Should Virgin Media Throttle p2p traffic?

[deed02392]

You are being pedantic. We have control in the sense that no one is or can be silenced on the internet at present. I think you need to look at the situation in Egypt. Why do you think their government found the need to take away their internet connectivity? It's a powerful tool for the people and not something which should have ANY restrictions imposed on it.

Originally Posted by deed02392

You are being pedantic. We have control in the sense that no one is or can be silenced on the internet at present. I think you need to look at the situation in Egypt. Why do you think their government found the need to take away their internet connectivity? It's a powerful tool for the people and not something which should have ANY restrictions imposed on it.

You say "pedantic", I say "factual"....

You state that no one "is or can be silenced on the internet at present" - does that apply to newspapers' web sites, or forums like this, as I think you may find that we can be "silenced" if we break the law, or libel (or allow our members to libel) someone.

You also state that that it is "not something which should have ANY restrictions imposed upon it" - how about bandwidth restrictions due to geographic/technology limitations, how about legal restrictions such a copyright/libel/criminal acts, and how about the basic economic restriction that it all has to be built and paid for, as the IntraWeeb Faeries can't actually hedge their Magic Faerie Gold™ in the Futures Markets to pay for the technology stack and fibre that is the backbone of the internet?

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by deed02392

You are being pedantic. We have control in the sense that no one is or can be silenced on the internet at present. I think you need to look at the situation in Egypt. Why do you think their government found the need to take away their internet connectivity? It's a powerful tool for the people and not something which should have ANY restrictions imposed on it.

Oh you're talking about censorship. Not the same as protocol shaping to be honest.

Sections of the Internet are censored for legal reasons, shaping is network management, nothing more. No-one is mooting wholesale censorship however it should be noted that many people demanding their 'rights' do so on media belonging to others.

There is nothing stopping 'the people' from publishing content however sooner or later you have to use a company's network, perhaps their servers too.

Shaping is not censorship anymore than an engaged tone on a telephone line is violating your right to converse. Blocking the protocols outright is censorship, this isn't happening.

The Internet is a collection of privately owned networks, alongside some state ones, linked together again mostly via privately owned interconnects.

You see where I'm going with this. It's a network run mostly to make money, unless every country in the world nationalises all their assets it will remain as such.

Working in the field for a decade has perhaps jaded me a touch as to the more spiritual nature of the interwebs

[craigj2k12]

well 32 people say no and only 26 say yes, so virgin should stop all p2p management with immediate effect



LOL

[Sirius]

Originally Posted by craigj2k11

well 32 people say no and only 26 say yes, so virgin should stop all p2p management with immediate effect



LOL

Oh well back to dial up speeds

[Ignitionnet]

Or even, perish the thought, higher end connections that cost a quid or more per Mbps.

[craigj2k12]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Or even, perish the thought, higher end connections that cost a quid or more per Mbps.

it would only cost a quid a month if you only used the net at peak times

[deed02392]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Oh you're talking about censorship. Not the same as protocol shaping to be honest.

Sections of the Internet are censored for legal reasons, shaping is network management, nothing more. No-one is mooting wholesale censorship however it should be noted that many people demanding their 'rights' do so on media belonging to others.

There is nothing stopping 'the people' from publishing content however sooner or later you have to use a company's network, perhaps their servers too.

Shaping is not censorship anymore than an engaged tone on a telephone line is violating your right to converse. Blocking the protocols outright is censorship, this isn't happening.

The Internet is a collection of privately owned networks, alongside some state ones, linked together again mostly via privately owned interconnects.

You see where I'm going with this. It's a network run mostly to make money, unless every country in the world nationalises all their assets it will remain as such.

Working in the field for a decade has perhaps jaded me a touch as to the more spiritual nature of the interwebs

I actually see them as the same thing over the long term. I see traffic shaping as a step towards traffic prioritisation, hence corporations buying traffic, ISP's selling exclusivity to the highest bidder, the segmentation of the web and eventually the end of the global, 'free' internet as we know it. ISP's can own all the hardware and fibre they want, but they have no right over the traffic that goes through it as the responsibility they so wish to distance themselves from (i.e. copyright infringement).

