Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Mark Smith]

On Sat, 25 Sep 2010 16:56:21 -0400 (EDT)
Jon Lewis  wrote:

> On Sat, 25 Sep 2010, Rodrick Brown wrote:
> 
> > If you follow the links in the article people are complaining that the LotR
> > process has served 70gb in a week, others are complaining that the service
> > is resulting in 300ms pings, and unusable connections.
> > This is a very grey area it will be interesting how this issue unfolds in
> > the long run.
> 
> I haven't played any of these things, so I don't know what they put in 
> the fine print, but unless LotR makes it clear that they're going to 
> utilize your (i.e. players of the game) bandwidth to PTP distribute their 
> software, I'd call that theft and unauthorized use of a computer network.

Skype have been doing this for years to ISP users who have public IP
addresses, which is how they get around NAT without having giant
publicly addressed relay servers. I don't know how much effort they
got to to notify users via the T&Cs. The only real difference here
seems to be the volume of traffic involved.


> Are these companies not making enough in monthly subscriptions to afford 
> Akamai or similar CDN services to distribute their software updates?
> 
> --
>   Jon Lewis, MCP :)   |  I route
>   Senior Network Engineer |  therefore you are
>   Atlantic Net|
> _ http://www.lewis.org/~jlewis/pgp for PGP public key_
> 

Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Franck Martin]

As for online experience, any action game with players 200ms away from each 
others, is not really playable.

By the time you aim, shoot, and the info register on the server and other user 
player PC, it has moved far away from the shot...

Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Bill Stewart]

On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 5:17 PM, Matthew Walster  wrote:
>> Plenty of people sell p2p caches but they all work using magic, smoke and 
>> mirrors.
Somehow that seems appropriate for gaming networks; maybe add some
swords or old Gandalf boxes.

In general distributing gaming software isn't going to have a big
impact on your traffic levels - the average user will upload at most
about as many megabytes as he downloaded (though obviously some will
upload much more and some much less), and if the P2P is implemented
well the uploads will mostly go to other customers of the same ISP,
reducing the amount that comes through their peering point.   And
it'll all be a lot less than somebody pirating movies, because the
game doesn't get DVD-sized updates multiple times a day or even a
month.

If you're running a satellite ISP, you probably care a lot more about
upstream bandwidth, but it'll be much faster for one satellite user to
get bits from Anchorage or even Seattle than to get it from another
user two satellite hops away, especially if your uplinks are smaller
than your downlinks, so if the P2P is implemented well (no idea if it
is), you'll get very little uploading.  (Does it save you money to get
a WoW subscription for a box that sits in a server rack at your hub
site with nobody actually playing it, to further reduce your bandwidth
needs?  Maybe.)

-- 

             Thanks;     Bill

Note that this isn't my regular email account - It's still experimental so far.
And Google probably logs and indexes everything you send it.

RE: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Warren Bailey]

Our excuse? We have purchased every available transponder on every spacecraft 
suitable for transmission out of Alaska. Granted, there are additional 
spacecraft out there with Alaska footprints. We however, being a service 
provider, are interested in space segment which gives us quality over quantity. 
Sometimes fiber just isn't an option. So that burger analogy doesn't quite 
apply here .. because the burger is 100mbps, it space segment alone is 150k a 
month. Not to mention the modems (and remote people who admin them) in the 
neighborhood of 140k each side of the link. Plus, the diesel used to provide 
power to the Earth station (9$ a gallon) so it can transmit.

Expensive happy meal.

-Original Message-
From: Jack Bates [mailto:jba...@brightok.net] 
Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2010 12:20 PM
To: manolo hernandez
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Subject: Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

On 9/28/2010 2:22 PM, manolo hernandez wrote:
> What is keeping your company from buying more bandwidth? I find the
> excuse of over subscription to be a fail. If that's your companies
> business model then it should not be whining when people are using what
> you sell them. Provision bandwidth accordingly and stop being cheap and
> squeezing every last dime from the end user for bandwidth that can be
> had for less than the price of a burger in some places.
>

You replied to him but under my quoted text, so I'm not sure who you 
were referring to. However, my company has issues in buying long haul. 
Bandwidth is cheap, yes. Getting a circuit is not. Currently I have 1 
option for a 10Gig circuit if I needed it today. That's not very 
redundant. It took 6 months to get facility upgrades by a large NSP to 
give me 1gig-e in OKC from DFW (very few NSPs have routers or high speed 
facilities in Oklahoma and even fewer in OKC. Tulsa has a few extra 
options). I'm still waiting on what looks like it'll be 1 year+ for a 
gig-e from another NSP. Going to remote ILEC towns, there's shortages of 
long haul facilities (in some areas, a single OC-12 sonet run is all 
that exists and it's dropped off in 3-5 places to various other 
companies on the way to the ILEC, and the fiber dwindles to 6 meaning 
primary pair, secondary pair, and backup dark pair is all that exists). 
The cost to bore new fiber and light it is extremely prohibitive.

We actually have no problems with people using what we sell, and we 
still have nice oversell margins which makes up our profit (0% oversell 
would be roughly break even). Many of our problems aren't with users 
using their bandwidth, but with applications screwing with the user's 
bandwidth (against the user's will). Someone linked bittorrent's work on 
latency based fallback for congestion control. I think that is an 
awesome piece of work. However, not all p2p applications do this, and 
some even install and work in the background without customers knowing. 
This gives the perception to the customer that things are slow and not 
working right. We care what our customer's think, so we absolutely hate 
such products as we can see the bandwidth usage itself, but helping a 
computer illiterate customer fix the problem without them spending money 
at a computer tech is difficult at best.


Jack

Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Jack Bates]

On 9/28/2010 2:22 PM, manolo hernandez wrote:

What is keeping your company from buying more bandwidth? I find the
excuse of over subscription to be a fail. If that's your companies
business model then it should not be whining when people are using what
you sell them. Provision bandwidth accordingly and stop being cheap and
squeezing every last dime from the end user for bandwidth that can be
had for less than the price of a burger in some places.



You replied to him but under my quoted text, so I'm not sure who you 
were referring to. However, my company has issues in buying long haul. 
Bandwidth is cheap, yes. Getting a circuit is not. Currently I have 1 
option for a 10Gig circuit if I needed it today. That's not very 
redundant. It took 6 months to get facility upgrades by a large NSP to 
give me 1gig-e in OKC from DFW (very few NSPs have routers or high speed 
facilities in Oklahoma and even fewer in OKC. Tulsa has a few extra 
options). I'm still waiting on what looks like it'll be 1 year+ for a 
gig-e from another NSP. Going to remote ILEC towns, there's shortages of 
long haul facilities (in some areas, a single OC-12 sonet run is all 
that exists and it's dropped off in 3-5 places to various other 
companies on the way to the ILEC, and the fiber dwindles to 6 meaning 
primary pair, secondary pair, and backup dark pair is all that exists). 
The cost to bore new fiber and light it is extremely prohibitive.


