Bandwidth Throttling = Net Neutrality February 28, 2009

More action this week on the subject of bandwidth throttling as practiced by the Canadian ISPs, namely Bell Canada and Rogers Telecommunications. All very shortsighted.

http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/News.asp?id=52207&PageMem=1

As one article leads to another, you will find a link to: http://www.saveournet.ca/ in the above article where you can express your point of view.

And as always the CRTC, champion of the rights of the user forever looking out for their rights and freedoms: http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/home-accueil.htm. Except not this time. The CRTC has come out in favour of deep packet inspection by saying there is not enough evidence to prove it is not necessary.  (Read: Telecom Decision CRTC 2008-108)

Every technology has good and bad points. The technology that spreads viruses, in essence brings us updates as well. The purpose if a virus is to spread doom and gloom and wreak your working environment. Agreed, terrible stuff. But the virus program looks for the existence of certain applications, and takes advantage of a computer that meets its requirements. By the same token, programs that update themselves look for opportunities within your computer that meet their requirements. While their purpose is at opposite ends of the spectrum, the basic process is similar.

And so it goes with P2P as championed by BitTorrent technology. Originally created to share large files across the Internet which meant music and movies (as in piracy), BitTorrent is now used to share all sorts of other legitimate files as well. It is an amazing piece of programming. Basically BitTorrent uses existing downloaded files across all shared PCs to facilitate each request. This reduces the load placed on each computer. It cannot reduce traffic, since the size of the file does not change. Just reduces load distributing it across computers all over the place.

Deep Packet Inspection from our ISPs invade our privacy (for those that assume we still have any) and discriminate against a technology that has perfectly legitimate uses. This might backfire on the ISPs. One of the goals of, it seems everyone, is to have the Internet be the official carrier of everything. From telephones conversations, to TV signals,  to eMail and anything else you could possibly imagine.

Our telcos have been abysmally slow at getting fibre to our door, but they will have to do that sooner or later. Once that is done, we will be able to get our TV channels through the Internet. One wire into the house as opposed to three or four. Once we can watch television programming, it follows that we will also be able to watch our movies through the web. These are large files necessitating a lot of traffic.  Unless of course, the telcos come up with a miraculous bit of programming that could somehow reduce the load by using the files already downloaded as a source for each request. Oh my God! The telcos will have to deep packet inspect themselves.  

Add to this the existence of Dark Fibre. This is the fibre that the telcos have installed but not lit. There is a lot of it under ground and is leased out to companies such as Cogent. What is stopping our telcos from using these lines to increase the available bandwidth?

Graphical News February 19, 2009

Some friends of mine were discussing the demise of the newspaper as we know it. It’s a complicated issue. Journalists must be paid by someone to get the news and report it. Newspapers have to make money. They cannot continue to give away their inventory. One of the solutions is the micro payment technology that keeps promising but fails to deliver. The survival of news appears to be at stake. Would you be willing to pay 1 cent per hit of a page? What if that hit lasted a week so you could revisit the story for 7 days without any additional charge?

One of the comments that was also made is that newspapers provide a graphical representation of the news, at least from the perspective of the editor.  A newspaper page is laid out i a particular manner and one’s eyes naturally drift from one story to another placing a value on stories based on their position or size. This is lost on the computer screen where the main story is front and center, and other stories are links on the side with no particualr importance placed on any of the stories. On one hand, this is cool, since the reader is left to make their own judgement. On the other hand, the news becomes a large morass of information that is hard to wade through.

A few years ago, a company called Marumushi came out with the concept of creating a graphical representation of the news. The project was launched in 2004, with details outlined on their project page.

The newsmap site is now my home page:

http://marumushi.com/apps/newsmap/newsmap.cfm

Amazon and IBM Join Forces February 13, 2009

One of the biggest challenges facing Cloud Computing is the interoperation of the data. Applications like Microsoft Office have allowed us to use information stored in Outlook to create a letter in Word. We can insert spreadsheets in Word documents linking back to the original. Double Click on the spreadhseet and Excel opens. Cool.

But Cloud Computing does not give us that luxury. In most cases, your data sits in disparate locations, never the twain to meet. Wanna create a letter from your eMail program, copy and paste it. Sounds simple. Maybe for one letter. What about a mail merge? Ouch.

But Amazon and IBM have now joined forces. (http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10163603-92.html?tag=nl.e433). In case you do not know, Amazon does more than sell books. For years now, they have been providing the backend data storage for a number of companies providing us with online storage, backup, or data sharing services. IBM has been making a lot of noise about the Cloud. Their latest foray being the collaboration site: https://www.lotuslive.com/. And finally, two giants have joined forces ushering in, hopefully, more cooperation between Cloud Computing initiatives.

Canada Post should become a High Speed Internet Provider June 23, 2008

Some of us have been following the dispute that is raging across the country regarding traffic shaping. Both Bell Canada and Rogers Communications have admitted to using this practice in response to a small number of users taking over more than their fair share of the available bandwidth. There is no competition when all players in a market use similar technology, and provide similar services.

