[LINK] Telstra Filtering Wholesale DSL ?

[Tom Koltai]

The following unfortunately, for Com-in-Conf reasons needs to be
anecdotal (without evidence).

With the purchase of Pipe assets by TPG, and the avalanche of new
(always on) broadband users, overseas bandwidth appears to becoming
scarce.
This is evidenced by the rapidly increasing frequency of error timeouts
on non-popular Youtube videos, specifically those not included in the
Akamai CDN.

It would appear that Telstra are utilising Deep Packet Inspection to
fine tune their lack of overseas connectivity.
Packets from unwelcome (unprofitable)  protocols would appear to be
discarded and connection routes are being deliberately flapped.

I first noticed the activity a number of months ago, however, however,
the timeouts appeared to be random and it wasn't until the timeout
increases of this week became painfully obvious that I commenced testing
via a number of protocol streams.

My adhoc (12 brackets of testing for thirty minute periods over five
days) findings are:
Continuous activity at over 30 kbps attracts first response activity
within six minutes (flat line on downstream, upstream unaffected).
Multiple port connections (over 150) continuously for over 6 minutes
attracts similar responses.

Whilst I sympathise with Telstra over their need to recover bandwidth
for their retail customers, it should not be by penalising their
wholesale customers.

This would appear to be a S52G Trade Practices Matter whereas Telstra
customers are not being disenfranchised and Telstra's wholesale customer
network customers are.
This may result in a scenario where Telstra are forced to refund access
fees to (Wholesale DSL ISP) customers that are dissatisfied with their
service levels.

(Happy to nominate Protocols offlist)


TomK