We actually have no problems with people using what we sell, and we 
still have nice oversell margins which makes up our profit (0% oversell 
would be roughly break even). Many of our problems aren't with users 
using their bandwidth, but with applications screwing with the user's 
bandwidth (against the user's will). Someone linked bittorrent's work on 
latency based fallback for congestion control. I think that is an 
awesome piece of work. However, not all p2p applications do this, and 
some even install and work in the background without customers knowing. 
This gives the perception to the customer that things are slow and not 
working right. We care what our customer's think, so we absolutely hate 
such products as we can see the bandwidth usage itself, but helping a 
computer illiterate customer fix the problem without them spending money 
at a computer tech is difficult at best.



Jack

RE: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Nathan Eisenberg]

> -Original Message-
> From: Jason Iannone [mailto:jason.iann...@gmail.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2010 12:50 PM
> To: manolo hernandez
> Cc: nanog@nanog.org
> Subject: Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth
> 
> In my experience users aren't willing to pay for dedicated bandwidth.

That's not the point.  The point is that if your users are using the net 
available bandwidth, it's time to add more bandwidth, not to mess with your 
users' traffic.  'Dedicated' has nothing to do with it.

Best Regards,
Nathan Eisenberg

Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Jason Iannone]

In my experience users aren't willing to pay for dedicated bandwidth.

On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 1:22 PM, manolo hernandez  wrote:
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On 9/28/10 3:01 PM, Warren Bailey wrote:
>> Jack,
>>
>> Apologies, I did not realize that you guys were doing so much. Please don't 
>> take my last email as anything which was intended to question or insult you 
>> guys. Up here (Alaska) we have about 100,000 cable subscribers along with 
>> mixed Fiber/DSL/POTS access and nearly 50,000 cellular customers with high 
>> speed data around our Metro network. I am an RF Engineer, however the 
>> network I run is IP based (satellite) and I run in the neighborhood of 
>> 250mbps forward and 30mbps return to most of the State of Alaska. I find 
>> that anywhere from 40-65% of our total traffic is "questionable", which is 
>> why I was asking about an ISP who liked their users downloading torrents. It 
>> is very difficult to gauge a users behavior if they are on an "all out" 
>> downloading binge over a weekend. Normally, a user logs in and does what 
>> they need to in a relatively short amount of time (hours). In the case of 
>> most providers, we oversubscribe our resources and have found this model is 
>> beginning to not apply to
> user behavior changes. Long gone are the days of the user turning off their 
> computers, and our customer base (rural Alaska) have few things to do besides 
> use the internet. This has made a "perfect storm" of sorts, as we are now 
> seeing most of our users utilizing 70%+ of their allocated (purchased) 
> bandwidth 24 hours a day. The vast majority of the night use is gaming, and 
> bit torrent. It makes things much more complicated when trying to give an 
> experience to people..
>>
>> //warren
>>
>> -----Original Message-
>> From: Jack Bates [mailto:jba...@brightok.net]
>> Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2010 10:26 AM
>> To: Warren Bailey
>> Cc: Richard Barnes; NANOG
>> Subject: Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth
>>
>> On 9/28/2010 1:00 PM, Warren Bailey wrote:
>>> Jack,
>>>
>>> Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but looking at your website - do you only offer 
>>> dial up services? This could be the background for a statement like "a 
>>> proper ISP doesn't encourage any type of traffic." We have a couple of 
>>> OC-192 running to Seattle, so certain "types" of traffic can make a good 
>>> day turn very badly without some traffic "management".
>>>
>>
>> BrightNet itself has ILEC's as customers. We're a turnkey glue for ILECs
>> nearby. Among other things, I provide engineering support and advise for
>> each ILEC. Each has their own levels of service, management, and
>> technologies deployed including wireless, cellular, DSL, FTTH, and
>> cable. I'm currently running around 1.2gbit between us and 4 NSP
>> transits with 3gbit available. Some of the ILECs have additional load
>> shifting with other transits. I estimate the need to go 10Gig ring or
>> split transit in less than 5 years at current growth rates, and the
>> largest problem we've run into is getting infrastructure to handle gig-e
>> speeds out of rural ILECs for the 100+ mile longhauls. I've had issues
>> with gig-e connectivity just getting out of OKC to enough NSP transits
>> and it will become more difficult/expensive when we do hit 10G.
>>
>> As it currently stands, we usually have no problems with event spikes,
>> though we sometimes have to tweek the traffic paths depending on how the
>> NSPs do. The largest issues have always been the last mile. As we
>> resolve last mile costs (which dropping 100% fiber in a rural area today
>> doesn't have the safety nets and guarantees that were provided when
>> copper was dropped in), we'll then have to tackle the longhaul
>> connectivity issues, but hopefully the cost to handle that will drop as
>> well.
>>
>>
>> Jack
>>
>>
> What is keeping your company from buying more bandwidth? I find the
> excuse of over subscription to be a fail. If that's your companies
> business model then it should not be whining when people are using what
> you sell them. Provision bandwidth accordingly and stop being cheap and
> squeezing every last dime from the end user for bandwidth that can be
> had for less than the price of a burger in some places.
>
>
>
> Manny
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Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[manolo hernandez]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 9/28/10 3:01 PM, Warren Bailey wrote:
> Jack,
> 
> Apologies, I did not realize that you guys were doing so much. Please don't 
> take my last email as anything which was intended to question or insult you 
> guys. Up here (Alaska) we have about 100,000 cable subscribers along with 
> mixed Fiber/DSL/POTS access and nearly 50,000 cellular customers with high 
> speed data around our Metro network. I am an RF Engineer, however the network 
> I run is IP based (satellite) and I run in the neighborhood of 250mbps 
> forward and 30mbps return to most of the State of Alaska. I find that 
> anywhere from 40-65% of our total traffic is "questionable", which is why I 
> was asking about an ISP who liked their users downloading torrents. It is 
> very difficult to gauge a users behavior if they are on an "all out" 
> downloading binge over a weekend. Normally, a user logs in and does what they 
> need to in a relatively short amount of time (hours). In the case of most 
> providers, we oversubscribe our resources and have found this model is 
> beginning to not apply to 
user behavior changes. Long gone are the days of the user turning off their 
computers, and our customer base (rural Alaska) have few things to do besides 
use the internet. This has made a "perfect storm" of sorts, as we are now 
seeing most of our users utilizing 70%+ of their allocated (purchased) 
bandwidth 24 hours a day. The vast majority of the night use is gaming, and bit 
torrent. It makes things much more complicated when trying to give an 
experience to people..
> 
> //warren
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: Jack Bates [mailto:jba...@brightok.net] 
> Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2010 10:26 AM
> To: Warren Bailey
> Cc: Richard Barnes; NANOG
> Subject: Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth
> 
> On 9/28/2010 1:00 PM, Warren Bailey wrote:
>> Jack,
>>
>> Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but looking at your website - do you only offer 
>> dial up services? This could be the background for a statement like "a 
>> proper ISP doesn't encourage any type of traffic." We have a couple of 
>> OC-192 running to Seattle, so certain "types" of traffic can make a good day 
>> turn very badly without some traffic "management".
>>
> 
> BrightNet itself has ILEC's as customers. We're a turnkey glue for ILECs 
> nearby. Among other things, I provide engineering support and advise for 
> each ILEC. Each has their own levels of service, management, and 
> technologies deployed including wireless, cellular, DSL, FTTH, and 
> cable. I'm currently running around 1.2gbit between us and 4 NSP 
> transits with 3gbit available. Some of the ILECs have additional load 
> shifting with other transits. I estimate the need to go 10Gig ring or 
> split transit in less than 5 years at current growth rates, and the 
> largest problem we've run into is getting infrastructure to handle gig-e 
> speeds out of rural ILECs for the 100+ mile longhauls. I've had issues 
> with gig-e connectivity just getting out of OKC to enough NSP transits 
> and it will become more difficult/expensive when we do hit 10G.
> 
> As it currently stands, we usually have no problems with event spikes, 
> though we sometimes have to tweek the traffic paths depending on how the 
> NSPs do. The largest issues have always been the last mile. As we 
> resolve last mile costs (which dropping 100% fiber in a rural area today 
> doesn't have the safety nets and guarantees that were provided when 
> copper was dropped in), we'll then have to tackle the longhaul 
> connectivity issues, but hopefully the cost to handle that will drop as 
> well.
> 
> 
> Jack
> 
> 
What is keeping your company from buying more bandwidth? I find the
excuse of over subscription to be a fail. If that's your companies
business model then it should not be whining when people are using what
you sell them. Provision bandwidth accordingly and stop being cheap and
squeezing every last dime from the end user for bandwidth that can be
had for less than the price of a burger in some places.



