Re: Online games stealing your bandwidth

[Jack Bates <jbates () brightok net>]

On 9/27/2010 7:35 PM, Warren Bailey wrote:
> Can someone name an ISP that encourages P2P traffic?? ;)

A proper ISP doesn't encourage any type of traffic. We're indifferent. 
Of course, we'll be happy to mention the benefits and draw backs of 
using various protocols on the Internet. Demand wise, video streaming to 
point and click boxes will load the network far more than p2p ever has; 
granted, in the opposite direction of the normal p2p complaint.

My, and my company's, biggest complaint is the lack of improvement on 
these protocols to play more friendly with customer's other traffic. It 
is not so much the effects of it on my network, as much as how it 
effects my customer's unshared link. The "give me everything" tactic, 
especially on outbound traffic, saturates the link, which in turn lowers 
the customer's other traffic. Am I the only one who likes to stream 
video while running bittorrent, surfing the web, checking my email, and 
playing some online game all at the same time?

I'm not going to rag on bittorrent, though. I do have adjustments in my 
clients to cap the upstream/downstream to allow my other traffic 
through. Many clients and protocols don't have this ability, though. 
Some purposefully hide themselves and what they are doing. The only 
indication is the fact that the "Internet is slow." The people who make 
this software should sit in a call center troubleshooting why "The 
Internet is slow!" when various software products are bandwidth hogs 
(and sometimes are hidden from the customer completely). We, of course, 
detect the link saturation, but there is no indicator for us to help the 
customer figure out what they need to disable.


Jack