Semi-related article: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gyYIyHWl3sEg1ZktvVRLdlmQ5hpwD8U1UOFO0
-Matt On 1/9/08 3:04 PM, "Deepak Jain" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/TenFold-Jump-In-Encrypted-BitTorrent-Traffi > c-89260 > http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Comcast-Traffic-Shaping-Impacts-Gnutella-Lo > tus-Notes-88673 > http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Verizon-Net-Neutrality-iOverblowni-73225 > > If I am mistakenly being duped by some crazy fascists, please let me know. > > However, my question is simply.. for ISPs promising broadband service. > Isn't it simpler to just announce a bandwidth quota/cap that your "good" > users won't hit and your bad ones will? This chasing of the lump > under-the-rug (slowing encrypted traffic, then VPN traffic and so on...) > seems like the exact opposite of progress to me (by progressively > nastier filters, impeding the traffic your network was built to move, etc). > > Especially when there is no real reason this P2P traffic can't > masquerade as something really interesting... like Email or Web (https, > hello!) or SSH or gamer traffic. I personally expect a day when there is > a torrent "encryption" module that converts everything to look like a > plain-text email conversation or IRC or whatever. > > When you start slowing encrypted or VPN traffic, you start setting > yourself up to interfere with all of the bread&butter applications > (business, telecommuters, what have you). > > I remember Bill Norton's peering forum regarding P2P traffic and how the > majority of it is between cable and other broadband providers... > Operationally, why not just lash a few additional 10GE cross-connects > and let these *paying customers* communicate as they will? > > All of these "traffic shaping" and "traffic prioritization" techniques > seem a bit like the providers that pushed for ubiquitous broadband > because they liked the margins don't want to deal with a world where > those users have figured out ways to use these amazing networks to do > things... whatever they are. If they want to develop incremental > revenue, they should do it by making clear what their caps/usage > profiles are and moving ahead... or at least transparently share what > shaping they are doing and when. > > I don't see how Operators could possibly debug connection/throughput > problems when increasingly draconian methods are used to manage traffic > flows with seemingly random behaviors. This seems a lot like the > evil-transparent caching we were concerned about years ago. > > So, to keep this from turning into a holy war, or a non-operational > policy debate, and assuming you agree that providers of consumer > connectivity shouldn't employee transparent traffic shaping because it > screws the savvy customers and business customers. ;) > > What can be done operationally? > > For legitimate applications: > > Encouraging "encryption" of more protocols is an interesting way to > discourage this kind of shaping. > > Using IPv6 based IPs instead of ports would also help by obfuscating > protocol and behavior. Even IP rotation through /64s (cough 1 IP per > half-connection anyone). > > For illegitimate applications: > > Port knocking and pre-determined stream hopping (send 50Kbytes on this > port/ip pairing then jump to the next, etc, etc) > > My caffeine hasn't hit, so I can't think of anything else. Is this > something the market will address by itself? > > DJ