

First, when does BT and DNA technology actually come close to working 100% ... that is when the ISP and backbone networks are full-duplex and very lightly loaded or idle. In that case the additional traffic BT's server generates is masked by the full-duplex connection for uploads, and the parallelism hides any packet loss created by BT --- AND the content would not otherwise be cached by the ISPs web cache.

Second, when is this statement by BT clearly false ... that is when the network is half-duplex, has some significant concurrent use (either locally or external to the user) for files in the ISP web cache, then using BT creates several times more traffic, that has to go out to the internet cloud making the initial download slower and continues to impact other use with the BT server uploads. The net result is both slower and less reliable, than simply grabbing a copy from the local ISP web cache. The impact on other ISP customers is the highest. While it might be easy to think you got the better end of the stick THIS TIME, you are equally likely to be the one suffering when some other ISP customer is trashing the network when you need to search the web, make a call on your VoIP phone, or use a VPN back to school or work.

Third, there is a large grey area in between ... mostly to the bad side. The reason is that loading the network with the BT server will always slow down other network use. If you are internet gaming, that means more lag. If you are just web surfing, that means slower page access. If you are doing utube, or other media streaming, it means jerky performance and more aborts/hangs. 1+1 is ALWAY greater than just 1 ... more network use by the BT server will always be slower than if there is no BT server.

3) http://www.bittorren.../whatisdna.html "DNA is more efficient because it delivers
downloads from a wide variety of available sources, selecting from
among the best, without overloading any."

Nothing is more efficient than the local ISP web cache ... PERIOD. Pure missleading marketing hype to make the BT and DNA sell.

4) http://www.bittorren.../whatisdna.html "DNA is faster because it delivers downloads to you from multiple, nearby sources in parallel."

Another half truth, that boarderlines on an outright lie. Again, if it's in the ISP web cache, that is likely to be closer than any other source, including other BT nodes. Half the time, the pipe between you and a major web host is probably closer and FASTER than a bunch of other BT client/server nodes that can share that content right away. If you are in Alaska, and the only other BT nodes that are serving that data are in China right now, then going to the original site also in Alaska using the same ISP as you, is probably a LOT faster. This BT claim is totally bogus, as they can NEVER predict the relationship between you and the current other BT users serving that content, as compared to the original source. BT can not just magically create a "nearby source" when they do not exist. Sure one might, but that is not the absolute given that this marketing hype is selling.

5) http://www.bittorren.../whatisdna.html "DNA is more reliable because it flexibly delivers
downloads to you from a variety of sources. And, when a download
becomes very popular, DNA makes sure there is capacity to deliver it."

Again, pure marketing half truth hype that is not based in reality. If the data is in the local ISP web cache, and the only BT servers with the data are on a bunch of throttled comcast users machines that are suffering from resets and packet loss, then the BT choise is likely to be much less reliable than either the ISP web cache or the original source.

6) http://www.bittorren...technology.html "Advanced Bandwidth Management: BitTorrent DNA runs quietly in the background with minimal
impact to the end-user experience. Our proprietary transport
technology leverages the full available network capacity of all
paths without disrupting other applications. By detecting the
presence of other applications, computers, and devices sharing
the consumer's broadband connection, BitTorrent DNA
automatically moderates its use of the network to ensure that
web browsing, voice over IP (VoIP), Internet gaming, and other
applications are not disrupted."

Again more half truths that boarder on an out right lie. For starters, most switched networks do not allow one host to see or monitor other hosts traffic on the same network ... which makes BT's claim in the second sentence just plain false ... if it can not see the use, then it certainly can not moderate it's own use to protect VoIP or other services.

Simply making this claim, and then actively discrediting the ISP, leaves the BT users trusting the wrong claims and wrong corporation that is out to make a buck selling it's goods and services.

