Category: Net Neutrality
March 24th, 2008
Fixing the unfairness of TCP congestion control
Bob Briscoe (Chief researcher at the BT Network Research Centre) is on a mission to tackle one of the biggest problems facing the Internet. He wants the world to know that TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) congestion control is fundamentally broken and he has a proposal for the IETF to fix the root cause of the problem.
The Internet faced its first congestion crisis in 1986 when too much network traffic caused a series of Internet meltdowns when everything slowed to a crawl. Today’s problem is more subtle and lesser known since the network still appears to be working correctly and fairly. But underneath that facade and illusion of fairness, a very small percentage of users hog most of the Internet’s capacity suffocating all other users and applications.
Solving the first Internet meltdown crisis
In October of 1986, the Internet began to experience a serious of “congestion collapses”. So many computers were piling their traffic on to the network at the same time that the network came to a grinding halt and no one got any meaningful throughput. By mid 1987, computer scientist Van Jacobson who is one of the prime contributors to the TCP/IP stack created a client-side patch for TCP that saved the day. Every computer on the Internet - roughly 30,000 in those days - was quickly patched by their system administrators.
Jacobson’s TCP stack patch worked by causing a computer to cut the flow rate of its TCP stream in half as soon as it detects any packet loss. Packets are lost whenever the routers relaying them receive more packets than they can forward and the router begins to randomly drop packets across the board. But whenever a computer sees an acknowledgement that its packet arrived successfully, it quickly and continually increases its flow rate with every acknowledgement until it experiences another packet drop at which time it cuts its throughput in half again. This became known as the AIMD (Additive Increase Multiplicative Decrease) algorithm where the sending computer is constantly probing for the maximum allowable bandwidth by repeatedly increasing throughput until it crosses a line and gets knocked down.
Jacobson’s AIMD algorithm also allowed a new TCP stream to open up and quickly rise to equilibrium where it attains the same flow rate as all other TCP streams. Conversely when a TCP stream ended transmission, the extra bandwidth freed up would be evenly distributed amongst the remaining streams. Van Jacobson’s patch was so successful that it became a part of the TCP standards and it hasn’t fundamentally changed for over 20 years and according to Bob Briscoe, Jacobson’s algorithm is the “fifth most cited academic paper in all of computer science”.
Under Jacobson’s algorithm which sought out to balance the flow rate (throughput) of each TCP stream, the system was more or less fair to everyone who wanted to use the network so long as everyone used an equal number of TCP streams. Since people typically used one TCP stream at a time and people had limited usage on those time-sharing computers in the 1980s, Jacobson’s algorithm was adequate for the problems of that era. While it was possible for someone to open two FTP downloads or uploads at a time and get double the total throughput than anyone else, this wasn’t a big problem when applications and operating systems were mostly limited to text and computers were limited to academic and large corporate institutions. But as time went on and as the number of applications and users grew, it was only a matter of time before the fairness of the system would be exploited.
March 19th, 2008
The cheapest way to do VoIP is still analog
What happens when you want to just want a bunch of phones in your business, hotel, or organization and you don’t need a bunch of fancy and complicated features on the phone? It’s simple, just get a bunch of cheap analog phones. But how do you build a phone system to support a bunch of analog phones? It’s simple, just get a PBX (Private Branch Exchange) with a few FXS interfaces to plug in the phones. Just to rehash what an FXO and FXS phone port is and what the differences are, here’s a text representation how these devices are connected:
- Phone (FXO) - (FXS) Channel bank (FXO) - (FXS) Telco
- Phone (FXO) - (FXS) Telco
But this is where the tricky part comes in since your typical IP PBX which is essentially a computer doesn’t have any FXS interfaces so that’s where channel banks come in. A channel bank traditionally converts a T1 PRI interface in to 24 separate channels for 24 phone lines. The problem with traditional channel bank is not that they’re all that expensive, but the fact that they require a T1 PRI interface on the PBX for every 24 phone lines which are very expensive and cumbersome.
To get around this problem of having to use expensive T1 cards that are tied to a single server, Xorcom shuns T1 cards and uses good old USB 2.0 for its interface to the PC. Pictured below are some Astribank products with FXO or FXS ports along with the option for PRI ports. You just plug in your TBX to one of the Astribanks via one of the abundant USB 2.0 ports and you’re done. Simply plug it in to a USB 2.0 switch and two cheap open-source PBX appliances and you can instantly flip between the two servers in case one of them goes down for whatever reason. Any problems with one PBX server and you simply need to flip the USB switch and the other PBX is instantly lit up with all of its FXO and FXS ports. Trying to swap a PCI card with a T1 interface is far more difficult.
Pictured above is the front view of three Xorcom Astribank models ranging from 8 to 32 ports with any mixture of FXO and FXS ports. Pictured below is the back of the units showing the power and USB port in the back. The larger models also have 50 pin breakout ports so you can use your existing breakout box if you chose to do it that way.
The next two photos show all-in-one appliances designed to run Asterisk or Asterisk distributions from popular vendors like Trixbox or some other Asterisk derivative.
March 16th, 2008
Japan's ISPs agree to ban P2P pirates
Four of Japan’s largest Internet provider organizations have come to an agreement with copyright holders on how to tackle the illegal file trading on P2P (Peer to Peer) networks. Comprised of about 1000 major and smaller Japanese Internet providers, the four organizations agreed to target flagrant copyright violators by first warning them and then banning them if their behavior doesn’t change.
According to the Daily Yomiuri Online, the Internet providers two years ago attempted to disconnect users anytime they detected the use of Winny (a popular Japanese P2P application) or any other file-sharing software. But that ran afoul of the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications because of concerns of privacy and the providers abandoned that practice. This time the Internet providers seem to have learned from the past and they’re going to be much more targeted by going after the most obvious transgressors of illegal file trading.
When the copyright owners see a list of IP (Internet Protocol) addresses downloading their copyrighted content, they’ll send that list of violators to the ISP (Internet Service Provider) and the ISP will warn and then ban the copyright infringers if necessary. This method doesn’t involve any of that politically dreaded DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) since the copyright owner merely needs to look for their own content on the popular file trading sites and ask for a list of peers by merely participating in the file trade. Not only does this method avoid privacy concerns, it also happens to be the most practical if not the only way of attacking the problem since many file trading applications are already completely encrypted against packet snooping.
Update 5:40AM - Just to make myself extra clear since many people refuse to believe that we are not talking about deep packet inspection here. P2P in Japan like the latest “Perfect Dark” application (successor to Winny and Share) is already fully encrypted at both the protocol and data level. That’s encryption is completely bypassed since the content owners merely need to download the Winny, Share, and Perfect Dark and look for their own content that’s being pirated. Then all they need to do is connect to it as if they were a user and then download the content to see if it is indeed their content. Then they already have a list of IP addresses that participated in that file exchange. There’s no decryption, key cracking, or deep packet inspection going on here.
Japan is considered one of the most connected broadband nations on the planet with widespread 100 Mbps broadband service. Many people in this country believe that by simply offering more capacity, there would be no need to manage the network since congestion problems would be gone. But Japan teaches us that no matter how much capacity you throw at the problem, congestion will always be a problem and the vast majority of it will be caused by P2P traffic.
At the iGrowthGlobal Panel on Network Management on Capitol Hill (my recap here), I met Haruka Saito who is Counselor for Telecom Policy from the Embassy of Japan. Mr. Saito was my fellow panelist and he shared the following data with the congressional and FCC staffers in the audience. He presented the following data from the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications which had been studying the issue of Net Neutrality in Japan for more than a year.
[Updated 3:15PM - I had incorrectly stated that 1% consumes 63% of all traffic because I read the charts wrong. The corrected text is in bold below.] As you can see, the utilization levels especially for uploads are dangerously high and that P2P traffic absolutely dominates both upload and downloads by a very large margin. Winny, WinMX, and Share (a successor of Winny) dominates the P2P usage. From this data, the P2P users that make up 10% of all Internet users in Japan hog ~75% of bandwidth resources and 1% of all Internet users in Japan consume 63% of that 75% share. That means just 1% of users consume 47% of all the Internet traffic in Japan. It’s no wonder the ISPs in Japan want a solution that cuts off the most egregious illegal file traders who also happen to be the biggest bandwidth hogs.
March 5th, 2008
AT&T's degrading service and my landlord's ban on Comcast
With all the negative attention headed towards Comcast lately, AT&T’s problems seem to be slipping below the radar. Unfortunately for me, those problems are first hand for me as I’m personally suffering degradations in speed. As if getting 1200 Kbps downstream on a so-called 1500 Kbps service and all those outage problems (example here and here) weren’t bad enough, my AT&T DSL service has declined. I suppose I could count myself lucky compared to my Mom’s neighbor who only got 320 Kbps service after AT&T unilaterally and without permission “upgraded” his bill to the 1500 Mbps service without upgrading his performance. Seem my DSLReports.com speed tests below.
