Virgin Media to dump neutrality and target BitTorrent users

[rashlan]

Originally Posted by Broadbandings

Then wouldn't something like P4P be a good option? Both save cash and increase customer satisfaction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proacti...pation_for_P2P

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...downloads.html

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...peer-tech.html

Maybe products from Cachelogic?

ISPs have options to think outside the box, away from the corporate network model of throttling / blocking anything you don't like. Distributed network caching, utilising anycasting, CDNs, these guys have multiple datacentres, extensive control over their networks and their connectivity to the outside world.

I'm also not sure why you keep mentioning transit as a major cost driver - it isn't. The major cost driver is and always will be the last mile bandwidth on an ISP network. Less than a tenner per Mbit/s/month on transit pales somewhat compared to the cost of an optical resegmentation, pulling KM of fibre, installing lasers, civils of building a new node, a few grand on a CMTS card to supply another 38Mbit/s to 400 customers.

Joe Average's 10GB/month costs VM at most £1.25 assuming 128kbps peak usage and being 100% transit traffic. This is why STM is there, to lower the spike at peak times from heavy users. Transit charges are at 95th percentile so it's purely based on peak usage, which STM reduces.

BT throttling on cable is nothing at all to do with transit bandwidth, no cable ISP throttles torrents to reduce their transit bill, they throttle them to reduce their upstream loading - this is why cable ISPs in Canada and the US only throttle uploading, and why Comcast's equipment exclusively targetted upstream. In the case of DSL ISPs they throttle to reduce interconnect bills with incumbents or load on ILEC rented CO/exchange links.

Is there a significant difference with the cost of suplying a user with say 50GB worth of data for virgin compared to O2/Be there?

[gunner45]

Originally Posted by Broadbandings

In a perfect world of a managed network the following would be the case:

1) No prioritisation until a network component nears congestion.
2) No deprioritisation, only upwards prioritisation of realtime and interactive traffic.
3) Management sufficient to avoid degredation of real time and interactive traffic only, maximising use of network resources by allowing customers to use as much traffic as the network can deal with at the time with no additional restraint. If the capacity is there no reason to not have it used, managing to an arbitrary limit is wasteful.

This is perfectly possible but not necessarily easy.

Comcast has what looks like a good solution which, under heavy load, assigns lower priority to heavy users. It is protocol agnostic, meaning it doesn’t discriminate against certain kinds of traffic versus other types.

Typically, says Comcast, a CMTS downsteam port has 275 modems sharing it, an upstream port 100 modems. The cable modem has a bootfile which is assigned by the DOCSIS protocol on startup. The bootfile contains a lot of information about your cable service, perhaps most importantly, how fast you can download/upload.

The traffic management occurs based on activity at the CMTS ports and is actually applied with a combination of flags set on your cable modem and those flags being processed on Comcast’s routers.

Here’s how it works:

1. Each port (keeping in mind it is either upload or download) is monitored independently.
2. Each cable modem has a flag for its current state
2.1. PBE - Priority Best Effort. The default state.
2.2. BE - Best Effort. A lower priority state. PBE traffic is prioritized below BE.
3. If a port reaches "Near Congestion State", which means that it has average over a certain threshold of utilization over a 15 minute period, network management will commence.
3.1. Downstream threshold: 80% utilization
3.2. Upstream threshold: 70% utilization
4. The network searches for users on that CMTS port that are in an "Extended High Consumption State", which means they have averaged over a certain threshold of utilization over a 15 minute period.
4.1. The user’s modem is set to BE.
4.2. Downstream and upstream threshold: 70% utilization
5. The network keeps the user in "Extended High Consumption State" until the user’s average utilization has dropped below the threshold for 15 minutes
5.1. User’s modem is set back to PBE.
5.2. Downstream and upstream threshold: 50% utilization
6. When in the BE state, all PBE traffic will be processed by the Comcast Internet routers before the BE traffic, regardless of the type of traffic, however the likelihood of it reaching a congested status is very low, and even in that case, the probability of dropped traffic is even lower.

So, if you are doing large downloads and if the network is in danger of being congested, you’ll likely be set to BE.

[cook1984]

Originally Posted by highroyds

Take a look. Thats telling me a whole different story.

That is a total, bare faced lie!

Once STM hits, you will not be able to download at full speed for an hour. Thus, it will be impossible to download a HD movie in one hour.

Okay, so at first there will not be any STM, but they know it's coming and will hit people in the middle of their contracts, so they know they can't actually offer that service for the full 18 month lock-in.

I am going to submit a complaint to the ASA about this.

[General Maximus]

where did you get 1 hour from? Once you hit stm that is it for 5 hours. They did say they were going to look at increasing the threshold on 50 mbit so you might be able to download 15gb for example before you hit stm so that you can easily download a HD movies.

Originally Posted by cook1984

I am going to submit a complaint to the ASA about this.

I think if more people complained then VM would not get away with all their advertising gimmicks, lets face it, vm broadband is not unlimited now isit, because you are limited to a certain amount of data you can download before BANG your stopped to x mb which is not what you agreed to pay for...you look at other countries with cable broadband and they do not have all these problems do they?

