Decluttering The Tubes, Solutions to the BitTorrent “Problem”?
Written by Ernesto on February 01, 2008Hundreds of larger and smaller ISPs all over the world try to limit BitTorrent traffic on their networks. They often argue that they have no other options, but that’s not completely true.
There has been a lot of discussion lately about Comcast’s efforts to slow down and block BitTorrent traffic, and even the FCC got involved in it. Unfortunately, Comcast is not the only ISP engaging in this kind of behavior, many others use similar tactics.
BitTorrent throttling has been going on for a few years now, but it is getting more attention lately, because the number of people who use BitTorrent keeps growing. The traffic shaping methods used vary from ISP to ISP. Some only limit BitTorrent traffic during certain times of the day, or throttle in specific regions. Others take a more aggressive approach and prevent their customers from seeding, or even downloading .torrent files.
Some people might wonder why ISPs throttle their connection. The argument most often used is that all the BitTorrent traffic on their network slows down other customers’ connections. An argument that makes sense (if it is true), but the real problem is that ISPs tend to be secretive about their throttling efforts. If it really is that big of a problem, be open about it, and let your customers know what they can and cannot do.
Art Reisman, who is chief technical officer at APConnections - a company that happens to manufacture traffic shaping devices, lists some of the possible solutions ISPs can implement in order to cope with the “BitTorrent problem”, which he wanted to share here.
1.) Ask for voluntary cooperation.
One recourse would be to ask customers to scale back on torrents, or to use them at night or another time when network usage is low. There is plenty of precedent in the Green movement to recycle and to reduce carbon footprints. So why not a campaign to scale back BitTorrent usage ?
The downside: Can you imagine a service provider sending a letter to its customer base outlining the technical limitations of allowing unlimited BitTorrent applications, and then asking for some voluntary cooperation? Me neither. Perhaps someday, but for now providers are viewed as a profit-driven adversary by most customers.
The upside: Seems to have a warm, fuzzy, feel-good ring to it.
2.) Keep connections within the providers network.
This is the method currently practiced with help from a popular product provided by Sandvine. The basic idea is that on a large provider network there are enough BitTorrent hosts that a client need not leave the provider’s network to retrieve content.
The downside: Consumers are suspicious of providers looking at their data to make determinations on what type of traffic it is. The consumer may also not get good results if the bulk of the content were located outside their providers network; for example, if a user were to download a file that was popular in Europe, the number of servers hosting it on the Comcast network might be limited.
The upside: Consumers are still freely able to find most BitTorrent content. Providers greatly reduce connections and exchange costs with other providers.
3.) Usage based quotas.
With this method a service provider will charge much higher rates when a preset amount of data usage is exceeded over a calendar month.
The upside: This method is unobtrusive in that the provider need not look at a customer’s data, only their total usage. Experience with university residential networks has shown that once quotas are announced users voluntarily reduce their peer-to-peer or BitTorrent usage.
The downside: More complex billing detail and customer service to resolve disputes. Large providers will still compete by marketing their service as unlimited. Despite the rants about BitTorrent being a resource issue, it is still only a small percentage of total customers that use it.
4.) Limit the total connections allowed at one time per user.
The upside: It’s simple and fair to implement. Providers already set rate caps on Internet speeds, so this is just a rate cap on connections, very similar and easy to swallow for the consumer.
The downside: When users reach their allotted connection limit, all traffic on their link slows down.
5.) Build out networks to handle the increased load and pass the cost onto the consumer.
The upside: It works.
The downside: It’s most likely not economically sustainable. Without some other form of mitigation, the public’s appetite for content appears insatiable.
6.) Cancel the service of users who abuse their privileges. There have been reports of providers doing this already.
The upside: It moves an unprofitable customer off your network and onto a competitor.
The downside: Customers begin to despise you.
Here at TorrentFreak we have discussed some of these alternatives before, and in the long run there is really only one solution that is acceptable. The Internet is only a few years old, if the plan is to keep using it in the future, ISPs need to upgrade their networks. So, invest in more Internet gateway capacity, 10Gbps interconnect ports, and peering agreements. BitTorrent users are not the problem, they only signal that the ISPs need to upgrade their capacity, because customers will only get more demanding in the future. The Internet is not only about sending email, and browsing on text based websites anymore.
Art Reisman told TorrentFreak that that there are two solutions that make sense to him: “Raise rates per usage volume instead of flat rates, if it can be kept simple! Second is to limit customer connections as a resource.” Charging for bandwidth uses makes sense indeed, as long as the prices are reasonable. The second option of limiting the number of connections only looks like a temporary fix though.
What do you think?
Previously: Rambo’s Armed Guard Anti-Piracy Measures Torn Apart By Industry Insider
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99 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
The only solution is to upgrade their cables to high-capacity fiber-cables. We can’t live with those old cables that are underneath our houses in the future, the sooner the ISP’s invest in fiber the better! If an ISP do invest, that ISP might get more customers that are fed up with slow connections.
ISP’s, upgrade to optical fiber. Sooner or later you have to!
I think providers need to specificaly structure packages so that any given tier gets exactly what they pay for, and upgrade network capacity if the demand for the top tier heavy user packages have an impact on the network. I never really believe the figures that ISP’s bound around. I fail to grasp how exactly the 95th percentile can have such a dramatic impact on even a fibre based network, but perhaps that says more about the physical state of it and the 5% are just used as a scapegoat.
ISP’s should not over sell capacity. Pulling the old ‘victim of our own success’ is a crock of shit. If you are going to sell an unlimited bandwidth high speed service, then the network should be able to cope with more than 5% of its users using it at their own maximum capacity. That doesnt leave much in the way of redundancy, and may explain alot when during times where alot of people may want to use their internet at the same time (like some global news event), shit starts to break and the network starts to fail.
