NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: Comments on NNSquad Purpose
At 12:24 AM 11/15/2007, Phil Karn wrote: >Suppose I send [pictures] out to my family with Bit Torrent. Given how it works, I won't have to send a full copy to each recipient. My system will only send a little over one copy of each picture, and the others all receive and send one copy each until they all have everything. Then it stops. Is that abusive? It's not how BitTorrent works. With BitTorrent, you have to send at least as much as you receive, so the total bandwidth each client uses is at least doubled. BitTorrent is designed to offload bandwidth demand, and possibly speed up the transfer, by co-opting bandwidth from other ISPs bandwidth. It does not conserve bandwidth; in fact, it wastes it because there is no opportunity for caching as there is with HTTP. >>Also, at least 99% of all file "sharing" is in fact illegal piracy of >>copyrighted material. (The infinitesimal portion that remains can be >>done by other means. > >Does that include my new baby pictures? Should I have to mail out a stack of CDs because you consider them too unimportant for "your" network? Very few people would send out baby pictures via BitTorrent. By far, the absolutely overwhelming majority of BitTorrent traffic is pirated music, video, movies, and software. >Who are *you* to decide which of your users' applications are "important" and "unimportant"? I'm a service provider who is trying to make sure my customers get good service. My customers want me to prioritize real time traffic and de-prioritize non-interactive traffic such as file downloads. What's more, they don't want my upstream pipes to be congested by bandwidth hogs. >And how does FTP use less resources than Bit Torrent? (I'm assuming that all files have been compressed with the same algorithms.) Do you have smaller outbound upstream pipes than inbound pipes? Actually, some of our pipes ARE smaller upstream than downstream. (These are the ones that feed our Web cache.) However, as I've already mentioned, BitTorrent at least doubles the load, because it requires you to transmit as much as you receive. And you can cache FTP. You can't cache BitTorrent. >And are you aware of the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA? Frankly, I don't care if I can manage to get off the hook. I don't have deep pockets. If I'm sued, I'm already screwed. >I think I have a way to make both of us happy. We users encrypt all our content, including our protocol headers, on an end-to-end basis so you can't discriminate against any application or transport protocol. That makes us users happy. And because you can't read any of our traffic, you can't be held responsible for its content. That should make you ISPs happy. Does this sound like a good approach? No. Because you still will be attempting to hog and monopolize bandwidth. That's still abusive behavior. --Brett Glass, LARIAT.NET