The results above were performed at the nearest locations to my home and they were performed on idle servers with barely anyone using them. That pretty much confirms the problem is on AT&T’s end and possibly on the last mile. My Mother’s so-called 768 Kbps service only delivered about 330 Kbps but after the AT&T fixed some wiring problems outside the house, the performance went up to about 600 Kbps. I’ll have to call AT&T and see if they can do anything about my problems when I get back home.
It’s gotten so bad with my service that I’m actually starting to yearn for some of those “evil” TCP resets from Comcast to grace my router. Even more frustrating is that Comcast might actually be offering DOCSIS 3.0 with 15 Mbps downstream and 2 Mbps upstream in my area, but I live in one of these draconian housing complexes that force us to pay for bundled inferior analog cable service even though I don’t use it. The FCC has ruled against these types of exclusive contracts but I don’t think that can overturn my current situation. I think I’m finally motivated enough that I want to start a petition with the neighbors to demand the right to use Comcast. I’ll definitely have to bring this up the next time I go to Washington DC before Congress and the FCC.
Some people have told me that I should have looked at the contract before I moved in but it really isn’t that simple. There are about a thousand homes in the same multi dwelling unit and we don’t have much of a choice on where we live when an old and small home in Silicon Valley is $650,000. I do find it ironic that I’m now begging and fighting for the right to get Comcast service while others are fighting to kill Comcast.
This isn’t to say that Comcast is always good and AT&T is always bad although I’ve always gotten much better service from Comcast when I actually had a choice between the two. But it is so critical that we have competition between the two so that they have to fight for my business. The way it stands now, AT&T pretty much knows that I have no other game in my area and they have zero incentive to deploy U-Verse in my neighborhood let alone fiber-to-the-node like Verizon’s FiOS service.
What’s even more frustrating is that this isn’t a rural area problem since I’m in the heart of Silicon Valley with about 4000 homes jammed tight in a two block by two block neighborhood. It would be a Verizon FiOS installer’s dream deployment with homes packed so tightly together. With my landlord out of the way, I’d have DOCSIS 3.0 15 Mbps service to choose from and AT&T would prioritize jumping in here with U-Verse service. These are the real problems facing consumers today and not whether a few bandwidth hogs get throttled or not and I hope others will join me in a worthwhile cause.
March 3rd, 2008
A geek's trip to Capitol Hill on Network Management
I appeared before congressional and government staffers on Capitol Hill for a panel on Network Management sponsored by iGrowthGlobal. This was my first time in Washington DC and while it was a little cold for my Californian bones, it was a beautiful city and seeing the capitol of the nation was certainly a worthwhile experience. One thing that struck me was how large and spread-out the Capitol was with so many Government buildings several miles apart.
The panel was moderated by Scott Wallsten, VP for Research and Senior Fellow of iGrowthGlobal. I met Mr. Wallsten at the Net Neutrality summit held at University of San Francisco last month where the two of us presented on separate panels. The rest of the panelists for this event were:
- Melvin Ammori, General Counsel, Free Press
- David Burstein, Editor, DSLPrime
- George Ou, Editor at Large, ZDNet
- Haruka Saito, Counselor for Telecom, Embassy of Japan
- Christopher S. Yoo, Professor of Law and Communications, University of Pennsylvania
Christopher Yoo -
After a brief introduction by Scott Wallsten who explained that the order of the presentations will be reverse alphabetical order, Christopher S. Yoo kicked off his presentation. Professor Yoo explained that networks, like roads, aren’t built for everyone to use them at the same time. Yoo gave the example that if a person wants to know how fast he can travel on a freeway, he wouldn’t know until he got there because we can’t predict exactly how many other people will be on the road at the same time. Yoo explained the difficulty in projecting network capacity and that we can’t always be right when determining whether more capacity or network management was the answer. Sometimes more capacity is the answer, sometimes network management is the answer and we shouldn’t lock ourselves in to one solution or the other.
Haruka Saito -
Next up was Mr. Haruka Saito from the Embassy of Japan. Mr. Saito explained that Japan had been studying and debating the issue of Network Neutrality in Japan for about a year and a half and he offered a lot of hard data gathered in Japan. Japan is one of if not the most connected nation in the world when it comes to broadband deployment with 100 Mbps fiber deployments and despite this abundance of capacity, even I was shocked that they were running in to congestion problems.
When the traffic chart was broken down in to color-coded regions showing application usage, P2P easily ate the lion’s share of resources and dwarfed everything else on the chart. Mr. Saito went on to explain that 1% of the users primarily through P2P consumed around 50% of the total capacity and this pretty much mirrors every other study I’ve seen elsewhere in the world regardless of capacity. The debate in Japan was who was going to pay for this excessive usage and whether the heaviest users should start paying more money.
George Ou -
Next up was me and I gave a presentation based on my Comcast versus Vuze and Comcast before the FCC article. After Mr. Saito’s presentation, it certainly made my job a lot easier showing my charts on how BitTorrent and P2P were effectively the primary bandwidth hogs. I explained that the vast majority of all web applications like Web surfing, YouTube, Apple iTunes video downloads, Xbox Live Marketplace video downloads, and other applications like email almost never use any upstream capacity. Even though there are applications like Skype High Quality Video Conferencing which can fully saturate the upstream pipe, its duration is relatively short which significantly lowers its average load on the network.
I then explained that Vuze using the P2P model shifts nearly all of its server, storage, and bandwidth costs to its customer’s computer and the broadband providers while all other video distribution services pay for their own distribution costs. Then I explained that Cable networks and Wireless networks are shared-medium networks that are constrained in capacity and that they weren’t built nor sold to be content servers for the rest of the Internet. Wireless networks are even more scarce in terms of capacity because of the scarcity of spectrum and many of the smaller ISPs would be put out of business if the Government made rules banning P2P throttling or P2P blocking. Without those smaller wireless ISPs that cover the rural areas that the larger companies don’t want to cover, those Americans living in rural America would be cut off from the Internet and possibly even their phone service. We have plenty of choices on getting content but few choices on broadband carriers and the Government must keep this in mind when making network management policies.
David Burstein -
David Burstein went up next to give his presentation though he didn’t actually have a presentation ready so he improvised the presentation. After indirectly but clearly referring to Professor Yoo as an “idiot”, Burstein told the audience that if only Comcast would upgrade to DOCSIS 3.0, then there wouldn’t be any need to manage the network. That seemed to fly in the face of the hard network traffic data that Mr. Saito presented indicating that even a 100 Mbps per home dedicated fiber network would have congestion problems due primarily to P2P traffic. Burstein continued to insist that a measly DOCSIS 3.0 network (which is 120 Mbps shared between a few hundred users) would somehow be immune to congestion problems.
Even stranger was Burstein’s testimony that it would only cost Comcast 10 cents per user per month to upgrade everyone to DOCSIS 3.0. When pressed where he got such a number, Burstein Then he admitted it was only a guess but insisted that until someone proves him wrong, then everyone should laugh in the faces of his doubters. I didn’t bother challenging Burstein on the spot since there were so many other things I wanted to say, but I will respond to him here.
If we take Burstein’s estimate at face value, then we would have to believe that a DOCSIS 3.0 CMTS (Cable Modem Termination System) along with a ~250 DOCSIS 3.0 cable modems could be had for a cheap total of $50 for the entire neighborhood per month. Now bear in mind that the typical DOCSIS 2.0 modem costs about $60 and a CMTS is about the size of a 40U rack and falls under the category of very specialized networking gear. A more common Cisco switch half the size would easily cost a quarter million dollars so it wouldn’t be surprising if a CMTS costs upwards of half a million dollars. With 500 users on a CMTS loop (Cable TV with typically half of them subscribing to cable broadband), the costs will at least be $1000 per user for just the CMTS and we haven’t even begun to look at the costs of upgrading the surrounding infrastructure to support the higher capacities and the cable modems.
[Update 3/4/2008 - Dave Burstein has asked me to issue a correction that he stated it was 10 cents per user PER MONTH. I do apologize for my error, but it doesn't really change the fact that the correct number from Burstein has little to do with reality. At 10 cents per user per month, it would take 10,000 months or 833 years to break even on a minimal $1000/user investment.]
Marvin Ammori -
Marvin Ammori from the Free Press went up and also improvised a presentation. He kicked it off with a cheap shot saying how he was glad that Professor Yoo and I didn’t bring a busload of chair warmers and attempted to paint the two of us as industry shills. Ammori then went on to build a straw man argument that he thought my position was that YouTube didn’t pay their fair share of the Internet. Ammori obviously never saw my article from last year where I ripped Ed Whitacre’s statements that Google didn’t pay their fair share on Internet connectivity. After Ammori finished his presentation, I let my displeasure be known that I spoke as a proud American citizen who was in Washington DC for the first time with no one paying me to speak.
One other interesting tidbit was the fact that Mr. Ammori who admittedly never heard of the word “BitTorrent” up until a few months ago claimed that BitTorrent will only do 4 upstream sessions. Since Ammori told us that he heard it from Professor Edward Felton [waiting for Ammori's clarification on who he heard it from], somehow that overturns my testimony that BitTorrent was a bandwidth hog that opened 10s of upstream sessions. The reality was that certain BitTorrent clients will default to 4 upstream sessions for each torrent, but multiple torrents meant multiples of 4. The other interesting claim that Ammori made was that BitTorrent was intelligent and kind enough to back off when your neighbor was trying to use something like a web or email application. Where exactly Ammori got this information wasn’t clear, but I’d like the Free Press to show me some documentation for a protocol that no one has ever heard before.
