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The Internet Your Rights Online

Broadband In Australia Just Got Slower 394

Posted by timothy from the all-those-bits-are-upside-down dept.
liquidx writes: "Seems like broadband Down Under is getting more and more restrictive. First we had our _unlimited_ plans changed to capped usage plans, then incoming port 80 traffic was blocked (due to Code Red/Nmida worms) and now file-sharing protocol ports are filtered due to 'load balancing issues'! Whirlpool reports that Optus@Home throttled traffic to ports 6700-6702 (ex-Napster ports) without telling its users. Read the letter and article here. Are there any other broadband services, other than the ones in Australia, continually degrading their service to customers? When will this stop?"
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Broadband In Australia Just Got Slower More

Broadband In Australia Just Got Slower

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  • And yet all us Americans complain about is having to change to a new email address..

  • FUP (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    First #Us post!
  • They restrict bandwidth on peer-to-peer and common service ports, presumably using prioritisation on their routers. I understand restrictions on ports 21,80 etc. But surely the telcos stand to benefit from more widespread adoption of broadband based on the demand for the peer-to-peer stuff.

  • Jesus Jumping Christ (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Did it ever occur to you people that these residential broadband connections for $40 might actually have some controls on them? Especially now that it's crunch time in the board rooms of the telcos and cable companies?

    Get over dot com days of thinking the world is wired with 10/100 for $50 a month. It's kaput.
    What's happening down under will happen in the US soon enough. Sorry you can't download 200 gigs of warez, pr0n and mp3's per month...party's over. Deal with it.

    • Leaping Messiahs! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ackthpt ( 218170 ) on Monday December 24, 2001 @01:34AM (#2746524) Homepage Journal
      Did it ever occur to you people that these residential broadband connections for $40 might actually have some controls on them? Especially now that it's crunch time in the board rooms of the telcos and cable companies?

      Did it ever occur to anyone that there should be a contract specifying terms of service, and if such restritions at the will of the provider are not in writing accepted by the client than it's a breach of contract? I'd look that sucker over before I accepted something for the good of the ISP, after all, they already got their golden parachutes.

      • Did it ever occur to you that saying "I demand a written contract" is something you should do BEFORE subscribing?

        People say "I'll vote with my dollars" or "I'll just get this other service"... okay, cool. You're not under contract, you're not obligated to put up with it. Just don't come whining when you discover nobody else wants to give you that contract either.

        Businesses get performance contracts because they negotiate the terms. They also pay a HELL of a lot more. You, too, can pay a hell of a lot more, which will allow you to negotiate terms. Or you can NOT pay a hell of a lot more, in which case your leverage is going to be -small-.

        You should know why businesses don't usually offer contracts to the consumer... it does them no blippin' good. You're not worth their time to sue, short of physically setting fire to one of their buildings. On the other hand, any customer that sues is going to cost more to defend against than they were ever worth for providing service.
    • Precisely. "When will it end?" the original post moans. It will end when the ISPs' profit/loss spreadsheets start telling them that any more limiting/filtering they do will start losing them money. For now they save more money on reclaimed bandwidth than they lose on leaving customers, so capping and filtering is a good policy. When they lose more money due to leaving customers than they save in bandwidth, they'll stop capping and filterng.

      none of us here are stupid enough to believe ATT wants to give you good service, are we? We all know that ATT (or whatever your ISP is) exists solely to make money. Providing service is only a means to that end, and they will tailor that means to get the most profit out of it. If you want to change it, either become a stockholder and vote, or vote by going to an uncapped ISP.
    • Nope, my DSL is static IP, and the TOS allow me to run any non-commercial servers I want, for about $35 per month. Sure, it happens it's slow, and sometimes they have outages. But with the usual speed, the usual uptime and the generous terms of service... well, Im not going to complain.

      I love my DSL provider. Heck, I used to pay $60 per month for unlimited time modem connection. And before that I paid on average $120 per month for standard charge metered access.

      If you want decent DSL service, dont go with the major telecom corps, because they'll do crap like this.

    • Re:Jesus Jumping Christ (Score:2, Informative)

      by kubrick ( 27291 )
      Did it ever occur to you people that these residential broadband connections for $40 might actually have some controls on them?

      Did it ever occur to you that the Australian telecommunications market is dominated by an ex-wholly-Government-owned (and still 51% in public hands) corporation which continually jacks up its prices yet returns none of this revenue in tax dollars or as increased benefits to its customers? No crunch time there -- except for the current CEO, whose institutional shareholders aren't happy with soaking the Australian public, but think they should have similar powers over most of Asia as well. They won't have any luck there, I'm afraid...

      US$40/month -- you'd be lucky to get a severely limited connection for that much here. Last I saw unmetered broadband here was running A$800 a month, and that was pretty slow and from a company at the, erm, "dodgier" end of the market.

  • When it will stop (Score:5, Informative)

    by Madwand ( 79821 ) on Monday December 24, 2001 @01:09AM (#2746441) Homepage

    It will stop when you and your peers start using IP Security with the Encapsulated Security Protocol (ESP) where in all data in the packets except for the IP header are encrypted. If you do this, the ISP will only be able to tell where your packets are going. They can't see your transport protocol (TCP, UDP, etc), let alone what application protocol you're using, so they won't be able to filter.

    • And you used IPsec/ESP to connect to Slashdot, right? No? Well, at least Joe Average has IPsec and IKE running on his Win98 box, right? No?

      That's a big blow to widespread IPsec connectivity, presuming that the Slashdot crowd doesn't represent the majority of broadband users and music-swapping fiends. The fewer people running IPsec/ESP, the less you can connect to securely. Less people, less files. Etc.

      Why isn't IPsec widely used? For one, few non-techs have heard of it. Also, it can be a pain to configure--and unless it gets a lot easier, "we won't throttle some of your traffic" isn't enough incentive to drive users en-masse to set it up.

      Don't get me wrong, I love IPsec. I've written about it [oreillynet.com], and use it a lot. But it's not ready for prime-time, "let's hide all our traffic everywhere" use. There's just not enough folks using it yet.

      • And when will these ISPs start blocking 6bone [6bone.net] because of all the trading that's starting to go on there (as well as other less "official" IPv6 nets)? When will RIAA [riaa.org] and MPAA [mpaa.org] discover the real deep dark underground of the Internet?

    • I'll admit i'm not very up on this, but common since tells me two things:

      A. Why does the ISP need to know what transport the client is using, can't they just look at the packet size? isn't that enough?

      B. How the hell are you supposed to set this up? wouldn't you need a server on the other side of your isp to decrypt your packets, like a friends box on a unlimited isp, or a box at a local college? i can't just connect to slashdot on port 80 via IPsec, can I?

      If there is some way i can i can use IPSec to remove port restrictions or download caps (though time warner cable hasn't done that.. yet) i'm all for it, or ever just to secure my connections, but it doesn't seem like this is something you can just magicly turn on and make it work everywhere.

