Traffic Shaping - The New Word for Limiting Unlimited Service

Over at ZDNet, Dana Blankenhorn and Paula Rooney have a go at explaining why Comcast doesn’t like BitTorrent one iota, and why most other providers also either try to limit it, or simply tolerate it, with thoughts of how they can remove it, dancing in their greedy little heads.

The authors posit that the reason Comcast is using traffic shaping to limit the use of BitTorrent is bandwidth. While I agree, I am less willing to simply throw up my hands and say that the average ISP is doing the best job possible.

Bandwidth - they don’t seem to have enough. The problem really lies with greed and poor planning. The poor planning is shown when anyone drags out a study on the expected rate of traffic expansion on the internet from 7 to 10 years ago. All of those studies show that none of the purveyors of bandwidth were willing to put money into the infrastructure needed, and increased potential bandwidth, choosing instead to bask in the glow of all the red hot money that was being collected, as everyone and their neighbor got on the broadband train.

At first the difference in bandwidth from lowly dialup speeds was so great that almost no one noticed the speed of the connection purchased was only infrequently the speed actually obtained. In much of the country now, it is almost cause for celebration when a customer reaches the speeds promised by the ISP, as it happens with the frequency of meteor showers. This is perhaps why, in Great Britain and Australia, legislation is being considered to force ‘truth in broadband advertising’. This legislation would cause the ISPs to state typical speeds, instead of the ever elusive optimum speeds.

In the United States, great concern is being voiced over ‘last mile problems’. This is when it is not economically feasible for cable companies or telecom entities to bring high speed access to the customers in the last mile, where population density is low. While I feel for these people, someone upstream better start thinking what will happen when all of these ‘last mile’ customers get connected. The traffic jam caused by all the new traffic will make the small number of BitTorrent users look like minnows in the ocean.

The authors at ZDNet state that spam is a big contributor to clogged pipes with bandwidth limitations, and they are right to some extent. The problem is a double ended one, however, as work must be done to reduce extraneous traffic, but the limits of traffic in total must also be continually raised.

Bandwidth for the internet is like cars and horsepower for young boys. If more is better, too much is just right! Someone should get that message soon, before the shouting starts.

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[tags] BitTorrent, Comcast, traffic shaping, bandwidth limitation, net neutrality, greed, optimum speeds, typical speeds, last mile problems, ISP, ZDNet [/tags]