[UPDATE 3/4/2008 - Ammori emailed me that he didn't say it was from Ed Felton despite the fact that he mentioned Ed Felton's name in the closest proximity to as far as my memory is concerned. Ammori writes in his email that he had named David Reed, David Clark, and Ed Felton as the three expert witnesses he cited, but has so far refused to clarify which one told him that BitTorrent maxes out at 4 upstream sessions. Strangely, Ammori seemed a lot more confident of his source when testifying before the government to bolster his claims and discredit mine but now he refuses to clarify his source when he is shown to be wrong. At this point I don't know if Ammori was given the wrong information or didn't understand what he was told, but either way he gave bad testimony.
Instead of offering clarification, he took a few more shots at me the same way that he attacked Richard Bennett implying that we're somehow not qualified and that we're "brought in" by Comcast which has no truth. Then just as he did at the panel last Friday, he insists that his sources are better even though none of his sources have disputed anything I or Richard Bennett has said. Richard Bennett is one of the pioneers of the Internet and he's written some very informative and articulate articles on this matter and he's also faced off with Ed Felton in podcasts. You can hear the podcast for yourself but I think you'll find that Richard Bennett held his own against Ed Felton and Richard has far more expertise on this particular subject matter.
During his presentation, Ammori also tried to discredit the data I showed where P2P seeding was pretty much the only application that hogged the upstream. In the context of the hard data presented by Mr. Saito from the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications showing that P2P was undoubtedly the upstream and downstream bandwidth hog, it was shocking that Ammori would try to continue disputing that fact. Ammori basically argued that we can't really know if the charts I used (copy here) are legitimate or not and he made a habit of trying to discredit me with no factual data to counter. It will be interesting to see if he's willing to explain exactly which expert he was citing.]
During the informal panel debate after everyone had spoke, I brought up the fact that Comcast gives you web space to post content which operates 10 times faster than any BitTorrent seed. This apparently wasn’t good enough for Mr. Ammori and he felt that this was somehow impinging on his right to free speech since he couldn’t serve out high-definition video content from his own home. Never mind the fact that we’re in a unique time in history where for the first time user generated content on YouTube can have a huge impact on the election. Anyone can put up a political ad on YouTube and get millions of people to watch it if the video was clever enough, but the fact that Ammori couldn’t serve it in High Definition from his own home was somehow a violation of his first amendment. But the fact of the matter is that you can serve HD video from your own home if you pay for a commercial-grade Internet connection that allows you to host servers. What you don’t have the right to do is buy a cheaper residential-grade Internet connection, hog the scarce resources by serving content to the whole world and violate the terms of service.
So to sum it up, it was knee deep in politics experience but it was all worthwhile. I felt honored that I had contributed something to my Government and my Nation.
[Update 3/4/2008 - Since this post is obviously being told from my viewpoint, I will be happy to link to any of the other speaker's blogs rehashing their experience if they write anything regardless of whether I agree with them or not.]
February 26th, 2008
FCC hearings: Comcast versus Vuze
The FCC held its hearing on Comcast’s Network Management practices at Harvard University yesterday. Vuze executive Gilles BianRosa whose company filed one of the two FCC complaints against Comcast reportedly told the FCC yesterday that BitTorrent does not hog bandwidth. Since most Internet experts would dispute that claim, I generated the following hard data on the bandwidth consumption of various applications that run on the Internet.
Note: Richard Bennett who was an expert panelist at yesterday’s hearings informed me that BianRosa claimed that BitTorrent didn’t exceed the contracted limit. That however ignores the explicit “no server” clause in the terms of service and no broadband service was built to be fully saturated 24×7. This is why commercial grade T1 lines that offer less than half the speed of broadband connections costing 8 times less are $400 per month.
Bear in mind that the data below is in reference to upstream (upload) bandwidth consumption in kilobits per second since that is the focus of these FCC hearings. Also note that applications like web surfing hardly use the upstream at all since it’s primarily your clicks and URLs that are being transmitted to tell the web server where you want to go.
The following is a graph of the above chart
* Corporate VPN telecommuter worker using G.722 codec @ 64 Kbps payload and 33.8 Kbps packetization overhead
** Vonage or Lingo SIP-based VoIP service with G.726 codec @ 32 Kbps payload and 18.8 Kbps packetization overhead
*** I calculated that I Sent 29976 kilobytes of mail over the last 56 days averaging 0.04956 Kbps
It is interesting to note that before the advent of P2P applications, Broadband users were primarily downloaders and rarely did they ever upload. It is for this reason that Broadband networks were built asymmetrically and heavily favored the downstream. Servers in data centers with commercial-grade Internet connections served and transmitted content and consumers consumed that content by downloading them.
If you’re downloading video from a service like Apple iTunes, Microsoft Xbox Live Marketplace, Netflix, or YouTube, you’re only downloading and not uploading anything. Those services pay a lot of money for their own datacenters filled with servers, their own bandwidth, and/or they pay services like Akamai to cache and distribute their content over the entire Internet.
Vuze on the other hand uses a different business model where they don’t pay for their own bandwidth and they expect their users to contribute their upload bandwidth to make the service work using the BitTorrent protocol. Vuze basically gets free distribution because they enlist their own customers to be their servers and bandwidth providers using their own computers and broadband connections. So instead of paying for commercial distribution, Vuze offloads their bandwidth on to the broadband providers.
<Next page - Exacerbating the Cable and Wireless spectrum scarcity>
Disclosure: Many people have asked me for the source of the data so I will put out the following disclaimer. As I already indicated in the first paragraph of this article, I am the original source of those charts and graphs. I’ve written extensively on VoIP bandwidth consumption as the former Technical Director of TechRepublic. Before TechRepublic, I built and designed networks for a living. I worked on the routing, the switching, and the traffic engineering of Intranet and Internet based networks. The in-use bitrates I cited are detailed and include packetization overhead and they can be independently verified.
February 13th, 2008
Comcast traffic management issue before FCC
Today is the deadline for the FCC call for comments on the Comcast traffic management case brought about by a formal complaint from the Free Press and Public Knowledge. As a former network engineer who designed networks and servers and as someone who has written extensively on these matters, I thought I would summarize the issues in a clear and concise manner.
Background
Independent groups last year found that Comcast was sending TCP RESET packets to BitTorrent seeders at various times of the day to cut back the number of upload sessions they could have. A BitTorrent seeder is someone who is not downloading but acting as a dedicated and peer-to-peer file server. BitTorrent downloads or uploads while downloading were not affected. Various groups complained that this was possibly illegal protocol discrimination using forged TCP RESET packets while Comcast maintained that this was reasonable network management to assure fair distribution of bandwidth to all their users.
The upstream contention problem
A typical Cable broadband network such as Comcast operates under the DOCSIS 1.1 standard which offers 10 mbps of upstream bandwidth and 40 Mbps of downstream bandwidth bandwidth shared amongst the neighborhood. Since the typical user has a static upstream cap of 384 kbps, it would be possible for 26 BitTorrent seeders and/or BitTorrent uploaders to completely jam the upstream pipe rendering the entire network unbearable. Since a typical Cable broadband company provisions between 50 and 400 users (typically somewhere in the middle) per cable loop, it is possible for ~10% of the users can jam the entire upstream network which ultimately affects downloads as well since services can’t be asked for. This is further complicated by the fact that DOCSIS networks use a reservation system for upstream traffic on a collision network. Too many requests for upload slots and the requests collide and no one gets to transmit anything.
Accusations of discrimination
Some have complained that this was content discrimination. But Comcast does not discriminate based on content; Comcast discriminates against excessive upstream usage that chokes up their entire broadband network. The EFF complains that this was “protocol discrimination” against BitTorrent and other P2P (peer-to-peer) applications, but it is a fact that BitTorrent and P2P are the biggest upstream bandwidth users. Since BitTorrent seeders who only continuously upload throughout the day can be reasonably classified as dedicated servers, they actually fall under prohibited services under Comcast’s TOS (Terms Of Service).
Blocking versus delaying
Comcast says they’re merely delaying BitTorrent seeders from uploading to their peers while their critics say they are blocking. It is true that Comcast blocks BitTorrent seeds when the broadband network is very busy, but they do allow BitTorrent seeding at most other times of the day. Network Engineer and Internet pioneer Richard Bennett explained this best in his comment to the FCC that since BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer applications all have the ability to resume transmission at where they left off, temporary blocking of seeders effectively acts as a delaying mechanism. The file eventually gets served to the remote party outside of Comcast’s network intact.
