[Ignitionnet]

Entanet switched to protocol based shaping in late 2009. Evidently people who used their connections for a bit of iPlayer and You Tube here and there took exception to being throttled to 2Mbps due to the P2P and newsgroup kiddies caning the bandwidth.

ISPs can pick and choose the traffic they 'cripple' - the law says they can inspect packets for network management purposes. This activity is quite specifically permitted within RIPA.

The offence doesn't actually have a clear name, it's popularly called copyright theft unless one is actually engaging in it in which case it's called 'Making the most of my Internet connection.'

Copyright is perfectly transparently a factor in why ISPs protocol shape. P2P / NNTP are obvious and easy targets to shape, it's rare that the shaped content is actually legitimate and most of the time when it is it's someone trying to offload the cost of distributing their product onto ISPs.

If you're thinking that enforcement of copyright is why protocol shaping is employed that's not the case.

As far as protocol agnostic throttling goes there are cases for both. One case for the shaping is that it seems unfair for those who are engaging in streaming legitimate and paid for media to be throttled so that those who are using non-interactive applications can avoid being controlled. One case against it is that it's all network load so should be treated equally.

We've discussed capacity management in some depth previously. As noted with your ideas customers would be very happy until their ISP went under and you've a cynical approach from the company point of view due to previous experience which may or may not be typical. It's certainly getting quite old now if nothing else.