Has Bit Torrent Declared War On VoIP and Gamers?
Posted 12/06/08 at 02:07:36 AM by Justin Kerr
Blogger Richard Bennett from the register is issuing a grave warning for all to hear, Bit Torrent has declared war on VoIP and Gamers. Recent policy changes to bandwidth distribution techniques at Bell Canada have the uTorrent developers looking for alternative ways to keep P2P screaming along. The solution they are allegedly pursuing is a shift in the default protocol used from TCP to UDP. Even though uTorrent isn’t the only P2P application, it is widely considered the standard by which other torrent applications are modeled. Changes to it would likely filter down into other Torrent applications sooner rather than later. Should this change come to pass, ISP’s may find themselves unable to effectively manage each user’s bandwidth since only TCP has the proper controls to handle and throttle network congestion evenly.
According to recent estimates, P2P activity accounts for almost 50% of modern internet traffic. According to Bennett, if P2P suddenly becomes immune to congestion control it could cut the bandwidth available to TCP traffic by as much as 75%. As he so plainly points out 25% of the bandwidth for 95% users hardly seems fair. Flooding the net with UDP traffic would, in theory, have an even larger impact on VoIP services and online gaming since it is largely dependent on the use of UDP.
User Datagram Protocol was originally designed for real time transfers of small amounts of data with a low tolerance for delay. Currently the protocol represents only about 2% of all the internet traffic, but uTorrent’s changes could have a dramatic impact on this number. According to Bennett, ISP’s have the ability to monitor and separate P2P UDP traffic, but would require the use of controversial technologies such as Deep Packet Inspection. Since lawmakers and consumers are pushing for the concept of network neutrality, he points out that it becomes even more likely that ISP’s will be forced to implement more aggressive bandwidth caps as a possible solution.
This is probably the dumbest
Submitted by damicatz on Sat, 12/06/2008 - 11:14pm
This is probably the dumbest thing I've ever seen the Bittorrent people do and that's saying a lot since they have a history of doing idiotic things.
As a network administrator, BitTorrent is a menance already. The BitTorrent protocol's designers have no regards for the RFCs or any standards that have been laid out regarding computer networking and protocols. The client authors have no concern for the impact that their client will have on a network; most clients literally flood any network they are on with a constant barrage of packets caused by the use of DHT, the trackers themselves and the fact that they are constantly opening and closing connections at a rate of hundreds if not thousands every 30 minutes while maintaining as many as hundreds of open connections.
It shouldn't take a rocket scientist to see the kind of deleterious impact that this kind of wreckless behavior will have on a network; especially when you have a lot of people all doing it at once. A BitTorrent download is considerably harder on a network than a similar speed client-server download.
I might add that BitTorrent itself is a lousy protocol just as P2P is a lousy concept. I have never seen an instance where BitTorrent even came close to rivaling the speeds of a good Usenet host like Giganews. I have never maxed out my 10mbps connection on BitTorrent. The speed on BitTorrent is always a crapshoot whereas with a pure client-server setup, like Giganews, it's constant.
BitTorrent is designed on the concept that the more you share, the more you download. The problem is, the majority of ISPs have highly disproportional upload/download speed ratios. Which means that most of the hosts you will be connecting to on BitTorrent are going to have upload speeds that wouldn't even rival a T1. So you're generally lucky to get 5-10KB/s per host unless you happen to connect to someone at a uni or somewhere that has a nice fat pipe.
Pretty one sided anecdotes (good job)
Submitted by D3lt4 on Sun, 12/07/2008 - 6:55am
Have you ever tried downloading linux OS? I topped at 1.3 mbs for the entire thing.
The concept is quite geiuns if you look at the entire picture and not just what it does to your network, but bittorent should not be used where there is a need for a network administrator.
That's because the distros
Submitted by damicatz on Sun, 12/07/2008 - 1:42pm
That's because the distros arrange to have fat pipes seeding those torrents. In which case, the majority of your speed comes from a handful of sources. The peer-to-peer aspect doesn't provide hardly any speed.
Why? Because it's considerably cheaper and easier to provide bandwidth to a data center than it is to provide it to a residence (last mile).
I can see both sides
Submitted by linkmaster6 on Sat, 12/06/2008 - 1:56pm
I can see the point to the argument on both sides of this. I use to work for an ISP called Xplornet that owns a network basically made up of radio towers which has run into issues with P2P traffic. The thing is that network was made for heavy traffic, their plan initial was to bring to bring high speed to rural areas which I think is a great idea since most major ISP's seem to thumb their nose at rural customers (as for those in cities whining they may get slowed down a little browsing/downloading, listen closely.... hear that? its the world's smallest violin...)
On the other hand I'm a fan of torrents, yes I do download games but its only becauseI want to try a real version before I buy it. Every game I've downloaded I now own a legal copy.
Can't remember where I read this, I think it was in an email a customer had emailed into the company it was about P4P and it was a different strategy for managing P2P traffic with out it being a burden on the network.
Anyone else heard of it?
Well...
Submitted by winmaster on Sat, 12/06/2008 - 9:26am
Maybe if Google would stop using more bandwith than it pays for, we wouldn't have this problem. Also, am I the only one who can't access content on the priate bay? All I get is the home page. If I do a search, all I get are the sidebar ads.
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The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
so the isps f**ked up the internet and p2p are the scapegote
Submitted by notailmouse2 on Sat, 12/06/2008 - 4:40am
so the bandwidth we were all rationed out depending on how much we payed doesn't exist? what other f*king company does this? well you payed for this but we giving you this inferior product because we f**ked up and are low on stock. Another brilliant analogy, You payed for a banana and at the cash register its swapped out for a grape?
Fortunately out of the chaos may come improvements to infrastructure. More bandwidth, and less p2ping do to reduced prices on digital media.
So is this good or bad for
Submitted by frdbrlw on Sat, 12/06/2008 - 4:10am
So is this good or bad for us that use bittorrent? Also a while ago i reinstalled Utorrent and now when i try searching the only sites it lets me search are bittorrent and google, how do i add piratebay and isohunt to the list?
Search
Submitted by dankers on Sat, 12/06/2008 - 5:06am
I'm assuming that µtorrent wants to appear as a more legal alternative and as such removed those from their search engine. I thought it used to have a mininova search too, but frankly I never cared for their searches. I looked for a while and say no way off adding the ones you mentioned.
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