Consumer versus commercial Internet connection
The reality is that Comcast customers were never blocked, throttled, or delayed from receiving any services; they were delayed from offering hosting services (BitTorrent seeding) that were technically prohibited to begin with under the terms of service. Comcast’s consumer broadband service technically doesn’t have to act as a commercial hosting service to other customers in and outside of Comcast’s network so the fact that they permit seeding most of the day seems like a reasonable compromise. Furthermore, BitTorrent users who are downloading are continuously uploading during the download without any delaying action so it isn’t as if Comcast refuses to participate in P2P uploads.
Blocking of Lotus Notes
Comcast’s network management mechanisms did have a bug in them that accidentally blocked Lotus Notes traffic, but this issue was fixed months ago when the issue was first brought to the attention of Comcast. All software and hardware implementations have bugs and we expect the service provider to act in good faith and repair the problems as soon as possible. In this particular case, Comcast appears to have acted quickly and properly by fixing the problems that blocked Lotus Notes.
The complaint to the FCC
The Free Press and Public Knowledge filed a formal complaint to the FCC to immediately enjoin Comcast from these network management practices before the merits are decided and the facts weighed. This is an unreasonable request since Comcast customers would be harmed by network traffic jams due to the lack of any traffic management. The Free Press and Public Knowledge also demanded fines of $195,000 per infraction which would amount to over $2 trillion dollars if we counted every Comcast customer. This is obviously impossible since it exceeds the gross revenue of any corporation in the USA.
January 26th, 2008
Network Neutrality Summit at University of San Francisco
I will be speaking at the Network Neutrality Summit this morning at the University of San Francisco. They will be streaming this event LIVE at ustream.tv. Fireworks start at 9:00AM which is the panel I will be on with:
- Richard Clarke - AT&T
- Lawrence Spiwak, Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy Studies
- George Ou - ZDNet
- Marham Erickson - Open Internet Coalition
- Timothy Wu - Columbia Law School
Hope to see you there or catch it live on the Internet.
December 10th, 2007
Why metered Internet is a really bad idea
The above image from Lauren Weinstein’s blog shows why metered Internet is a really bad idea and obnoxious. It shows Canadian ISP Rogers Internet altering web pages to warn you when you go over 75% of your 75GB cap. I checked on the Rogers website for the Toronto Ontario area and 1 mbps service was $33 CAD (worth more than US dollars these days) per month with a 60 GB monthly cap. That effectively means you can only use BitTorrent for about 6 days out of the month. Compared to the Australian plans which have 8GB noon to midnight caps that the EFF was touting as the “better” alternative to Comcast BitTorrent seed throttling, Rogers seems like a pretty good deal. However, it’s still nowhere near as good as the US ISPs that don’t use metered internet plans.
There are plenty of price tiers in the US that work by limiting the rate at which you can download but not the amount you can download so it’s not like everyone is forced to subsidize the big bandwidth users. You can get 768 kbps DSL plans in the US for $15/month which still allow you to theoretically download 248 GBs per month if you kept it running continuously. This offers the best compromise where Internet usage isn’t stifled by constant fears of going over the limit or what time of the day it is like your cell phone.
My AT&T DSL plan is 1.5 (good for 1.2 mbps due to distance or line quality) costs $20/month with no metering. I’ve also had Comcast in the past and they charged less than $40/month with roughly 5 mbps service and they didn’t have any gigabyte caps (excluding NNTP news server which doesn’t count as network utilization). Comcast doesn’t even throttle BitTorrent uploads or downloads, they only limit the number of BitTorrent seed connections you can serve at a time to alleviate the network load. Now is this really that bad of a trade-off to ensure that a few BitTorrent users don’t overwhelm the majority of users and make everyone suffer? Even if you throttled BitTorrent upload/downloads by 50% throughput (which isn’t being done) and “only” allowed them to download 200 GBs per month instead of 400 GBs per month, is that really so unfair?
On a related note which I also posted as an update, the EFF has responded to me and others that I have misrepresented their position in my blog titled EFF wants to saddle you with metered Internet service. I’ll let you be the judge of that so here is what they sent me and what they’re telling everyone else.
The article incorrectly states that EFF endorses legislation or regulation that would force ISPs or users to offer only metered services. The EFF report actually states that the *availability* of metered access alongside “all you can eat” plans, combined with accurate advertising by ISPs, is one alternative that might solve whatever congestion issues Comcast might be having (as the language you quote in your article expressly makes clear).
Nowhere in my blog post do I state EFF would force ISPs to *only* offer metered services? All I said was “The EFF goes as far as touting the Australian model for broadband service” as a better alternative to Comcast’s current model and I included the Australian ISP link the EFF pointed to. The plans that came up were mostly metered plans and some were very expensive unlimited plans. Peter Eckersley even sent me an email touting this page where you pay $65/month AUD for a plan that gives you 8 GB of “pre-paid data” during noon to midnight [Update 12/12/2007 - Peter Eckersley emailed me saying he sent me the wrong link and had meant to link to this page which is $20 cheaper. That's slightly better but the 8GB cap is still a horrible idea]. Since you can download 8 GBs in less than 2 hours at 10 mbps, you essentially give up using any BitTorrent from noon to midnight unless you want to pay $3/GB. Even the off-peak rates are metered so you still have to be careful to turn off your BitTorrent client after 1 hour each day. If you want 48 GB “pre-paid data”, you need to pay $120/month AUD and $3/GB over that amount.
Now consider Comcast’s offerings which permit you to download and upload unlimited data using BitTorrent with no throttling for a flat fee of $40 per month. You can easily download 100 GBs and upload 10 GBs per month or more and Comcast won’t stop you or charge you anything extra. The only thing Comcast does is occasionally scale back the number of BitTorrent seed connections (dedicated server mode) you can have even though Comcast’s TOS (Terms Of Service) prohibits servers of any kind. My ATT DSL plan is less than $20/month and I can download 8 GB per day every day and not pay a single cent on overage charges so what is the EFF thinking recommending the Australian ISP model over Comcast’s “bad” model?
The EFF says what Comcast is doing is evil and that the Australian model is the better alternative even though it’s draconian compared to what Comcast or any other American ISP is doing. It would certainly stop the BitTorrent usage during peak hours but at what price to the user? The Free Press and Public Knowledge also think metered Internet is a better alternative but they go a step further and want to criminalize Comcast’s current operating model and fine them trillions of dollars. So again I ask: Who is the EFF, Free Press, and Public Knowledge serving? The RIAA and MPAA couldn’t buy this kind of anti peer-to-peer lobbying if they tried.
December 3rd, 2007
EFF wants to saddle you with metered Internet service
Updated 12/8/2007 - The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) last week publicly joined Free Press and Public Knowledge in recommending a metered Internet service as the alternative to Comcast’s BitTorrent throttling. The extremist “Net Neutrality” crowd that wants to regulate the Internet with bans on per-user charges/contracts for Enhanced QoS are so busy trying to revive their cause by using the Comcast issue that they’re overlooking the fact that these three groups are trying to bring you a metered Internet service. The media for the most part has missed the boat on what’s really going on and they present this to the public as if EFF is trying to protect the public’s interest from evil corporations.
The EFF goes as far as touting the Australian model for broadband service. Just to be sure this isn’t some kind of mistake, I personally confirmed with EFF this is what they want. In their report they write:
The Australian broadband market offers an illustration of how this can work in practice. The selection of Australian broadband options can be searched at http://bc.whirlpool.net.au/bc-plan.cfm. It includes a wide selection of plans with different peak and off-peak quotas, some with a traffic shaping after a quota has been passed and others with a wide range of per-gigabyte fees. It also includes explicitly “no set limit” plans where the ISP reserves the right to deem certain usage excessive, and more expensive, truly unlimited plans where the user can saturate their link 24/7 if they wish.
I checked out the link and a Cable broadband connection costs $40/month with a 400 MB cap and a $150/GB overage charge. Just imagine if you accidentally left the BitTorrent client on for a weekend or if the kids use Grandma’s computer to download a bunch of videos racking up hundreds of dollars in charges. We’re all going to have to go back to the cell phone model where we worry about peak and off/peak hours and how many megabytes we used just like we worry about how many minutes we use.
Well no thanks EFF, I as an American have no interest in paying higher prices like they do in Australia (no offense to the beautiful country of Australia and its people). Not only does a metered Internet service plan screw the low-end users, it makes BitTorrent or any kind of peer-to-peer networking cost prohibitive. The EFF ironically claims its standing up for BitTorrent rights when it fact it would kill it with metered Internet services.
Update 12/8/2007
The EFF has responded to me and others that I have misrepresented their position. I’ll let you be the judge of that so here is what they sent me and what they’re telling everyone else.
The article incorrectly states that EFF endorses legislation or regulation that would force ISPs or users to offer only metered services. The EFF report actually states that the *availability* of metered access alongside “all you can eat” plans, combined with accurate advertising by ISPs, is one alternative that might solve whatever congestion issues Comcast might be having (as the language you quote in your article expressly makes clear).
