What is Digg?103 Comments
- moncojhr, on 10/12/2007, -3/+52Looks like a lot of people will be moving to another ISP.
- javip, on 10/12/2007, -7/+47I'm in Australia and I've never even heard of that ISP!
- raptordrew, on 10/12/2007, -2/+33Dinodude1 - "P2P is illegal and should be banned accordingly."
I beg to differ - P2P is not illegal, the stuff I download is. You're calling the gun the killer. - LiveDirect, on 10/12/2007, -4/+32Will the digg effect cost them anything? http://www.exetel.com.au/
>:-) - EGOvoruhk, on 10/12/2007, -7/+35Forgive the off-topicness, but the broken bittorrent encryption is news to me. When did this happen? :-(
- Zeromus, on 10/12/2007, -3/+30I'll be switching, it's barely legal that they haven't told me about this and I have to learn about what my ISP is doing via digg.
That and I want my bandwidth back. - redwire, on 10/12/2007, -2/+28I like promise #3 to thier customers:
"Exetel will only provide optimum data speeds at all times" - rocke86, on 10/12/2007, -5/+28I agree, If a company doesn't trust you, then don't trust it back. Switch to a company that trusts you and doesn't treat you like a criminal. One of the many reasons I'm against DRM. Vote with your money, that is the only thing evil companies care about.
- GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20It's not subsidising P2P users. They pay for their bandwidth and you pay for yours. What its used for shouldn't be relevant. If you have a contract for a 2MBit connection with a 50GB a month download limit they should supply that irrespective of what tool is used.
- Ramble, on 10/12/2007, -3/+18P2p isn't just illegal, I use p2p for a number of legal things, and it's pretty useful.
Then again, I'm with ntl, who are too poor and too lazy to actually set up any sort of traffic shaping. - andy206uk, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16You guys are lucky. This is common practice among a lot of British ISP's.
Give it six months and you'll be in a situation where most ISP's do it and you have to pay more to use an ISP that doesn't traffic shape. - thewayne, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15@ Quactaur
This is true. We are testing some equipment at the isp I work at that will throttle encrypted traffic as well. It uses algorithyms to identify the behavior of the packets. Very interesting stuff. However, I am against all throttling. But I do like having a my job. - DD32, on 10/12/2007, -7/+21"'m in Australia and I've never even heard of that ISP!"
Then your living a pretty sheltered life!
Then again, not really supprising.. Probably havnt heard of WestNet either.
But bandwidth in australia COSTS MONEY, its not unlimited, so something has to give, price goes up, or quotas go down.. Exetel saw the best move to slow P2P down during peak hours to 50% so as to allow the network to handle the load without having to raise the prices.
D - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14HEY! LET'S THROTTLE HTTP! ALL THAT PORNOGRAPHY COSTS US SO MUCH BANDWIDTH!
Seriously, ISPs need to go screw themselves; we pay for bandwidth; we want it. - mcnugget, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13"Better for everyone" my ass. It's bad for you (lose customers) and the customers (lose speed)...It's worse for everyone.
- Arkonnan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10> This move will save Exetel about $45,000 per month
Assuming that they don't lose half of their userbase as a result. Their decision may come back to bite them in the ass. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -12/+20It doesn't work anymore.
- bjeanes, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10"I agree, If a company doesn't trust you, then don't trust it back. Switch to a company that trusts you and doesn't treat you like a criminal. One of the many reasons I'm against DRM. Vote with your money, that is the only thing evil companies care about."
If they were doing it on the basis of trust, or lack thereof, they would cut teh P2P bandwidth in half 24 hours a day, not just part of the day. it's a matter of being able to still make money whilst Telstra exists *curses under breath* Exetel are ok. if anyone in australia IS thinking of changing ISPs, i highly recommend iiNet. Great speeds (especially adsl2+), and as of today, for the 3rd month in a row, they have forgotten to shape me =). of course, there is the problem of having to bundle phone with them .. but if it isn't an issue, iinet ftw. decent game servers too and a massive ftp server that doesn't count to quota.
ok enough spamming ... seriously tho, as an australian in the IT world, the absolute lack of reasonably priced internet is like being suffocated. boycott telstra!
oh yeah westnet is good too, a bit expensive though. and TPG is brilliant. whirlpool.net.au is the best resource for anyone looking to change. - templeofboom, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Hence the phenomenal growth of RapidShare. By downloading files via http, most ISP's can't throttle, and the few that want to stop it just ban connections to them completely. Of course downloading via http isn't exactly p2p, but when used in conjunction with a decent warez board, people can get their fill at full speed.
- GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9My ISP varies its P2P blocking so they allow it to be used fully when I'm in bed. I don't pay for a particular tool I pay for bandwidth. If an ISP doesn't like that then they should stop advertising as an ISP. P2P is as valid a use of the Internet as E-Mail, IM or even Prn.
