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Originally Posted by rdhw
You need to distinguish between traffic received because it was addressed to you, and traffic received because it was broadcast or multicast, and received by everyone. In any scheme for volume based charging, only traffic addressed to you (or sent by you) would be accounted for.
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You do need to distinguish but isn't that easier said than done. That would mean that NTL 'monitoring equipment' would have to sit *in-line* of the data path for every user.
Say NTL can can do that (which they could but probably won't). How would they differentiate traffic. If someone sends me 1500 byte ping packets that my router drops. Would that count? Probably not. If a virus sends me stream upon stream of TCP SYN messages on port X would that count? They are addressed to my IP address? OK what if NTL say only 'conversations count' or established TCP sessions count as they know then that a device is talking to another device. What if I have BTs broadband telephone service (VoIP) that uses UDP and doesn't have the TCP 3 way handshake? or how about the next great application whatever that may be or the next virus that looks like a valid application.
NTL are probably going to use SNMP to gather interface statistics similar to what I have done already or netflow stats from the cisco UBRs. Netflow would allow NTL to see what IP application or ports are using the bandwidth as opposed to SNMP interface stats that only show how much bandwidth is in use and by whom. Connece the two sources together and you now know who is using all your bandwidth, how much they are using and what that usage comprises of.
Whether NTL can distinguish between 'intended traffic' and count it towards the traffic allowance and the 'un-intended' I don't know. We will all just have to wait and see.