The state of most networks I would say has less to do with the activities of the end user, and everything to do with profit over investment of behalf of ISP’s. This is especialy a problem where any one ISP may have a monopoly in an area and can basicaly do or say whatever they want becuase their customers have no other option but to use them. Broadband provision is fastly turning into a sess pit, and consumers are becoming disallusioned with the notion of endless supper speed broadband, becuase more good majority of them, it’s most certainly not the case where they are.
I don’t understand why building out the network is “not economically sustainable”, this is the nature. These companies have monopolies all over the country.. I guarantee, you open access, this won’t even be an argument anymore. Plus with wireless, white space, and bpl, there are cheap ways without building infrastructure to the local areas, and still being able to contribute back to the backbone. F these companies , these are all just excuses.
i like solution number 1.
PEACE
“The Internet is only a few years old…”
Dude, the ‘net has been around since 1983, and even earlier if you consider ARPANET.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet#Creation
Do your homework, Ernesto :-)
Best regards.
[quote comment="278644"]i like solution number 1.
PEACE[/quote]
I won’t do it.. My computer is turned off whenever I sleep. Electricity is expensive and I won’t risk a fire.
Charging for bandwidth uses makes sense indeed, as long as the prizes are reasonable.
Should be ‘prices’.
Bandwidth is NOT privilege but Purchased goods. If I buy UNLIMITED Bandwidth thats just what I expect. My purchase has absolutely NOTHING to do with privilege it is a service I bought and paid for. Throttling is not caused by customers using what they purchased but but ISPs overselling their bandwidth and then trying to give everyone less for more. ISPs should be held accountable for over selling band width. i suggest we have a law against greedy ISP to combat Poor service…!!!
I don’t like the idea of “Raise rates per usage volume instead of flat rates.”
Mainly because I don’t want to have to “watch my minutes” on the internet.
The US should just have a bandwidth cap. A user exceeds it per month, their internet gets slow. 30GB per month seems suitable.
Also, why are ISP’s complaining about customers using their service to it’s fullest extent? If the ISP has a problem, they should fix their end, and not blame the customer.
@1-4
You all are dumb. Why must you be attention whores?
Anyways, I just dont think that traffic should be throttled at all. No one throttles web browsing.
[quote comment="278648"][quote comment="278644"]i like solution number 1.
PEACE[/quote]
I won’t do it.. My computer is turned off whenever I sleep. Electricity is expensive and I won’t risk a fire.[/quote]
Dude, you’re way too paranoid. I leave my computer on 24/7, and honestly, shutting off and on your computer each night/morning, can severely damage your hard drive.
What would you rather pay more, loss of personal data and a new hard drive, or an electric bill?
I don’t understand this whole argument. Just don’t offer such high bloody speeds if the ISP’s can’t handle the traffic.
I’d much rather unlimited with a slower connection than a MB cap.
They brag about massive speeds, which are useless for web browsing anyway.
My computer was purchased 5 months ago and my previous computer lasted for 6 years. First then the primary hard drive took an early evening. Besides, all my data is divided among my two external hard drives. And yes, I know I’m paranoid. Someone IS following me oÔ
I don’t like any of those solutions.
I like the way it is now :)
I am very comfortable with current internet speed !
Hope they do the fiber cables A.S.A.P and give us 100Mbit connections :)
OMG TWELFTH COMMENT
I agree with what TF says… The interwebz be changing, they should adapt.
Bit-Torrent is not a “problem”. It’s a legitimate use of my bandwidth. I’m paying for my internet connection, and I should be able to use any and all of the bandwidth that the ISP allots. If they don’t like it, let them set a quota, or lower my speeds. It’s not fair to just target bit torrent traffic.
That being said, if my ISP does set a quota or lower my speed, I’m leaving for a better provider that suits my needs.
In the long term the solution is going to have to be charging for usage, as every other utility does. The problem now is that bandwidth charges (where they exist) are usually unreasonable, often nearly as much as the monthly bill for a few GB more. What we need is a reasonable flat charge for usage per mb along with easy bandwidth monitoring for customers (honestly just means putting the bandwidth used prominently on the ISP’s website, to check my usage I have to go through about five pages AFTER logging into my account management).
Charging for data usage is bullshit.
They should just offer unlimited lower speeds.
Shit, you don’t see phone companies limiting how many words you can say on each phone call.
British telecom were capping all p2p apps of mine when i was supposed to be on unlimited bandwidth, but to make it worse they would never admit to it, they wasnt prepared to explain or discuss what hours were suitable for bit torrent etc just were happy to palm me off with excuses
Switched to NTL now and there Fup is clearly stated on there web site with times an limits too follow, between 4pm and midnight theres a limit to how much you can download and if you go over often then you get capped to half your speed untill midnight, then speed resumes to normal, which i think is fine and accectable, the main reason being is that at least they tell you these things before you sign up, honesty goes along way
although as said would be better if isp’s just upgraded there lines
oh ya and f**k having to pay for how much you use, id soon switch isp if that were to happen
@20
Virgin (NTL-Telewest) recently changed their ‘FUP’, and amended the ‘window’ which they defined as ‘peak times’.
The new ‘peak time’ is between 4pm and 9pm.
Oh, come on! None of the solutions are good. The networks wouldn’t limit anything if they had profits upon BitTorrent, they would then find a perfect solution to the claimed “overload”.
I think quotas are awful, but what they could do (if possible) is to limit the speeds for BitTorrent. Something like somehow allowing you to use only a share (like 50%) of your connection’s speed to P2P.