Nowhere in this blog post do I state EFF would force ISPs to *only* offer metered services? All I said was “The EFF goes as far as touting the Australian model for broadband service” as a better alternative to Comcast’s current model and I included the Australian ISP link the EFF pointed to. The plans that came up were mostly metered plans and some were very expensive unlimited plans. Peter Eckersley even sent me an email touting this page where you pay $65/month AUD for a plan that gives you 8 GB of “pre-paid data” during noon to midnight [Update 12/12/2007 - Peter Eckersley emailed me saying he sent me the wrong link and had meant to link to this page which is $20 cheaper. That's slightly better but the 8GB cap is still a horrible idea]. Since you can download 8 GBs in less than 2 hours at 10 mbps, you essentially give up using any BitTorrent from noon to midnight unless you want to pay $3/GB. Even the off-peak rates are metered so you still have to be careful to turn off your BitTorrent client after 1 hour each day. If you want 48 GB “pre-paid data”, you need to pay $120/month AUD and $3/GB over that amount.
Now consider Comcast’s offerings which permit you to download and upload unlimited data using BitTorrent with no throttling for a flat fee of $40 per month. You can easily download 100 GBs and upload 10 GBs per month or more and Comcast won’t stop you or charge you anything extra. The only thing Comcast does is occasionally scale back the number of BitTorrent seed connections (dedicated server mode) you can have even though Comcast’s TOS (Terms Of Service) prohibits servers of any kind. My ATT DSL plan is less than $20/month and I can download 8 GB per day every day and not pay a single cent on overage charges so what is the EFF thinking recommending the Australian ISP model over Comcast’s “bad” model?
The EFF says what Comcast is doing is evil and that the Australian model is the better alternative even though it’s draconian compared to what Comcast or any other American ISP is doing. It would certainly stop the BitTorrent usage during peak hours but at what price to the user? The Free Press and Public Knowledge also think metered Internet is a better alternative but they go a step further and want to criminalize Comcast’s current operating model and fine them trillions of dollars. So again I ask: Who is the EFF, Free Press, and Public Knowledge serving? The RIAA and MPAA couldn’t buy this kind of anti peer-to-peer lobbying if they tried.
November 6th, 2007
A rational debate on Comcast traffic management
Updated 8:00 PM
The discussion on Comcast actively resetting BitTorrent connections to manage its network for its cable broadband service has gotten hot in recent weeks and there hasn’t been a whole lot of accurate reporting on the subject because of the complexity of the issue. The subject of Net Neutrality has once again surfaced with Comcast’s actions being the latest rallying cry of Internet “discrimination”. This isn’t the first time an ISP was used as an example of Internet discrimination, extremists concocted a story that Cox was blocking Craigslist when the problem was arguably Craigslist own making all along.
Much like the debate on Net Neutrality, I sat on the sidelines for a while to get a handle on the situation. I had mixed feelings on the issue and I didn’t jump in until I saw the debate get out of hand with outright nonsense. Since June of 2006 I’ve written a series of articles on the issue of Net Neutrality culminating in “A rational debate on Net Neutrality” which I can proudly say got a lot of linking from reasonable proponents on both sides of the issue. Now that extremist groups like SaveTheInternet.com is lobbying the FCC to stop Comcast’s network management practices without fully understanding what they are asking for, I’m going to try and start a rational debate on the issue.
I will start by summarizing the Comcast situation and how it all started. Comcast was found to be actively resetting TCP connections on BitTorrent peer-to-peer file trading connections by forging TCP reset packets that appear to be coming from the BitTorrent peers. When most of us hear the term “forged TCP reset packets”, it sounds like Comcast has crossed the line of reasonable network management Comcast is guilty of application discrimination. So when word of this got out, all hell broke loose and the knifes were out for Comcast’s blood.
The Free Press has gone as far as demanding an FCC enjoinment before the merits are even decided and they are demanding fines of $195,000 per infraction which would amount to $2.3 TRILLION dollars if we only counted Comcast customers.
The FCC should act immediately to enjoin Comcast’s secret discrimination and, even before deciding the merits, issue a temporary injunction requiring Comcast to stop degrading any applications. Upon deciding the merits, the Commission should issue a permanent injunction ending Comcast’s discrimination. The Commission should also impose the maximum forfeitures to deter Comcast and other network providers and to ensure society is fully compensated for the harms imposed by Internet discrimination.
I have to admit that when I first heard about the issue, I too thought Comcast crossed the line of reasonable network management in to abusive behavior but after speaking to Richard Bennett who had a hand in creating some of the technology used to build the Internet, I’m not so certain that my initial assessment was correct.
<Next page - Web hogs plus shared cable equals network meltdown>
June 4th, 2007
A rational debate on Net Neutrality
The subject of Net Neutrality has become so politicized that it’s almost impossible to have a rational debate on the subject. Even the term “Net Neutrality” has become a political slogan that is often deliberately vague to hide its true meaning. Is it even possible to have a rational debate on Net Neutrality? That’s what I’m going to try and do here and this won’t be your typical Net Neutrality article that takes one side or the other because it will slap down the villains on both sides of the debate. I’m going to try and step back and share with you my thousand foot view of the whole war on Net Neutrality.
How the Internet really works:
The Internet is based on users only paying for their on-ramp access and nothing more. This is the way that the Internet has always worked on a “best practice” and contractual basis. The “Internet” also isn’t the single entity that people often perceive it to be; it’s actually an inter-network (hence the name Internet) or a network made up of many private networks that route Internet data amongst each other on a contractual basis. Large carriers who own chunks of the Internet don’t charge other large carriers in exchange for using each other’s infrastructure and this is called settlement-free peering. In other words, you carry my traffic and I’ll carry yours and everyone pays for their share of the Internet infrastructure.
If there’s an imbalance in the amount of traffic that one carrier passes through on behalf of another carrier, the larger carrier carrying more of the data will charge the smaller carrier. On very rare occasions the smaller carrier will balk and refuse to pay and the connection between carriers is severed and customers will get cut off from each other. Ultimately one side or the other blinks and sometimes it’s the bigger carrier quickly caving in because they’re afraid of the legislature stepping in to regulate the unregulated Internet if the stalemate doesn’t get solved in a very high-profile case where customers are cut off. But at no time do carriers ever get to directly charge customers who are attached to other carrier’s networks for their Internet for traversing their network because revenue is already shared when the smaller carrier pays a portion of their revenues to the larger carriers or it’s settlement-free because of mutual sharing.
The myth that the Internet has always been a dumb pipe:
One of the most common arguments I hear is that the Internet has always been and continues to be a dumb pipe and there is no intelligent packet prioritization on the Internet. That simply is false and there have long been contractual agreements QoS (Quality of Service) packet prioritization for business customers. These agreements allow customers to pay a premium to permit a certain percentage of traffic (usually a small percent) to get traffic prioritization across a carrier’s network.
Global Crossing for example has a premium service for its customers which it actually extends to other partnering networks using settlement-free contracts. Some of these partners are in Asia and they prioritize Global Crossing packets in exchange for Global Crossing prioritizes their packets in return. This is identical to the settlement-free connectivity I mentioned earlier only this extends the concept to cover prioritization as well. This is end-to-end QoS service which covers off-ramp QoS service without the customer directly paying the off-ramp remote network.
If we had to pay for access to other networks on the Internet, then we might as well go back to AOL or CompuServe circa 1994 when you had pockets of proprietary networks that no one else could reach and that’s the last thing we want. The minute you start demanding payment from customers of other networks, the Internet becomes fragmented because it’s becomes a metered closed Network. Even if you could afford to pay, it would be a logistical nightmare to keep up with all the various entities you have to pay.
Just like how we don’t directly pay to route and connect to other carriers on the Internet, we wouldn’t directly pay other remote carriers for prioritization services. We pay our own carrier once for connectivity (and premium prioritization service if we choose to do so) just once and let our carrier work out the dirty details with the other carriers on the Internet of whether they need to exchange money or not. This is how an intelligent but fair and open Internet works.
May 31st, 2007
Why HD movie downloads are a big lie
There’s a lot of buzz lately about the delivery of HD TV and Movie content over the Internet with shows like Lost being delivered by ABC.com and other video download services with XBox360 or iTunes. I even have friends and colleagues telling me that BlueRay or HD-DVD won’t make it because HD will simply be delivered over the Internet. But there’s one dirty little secret that people are forgetting or that they don’t understand, IT’S NOT HD they’re getting over the Internet. Heck it’s not even NTSC 480i (720×480 60 fields interlaced) DVD quality when you really look at the amount of video data you’re getting!
Oh sure they might call it HD because it happens to be 1280×720 resolution which sounds awfully high, but you’re talking about an audio/video stream that’s 1.3 mbps (megabits per second) at best. You can call it whatever you like and you can even claim it meets the minimum definition of HD because it’s 720p (1280×720) resolution but it ISN’T HD for the simple reason that the bit rate isn’t enough. A regular 480i DVD is either 2, 5, or 8 mbps and most modern dual-layer 8 GB DVD releases are at least 5 mbps but more likely 8 mbps. A typical DVD movie is approximately 6 GBs of data while a typical “HD” movie you download is only about 1.5 GBs of data. Do you honestly believe you’re getting more image information in that 1.5 GB so-called HD movie you downloaded versus that 6 GB DVD movie?
