Continue reading Virgin Mobile targets March 23rd to throttle data, take candy from children

Virgin Mobile targets March 23rd to throttle data, take candy from children originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 19 Jan 2012 08:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Bell Canada will stop throttling your P2P traffic, might charge instead originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 25 Dec 2011 08:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The Internet Infrastructure Foundation is the independent organization responsible for operating the top Swedish domain (.SE) and national domain name registry. It actively promotes development and stability of the Internet.

The Health Status of Net Neutrality – The Operators’ Impact on Internet Traffic is their new report which looks at how suppliers of fixed and mobile Internet services in Sweden, traditionally some of the fastest in the world, regulate the flow of traffic in their networks.

The plan was to discover if throttling activities exist among operators, and if so to assess how feasable it is to accurately measure it, and then decide whether it was worth continuing with and expanding upon the project.

Tests were conducted by .SE on the services of a dozen ISPs and measurements were taken for three different types of traffic – standard web browsing, file-sharing and video (such as YouTube).

“What is evident from the measurement results is that some mobile operators systematically downgrade user traffic such as the file-sharing protocol BitTorrent,” says Jörgen Eriksson.

Eriksson, who had responsibility for conducting the tests, says at least one ISP blocked all incoming connections to torrent clients.

The report notes that interfering with BitTorrent is a bad idea, since much open software distribution relies on it. Furthermore, messing with P2P protocols in general is problematic since other services such as Skype, Spotify and Voddler use them.

“If an operator attempts to limit these protocols and the operator’s customers know that their Internet connection does not give them full access to this type of service the operator will lose customers,” says the report.

In Sweden, service providers are free to restrict traffic providing they comply with certain conditions, but the report criticizes ISPs for their lack of transparency.

“The most interesting conclusion is that it is very difficult, if at all possible, to find information among operators about what they block or prioritize,” says Eriksson.

“We know that mobile market players see it as an advantage to NOT be compared with others. There is thus a risk that even if the technical information is presented, it will be useless for those who do not have a deep understanding of how the Internet is built.”

For now and until .SE’s next and more comprehensive report, the tested ISPs will retain their anonymity giving them time to reconsider their strategy, which given wider considerations might not be a bad idea.

Restricting end-users’ access to peer-to-peer based services could have a knock-on effect to the wider Internet. Peer-to-peer protocols help to distribute traffic online, an improvement upon older and more bandwidth intensive models.

“If peer-to-peer protocols are blocked so the trend will go toward developing protocols according to the traditional server-client model, or data will be hidden in other traffic where it is difficult to discern,” the report adds.

“It will probably not be as effective and lead to an increase in traffic – rather than the decrease as ISPs seek when they block peer-to-peer protocols,” the report concludes.

Full report here (Swedish, pdf)

Source: Net Neutrality: Mobile Broadband Suppliers Discriminate Against BitTorrent

Hundreds of ISPs all over the world limit and restrict BitTorrent traffic on their networks. Unfortunately, most companies are not very open about their network management solutions.

Thanks to data collected by Measurement Lab (M-Lab) the public is now able to take a look at the frequency of these BitTorrent throttling practices. Among other tools, M-Lab runs the Glasnost application developed by the Max Planck Institute.

The interactive data set published yesterday spans a two-year period and this initial release covers the period between April 2008 and May 2010. It includes BitTorrent throttling percentages of ISPs in dozens of countries, divided into three-month periods. Below we discuss a few trends and notable findings.

United States

The BitTorrent throttling practices of Comcast, exposed by Robb Topolski and TorrentFreak in 2007, were in part what led to the Measurement Lab research. After an FCC investigation Comcast was ordered to stop slowing down BitTorrent on a large-scale, and the data shows that the company has kept its word.

Early 2008 Comcast limited nearly half (49%) of all BitTorrent traffic but this was reduced to 3 percent by the first quarter of last year. Cox, another heavy throttler, went from 51 percent to 3 percent in the same time period. The data further shows that in 2010, Clearwire was the only U.S. Internet provider that limited more than 10 percent of all BitTorrent traffic, 17 percent to be precise.

Worst: Clearwire (17%)

Best: Comcast and others (3%)

Canada

In Canada, all large ISPs have admitted to slowing down BitTorrent traffic, and some do so to a great extent. Since the start of the measurements Rogers has continuously throttled more than three-quarter of all BitTorrent traffic, and there are no signs that this will stop.