7) http://www.bittorren...technology.html "Friendly to Service Provider Networks: BitTorrent DNA contains a number of enhancements to mitigate
the impact of peer networking on service provider networks.
These enhancements include: BitTorrent's sophisticated
congestion-avoiding transport technology; an intelligent peer
selection algorithm that prefers peers on the same LAN, network,
or AS; and work with vendors of BitTorrent caching products to
support local cache discovery. By keeping traffic local and
non-congestive, BitTorrent DNA reduces long-haul and peering
traffic for service providers, while improving the end-user
experience."

Again another half truth, that boarders on another outright lie to make the user feel good about doing the right thing, that is actually the wrong thing. The first assumption is that traffic will be local inside the ISP, and so local as to not even use the ISP internal backbone ... which is pure fantasy, as BT can not create new services in an ISP when the only other users of that content and on another continent. While this MIGHT happen for some content, it is not likely to happen even a significant portion of the time, and certainly less likely than using the ISP web cache. The additional server load this creates in half-duplex and wireless networks, completely mitigates nearly all potential gains -- especially for wireless ISP customers. So this BT marking hype is clearly false in many critical cases where the BT product trashes a half duplex wireless network.



To close, I'd like to suggest readers follow the money here ... BT is another corporation, possibly larger than many small ISP operations, that is out to make a profit with several shell games. First, they want to transfer the cost of providing bandwidth from content providers (like themselves) onto the backs of all ISP's, by making false claims about how better this is. This at best is very self serving, and at worst, exactly the same model as spamers using a vast bot farm ... the only difference is that BT suckers it's customers into providing that bot farm with false claims of how good this is for everyone -- and as we have learned, most of those customers don't even know they have done that until they get the bill from their ISP or have their service terminated. Just how is this better than spy ware or bot farms?

[Martian]

The following may be too much to ask of an industry so heavily influenced by lawyers and marketing hucksters, but here goes. ISP’s need to learn how to have genuine two way communication with their customers.
ISP’s should condense their anti-bandwidth hog message into short, simple, non-corporate speak, non-legalize, non-Madison Ave. straightforward explanations of:
1...How the bandwidth hogs are freeloaders and just how it costs other ISP customers both in monthly fees and in deteriorated service.
2...SPECIFIC examples of programs and services that do hog bandwidth—name names.
3...SPECIFICALLY how the ISP is combating bandwidth hogging.
4...SPECIFICALLY what the ISP would further like to do to combat this hogging.
5...How the benefits of curbing the hogs would accrue to the other customers, not just the ISP itself.
6...Assurances, again be specific, that the ISP is not trying to profiteer—for example, the ISP will not undercut 3rd party VoIP to favor its own voice services or even competing services that may be provided by an affiliated telephone company.
7...Establish an unfiltered on-line forum just to discuss this. Personally, I wouldn’t even bother to filter the odd profanity.
Initial communication could be offered in two flavors, one in non-technical, generic logic, and the second with the full Monty of esoteric technical jargon. Leave out all the “We value our customer ….yadda, yadda, yadda ” BS that just pisses off people.
Bottom line is that Totally_lost has effectively explained the ISP industry’s position in this thread of this forum, but the message needs to be discussed at length with the public at large.

[mooncaine]

This has been a great series of articles, and I'm grateful for it, MacWorld. I'm also grateful for the comments of posters here, such as the person who represents an ISP's point of view. Now, to my comments:

"I just get upset when the net neutrality wonks get going and attempt to put the blame on the ISPs for not giving everybody unlimited access for free as if it is a "right" that is guaranteed in the constitution."

That's not quite the issue. The issue is that ISPs want the right to prioritize certain types of data traffic, as they see fit. I say, if you want to do that, build your own network. You must not do that on the network that the public provides. At least among Americans, probably they are guided by the general assumption that the network was originally developed with their money, by their government, and that this made the ISP business possible in the first place. Like the capacity of water or gas pipes we paid to have laid in the ground, we feel that no particular company should be able to monopolize, sequester, compartmentalize, monetize, reserve or deny any access to the resources that don't belong to that company.