      -Jon
  • In the last days of @home, my services were serverly hampered. At first it was just port 80, and they claimed it was because of code red. Then port 23 was blocked, obviously because they were trying to cut down on servers (I believe port 23 is for mail servers). They also blocked a few other ports, I believe including the default port for FTP.

    Now that @home is being removed in my area, I wonder if my new service provider will unblock the ports. Until then I won't know if this was a dying effort from @home, or a long-lasting change that will always be with me.
    • If you need to forward any port, use [cotse.com]... available for UNIX and Windows:

      explanation [taken from their page]
      [If] you have a firewall that does not allow telnet (23), but it does allow http (80). Set leapfrog up on the other side of the firewall to listen on port 80 and send to 23, then telnet to port 80 of the leapfrog machine and you will ricochet to the machine you wish to connect. You will have the Leapfrog machines' IP and MAC addresses. It supports unlimited users (well, limited by memory).
  • Various satellite providers (DirecTV's systems and StarBand) offer broadband that to the best of my knowledge doesn't curtail your bandwidth. I don't think they plan to do so in the future either, because of the next generation higher-speed 2-way (1.5Mbit upstream & downstream) service coming down the pipe. Is satellite broadband available in Australia? There are latency issues (I fiddle with them at work), but they're pretty speedy on the downstream. Generally you can expect 80-100kbps upstream (128k potential), and up to 1.5Mbit downstream (1.4Mbit at work). The setup is expensive (US$600-US$700 + installation US$99-US$199 + US$70 per month) - too much if you have decent/reliable broadband available in your area. I've found satellite service pretty reliable and yes, you can network it and run a server on it but . . . latency. Another minus for /.ers is that you'll need a Windows box to host your satellite hardware b/c there are no Linux drivers I'm aware of.
  • we have been asking about DirecTVDSL. They have been playing games with us concerning the news server. Check it out here (http://www.dslreports.com/forum/telocity~root=tel ocity~parent=telocity~mode=shut). The limit is now 200MB/day, but it has been constantly changing for a few months. It started with a powerful new server which overloaded the line into their building. For these past months, they have been trying different ideas on how to cap their customers. It has been quite annoying. Others can probably tell it better.

  • Maybe that's why they aren't marketing it as T1? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tsar ( 536185 ) on Monday December 24, 2001 @01:24AM (#2746499) Homepage Journal
    Why is everyone so up-in-arms? The broadband providers are going out of business, folks! They aren't growing money on network trees, they're going bust building infrastructure! Maybe someday we'll all have 100-megabit constant connections to the Internet for a dollar a month, but even then, a dozen Napster clients will be more expensive to serve than a thousand casual browsers. As a matter of fact, I'd wager that full-pipe users represent a net loss to most broadband providers.

    That's why they don't want Napster clones to be popular, because they can't afford them. Maybe when Napster users are willing to pay $150 a month for high-cap service, they'll be profitable, but come on. If Napsterites would be willing to do that, wouldn't they be buying the music in the first place?

    Sorry, folks, but you're all out of college now, and broadband is expensive in the real world, especially if you want the whole, big, fat pipe all to yourself.

    • Re:Maybe that's why they aren't marketing it as T1 (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Magila ( 138485 ) on Monday December 24, 2001 @02:08AM (#2746596) Homepage
      I agree with everything you said, but I have to point out the the telcos/ISPs have only themselves to blaim for creating this situation. They market DSL/cable in a way which gives people the impression that they can do anything with their bandwidth. Thier comercials emphasize that they offer a always on (and in DSL's case they often claim dedicated) high speed connect when in reality they can't afford the service they lead consumers to beleive they are offering. As a result they have had to implement all these restrictions because they tried to sell people on a service they couldn't afford to provide. When you look at their advertizing the "bandwidth hog" argument kinda falls appart. One of their major selling points is the ability to stream high quality media and download large files quickly ("no limits but your imagination!" seems to be a big one).

      Now that the ISPs have convinced people they can get 1.5+ Mbps of "unlimited" bandwidth for $40/mon it's understanble that their's going to be some frustration when reality sets in and people realize that getting real unlimited broadband is prohibativly expensive.
      • You're forgetting the /. 99.99/0.01 rule - that is that /. represents 0.1 % of the people who might see those ads and we're the only ones know what a mega/kilo-bit means and get excited about what we could do with all that bandwidth. The other 99.99% want to know if it works with their fav. apps and is it fast. 500Kbps is plenty fast for someone who's been used to dialup.

        The only people being "mislead" are tech-heads, and they should be smarter than to take advertisements at their word.
    • Sorry, folks, but you're all out of college now, and broadband is expensive in the real world, especially if you want the whole, big, fat pipe all to yourself.


      Well I wouldn't be too quick to claim that. I'm currently attending Penn State University, one of the largest Universities on the east coast, and we have an OC3 connection to the Internet. (Not sure what our Internet2 connection is, but it's blazing fast...)


      Anyways, We've been having a problem on campus here. There are 12,000 some students living on campus, and there are around 80,000 students in the Entire Penn State system. (This is including the campuses around the state of Pennsylvania, because they share the bandwith from us too) Recently they've needed to implement a cap on the connections to 20mb from 7am to 7pm and other times at 50mb. The reason for this cap has been because that those 12,000 students were using OVER 60% of the total bandwith for the entire system...

      I work for the Residential computing on campus and I do room calls. When I'm at these rooms I see a lot of people using morpheous and kazaa (even some of the clueless ones running both at the same time!) ... I don't have anything against p2p systems in general, but to be frankly honest, my viewpoint has been changing a lot. I came to college to get a degree in Computing. I've read and talked to many people in the past and have been jealous of what they've been able to do with the computer systems. I used to hate the idea of them blocking such software, but realistically it's possibly the best solution.

      I think maybe some people should reconsider using these systems, it wont happen, but if people atleast turned them off when they wern't around, there would be a lot less of a bandwith problem going around...

      • I think maybe some people should reconsider using these systems, it wont happen, but if people atleast turned them off when they wern't around, there would be a lot less of a bandwith problem going around...

        If people turned them off when they weren't around, there would be a lot less filesharing too. A lot of people leave their computers on all the time sharing files on irc, WinMX, Morpheus/Kazaa, it is the basis of the system. If everyone turned the stuff off as soon as they downloaded whatever they wanted, pretty soon no one would be able to get anything...

        Tim
    • The broadband providers are going out of business, folks!
      This article is about Australia and not the US - the parent companies of the two broadband providers are making record profits. Whether the broadband side of the business is making a profit or not depends upon what other parts of the same company are charging them. The two companies (Telstra and Optus) own ALL of the broadband infrastucture in the country, from the trans-oceanic cables, to the exchanges, routers and cable modems.

      The true cost of cable over here is hard to work out, due to all of the internal charging within the two telecommunications companies.