Manny
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RE: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Warren Bailey]

Jack,

Apologies, I did not realize that you guys were doing so much. Please don't 
take my last email as anything which was intended to question or insult you 
guys. Up here (Alaska) we have about 100,000 cable subscribers along with mixed 
Fiber/DSL/POTS access and nearly 50,000 cellular customers with high speed data 
around our Metro network. I am an RF Engineer, however the network I run is IP 
based (satellite) and I run in the neighborhood of 250mbps forward and 30mbps 
return to most of the State of Alaska. I find that anywhere from 40-65% of our 
total traffic is "questionable", which is why I was asking about an ISP who 
liked their users downloading torrents. It is very difficult to gauge a users 
behavior if they are on an "all out" downloading binge over a weekend. 
Normally, a user logs in and does what they need to in a relatively short 
amount of time (hours). In the case of most providers, we oversubscribe our 
resources and have found this model is beginning to not apply to user behavior 
changes. Long gone are the days of the user turning off their computers, and 
our customer base (rural Alaska) have few things to do besides use the 
internet. This has made a "perfect storm" of sorts, as we are now seeing most 
of our users utilizing 70%+ of their allocated (purchased) bandwidth 24 hours a 
day. The vast majority of the night use is gaming, and bit torrent. It makes 
things much more complicated when trying to give an experience to people..

//warren

-Original Message-
From: Jack Bates [mailto:jba...@brightok.net] 
Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2010 10:26 AM
To: Warren Bailey
Cc: Richard Barnes; NANOG
Subject: Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

On 9/28/2010 1:00 PM, Warren Bailey wrote:
> Jack,
>
> Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but looking at your website - do you only offer 
> dial up services? This could be the background for a statement like "a proper 
> ISP doesn't encourage any type of traffic." We have a couple of OC-192 
> running to Seattle, so certain "types" of traffic can make a good day turn 
> very badly without some traffic "management".
>

BrightNet itself has ILEC's as customers. We're a turnkey glue for ILECs 
nearby. Among other things, I provide engineering support and advise for 
each ILEC. Each has their own levels of service, management, and 
technologies deployed including wireless, cellular, DSL, FTTH, and 
cable. I'm currently running around 1.2gbit between us and 4 NSP 
transits with 3gbit available. Some of the ILECs have additional load 
shifting with other transits. I estimate the need to go 10Gig ring or 
split transit in less than 5 years at current growth rates, and the 
largest problem we've run into is getting infrastructure to handle gig-e 
speeds out of rural ILECs for the 100+ mile longhauls. I've had issues 
with gig-e connectivity just getting out of OKC to enough NSP transits 
and it will become more difficult/expensive when we do hit 10G.

As it currently stands, we usually have no problems with event spikes, 
though we sometimes have to tweek the traffic paths depending on how the 
NSPs do. The largest issues have always been the last mile. As we 
resolve last mile costs (which dropping 100% fiber in a rural area today 
doesn't have the safety nets and guarantees that were provided when 
copper was dropped in), we'll then have to tackle the longhaul 
connectivity issues, but hopefully the cost to handle that will drop as 
well.


Jack

Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Jack Bates]

On 9/28/2010 1:00 PM, Warren Bailey wrote:

Jack,

Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but looking at your website - do you only offer dial up services? This could be 
the background for a statement like "a proper ISP doesn't encourage any type of traffic." We have a 
couple of OC-192 running to Seattle, so certain "types" of traffic can make a good day turn very 
badly without some traffic "management".



BrightNet itself has ILEC's as customers. We're a turnkey glue for ILECs 
nearby. Among other things, I provide engineering support and advise for 
each ILEC. Each has their own levels of service, management, and 
technologies deployed including wireless, cellular, DSL, FTTH, and 
cable. I'm currently running around 1.2gbit between us and 4 NSP 
transits with 3gbit available. Some of the ILECs have additional load 
shifting with other transits. I estimate the need to go 10Gig ring or 
split transit in less than 5 years at current growth rates, and the 
largest problem we've run into is getting infrastructure to handle gig-e 
speeds out of rural ILECs for the 100+ mile longhauls. I've had issues 
with gig-e connectivity just getting out of OKC to enough NSP transits 
and it will become more difficult/expensive when we do hit 10G.