Fortunately I think the at night policy is a decent compromise. It's not about being dogmatic and it is a workable middle ground. - Quactaur, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10Some technologies (typically ones that cost loads of money) can actually throttle encrypted traffic to an extent too. I think it may use heureustics (torrent traffic has a very predictable pattern of uploads and downloads, with one type, either UL or DL going through the same port each time) but it definately happens and is possible. No reason not to switch off encryption though, it's a great function.
- stesun, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7go SWEDEN!
My fiber connection happens to have a quota of about 32000 gigabytes per month. - stuf, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6What I think is more ironic, is the companies selling bandwidth and not delivering.
Might be just me. - anthonywr, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9javip, chances are then you would'nt know if your ISP throttles particular protocols - More reason to take a stand against this activity. Sure people in the know can swap providers, the rest just get degraded performance when torrenting linux or whatever and think its normal when its not. This info is not available in common speak when people sign up. My mum would have any idea what the hell "p2p traffic throttle to 50%" ment.
FYI Exetel are the 7th most popular ISP on Broadband Choice (http://bc.whirlpool.net.au/). Not for long I'm guessing. WP members are a rather critical bunch of people. - moncojhr, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7But later on the ISP may notice other protocols costing them too much money and may begin throttling it. However this time it might be something you use. How can you trust they wont screw you over too?
- rajulkabir, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Using Exetel right now (visiting Australia for a month). The catch is this.
From noon-midnight you can use all the bandwidth you want; after you hit your cap (15G/month or whatever), you start paying a few bucks a gig but you can keep going.
From midnight-noon though, once you hit your cap, you get rate-limited down to dialup speed for the rest of the month, and you cannot buy your way out of it - you're just screwed. So if you try to do your torrents outside of the throttled period, you still end up getting throttled sooner or later.
I will agree with everyone above who said that internet access in Australia sucks. It's slow and phenomenally expensive - I have been shocked at the charges people get stuck with here. Just across the water in Singapore you get unlimited access at 10 times the speed for half the money, no usage caps. Surely that last little stretch of cable can't add that much to the cost. Telstra was all about ***** the consumer when I lived here in the early 90s, I now see nothing has changed since then. - ghm101, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10Someone "ahem" known to a friend of mine, uses Azureus with encryption and it speeds along just fine.
Ocaisionally *he* has to turn it off when he is trying to get a less well seeded torrent up to decent speed. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I work for an ISP, if all the heavy bittorrent users left to go to another ISP, we would have a big party. I am sure Exetel will not miss any ISP switchers. When someone sucks as much bandwidth as 50 normal net users and pay the same price. ISP's loose money on those users.
- lowerlogic, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5goodbye sweet net neutrality
- Durrok, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Tough *****. Either start offering basic connections (768/128) and advanced connections (8/1, etc) or offer less bandwith overall. You offer us Xbandwith for Xprice per month, if that isn't economically viable, stop advertising it and change your plans around.
- Klowner, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5So, Dingodude1, if I have apache running on my desktop, I should be banned from visiting websites right?
- noGoodNamesLeft, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6rick2k: "I really don't give a ***** about people who think its there right to use p2p."
What pisses *me* off (and I don't use P2P enough for it to be an issue in my case) is where UK ISPs hide behind weasel-ish and vaguely-worded "fair use" policies when selling "unlimited" bandwidth. If it's not unlimited, they should make the limits clearer.
You're right; no-one has an inherent entitlement to download 10s of gigs of data every day of the month. However, ISPs insinuate that they can do just that in their ads. They're just as much to blame for dangling the carrot.
And since these services are general Internet access ones, it's reasonable to assume that any restrictions to this *should* be made clear to the users. Want to restrict or ban P2P? Then make it clear *beforehand*. - Jugalator, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4"This move will save Exetel about $45,000 per month, while it only takes $75,000 to implement the bandwidth throttling mechanisms."
Is the savings taking the people that will move from the service into account or not? My ISP allows unthrottled unencrypted traffic and they surely want to profit, and they're big in my country and most likely aware of BT, so I really wonder why some ISP's do this and some don't. - thushan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Well atleast they dont count uploads as downloads like *some* providers *cough* telstra *cough*...
Happily using Netspace not that anyone cares... - thatbox, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4But the ones to leave will most likely be their most unprofitable customers. They know what they're doing.
- foolfromhell, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5One of my friends from Australia gets a max download of 1GB/month and upload of 200MB/month.