  • So let me get this right? O@H restricted traffic for a service that is legally no longer running and hasn't been running legally for a while, thereby only effecting the three remaining people using Napster to go to unofficial servers? And even if they were running, the cap could easially be worked around by changing the port preferences in Napster.

    As an O@H user, I don't exactly care, especially when the competition is much worse (BigPond, our only other broadband choice besides O@H, has a 3gb/month limit and a 50kbit/sec cap). Wake me up when something interesting happens.
  • Here in Canada our @HOME crap fell, so Shaw took over completly. My service has been great, with transfer speeds of upwards of 700k/s. Upload speeds are slower, but acceptable, in the 100k/s range. So not all companies suck. Maybe they're regulated so that what I get is required, but still.
    • Yeah, besides the fact that Shaw can't seem to get their email servers to stay up more than an hour straight, it's still as good as the day I ordered it 3 years ago. I can still grab 500KBytes downstream (when and if I can find servers to accomodate :). There was a rumor that upstream was gonna be capped at 64KBytes, but so far I get the steady 128 I've always gotten.

      Nice to see yet another reason not to leave this country, though :)

  • A network admin's perspective (Score:3, Troll)

    by All Dead Homiez ( 461966 ) on Monday December 24, 2001 @01:28AM (#2746509)
    I am a network engineer for a small, independent cable franchise in PA, and we recently were forced to make the difficult decision between open access and traffic shaping. Some of the things that we needed to weigh were:
    • Cost. With our traffic levels at the time, we were on the verge of ordering three new T1 lines for a moderately sized (pop. 80,000) suburb. Those lines would have cost us about $2000/month for service and support.
    • Service quality. Since the rise of KaZaA and Morpheus, our traffic has doubled from what it was during peak Napster season. Our upstream was especially swamped.
    • Maintenance. Many file sharing clients install spyware, "ad gators," and other software that does a splendid job of screwing up their network stacks. These customers then required site visits for us to fix their systems.
    • Copyright violation. As a small company, we had serious reservations about knowingly allowing such serious ethical lapses to take place on our network.
    As it turned out, we had no other choice than to start limiting service. I came up with the following plan, which the managers approved:
    • Block all file sharing ports at the router level. 1214, 6699, 6346, 40000-42000, and all of their cousins were history.
    • Block all incoming connections to our users, so that they could not become servers. We allowed SSH as long as it is OpenSSH >= 2.5.2.
    • Block all known VPN clients. These were sucking up tremendous amounts of bandwidth, since we are in a rural area and many people liked to telecommute using our service.
    • Cancel three of our T1 circuits.
    • Institute a "one strike you're out policy" on Nimda, email virii, spamming, and piracy. So far we have only had three disconnections.
    • Charge a $209 service fee to users who have crippled their internet access through a fault of their own.
    • And, the silver lining on the cloud: Cut rates by 33%.
    The result? Profits are up by 7.5%; from the $209 service charge alone, we have collected several thousand dollars. Most users report much better latencies to major sites and very good burst bandwidth. We lost a couple of users from the VPN ban but they were all above-average bandwidth hogs so we don't miss them. All is right in the world, and I'm very satisfied with how things worked out.

    -all dead homiez

    • God bless competition (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Sanity ( 1431 )
      Congratulations on screwing some more money out of your customers by quietly degrading the service they are paying you for.

      With any luck, however, people will soon get wise to this. You might find that you can take advantage of uneducated consumers in the short term, but in the longer term expect people to start caring whether their ISP is crippling their Internet access.

      Remember that much of the motivation for people to spend the extra money on broadband is created by P2P file-sharing applications. It will only be a matter of time before ISPs which haven't opted to cripple their user's Internet access will start to educate consumers about these issues.

    • Dude! NOT cool! If my ISP blocked incoming ports I would immediatly cancel my service and switch from cable to adsl (both are available in my area). A better solution would be to throttle the file sharing ports and keep fares exactly where they were. It is people like you who give the ISP biz a bad name
    • * Institute a "one strike you're out policy" on Nimda, email virii, spamming, and piracy. So far we have only had three disconnections.

      You probably could have stopped right there and saved a bundle. Removing the idgits with infected boxes is a dream. I installed a blocker on my webserver at work just to block requests for Nimda (I run linux and FreeBSD) in one month alone before I installed the blocker I transmitted 1.2 GiGs! (bytes not bits) of 404 error codes to Level 3's infected NT boxes (oh and my service was from level 3) and yes.... I have a record of the boxes and of who owns them. Granted most of these where colo's but if level 3 had bothered to check they would should have just shut them down. They didn't want to because these guys where over running there transfer limits and where getting socked for a bundle in extra traffic charges.

      * Block all incoming connections to our users, so that they could not become servers. We allowed SSH as long as it is OpenSSH >= 2.5.2.

      How do you tell this without violating the privacy act of 1970? The ALU would love to know.

      * Block all known VPN clients. These were sucking up tremendous amounts of bandwidth, since we are in a rural area and many people liked to telecommute using our service.

      our..... do you have a mouse in your pocket. You contract for a given product, failure to deliver is a breech of contract. Simple direct.

      * Charge a $209 service fee to users who have crippled their internet access through a fault of their own.

      This is fair.... However determining who caused the cripple can be a nightmare... warning from one who's been there. Be careful and error on the side of caution. The benifits will outway the losses.

      * Block all incoming connections to our users, so that they could not become servers. We allowed SSH as long as it is OpenSSH >= 2.5.2.

      Oh and again on this one..... define server? SSH is a server. Do you mean web servers? FTP servers. Webmin servers? NTP servers?
    • I can fully understand throttling bandwidth on ports used by file-sharing programs and other bandwidth hogs. You simply can't have a few applications eating up the lion's share of your network's bandwidth... it degrades the performance of anything else requiring bandwidth. Additionally, I'm fully aware that ISP's need to grossly oversell bandwidth... the business doesn't make economic sense if everyone is maxxing out their bandwidth 24/7.

      But blocking these ports entirely? At best, that's ridiculous and shortsighted. File-sharing is one of the few "killer apps" driving broadband adoption, can't you see that? Your profits are up short-term, but I think you're going to hurt your company in the long run by blocking it entirely. File-sharing aside, other legitimate peer-to-peer applications like video-conferencing will be crippled due to your "no incoming connection" policy (at least one end has to be able to accept an incoming connection). Again, you're killing one of the precious few killer apps your industry relies upon. You think people want broadband so they can download cookie recipes faster? *shakes head*

      At worst, you're a shortsighted, ridiculous, and a thief... is your company openly advertising the fact that most of the selling points for going broadband simply won't work on your network? You remind me of a car manufacturer gloating that they've reduced costly warranty-related repairs by limiting the cars' top speed to 45mph and making it only work on odd-numbered days of the month (no Ford jokes please) without telling the customers. Long-term, you're really fucking the company over. That analogy is more drastic than what you're doing, but the difference is one of degree, not one of type. If you've clearly informed customers about your crippled service prior to taking their money, then the analogy doesn't apply, of course. Caveat emptor.