As it currently stands, we usually have no problems with event spikes, 
though we sometimes have to tweek the traffic paths depending on how the 
NSPs do. The largest issues have always been the last mile. As we 
resolve last mile costs (which dropping 100% fiber in a rural area today 
doesn't have the safety nets and guarantees that were provided when 
copper was dropped in), we'll then have to tackle the longhaul 
connectivity issues, but hopefully the cost to handle that will drop as 
well.



Jack

RE: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Warren Bailey]

Jack,

Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but looking at your website - do you only offer 
dial up services? This could be the background for a statement like "a proper 
ISP doesn't encourage any type of traffic." We have a couple of OC-192 running 
to Seattle, so certain "types" of traffic can make a good day turn very badly 
without some traffic "management".

-Original Message-
From: Jack Bates [mailto:jba...@brightok.net] 
Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2010 5:58 AM
To: Warren Bailey
Cc: Richard Barnes; NANOG
Subject: Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

On 9/27/2010 7:35 PM, Warren Bailey wrote:
> Can someone name an ISP that encourages P2P traffic?? ;)
>

A proper ISP doesn't encourage any type of traffic. We're indifferent. 
Of course, we'll be happy to mention the benefits and draw backs of 
using various protocols on the Internet. Demand wise, video streaming to 
point and click boxes will load the network far more than p2p ever has; 
granted, in the opposite direction of the normal p2p complaint.

My, and my company's, biggest complaint is the lack of improvement on 
these protocols to play more friendly with customer's other traffic. It 
is not so much the effects of it on my network, as much as how it 
effects my customer's unshared link. The "give me everything" tactic, 
especially on outbound traffic, saturates the link, which in turn lowers 
the customer's other traffic. Am I the only one who likes to stream 
video while running bittorrent, surfing the web, checking my email, and 
playing some online game all at the same time?

I'm not going to rag on bittorrent, though. I do have adjustments in my 
clients to cap the upstream/downstream to allow my other traffic 
through. Many clients and protocols don't have this ability, though. 
Some purposefully hide themselves and what they are doing. The only 
indication is the fact that the "Internet is slow." The people who make 
this software should sit in a call center troubleshooting why "The 
Internet is slow!" when various software products are bandwidth hogs 
(and sometimes are hidden from the customer completely). We, of course, 
detect the link saturation, but there is no indicator for us to help the 
customer figure out what they need to disable.


Jack

Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Richard Barnes]

BitTorrent have been active contributors to the IETF LEDBAT working
group, which is looking at transport protocols that back off much more
aggressively than TCP, with exactly the idea of making P2P have a
lower impact on other things at the customer edge.





On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 9:58 AM, Jack Bates  wrote:
> On 9/27/2010 7:35 PM, Warren Bailey wrote:
>>
>> Can someone name an ISP that encourages P2P traffic?? ;)
>>
>
> A proper ISP doesn't encourage any type of traffic. We're indifferent. Of
> course, we'll be happy to mention the benefits and draw backs of using
> various protocols on the Internet. Demand wise, video streaming to point and
> click boxes will load the network far more than p2p ever has; granted, in
> the opposite direction of the normal p2p complaint.
>
> My, and my company's, biggest complaint is the lack of improvement on these
> protocols to play more friendly with customer's other traffic. It is not so
> much the effects of it on my network, as much as how it effects my
> customer's unshared link. The "give me everything" tactic, especially on
> outbound traffic, saturates the link, which in turn lowers the customer's
> other traffic. Am I the only one who likes to stream video while running
> bittorrent, surfing the web, checking my email, and playing some online game
> all at the same time?
>
> I'm not going to rag on bittorrent, though. I do have adjustments in my
> clients to cap the upstream/downstream to allow my other traffic through.
> Many clients and protocols don't have this ability, though. Some
> purposefully hide themselves and what they are doing. The only indication is
> the fact that the "Internet is slow." The people who make this software
> should sit in a call center troubleshooting why "The Internet is slow!" when
> various software products are bandwidth hogs (and sometimes are hidden from
> the customer completely). We, of course, detect the link saturation, but
> there is no indicator for us to help the customer figure out what they need
> to disable.
>
>
> Jack
>

Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Jack Bates]

On 9/27/2010 7:35 PM, Warren Bailey wrote:

Can someone name an ISP that encourages P2P traffic?? ;)



A proper ISP doesn't encourage any type of traffic. We're indifferent. 
Of course, we'll be happy to mention the benefits and draw backs of 
using various protocols on the Internet. Demand wise, video streaming to 
point and click boxes will load the network far more than p2p ever has; 
granted, in the opposite direction of the normal p2p complaint.


My, and my company's, biggest complaint is the lack of improvement on 
these protocols to play more friendly with customer's other traffic. It 
is not so much the effects of it on my network, as much as how it 
effects my customer's unshared link. The "give me everything" tactic, 
especially on outbound traffic, saturates the link, which in turn lowers 
the customer's other traffic. Am I the only one who likes to stream 
video while running bittorrent, surfing the web, checking my email, and 
playing some online game all at the same time?


I'm not going to rag on bittorrent, though. I do have adjustments in my 
clients to cap the upstream/downstream to allow my other traffic 
through. Many clients and protocols don't have this ability, though. 
Some purposefully hide themselves and what they are doing. The only 
indication is the fact that the "Internet is slow." The people who make 
this software should sit in a call center troubleshooting why "The 
Internet is slow!" when various software products are bandwidth hogs 
(and sometimes are hidden from the customer completely). We, of course, 
detect the link saturation, but there is no indicator for us to help the 
customer figure out what they need to disable.



Jack

Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Richard Barnes]

I thought the issue was more about  ISPs encouraging *responsible* P2P.