Upgrade to modern standarts and stop ******ing MPAA/RIAA/IFPI?
heres an idea KILL YOUTUBE and other low res video sites because the resolution doesn’t make the file size that much smaller a 10 minute youtube video can be anywhere from 35-75MB/s and i unfortunatly know people that open up 20 tabs of things they might want to watch on youtube and let them all download so that when they get to it they don’t have to wait for the video to download to watch it… then once they start to watch them they watch for only 30 seconds of it before deciding to move on to another video
If you’re selling an unlimited line, it should be unlimited.
Hell, here in Norway, only some piss-poor local ISPs have any sort of bandwidth usage quotas - all the major ISPs allow you to use it to your heart’s content.
Telenor (major ADSL/general telephony provider) experimented with quotas a couple years back, and it bit them in the ass. I believe they rolled back to a unlimited plan within half a year, as they were hemorrhaging customers like no other. No quotas these days, at least.
Is it really so hard to just either bump your prices and build infrastructure while at the same time reducing load (people switching to other ISPs/getting cheaper lines and as such removing the overload), or just cough up the cash for better interconnects outright?
Maybe offer a BT client optimized for looking for peers on the local net first? (Yea, right - as if anyone would bother developing it, much less use it - oh well)
I must agree it kinda takes the p iss when they lure you in telling you of fast speeds, yadda yadda to hook you then slap you with a letter telling you have been downloading too much. Like wtf do you expect? Like you said in the original article, For the internet to advance ISP’s need to realise that we arn’t just using it to surf wikipedia and check our emails. They need to change, not the consumer.
And yes I mean quality with all kinds of sarcasm.
Ernesto - how old are you to actually believe the Internet is only a few years old? In comparison to my great grandmothers age, yes, it’s only been a few years. But would you call a 15 year old “only a few years old”? hahaha
Unless you know what you are talking about, don’t write it! K.I.S.S.
You can go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle if you aren’t old enough to know what that means.
And to the paranoid electricity saving tree hugger - it costs next to nothing to leave it on when comparing against the cost of a damaged hard drive due to excessively turning on & off.
@20
Virgin (NTL-Telewest) recently changed their ‘FUP’, and amended the ‘window’ which they defined as ‘peak times’.
The new ‘peak time’ is between 4pm and 9pm.
Lol! iv been waiting till 12 everynight thanks for informing me
feels like a plonker
These deliberately misleading ISP’s * their marketing lies should/are illegal.. I cant understand how there is not better regulations to protect users from being deceived and outright scammed!
@23 Virgin Media are definitely a better ISP than most in the UK, though by no means perfect lol
@29
Ah It was fairly recently they amended their FUP. xD
Heres the script:
http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html
Here in the UK, all phone lines are operated and maintained by BT. If we were to upgrade our lines it would be BT doing the work. BT need to know that once they upgrade people will want the service, until they can gurantee that demand then good luck. I think I heard it would cost them about £10-15 Billion. Switching provider here still puts pressure on the same network, unless you’re on cable of course. Even they have their problems and coverage is crap.
[quote comment="278750"]
Ernesto - how old are you to actually believe the Internet is only a few years old? In comparison to my great grandmothers age, yes, it’s only been a few years. But would you call a 15 year old “only a few years old”? hahaha
[/quote]
Not Ernesto :) But i`ll answer this one: Yes 15 years is only few years. In long run 15 years is nothing, zero. Something like phone or radio is not “only few years old”.
7) Setting up VPN for ISP’s customers.
The upside: Reduced traffic towards other providers reduces cost, as the users tend to connect among themselves. Especially when the users make their own filesharing services amd bittorrent trackers.
The downside: None.
great article. torrentfreak ftw.
In Australia we have always had to live with usage limits. I only have 20gig a month from midday to 2am, and 40gig from 2am to midday. After exceeding that I am capped to 64kbs. I pay $70 a month for this, representing almost the best value in Australia at the moment. Those of you in other countries with very large or no usage limits should count yourselves lucky.
Well, the limits make sense.
I chose an ISP with a limit of 100 GB combined as opposed to the one who is unlimited (but in fact the limit is 100 GB and you are slowed down if you go over).
Why? Because bandwidth is a limited resource and I expect the ISP to deliver the chunk I paid for. And my ISP does deliver it.
the only places you see companies do fiber-optic is Verizon and some IP provider in New York. I would love to see companies use #1. I would pay for a fiber subscription. It seems like everyone is stubborn these days. The real problem the inert net industry is that it’s appliable to Moore’s Law.
@11: In Europe, a computer running 24/7 when it doesn’t have to may cost you an additional €90 per year if your computer eats 100W. That’s one harddrive per year. The risks that you actually damage your harddisk by turning it on and off are so minute that it is a complete non-argument in this issue, as compared to electricity costs. You have a backup, right?
On the issue of bandwidth problems…
Number (5), investing in more bandwidth is not an allround feasible option, because not every customer is willing to pay for it. “We raise your fee because 10% of our other users use so much of our bandwidth.” As long as maximum bandwidth allotment is the only ground on which subscription fees are based, extra investment costs can only be redeemed by raising the price of the more costly subscriptions, but the provider will also have to raise the maximum bandwidth of those subscriptions, thus not solving the problem at all. It will make the problem bigger and bigger.
The only solution is some form of quotum. If that is not competitively sane, then differentiation of price plans may be necessary: cheap plans with quota and pricier ones without. If you set the quotum at 25-50% of what is theoretically possible with a certain price plan, only the full time downloaders/seeders - those that cause the problems - get hurt. 50% of a 1.5M/256K link is 40GB upload per month. That’s hardly unreasonable for this price plan. I think it is the best solution.