      What you ought to do is offer a discount (like the 33% rate cut) to customers who don't want/need/feel like paying for things like file-sharing and incoming connections. Clearly spell out for them the limitations they'll be living with. Then, offer a plan at or close the old rate with all those other services enabled. If there's bandwidth-throttling on certain ports, clearly spell this out to the consumer before taking their money. Don't advertise the service as "150kbps" without mentioning than file-sharing apps will be throttled to XX kbps.
    • ---------(SNIP)

      Block all known VPN clients. These were sucking up tremendous amounts of bandwidth, since we are in a rural area and many people liked to telecommute using our service.
      ---------(SNIP)

      Er.. "telecommute using OUR service" = "People buy service from us and like to use it to telecommute. Sorry, but I'm not drying those virtual tears of yours. If I purchase DSL or Cable from my neighborhood provider, I intend to use the service I've purchased.

      How can you seriously be bothered by the fact that your users have the *audacity* to actually use the service they've purchased to do work?
    • I'll leave the comments about your employer's religion and the ethics of imposing their morals on other people alone in this post...

      It seems like your company believes the Internet *is* port 80. If that's so, well - quite frankly, broadband is pretty pointless. Web browsing can be done on a cheap 56K link.
      High-bandwidth applications ARE the killer app for broadband. If you don't like people actually using more than what a 56K user will use, you're defeating the entire object of broadband. With all those ports you block, you probably break a lot of games too (the real reason I use broadband is for games. I pay for dedicated hosting for servers i.e. real bandwidth). I'm so glad that RoadRunner is my ISP, they actually seem to realise what broadband is actually for.

      Next you'll be telling us that you're blocking FTP because it uses too much bandwidth. And blocking ssh because people might use it to tunnel some of the ports you block.

      If I ever write a program that needs a bit of bandwidth, it's going to be an apache module and run on port 80 so you can't block it :-]
      • I'll leave the comments about your employer's religion and the ethics of imposing their morals on other people alone in this post...

        He never said anything about religion dude, just ethics, and it is unethical to knowingly allow someone to illegaly transfer intelectual property via file-sharing. It would probably have been overlooked though, if it hadn't been for the bandwidth.

        It seems like your company believes the Internet *is* port 80. If that's so, well - quite frankly, broadband is pretty pointless.

        It seems like you believe that broadband makes you immune to laws and TOS agreements. Just because you CAN transfer 1.2 gigs of MP3s in a day doesn't mean you have a right to. If it is not unethical to you, then it is, at the very least, illegal, period. If you don't like that, lobby your congressman.

        Web browsing can be done on a cheap 56K link.

        Yes, but it's slow as hell. Most pages nowadays are designed with flash, java, huge images - frankly, they make sites that could be 56k-compatible, but don't bother with the effort because they don't feel they have to.

        High-bandwidth applications ARE the killer app for broadband. If you don't like people actually using more than what a 56K user will use, you're defeating the entire object of broadband.

        They stopped very few uses of their service. VPNs are the only near-legitimate use, file-sharing is blatantly illegal, running servers is likely against the TOS which people agreed to in the first place, and the rest is all good stuff.

        Other legitimate uses that are probably not affected: FTP downloads, streaming media (realplayer, QT, Windows Media, mp3.com MPEG streams, shoutcast MPEG streams, downloading large files (PDF datasheets on chip designs, etc), game demos, OS upgrades, and on and on and on.

        Frankly, I find people that bitch about these things to be pathetic. Half the people bitch because their ISP enforces their terms of service (running servers), and the other half bitch because their ISP upholds the law (file sharing). It's pathetic. Buy your own bandwidth, try running your own ISP the way you want an ISP run, and it'll run into the ground in a few months if you ever actually get it off the ground.

        Come on people, grow up. Broadband isn't in the constitution, file sharing is not an essential service, and you just sound like a baby for complaining that your ISP is trying to stay afloat.

        --Dan
        • He never said anything about religion dude, just ethics, and it is unethical to knowingly allow someone to illegaly transfer intelectual property via file-sharing. It would probably have been overlooked though, if it hadn't been for the bandwidth.

          Actually, he did. He mentioned that the ISP was run by Christians, who wanted to enforce Christian ethics. Christian ethics encompass more things than filesharing (my last (dialup) ISP got bought by a Christian ISP, which without notice started 'filtering' our access to sites based on various flawed net-nanny type technologies). But that's a whole different discussion which I said I wasn't going to get into, and I won't. ISPs want to be common carriers. They can't have their cake and eat it too. Either they are common carriers and simply sell bandwidth, or they are 'net police.

          file-sharing is blatantly illegal,

          Since when? I share hundreds of files from my server [0]. None of them are illegal for me to share.

          Instead of banning particular things (which could make the ISP liable for user's actions in the eyes of a court, instead of merely a common carrier), why don't they instead give some hard figures about how much bandwidth use is "acceptable"? Why not say something like x GB/month transfer is acceptable use instead of indiscriminately blocking ports in a piecemeal fashion? Dedicated hosting providers do it this way - why can't cable modem/DSL providers do it that way?

          Seems like RoadRunner cable manage OK without making an assinine TOS or blocking hundreds of ports. (Wonder what this ISP's port blocking does to programs that assigns ports randomly?)

          Buy your own bandwidth

          I already do thank you very much. 600GB/month worth of transfer at a data centre with 1.6Gbit/second worth of connection.

          [0] My server doesn't run at the end of a cable modem.

    • Well let's all go back to Dial Up. The teclo company can't block certain audio frequencies to prevent modem usage, so how can an ISP legitimately block ports to prevent certain types of usage? I'd rather have a bandwidth cap as "low" as 256Kb/s (up/down) then have 1.5Mb of "port 80 only" traffic. I say, keep Internet access unfiltered and pure, and throttle the overall bandwidth to a reasonable amount. Give the consumer the option to PAY for all that bandwidth (via bandwidth capping, NOT transfer charges), instead of restricting what they DO with that bandwidth.
    • I live in Western PA, and wow, am I glad I don't have your company as a provider. I use VPN to get back to the office to do work, which is one of the reasons I have broadband. I certainly hope that there are high speed alternatives in your area for people who realise how rotten what you describe is. You could have at LEAST offered people higher priced connections that supported VPN.
  • After all, the cable services don't prohibit servers because they're morally opposed to the idea of serving files--they do it because servers take up their bandwidth. And bandwidth is expensive, as we're learning when companies cut back on their streaming video or even (as in the case of AdAware) fall off the 'net entirely.

    So, without servers, what's using bandwidth now? Seems obvious--peer to peer. Which, in itself, is technically as much a "server" as any FTP or website. Heck, running your own Half-Life multiplayer game is technically a "server" too.

