[LINK] RFI: P2P Traffic 2005-06

[Kim Holburn]

On 2006 Aug 07, at 6:57 PM, Jan Whitaker wrote:

> At 08:22 AM 7/08/2006, rchirgwin at ozemail.com.au wrote:
>> The third thought is this: once the user traffic has passed a  
>> given boundary (let's call it the point of ingress), isn't all  
>> traffic "peer to peer"? The definition being sought by marketers  
>> isn't a definition of "Internet traffic" but "access network  
>> traffic"...
>>
>> Random musings which may be shredded at will...
>
> I'll bite. I've been having a go on Whirlpool about p2p hogs as  
> they whinge so much about poor performance of their connections  
> (pirating stuff). In fact the cynical comment when they get too  
> vocal is that *of course* they are just trying to get Linux  
> distros. The funny reply then is the whinger asking: what's a Linux  
> distro? -- or -- God, I can't get my copy of xxxx tv program, what  
> ever will I do!?!
>
> As a result I tried to do a bit of copyright education (long  
> story), but ended up with the thread being moved into the p2p forum  
> with the Thread title: Illegal downloading under Australian law. It  
> has come up in the top 20-30 most read threads in all of whirlpool  
> for about a week, with over 2100 views. Now the top thread on that  
> forum over the past two days is: RIAA Sues Limewire (one of the p2p  
> distribution clients).
>
> It's all an interesting insight into the hardcore p2p users.  The  
> link is: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-threads.cfm?f=87 is  
> you want to have a look.


There is an interesting article by Cringely on this and how it  
relates to net neutrality.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060622.html

> Though e-mail and web surfing are both probably more important to  
> Internet users than BitTorrent, the peer-to-peer file transfer  
> scheme uses more total Internet bandwidth at something over 30  
> percent. Some ISPs absolutely hate BitTorrent and have moved to  
> limit its impact on their networks by controlling the amount of  
> bandwidth available to BitTorrent traffic. This, too, flies in the  
> face of our supposed current state of blissful Net Neutrality. A  
> list of ISPs that limit BitTorrent bandwidth is in this week's  
> links, though most of them are, so far, outside the United States.
>
> BitTorrent blocking or limiting can be defeated by encrypting the  
> torrents, but that increases overhead, causes a bigger bandwidth  
> hit, and defeats local caching schemes that might help reduce  
> bandwidth demand. So blocking BitTorrent actually makes life worse  
> for all of us, which may be why most U.S. ISPs aren't doing it.
>
> So let's assume that ISPs are allowed to offer tiered services.  
> What impact will that have on BitTorrent? The answer lies in the  
> nature of the TCP/IP protocol. Here is an analysis from a friend  
> who is far more savvy about these things than I am:
>
> "If you look at the amount of overhead TCP needs it's exponential  
> to how slow each connection is; the slower (the connection) the  
> more overhead because the window sizes are smaller and more control  
> packets are being used for verification. And you know what?  
> BitTorrent is FAR WORSE. Remember that for each file you download  
> on BitTorrent you connect to dozens, possibly even hundreds of  
> people, and the slower each of those connections is the more the  
> overhead increases.
>
> "About a month ago the amount of torrents I may (have been)  
> automatically downloading at any given time was between 10 and 30.  
> This means that I was getting no more than 1Kbps from every peer,  
> which meant about half of my bandwidth usage was in BitTorrent  
> protocol overhead and not in downloading file data. I brought this  
> (overhead) down (by 40 percent) by just having five torrent  
> downloads at a time and queuing the rest, and I even got the files  
> faster. I then did some more scheduling and what not to get (my  
> bandwidth use down by a total of 70 percent) and I still downloaded  
> about the same amount of real file data.
>
> "So what happens when everyone's VoIP or other preferred packets  
> get preference over my torrent packets? Since I have no knowledge  
> of the other people's usage in my aggregate network I can't adjust  
> well for changes in the network. The BitTorrent traffic that is  
> going will have exponentially increased overhead due to the slow  
> downs, increasing overall Internet packet overhead (with BitTorrent  
> already 30+ percent of all Internet traffic). Which means that  
> allowing the telco's to subsidize the cost of improving their  
> infrastructure by having preferred packets could exponentially  
> increase the cost accrued by the larger internet and backbone  
> providers just to keep costs down at the aggregate level."
>
> To recap: Giving priority to some traffic puts a hurt on other  
> types of traffic and when that other traffic constitutes more than  
> 30 percent of the Internet, the results can be severe for all of  
> us. On the Internet everything is connected, and you can't easily  
> ignore the impact of one service on another.




--
Kim Holburn
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