On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 8:35 PM, Warren Bailey  wrote:
> Can someone name an ISP that encourages P2P traffic?? ;)
>
> Sent from a mobile phone with a small keyboard, please excuse my mistakes.
>
> On Sep 27, 2010, at 4:32 PM, "Richard Barnes"  
> wrote:
>
>> There's some standardization work being done in the IETF ALTO working
>> group.  They're looking at ways ISPs can inform P2P clints about which peers
>> are "better", I.e., topologically nearby.
>> http://tools.ietf.org/wg/alto/
>>
>> I'm less familiar with DECADE, but I believe they're working on more
>> directly cache-related stuff.
>> http://tools.ietf.org/wg/decade/
>>
>> On Sep 25, 2010 4:44 PM, "Matthew Walster"  wrote:
>>
>> On 25 September 2010 21:16, Rodrick Brown  wrote:
>>> I think most people are...
>> 
>>
>> I once read an article talking about making BitTorrent scalable by
>> using anycasted caching services at the ISP's closest POP to the end
>> user. Given sufficient traffic on a specified torrent, the caching
>> device would build up the file, then distribute that direct to the
>> subscriber in the form of an additional (preferred) peer. Similar to a
>> CDN or Usenet, but where it was cached rather than deliberately pushed
>> out from a locus.
>>
>> Was anything ever standardised in that field? I imagine with much of
>> P2P traffic being (how shall I put this...) less than legal, it's of
>> questionable legality and the ISPs would not want to be held liable
>> for the content cached there?
>>
>> M
>

Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Warren Bailey]

Can someone name an ISP that encourages P2P traffic?? ;)

Sent from a mobile phone with a small keyboard, please excuse my mistakes.

On Sep 27, 2010, at 4:32 PM, "Richard Barnes"  wrote:

> There's some standardization work being done in the IETF ALTO working
> group.  They're looking at ways ISPs can inform P2P clints about which peers
> are "better", I.e., topologically nearby.
> http://tools.ietf.org/wg/alto/
> 
> I'm less familiar with DECADE, but I believe they're working on more
> directly cache-related stuff.
> http://tools.ietf.org/wg/decade/
> 
> On Sep 25, 2010 4:44 PM, "Matthew Walster"  wrote:
> 
> On 25 September 2010 21:16, Rodrick Brown  wrote:
>> I think most people are...
> 
> 
> I once read an article talking about making BitTorrent scalable by
> using anycasted caching services at the ISP's closest POP to the end
> user. Given sufficient traffic on a specified torrent, the caching
> device would build up the file, then distribute that direct to the
> subscriber in the form of an additional (preferred) peer. Similar to a
> CDN or Usenet, but where it was cached rather than deliberately pushed
> out from a locus.
> 
> Was anything ever standardised in that field? I imagine with much of
> P2P traffic being (how shall I put this...) less than legal, it's of
> questionable legality and the ISPs would not want to be held liable
> for the content cached there?
> 
> M

Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Richard Barnes]

There's some standardization work being done in the IETF ALTO working
group.  They're looking at ways ISPs can inform P2P clints about which peers
are "better", I.e., topologically nearby.
http://tools.ietf.org/wg/alto/

I'm less familiar with DECADE, but I believe they're working on more
directly cache-related stuff.
http://tools.ietf.org/wg/decade/

On Sep 25, 2010 4:44 PM, "Matthew Walster"  wrote:

On 25 September 2010 21:16, Rodrick Brown  wrote:
> I think most people are...


I once read an article talking about making BitTorrent scalable by
using anycasted caching services at the ISP's closest POP to the end
user. Given sufficient traffic on a specified torrent, the caching
device would build up the file, then distribute that direct to the
subscriber in the form of an additional (preferred) peer. Similar to a
CDN or Usenet, but where it was cached rather than deliberately pushed
out from a locus.

Was anything ever standardised in that field? I imagine with much of
P2P traffic being (how shall I put this...) less than legal, it's of
questionable legality and the ISPs would not want to be held liable
for the content cached there?

M

Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Jack Bates]

On 9/27/2010 2:54 PM, Brandon Butterworth wrote:

No, I mean if there have to be caches why use p2p in the first place,
once there's a network of caches p2p becomes a more complicated http
and that model has been well optimised by some.



It's a redundancy factor. By participating in a p2p network as a cache, 
and even feeding clients information which would be important to them 
(ie, I'm actually better than your neighbor's house). p2p can be 
optimized. A p2p cache generally wouldn't cache items which don't have 
repeatability, so there would probably need to be multiple hits for the 
cache to grab the data. The cache itself would use p2p to obtain it's 
copy, providing information to it's clients even as the current clients 
and the cache server are both pulling from remotes.


At no point should you consider such a caching solution to equate to a 
standard http cache. A proper standardized p2p cache shouldn't just be 
about caching information for local clients, but should also be about 
giving clients additional information to optimize them. Clients who are 
seeding information should be able to inform the cache of such, and 
should enough traffic be involved, the cache itself should be able to 
pull the necessary information and start providing to remotes instead of 
the client, so long as the client shows it's seeding (ie, client is 
seeding, but actually isn't transferring data since the cache is 
announcing it will on behalf of the client).


This would, of course, not drop the overall outbound p2p traffic from an 
ISP at it's core, but could reduce last mile bandwidth while still 
participating as necessary. It meets the legal caching framework, as if 
the client stops providing, the cache will stop providing. Such a 
solution, of course should still maintain a "hey, IP x seeding, but 
cache at IP y has the data" (similar to proxy headers, but this works in 
a cloud which complicates it a bit) to meet any dmca tracking issues or 
ISPs will run from the legal nightmare.



Jack

Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Leigh Porter]

On 27 Sep 2010, at 20:54, Brandon Butterworth wrote:

>>> I fail to see the point. If an ISP needs to add caches they may
>>> as well just add a simple, cheaper, standard, http cache.
>> 
>> It's a bang-per-buck issue, and depends highly on whether your
>> particular network sees more HTTP or P2P traffic.
> 
> Orly.
> 
> No, I mean if there have to be caches why use p2p in the first place,
> once there's a network of caches p2p becomes a more complicated http
> and that model has been well optimised by some.
> 
> I know the people stealing things don't want to pay akamai but games
> charging for access are a different matter.
> 
> brandon
> 

I agree but it isnt the SP who drives P2P use, its the users.. So whilst they 
use it, networks kind of have to make it work.
We used the P2P cache for a very specific reason. We had a wireless uplink 
constrained network and the P2P cache cached users uplink traffic and served it 
from the cache, saving us about 50% up our P2P uplink load.

--
Leigh Porter

Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Brandon Butterworth]

> > I fail to see the point. If an ISP needs to add caches they may
> > as well just add a simple, cheaper, standard, http cache.
> 
> It's a bang-per-buck issue, and depends highly on whether your
> particular network sees more HTTP or P2P traffic.

Orly.

No, I mean if there have to be caches why use p2p in the first place,
once there's a network of caches p2p becomes a more complicated http
and that model has been well optimised by some.