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by deed02392

I actually see them as the same thing over the long term. I see traffic shaping as a step towards traffic prioritisation, hence corporations buying traffic, ISP's selling exclusivity to the highest bidder, the segmentation of the web and eventually the end of the global, 'free' internet as we know it. ISP's can own all the hardware and fibre they want, but they have no right over the traffic that goes through it as the responsibility they so wish to distance themselves from (i.e. copyright infringement).

Traffic has been shaped on public networks for over a decade and that hasn't happened yet. That's just considering hardware appliances, it's of course perfectly feasible to deprioritise by having certain destinations you don't like very much crammed together on cheap congested transit and give uncongested connectivity to others.

ISPs are perfectly allowed to inspect traffic in an automated fashion for network management purposes without losing common carrier protection or violating privacy - see RIPA for more details.

[deed02392]

Originally Posted by Hugh

You say "pedantic", I say "factual"....

You state that no one "is or can be silenced on the internet at present" - does that apply to newspapers' web sites, or forums like this, as I think you may find that we can be "silenced" if we break the law, or libel (or allow our members to libel) someone.

If you have a message to get out, you can do so now to the whole world, anonymously; which for some people is equivalent to safely. Individual websites can be 'silenced', obviously, but because of the nature of the web at present, that would not be of any effect in censoring what people might need to say.

Are you unable to address why you think Egypt felt the need to take it down completely?

You also state that that it is "not something which should have ANY restrictions imposed upon it" - how about bandwidth restrictions due to geographic/technology limitations, how about legal restrictions such a copyright/libel/criminal acts, and how about the basic economic restriction that it all has to be built and paid for the [...] technology stack and fibre that is the backbone of the internet?

If they have oversubscribed their hardware, they better be ready to compensate those who aren't receiving the advertised service. I'm happy to accept contention ratios and 95th percentiles, as long as I'm told about them up front.

---------- Post added at 11:39 ---------- Previous post was at 11:34 ----------

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Traffic has been shaped on public networks for over a decade and that hasn't happened yet. That's just considering hardware appliances, it's of course perfectly feasible to deprioritise by having certain destinations you don't like very much crammed together on cheap congested transit and give uncongested connectivity to others.

ISPs are perfectly allowed to inspect traffic in an automated fashion for network management purposes without losing common carrier protection or violating privacy - see RIPA for more details.

I know it has happened for a long time already, but I think you'll agree it is a much hotter topic now, hence this thread. It's this "you don't like very much" aspect of the traffic management which is wrong. Why should any one person be allowed to make that decision? How can they claim to represent the wishes of all the owners of the traffic?

ISPs may be allowed under the pretense they wouldn't be able to afford to do it on a big brother scale. I'd like to clearly state just because RIPA allows it, it most definitely does not mean it's right or A Good Idea.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by deed02392

I know it has happened for a long time already, but I think you'll agree it is a much hotter topic now, hence this thread. It's this "you don't like very much" aspect of the traffic management which is wrong. Why should any one person be allowed to make that decision? How can they claim to represent the wishes of all the owners of the traffic?

Because they own the infrastructure that traffic is using to get from source to destination or vice-versa. If the owners of that content, or the requesters, don't like the policies of their current carrier they can always find an alternate one or create their own.

[Chrysalis]

have a look at this data from last 5 minutes downloading of an ftp server.

before the green line is on the port encrypted ftp transfer, after green line is same server but after changed to port 443. This wasnt affected 2 days ago, so VM appear to be getting more agressive in throttling non p2p/nntp stuff yet I see no change of statement on their site.

[Ignitionnet]

Try it again, might have been a one-off ID failure.

[Chrysalis]

still the same, it wasnt one large file so was multiple connections anyway during that graph.

Will test again after midnight to see if it changes behaviour.

[craigj2k12]

if you look at the virgin forums, they are updaing their throttling policies onto the network quite regularly, the one iv been following is the large 20+ page thread about black ops, in which they keep updaing the traffic management to the network with no difference to black ops, but peeps on here are saying that other things are changing!