How good is your ISP?

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Hm, not that bad..

my ISP is s**t, try to download a torrent and it slows to nothingness, the torrent might download provided you got enough peers from the tracker before you got chocked

I gave up using torrents. I noticed that my connection crawled, and complained to my ISP. They said they intentionally throttled torrents. I explained that by doing so, they INCREASED the traffic, because everyone had to get downloads from the sources, wherever they happened to be. My ISP is too thick to understand that.

That doesn't seem quite right...

Comcast does the same, only they don't admit it. I can't remember the last time I successfully used a torrent...

Speakeasy pWn3z!

To the contrary - and there is another factor at play.

1. BitTorrent is a rather wasteful protocol - primarily because of communications (to/from trackers and peers), discarded data, etc. All things being equal, it will require more data to be transferred to obtain a file using BitTorrent than from a HTTP or FTP server. It is great for distribution of load, which brings us to point number two:

2. It severely increases upload traffic. Downloading the file from a HTTP or FTP source results in negligible upload traffic. Using BitTorrent can result in considerable upload traffic, particularly if users wish to "keep their ratio up". In some cases, overall upload traffic is nearing or even exceeding download traffic - to the point where Australian ISPs are starting to meter traffic in both directions.

End result? Your ISP is right - throttling BitTorrent and getting users to obtain files via other means (HTTP, FTP, NNTP, etc) reduces the amount of traffic on their network.

Point 1. More data? Not a significant amount. Discarded data? Not compared with the huge amount of data regularly discarded by people failing to download monolithic files.

Point2. And you point is? The upload channels exist. Most people do not use them. I take it what you are saying is that ISPs wish to welch on the deal, whereby they sold customers a service that included upload capability, and are now whinging because people use it?

End result? My ISP may need to rethink their position - throttling BitTorrent and getting users to obtain files via other means (HTTP, FTP, NNTP, etc) reduces the amount of traffic on their network, when people decide to cease using them as an ISP.

Reality. People wish to download data reliably and efficiently. If FTP/HTTP file caching were implemented well along the data paths involved, the net result would be somewhat similar to BitTorrent's effect. They are not. In order to genuinely reduce traffic, the number of hops actually traversed by each piece of data is the bottom line. With an active torrent, this will tend to be twice to hop count from you to your ISP. With an FTP/HTTP download, it will often be the hop count all the way to the source.

Now... if ISPs themselves started to join in with the torrent idea, the download hop counts would drop to just the single way trip. For some reason, they do not seem to want to do this.

Not good enough. Nanna needs to change.

...or failing to download files via BitTorrent. That really isn't comparable.



You can't sell a service without an upload capability. However, with traditional ISP usage (and in turn, how plan pricing is derived), upstream traffic has been less than downstream traffic. The fact that this trend is being reversed, particularly when most users remain on asymmetric links, is causing a problem.



All of the above protocols have lower overheads, so even with the same number of users the amount of traffic would decrease.



Yet people squeal about things like transparent proxies. Can't have your cake and eat it. Reducing distance will reduce the amount of traffic on any given link, but to your ISP, most such links are outside their network and thus not their problem. It isn't a problem to them if your data comes via more links, but it is a problem if you chew up more of their links.



P2P caching can be very hit and miss - and given that most material distributed via P2P networks is copyrighted, is a potential legal liability. Not to mention the cost of the equipment to do it, and the additional network complexity that comes with it.

(Disclosure: I moderate a broadband discussion forum, and deal with ISP staff on a near daily basis. Suffice to say I'm not just blowing hot air here...)

I won't bother to reply in detail to any of the new subjects you have introduced, whilst avoiding any attempt to answer any of the points I made. E.g. I accepted that Bittorrent protocols do involve an overhead, but stated that it was not significant. You ignored that.

By your "disclosure", I take it that you are saying that you are biased toward the views held by ISP staff. OK.

Also, as you mentioned before that, you acknowledge that ISPs dislike Bittorrent because they don't care about overloading the network beyond the nodes they themselves control. A somewhat blinkered view, and ultimately one that they will have to get out of.