On Jan 9, 10:42 am, Roy Schestowitz <newsgro...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> FCC investigates Comcast
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | THE US FCC has promised faithfully to look into complaints that Comcast has
> | been the throttling bandwidth of punters who it thinks use file sharing.
> `----
> http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/01/09/fcc-investigat...
Bandwidth "shaping" has been around for over a decade. AT&T developed
ATM protocol, which was capable of carrying TCP/IP, Telephone, and
Video conferencing signals over high speed networks in a packet
switching network.
Normally, telephone and video signals require higher priority, because
if a packet is delayed for even a few milliseconds, it can result in
clicks, pops, jitter, checkerboarding, and other really strange
experiences that are very obvious and very annoying.
Streaming audio and video queue up a second of two of content to try
and smooth out the delivery, but even this can be a bit distruptive if
packets are delayed significantly. In some cases, the result will be
a very "fuzzy" signal.
The problem, for the carriers is that VoIP, and HD video downloads are
causing huge increases in low priority bandwidth traffic. At the same
time, the local Bell Operating companies are paying premium prices for
the high priority bandwidth, and now cable network content providers
and studios are also looking for high speed, high priority bandwidth
for video on demand and Pay-per-View programming.
All of this traffic is shared through a high speed switching network
which is invisible to the average TCP/IP user.
One of the bigger problems now, isn't bit-torrent, but things like
Sling-boxes. These let a user pull television, and put it through a
common server, and the user pulls the content when he is on the road.
Appearantly, this is very popular with people who have high grade
cable service with lots of premium channels, and are staying in hotels
where cable service is often very sparse, and rarely has all the
choices of a digital cable system.
The problem is that sling-box users expect smooth video, at standard
resolution, and they are pumping 8 megabytes/second (compressed to 1
megabyte/second) for hours at a time. If Internet providers give
these low-end systems the same priority as Google, it is Google that
will suffer.
Until the release of sling-box, there was plenty of bandwidth to go
around, but with these little "private TV" systems gobbling up massive
bandwidth, a huge surge in growth could result in a clogging of all of
the network bandwidth.
The Internet carriers have to resort to either wave-shaping, or raise
prices to increase bandwidth to meet the demand, or some combination
of both. If we start letting people plug in their Sling boxes, and
gobble up all of that bandwidth with no shaping, the carriers will
have to double their prices to keep the entire network from
collapsing.
Many content providers are working to optimise their network usage.
They often have caching and queuing systems and mirrors in densely
populated geographical areas, to minimize the load across the national
and international backbones.
The irony is that the push to get the carriers to offer "flat rate"
service to all content sources, is actually a change from current
tarrifs. In order to provide flat-rate for flat-service, the prices
charged for Internet Access may have to double, or even triple.
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