    And so they cap bandwidth and try to chip away at these things however they can. It's annoying . . . but it's hardly surprising.

  • Notes from the Underground... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 24, 2001 @01:35AM (#2746526)
    I was sick an tired with bandwidth caps and such so I eventually opted for business-grade DSL. Mind you, I pay three times the amount I use to ($150 per mo. vs $50 per mo.) but I have 32 static IPs, 864 up/down, and if my service so much as hiccups I have a customer support person on the line helping me debug it. You can get good service but you can't (and shouldn't) expect it for $35 a month.

    Most of the threads I've been reading have an overtone of how one *deserves* good bandwidth or that the telcos are just greedy. The truth of the matter is that alot of folks tried to supply fantastic bandwidth on razor-thin margins and they went out of business.

    There is good service out there but you have to pay...end of story.

  • Optus@Home had terminated high-volume users, arguing they were in breach of an acceptable user policy. 'This product was advertised as unlimited and was targeted to high-end users, yet Optus used the presence of an acceptable user policy to terminate services to those very people to whom the product was marketed,' ACCC chairman Allan Fels said at the time."

    Here in NZ, for fast connections (except in wellington where they have cable), we have two choices, an unreliable satellite down, dialup up thing, or ADSL. The only flat rate ADSL available is 128k, so I'm on that.

    The service is advertised as 'unlimited', and when we signed up we steered clear of the slightly cheaper ISPs that had Terms + conditions saying 'excessive use == grounds for disconnection' type things. Recently, our ISP suddenly added such a condition to our terms and conditions. We could easily switch, but my parents didn't heed my advice about setting up a forwarding email, and a change in email would be a bit painful.

    I thought the 128k cap would get us out of this. The cap is ~1.3G/day if totally utilised, we probably use about half that.

  • This is basically volume-based pricing and it makes a lot of sense. People want high bandwidth and low latencies, and the provider's cost structure simply doesn't permit giving everybody unlimited usage.

    However, with volume-based pricing, the provider should remove any additional restrictions ("business use", "servers", etc.). While before, arguably, people weren't paying their fair share, with volume-based pricing, you pay what you use, and there is no excuse for providers to divide their users into classes.

  • Adjust prices in the following for whatever things cost in your part of the world. Let's compute a ballpark figure for the cost of bandwidth from the cable company to the internet.

    180 Kbyte/second data transfer rate per T1 x 3600 seconds/hour x 24 hours/day x 30.5 days/month = 452 gigabytes/month. So, they need a T1 for every 452 gigabytes of data their customers try to download each month.

    A T1 is about $700/month.

    So, ballpark figure, it costs them $1.55 for every gigabyte of data their customers download.

    At $40/month, this means that even if they had zero costs other than paying for bandwidth to the internet, they would lose money on any customer who downloads more than 25 gigs a month.

    TANSTAAFL applies to internet bandwidth.

    • 180 Kbyte/second data transfer rate per T1 x 3600 seconds/hour x 24 hours/day x 30.5 days/month = 452 gigabytes/month. So, they need a T1 for every 452 gigabytes of data their customers try to download each month.

      A T1 is about $700/month.
      So, ballpark figure, it costs them $1.55 for every gigabyte of data their customers download.
      Any ISP with significant throughput who pays that is an idiot. You can get the cost down to about $0.25 per GB if you buy in bulk, and the cost of bandwidth is falling fast.
      • Perhaps bandwidth, "in bulk," is in the neighborhood of $0.25 per gigabyte at a datacenter (above.net, exodus, whatever).

        To an ISP, this is nearly worthless. They need that bandwidth in Cairo, Ohio and Yokum, Texas - not in an unassuming brick building located in the warehouse district of San Jose, California. Someone has to pay Ma Bell drop lines to these desolate places, cost-per-gigabyte be damned, and the price is high - higher, I suspect, than what the parent poster conjects.

        -
      • Yeah, you can get bandwidth cheaper than a T1, by going to much bigger pipes. How big a pipe do you need to get the price down to $0.25 per gig? If the ISP has to aggregate traffic from many areas to get enough for that huge pipe, you have to consider the cost of getting all that traffic to where they have the big pipe. E.g., if they use a T3 to get the traffic from some small town to some regional network center where they have the big pipe, then the cost of bandwidth on a T3 places a lower limit on what it costs the ISP to provide bandwidth to those users.

  • Are there any other broadband services, other than the ones in Australia, continually degrading their service to customers?

    Yes--nearly all ISPs do this.

    When will this stop?"

    Probably never! Most subscribers will keep paying even if they dislike the restrictions.

    This situation is a neat example of SYRiNX's Golden Rule of Business: Only the sales matter. This is a simple restatement of an old adage: Actions speak more loudly than words. Let customers complain profusely as long as they keep paying!

    Businesses that play by this rule nearly always succeed. For example: Microsoft and AOL ignore overwhelming animosity and focus exclusively on sales, and this has brought them financial success. Businesses that make other tasks a higher priority nearly always fail or struggle. For example, Apple focuses on product quality; Amiga focuses on popularity; and Sun focuses on developing a friendly image.

  • Dear Aussie,

    We share the same fate as you. I am talking about the one which offers broadband via "satellite" disks (in fact, it is kind of asynchronise WLAN, fast download-2Mbps, slow upload 28kbps).

    It initially gave us unlimited data downland in exchange for capped transfer speed (2Mbps capped to 256kbps). Then, they blamed Napster and capped the data to 2GB per month.

    Then, they redefine this product design (what a nice term). They meter each single MB of data. The new customers basically will need to pay 3 times more than what I paid if they want to d/l 2GB per month... Existing customers are not affected so far... But god knows when will they change their mind. The price for the new customers is now comparable (within 100% price difference) to a delicated 256kbps line...

    When all potential players are gone, I am quite sure they will squeeze us further. Welcome to monopoly world!

    A wired Kiwi....

  • You think you guys got it bad..... (Score:4, Informative)

    by vchoy ( 134429 ) on Monday December 24, 2001 @02:04AM (#2746589)
    Try Telstra (the biggest telco and competitor to Optus in Australia).
    Here's the situation:
    Telstra costs per month costs are higher than yours for what we pay for.. The monthly fee schedule may look similar, but here's the killer: While Optus has an Acceptable Usage policy of 10 times the average use...you guys are probably are allowed to go up to 20GB per month! At Tel$tra, customers are CAPPED at 3GB a month! What happens if we go over 3GB? Telstra charges you A$0.18 (US$0.09) per meg if you go over!! Imagine that...if you clock an extra 3GB over your limit, ontop of your monthly service fee you would be looking about over $500 (US$250) per month!! I'm sure our international counterparts are probably wetting their paints, laughing and saying what a joke this is... here's the link [bigpond.com] for your confirmation: (Prices are in $A. You can roughly divide by 2 to get the US dollar equivalent.
    By the way costs is one thing, what about service? I tell you for your monthly fee OPTUS does not throttle limit your downloads (with exception of this post, ie port specific). At Tel$tra, for the same monthly fee, you would only get 256kbps down and 64kpbs upload!
    That's not all, lets just say you require extra speed (hey, isn't this what broadband is all about?), you have to pay extra on top of your service fee!!! Get this, your cap remains at 3GB! So you are in fact paying more for a faster connnection that makes it easier for you to exceed your 3GB cap and from there its $$$ -> Tel$tra!