[Mick Fisher]

Originally Posted by i-Set

I think if more people complained then VM would not get away with all their advertising gimmicks, lets face it, vm broadband is not unlimited now isit, because you are limited to a certain amount of data you can download before BANG your stopped to x mb which is not what you agreed to pay for...you look at other countries with cable broadband and they do not have all these problems do they?

A memorable but flawed sentiment as the Goverment policy of "Light Regulation" is a license for ISP's, and most other businesses, to blatently rip off consumers without fear of any consequences save for the very occasional light slap on the wrist.

Our Government is so desperate for money that it is frightened to regulate business properly for the fear that it will move off-shore with the resulting revenue and job loss. They are however quite happy for us to subsidise the situation by being ripped off and suffering atrocious customer service.

It's really just another stealth tax.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by rashlan

Is there a significant difference with the cost of suplying a user with say 50GB worth of data for virgin compared to O2/Be there?

Nope.

---------- Post added at 08:49 ---------- Previous post was at 08:48 ----------

Originally Posted by gunner45

Comcast has what looks like a good solution which, under heavy load, assigns lower priority to heavy users. It is protocol agnostic, meaning it doesn’t discriminate against certain kinds of traffic versus other types.

Yep I posted on this solution elsewhere. It's by default giving all customers a better than best effort level of service and placing heavy users onto the normally default best effort tier.

As you mentioned it's also protocol agnostic in a similar manner to STM, which is nice.

[cook1984]

Originally Posted by General Maximus

where did you get 1 hour from? Once you hit stm that is it for 5 hours. They did say they were going to look at increasing the threshold on 50 mbit so you might be able to download 15gb for example before you hit stm so that you can easily download a HD movies.

You misunderstand. What I mean is that you would not be able to download at 50mb for one hour. On all current tiers, you cannot download at full speed for one hour during the day or the evening. You will be hit with STM first and your connection retarded to the point it's useless for anything beyond basic web browsing.

---------- Post added at 22:31 ---------- Previous post was at 22:24 ----------

Originally Posted by Broadbandings

Yep I posted on this solution elsewhere. It's by default giving all customers a better than best effort level of service and placing heavy users onto the normally default best effort tier.

Our ISP at work tried something like this a couple of years ago, when BT first changed their pricing from per ADSL connection to per back-end pipe and suddenly everyone couldn't even manage 50:1 ratios.

Being an IT outfit we pulled a lot of bandwidth. Drivers, applications, Windows Updates (200MB+ on a fresh Vista SP1 install) etc so at about 9:30AM we were automatically pushed onto the "slow pipe" with all the other "bandwidth hogs".

It was so bad we couldn't even browse the web, let alone download anything. Our business ground to a halt. We called our ISP and spent three hours complaining and demanding the service we paid for before they put us back on the "fast pipe". It was still as slow as it ever was, but at least we could work.

[Gary L]

Originally Posted by cook1984

You misunderstand. What I mean is that you would not be able to download at 50mb for one hour. On all current tiers, you cannot download at full speed for one hour during the day or the evening. You will be hit with STM first and your connection retarded to the point it's useless for anything beyond basic web browsing.

But the ad is for the 50Mb only. there isn't no STM on the 50Mb as yet, but will be later.

[cook1984]

Originally Posted by Gary L

But the ad is for the 50Mb only. there isn't no STM on the 50Mb as yet, but will be later.

This would be so much easier if you actually bothered to read the whole post.

I'll say it again since expecting you to scroll up and read it is apparently a bit too much to ask. VM know they are going to bring in STM next year at some point. Anyone who signs up now will be on an 18 month contract and will be hit with STM.

Looking at their advert, there is no mention of this, no footnote to qualify their claims. It looks like you get 50mb for 18 months. That is simply not true.

[Gary L]

Originally Posted by cook1984

This would be so much easier if you actually bothered to read the whole post.

I'll say it again since expecting you to scroll up and read it is apparently a bit too much to ask. VM know they are going to bring in STM next year at some point. Anyone who signs up now will be on an 18 month contract and will be hit with STM.

Looking at their advert, there is no mention of this, no footnote to qualify their claims. It looks like you get 50mb for 18 months. That is simply not true.

I'm with you all the way, and agree with you. but the fact is there is no STM on the 50Mb at this time. so complaining about an ad which will be changed when STM is introduced is a waste of time.

Getting people to sign up for 18 months when Virgin know full well that they will be applying STM to that contract very soon is different. and there will be a lot of comebacks from that later, but there isn't no STM at the moment so the ad isn't misleading in that sense.

Infact I said the same as what you're saying already. you could say that they were misleading people with all the promises and there being no STM to sign up. knowing that at a later date they will screw them all with the thing they were trying to get away from. STM.
http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/34698976-post118.html

[jkenney]

so, how long is this going to take? when will it be done? i can't wait much longer to be able to use my internet connection at normal hours again.

if they haven't throttled bittorrent users by january, i'll be switching to an isp that does.

[hoohim]

Maybe this has been addressed elsewhere but surely VM would be better off by making more use of their internal NG server and trying to get more peeps off external torrents that consume bandwidth onto this. Peeps are always going to be downloading films etc which are all freely available on the VM NGs. Fair enough you only have a 7 day rentention and no SSL but its fast and free and would surely free up external bandwidth making the business model more sustainable.

[Stabhappy]

It's not actually internal. It's hosted by a reseller in Amsterdam(?).

[hoohim]

bang goes that idea then