You don't want my water in your pipes? Build your own pipes.

That gets complicated when your pipes depend on the pipes that the public built. Take it or leave it, I say. You want to use our pipes, too? Then you can't decide not to pass our water through, too. If we have problems with bandwidth, we must decide how to prioritize traffic, together: all the owners of the network. Otherwise, when an ISP decides to throttle certain protocols, it is usurping the common benefit of the network to suit its own purposes, isn't it?

We are so often told that consumers "should read the fine print no matter what they are buying." I feel that there should be no fine print. All the print should be the same size; we should insist on this and get laws passed to enforce it. Fine print intentionally discourages, when not outright preventing, the consumer from reading it. Rather, the company that presents a customer with fine print is intentionally trying to dissuade the customer from completely understanding the agreement or contract that's being offered.

Call that what you want; I call it hiding the truth. I doubt that I'm alone. There's nothing mysterious or ambiguous about "fine print", and we all know very well why the print is "fine".

[Totally_lost]

While our cooperative is "just" an ISP for a few non-technical member households, the wonderful part about the whole process has been making friends and being able to create the environment of neighbor helping neighbor -- AND -- being able to take control of our own internet service so we get what we want. In our first few years we covered an area roughly 50 miles wide and 60 miles long, with about 250 square miles of that lit up from the 4 hill tops. We had a number of people that wanted us to light up more, but it was too much travel for our tech team, so we encouraged others to do the same. Sadly, a bunch of for-profits sprung up and in the spectrum war that followed we got forced out of our initial market foot print loosing about 70 familes in the city and suburban areas due to interference created by the for-profits. Many of those managed to get cable and DSL as those services were built out in town, others moved to the for-profits, which after the spectrum war was reduced to a single provider that bought the others out. It's been interesting to watch the ISP landscape change for the last 9 years.

Our coop, just refocused it's support back to our core mission of helping families without another broadband solution get connected, which was in the mountains and foothills, plus the very rural area just below the Wyoming boarder down to Fort Collins, and we've grown back up to about 70 mostly very rural families again.

Anyone that is really frustrated with a poor ISP, I suggest starting your own cooperative ... get a T1, share it with 15-50 families using either a DSL DSLAM at your local pair gain box or build out a small wireless network. MegaPath and Covad will provide a T1 for about $400 (plus or minus a bit depending on your location). The wireless gear or DSL gear has a modest up front cost, which means you need between a couple dozen families to share the costs.

In some cases, where one member needs much of the T1 for a business, it can be supported with fewer ... or the only other alternative is satelite, where per houshold costs are already high and people are willing to pay a bit more. When we started CWX.NET the radios were $1,500 per household for an Aironet UC4800 and 24dBi dish antenna, and it's been wonderful to watch prices fall below $300 per household for "Customer Premise Equipment" (CPE).

The down side, is that some of the technical limitations force you to become aware of what works and what doesn't, and you have to make realistic decisions about what traffic is acceptable to fairly share the bandwidth. There will be a few mistakes made along the way, a few arguements about bandwidth hogs, but in the end everyone gets on the same page and supports each other (or a few people will get heated and leave, which is a good thing, as people in a cooperative need to be cooperative, and those that are unable to are welcome to leave.

I don't really represent ISP views, because the problems I've shared affect any cluster of users managing internet services ... a household with a half dozen or more computers in a large family, or a small business with a few dozen employees. I just don't believe that ISP's should be blamed for the problems that peer-to-peer and other applications that do not share well create.

The funny part, is that most of the Bittorrent problems in our network are normally resolved when the member with the BT server calls us complaining that their service has been VERY slow for a couple days. We then bring up iftop or iptraf, and see the dozens of upload connections going all over the world, and ask them to start turning off computers in their house until it stops. Because wireless is half duplex, the high BT server traffic brings that members connection to a crawl worse than it affects other members.