[Update 3:35PM - I was a bit shocked to hear some people argue that a 1.3 mbps H.264 MPEG-4 based 720p 30-fps video stream can be better than an 8 mbps MPEG-2 480i 60-field DVD stream. I'm going to explain something; it's impossible. MPEG-4 can compress data in a more efficient manner such that it can have a 1.4x advantage over MPEG-2 in compression ratios while maintaining the same perceived quality. However, there's absolutely no way that newer compression formats can overcome a 4 or 6 fold disadvantage in bitrate. Compression - especially in the lossy world of video - is more of a subjective thing. MPEG-2 video is already compressed fairly efficiently and you're really not going to squeeze out any more than a 2 fold improvement at best no matter how fancy the encoder is. There can be marginal improvements in the field of compression but there are never free lunches.]
The fact that a DVD is only encoded in 480i video is unfortunate but it still has more video information and raw potential than a so-called HD movie download for the simple fact that it has 4 times more data. A 480i video stream can be “up-scaled” to a 1080i or 1080p 1920×1080 display with glorious results and I guarantee you that it looks better than that so-called HD 720p movie you spent at least 3 hours downloading over the Internet while your family complains the Internet connection is really slow.
But truthfully speaking, the whole Blu-ray versus HD-DVD format war is silly because a regular dual-layer DVD can easily store 93 minutes of 12 mbps 1080i or 1080p H.264 or VC-1 encoded video with bare minimum HD quality that looks much better than normal MPEG-2 480i DVDs. This format would have been extremely easy to produce and the players could have cost less than $100. The only thing that HD-DVD gets you is that you can either store 3 hours of that same quality video or 100 minutes of good quality 20 mbps H.264 or VC-1 video. Blu-ray players for some reason decided to forego the more advanced video codecs like H.264 or VC-1 and they’re using the old MPEG-2 encoding scheme which neutralized the capacity advantage of Blu-ray media. [UPDATE 6/1/2007 - Newer Blu-ray titles have begun using H.264 so they've regained the capacity lead.] But instead, we have a format war where no one is really winning since Sony decided to cede their market in the next generation console wars with the PS3 to salvage the BlueRay format.
Another huge misconception is that people tend to confuse HD movie downloads over the Internet with HD IPTV. While the acronym “IP” stands for “Internet Protocol”, people have the meanings reversed because Internet always involves IP but IP doesn’t always involve the Internet. What I mean by that is that IP could strictly be a closed-network thing on a LAN (Local Area Network).
Note: It’s also a huge misconception that VoIP (Voice over IP) means Voice over the Internet because the vast majority of VoIP traffic happens on the LAN and gets switched over the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network).
IPTV requires 16 mbps per HD Channel and it would be IMPOSSIBLE for it to traverse the Internet in unicast traffic in the near tear or long term. IPTV works on a very localized level within a carrier’s own network where everything travels on local fiber-optic multi-gigabit networks on a multicast (or cached) level out to the DSLAM and only from there does it unicast to the user over a mile of a pair of copper cables. [Update 5:50 PM - Think of multicasting as a massive carpool where data is only transmitted once for everyone whereas unicast means the video bandwidth is multiplied by the number of users. Even a 2 mbps unicast stream turns in to a 20,000 mbps stream with 10,000 users where as a multicast or locally cached 16 mbps stream for 100,000 users is still means 16 mbps of traffic over the backbone.] That’s precisely why AT&T U-Verse wants to install miniature DSLAMs within a mile of their customers so they can support a 20 mbps DSL connection that can support a 16 mbps unicast HD IPTV stream over the last mile in addition to data access to the Internet. Other than U-Verse, Verizon’s FiOS (Fiber to the premises or home) is the only other way that IPTV can be delivered to the home. The Cable Internet companies don’t really care about IPTV because they deliver their digital television over a different frequency over the same coax cable and it’s a broadcast technology that sends out the same analog/digital signal to everyone’s house.
This is precisely why HD Movie downloads are a big fat lie being pitched to consumers because even the delivery of 1.3 mbps unicast traffic will bring most parts of the Internet down to its knees if enough people use the service. The carriers are in a strategic position to be close enough to the customer that they can actually deliver true HD-quality IPTV with some level of video on demand and that scares the Googles of the world to death because there’s no way an Internet based 1.3 mbps make-believe HD video service can compete with true HD IPTV. That’s precisely why Google lobbied so hard to defeat the Telecom bill last year which would have deregulated the Telcos so they could implement IPTV and Net Neutrality was merely a political “poison pill” to kill the Telecom bill. More on this later …
April 13th, 2007
Cringely doesn't need no stinking facts to push Net Neutrality
Robert X. Cringely — the PBS pundit who was caught masquerading as a Stanford PhD and professor — has a new blog out titled “We Don’t Need No Stinking Best Effort.” Cringely has come out with another bogus accusation against the Broadband companies claiming that they’re now in a conspiracy to break his fax machine. But this isn’t the first time bogus accusations have been employed by the Neutrality extremists. I covered the fiasco last summer when Craigslist falsely accused Cox communications of Net Neutrality violations and even got a US Senator to repeat the lie, but it turned out it was Craigslist’s own doing to begin with.
In this latest smear, Cringely’s complains that his 1410 kbps (upstream) service from Comcast is mysteriously unable to support the 9.6 kbps fax stream he’s trying to shove over his Vonage VoIP (Voice over IP) service. Cringely concludes that it must be because of the lack of Net Neutrality and that Comcast is doing some kind of anti-competitive prioritization at his expense, which causes his fax machine to fail when using his Vonage service. But is this really what’s going on? Had Cringely done the most basic research on this issue, he would realize that this has nothing to do with network prioritization.
Let’s take a look at what Cringely is trying to do. He’s trying to shove a 9.6 kbps digital fax stream over an analog phone line, which gets converted to a digital VoIP stream using some analog to digital voice CODEC, which uses about 8 times the bandwidth as the original fax stream. Aside from the fact that this is a grossly inefficient roundabout way to transmit a fax, since you’re doing an unnecessary digital to analog and then back to digital conversion, it actually causes severe issues to the point that faxes will simply break if you try to send it over a VoIP line, even if lossless CODECs like G.711 are used. There actually is a standard called T.38 that addresses real-time fax compatibility over VoIP lines, but you have to have T.38-capable equipment configured on each end of the line. Ideally, you would send the fax over to a fax service provider on the Internet using a regular TCP/IP data stream at 8 times the speed at full efficiency and let it do the PSTN conversion on its end. There are actually $5/month services that permit unlimited inbound facsimiles in his e-mail inbox, which can be printed from any laser printer. So Cringely is essentially ramming his head against the wall trying unsuccessfully to get his second Vonage line (presumably at $35/month) to receive a single fax. If he had to have his own traditional fax machine working, T.38 would be a minimum requirement for basic medium-speed fax capability. Cringely’s lack of a T.38 capability ATA (Analog Telephony Adapter) is the real reason behind his problems, but it’s just too convenient an excuse for him to slam the carriers with his extremist Net Neutrality agenda.
Another fundamental problem with Cringely’s accusations is that facsimiles are not latency-sensitive, and they’re nothing like a voice call. If there is a half second delay in the packets for your voice call, that’s extremely noticeable, and that’s why network latency must be kept at a minimum for VoIP. Facsimiles are completely different because it doesn’t matter when the packet arrives so long as it arrives at all intact in a reasonable amount of time. Whether the fax takes 20 seconds to transmit or 30 seconds to transmit is totally inconsequential. Even if Comcast were to hypothetically degrade his VoIP traffic (it isn’t), it wouldn’t make a bit of difference for his faxes.
Cringely’s own forum has criticized him for this oversight, but he’s not one to respond to his critics or fix any of his errors. Many people, including myself, have called him out on blatant errors on IP networking, but he never responds to any of his critics. I guess if PBS lets him get away with claiming to be a Stanford PhD and professor, falsely accusing Comcast of blocking his facsimiles doesn’t even register on the scale. When it comes to technology policy and accusations, Cringely doesn’t need no stinking facts.
January 5th, 2007
Will BitTyrant poison the well for BitTorrent users?
David Maynor has pointed to an interesting development on the BitTorrent scene in a new "selfish" BitTorrent client called BitTyrant. Speaking of poisoning the well, BitTyrant requires Java 1.5 to run which means you have to tolerate Java version conflict hell and massively bloated and inefficient software which is the complete opposite of something like uTorrent. Maynor goes on to explain some of his past P2P experiments where he would game the system by cherry picking he fastest uploaders and only uploading to them which - according to Maynor - seems to be something that BitTyrant is doing as well. But Maynor goes on to show that uploading bogus but highly compressible ZERO data would yield large quantities of downloads before the other party figures out they're being gamed.
The inventor of BitTorrent Bram Cohen doesn't want to enforce upload ratio policies at the protocol level; and I think he might have a point. You can't mandate 1:1 ratios because people simply won't want to or be able to use it because of the asymmetric low-speed upload nature of broadband links. The problem with anti-leach mechanisms if enforced too rigidly is that it will turn off users since most people can't upload as much as they download because of their Internet connection. If download speed was capped at upload speeds in a tit for tat peer to peer exchange, the experience will be unbearable for most users. In my experience, BitTorrent can be very healthy if everyone at least uploads 20% of what they download since there is a small generous minority that will leave their connections open and seed their files long after they've completed downloading.
