Traffic Shaping

[Chris W]

Originally Posted by unlimited

Having been on the inside and outside of NTL, It saddens me to watch them going down the road they are. They have fantastic staff who will help the customer all they can, Then they have these money grabbing idiots called senior management, who have no idea what a network is or where you would find one.
who have one and only one task in life, get as much as you can out of this thing called a network, Dont spend money on it, then reduce the use of the network while trying everything in there power to charge more for it whilst giving even less.

You might think i am bitter and twisted but i have seen the change over the last year and i dont like what i am seeing.

Can't agree with you here-

I agree that the network has been allow to degrade due to underinvestment, however nothing that can be done to change that fact.

What ntl have to do now is be proactive and forward thinking- in order to improve the network would take time and cost big £ÃÆ ’‚£Ãà¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã…¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚£s. That kind of investment would big price hikes- not something that would go down well with current customers, and something that would reduce the number of new customers as well.

If DOCSIS 3 is going to be implemented then this will cost a lot, and will mean ntl has an excellent network to utilise, IMO it is best that ntl shape in order to "save up" for DOCSIS 3 and other network imrovements that secure a good future, than spending now on a network which will require continuous spending.

The shaping is going to be implemented between 6pm and midnight- imo people who need to use newsgroups/ p2p (the traffic likely to be affected most) have plenty of other hours in the day to download. These customers are the one that provide the most strain on the network, and they are the customers that every ISP wants rid of... so if i were ntl i would take the "well if they leave then nevermind" attitude. Better to lose one customer who downloads huge amounts via p2p and affects the service of others, than 10 "normal" internet users who get annoyed that it takes ages to load a webpage when they get home from work.

unlimited, if you don't want a shaped connection then why are you going to UKOnline???

Originally Posted by Chris W

Can't agree with you here-

I agree that the network has been allow to degrade due to underinvestment, however nothing that can be done to change that fact.

What ntl have to do now is be proactive and forward thinking- in order to improve the network would take time and cost big £ÃÆ ’‚£Ãà¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã…¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚£s. That kind of investment would big price hikes- not something that would go down well with current customers, and something that would reduce the number of new customers as well.

If DOCSIS 3 is going to be implemented then this will cost a lot, and will mean ntl has an excellent network to utilise, IMO it is best that ntl shape in order to "save up" for DOCSIS 3 and other network improvements that secure a good future, than spending now on a network which will require continuous spending.

The shaping is going to be implemented between 6pm and midnight- IMO people who need to use newsgroups/ p2p (the traffic likely to be affected most) have plenty of other hours in the day to download. These customers are the one that provide the most strain on the network, and they are the customers that every ISP wants rid of... so if i were ntl i would take the "well if they leave then nevermind" attitude. Better to lose one customer who downloads huge amounts via p2p and affects the service of others, than 10 "normal" internet users who get annoyed that it takes ages to load a web page when they get home from work.

unlimited, if you don't want a shaped connection then why are you going to UK Online???

All isp's will shape. But not all isps release any problematic updates on a Friday so no one See's it.

Other isp's tell there customers what they are doing in emails,
Other isp's give them the chance to change if they dont like it.

I have a connection that is up and down like a w***** draws and i know why. I have no intention of being a Ginny pig for there tests again. Far as i am concerned what i experienced for a month not long back will happen again. I pay for a connection which i use to download from newsgroups, I did that over night and i continue to do so i dont download between 6 and 11 as i am playing online games. So why should i suffer between 6 and 11 so they dont have to invest in the network.

And one final point i will be getting up to 22meg for 29.99, I am 2.3 km from the exchange so expect to get about 14 to 16 meg. Now that to me is much better value. I have also taken the opportunity to get a BT line so i can get all the extras that are out there ie caller display, Remember that has been on BT's network for years but is not seen as necessary on NTL's where i live. So all in all i am moving to a better option as far as i am concerned.

[etccarmageddon]

that's £29.99 plus £10ish BT line rental.