I personally believe that Bittorrent is far more dishonest than any ISP I've met, both because they are less than truthful about the technical impacts of their product, AND because their business model is fundamentally dishonest sucking technology unaware users into providing the high volume content servers when it's against nearly every ISP terms of use for sound technical reasons.

Their spyware like, or spam like, business plan, is very self serving simply to avoid building a major server facility with a Tier 1 backbone connection that is very expensive to operate -- equipment costs, labor costs, building costs, utility costs, plus network costs. Technically, it puts all the servers at the leaf end of the network, rather than keeping the servers at the trunk end close to the internet backbone, and prevents the ISP from using web caches to minimize internet backbone traffic. This is just wrong business wise, wrong technically, and wrong ethically. For them to whip the user community into a frenzy against ISP's with this "net neutrality" straw man arguement to cover their own misdeeds actually makes me angry.

Pushing the servers out to the leaf nodes of the internet increases the ACK and DNS inquiry latency for all users sharing a network branch with those servers, which significantly slows down peoples web surfing. It also introduces packet loss on the ACK and DNS inquiry path, which even more impairs those peoples network performance.

In addition, most larger ISP's offer co-location services for servers near their network backbone connection and use the revenue to help pay the bills. This additional revenue stream helps the ISP offer lower prices to it's customers. Technically, this is the best place for servers, as it doesn't introduced traffic that impacts all the ISP's users.

Bittorrents business plan is to charge companies for using their bot network to avoid having to build or lease co-location facilites, plus sell their own content using this bot network. This bussiness plan steals co-locate revuenue from the ISP, which means that the ISP will have to charge it's customers more to replace the lost revenue. In addition, the BT business plan based on bots (end user servers that violate ISP terms and conditions) shifts a huge load onto the ISP network that if allowed dramatically changes oversubscription ratios for the network infrastructure which also dramatically increases end user costs. In the end, the end users pay more, get worse service, and BT makes a bunch of money off everyones backs .... probably including a major IPO that leaves the investors screwed when this house of cards finally falls.

[als2663]

Mooncaine wrote

"That's not quite the issue. The issue is that ISPs want the right to prioritize certain types of data traffic, as they
see fit. I say, if you want to do that, build your own network. You
must not do that on the network that the public provides. At least
among Americans, probably they are guided by the general assumption
that the network was originally developed with their money, by their
government, and that this made the ISP business possible in the first
place. Like the capacity of water or gas pipes we paid to have laid in
the ground, we feel that no particular company should be able to
monopolize, sequester, compartmentalize, monetize, reserve or deny any
access to the resources that don't belong to that company."

Actually - that is exactly the issue. We did build our own network. What makes you think that you contributed to or own my DSL network? I want the right to prioritize, limit, and otherwise control traffic on my network! Not a network that you paid for. What network have you paid for? The internet? Sorry to disabuse you of that thought but the internet backbones are provided by companies who paid huge amounts of money to build it - not you. Do you think you paid for my DSL network? Did you contribute anything to my router costs, or my mail-server costs, or my T1 lines, or my DSLAM costs? What makes you think that you own, or contributed in any way to those costs.

It cost me $8500 per site to put in a DSLAM. It costs $15/month to supply power, The T1 lines are $600/month each. Mileage costs us $600/month. Barracuda mail filter is a $30K box. Connections for our user into the internet costs us thousands every month.

I haven't had any checks from you, or the government to do any of this. Because we "own" the network (that is we pay monthly for the infrastructure and paid money for the hardware necessary to make it work) doesn't that imply that it is "our" network. We did build it.

What you want to do is to regulate what I can or cannot do on my network. That is my objection to this whole issue. Most ISPs "own" their networks (by buying bandwidth or lines, or whatever). What world do you live in? Are you talking about an ISP that just provides email services? That isn't the issue, and none of them would have any way of limiting your service.This general discussion is about ISPs that do own their networks, and now somebody wants to tell me that even though it is my network, and I pay for it every month, that they want to control what I offer to my users?