Most Torrents can be healthy if people will use an honest client and put a reasonable upload cap of 70% of their peak upload bandwidth. This avoids over saturating their upstream Internet connection and allows their VoIP/Skype applications and their general Internet responsiveness to remain reasonable. Of course this doesn't work if there are 2 clients set to 50% of peak upload if they're both uploading at the same time since they will saturate the entire Internet connection and brutalize other less agressive applications. When I teach people how to set cap their upstream bandwidth and tell them to set a reasonable cap of 70% of their peak upload speeds, many people will simply decide set their upload to zero or near zero and rationalize their selfish behavior that no one else is entitled to their bandwidth. Obviously they're forgetting where their FREE downstream bandwidth is coming from and if everyone decides to do this, BitTorrent simply won't work.
This illustrates the need for "Enhanced QoS" bandwidth shaping mechanisms ESPECIALLY on your own broadband router which allows you to leave all of your BitTorrent clients on full throttle and still allow games, VoIP, and other latency sensitive applications to work well. This even allows BitTorrent to work at higher speeds than the less-than-always effective voluntary 70% upstream cap while an IP voice call is in session. So if you have a 512 kbps peak upload speed, having a QoS enabled router (tutorial here) will allow your BitTorrent client to operate at full speed when nothing else is happening but still operate at around 430 kbps while your VoIP/Skype stream maintains low latency and high quality. Add a game session to that SIP or Skype VoIP call and your BitTorrent upload will simply be capped to 380 kbps while the responsiveness for your game and voice call remains high.
The stupid network that Net Neutrality proponents espouse where "all packets are treated equal" simply falls on its face in the real world because there is no better way to foster a better network experience. Net Neutrality proponents in Congress are seeking to ban the sale of Enhanced QoS all over the Internet in the name of saving the Internet. They subscribe to the nonsense of the stupid network that will say "bandwidth solves all latency problems". But even throwing ten times more bandwidth at the problem won't prevent traffic-bursting applications like BitTorrent, HTTP, FTP, and other web applications from simply swallowing up any additional bandwidth given while starving low-bandwidth latency-sensitive applications like Voice over IP or online gaming.
July 13th, 2006
Craigslist silently fixes their end in the Cox fiasco
For months, Craigslist had been held up as the poster child for what can happen in a world without Net Neutrality. That poster child status expired last month when we found out what really happened was a simple technical glitch in a personal firewall from Authentium that Cox offered its customers. The story that started it all which accused Cox Communications of deliberately blocking Craigslist to bolster their own classified has since been corrected yet the original conspiracy theory had long enough legs to reach the US Senate.
Throughout the ordeal, I tried in vain to get Craigslist to acknowledge their part in this because of the fact that their website was not conforming to best practices which triggered the glitch in Authentium’s personal firewall. The Craigslist website was behaving in an unusual way where it would tell the whole world it was too busy all the time. Craig Newmark’s (founder of Craigslist) position was that the responsibility for the glitch fell solely on the shoulders of Cox Communications and Authentium and that it was up to them to fix the problem.
Authentium had provided a beta fix within days of the original complaint in February but spent the next few months testing the software before it could be released to the general public. Had Craigslist fixed their servers to behave according to best practice like everyone else on the web, the problem could have been universally fixed for all users with or without updated software from Authentium. Last month when the final update for Authentium was released, the story finally died down but the actual problem didn’t go away since it takes a long time for software updates to propagate to end users.
Yesterday when I was testing a new free network analyzer from WildPackets called OmniPeek Personal, I took a quick look at Craigslist.org and to my surprise it was fixed. I checked with a few of my colleagues and they verified the results. What surprised me was the fact that Craigslist never acknowledged any issues on their end yet they fixed it silently after all the smoke had cleared. This is certainly good for Craigslist because anyone who wants to go to their website regardless of any problems with their Authentium personal firewall will be able to do so. But it still leaves one wondering why they fixed it now and not sooner when all the accusations of conspiracy were flying about.
June 29th, 2006
Net neutrality debate in New York - Podcast
In an event hosted by the New York Software Industry Association (NYSIA) on Monday 6/26/2006, Bruce Bernstein the President of NYSIA moderated a public debate on Net neutrality between
- James L. Gattuso, Senior Research Fellow, The Heritage Foundation
- Tim Karr, Campaign Director, Free Press
- George Ou, Technical Director, TechRepublic
My colleague and fellow ZDNet blogger Donna Bogatin was present and wrote this blog covering this debate and wrote:
"The net neutrality issue stirs impassioned debate, and last evening’s Big Apple debate was no exception. Several times during the formal discussions, Jay Sulzberger literally rose from his seat in the audience to demand corrections, retractions, rebuttals".
I phoned it in from our San Francisco studio and recorded the event to bring you this podcast. Note that some of the questions from audience are very quiet because they didn't have microphones. We tried to raise the audio level of the questions from the audience as much as we could though it may still be hard to hear. The entire podcast is about 94 minutes long.
June 21st, 2006
Is ESPN committing reverse Net neutrality?
A little more than a week ago I had a Net neutrality debate with Russell Shaw. Russell Shaw speculated that there had to be some sort of Net neutrality violation going on and that the ISPs were locking ESPN out without some sort of special contract. In Russell's blog, he speculates:
"My guess is that ESPN360 and Comcast did not come to a licensing agreement. It was ESPN360 that refused to pony up."
But as I dug a little deeper and discussed the issue with some fellow bloggers Matt S and Richard Bennett and looked around on ESPN360, I came to a startling thought: Could this be a case of reverse Net neutrality service blocking? If this is the case then Russell might be right about a neutrality violation, but he may have gotten the role of the perpetrator and victim backwards.
The more questions I asked, the more it seemed like this was a case of ESPN doing business as usual with Cable TV operators, only this time it seems they may have extended the concept to the Internet Service Providers (some of which are also Cable TV operators). ESPN being an extremely popular channel is in a position to be a tough negotiator in extracting revenue from Cable TV operators which get passed on to all cable subscribers regardless of whether they watch ESPN or not. Is it possible that ESPN is extending this exact same negotiation tactic to the Internet?
I went surfing on ESPN360.com and I was directed to a popup window titled "SORRY, YOUR INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER DOES NOT CARRY ESPN360 VIDEOS" which then informed me:
"Good news for Sports Video Deficiency sufferers!
Although your current Internet provider doesn't carry ESPN360, from June 26 - July 19, everyone will have access to all of the sports video clips, games, live events and original ESPN shows exclusive to ESPN360 users. For now, click on the button, 'I Want ESPN360' and fill out the form to send a note to your Internet provider asking for permanent free use of ESPN360 and take a stand against sports video deficiency!
All-access period June 26th - July 19."
Exhibit A: You are a video deficient sufferer
Now wait just a minute; I am a video deficient sufferer on every day of the year except for June 26th - July 19th? Who gave me a reprieve from my wretched video deficiency in those three weeks? Why does this seem so familiar? Come to think of it, I've had these kinds of free premium TV channel trials on my Cable TV service. After I click on the "I want ESPN360" button, I get this nice convenient form to nag my ISP that I want them to carry ESPN360.
Exhibit B: Here is how you can nag your ISP!
This second form shows you a list of partners that do "carry ESPN360" (sounds a lot like Cable TV terminology).
| EPSN360 carriers | Video "deficient" ISPs |
| Adelphia | Cablevision |
| Verizon | Cox |
| Beld | Comcast |
| Charter LA, Stl | SBC |
| Grande | Time Warner |
| Mediacom | College (dorm?) |
| MidHudson | Other |
So this is very interesting. In order for this to be a case of Net neutrality abuse where ISPs block or degrade websites, I would have to believe the following:
- I would have to believe that there was some massive conspiracy between some of the biggest Cable and DSL broadband operators in the Country to block ESPN360 videos.
- I would have to believe that the ISPs have somehow managed to only block the premium content from ESPN360 but just so happens to allow the free samplers from EPSN360. This would require that the network understands what's going on at the web application layer to know what's a sampler and what's a premium service to block.
- Then almost like magic on June 26th, all the ISPs that don't "carry" ESPN360 would all simultaneously unblock ESPN360 for the exact duration of a few weeks.
- I would also need to believe that the FCC would do nothing to intervene in such a massive conspiracy when the FCC had already slapped down Madison River Communications for blocking Vonage and fined Madison $15,000.
While I couldn't say for sure, I would have to bet that this is most likely NOT a case of a Net neutrality violation, but just the opposite situation where ESPN360 is treating the Internet like Cable TV where we get little choice in channels since they're all pre-packaged. More than likely, it's a case of ESPN looking at your source IP address. If ESPN sees you coming from an IP address starting with 24, then it knows you're coming from Comcast and it can tell you that you are "video deficient".