[Chrysalis]

yeah I just only recently noticed ukonline are doing shaping, I am going to have a read of adslguide later to see how bad it is.

[Simply Gray]

Homechoice installed on Friday. Will cancel NTL on Monday.

[Ignition]

Originally Posted by Simply Gray

Homechoice installed on Friday. Will cancel NTL on Monday.

Don't forget if you can do it to switch the TV off entirely, will give you the other 2Mbps you aren't getting from your internet

I get about 940kB/s on Homechoice

Originally Posted by etccarmageddon

that's £29.99 plus £10ish BT line rental.

Indeed just like my £10.00 line rental to NTL on top of my £24.99 to NTL. I need a phone so no matter if i had BT or NTL i need to pay for one

[DVS]

Originally Posted by Ignition

So long as it's not looked at by a human being nothing wrong with that at all. No privacy implication there, it's their network you are using to transport traffic, they can do with it what they will.

That is bull IMO on mutliple levels. I use NTLs phone system, does that give them the right to listen to my phone calls, even with non-human means. I very much doubt that as it would surely be classified as an illegal wiretap. Why should a data network, which by the way carries VOIP traffic, be treated any differently? If they are shaping at the transport layer then that is a different matter, something I'd appropriate to line routing on the PSTN, but deep packet inspection is simply wrong and IMO a breach of my privacy. Wether it's a computer or a human being doing the inspection is irrelevant!

[Ignition]

Originally Posted by DVS

That is bull IMO on mutliple levels. I use NTLs phone system, does that give them the right to listen to my phone calls, even with non-human means. I very much doubt that as it would surely be classified as an illegal wiretap. Why should a data network, which by the way carries VOIP traffic, be treated any differently? If they are shaping at the transport layer then that is a different matter, something I'd appropriate to line routing on the PSTN, but deep packet inspection is simply wrong and IMO a breach of my privacy. Wether it's a computer or a human being doing the inspection is irrelevant!

I guess you aren't a big fan of the fact ntl are legally obliged to be able to monitor your phone calls at any time.

It's bull on zero levels, your IP traffic isn't protected by any legal statute and no record is made of the contents of the packets merely the protocol being used.

Think outside of the OSI 7 layer model and you're there. The traffic shaping gear will know you were using Bittorrent, it won't have stored which torrent you were using. To gain knowledge of exactly which torrent you are downloading is to assume legal responsibility for your behaviour (being aware of exactly what a customer is doing suggests responsibility for it) and puts ntl at legal risk.

I hope this in some small way reassures. Yes ntl will be able to tell that you were using Bittorrent, VoIP, http, etc, however the actual contents of those sessons remains a mystery.

The only reason for the packet inspection is because a layer 4 lookup on the protocols is trivial to avoid.

[MrBen]

I've been told that traffic shaping is not currently active at the moment.

I was also told that shaping might work in the following ways...
(Note: This info was given as a personal opinion so may or may not be correct)

• On-net transfers (i.e. between ntl: customers) will not be shaped because each customer is paying ntl: for their bandwidth.
• ntl: users receiving data from another ISP will not be shaped because they are sucking from another ISP. Having said that the ntl: user maybe subject to shaping on the other network
• A non-ntl: receiving data from an ntl: customer is likely to be shaped because they are taking data from ntl:'s network but are not paying ntl: for the bandwidth

Ben

[jtwn]

Thats quite interesting

Originally Posted by Mrbean

I've been told that traffic shaping is not currently active at the moment.

I was also told that shaping might work in the following ways...
(Note: This info was given as a personal opinion so may or may not be correct)

• On-net transfers (i.e. between ntl: customers) will not be shaped because each customer is paying ntl: for their bandwidth.ntl
• : users receiving data from another ISP will not be shaped because they are sucking from another ISP. Having said that the ntl: user maybe subject to shaping on the other network
• non-ntl: receiving data from an ntl: customer is likely to be shaped because they are taking data from ntl:'s network but are not paying ntl: for the bandwidthburn

So if i read this correctly the following could happen.

