[LINK] Filtering, throttling of ISPs

Kim Holburn kim at holburn.net
Sat Apr 4 20:09:52 AEDT 2009


Interesting discussion on ISP filtering, throttling, shaping and  
managing.  Looks like most of Canada's internet ISP connections are  
filtered shaped and throttled with DPI.  (See second ars article below.)

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/04/canada-asks-public-to-weigh-in-on-network-management.ars
> Canadians weigh in on network management: they don't like it
>
> Submitting comments to government regulators is not usually for the  
> faint of heart, but Canada's CRTC has gone out of its way to set up  
> an easy-to-use Internet forum to hear directly from the public about  
> network neutrality and traffic management.
> By Nate Anderson | Last updated April 2, 2009 8:30 AM CT
>
> Thanks to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications  
> Commission (CRTC) hearing on network management, we already know  
> that Canada's Internet is widely throttled, filtered, and managed <http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2009/01/how-canadian-isps-throttle-the-internet.ars 
> >. We also have access to thousands of pages of responses filed by  
> those on all sides of the issue. But what sayeth the great unwashed  
> masses? Thanks to a new public forum < http://isppractices.econsultation.ca/ 
>  > for comments, we now know.

http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2009/01/how-canadian-isps-throttle-the-internet.ars
http://isppractices.econsultation.ca/

Here's a couple of comments from the ISP Practices forum on "Impact on  
Innovation":
>  dbsanfte
>
> Both Bell and Rogers, to pick two big players, are involved in  
> throttling traffic on their networks that uses the Bittorrent  
> protocol.
>
> The excuse given for doing this has always been local link  
> congestion, yet such congestion is nothing new. In the past, it was  
> managed via monthly bandwidth caps, which did not single out any one  
> protocol in particular, and the onus was on the end-user to manage  
> their usage.
>
> Bittorrent as a protocol just happens to be the most economical way  
> for a new startup to deliver content to subscribers, by having each  
> subscriber play a part in redistributing the content to others, and  
> throttling such peer-to-peer technologies eliminates them as a  
> vector for innovative new content delivery systems.
>
> It seems a highly dubious coincidence to me that these ISPs, given  
> their stakes in the consumer television market, should choose to  
> restrict access to their networks to a specific protocol only, one  
> which dramatically lowers the barrier of entry to the market for new  
> players in content-delivery. In fact, no one with two eyes and a  
> brain can possibly believe this is a 'coincidence' at all.
>
> Throttling of P2P protocols like Bittorrent is a blatant anti- 
> competitive move by Canada's largest ISPs.
>
> [updated 2009-03-31 11:48]

>  David Kidd
>
> As I commented in another post, we have an example of what these  
> very companies attempted in earlier technologies. For decades after  
> the introduction of telephone service, connection was limited to  
> Bell-supplied devices - even so limited a device as a different  
> shaped plastic mouthpiece was claimed to be infringing. Only once  
> the outright ban was overturned did we see the advances that we now  
> take for granted - different phones, PBXs, modems in laptops. Many  
> of these were not available, or their use was prohibitively  
> expensive, in the pre-connection days. We may be seeing similar  
> blocks now by Rogers: attempting (say) to block VOIP applications  
> from running over IP on their cell devices - possibly because a VOIP  
> over data call would divert revenue from more profitable direct cell  
> calling. Especially in this near-monopoly environment, partly too  
> based on a public resource (the airwaves), the CRTC does need to  
> encourage standardization of the infrastructure, but equally must  
> encourage and in fact mandate allowing variance of end use. That  
> variance is what nurtures innovation. Allowing the end use to be  
> "managed" allows it to be prohibited in the name of that "management".
>
> [updated 2009-03-31 14:29]


-- 
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
Ph: +39 06 855 4294  M: +39 3494957443
mailto:kim at holburn.net  aim://kimholburn
skype://kholburn - PGP Public Key on request









More information about the Link mailing list