Skip navigation

 Login or Register | Member Centre

ISPs byte more than they can chew

PETER SVENSSON

Associated Press

Latest comment posted at 7:39 PM EDT 13/02/08

As Internet video gains in popularity, service providers are trying to figure out how to handle the increase in traffic and their methods have faced criticism – but users ain't seen nothing yet ...Read the full article

This conversation is closed

  1. brian bishop from Brantford, Canada writes: This author clearly doesn't have much of a grasp on how ISP's work.

    To start with, you already pay for both speed & bandwidth, to suggest otherwise is ludicrous. If your ISP didn't factor bandwidth into your subscription costs they'd all be broke right now.

    What you also don't realize is your ISP makes huge profits by you the subscriber not using all the bandwidth you've already paid for.

    All ISP's base their service on the "over-subscription model", they have more subscribers than they have the capacity to handle. They also purchase bandwidth in bulk, based on what your paying for your service & the number of subscribers they have. Whatever bandwidth isn't used at the end of each month becomes profit for them.

    So you see there using file-sharing as a method to maintain those profits. If they can prevent all that excess bandwidth already bought & paid for by you the subscriber from being used, it allows them to maintain those profits they don't want you to know about.
  2. brian bishop from Brantford, Canada writes: Here's an example of how taxed our ISP's truly are.

    I fire up Utorrent "a BT client" & begin downloading a 4.3GB movie, my speed rises to "250Kbps" then drops to under "30Kbps" within 20 or 30 minutes & stays that way the whole time until I'm done.

    At the same time I open up Firefox & begin downloading four Linux distros 700MB each via HTTP, my speeds reach 350Kbps & remain there the entire time until their all downloaded.

    Now I'm still downloading that 4.3GB movie, so I then connect to a couple FTP servers I know are fast & begin downloading several more huge 1GB plus files. Guess what, my FTP files are coming down at 250 - 300Kbps & I still finish them long before my movie.

    So why doesn't my ISP hinder my HTTP or FTP downloads if their networks are so over capacity, because their not & just like our governments get away with overtaxing tobacco & alcohol "sin-taxes", their playing the piracy angle "BT is bad"! Few people use FTP or HTTP to download large files anymore & as such they don't threaten the bandwidth profits they've been stealing from us all along!
  3. Brian Lowry from Fredericton, Canada writes: No real news here -- if you own a Mac and use Rogers Portable, it's pretty clear that they now routinely block all afp:// traffic, which severely handicaps Mac OSX when working with other Macs. At least with video they just limit traffic, but with Macs they have apparently decided to set up roadblocks -- great giant invisible roadblocks that you don't notice until you crash into them. Once a cable company, always a monopolistic enterprise, I suppose... sigh.
  4. The Wight from Canada writes: If ISPs are honestly are running up against the limits of their networks (which is not a completely honest stance as the first poster noted), then they are fools for choosing to filter specific transmission methods (bittorrent) or specific content (video streaming).

    It's not the HOW or the WHAT that they should be concerning themselves with, but the HOW MUCH. If they move past that point, they are plainly stepping into dangerous territory.

    For example, it became quite clear over time that my provider was filtering competitive VoIP telephone products, degrading their performance artificially to drive VoIP telephone users to their own product. Aside from the questionable legal status of artificially filtering competitors, they claimed that the bandwidth was just too much. Of course, the fact that I could download a single movie trailer from www. apple.ca and use more bandwidth in that 5 minutes than I would use in phone calls all month was the reality. The bandwidth excuse was the justification to play hardball with their competitors.
  5. Sam Snead from Canada writes: ISP used a burst traffic model in their subscription maximizing model. Large downloads are no longer burst traffic, bit torrent or otherwise, thus they are oversold. Pretty simple. Being oversold means less unused bandwidth, so less cost recovery.

    Man, I sure hope people are not willing to give away control and $hitloads of money to the ISPs, by falling for the BS, marketing and PR.
  6. Jason Young from digital identityvile, Canada writes: This, ladies and gents, is the rubicon. We are about to cross it, the heck with the liberal versus conservative, market versus regulation, this will have serous reverberations for the flow of information and knowledge well into the 21st century. Let us tread very carefully before we start sanctioning or controlling the flow of data and with it potentially ideas.
  7. grel grel from Toronto, Canada writes: Good AP article ... would have been nice if Canada's National Newspaper had added a sentence or two of Canadian content!!
  8. Gabriel Hall from Calgary, Canada writes: What a lopsided article. What the writer doesn't explain is the fact that "net neutrality" is preserving the right for a consumer to go anywhere on the net without having to be subject to the coddling of an ISP. The prime example is if your ISP strikes a deal to prioritize traffic to.. say... Royal Bank online banking because Royal bank decided to partner with your ISP. Royal Bank users would get great response, but they would have the right to limit the number of users or the amount of bandwidth going to TD bank. Therefore TD bank users may or may not get any access to their online banking at all just because they have selected the wrong ISP (Or possibly the only ISP in their area). There are many more examples, only being allowed to get information on the NDP political party, or only being allowed to book reservations at Fairmont hotels, or airplane tickets with Westjet, etc. etc...