I want to upload my latest convention pictures to my non ntl hosted website i would have been shaped.

I want to make a skype call to my friend in Norway i would have been shaped.

I want to make changes to my Non ntl hosted website i would have been shaped.

The list goes on.

Waits for the possibility of this :- ........"if you pay a additional charge we will not shape your non NTL provided voip calls"

[Ignition]

Originally Posted by MrBen

I've been told that traffic shaping is not currently active at the moment.

I was also told that shaping might work in the following ways...
(Note: This info was given as a personal opinion so may or may not be correct)

• On-net transfers (i.e. between ntl: customers) will not be shaped because each customer is paying ntl: for their bandwidth.

OK, not unknown I guess. Doesn't do anything to tackle local congestion but does improve customer experience potentially.

• ntl: users receiving data from another ISP will not be shaped because they are sucking from another ISP. Having said that the ntl: user maybe subject to shaping on the other network

Umm ok. Even though ntl will potentially be paying transit costs regardless of the direction of the traffic this is considered as not being a major issue.

• A non-ntl: receiving data from an ntl: customer is likely to be shaped because they are taking data from ntl:'s network but are not paying ntl: for the bandwidth

Well no I'd expect to see that shaped more because upstream bandwidth is limited on the cable network but if this is the case this seems to be all about trying to save a few quid trying to save transit and peering setup costs. Considering that various other ISPs are busily putting multiple 10Gbit ports into LINX, Amsix, etc, this seems lame.

If this goes ahead on those terms hope you aren't the lucky person who has to deal with the depeering requests when you ruin the traffic patterns.

I'd suspect with this will come some traffic redirection, directing requests from on-net customers to other on-net customers to fulfill, which can even potentially increase upload congestion from customers getting hits they wouldn't usually. I guess that'll be where the caching comes in...

This the first part of a project to turn the whole ntl network into one giant LAN?

[trebor]

could this traffic shaping thing be having an adverse effect on my general internet connection over the last couple of months. since this topic started my connection has been lost so many times I've lost count .all the lights go out on the modem for a few minutes up to a few hours. in the evenings the connection is very poor lots of slow pages, pages not found and dropped gaming connections.

[Fawkes]

Originally Posted by Ignition

I guess you aren't a big fan of the fact ntl are legally obliged to be able to monitor your phone calls at any time.

It's bull on zero levels, your IP traffic isn't protected by any legal statute and no record is made of the contents of the packets merely the protocol being used.

Think outside of the OSI 7 layer model and you're there. The traffic shaping gear will know you were using Bittorrent, it won't have stored which torrent you were using. To gain knowledge of exactly which torrent you are downloading is to assume legal responsibility for your behaviour (being aware of exactly what a customer is doing suggests responsibility for it) and puts ntl at legal risk.

I hope this in some small way reassures. Yes ntl will be able to tell that you were using Bittorrent, VoIP, http, etc, however the actual contents of those sessons remains a mystery.

The only reason for the packet inspection is because a layer 4 lookup on the protocols is trivial to avoid.

Ok, I understand that NTL will only be looking at the protocols and ports its users are using and that this is done on a machine level. But I’m still concerned about how this general data is used. IF it is only used to prioritise time sensitive traffic like VoIP than that’s fine. But if it is used in the way I described in a previous post:

• restrict traffic to destination X over destination Y because NTL has some deal with Y.
  
• use or sell the data for marking purposes.
  
• charge different rates for different data types.

My electricity supplier doesn't care if I'm watch TV or mowing the lawn. They charge for what I use.

My water supply is unmetered, but even if it wasn't the water company wouldn't monitor if I was taking baths or showers.

I want an ISP that can provide me with a connection to the internet, what’s so hard about that?

If NTL needs to change its business model or pricing to remain profitable so be it. But currently I pay for a connection. That connection is capable of 10MB download and 512k upload, subject to a fair use policy of 75GB per month.
NTL need to inform me if that changes.