Israeli ISPs Caught Interfering With P2P Traffic 139
Fuzzzy writes "For a long time, people have suspected that Israeli ISPs are blocking or delaying P2P traffic. However, no hard evidence was provided, and the ISPs denied any interference. Today Ynetnews published a report on comprehensive research that for the first time proves those suspicions. Using Glasnost and Switzerland, an Internet attorney / blogger found evidence of deep packet inspection and deliberate delays. From the article: 'Since 2007 Ynet has received complaints according to which Israeli ISPs block P2P traffic. Those were brought to the media and were dismissed by the ISPs. Our findings were that there is direct and deliberate interference in P2P traffic by at least two out of the three major ISPs and that this interference exists by both P2P caching and P2P blocking.'"
Re:Throttling (Score:3, Informative)
ISPs should be required to sell unfettered access at the same rate they pay for it
That would be interesting, but quite impossible, because the price depend on the destination and what kind of transit/peering/paid peering the isp have. And you don't want to sell the service with 10 different prices/GB depending on which route your isp use to get data from A to B.
btw: 300GB/Month is a lot of transfer for a private user. I have a 5/1 mbit connection, and I don't think I have ever used even 1/10 of that for a single month. Maybe I just don't watch enough video online.
Call me skeptical (Score:5, Informative)
Re:i have "evil" verizon fios (Score:2, Informative)
Enjoy your dial-up.
Re:Throttling (Score:3, Informative)
It is way past time for the public to get outraged and act up in regard to the entire utilities industry. Whether it is power, phone or cable it is high time to vastly reduce both the charges from the providers as well as taxes placed upon the end users.
Re:Free and open comms (Score:3, Informative)
If it is happening even without the router, it is a bit suspicious that visiting speedtest fixes it. However, your router may be causing problems on its own, many cheaper routers can fill their NAT tables while torrenting.
If you've got a router that can adjust the length of time an entry is in the table, shorten it down to a few minutes.
Re:Free and open comms (Score:3, Informative)
Well there's not really a choice (Score:4, Informative)
You can't have everything. Internet connections are cheap because they are shared. People don't have dedicated bandwidth, they share it with everyone else. Works out, because normally you don't use all your bandwidth all the time. As such you can oversubscribe the links. You see this in offices all the time. I have a gig to my desk, however the switch in your area only has a gig back to the floor switches. Those only have a gig to the building switch, that only has a gig to the core switches and so on. However, all in all I still get blazing fast speeds on the network because people aren't all using it at the same time. Thus we can afford to roll out gig. We couldn't if we had to do dedicated bandwidth. We'd need two 10gig connections just from our switch to the floor switches, the building would probably need OC-768, maybe more than one. I shudder to think what the core switches would have to have.
Ok well same deal but larger on the Internet. So unless everyone wants to have rather slow, pricey, connections the only option is some limits to make sure people share.
In Japan, it doesn't at all surprise me that they'd have limits like this because the trend seems to be to sell connections with allegedly massive speeds with low prices. All the time on Slashdot we see stories about how in Japan you can have 100 or 1000mbit Internet for cheap. Ya well ok, here's news for you: You can't really have that. Yes the physical signaling rate might be that high, but you aren't getting that kind of speed all the time everywhere. They couldn't afford the links required for that. For that matter you generally don't even get your peak speeds except to others on the same ISP. I've seen people from Japan talk about how fast tehy get a file, but when you do the math it works out to 10-20mb/sec, same kind of thing you get on US cable connections.
Where I live at least, you have a choice to a large degree because you can buy business class connections. My cable company (Cox) sells both residential and business connections. They follow the same bandwidth tiers, though in a given tier business connections usually have a little more upload speed. However, business connections are a whole lot more expensive. Well why is that? They can't make you buy a business connection.
Well the reason is business connections don't have restrictions, residential ones do. You can't run servers on residential connections, you can on business connections. If you do too much traffic on a residential connection they'll call you and/or throttle you. On a business connection you can do as much as you like and you'll hear not a thing. The tradeoff is that max speeds you'd get for like $40-50 on a residential connection, you'll pay $120 for on a business connection.
So if you really want to pay more, look in to it because you probably can. However, don't then cry that it is in fact a good bit more. Also, you probalby don't really want ISPs selling you access for the prices they pay. High grade lines are very pricey. That is why they get that, and then oversubscribe it. They can resell it for lower cost since they have more customers. On OC-3 circuit (155mbps) to a Tier 1 provider is generally in the realm of $10,000 and up per month. Means if they were to sell you a 15mbps cable connection at "their rates" you'd be paying like a grand a month. Better perhaps that you then share with a few people and get a more reasonable price.
Would not surprise me in the least (Score:4, Informative)
Given that:
1) the ISP situation is completely wacko in this country you pay first for a physical line connection (from Phone Monopoly or from Cable Monopoly) and then extra for a completely separate ISP (who are the ones investigated here) where both need extra payment for faster connections
2) the physical line companies are upgrading their infrastructure to give 50 mbps level speed and movie/TV content service and/or also provide VOD services
I would be surprised if this is NOT happening.
Israeli telecoms/utilities companies are not renowned for good value for money and there are plenty of IP-traffic related companies looking for cheap pilot installations which they can leverage as references when they go to sell in global markets.
Aside from Israelis not liking to pay for anything unless they have to, there are few legal purchasing outlets for digital content and if you want music/movies your choice is pretty much:
1) buy a CD (remember them!)
2) download it from P2P
3) have a credit card and bank account in a foreign country that does have an iTunes Music Store (for example)
Re:Call me skeptical (Score:1, Informative)
The article has some other problems. The authors are very indignant about caching, but this actually *helps* the users get a faster download. What's wrong with caching?
Very inconclusive other than on the caching point, and they have it backwards.