I know the people stealing things don't want to pay akamai but games
charging for access are a different matter.

brandon

Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Valdis . Kletnieks]

On Mon, 27 Sep 2010 19:27:28 BST, Brandon Butterworth said:

> I fail to see the point. If an ISP needs to add caches they may
> as well just add a simple, cheaper, standard, http cache.

It's a bang-per-buck issue, and depends highly on whether your
particular network sees more HTTP or P2P traffic.  If HTTP is 60%
of your traffic, an http cache makes sense.  If P2P is 70% and
HTTP is 20%, it probably doesn't make sense.

And the only numbers that matter here are what *you* measure
at the point you intend to install the cache - I've seen so many
conflicting numbers for different parts of the net that no firm
conclusions can be drawn.


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Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Valdis . Kletnieks]

On Mon, 27 Sep 2010 17:44:37 BST, Leigh Porter said:

> We had a great P2P cache from Cache Appliance. Did anybody else try
> them?

Can you say anything about what size cache it was, and what amount
of bandwidth savings it produced?


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RE: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Leigh Porter]

-Original Message-
From: Jack Bates [mailto:jba...@brightok.net] 
Sent: 27 September 2010 17:39
To: Adrian Chadd
Cc: NANOG
Subject: Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

On 9/25/2010 6:47 PM, Adrian Chadd wrote:
>>
>> I don't recall any protocols being standard.
>>

>I don't either, though I recall bittorrent actually supporting it once 
>and pushing to have ISP support and stay away from encryption/ISP 
>circumvention. That was years ago. Haven't stayed current.

>> Plenty of people sell p2p caches but they all work using magic, smoke
>> and mirrors.

>Seem to recall some law suits concerning a few of them. Even if we had 
>ISP supporting caches, there is always the problem getting p2p clients 
>to support them (given they often are too busy trying to circumvent).


We had a great P2P cache from Cache Appliance. Did anybody else try
them?

--
Leigh

Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Jack Bates]

On 9/25/2010 6:47 PM, Adrian Chadd wrote:


I don't recall any protocols being standard.



I don't either, though I recall bittorrent actually supporting it once 
and pushing to have ISP support and stay away from encryption/ISP 
circumvention. That was years ago. Haven't stayed current.



Plenty of people sell p2p caches but they all work using magic, smoke
and mirrors.


Seem to recall some law suits concerning a few of them. Even if we had 
ISP supporting caches, there is always the problem getting p2p clients 
to support them (given they often are too busy trying to circumvent).


A good standard would be nice, though, and at least offer a middle 
ground for trying to get support for such technology as well as pushing 
it back to open source, legitimate caching vs lying to p2p clients, and 
solving many issues that pop up from time to time of upstreams not 
supporting the downstream loads, which a cache could heavily alleviate.


Jack

Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Valdis . Kletnieks]

On Sat, 25 Sep 2010 17:41:16 CDT, Robert Bonomi said:
> On Sun, 26 Sep 2010 00:01:38 , Jeroen Massar said:
> > So it that is true, if you define "news server" as a "cache", even
> > though you have to buy several terabytes, make that several petabytes,
> > to "be able to "cache" this data one along with all the network
> > environment to support getting data out of this "cache", the ISP is
> > completely in the clear even though that "cache" is the sole single
> > point where one can retrieve that "cached" data from even years after
> > the data was originally put on the network, the original is gone and
> > that "cache" works without anything being attached to it ? :)

"sole single point" is a sticking point, since at that point you've crossed
over from "cache" to "archive" - see below.

> There is existant _recent case law, specifically with regard to operating
> a newsserver, that holds otherwise.  Of course the server operator was
> blatently _advertizing_ the copyright-infringing (and more) nature of 
> their content.

Haven't read that case law yes, but I'm willing to guess the operator of the
newsserver was running it in violation of 17 USC 512 (b)(2)(E)(i) - which
basically says you need to respond to takedown requests if the upstream copy
has already been removed (which will often be the case with netnews). So if
you're the sole single point caching something that's now gone from upstream,
you have a problem (and a stale cache). But of course, we all run technically
competent caches that expire stuff when it goes stale (unless your business
model includes advertising you have a stale cache)...

The *real* fun for Bittorrent is (b)(2)(E)(ii): "The party giving the
notification includes in the notification a statement confirming that the
material has been removed from the originating site or access to it has been
disabled or that a court has ordered that the material be removed from the
originating site or that access to the material on the originating site be
disabled." - which could be difficult to do when the material has been
assembled block-by-block from dozens of other sources and few records kept of
the actual provenance of any given block.  They might have to resort to finding
a helpful judge willing to sign a "John Doe" order for each takedown.



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Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[gordon b slater]

On Sun, 2010-09-26 at 07:47 +0800, Adrian Chadd wrote:

> I don't recall any protocols being standard.
> 
> Plenty of people sell p2p caches but they all work using magic, smoke
> and mirrors. 
> 
> 
> Adrian

Less smoky is the relatively common practice (at least in Europe) of
tech-friendly ISPs running bittorrent for "release days" of Linux and
BSD distros; Ubuntu releases especially because they have a large
proportion of release-day installs (!) and the servers get hit hard. 

How much of this is just staff doing their customers a favor is
debateable, but I know two places where it's written into SOPs for
Debian and FreeBSD major releases (about a week or two after the
release). Linux distribution by bittorrent is sometimes harder now that
more Tier 1 ISPs block or inspect the P2P traffic
By a bit of quick fiddling you can ensure that users outside your blocks
don't get served.  
I'm talking installation ISOs, not the ports or packages - the rsyncs
and mirrors take care of that as normal.

For the Debian 5.05 release I provided 700GB+ in a week for the x86
Gnome CD alone via BT, the AMD64 CD was about twice that, yet most of
the Debian stuff will be done using Jigdo, so that's a fraction of the
actual traffic. The Debian Netboot CD's seem quite popular too but
especially for exotic hardware archs. The 5.06 release is still flowing
nicely.

The last few FreeBSD releases I've pushed 500GB each time though I hold
them open for much longer for the less popular architectures.

The thought of it all flying round in such long circles dismays me
somewhat. There's probably an reasonable argument for temporary ISP-BT
of this stuff, as it'll save us all a tiny bit of peak and a lot of
packets, all for very little kit, space and man-hours.

The rest of the torrent users, (games or copytheft), can surely
be /dev/null-ed ?  :) Hmm, can I smell burning torches in the distance?

Gord
--
# Hahaha, hehehe, I'm a little Gnome and I hate KDE

Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Jeff Kell]

 Games?  Yes a few, but...

Ever seen Skype on an open, non-NAT'ed internet connection?  Capture
some netflow on a self-promoted supernode sometime.

