NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: Keith Dawson: uTorrent Responds Regarding UDP Usage
The concern that the P2P bulk transfer switch to UDP will affect VoIP, DNS, or other UDP traffic such as online gaming is legitimate so it can hardly be characterized as nonsense. UDP is normally used by self-throttling mostly low-bandwidth applications. Because UDP end-points don't respond to dropped packets the way TCP end-points do, most routers leave the UDP traffic alone when there is congestion and they only drop TCP packets which respond by cutting their flow rate in half. Besides, there's no point in forcing a 30 kbps gaming UDP data stream to slow down because it's already very slow and it's only fair to ask the bursty applications that have no bandwidth limit operating at 100 to 500 times faster to take a hit on bandwidth. Now here comes BitTorrent with their well-meaning but problematic change to take a bulk file transfer protocol and stick it on UDP. So instead of tiny 30-80 Kbps VoIP and online gaming UDP streams, we're now looking at multiple UDP streams operating at 15,000 Kbps per user. Now we're forcing the network operator to change their routers inside the Internet to start managing UDP flows by dropping UDP packets whenever a link is congested. Where there was once some level of protection for legitimate low-bandwidth UDP flows or tiny spurts of data being sent by protocols like DNS, they now lose protection unless the network operator implements more sophisticated network management schemes that can exclude traditional UDP applications from packet drops. While this can be done by analyzing the traffic patterns, it isn't easy or cheap to implement on every router on the Internet. When we think about all the ramifications of a major change like this to a protocol that makes up a significant portion of all Internet traffic, it becomes clear that maybe BitTorrent didn't think this through enough. George -----Original Message----- From: nnsquad-bounces+george_ou=lanarchitect.net@nnsquad.org [mailto:nnsquad-bounces+george_ou=lanarchitect.net@nnsquad.org] On Behalf Of Lauren Weinstein Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008 6:20 PM To: nnsquad@nnsquad.org Cc: lauren@vortex.com Subject: [ NNSquad ] Keith Dawson: uTorrent Responds Regarding UDP Usage ------- Forwarded Message Date: Mon, 01 Dec 2008 18:45:32 -0500 To: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com> From: Keith Dawson <kadawson@mac.com> Subject: Re: [ NNSquad ] Richard Bennett's Take on uTorrent / UDP / VoIP >Richard Bennett's Take on uTorrent / UDP / VoIP >http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/01/richard_bennett_utorrent_udp/ Just now in the process of publicizing uTorrent's response, which can be summed up as: "utter nonsense." http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/12/01/bittorrent-register-report-protoc ol-change-utter-nonsense http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?pid=379206#p379206 - -- KDawson ------- End of Forwarded Message