So what does all of this mean? Is it possible that ESPN is making certain demands of the ISPs to be able to "carry" ESPN360 as if they were cable companies? Does this mean that ESPN is demanding preferential treatment and free connectivity to the ISPs that aren't ESPN360 carriers? Does this mean ESPN360 is demanding free caching services from the ISPs since that is the only scalable way to effectively deliver high-quality video on demand? And most importantly, is ESPN demanding a fee per subscriber from the ISP? If any of this is true, those of us who don't watch ESPN will be forced in to subsidizing this sort of activity.
Now if ESPN can demand money from ISPs for the privilege of being able to "carry" ESPN360, then why couldn't Google video demand similar privileges and payment from ISPs since it would be suicidal for any ISP to not be able to "carry" Google or Google Video? Google certainly is in a much better position to bully any ISP than the other way around. Technically speaking, it would be very easy for a content provider to cut off any IP range they want and effectively block all ISPs that won't share their subscription revenues.
The Net neutrality advocates worry so much about the content transporters that they have never considered the possibility of "evil" content producers. While I don't know the exact business model behind this ESPN360 deal, it certainly looks like ESPN is blocking entire blocks of IP addresses that correspond to non-paying ISPs. If this is true, doesn't this turn the entire Net neutrality debate on its head since we may need to reverse our focus towards the abusive content companies? If the Net neutrality proponents can get so worked up about non-existent and fabricated cases of abuse on the part of the ISP, would they get as passionate about the real possibility of reverse Net neutrality?
[Update: Fellow blogger Justin James followed up on this issue]
June 20th, 2006
Craigslist scare story gets even stranger
[Update: Now we have US Senator Wyden propagating the lie that this was a Cox conspiracy to block Craigslist because they have their own classified service. The following blog proves that this was never the case and the original myth was retracted]
In my last blog about the lies being spread about Cox and Authentium, I showed how the Net neutrality lobbyists are lying about the situation to push their agenda even though they've been proven they were wrong. Their rallying cry has been that Cox blocks Craigslist and this is what you get without their brand of Net neutrality and their key reference point is Tom Foremski's original blog that made the following claim:
Back on February 23rd Authentium acknowledged that their software is blocking Craigslist but it still hasn't fixed the problem, more than three months later. That's a heck of long time to delete some text from their blacklist.
This statement that blamed this on a Cox/Authentium blacklist had turned in to the battle cry for the Net neutrality gang demanding a stop to all tiered pricing structures though they sell it as a case of your first amendment. It turns out that Tom Foremski's original blog that blamed this on Cox and Authentium's inability to change some text on a blacklist was indeed false. Foremski now states "I assumed there was a blacklist - I have no idea how Craigslist is being blocked".
To make the case even more strange, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark decided to weigh in and say I "have it wrong" though he offered no specifics on what he believes I have wrong. Newmark simply put up his own blog on this issue where he continued to pass the buck and took no responsibility on his part. But the truth is that Craigslist is equally at fault and could have fixed the issue themselves long ago if they were simply following the RFCs for TCP/IP. Many people have verified this to be the case and I took the time to verify it myself. Here is a screenshot of an Ethernet capture when I tried to surf craigslist.org.
Note the dark highlighted portion that reads "Window size: 0". That literally means "don't talk to me now I'm busy" in TCP/IP. That is the equivalent of putting up an "out to lunch" sign on the front door of a store.
Cox communications never blocked anything on the network so this was never a "Net neutrality" issue to begin with since the blocking is being done on a piece of software that users downloaded. That software is Authentium's personal firewall which Cox offers to its customers for self protection. Authentium's software fails in the sense that it never bothered to check back to see if the store was really open and simply took the "Window size: 0" literally and never checked back.
So whose fault is this? It is a fault on both Craigslist and Authentium where a bug in Craigslist servers triggered a bug in Authentium and the problem could be fixed on either end. Fixing the problem on Craigslist servers would immediately fix the problem for every single Authentium user which could be in the hundreds of thousands or more. Fixing the Authentium personal firewall won't do anything until a massive notification and deployment effort with Cox customers (and other Authentium users). Such a large scale deployment will take time and there is no guarantee that everyone will install an updated firewall or even bother reading the notification.
Craig Newmark could have corrected the problem for everyone globally on his own servers months ago yet he asks Cox and Authentium "why did it take so long". But it seems to me that Authentium at least took ownership of the problem months ago and does have an actual fix that they've scheduled to release. Craig Newmark on the other hand seems to have taken this to mean "see it's their fault and they admitted it" and refuses to even acknowledge what the blogsphere is saying about his responsibilities with his own servers. So my question for Mr. Newmark is this: Why didn't you fix this on your end months ago?
June 19th, 2006
Net neutrality proponents flagrantly lie about Craigslist blockage
[Update: Now we have US Senator Wyden propagating the lie that this was a Cox conspiracy to block Craigslist because they have their own classified service. We now have proof and a retraction that this was never the case]
It appears that the Net neutrality proponents have been caught in a flagrant lie in their effort to scare the public (thanks to The Original Blog and The Lippard Blog for pointing this out). MyDD.com and SaveTheInternet.com along with many other Net neutrality activist sites have accused Cox Communications of deliberately blocking the website Craigslist by quoting a report from our own Tom Foremski. This alleged blockage of Craigslist was supposedly an example of what would happen without the passage of an extreme version of Net neutrality being pushed by Congressman Markey and Senator Snowe and big Internet companies such as Google. The only problem with this accusation is that it is flat out wrong, yet SaveTheInternet.com and MyDD.com are flagrantly lying about it. Even though they have been repeatedly notified of the real situation, they refuse to retract their stories and continue peddling the lie.
The accusation is that Cox communications using a firewall from Authentium is blocking Craigslist and that Authentium failed to remove Craigslist from their text based blacklist. Here's a quote from Tom Foremski's original report.
"Back on February 23rd Authentium acknowledged that their software is blocking Craigslist but it still hasn't fixed the problem, more than three months later. That's a heck of long time to delete some text from their blacklist."
Now this is a fairly serious accusation, because it only takes a few minutes to remove something from a blacklist. If this had really been a simple blacklist issue and a simple text string wasn't removed from the so called blacklist for three months, there would be some serious legal liability on the part of Authentium and Cox Communications since either one of them could have modified a simple text based blacklist. Furthermore, there is insinuation that there had been some collusion on the part of Cox Communications and Authentium to benefit Cox's own classified ads service. Here's a continuing quotation from Tom Foremski.
"Jim (CEO of Craigslist) wasn't aware that Cox had its own classified ads service. 'That changes things,' he said."
But the real story is that this has NOTHING to do with blacklists and is actually the fault of Craigslist's own web servers. Craigslist web servers return a TCP ACK window size of 0 which in plain English tells the entire world "don't talk to me, I'm very busy right now" whenever anyone tries to talk to it. This is VERY unusual behavior on any website because they would just be asking for problems if they did this. If anyone follows RFC 793 (the official rule book of TCP/IP) to the letter, they simply won't try to talk to Craigslist at all or they'll talk to it very slowly. Many devices on a TCP/IP network will be a little less stringent and play a little looser with the RFCs and be a little more aggressive in trying to connect to a server that says "don't talk to me", but the Authentium firewall product honored the reply from Craigslist and responded by sending data one byte at a time. Authentium has been working on a newer driver for their Firewall to accommodate these rare situations, but Craigslist could save themselves a lot of problems by not telling the world "don't talk to me" in the first place.
The CEO of Authentium John Sharp gave this interview where he confirmed the issue. Here's a quotation from Sharp:
"The beta of the fix was made available almost immediately - in mid-March. The final version of this new driver is now shipping in our OEM firewall products, and the beta version is available to Cox subscribers via Cox High Speed customer support. This new driver will enter general availability at Cox as part of their summer product release."
Understandably, Cox isn't going to implement a beta driver on a production Firewall that could adversely affect millions of users just because Craigslist can't configure their servers properly. How this was interpreted as a blacklist issue is beyond me, but it's clear that a correction needs to be issues as soon as possible and the deliberate lying needs to end. As Richard Bennett says, "Craig Newmark’s site is screwed up and he’s blaming Cox for it - and seeking a new law. That’s taking Internet retardation to a whole new level."
This is particularity significant since the whole case for the extreme versions of Net neutrality is based on the premise that Internet sites will be blocked without it. Craigslist is the only example of a website being blocked for prolonged periods of time being cited by the Net neutrality crowd and the fact that it has been proven to be a big lie speaks volumes about their position. This isn't surprising given the fact that almost all of the Net neutrality proponents never even read the very proposal that they're pushing for.
On the other hand, the existing laws have proved to be effective when the FCC stopped Madison River Communications of blocking Vonage last year and handed them a $15,000 fine. If this wasn't enough, the House of Representatives have passed a bill that mandates FCC oversight for any complaints of sites being blocked or degraded with fines of $500,000 per incident. But this wasn't enough and the Net neutrality extremists are seeking is an end to all tiered services and a ban on charges for enhanced QoS services.
George Ou is Technical Director of ZDNet. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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