Or seen Octoshape in action?

Jeff

Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Matthew Walster]

On 26 September 2010 00:47, Adrian Chadd  wrote:
> I don't recall any protocols being standard.
>
> Plenty of people sell p2p caches but they all work using magic, smoke
> and mirrors.

I had the P4P 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proactive_network_Provider_Participation_for_P2P)
pointed out to me - but like you said, it's hardly going to be an open
standard if it gets anywhere.

M

Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Adrian Chadd]

On Sat, Sep 25, 2010, Matthew Walster wrote:

> I once read an article talking about making BitTorrent scalable by
> using anycasted caching services at the ISP's closest POP to the end
> user. Given sufficient traffic on a specified torrent, the caching
> device would build up the file, then distribute that direct to the
> subscriber in the form of an additional (preferred) peer. Similar to a
> CDN or Usenet, but where it was cached rather than deliberately pushed
> out from a locus.
> 
> Was anything ever standardised in that field? I imagine with much of
> P2P traffic being (how shall I put this...) less than legal, it's of
> questionable legality and the ISPs would not want to be held liable
> for the content cached there?

I don't recall any protocols being standard.

Plenty of people sell p2p caches but they all work using magic, smoke
and mirrors. 


Adrian

-- 
- Xenion - http://www.xenion.com.au/ - VPS Hosting - Commercial Squid Support -
- $24/pm+GST entry-level VPSes w/ capped bandwidth charges available in WA -

Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Jeffrey S. Young]

t

On 26/09/2010, at 6:43 AM, Matthew Walster  wrote:

> On 25 September 2010 21:16, Rodrick Brown  wrote:
>> I think most people are aware that the Blizzard "World of WarcCraft" patcher
>> distributes files through Bittorrent,
> 
> 
> 
> I once read an article talking about making BitTorrent scalable by
> using anycasted caching services at the ISP's closest POP to the end
> user. Given sufficient traffic on a specified torrent, the caching
> device would build up the file, then distribute that direct to the
> subscriber in the form of an additional (preferred) peer. Similar to a
> CDN or Usenet, but where it was cached rather than deliberately pushed
> out from a locus.
> 
> Was anything ever standardised in that field? I imagine with much of
> P2P traffic being (how shall I put this...) less than legal, it's of
> questionable legality and the ISPs would not want to be held liable
> for the content cached there?
> 
> M
> 
> 
IMHO,

Sooner or later our community will catch on and begin to deploy such
technology.  P2P is a really elegant 'tool' when used to distribute large
files (which we all know).  I expect that even the biggest last-mile 
providers will lose the arms race they currently engage in 
against this 'tool' and start participating in and controlling the flow of
data.  

Throwing millions into technologies to thwart this 'tool,' technologies such
as DPI only takes away from a last-mile provider's ability to offer service.
I believe this is one reason the USA lags the Rest of the World in broadband
deployment.

Ultimately, I believe it will make sense to design last-mile networks to
benefit from P2P (e.g. allow end stations to communicate locally rather
than force traffic that could stay local to a central office through a session-
based router).  Then take advantage by deploying a scenario such as the 
one you've outlined to keep swarms local.  Before we do that though, 
we need to cut the paranoia about this particular tool (created by the 
RIAA and others) and we need to see a few more exec's with vision.

jy  

Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Robert Bonomi]

> From nanog-bounces+bonomi=mail.r-bonomi@nanog.org  Sat Sep 25 17:00:42 
> 2010
> Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 00:01:38 +0200
> From: Jeroen Massar 
> To: valdis.kletni...@vt.edu
> Subject: Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth
> Cc: NANOG 
>
> On 2010-09-25 23:53, valdis.kletni...@vt.edu wrote:
> > On Sat, 25 Sep 2010 21:43:25 BST, Matthew Walster said:
> > 
> >> Was anything ever standardised in that field? I imagine with much of
> >> P2P traffic being (how shall I put this...) less than legal, it's of
> >> questionable legality and the ISPs would not want to be held liable
> >> for the content cached there?
> > 
> > The ISP is off the hook on that one.  17 USC 512(2) specifically carves out 
> > an ISP
> > safe-harbor for data that's only cached on an ISP's servers due to an end
> > user's request.  IANAL, so have somebody you pay for legal advice read 17 
> > USC 512(2)
> > and tell you what they think.
>
> So it that is true, if you define "news server" as a "cache", even
> though you have to buy several terabytes, make that several petabytes,
> to "be able to "cache" this data one along with all the network
> environment to support getting data out of this "cache", the ISP is
> completely in the clear even though that "cache" is the sole single
> point where one can retrieve that "cached" data from even years after
> the data was originally put on the network, the original is gone and
> that "cache" works without anything being attached to it ? :)

There is existant _recent case law, specifically with regard to operating
a newsserver, that holds otherwise.  Of course the server operator was
blatently _advertizing_ the copyright-infringing (and more) nature of 
their content.

Several of the major ISPs who recently discontinued providing USENET did
so as a direct result of the above-mentioned case -- attorney-generals
were 'making noises' -- and the ISP chose not to risk a confrontation.

Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Harry Strongburg]

On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 09:56:15PM +, khatfi...@socllc.net wrote:
> Speaking to your example with Blizzard:

It was not my example, I do not play Blizzard games.

> The Blizzard downloader does provide an option to disable P2P 
> transfers which then downloads direct via http from Blizzard.

This is nice. Many other games using Pando and other such P2P 
downloaders do not.

> Yes, the update software defaults to allow P2P but it isn't like they 
> are forcing it upon their users. I have seen Sony do the same thing 
> and have never seen a downloader that you couldn't disable that option 
> if you like.

I am 100% sure "Pando Media Booster" do not give you the option of 
disabling it. Unless they hide it very, very deep.

Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Jeroen Massar]

On 2010-09-25 23:53, valdis.kletni...@vt.edu wrote:
> On Sat, 25 Sep 2010 21:43:25 BST, Matthew Walster said:
> 
>> Was anything ever standardised in that field? I imagine with much of
>> P2P traffic being (how shall I put this...) less than legal, it's of
>> questionable legality and the ISPs would not want to be held liable
>> for the content cached there?
> 
> The ISP is off the hook on that one.  17 USC 512(2) specifically carves out 
> an ISP
> safe-harbor for data that's only cached on an ISP's servers due to an end
> user's request.  IANAL, so have somebody you pay for legal advice read 17 USC 
> 512(2)
> and tell you what they think.