It is time for a new player to enter the market.

I would like to propose that Canada Post be given the mandate to provide the public with high speed internet service.

1. They have offices all over the country
2. They need to communicate with their offices
3. They already deal with the public
4. They have a mandate to provide mail service. This can be extended to internet mail service
5. They have excellent technology in ePost, though few seem to know of it. This technology can be used to augment their eMail services
6. Being national, Canada Post would allow a user to access their service from anywhere in the country

I see big wins all around.

The existing providers could use the competition.

To Throttle or not to Throttle? June 19, 2008

Canadian Telco’s have decided that a small number of users (10% according to some figures) are abusing the Bell Acceptable Use Policy and using too much bandwidth. These users are spoiling the Internet experience for the others who are dutifully abiding by the spirit of the policy. Technologies allowing Deep Packet Inspection are being used to throttle – or shape, which is such a better word – Internet traffic.

All the discussions on the topic that I have seen have revolved around the ethical merits of throttling, or the violation of contractual agreements, or privacy rights infringed. But how do the Telco’s go about deciding what constitutes abuse?

No one appears to know exactly how much internet traffic is too much. The type of traffic being throttled is typically that created by peer to peer networks such as those taking advantage of BitTorrent downloads. This assumes that all such downloads are for illicit purposes, and therefore should be discouraged. Bell Canada is very careful to not make that assertion.  All they say is that they want to maximise the experience for all users.

Bell Canada offers the “Total Internet Max” browsing experience for CDN$89.95 a month. This includes 100GB of usage per month. They also provide usage insurance of CDN$10.00 a month for an additional 30GB of activity.

How does the user know how much bandwidth has been consumed? The information is located online, of course, the irony of which should be obvious. The user is using up their bandwidth to find out how much bandwidth they are using. Technically, surcharges could be incurred during this investigation.

How do you know if are incurring the wrath of the Deep Packet Inspectors? Well you don’t. Unless you are downloading something huge using a BitTorrent service, in which case, you will be throttled. Sorry, your traffic will be throttled.

The information made available online when you sign up for a Sympatico Internet account makes no mention of the shaping or throttling of Internet traffic. Speak to a representative and they make no mention of it either.  In fact, the representative I spoke with, charming as she was, knew nothing about this and had to speak to her supervisor. The latter said Bell does not throttle traffic. I was finally transferred to Customer Service who said the only people able to answer my question were in Tech Support, but I need an account to talk with them.

It was finally agreed that my telephone account was sufficient to let me through. The Tech Support rep, again a charming individual, informed me that the shaping takes place in peak hours defined as being between 6 and 10PM.

I also took a look at the Bell Acceptable Use Policy, which is far ranging. I encourage everyone to read it. Transmitting chain letters is not allowed, for instance. Paragraph two is the one used to justify the shaping of traffic:

Restricting or inhibiting any other user from using or enjoying the Internet, impairing the operations or efficiency of the Service or creating an unusually large burden on our networks, or otherwise generating levels of Internet traffic sufficient to impede other users’ ability to transmit or receive information.
In summary, my major objections to Bell (and Rogers) shaping of Internet traffic are:

1. Numbers are not made available defining what constitutes the shaping of traffic
2. No one is informed about the rules governing shaping
3. No information is made available defining the load and traffic we are being saved from.

Do the owners of the road have the right to determine how much traffic flows through their property? The answer is probably yes.

What rights do users have? Or what rights should the user expect to have?

Links:

Bell Acceptable Use Policy

The different types of traffic being generated on the Web are described in this very interesting (though a bit geeky) article. Note the article dates from 1998!

Fiber to the door June 18, 2008

According to a story in Wired News, Verizon is expanding its investment in Fiber Optic lines to the door. They are bringing 50mbps to the consumer and are already experimenting with 100mbps. Prices range from US$89.95 in New York, to US$139.95 a month in California.

Meanwhile, the powers that be in Canada are throttling our service. Wait, a correction is in order, they are throttling the service of the 10% of the users who are abusing their agreements, so the rest of us can continue taking advantage of the 5 to 16mbps they are providing. Bell Canada is promoting their new fiber optic service with speeds “up to 16mbps” at a price of CDN$84.95.

Which makes more business sense? Throttling back your clients? Or increasing the bandwidth?

I suppose from a strictly dollars and cents issue, throttling may be less expensive. The work is done at the server level with new technologies purchased for this purpose. ComCast in the U.S. has set the precedent.

Installing Fiber, on the other hand, requires planning and foresight.  The logistics for the installation are daunting.  Verizon has set that standard. While the rest of the Telco’s sit and watch, Verizon is providing its customers an incredible experience, and is setting the stage for new and enhanced features.

The future, if one is to believe the pundits, is that the Internet will become the be-all and end-all of everything. Our TV will come from there, our files, pictures, music, will all be stored online, available from anywhere, anytime. The Cloud, as it is referred to, will conquer all. In which case, we will need much faster access and more bandwidth.

The choice is to follow the lead set by ComCast or that of Verizon.