[mooncaine]

SInce you posted messages on a web page on this website, you are demonstrating that you aren't merely using your network. You're using ours, too. So what else do you need to know? The history of the Internet? You know darn well you are sharing a network with me -- that's the only thing that gives your network value to your customers: your connection to the Internet.

That's why you and I can have this conversation. My problem with the ISP's desire to prioritize traffic is that the ISP's choices affect users beyond that ISP's network, and since the ISPs are not required to be open and truthful about their traffic shaping, we may not be able to discover who is degrading our network to suit their own purposes while harming (sometimes, intentionally) our pursuit of our own purposes.

And, yes, the idea that government can tell you what you must do with your property is essentially what regulation means, so, since I favor regulation to prevent ISPs from shaping traffic secretly, then, yes, I am telling you that I want to control what you do with your network. Just like we do with phone companies, banks, roads, radio, air traffic control. If the idea of being regulated by law & order doesn't appeal to you, then you, too, have a choice. You can find another business. This isn't the frontier, and ISPs aren't on private ranches. Their actions have an impact on the rest of the network, and it's reasonable to expect them to cooperate with the other members of the network, or ... leave.

[Totally_lost]

It's a two way street. If users want to demand ISP service restrictions by regulation, then ISP's can also demand a balance in that regulation on users actions too .... like get peer-to-peer the hell off the internet ... that at minimum is the result that any "network neutrality" regulation will generate as a compromise balance.

Actually, I would support any regulation that removes bandwidth hog applications that do not share well from the internet, in exchange for some restrictions that require open disclosure and minium neutrality clauses.

That however, is counterproductive to Bittorrents business plan, and certainly not what their mouth pieces are asking for.

[Totally_lost]

So far the only "prioritization" I've heard about is blocking peer-to-peer (IE bittorrent) because it violates the "no server" restriction in the terms and conditions of service, and also violates a clause that most ISP's have as a catch all that prohibts any user actions which degrades or damages services for other users .... IE denial of service attacks like ping floods (which is very close to what dozens of BT server connections does to the network).

I haven't seen any claims they are throttling or blocking competitive services like NetFlix which (almost) behaves properly. That clearly would get them in trouble, AND actually make a good case for regulation.

Blocking BT on the otherhand, is a VERY good thing, as the customer is almost always violating the high volume server restriction, and hurting other users.

[Totally_lost]

One other comment about BT traffic. The user downloads an hour or two of traffic, then serves out several hundred times that amount of data ... which is far more than the BT web sites claim of " DNA automatically accelerates your favorite web sites and
software by downloading in parallel from multiple sources. During
and for a short time after each download, your computer helps
distribute what you download."

When I've looked at the connections, I see that the majority are frequently all around the world, frequently in places where networks are expensive.

This tells me two things .... the ratio of consumers to servers is very high ... AND ... that users/ISP's that provide servers burn a few hundred more times the bandwidth serving than they get in exchange for "faster" downloads. That is horribly unbalanced, and far less than equal community sharing. US ISP's end up eating a lot of infrastructure bandwidth and costs, just so BT can sell their BOT network to provide data to users that are not equally sharing the server load.

[als2663]

bq. Mooncaine wrote:
bq. SInce you posted messages on a web page on this website, you are demonstrating that you aren't merely using your network. You're using ours, too. So what else do you need to know? The history of the Internet? You know darn well you are sharing a network with me -- that's the only thing that gives your network value to your customers: your connection to the Internet.
I'm not sure exectly what you are referring to above when you refer to "using ours too". To send this message - I used my network, (which I pay for) which got my posting to our access point and to our DSLAM, then I used my network again (which I pay for) which got my data to our hosting point (a very expensve co-location with Yipes - which I pay for), then I used Yipes's network (which I pay for bandwidth on) to get this into Level3's network. Then the traffic went over Level3's network (which Yipes pays Level3 for) and thence thru the cloud (internet which is paid for by Level 3 and all of the other tier 1 carriers, and then somewhere to Macworld's servers via a facility (that they pay for). That's as far as it went.

