John Linton I read L. Gordon Crovitz's article titled "FREE THE WEB - FROM THE FCC" (Asian Wall Street Journal - page 14) earlier today which centred around the FCC (the USA Federal Communications Commission) announcement last Friday that it will "replace market solutions with regulatory review" regarding carriers policies on allocating usage of the bandwidth in their networks.
This resulted from a major US carrier (Comcast) restricting/delaying P2P traffic which it claimed that at peak times was taking 90% of available capacity but only servicing 5% of the users at those times. Subsequently, in March 2008, Comcast and BitTorrent agreed that a different technique would be used to manage its network that didn't 'specifically' target BitTorrent traffic.
The article quotes the UK Guardian newspaper (that carried the announcement of the UK initiatives on copyright infringement I referenced earlier) succinct summing up of the problem for users and carriers as:
"The family gathers for tea, and their are four cream cakes for four people. If one of those people grabbed three of those cakes then words would be said. However P2P users think it's perfectly OK to grab 75% of the communal internet bandwidth."
Exetel has 'wrestled' with this issue (as has every other provider of internet services) for over two years. It isn't easy to address and the ONLY solution that provides any sort of realistic service delivery for ALL users is to restrict the ability of P2P users to 'hog the bandwidth" at peak times - irrespective of what ANYBODY says on this issue there is no other financially viable solution. I think, over the past two years, we have come up with a sensible operation methodology that delivers optimum speeds and traffic volumes to all users at all times but it has taken a lot of money, user and system administration 'pain' and a whole lot of other work to reach this situation.
The ONLY solution to preventing P2P traffic congesting all users on a network at peak times is to control the amount of bandwidth that P2P applications are 'asking for'. Unrealistic, or just plain lying in the case of ISPs, people will say things like "it's the ISP's responsibility to provide whatever bandwidth is required at all times for all users, irrespective of what they are using, to achieve peak speeds at all times". Interestingly childish and pointless statement - similar to averring that "The NSW DMR should provide enough traffic lanes to allow all road users at all times to drive at the maximum speed their vehicle is capable of". Everybody understands the concept of 'peak hour' and its consequences - so it applies to broad band internet.
So let me say that, in the event that there is an ISP/Carrier that DOES deploy enough bandwidth at ALL TIMES to allow their P2P users to download at the maximum of their line speeds (in other words does not restict P2P usage in any way) then they will undoubtedly, over time, attract ALL P2P users who think that their current ISP, which does restrict P2P speeds at peak times, is not providing a suitable service. Like the 'anonymous' ISP who attended the Allot conference in Bangkok attended by Steve recently - Allot said they had to be anonymous because in Australia they continued to publicly deny they restricted P2P although they used the same NetEnforcer equipment that everyone else attending the conference did - NO ISP, irrespective of what their 'spokes people' state publicly can afford the amount of bandwidth such a policy would require - even if they do charge as much for their services as the 'anonymous' Australian ISP does.
Whether or not the FCC does begin to introduce 'regulation' of how traffic is carried over an carrier's bandwidth the fact is going to remain that no carrier/ISP can afford to charge a P2P user the same amount for the same service as a non-P2P user if the requirement is going to be "I wan't a guarantee that my P2P traffic will always be at full line speed". So regulation will require a two tiered pricing for broadband plans or an ISP will make it clear that they don't support P2P on their network at all.
I think Exetel's current policies are the best possible ways of addressing this difficult issue:
1. P2P is restricted at peak times but not prohibited and only restricted when it begins to interfere with HTTP traffic
2. Large down load allowances in off peak ensure there is ample time to download large files when speed doesn't matter as they can be done as auto timed starts and not interfere with HTTP traffic
3. P2P caching takes care of most popular P2P titles and reduces the cost of providing a P2P file allowing more bandwidth to be provided to P2P applications
The combination of P2P 'restriction' in using up stream bandwidth and providing caching in the place of 'up stream' bandwidth will, over time, make the use of P2P restrictions 'neutral' as far as the end user is concerned.
P2P has only been able to be accommodated, in Australia, so far because the cost of IP connectivity to the rest of the world has fallen so dramatically over the past two years and many ISPs have used proxies and now are using P2P restricting devices.
Hopefully their will be no FCC type regulation of the 'web' in Australia - if there is - prices will increase and P2P will be charged at higher rates.