    Net neutrality is much more than talking about usage limits and curbing P2P and possible piracy, it's about freedom of movement and choice.
  9. Mike Potter from Hamilton, Canada writes: Interesting article about why the US is failing in its job. Why don;t you run something about Canada. Our problem is plainly greed and poor management. Our major Isp's rely on the fact that as long as they maintain a common front there is no need to compete on features or upgrade their gear to meet the needs of their customers.

    p.s. T. Rog. I didn't cancel my service because of "customer remorse" ; I canceled because your people didn't even try to get it working (4 months and not one page was transmitted correctly)
  10. Lou Bix from Van, Canada writes: Some way I see the home customer getting screwed.
    If you loook at any of the ISP earning statements. The best margins are in selling bandwidth to the home customer. Also the price of the gear to build out the networks has bailed. The ISP's have got to build out the networks to keep up with demand.
  11. General Wolfe from Wolfe Island, Canada writes: The issue here is not whether ISP's can or should limit traffic but rather, that they should disclose, fully, what they are doing. How can a consumer make an informed decision as to which ISP to use unless there is full disclosure of the degree and method they use to restrict bandwidth. This is the forum where regulators must get involved. All ISP's should be required to provide a standardized disclosure so that you know what you are paying for and be able to determine whether or not you are getting what you pay for. ISP's advertise download speeds that they can't deliver. When you buy a car you may not experience the fuel economy figures as quoted on the spec sheet but at least the spec is based on standardized tests that allow reasonable comparison across competitors' products.
  12. Sean McManus from Toronto, Canada writes: Weak article, typical of G&M when it comes to technology.

    No mention of Canadian providers like Rogers, who freely disclose that there is a monthly cap for download & uploads, and the maximum up/down speed.

    Besides this net neutrality is neither written or guaranteed. Your ISP is a business, not a charity, and the Internet is a priviledge, not a right.
  13. Jeff Pritchard from Canada writes: Sean McManus writes: Besides this net neutrality is neither written or guaranteed. Your ISP is a business, not a charity, and the Internet is a priviledge, not a right.

    >>>

    Wrong. The internet is a right. Let's wake up to this crucial fact. Canada and Canadians would be better served by officials who appreciated this.

    To give over fiat control of this extremely powerful medium to a handful of companies would be sheer unadulterated idiocy, and ultimately harmful to the country and to this and future generations.
  14. Sean McManus from Toronto, Canada writes: The internet is a right? I dislike Rogers and Bell as much as anyone, and while I I think the "internet as a right" may be desirable but it has never been true, given its humble beginnings as a network between univerisity researchers, institutes and firms like IBM (hence their use of the 9.x.x.x address). It was never concieved to be some all encompassing free for all.

    The very backbone of the internet in North America has been in private hands for decades, and in other countries it's usually owned by the local PTT. Who do you think pays for the routers and cables and fibre between nodes? It's not a public entity (doesn't come from your taxes), so at some point there needs to be rules, controls, and fees.

    Just like TV, you may get "free" signals over the air, but that does not mean it's free for the providers.
  15. Jeff Pritchard from Canada writes: When, for all intents and purposes, access to the internet is a de facto requirement both of non-minimum wage level employment and of regular social intercourse, we have to recognize it as a fundamental right.

    You're right - at this stage the notion of having protections in place for low-cost, widespread internet access is more a desire than a fact. But there are other facts we can agree on - today, a person's quality of life is irreparably harmed if they do not have internet access. Policy decisions should be formed around facts like these, rather than disingenuous whinging by companies such as Rogers who are already making record profits, and who hide real-cost analysis behind layers of made-up statistics and technological and legal obfuscation.

    Especially here in Canada, where we have a notable dearth of ISP competitors. The more of a monopoly a company has, the less leeway they should be given.
  16. A. Nonymous from LinuxVille, United States writes: I do my part to help in the bandwidth crunch. I set my hosts file to block all ads from advertising networks.

    Most ads use lots of flash animation / sound and graphics which waste my valuable bandwidth.

    This also helps the ISP's, since I'm not sending any data to the advertising networks, further reducing the strain on their networks.