During the first quarter of 2010 the two other large Canadian ISPs, Bell and Shaw, were throttling 16 and 14 percent respectively. Videotron on the other hand has never slowed down more than 7 percent, and only 3 percent during the last measurement year.

Worst: Rogers (78%)

Best: Videotron (3%)

Great Britain

In Great Britain, TalkTalk used to limit a third of all BitTorrent traffic, but this was reduced significantly by the end of 2009. They now only slow down BitTorrent during peak hours which resulted in a 12 percent throttling rate early 2010. Tiscali and BT Group are exposed as the most heavy throttlers while Virgin Media, O2 and BSkyB have had relatively low percentages throughout the measurement period.

Worst: Tiscali and BT Group (27%)

Best: BSkyB (5%)

Other

A quick look at some other countries shows that in Australia none of the large ISPs were throttling BitTorrent traffic heavily in 2010, and the same can be said for Sweden and France. In The Netherlands UPC used to throttle heavily, but this was no longer the case early 2010.

In Germany, Kabel Deutschland seems to be the poorest choice for BitTorrent users (36%), and in Poland UPC has to be avoided as they limit 87 percent of all BitTorrent traffic.

Those who are interested in seeing how their own ISP performs can take a look at the full dataset at deeppacket.info. The researchers promise to release more recent data in the future, and it will be interesting to see how the various throttling habits of ISPs develop.

For those who have a choice, which us unfortunately not always the case, the data can definitely help to make an informed decision when signing up at a new Internet Provider.

Source: BitTorrent Throttling Internet Providers Exposed

When OnLive finally launched in the UK last week, thousands of people were eager to give it a try. The proposition of playing high-end games wherever you are, and on any machine, appeals to a wide audience. Unfortunately, however, the launch turned out to be a huge disappointment for many new OnLive subscribers.

As soon as the new service went live TalkTalk subscribers were noticing some strange behavior. During the day they were able to play games just fine, but after 6 in the evening, they were all of a sudden unable to connect. Then, after midnight the connection problems suddenly disappeared and games were loading just fine.

Initially some thought it could be that OnLive couldn’t keep up with the demand, but when the same pattern repeated during the following days it became apparent that something was seriously wrong. This was confirmed by OnLive’s support desk, who observed that the users with problems were facing excessive packet loss on their connections.

So what’s going on here?

Based on the systematic problems between 6 PM and 12 AM, it appears that TalkTalk’s P2P throttling application is also cutting off OnLive. TalkTalk are very open about their traffic management practices, and they do indeed limit P2P traffic during the exact times OnLive users are facing problems.

OnLive uses UDP connections to transfer game data, and it seems that TalkTalk’s traffic shaping equipment mistakes this for P2P traffic.

TorrentFreak reached out to TalkTalk to find out more about the issue, as users in the ISP’s support forums were unable to find out more. Yesterday we got a response and TalkTalk acknowledged the problem, but a fix is yet to be found.

“This has been raised with our network team and we are currently investigating,” a TalkTalk spokesperson informed us. Meanwhile, TalkTalk subscribers are growing impatient as they feel that they are being ignored.

“I basically feel that my money spent on OnLive is being wasted. Working from 8:00 till 16.30 I have no use for this service as I would have wait until midnight to have access. Which is unrealistic, people need to have a good sleep, right?” OnLive user and TalkTalk subscriber Dawid told TorrentFreak.

And somehow we feel that OnLive is not very happy with the issue either, as they may lose customers who think that the cloud gaming platform is simply offering a bad service. A few users of other ISPs have been reporting issues as well, but only at TalkTalk are they still persisting more than a week after OnLive launched.

While we understand that problems can always occur, the above clearly illustrates the dangers of traffic shaping. There’s always going to be collateral damage. In the case of OnLive it is significant enough to be noticed and (hopefully) fixed, but what happens if a smaller company is affected? Hopefully TalkTalk will come forward with an official apology and more details on their UDP throttling, so this debacle can be prevented in the future.

Update (October 3, 2011): TalkTalk gave the following comment to TorrentFreak

“Unfortunately the recently launched OnLive gaming service was incorrectly identified as a peer-to-peer application. We’ve changed this and are currently testing with customers. We apologise for the inconvenience this has caused.”

Source: TalkTalk’s P2P Throttling Kills OnLive Games

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Continue reading T-Mobile's new plans get official: starting at $60 for unlimited everything, throttling included

T-Mobile's new plans get official: starting at $60 for unlimited everything, throttling included originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Apr 2011 18:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.