You might say that you will switch to the competition, but if the competition is known to throttle all bittorrent traffic, or prevent seeding, or raises the fees to account for bittorrent traffic, then staying with your quotum bound provider that just throttles your bandwidth a bit at daytime hours after your first 20G of upload or 120G of download, might seem like not such a bad choice after all. And if users ARE switching to other providers that offer unlimited bandwidth at higher cost, then nothing is preventing the provider from offering a differentiation in its priceplans according to limited/unlimited.
@37 You have subscribed to an ISP who provides you with a guaranteed 100GB download/upload. Therefore you have a ‘capped subscription’… What is your bandwidth speed? .. 2Mb, 4Mb, 8Mb?
Myself, in the current climate prefer unlimited and uncapped downloads with traffic management during peak-times. Than capped usage limits.
ISP’s are traffic managing, shaping, throttling all sorts of P2P applications such as ’streaming’ video software like ‘TVUplayer’ for example.
The increasing use of such streaming software by the public and content providers like the BBC will force ISP’s to upgrade their infrastructure.
This is an issue which affects more than just the Bittorrent community.
How do the online gamers cope with such ‘traffic management’? Are they affected by these policies
The thing about Comcast is that they are an octopus — media is their bread and butter.
BitTorrent competes with what Comcast wants to deliver to the subscriber (that is to say, their own content). The bandwidth used on BitTorrent competes with their own stuff like “Fancast” — a free (currently) streaming TV show source set up by Comcast. The quality isn’t bad, but they intend to make money off of this and BitTorrent giving people access to the same content except in high quality goes against their bottom line.
But Comcast sucks anyway even if they allowed BitTorrent to ride their network unfettered.
it would be nice if the community started putting together a list of ISPs that have throttled back their service. so we know who to stay away from.
Fuck all attempts to change ISPs! Freedom! Freedom!
Only noobs turn their computer off at night. Probably the same jerks that leave everyone stuck at 99% for weeks til they decide to reopen their torrent client.
[quote comment="278658"]I don’t like the idea of “Raise rates per usage volume instead of flat rates.”
Mainly because I don’t want to have to “watch my minutes” on the internet.
The US should just have a bandwidth cap. A user exceeds it per month, their internet gets slow. 30GB per month seems suitable.[/quote]
Maybe that suits you, but I’ve done that much in a day or two. :P
verizon fios ftw
When it comes available in your area get it.
If enough folks do this the other isp’s will follow suite.
conform to be cast out isp’s
[quote comment="278661"][quote comment="278648"][quote comment="278644"]i like solution number 1.
PEACE[/quote]
I won’t do it.. My computer is turned off whenever I sleep. Electricity is expensive and I won’t risk a fire.[/quote]
Dude, you’re way too paranoid. I leave my computer on 24/7, and honestly, shutting off and on your computer each night/morning, can severely damage your hard drive.
What would you rather pay more, loss of personal data and a new hard drive, or an electric bill?[/quote]
I have been shutting down my computer for almost ten years and still works great. I have only upagraded software, video card, ram, monitor, and mouse. But I think it comes down to the quaility of your hardware components. I like sleeping in peace and quiet.
As for a good solution to all the isp traffic I think the isp’s need to upgrade their cables in the near future. People aren’t just downloading illegal content, but also legal stuff too. Movies, sports, television programs, music, etc… and more people are able to afford to buy more than one connection per household for each member. Then there’s people with internet on their cellphones. ISP’s need to upgrade their cables or soon those dsl and cable connections may end up performing like 56k modems. Upgrade or fade.
Laser fiber optic cables would be sweet! The technology has been around a few years. Downloading a full length movie would take less than a minute. Of course there’s a reason this hasn’t been used or talked about much: cost. It’s too expensive for what ISP’s would want to spend on. Hopefully one day soon they will be the most commonly used technology.
ISP’s should just quit bitchin’ and make their networks bigger, better, and faster. problem solved.
[quote comment="278758"]@29
Ah It was fairly recently they amended their FUP. xD
Heres the script:
http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html/quote
Its also widley accepted by VM customers ‘in the know’ that VM dont tell the greater majority jack shit. none is a perfect example of that fact. If you donr frequent the virginmedia website, digitalspy, or VM newsgroups, chances are you know absolutely nothing about their traffic management. I remember getting a letter from them when they upgraded my 4mbit to 10mbit, I remember getting a letter from them when they upgraded my 10mbit to 20mbit (+ an increase in price), and soon I will be expecting a letter about their new 50mbit package with the introduction of DOCSIS 3. But not once did I recieve anything, be it by post or even an email, informing me (or anyone else) about the introduction of either the first round of traffic management, or the recently revised traffic management. I might add the window is smaller, but upload is also now counted and can cause management to trigger, and it lasts for 5 hours as opposed to the previous 4, also speed is not halved as stated in a previous post, but quartered.
British Telecom use (or did use) Elicoyas to manage their network, but adsl and the complete sham that is LLU means anyone who uses them or just about any of the UK adsl broadband products is a fool, especialy if you have the availability of cable in your area.
People should donate money to buy and upgrade eqipment and isps should only charge a monthly rate for the service and maintence.
Move to Europe, or even better, Norway, and get fiber almost wherever you are. 100 Mbit (L)
There is another option that was not listed. Flag P2P traffic as “bulk data” and prioritize other traffic. Let P2P traffic “fill the tubes”, but not get in the way of other, more interactive stuff.
Also, getting BT to prioritize local connections (same ISP), is easily done by providing symmetric lines (or even asymmetric the “wrong” way). Due to ADSL, the fastest nodes, which will be prioritized, are NEVER on my ISPs network, but mostly long-haul (cross continents).
“theres take a more aggressive approach and prevent their customers from seeding, or even downloading .torrent files.”