I don't believe that I used anything that you pay for in all of this. Message got to Macworld's server without you paying a cent. You used a network that you pay for to access Macworld's servers to look at the message that I posted on their server. You didn't use my network to look at the server. Nobody in the process of delivering my message to Macworld's server received any remuneration from you. You have to pay for connecting to Macworld's server, but that is between you and whoever your ISP (and their upstreams).

The point of all of this is that I just want to control traffic on my network .I really don't care what you do with yours, or what Level3 or Viawest, or Whoever does with theirs. My network is the one that is getting slammed with BT users so I want to control that utilization. If Level3's network is getting slammed by email users - then they have a right to control that. If Viawest is getting slammed by porn users - then they have a right to control that. After all the network is theirs, and they can do whatever they want to do with it - including shutting it down at any time they see fit. Might piss off some of their customers, but they have the right to do so. Every network "owner" has the right to do what they want, and if their customers don't like it they can vote with their feet.

Where is "your network"? The one that you claim is yours. What kind of access lines are you running? What kind of routers do you have? Whose email server are you using? How many customers do you have, What are your expenses? Anybody that "owns" a network can answer those questions. Can you?

You see, it is obvious that you don't have a network - you are renting space on something that belongs to somebody else. It isn't "yours". You are just renting it. Like a house. If the owner chooses to kick you out and burn it to the ground - it is his right. If the owner chooses to raise the rent - they can - They own it. If you have a lease - you have to abide by the terms of the lease - otherwise you can be evicted. If the owner has in the lease that you can't smoke in the house, and you do, you can be evicted, If the lease says that you can't have pets, then if you get a dog, you can be evicted. The owner owns it - he is just renting the space to you.

I "own" my DSL network. I pay for a network that handles many subscribers. I have servers, routers, fiber links, internet access, DSLAMs, T1 lines, DS3 lines. I "rent" them and have an exclusive right to use the lines and bandwidth. It is in my contract that I have with the people that I rent them from. I can (and should) be able to do what I want with it. I can shut it down, ban BT traffic, ban porn, require that all users' last names start with "X" if I choose. It is mine. I paid for it, I can do what I want with it. I'm not a "public service". I don't report to the PUC. I don't take public money, and am not using public facilities. They are all private - owned by the provider that I rent them from. Because it is my network I do not allow anybody on our network to operate a public server of any type (BT or not) as it slows the network down for all of the users. I can do that - it is my network. It is in the agreement that my customers sign when they choose to use me as their provider.

When you get your own network - then you can tell your users what they can and can't do. Ours is obviously not too restrictive, as we are a successful - for profit - company. We are growing every year, and our customers love us. They have gone for less expensive alternatives, and come back. They do this because we control the network and they know that they will get the best service that it is possible for us to give. We don't allow bandwidth hogs.

So before you go spouting about "your" network, please let us all know what it consists of. Just because you pay somebody for internet access - it doesn't mean that it is "your" network. Whoever owns the network that you use can put any kind of restriction on it that they want because it is "theirs" not "yours". They can charge whatever they want, and can provide any kind of service that they want. You don't have to use it. Nobody is forcing you. You can go find a different provider if you choose. Vote with your feet, but don't complain about restrictions on a network that is most certainly not "yours"!

[Totally_lost]

Having the Feds take up the Bittorrent mantra of mandating all ISPs being required to allow the BT BOT farm isn't likely. What is more likely, is that they will get caught up in legislation against Spyware (which is effectively what they are) or SPAM BOTs, then get run thru the ringer for "truth in advertising" law violations.

It might not take much at this point to have a small group of wireless ISPs to file a class action suit against Bittorrent and their mouth pieces like MacWorld, and win based on the deceiption in their web site and the slandering that articles like "Find and honest ISP" creates. I would actually applaud Comcast if they did so.