    But wait there's more....you are probably thinking why there is not higher cap plan available? Well the situation is if you went to the link I provided above there is a 5GB cap plan (no speed limit)...look at the price... A$209 ($US100) per month!!!!
    What really amazes me is that it would be cheaper (but not possible in this case) to set up 2 x 3GB cap cable accounts and it would be still cheaper than the 5GB plan. I just don't get how Tel$tra has come up with their pricing models! Let's just say you wanted 10GB Cap, $US 200 per month!!! What do ordinary Optus customers pay for this competing service? Approx $70 ($US35) per month. Only 17% of the Telstra cost!!!

    According to Telstra, the customers have to "MANAGE" their usage to ensure they don't go over their cap...so what tools have Telstra given to its customer's? A an online usage meter that does not work! Check this link [whirlpool.net.au] to see why customers a very angry. I wish I could switch over to Optus, but where I live, Telstra is the only broadband provider. Talk about monopoly.

    Optus customers have it good and I wish I could join you guys. I think the broadband broadband offered overseas kick butt.

    Maybe I should relocate (I can not see myself going back to dialup). Btw, Telstra have recently introduced these new restrictions so I did not know about them until after I signed the contract months before.
    Here's a link [news.com.au] that mentions the first customer hit with the 3G cap.

    • Did it ever occur to you that Telstra are losing money on their broadband services? I'm suprised they haven't pulled the plug on the service yet. They don't own the backbone, they pay Optus heaps(per megabyte), to access the backbone. You wonder why Optus has a better deal - they own the backbone. Based on my calc's even 3Gb a month is losing them money on the ADSL accounts.

      Let me know when you start a business selling something for less than you pay for it!
      • They don't own the backbone, they pay Optus heaps(per megabyte), to access the backbone.

        Completely incorrect.

        Telstra, until very recently, owned most of the international capacity out of Australia. Now that Optus has SCC, they have the edge, however Telstra still has substantial int'l capacity, and is on it's way to get more.

        Essentially, Telstra are buying capacity off one of their own subsidaries (Reach, JV with some Hong Kong telco). Just like Optus.

  • Frankly, I don't give a damn (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Breace ( 33955 ) on Monday December 24, 2001 @02:41AM (#2746672) Homepage
    Oh boy, this is not going to be popular.

    I frankly could NOT give a rats-ass if ISPs throttle P2P software. Do you really want me to believe you guys are using it legitimately? Do you REALLY want me to believe that mostly everything on there does NOT violate a copyright of some sort?!

    I totally believe in freedom (of speech), and as such I totally hate the DMCA, RIAA AND MPAA.

    But fuck it, MY internet connection gets slow because of people exchanging software (music, computer, whatever) illegaly. And my prices don't drop or my ISP goes out of business.

    I don't think ISPs have the right to block just anything the want, but you sure make their case a lot more palettable when you don't use the internet responsibly. You can cry bloody murder about people taking away your ability to get your MP3s, but in the meantime your behaviour hurts everyone.

    That's why I say I don't give a damn.

  • Tired of hearing "This is okay" ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by SuperDuG ( 134989 ) <<kt.celce> <ta> <eb>> on Monday December 24, 2001 @02:56AM (#2746695) Homepage Journal
    The whole point of broadband is _not_ to download websites faster. The entire point of broadband is to have a fast connection to the internet. What the hell would a fast connection be good for unless you wanted to use p2p or other networking apps?

    Seriously, Normal webbrowsing, chatting, and email can be done flawlessly with a 56K modem. All the other things that people do with the internet use broadband.

    Send your parents a X-Mas video as an email attachment. Well Hell that alone is going to be 10 - 100 megs (depends how stupid you are about compressiong *grin*). Then there's getting that X-Mas music to pop into the background ... yup gunna pull out my p2p to grab a copy of crosby's jingle bells ... why ... well because I know somewhere downstairs I have it sitting on record somewhere that I bought in a stack of records for $5 at a garage sale.

    So that's a decent point. I have yet to see a real legal reason for broadband .... and you know what??? it's all that bad illegal stuff that makes broadband sell. You really think ads about how you can see a webpage faster make joe-surfer-internet want to pay between 2 - 4 times more for the internet? Hell no ... it's seeing the neighbors with their new CD-Burner making mix CD's in a matter of minutes via KaZaa (or whatever) then burning it to a $.50 CD-R and bragging about how you just paid $13 for what they paid $.50 for ...

    Then there's open source funness. Are you going to run out and buy the latest greatest $80 copy of redhat when you can pop over to linuxiso.org and just burn a copy??? We're talking $2.00 for the three CD set (and I'm counting the sticky labels as well) ...

    Broadband was made for downloads to be fast ...

    Then there's gaming ... When I'm playing Q3 on the net ... do you really think I'll settle for anything more than a 45 PING??? ohhh hell no ... and do you think that me playing on the uberfast server doesn't take up bandwidth? OF COURSE IT DOES ... but you know what ... that's what I'm forking $52 out a month for ... the ability to do just that ...

    So in all seriousness ... if you don't like broadband ... go to your 56K modem and leave us all alone ... because we waited for the day of 2 mb/s downloads ... and now that the day is here ... we consider that a right ... a right that we will fight to keep...

    • What the hell would a fast connection be good for unless you wanted to use p2p or other networking apps?
      Seriously, Normal webbrowsing, chatting, and email can be done flawlessly with a 56K modem. All the other things that people do with the internet use broadband.

      I have yet to see a real legal reason for broadband

      Uhm, I think you are wrong.

      Once you are used to a 1.5Mb link, web-browsing is no longer a treat on a dialup. I was forced to use a dialup a couple of weeks ago and it was a rude awakening. You should try it. It's the inevitable 'no way back' :o)

      Regardless, I download datasheets for chips a lot. > 1 MB files are fairly normal for a 300 page PDF and I download quite a few. I wouldn't want to wait 56K times.

      I also used to download the Microsoft DDKs etc. which where 30-40MB each. Those become tricky at a minimum on dialups. I know downloads from the Evil Empire don't count, but quite a few Open Source projects out there are similarly sized.

      I can think of tons of other stuff that I can get legally and legitimatly. That's what I pay my ISP for. If you feel you pay yours for your needs, read the contract: if they don't live up to it, don't whine,- cancel or sue.
    • Seriously, Normal webbrowsing, chatting, and email can be done flawlessly with a 56K modem. All the other things that people do with the internet use broadband.