Just as an fyi if your ISP does this find a tracker which you can access via https (where the url looks like https://www.YourTrackerHere.org etc) and your .torrent files will download as seamlessly as usual. The second best fix is to use a tracker that hosts zipped .torrent files as an alternative to the usual ones. This only adds one step to the process where you open your zip program to access the .torrent file.
Another solution is to right click the .torrent and do a “Save As” then change the extension from .torrent to .txt. Once it is downloaded, simply change the extension back to .torrent (this works with varying degrees of success).
The technology war against filesharing continues.
This has to be the worst article I can remember reading on torrentfreak in a long time. I’m sorry to say this, but it’s the truth.
[quote comment="278961"]Only noobs turn their computer off at night. Probably the same jerks that leave everyone stuck at 99% for weeks til they decide to reopen their torrent client.[/quote]
Yeah right.. Just like when I downloaded a movie from a private site and startet seeding at TPB because 5 or 6 people were stuck at 83%? I didn’t downloaded anything from TPB but I shared with them, shared until I there were 4 people that had 100%. I turn my computer off, electricity is so fucking expensive in Norway!
[quote comment="279024"]Move to Europe, or even better, Norway, and get fiber almost wherever you are. 100 Mbit (L)[/quote]
Stavanger, Sandefjord og noen andre steder er eneste med fiber. Sverige er derimot landsdekket med fiber.
There are better solutions, i have listed some of these here:
http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/User:The8472/P2PvsISPs
simply the market will evolve as new fiber optic cables are installed and the isps will either get involved with this or disappear the way the dinosaurs do.
It’s a buyers market, and while it’s that, they’ll simply have to expand their network capacity. That simple :)
[quote]2.) Keep connections within the providers network.[/quote]
This doesn’t help a bit. Data transfer is already cheap as in very cheap. (except for a few exceptions, like Australia to the rest of world)
Considering the caps being discussed are all in the sub 100GB per month, it is clear that it isn’t the backbone bandwidth that is the problem, but the last mile.
Keeping traffic within a provider network won’t solve the problem at all, as the traffic still has to travel on the congested last mile (or several miles).
The problem is with the ISPs that have failed in their responsibility to keep the infrastructure up to date, or invested too much in non scalable infrastructure (which I think is the main problem for cable companies).
“The Internet is not only about sending email, and browsing on text based websites anymore.”..WELL SAID!!!
Here is one simple ’stop-gap’ solution to one aspect of the ISP’s ‘P2P problem’. But it will take the co-operation of the user and the entire Bittorrent community.
Lets take the ‘movie’ downloader, he/she wants a good quality file in a user friendly format. Most will download an ‘AVI/DivX’ format file, which will be anywhere between 700MB and 1.3GB per movie. But…….
What if that file was in a MP4 format!!, MP4 with its high compression rates could near enough halve the file size..
Half the file size equates to less bandwidth usage does it not?… Now I realise that everyone who has bought a standalone DVD player which is DivX compatable is not simply going to throw them away.. But its a simple conversion from MP4 to AVI/DivX with the right software and the relevant codecs installed aye?
What also if the Bittorrent community (and the scene) banned DVD-rips and other files sized over eg: 2gigs, and also banned especially the recent Blueray etc rips with 8gigs…? I mean if you want the DVD/Blueray/HDDvd (with menus and extras) buy the bleedin’ thing.
Most here will know that they can bypass bittorrent and other P2P applications if the wish to watch or even download certain Television series or Films. Stage6 allows you download the (DivX) file, and certain browser addons allow to download from sites such as Gubba and Youtube etc.
Admittedly the ISP’s need to upgrade the infrastructure (which in my opinion should be ‘State Owned’ by the public rather than in private and share holders hands, or is that too socialist for some here?), but surely we as individuals can lessen the load on that infrastructure simply by ethical consumerism.
:0o XD
Do you think that ppl want a 10/20mbit to dl mail and surf a bit? Cmon!
IMHO the solution is to upgrade infrastructures and give to the customers what they pay for, 24/7!
And @62
What also if the Bittorrent community (and the scene) banned DVD-rips and other files sized over eg: 2gigs, and also banned especially the recent Blueray etc rips with 8gigs…? I mean if you want the DVD/Blueray/HDDvd (with menus and extras) buy the bleedin’ thing.
Are you joking? That’s quite mad.
So why do not ban movies and share only txt, jpeg and mp3! YEEEAHH!
[quote comment="279240"]
What if that file was in a MP4 format!!, MP4 with its high compression rates could near enough halve the file size..
[/quote]
Look at the anime sub community. They were among the first to adopt mp4. Has the file sizes decreased?
In a few cases yes, although not nearly by 50%. In most cases though, no. Sometimes the size has remained the same, leading to an increase in quality. And sometimes the size has been increased to allow for even better quality at HD resolution.
[quote comment="279240"]
What also if the Bittorrent community (and the scene) banned DVD-rips and other files sized over eg: 2gigs, and also banned especially the recent Blueray etc rips with 8gigs
[/quote]
Banning, what people want and instead giving them what they don’t want sounds a lot like the soviet plan economy failure. While I am not anti communist as some people, I atleast recognize that plan economy was one of the big failures of the soviet era communism.
“Its also widley accepted by VM customers ‘in the know’ that VM dont tell the greater majority jack shit. none is a perfect example of that fact. If you donr frequent the virginmedia website, digitalspy, or VM newsgroups, chances are you know absolutely nothing about their traffic management”
the guide i gave was a estimate off the top of my head from what id vaugly remebered reading a while back, i knew enuff to keep me from being capped and i download about 100 gig a month and iv never had grief with my speed. But ya dont expect VM to tell you these things, but at least there wrote plain an simple on there web site
[quote comment="279324"]
Are you joking? That’s quite mad.
