I see your point. The main problem I see with the traffic shaping or worse boxes is that comcast/ATT/... Sells a particular bandwidth to the customer. Clearly, they don't provision their network as Number_Customers*Data_Rate, they provision it to a data rate capability that is much less than the maximum possible demand.
This is where the friction in traffic that you mention below happens. I have to go check on my broadband service contract to see how they word the bandwidth clause. Bora On 10/22/07 9:12 AM, "Sean Donelan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Mon, 22 Oct 2007, Bora Akyol wrote: >> I think network operators that are using boxes like the Sandvine box are >> doing this due to (2). This is because P2P traffic hits them where it hurts, >> aka the pocketbook. I am sure there are some altruistic network operators >> out there, but I would be sincerely surprised if anyone else was concerned >> about "fairness" > > The problem with words is all the good ones are taken. The word > "Fairness" has some excess baggage, nevertheless it is the word used. > > Network operators probably aren't operating from altruistic principles, > but for most network operators when the pain isn't spread equally across > the the customer base it represents a "fairness" issue. If 490 customers > are complaining about bad network performance and the cause is traced to > what 10 customers are doing, the reaction is to hammer the nails sticking > out. > > Whose traffic is more "important?" World of Warcraft lagged or P2P > throttled? The network operator makes P2P a little worse and makes WoW a > little better, and in the end do they end up somewhat "fairly" using the > same network resources. Or do we just put two extremely vocal groups, the > gamers and the p2ps in a locked room and let the death match decide the > winnner?