[Chrysalis]

I never said copyright is the only reason but I suspect its a factor. It wouldnt surprise me if someone whether it be the government or media companies have leaned on the major isp's and this has led to protocol throttling been favoured over other methods. If there was no protocol shaping then obviously something would be there in its place whether it be different types of throttling or usage limits. However to say protocol shaping is not expensive in mantime and not problematic is wrong so it is clearly not the best technical option to use yet it is popular here. Whilst some isp's in other countries may have deployed protocol shaping the extenct its been used is nowhere near the level its used here and some countries regulators have even gave it the thumbs down.

A few didnt like the 2mbit throttle on entanet is true but they were a small minority and didnt realise the alternative of allowing things to naturally congest would have been far worse, although iplayer was never a reason I heard and that doesnt require 2mbit so I cant think as to why that would be mentioned, when they switched was after they moved to WBC 21CN, that system didnt work so well with ALT plus at that time the guy who designed ALT had left the company. They initially tried to stick with just ALT and the protocol shaping came later. the most common complaint I heard related to ALT was more that people with high sync speeds felt they were been unfairly treated as the ALT capping system effectively left people with low sync speeds less affected, if you had a sync speed of 2mbit or below you were effectively never throttled. That really wouldnt apply to VM since everyone syncs at equal speeds although there is differing packages.

The point been that at 2mbit just about everything will still work. Now we have HD streaming which may possibly be affected but I would expect a modern day version of ALT to have a higher base limit than 2mbit anyway as that ALT was years ago.