So why do not ban movies and share only txt, jpeg and mp3! YEEEAHH![/quote]
Are jpegs, text files, and mp3’s big sod-off 2-8Gig files?
Get a grip lad.
The issue being discussed is not copyright, its about bandwidth, and therefore file size. If anyone wants to upload a 2-8Gig file to bittorrent, then it should be copyright free. If not, then they can host it somewhere, could’nt they?
[quote comment="279331"]
Banning, what people want and instead giving them what they don’t want sounds a lot like the soviet plan economy failure. While I am not anti communist as some people, I atleast recognize that plan economy was one of the big failures of the soviet era communism.[/quote]
Do you know the difference between ‘communism’ and socialism?
Brighthouse Networks/Road Runner (USA) do not throttle back to the best of my knowledge. Had no issues on capping or throttle backs since I’ve been with them.
And when it comes to bandwidth, it’s not just movies and music being downloaded, you have to take into account ALL of the streaming video sites, Google Video, YouTube, Porno Tube and that’s just 3 of the many that are out there.
If the ISP’s can’t supply what they are selling, then they shouldn’t be selling it. And if anyone chooses an ISP who throttles back or limits speed (unless like in Australia you have no choice as all ISP’s do that) then you are an idiot for not reading the fine print before getting your connection and you have no one to blame but yourself.
Period. End of subject IMO.
Man I hate the monthly total bandwidth limits…good thing there is another ISP here. But in this day and age files are getting larger and the bandwidth limits are ridiculously small jeesh
You are sold an expensive car for a premium that can drive 200 MPH and later on they tell you that you are only allowed to drive 80 MPH with it on their highway because there are so many people who bought a car from them and want to use it when and how they like… And don’t you dare to use the car on Mondays and Fridays and between 4 and 7 o’clock.
I say invest in more and better highways instead of trying to only favor your shareholders and your bonus.
is this a good site?
http://wua.la/en/home.html
“Wuala, your free online hard-disk
Wuala is a new way of storing, sharing, and publishing files on the internet. It’s a free desktop application for Windows, Mac, and Linux that brings you a convenient and secure online storage. Unlike traditional online storage systems, Wuala is decentralized and can harness idle resources of participating computers to build a large, secure, and reliable online storage. This new technology has a number of advantages and it allows us to provide you a better service for free.
Access, share and publish files
You can use Wuala to upload a file and access it from anywhere else, even when your computer is offline. Or you can use it to share files such as photos, videos, music, or documents with friends or groups. Furthermore, you can publish files for the whole world to see. In the public area, you can search and browse for what others have published. You can store any file you want in any size you want. Downloads are fast and there are no traffic limits.
Get as much storage as you like
You start with 1 GB provided by us. If you want more, you can simply trade some space on your hard disk for additional online storage. The idea behind Wuala is not to give you more storage in total (apart from the first GB provided by us), but to change the quality of your storage: It is able to transform local storage into online storage that can be accessed from anywhere and at any time, even when your computer is offline.
Security and privacy
Wuala is secure and protects your privacy: All files you store are encrypted such that only you and those authorized by you can access them. All encryption and decryption is performed locally and your password is never sent to us - so not even we can access your files.
Free, convenient desktop application
Wuala comes as a convenient desktop application for Windows, Mac, and Linux. After a quick download, Wuala is ready. It is integrated into your operating system so that you can conveniently drag and drop files, upload files in the background, open files in your favorite application, and stream media files directly.”
I have no fucking clue, it’s new, someone know?
strongly agree with comment 1
Pay per play is fine with me. Give us monthly GB allotment, like they do with minutes on cell phone carriers. In return, give us faster upload speeds. Probably won’t happen since companies are too busy lying to customers about billing practices and the services provided.
At worst, a person will download x hours of movies (even HD movies) a month; most people will download an average of x - k1 movies a month.
At worst a person will download y albums a month; most people will download an average of y - k2 albums a month.
There is a finite number of people;
therefore, at most, there is a finite amount of data downloaded (transferred) every month.
If there was bandwidth for at least this amount of data, then no one would ever have any problem again.
If there was more than this amount of bandwidth, then it would never be used:
People would have to quit their fulltime jobs, and start sleeping 3 hours less a night, in order to have the time to watch everything they normally do + the excess; not gonna happen:)
really the bad part is that sometimes you are stuck with your ISP. Where I live there is only one provider and no one else. This company who I wont mention “cough: comcast has a monopoly in the area for cable. I could go dsl but I wont since It is more expensive here and has less bandwidth. Satalite is an option that I dont even care to deal with. Supposedly comcast has a fibre optic network capable of handling the traffic but if thats the case it sucks here and needs to be replaced with the optics from the roswell crash..lol
A combination of (1) and (2). I don’t mind scheduling large downloads to start at 1AM when hardly anyone is using their connection for “important things”.
I currently get “peak” quota and “off-peak” download quota. Off peak quota is 3x more than peak, so my ISP is being smart and encouraging people to torrent when the pipes aren’t busy.
Although Sandvine suck right now, they have the right idea - downloading something from the US is just inefficient if there are local sources for it. If they can get the technique right so it results in no (or very small) delays in getting the file, then they should do it.
[quote comment="278658"]I don’t like the idea of “Raise rates per usage volume instead of flat rates.”
Mainly because I don’t want to have to “watch my minutes” on the internet.
The US should just have a bandwidth cap. A user exceeds it per month, their internet gets slow. 30GB per month seems suitable.
Also, why are ISP’s complaining about customers using their service to it’s fullest extent? If the ISP has a problem, they should fix their end, and not blame the customer.[/quote]
30 GB? oh my. I go through that in three days. Every three days.
The internet is only a few years old?