      Geez, you know not everyone subscribes to cable/DSL just for high speed. People are into the always-on aspect of the service.

      I, for one, wouldn't be interested in the raw throughput; I'm more interested in being able to download in tbe background while I can keep surfing (something near impossible on dialup).

      And never mind the convenience of being able to quickly check something like movie times or gig guides without having to wait 30 seconds to dial in (my computer is always on; pity dialup isn't).

      Cable isn't just about raw bandwidth - some of us don't care much about that.
    • The whole point of broadband is _not_ to download websites faster.

      This is true, but the whole economics of broadband relies on it being used to download websites faster. Websites, E-Mail and NNTP.

      The $52/month you're forking is chump change compaired to what the ISPs are paying for that bandwidth.

      It's time some of you had a little bit of insight on how they can give you that bandwidth and still make money.

      NNTP and E-Mail are easy, you're not actually using the ISP's bandwidth to download these. You're only using the link to your ISP. We all know local network speed is cheap. You're using their local network for these protocols (As long as you are using their news/mail servers). The web part of your bandwidth usage is a little bit harder to handle, but not much. One of the biggest helpers, and a company that has made high speed access for what we are paying possible, is Akamai [akamai.com]. They've given some nice 1U rack mount content servers to almost every ISP out there already. Even small local ISPs will have some 1U servers in their server room. Symantec, (ping liveupdate.symantec.com , you'll see it's probably one of your ISP's IP addresses) Best Buy, Washington Post, Trend Micro and Barnes and Noble are just a few examples of their customers, and sites that will be using mostly your ISP's local network. (Taken from Akamai's site [akamai.com].

      The next step to save even more of your traffic from hitting the ISP's big fat expensive pipe is caching servers. Inktomi [inktomi.com] and Compaq [compaq.com] teamed up to give a nice setup. It's expensive (Somewhere in the neighbourhood of $75,000) but you save that in bandwidth pretty quickly. It's going to cache any semi to frequently viewed pages, and alot of the streamed media you watch. Five hits to ESPN.com just becomes one, and four local requests. The sites you hit and the files you download that are not cached or served from the content servers are a small matter, because a good setup and alot of "normal" internet users will actually be hitting the local servers about 80% of the time.

      But you cannot cache P2P traffic, you cannot cache internet gaming traffic, and you cannot cache incoming traffic (Hence why that $52 is not enough for you to be serving up content.) The things you cannot cache are the things that will run an ISP out of business. Everyone here has heard the price of T1s in previous broadband articles or has priced them out themselves. Most realize the economics don't work. This is the only way to make it work. Traffic on alot of protocols just isn't cost effective to be given at high speeds.

      I hope this clears up alot of peoples views on broadband access and how it can all work. I can't say if it's right or not, it's just the way things right now have to work. The only thing I can say is if you want a fast connection that you can use for Internet Access and not a fast connection to your ISP, you are going have to pay for it, and it's going to be alot more then $52/month.
      • Sorry, you are just being moronic. The ISPs market their offering as Internet Access. If they can't deliver on that, they WILL go out of business. If their business is based on a maximal usage of bandwidth, they need to be honest about it, and make that an up front part of their offering. I will just go use another provider. What generates bad will with customers is changing the contract with them arbitrarily when they signed up for X and agreed to pay Y dollars a month for it, then you arbitrarily start delivering X-C.


        Any provider that does this to me will discover they have one less customer very rapidly. Don't advertise 150k/second if what you mean is 150k/second burst rate and an average usage rate of no more than 2k/second.

    • "Are you going to run out and buy the latest greatest $80 copy of redhat when you can pop over to linuxiso.org and just burn a copy??? We're talking $2.00 for the three CD set"

      The only reason $80 sounds like a lot for that copy of Red Hat is because the TRUE cost of your Internet connection is masked. It sure doesn't cost your ISP $2.00 for you to download 1800MB (and I'm not just talking about bandwidth costs here folks! There's a lot more to a large business than just pipe.)

      "because we waited for the day of 2mb/s downloads ... and now that the day is here ... we consider that a right ... a right that we will fight to keep"

      Bwah ha ha ha. Well, if the broadband companies were making money off you, they'd love you for this statement. "We'll fight to stuff money in Company X's officer's pockets!" Unfortunately for you, you're saying "We'll fight to take money from Company X's officer's pockets!" - believe it or not, they don't like that.

  • How on earth is this "Your rights online"? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by throx ( 42621 ) on Monday December 24, 2001 @03:10AM (#2746714) Homepage
    This is a business decision from the broadband provider. You do NOT have the right for broadband access to your hous and you do NOT have the right to demand your provided gives you an unfiltered service. The facts are that they are providing a service which you pay for - your sole rights are in the contract you signed with them, most of which pretty much dictate that they can do whatever they damn well please.

    If you really want an unfiltered service with high bandwidth then get your own T1, or are you really just bitching because you can't get everything you want for only $60/month?

    Want some cheese with your whine?
    • Then you, sir, do NOT have the right to unmonitored telephone access.

      I agree, that we don't deserve a T1 for $50/month. But we do deserve unlimited, unfiltered, and pure Internet access. My DSL is limited to 640Kb/s (256Kb/s up) and that's a GREAT DEAL for only $50 - but only because I can go in and out on ANY ports. Yes people are spoiled with connections that are just too fast thanks to @Home, but that doesn't justify "bandwidth shaping". Just as the phone company can't regulate who I talk to or in what language, nor should an ISP.
  • Give yourself ISP independance.

    HTH.
  • I'm curious what others think about this thought experiment [livejournal.com].

    In a nutshell, broadband providers have a lot to gain by restricting users' access, and users have a lot to lose if they let the industry move toward new usage models.

  • Local P2P Shouldn't Be Throttled (Score:3, Informative)

    by zilym ( 3470 ) on Monday December 24, 2001 @04:36AM (#2746820)
    I can fully understand ISPs throttling people's P2P transfers to save some Internet bandwidth. But I also think they ought to be more selective and allow full bandwidth between customers of their own network since this essentially doesn't cost them anything.

    I mean, think about it... Everybody in your city connects back to the cable company's head end office where they are all trunked together using the cable company's high speed local area network equipment. Traffic that only goes between people in the same city doesn't need to go through the Internet at all.

    People SHOULD be running servers on their home systems -- providing services that are for use by other users inside their ISP's network. It's content without the cost of Internet bandwidth! ISPs should be ENCOURAGING this type of network usage.

    This assumes that proper routing is being done by the ISP. Your customers in the city need to be able to talk to each other. My current cable ISP by gives you a NATed private IP address instead of a real Internet routable IP address. This is incredibly stupid because now all of the P2P clients running on their network can only transport files to/from users that have a real IP. And since none of their own users have real IPs, guess where all the P2P traffic HAS to go? Yep, through the Internet to other cities.