If nothing else, there is certainly room for the ISPs to go after MacWorld advertisers with a very strong complaint that MacWorld failed grossly to exercise editorial ethics. There is an equally strong case here that MacWorld has been less than honest with it's readership slaming ISP's with the assertion that many/all are far from honest.

[wardoggie]

als2663 said:

So before you go spouting about "your" network, please let us all know what it consists of. Just because you pay somebody for internet access - it doesn't mean that it is "your" network. Whoever owns the network that you use can put any kind of restriction on it that they want because it is "theirs" not "yours". They can charge whatever they want, and can provide any kind of service that they want. You don't have to use it. Nobody is forcing you. You can go find a different provider if you choose. Vote with your feet, but don't complain about restrictions on a network that is most certainly not "yours"!
{quote}

If net neutrality regulations are not passed, this paragraph will come back to haunt you. Because while you're carrying on about how unfair Bit Torrent is and how unrealistic it is for some users to demand to use more than their fair share of your shared bandwidth (which you haven't actually defined, so how could they be using more than their share?), and how you're concerned about the QoS you provide to all of your customers, the people you pay each month to connect to THEIR network are going to drive YOU out of business.

Because, as you so eloquently put it, "They can charge whatever they want, and can provide any kind of service that they want." They can raise your bandwidth costs because you're allowing your users to use a different VoIP service than the one they provide. Or they can restrict traffic coming to your network so that no two customers of your service can have a VoIP conversation with anyone else outside your network unless they're talking to one of their customers.

The difference is, where else are you going to go? There are only so many broadband providers and they're all going to be cutting their own deals that try to leverage their positions. So you'll pay more and try to pass the costs along to your customers. And when they see the cost of your outstanding, torrent-free QoS, all but the most affluent or connectivity-dependent customers will give up and go with cheaper service that comes from one of the telcos. Not just the "bad apples" to whom you say "good riddance," but the people who just can't afford to pay more for high QoS. And if you're only making $10/month/customer, and the number of customers goes down, you're either going to have to charge disproportionately higher rates to keep serving the customers you have left, or decide that it's more profitable to do something else.

And that's just part of the reality of the net neutrality issue. I haven't even touched on how it could affect your users who want to watch last night's Tonight Show on hulu.com and have to wait forever because NBC decided not to pay AT&T's traffic charges. When they call to complain about that, it won't be your fault, but you'll still have to deal with it -- just like with Bit Torrent. But then it'll be too late because you only focused on the Bit Torrent part, made cogent, technical and ethical arguments why it should be restricted, and helped seal your own fate.

Bit Torrent is the part you have to deal with right now, and you've proven that you can do so. You've explained to some users that it's okay to do in the middle of the night, but not when everyone is trying to get online in the morning and during the day. You've put forth terms in writing stating that public servers are not allowed on your network and that you can shut down peoples' BT traffic if they get out of hand. And you've booted people who insist on violating your terms. But BT is not the entire issue. It's just the first hint of many more issues to come. What would happen to your customers who wanted to watch Flash video content if Microsoft were to cut an exclusive agreement with your broadband provider so that only Silverlight content got priority bandwidth?

So, while it's a PITA, you've employed acceptable (IMO) practices to deal with applications like BT. Net neutrality, in its current form, according to the Washington Post, does nothing to limit this. Read it for yourself here if you doubt me. But if you'd rather have the right to do as you please with your network with no regard as to what effects it may ultimately have on your ability to operate a network, then by all means -- continue to oppose net neutrality.

I'm already an AT&T broadband customer, and don't even qualify as a light BT user, so it's not like your opinion on BT affects me. The only reason I care is because the issue is much larger than BT. IMO, Net Neutrality will ultimately benefit consumers because it prevents large telcos from engaging in anti-competitive practices against small companies like yours.