Warning, wall of text incoming ^^.
It’s somewhat silly that people keep harping on the theme of ‘The internet is only a few years old’.
In a very real perspective it is so after all, the net as we know it nowadays started only emerging around 95, and it is a very different place now then it was back then. Bittorrent and youtube were nonexistent and the best you could hope for was for an mp3 of shady quality to download in 20 minutes or so, so yes, the high bandwidth Internet is only a few years old.
Also, in all honesty I find the discussion of bandwidth caps weird, as they will not resolve any issues at all. The problem lies, as I see it, in concurrent capacity, not total capacity. The lines and links stay up, even when not in use. I used to live in a town with a 4gb per month limit, and as I do download quite a bit, I went through that quite fast. But when I’ve used up my quota, my line remains active, but only in a crippled fashion, this however does nothing to stop congestion, as when my allocation resets so does everyone else’s, and everyone started happily downloading again. The internet was painfully slow there whenever people had their allocations reset and lovely fast when nigh on everyone was crippled.
So did the caps solve anything, if you ask me, no not really, it just made for a very very congested network whenever the caps got reset, and probably made the congestion worse then it could’ve been, due to everyone waiting for their limit to reset to do the downloads they wanted, making the network take a much larger hit then if it had been spread out over time, and everyone downloading when the idea/urge hit them instead of saving it up.
So what would’ve been the solution, imho lower speeds to the end user and no cap would’ve worked a lot better, as it eases the concurrent load and most certainly would spread the load out much better.
Bandwidth is not a limited resource as in that there is only so much available in total, it’s limited in the sense that there is only so much available per period of time.
To say that a network for example has a capability of say 100 gb/month, and then selling that in chunks is silly, as an user then may want to blow the chunk they bought, say 10gb, in one go, and if multiple users do this, the network will still get congested and bogged down.
Offering reasonable speeds so the network stays under it’s total capacity per moment would work a lot better to resolve that congestion, and make people happier too most likely.
To me the major problem seems to be to change the view from total capacity for a given period of time, to what capacity can it can handle just in the now, as the network does not cease to exist when an arbitrary limit of data has been reached.
The proper way to do this is simply lower the priority of torrent packets on the net.
If the ISPs can tell a torrent package, they can make them get of of the way of other packets.
Re: TheFilmBuff,
I haven’t opened 20 tabs on YouTube, but I have opened 4-5. Why? Because the YouTube server’s speed is permanently set on “pokey”. I can download 20MB from other sites in under a minute, but YouTube takes 3-4 minutes to send me a lousy 5MB video.
[quote comment="280048"]Warning, wall of text incoming ^^.
Also, in all honesty I find the discussion of bandwidth caps weird, as they will not resolve any issues at all. The problem lies, as I see it, in concurrent capacity, not total capacity. The lines and links stay up, even when not in use. I used to live in a town with a 4gb per month limit, and as I do download quite a bit, I went through that quite fast. But when I’ve used up my quota, my line remains active, but only in a crippled fashion, this however does nothing to stop congestion, as when my allocation resets so does everyone else’s, and everyone started happily downloading again. The internet was painfully slow there whenever people had their allocations reset and lovely fast when nigh on everyone was crippled.
So did the caps solve anything, if you ask me, no not really, it just made for a very very congested network whenever the caps got reset, and probably made the congestion worse then it could’ve been, due to everyone waiting for their limit to reset to do the downloads they wanted, making the network take a much larger hit then if it had been spread out over time, and everyone downloading when the idea/urge hit them instead of saving it up.
[/quote]
Uhh, didn’t they think to stagger the reset dates so not everybody came off their cap at the same time??? What kind of dumbass town is this??
Personally, I would prefer a super high speed capped connection at the expense of a slower unlimited one. I currently get a 20mbit, 150gb/month package in Australia. You can only use 40gb from 7am to 1am which is a pain but otherwise it’s pretty good.
Wouldn’t you prefer a 500mbit connection with a terabyte limit over a 3mbit unlimited connection? Sure, the 3mbit connection can use a terabyte going flat out for a month, but I’ll take the 500mbit one thanks.
Feb 02, 2008 at 02:50 by Branston PickleQuote Branston Pickle
@29
Ah It was fairly recently they amended their FUP. xD
Heres the script:
http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html
i was turning off utorrent between 4-12pm thanks for the heads up.
fhuck companies. We should try a distributed internet over WIFI or Wimax.
You know distributed computing os the internet.
And finally the users will rule over the internet
where I live we pay about US$250 / month and get 60GB bandwidth..go over this and they charge us 20c a meg! Thats the best deal in Australia for the largest download plan…. You’re soooo lucky! for now at least….
10 mbs without bitorrent or p2p ??
what the deal?
If my ISP asked me to limit my torrenting to the night time, I would assist and schedule most my load for the night. I got no problem with that.
Yay Primus! Its about $45 a month, truly unlimited and unthrottled bandwidth!
I’ve downloaded over 10GB in the last 24 hours and I haven’t run a single P2P program. All the downloads have been from Usenet.
Personally, I’d prefer a slower, but unlimited account over a faster one with a quota. If I had a faster account, I’d just ant to download more and would quickly use up my quota. At a slower speed, I can’t donload things as quickly, but at least I wouldn’t have to worry about how much I download.
For whatever it’s worth, when I signed up for AT&T DSL, I specifically asked them if they had any usage caps and they said no. I mentioned that I’d heard of other companies throttling heavy users or imposing quotas and I was assured that AT&T didn’t do that. Of course now they’re planning to filter everything, but that’s a separate issue.
The solution is obvious if you look at just about any other buisness.
Supply more of your product!