    By saving a little money on buying fewer IP addresses, they waste who knows how much on extra Internet backbone traffic costs.

    P2P has the potential to be the most bandwidth efficient system of distributing large files. In an ideal world, when the next release of my favorite Linux distribution is put online, ONE copy of it gets downloaded through the Internet backbone to my city. From there, people inside the city copy it from each other, wasting no Internet bandwidth at all. Simple P2P systems like gnutella probably couldn't pull this off very well, but something like the mftp based edonkey2000.com could do it IMHO (with proper routing in place).

    Throttle the Internet P2P data streams. Route internal P2P data streams properly so they don't use the Internet. Try to expand your coverage area to the as much of the city as you can.

    Just my 2 cents on the stupid ISP management going on.
    • "Spending less on buying fewer IP addresses" isn't the real reason for using non-routable blocks for most customers. IPv4 space is running out- slowly but surely. Sure, they can get another class C, possibly a class B block, but that only buys you 254 in the case of the class C and 65534 in the case of the class B- and you're going to pay a premium from the upstream provider for those blocks and justify your usage because there's only a limited number of them available. Right now, if you want the cheap prices, you're going to get a non-routable because the price figure doesn't factor in the cost of having the routable address. Instead of $30-60 per month, expect it to jump to $100-200 per month. In many cases, you are getting what you're paying for.
      • That is much of an excuse. ISPs should start pushing for more IPv6 adoption if this is their real limitation.

        Besides, I don't buy your assertion that IPv4 space is THAT tight. My ISP does provide real routable IP addresses as an option for $10/month extra. Its just that most people aren't gonna understand the issues and never bother to sign up for real IPs.

  • My experiences with cable modems (Score:3, Interesting)

    by phaze3000 ( 204500 ) on Monday December 24, 2001 @04:41AM (#2746832) Homepage
    I live in the UK, and my Cable Modem is provided by BlueYonder [blueyonder.co.uk].

    I have to say that on the whole I've been very impressed with the service. Although there were a few throughput issues when I initially joined, I've been on the whole very impressed with the service. They even allow servers (with suitable resitrctions, max 10 connections per cable modem and it must be private, password protected), and the only limits they place on normal traffic is a transparent proxy for all port 80 traffic (which I am sure actually speeds up the service rather than slowing it down). I get a constant 64kb/sec transfer rate downloading where possible (and thanks to the transparent caches this is relativly often). The only thing I can say against them is that their mail server often (once a month or so) gets backed up and takes three or four hours to send emails - but they're running some Microsoft SMTP solution at the moment, so perhaps that's to be expected ;) Oh, that and they're part owned by Microsoft. But they don't mind that I only have linux boxen connected to their CM..

    So basically, to all those who have replied 'well what do you expect, the economic model isn't viable!', I beg to differ.

    • I have to second this motion. Shaw Cablesystems [www.shaw.ca], based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, provides first-rate services to their customers, from coast to coast.

      After Shaw moved into my city (replacing the @home infrastructure rogers was using with their own), my average speeds jumped from 39 KBps to around 120 KBps, with bursts to 600 KBps.

      There are no rate limits. There are no transfer limits. The first-level technician I talked to knew what a firewall was and could give me a few names of good ones - but knew that Macs are pretty much screwed in that department. He suggested I go to tucows though. In short, he knew what he was talking about (more than most level 1 techs).

      People who are saying 'broadband isn't feasible' really mean 'broadband companies who think it's a good idea to buy online greeting card companies that make no profit for $780 million USD and then sell them for $24 million USD'.

      Excite was stuck in the 'portal' days. They didn't realize that 'profit margins' were more important than 'eyes' (i.e. ad revenue and portals channeling people into services). Sadly, this was blatant stupidity, since the portal days were over three years ago, even before the tech boom.

      Oh well. I can still stream MP3s and file-share, so I'm happy. I can still get 390 kbps from my webserver and DCC to friends at 52 kbps, so I can't complain.

      --Dan

  • Business ADSL in Australia (Score:3, Interesting)

    by the way ( 22503 ) on Monday December 24, 2001 @05:40AM (#2746906)
    The real problem is that the ex-monopoly provider of all of the main pipes in Australia charges monopolistic amounts for bandwidth. Want ADSL with a 20GB monthly quota? That will be US$1500, thanks... And that's the wholesale price!

    In the US it is easy to get bandwidth for under US$2 per month, which is about 30x cheaper!See http://telstra.com.au/bigpond/direct/adslpricing.h tm for Australian pricing.

  • Remember, cable in Oz is a *monopoly* (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cthugha ( 185672 ) on Monday December 24, 2001 @06:01AM (#2746932)

    I've seen a lot of people post about how this is perfectly legitimate network management, and I can accept that, although it must be asked where heavy use ends and abuse begins (do compulsive downloading of the latest ISO of your favourite dozen distros and constant apt-gets count).

    I've also seen a lot of posts saying, in effect, "Why care? It's their network, they can do what they like." But remember, people, cable access in Australia is a monopoly (or rather, an oligopoly) where the only players are the two big telcos, Telstra and Optus. It's not as if you can go somewhere else if you feel you're being screwed; they can do what they damn well like and we just have to put up with it. So it is quite important keeping an eye on them and screaming bloody murder if it even looks as if they're trying to shaft someone.

  • "Are there any other broadband services, other than the ones in Australia, continually degrading their service to customers? "

    Broadband services? No

    But this past year at work our network admins blocked ports after finding 3 PCs in the company were consuming 1/3rd of the bandwidth of our corporate T3 with Napster.

    So not broadband services, but Napster is responsible for degrading the service of thousands of persons at my company. I would imagine the same is true for DSL and cable users as well which is why they are throttling it's usage.

    Oh, you didn't want to hear that Napster is evil, did you? Too bad.

  • It'll stop when (Score:3, Funny)

    by jidar ( 83795 ) on Monday December 24, 2001 @12:13PM (#2747570)
    It'll stop when the packetloss stops.

    I'm sick of half of my fucking traffic going into oblivion because all P2P people leaving 5 different P2P clients running all the time.

    I don't have anything against P2P, and I could care less what people do with it... right up until it starts to effect the quality of my service. Sure I can bitch and moan that the ISP's aren't adding more bandwidth as it's needed, but I'm sure that no matter how much was added the P2P monkeys would just suck it all up anyway. As it is, running at 50% PL nonstop all day is fucking bs, and if they have to block all P2P software to get that to stop then I'll live with it. I can go back to getting my porn and mp3s from usenet and irc.

    Back in my day, we didn't have any fancy assed Napster or Morpheus, we had to use rn to save the files then stitch them together and pipe it to uudecode, so don't come bitching to me when you have to scan Usenet for your porn using your automagic binary grabber/combiner/decoder, because you don't know how good you have it.
  • "When will this stop?"

    When all you cheap bastards start buying CDs and going to the movies, instead of "sharing" ripped versions with each other 24/7.

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