    Everyone should install adblock, or an ad-blocking filter to help reduce the load. I'm doing my part!
  17. Sam Snead from Canada writes: A good host file for blocking ads ... from ad servers ... is here

    everythingisnt.com/hosts
  18. James Van Leeuwen from Pincher Creek, Alberta, Canada writes: Right or privilege - the outcome will be the same. The fundamental problem here in North America is that network operators both own their infrastructure *and* deliver services by way of their infrastructure. Imagine if Wal-Mart owned all our streets and roads - eventually, all roads would lead to Wal-Mart. There is only one solution to this problem, and that is structural separation. Operations and services have to become structurally independent, with government oversight preventing *any* overlap. In short, broadband networks have to be managed like roadway networks. They are practically identical in a system-science context, and they will soon be equally significant to everyone's social and economic welfare. Eventually, broadband networks will become even more valuable than roadway networks, because they can support greater depth and breadth of social/economic activity at a fraction of the cost of roads and transportation (financially, socially and environmentally). Structural separation involves a profound disruption to existing network business models, which are practically written into the DNA of incumbent network operators. However, it is essential to their longer-term survival, because it's now relatively inexpensive to build and operate high-capacity community/regional-scale broadband networks. As more local, regional and national governments around the world come to recognize the social and economic value of symmetric, open-access broadband, demand for symmetric and open access service will intensify. If private owner/operators refuse to deliver what governments and markets are demanding, governments will just build their own networks and put the private owner/operators out of business. Everyone wins except for greedy private network owner/operators. If this doesn't happen, Canada and the U.S. will not be competitive in the global information economy. India and Russia are eating our lunch. China's gearing up.
  19. Gordon Murray from Canada writes: "Better service" is what everyone wants. With limited resources due to increasing movie downloads, 'rationing' look like the only alternative.
    Where are all the experts offering alternatives to 'rationing'?
    Is it just shout "Vive la neutralite net!"
    Come on.
    How about polls towards public perceptions of methods of rationing bandwidth?
    You can see in this article: 1) cutting off persons over budget 2) targetting specific networks known to carry big files and/or associated with pirated content and, in addition to others 3) just slow traffic down indiscriminately.

    You're so smart, we're so smart, they're so smart: How would YOU have it? Where is YOUR idea of a complete/replete list of alternatives and YOUR idea of which one to use, perhaps some mixture of strategies tilt one way or another?

    Me? I dunno.
  20. Eric the Red from Canada writes: "brian bishop from Brantford, Canada writes: Here's an example of how taxed our ISP's truly are...."

    Brian, your torrent downloads fluctuating has nothing to do with ISPs being taxed...

    They're being throttled and it's not because ISPs are being taxed.
  21. brian bishop from Brantford, Canada writes: Eric - Your not reading what's written, I never said taxed as in money!

    Taxed as in their systems & networks!

    James Van Leeuwen -

    Not one Canadian Internet provider owns infrastructure beyond their servers, Sympatico is a separate company from Bell, Roger's Internet is a separate company from Roger's & so on, the CRTC mandated that years ago. The same is true of cell & VOIP services, all company's had to be created separate of their parent company's. They all have to pay line leases & buy bandwidth as set out by the CRTC, all on an equal footing with the other hundreds of Internet, cell, VOIP & cables providers across the country.

    Gordon Murray - your not paying attention, there is no limited resources, no shortage of bandwidth or anything else for that matter!
  22. James Van Leeuwen from Pincher Creek, Alberta, Canada writes: Brian Bishop, I am in fact talking about the ISP parent companies, the operative word here being 'parent'. There is no real structural separation if an ISP is wholly owned by a network owner, because there is still a fiduciary relationship to the owner. The crux of the issue is that network operators don't just want to capitalize on demand for access, but on demand for content as well. They want to be more than just 'dumb pipes', but this is exactly what we need them to be if we are to realize the full social and economic development potential of broadband access. When we step out of our doors, we have equal access to social, recreational or commercial opportunities around the planet by way of transportation networks. The greater our mobility, the greater our society's potential for social and economic development. Obstacles to mobility create demand for alternative routes, and this is why most transportation infrastructure the world over is publicly owned - even though it is essential infrastructure, there is no profit in owning it. We collectively operate it at a loss in order to realize the huge profits in social and economic development. The analogy to Net Neutrality should be obvious. If an ISP limits access (shapes traffic) or artifically limits bandwidth (creates bottlenecks), they will only force traffic onto competing networks that offer open access and full bandwidth. Because of the immense capacity and relatively low cost of deploying optical networks, and their exponentially increasing value to social and economic development, established network and ISP business models are no longer sustainable. Full structural separation is inevitable, and the sooner the network operators figure this out, the sooner they'll be able to cut losses in asset value by selling off their fibre networks. This is already happening with long-haul carriers, and guess who's snapping them up at fire sale prices? The web services industry (Google and friends).

Comments are closed

Thanks for your interest in commenting on this article, however we are no longer accepting submissions. If you would like, you may send a letter to the editor.

Report an abusive comment to our editorial staff

close

Alert us about this comment

Please let us know if this reader’s comment breaks the editor's rules and is obscene, abusive, threatening, unlawful, harassing, defamatory, profane or racially offensive by selecting the appropriate option to describe the problem.

Do not use this to complain about comments that don’t break the rules, for example those comments that you disagree with or contain spelling errors or multiple postings.

Back to top