I would prefer slower speeds, but UNLIMITED. (even those they say it’s already unlimited) Let me say it again, un-li-mi-ted traffic!
The BitTorrent problem is not the only one to argue about. People like to watch good quality streaming videos on the web, TV Shows which are not really copyrighted in the U.S. and use other high bandwidth applications: gaming, video chatting, etc…
It is good to have a 12Mb Comcast Power Boost for such things, for instance, but when you get cut off by USING ITS 1/8 capacities (which is roughly 500GB over the month), does it also means that Comcast CAN NOT handle fully loaded 1.5Mb channel over the month (which also gives 500GB of dl data), while Europe providers can handle much more? Are we live in America, or in Russia, where such thing like traffic limits are still exist? At least in Russia providers DO SAY to their customers what they should expect and what plan should they purchase considering certain traffic limitations. From Comcast we don’t hear anything, we still think that the Internet excess is unlimited. Well, that’s not true and they know this. Using their monopoly rights of a second largest internet provider they can do whatever they want and wait a little bit more before start upgrading their s**** network. But like someone said in here, “sooner or later they would have to do this”.
Companies exist for the customers, and the customers are those in right to decide what they want!
P.s. The thing about 500Gb of bandwidth per month is near truth. I heard some cases that after using “unlimited” Comcast internet connection people were getting cut off. I don’t think that they’ve downloaded much over 500Gb, I would think even less that that, but still got cut off.
the real problem is misrepresentation of the product. i had a friend recently switch over to my isp [twsocal] and listened in on the phone call and they said it was unlimited - now in our case it is :D - but when i was up north in comcast area i asked them how much bw was alotted per month and they said unlimted i grabbed a few things [600-700 gigs or something in like 2 weeks or so] they called my dad threatening to cancel his service! what a crock of sh1t!! lol
look isp’s we all know you are overselling, but there is a limit to how far you can overpromise before it catches up with you - take a lesson from verizon and just spend the cash
I think solution no. 4 is the best
The only internet switching and being the smartest in my book would have to be verizon…. this company has been falling behind becuase of comcast and becase of there internet being really good and relibable(me being old customer b4 throttling). Im currently waiting for that lovley fiberoptics to get around my neighbor hood. thats the only downside… i feel like shit going for 1mb/s dls to a lowsey 150k/bs max preety much with verizon dsl. but ive used fios before and my god will everyone fall in love with it.(of course i was using the 50mb/s connection :D) 4 xbox360 playing h3. 3 computers wirelessy connected all playing css and me downloading off of limewire at 2mb/s and someone else downloaidn ga movie at 5 mb/s
iono all i can say its really really fast :D! Have fun and be safe.
(friends dont let other friends go without protection so why risk it…. Use peerguardian2)
-leet (i miss demonoid </3)
[quote comment="284270"]The only internet switching and being the smartest in my book would have to be verizon…. this company has been falling behind becuase of comcast and becase of there internet being really good and relibable(me being old customer b4 throttling). Im currently waiting for that lovley fiberoptics to get around my neighbor hood. thats the only downside… i feel like shit going for 1mb/s dls to a lowsey 150k/bs max preety much with verizon dsl. but ive used fios before and my god will everyone fall in love with it.(of course i was using the 50mb/s connection :D) 4 xbox360 playing h3. 3 computers wirelessy connected all playing css and me downloading off of limewire at 2mb/s and someone else downloaidn ga movie at 5 mb/s
iono all i can say its really really fast :D! Have fun and be safe.
(friends dont let other friends go without protection so why risk it…. Use peerguardian2)
-leet (i miss demonoid </3)[/quote]
[quote comment="284270"]The only internet switching and being the smartest in my book would have to be verizon…. this company has been falling behind becuase of comcast and becase of there internet being really good and relibable(me being old customer b4 throttling). Im currently waiting for that lovley fiberoptics to get around my neighbor hood. thats the only downside… i feel like shit going for 1mb/s dls to a lowsey 150k/bs max preety much with verizon dsl. but ive used fios before and my god will everyone fall in love with it.(of course i was using the 50mb/s connection :D) 4 xbox360 playing h3. 3 computers wirelessy connected all playing css and me downloading off of limewire at 2mb/s and someone else downloaidn ga movie at 5 mb/s
iono all i can say its really really fast :D! Have fun and be safe.
(friends dont let other friends go without protection so why risk it…. Use peerguardian2)
-leet (i miss demonoid </3)[/quote]
[quote comment="278652"]Charging for bandwidth uses makes sense indeed, as long as the prizes are reasonable.
Should be ‘prices’.[/quote]
Solution:
Slowing the connection down by usage and pricing the usage differenty to time. Example:
00-06 price 1 tick(s)/Mb
06-08 pirce 2 tick(s)/Mb
08-16 price 3 tick(s)/Mb
16-21 price 5 tick(s)/Mb
21-00 price 3 tick(s)/Mb
Now 300 ticks will slow your connection down by 30%, 800 ticks will slow it to 50% and so on…
Then at midnight your connection and tick counter is reseted to full speed.
ISP traffic shaping/throttling does not work and never will work. These ISP morons have bought a false bill of goods.
Since the shaping era began everyone I know, leaves their computers on for longer and downloads as many files as possible. Similar to filling a bucket with water. Either you turn the tap, fill it fast and turn it off, or you fill it by letting the faucet drip for days on end. Often you let it overflow and let the tap drip continuously. The net result of which is, more bandwidth is being used. The ISP’s in turn do not gain anything other than dollars from ‘false’ advertising, which they need so they can pay consultants and companies for ‘traffic shaping’ which does not work.
These ISP clowns are living in the 90’s, sending cutsy e-mails to grandma with a geewhiz fancy typewriter.
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