Wednesday, December 3. 2008Will The Copyright Pirates Now 'Kill' The Whole Internet?........John Linton ............or will BitTorrent commit commercial suicide by ending copyright theft in one fell swoop by doing what AFACT and all the other copyright owner's agencies and all National Governments have failed to do by making all P2P piracy the number one criminal act on all ISPs/Carriers prohibit lists? It will be interesting to see if the Australian ISPs now reverse their attitude to forwarding copyright infringement notices and, Heaven forbid, even start discontinuing P2P pirates who will be destroying their networks - or at least destroying their cost models for traffic. ......Another Night - Another Problem From Left Field Managing a small business means you work for almost as many hours as you are awake on most days and so I was alerted to this article by my lap top 'beeping' with an email from one of Exetel's volunteer forum admins as I was finishing off a pleasant bottle of red and half watching something or other on Fox: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/01/richard_bennett_utorrent_udp/ I read the article and immediately sent it to Steve who replied a couple of hours later confirming the article writer's view that if BitTorrent did switch to using UDP instead of TCP then there would be serious ramifications including bringing legitimate use of the internet to a halt. His reply to me, in part, was:
So, it remains to be seen whether or not BT et alia will switch to using UDP and if that does happen what the actual impact on the global internet is. If it is anything like what the article's author describes and what Steve's first pass view describes then one of four things will happen: 1) The internet will collapse under the 'weight' of a bunch of unethical people's activities. 2) P2P (UDP or not) will be banned on every network that has the capability of doing that - which means every commercial network. 3) Some new method of switching data will be 'invented' that will allow legitimate traffic to be processed without delay. 4) The cost of internet services will increase and be purely based on pay per megabyte downloaded and uploaded (no "included download" plans) I think that 4) above, which is pretty much the way Telstra, and some others, currently charges retail customers will become the standard method of providing internet services so every current user can thank the copyright pirates for their future higher internet pricing - should that be the case. By luck or good judgment (take your pick) Exetel have spent over two years taking the pain and grief of managing a long and large volume 'free period', understanding P2P controlling, understanding P2P caching and, more recently, basing plans on PAYU as well as, in the case of HSPA, charging for uploads as well as downloads. Whatever experience we have gained from these very painful learning curves may well be more useful in the future than it appeared when we began to understand how we might need to manage a large network at some future point in time. Sometimes planning pays off - even if it turns out not to be quite what you were planning for. Trackbacks
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Would the best idea be to offer customers, an Exetel based Usenet service much like Internode does.
Im sure customers might switch from using P2P over to using a Usenet Service like Astraweb which could be managed more easily if Exetel had some offering available. Comment (1)
maybe that's a way of addressing part of the problem. I guess there are going to have to be a lot of different processes to those we use today - and the same would apply to all other parts of the global internet.
Whether there is any way of managing a flood of P2P over UDP is the issue - affecting VoIP is a major concern to us. What it will, in my opinion, make very clear is that P2P will become even more unwelcome than it already is on EVERY part of the global internet and you will find that ISPs attitude to copyright piracy will undergo a U Turn. ISPs will be 'falling over themselves' to send infringement notices and cut off P2P users. Comment (1)
P2P affecting legitimate internet usage has always annoyed me, if it starts affecting VoIP that will be a major pain, as it stands it's one of the last things that that has remained unaffected for the most part.
As a Linux user of 10 years I begrudgingly had to install uTorrent as there was something I wanted that wasn't available any other way, maybe an attempt by some users to show a legitimate side to torrents but the experience wasn't great as there were hardly any users uploading the same file so the process was painfully slow. I have friends that are right into the bittorrent scene downloading TV shows etc and know that they get fast speeds, it seems the illegitimate files are the ones that work the best, the attempt to present the format as useful for legitimate uses hasn't impressed me. If they do try bringing this format over to UDP in an attempt to get around filters and such I hope it backfires on them and the ISP's revolt, I would have to think that 90% of the usage of programs like uTorrent is for illegal activity anyway Comments (4)
"The cost of internet services will increase and be purely based on pay per megabyte downloaded and uploaded (no "included download" plans)"
Good. I'm a strong advocate for PAYU plans and have been for a long time. As long as some protection is built in to avoid excessively large bills (such as a block purchase system) PAYU is very pro-consumer. Also, as you've concluded, PAYU plans are the simplest solution to this whole P2P conundrum. Only when every MB uploaded and downloaded has a real-time dollar value attached to it will people start to curtail their file sharing habits. The cost average plan structure of today only encourages aberrant behaviour. People download crap they don't really want or need just to feel they've "got what I've paid for". It's good that Exetel offer PAYU plans in their product lineup. I think you're ahead of the curve on this one. Comment (1)
Wow, what a way for the bittorrent protocol to p!$$ even more people off. I'm an avid user of bit torrent (Linux Distro's etc), but this just seems like a real 'knife to the heart' of the isp's and the internet in general.