So it that is true, if you define "news server" as a "cache", even
though you have to buy several terabytes, make that several petabytes,
to "be able to "cache" this data one along with all the network
environment to support getting data out of this "cache", the ISP is
completely in the clear even though that "cache" is the sole single
point where one can retrieve that "cached" data from even years after
the data was originally put on the network, the original is gone and
that "cache" works without anything being attached to it ? :)

Oh, one just have to love these things called laws... good that they are
protecting the right parts of the distribution network eh ;)

Greets,
 Jeroen

Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[khatfield]

Speaking to your example with Blizzard:

The Blizzard downloader does provide an option to disable P2P transfers which 
then downloads direct via http from Blizzard. 

Yes, the update software defaults to allow P2P but it isn't like they are 
forcing it upon their users. I have seen Sony do the same thing and have never 
seen a downloader that you couldn't disable that option if you like. 

-Kevin
-Original Message-
From: Harry Strongburg 
Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2010 21:03:43 
To: 
Subject: Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 04:16:46PM -0400, Rodrick Brown wrote:
> I think most people are aware that the Blizzard "World of WarcCraft" patcher
> distributes files through Bittorrent

I personally love Bittorrent. It is wonderful for CDN - for both legal 
and not-so-legal files. I however despise the game-loaders not giving 
you more options to control this traffic. For example, many run as a 
daemon that does not stop seeding - even when you're in-game. You could 
manually kill it, but it will re-run again. If you remove it, enjoy not 
being able to continue to play the game if it updates.

"Pando Media Booster" (which I have had to deal with), detects your 
upload speed and uses about 3/4ths of it. The game installer never even 
had you accept an EULA - just when PMB.exe started when it was 
installed, it says on the bottom "you have accepted the EULA". EULAs 
don't really mean much now of days, sadly. This ruins the network 
quality, especially on large LANs, and most people don't even realize 
it's using all their connection.

My personal verdict on it is: Give the users the option to limit the
upload speed to whatever they want, and an option to disable it when
they don't need to download any updates; if this is done, I personally
see no problem with it. If this option is not added, I see it as malware
that should be deleted.

As I said above, I have no problems with using Bittorrent as a method of 
CDN - it's actually one of the best methods. But, the end-users need 
more control over it.

Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Valdis . Kletnieks]

On Sat, 25 Sep 2010 21:43:25 BST, Matthew Walster said:

> Was anything ever standardised in that field? I imagine with much of
> P2P traffic being (how shall I put this...) less than legal, it's of
> questionable legality and the ISPs would not want to be held liable
> for the content cached there?

The ISP is off the hook on that one.  17 USC 512(2) specifically carves out an 
ISP
safe-harbor for data that's only cached on an ISP's servers due to an end
user's request.  IANAL, so have somebody you pay for legal advice read 17 USC 
512(2)
and tell you what they think.




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Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Harry Strongburg]

On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 04:56:21PM -0400, Jon Lewis wrote:
> Are these companies not making enough in monthly subscriptions to
> afford Akamai or similar CDN services to distribute their software
> updates?

If you read the article, you will see that Akami is one of the 
perpetrators, via the "Akamai NetSession Interface". :)

Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Harry Strongburg]

On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 04:16:46PM -0400, Rodrick Brown wrote:
> I think most people are aware that the Blizzard "World of WarcCraft" patcher
> distributes files through Bittorrent

I personally love Bittorrent. It is wonderful for CDN - for both legal 
and not-so-legal files. I however despise the game-loaders not giving 
you more options to control this traffic. For example, many run as a 
daemon that does not stop seeding - even when you're in-game. You could 
manually kill it, but it will re-run again. If you remove it, enjoy not 
being able to continue to play the game if it updates.

"Pando Media Booster" (which I have had to deal with), detects your 
upload speed and uses about 3/4ths of it. The game installer never even 
had you accept an EULA - just when PMB.exe started when it was 
installed, it says on the bottom "you have accepted the EULA". EULAs 
don't really mean much now of days, sadly. This ruins the network 
quality, especially on large LANs, and most people don't even realize 
it's using all their connection.

My personal verdict on it is: Give the users the option to limit the
upload speed to whatever they want, and an option to disable it when
they don't need to download any updates; if this is done, I personally
see no problem with it. If this option is not added, I see it as malware
that should be deleted.

As I said above, I have no problems with using Bittorrent as a method of 
CDN - it's actually one of the best methods. But, the end-users need 
more control over it.

Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Jon Lewis]

On Sat, 25 Sep 2010, Rodrick Brown wrote:


If you follow the links in the article people are complaining that the LotR
process has served 70gb in a week, others are complaining that the service
is resulting in 300ms pings, and unusable connections.
This is a very grey area it will be interesting how this issue unfolds in
the long run.


I haven't played any of these things, so I don't know what they put in 
the fine print, but unless LotR makes it clear that they're going to 
utilize your (i.e. players of the game) bandwidth to PTP distribute their 
software, I'd call that theft and unauthorized use of a computer network.
Are these companies not making enough in monthly subscriptions to afford 
Akamai or similar CDN services to distribute their software updates?


--
 Jon Lewis, MCP :)   |  I route
 Senior Network Engineer |  therefore you are
 Atlantic Net|
_ http://www.lewis.org/~jlewis/pgp for PGP public key_

Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Matthew Walster]

On 25 September 2010 21:16, Rodrick Brown  wrote:
> I think most people are aware that the Blizzard "World of WarcCraft" patcher
> distributes files through Bittorrent,



I once read an article talking about making BitTorrent scalable by
using anycasted caching services at the ISP's closest POP to the end
user. Given sufficient traffic on a specified torrent, the caching
device would build up the file, then distribute that direct to the
subscriber in the form of an additional (preferred) peer. Similar to a
CDN or Usenet, but where it was cached rather than deliberately pushed
out from a locus.

Was anything ever standardised in that field? I imagine with much of
P2P traffic being (how shall I put this...) less than legal, it's of
questionable legality and the ISPs would not want to be held liable
for the content cached there?

M

Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Rodrick Brown]

I think most people are aware that the Blizzard "World of WarcCraft" patcher
distributes files through Bittorrent, however apparently a number of other
MMO companies (LotR, Lego) are apparently doing something similar but aren't
as upfront about it, and are installing Windows services which seed whenever
the computer is online. Game Companies Should Play Fair With P2P |
TorrentFreak

If you follow the links in the article people are complaining that the LotR
process has served 70gb in a week, others are complaining that the service
is resulting in 300ms pings, and unusable connections.
This is a very grey area it will be interesting how this issue unfolds in
the long run.


-- 
[ Rodrick R. Brown ]
http://www.rodrickbrown.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/rodrickbrown