Peer2Peer

Comcast traffic management: Sign of the future?

Comcast’s response to the FCC on its traffic management policies seems to promise a future where operators may be moving to metered capacity or to pay-for-excess plans like those already adopted elsewhere. The network operators who provide broadband access to the Internet have, for years, complained that applications were being created that drove their traffic up and generated no compensatory revenue. YouTube is the most popular example. The most immediate problem for cable operators, however, has been the P2P and server activity that congests the narrow, shared, uplink cable provides. The interesting fact is that solving this problem and creating a broader pay-as-you-go strategy for traffic in either direction creates a similar strategy, and we believe access operators are preparing to begin to turn the tap overall unless they can figure out how to monetize.

P2P/BitTorrent fall on hard times

P2P may be falling on hard times in at least one sense; BitTorrent confirmed a 20% layoff but said the move had nothing to do with the Comcast throttling issue. In some ways it would have been better for the company had Comcast been the culprit, since the FCC has ruled that Comcast can’t strangle a particular type of traffic.

We believe that the real problem is that there is little BitTorrent can do to rehab the image of P2P, which our research and modeling shows is used for illegal file sharing in more than 90% of cases. It’s ironic the giant of P2P is now suffering, given that the telcos are at the same time looking at P2P signaling architectures as an alternative to centralized signaling systems like IMS. Recent rumors say that operators are researching the use of a P2P architecture for delivering “rich service signaling” without the need for a central signaling system and without the limitations of SIP/SDP/IMS.

Common P2P architecture could threaten IMS

A number of developments, especially a rumored suggestion of cooperation among 15 common carriers to produce a P2P-model IMS-competing, voice-over-IP architecture that would be open to developers, suggest that the telco space is shifting its view of the future to accommodate the death of voice as a profit engine and the need to develop connections with the web community to create richer applications. While the move is hopeful, it is also a major culture shift for the operators and perhaps most especially for the equipment vendors that support them. We’ll be looking at equipment vendor views on open software platforms and programs while at NxtComm this year, and we’ll report on the results.

Comcast zeroes in on Internet “hog” management

Comcast today announced it would change how it imposes traffic management constraints on Internet usage, discontinuing its focus on P2P applications and focusing instead on traffic management of “hogs” or users who create the largest amount of traffic. As a practical matter, the move will likely have the same impact when the cable spans are congested, since P2P is the most significant source of upload traffic, but the new move might also impact any users who act as servers or who generate significant video traffic. The FCC has asked the company to commit to a date for the change, in what we believe is a simple PR move on the part of the FCC. We do not believe the FCC would have ordered a change, and that the current move by Comcast is a response to a competitive campaign largely by Verizon.

Comcast and BitTorrent in P2P talks

Comcast and BitTorrent are in talks over how to make P2P exchange less a traffic management problem for cable networks. There has been little detail released on this but the rumor is that Comcast is seeking a “topology-aware” hashing tree so peer uploads from one user on a cable span would eliminate the span as a source for other uploads, seeking instead alternative systems on other spans or operators. The move is prompted not so much by the FCC’s actions, which are not likely to require Comcast to stop its traffic management, but by the fact that the problem has handed the RBOCs, and especially Verizon, a major competitive advantage.

FCC chairman advocates spelling out P2P policies

Comcast and its opponents faced off at an FCC hearing, but little of substance was brought into the open. The positions remain largely as filed in the various briefs; Comcast says that network management is essential for overall service quality and net neutralists say that any constraints will be the end of the Internet. Chairman Martin’s comment about the fact that such things should be done with open policies and transparency seem to us to be the signal that the FCC will mandate that these traffic management practices be spelled out in the user agreements. We do not expect any substantive policy announced favoring net neutrality despite the tone of some post-meeting commentary.

Verizon goes on the offensive on upload speeds

Verizon has finally awakened to one of the major weak points in cable broadband services delivered and taken steps to exploit it. A FiOS ad talks about the fact that FiOS delivers not only fast downloads, it delivers uploads 25 times faster than cable, and upload speed was the big problem with cable from day one. Cable broadband is shared bandwidth in both directions, but the statistical sharing of the downlink still lets customers have decent experiences given that there’s as much as 8 or even 16 Mbps to share. But the uplink is only between 256 kbps and 512 kbps, and any significant uploading (such as P2P hosting) creates a major problem for the MSOs. That’s why Comcast is prepared to duke it out with the FCC on the issue of P2P traffic management, and that battle is likely what’s spurring Verizon to take the offensive in its ads.

Comcast admits P2P interference

Comcast has finally admitted to taking steps under its usage agreement to block or interfere with P2P traffic, at least that of BitTorrent. This is perhaps the first instance of a large access provider using their UA this way, but as we have noted before, it is inevitable that access carriers take steps to manage the use of their network, particularly where that use might interfere with other customers in the short term (by congesting the shared cable uplink bandwidth in this case) or in the long term (by forcing upgrades to capacity that cannot provide the operator with suitable ROI to justify the investment). We believe this process will be widespread by next year, and it is very unlikely that the courts would find it an abuse. In 2008 we would expect to see the first examples of operators providing premium handling as an extra-cost option, and this is likely a step in that direction. We also believe that premium for-charge service options are a good thing, since they link increased performance to increased carrier revenue and thus justify the buildout at the business level.