This is a lot bettert han a 1GB/200MB plan - geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4"torrent traffic has a very predictable pattern of uploads and downloads, with one type, either UL or DL going through the same port each time"
Well then the solution is easy then isn't it? Make it a part of the protocol to rotate ports at random intervals. Send data to different clients through different ports, and at a different rate (such as "hot" and "cold" throttling; send a bunch of packets at once on one torrent, then allow that torrent to "cool" down by only sending one or two packets until it's hot period comes again). There are literally _THOUSANDS_ of different ways BitTorrent can get around arbitrary throttling rules (there are mathematicians developing them right now for sending data over noisy links; the same modulation system that works for your cable modem might be the same way we torrent some day), and in the end, BitTorrent's going to be a lot faster about adopting those ways than any ISP is going to be.
Of course, this is a very bad way of going about things (as other applications will suffer as the ISPs try to find new ways to filter BitTorrent), Bram Cohen as much as came out and said that, which is one of the reasons he doesn't support protocol encryption in the first place (it's the "first shot" in the Torrent Filter wars).
And mostly, it's an academic argument anyways, as you could (and should) always just boycott the company that sells the deficient product. - b_timmins, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4And just for those who want more detailed information there's a list of 'traffic-shaping" ISPs at http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Bad_ISPs
- carpespasm, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4you're not subsidising p2p users, you're paying for a certain amount of bandwidth, either on a per month, or capped speed basis. since most places seem to give you X speed, and you download whatever you want at that speed, when you're trottled down to less than that agreed upon speed, you're not getting what you pay for.
An ISP should not think it's subsidising customers, each customer pays for their own bandwidth, if the ISP doesn't provide enough backbone to meet their end of the deal, that's their problem, not yours or mine. - garreh, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3@diggywiggit you are wrong.
BitTorrent encryption hasn't been broken by most ISPs. Only some people CLAIM Canadian ISPs have the technology to block such traffic.
More information about bittorent encryption can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_protocol_encryption - ZMerlin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Optus Cable. Should I mortgage my house now or later?
- nasium, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This is old news: http://www.zeropaid.com/news/7721/Exetel+to+Cut+P2P+Traffic+by+50%25
- Sk0pe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@Broccolibob
Have you used Exetel? Hmmm... I get exceptional connection speeds with them, consistently getting sustained 57.5kB/sec at all hours.
Oh, and P2P is NOT illegal in Australia. It is illegal to share pirated content over P2P. There are many legal uses for P2P.
I find it simultaneously hilarious and incredibly frustrating that all these people are saying "Exetel huh? I'll have to remember to steer clear of them". If you actually go to the source and see what they are saying to the customers (in the forums) you will see that they ARE NOT limiting (for example) a 512kbps connection to 256 kbps for P2P. They are limiting overall P2P traffic to 50% of the TOTAL network bandwidth. If the total P2P demand is less than 50% then there will be no impact on your connection. - Sk0pe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm with Exetel, and more than happy with the service. By the way, they ARE NOT cutting your available bandwidth by 50% for P2P during the hours of noon to midnight. They are ONLY throttling P2P if the total P2P traffic exceeds 50% of available bandwith on the whole network. So if P2P is 49.9% of the total traffic on the network at this time, there is NO throttling. If P2P exceeds 50% during this time, they throttle everyone's P2P just enough to get the P2P traffic back under 50%.
So basically, they are not throttling P2P as much as giving QoS for other services (like VoIP and HTTP) which are generally used more during the hours in question.
Not only is this whole dicussion moot, the original article is inaccurate. If I wasn't with Exetel already, I would be switching to them since my VoIP service is more likely to be higher quality. - MackPrime, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5never heard of eXetel or whatever the ***** they capitalize in their name. This sucks for those on ExEt3l or whatever it's called, way less convenient porn.
- itchybeard, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2What you say about the UK is true andy, but some ISPs (here in the UK) are now saying:
We log your total bytes usage. If you are in the highest X % of transfer then your contention is shared with all the other users who are in the highest X % of usage during peak times.
That's completely fair if they're not a Tier 1 provider. - JaggedEdge, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Ha, I dont live in Australia but it makes more sense for P2P traffic utilized during the weee hours of the morning while you're sleeping ~.^
- mastercheif, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Wow, I sure am happy that im paying 30mbps down and 3mbps up with unlimited bandwith for $40 USD a month!
- itchybeard, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Oh and if they aren't a Tier 1 provider, cough up the extra for a Tier 1 provider like NTL who are too rediculously big and disinterested to implement their traffic restriction policy and you really can just pipe whatever you like though it and not get banned or shaped.
It costs a bit more and thats how it should be. You get what you pay for.
(BTW they have deleted my messages on their forum without comment or explaination before for pointing out this is true so I guess they don't want it advertised but are fully aware of it) - itchybeard, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Zeroflake and Durrok both have extremely valid points. But Durrok wins because his message is more honest. You should be honest and not whine about losing your money after you drew the P2P in with lies such as unlimited bandwidth!
Better yet, why do you want to draw these users in? Stop it and everyone wins! Let the Tier 1 carry P2P, they will charge 50% more and since they don't pay for most of their bandwidth won't really give a flying f*** either! -
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