I'm happy with the speed and connections I can achieve with the current setup and will be ensuring my client uses only tcp as there's no benefit for me to use UDP. Having said that though, it seems as though this is just another story of companies having to keep up with technology. In the same way Apple and Nintendo keep releasing firmware updates to close holes that allow the use of homebrew on their devices, users have cracked them within hours. P2P is here to stay in one form or another. Obviously ISP's are stuck between a rock (users paying money for internet) and a hard place (AFACT etc), but there needs to be some innovation in the way this is delivered. Exetel seems to me to be a very innovative company (No contract HSPA, PAYU plans, bundled sms etc) so I'll be interested to see your 'response' to this 'problem'. Comment (1)
The flip side to all this is at least the major international fiber links have now entered a upgrading feedback loop because of bittorrent.
I don't think Telstra would have built the new "Endeavour" submarine cable without the stable, reliable and huge demand from bittorrent users. My thinking is that bittorrent is re-dimensioning the internet like no other protocol has ever done in the past, and future generations will benefit from what bittorrent has been able to achieve. Naturally this glorious expansion of the internet will end for Australia when we are placed behind the new Nannynet. By the way, if you talk to any bittorent developer, this is likely their philosophy also. Just so I'm not silenced, i will hedge all the above by saying it was all supposed to be a joke, HAHA. Comments (2)
After reading about P4P, i think my views may have changed (if anyone starts using it). see: http://www-net.cs.yale.edu/p4p/vuze/#stats
Comments (2)
There are two issues here, copyright theft and P2P traffic. They are related but not the same thing. Copyright theft is a legal issue best handled by law enforcement and in the courts
I only wish to discuss P2P traffic. I think there is fault on both sides of the debate. On one hand, there is your point about P2P users swamping all other users so I will not go over that again. But what about P2P users? In Australia they universally PREPAY for downloads. Why can’t they use their PREPAID download allowance as they see fit? What if video on demand takes off and EVERYONE does it ALL the time? Will they be shaped? If so it will not work. I think the real problem is that Internet backbones are not big enough to suit the current applications in use. Sure some people only use 200mb a month just as some people only drive their car to church on Sundays while others are constantly on the road. The system has to be designed to support the traffic. If prices need to rise then so be it. Comment (1)
"Internet backbones are not big enough to suit the current applications in use"
and "The system has to be designed to support the traffic" The problem with this is the huge capital cost of putting in bigger backbones - additional undersea cabling for a start, not to mention the distribution networks required within major cities around the world - and it would have to all be upgraded for it to work. Would you be happy if your costs doubled or quadrupled? There's no doubt that the overall capacity needs to increase, but to service such a small percentage of users? PS, my favourite quote from the linked article: "But this insight isn’t shared by downloaders in general, most of whom have a sense of entitlement where their etiquette gene should be." Comment (1)
Why is someone's phone call more important than my Linux ISO?
What happened to net neutrality? The way I see it is if an ISP sells an amount of bandwith (quota limit for a month) the user should be allowed to use it at any stage and in any manner they like and receive the same latency and speed as their neighbour next door. If the ISP can't actually provide what they offered in an attempt to get big fast they deserve to fail. Comments (2)
if all the world were downloading Linux iso's you would have a point, so why should a protocol that has such a high percentage of usage for illegal purposes be allowed to impact something as simple as a phone call
Comments (4)
Why is someone's phone call more important than my Linux ISO?
That's got to be the dumb question of the day. Phone calls by their nature, need to be in "real time", whereas it really doesn't matter if your linux distro gets to you right now, or in 10 minutes time. If you can't grasp that concept, then you probably qualify as one of the downloaders that JL identified. The way I see it is if an ISP sells an amount of bandwith (quota limit for a month) the user should be allowed to use it at any stage and in any manner they like and receive the same latency and speed as their neighbour next door. That's like saying the Government should build a 50 lane highway between Sydney and Newcastle, just in case the entire Sydney population all want to head to Newcastle for the weekend at the same time. It's a dumb concept that's only spouted by people who "have a sense of entitlement where their etiquette gene should be." Comment (1)
Correct me if i'm wrong but exetel have no "unlimited" plans?.
All the plans are X gig a month peak and X gig a month offpeak with per gig charges after that. This is why bit torrent is trying to get around the crippling of their platform. ISP's aren't throttling as a last resort in emergency situations to maintain a QOS. They are by default crippling paying customers traffic to avoid paying for the infrastructure to support it. Its an every day thing. Bit torrent isn't abusing the protocol, ISP's are. When usage hit's peak, ISP's just pick out bit torrent traffic and squish it. That's poor planning. Charge more per gig or lower the caps or juggle the peak/off peak ratio. If you are selling people 12 gig a month at X speed, you shouldn't be continually throttling their traffic in peak times, and if you are you should put a prominent note about it in your advertising and on your webpage. Comment (1)
Exetel do make it well known they shape P2P traffic.
But I agree 100% with you, a user has every right to use their set quota at 100% speed whenever they see fit. ISP's are doing the wrong thing and rather than upgrading their links/bandwidth they're overselling products and everyone else suffers. Comments (2)
I have a feeling that if there weren't restrictions on P2P that more users would suffer as a result, why do roads have speed limits, because some people have no self control
Exetel admit to shaping P2P, many others do it also but they deny doing so to try and remain popular, not sure why they feel the need to impress Comments (4)
The author of the Register article has published another one that counters his first and is almost a back flip. The comment stream is interesting too.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/05/richard_bennett_bittorrent_udp/ Comment (1)
Thanks for the update, it will be interesting to see just how this pans out in the long run
Comments (4)
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