Here is another story related to bandwidth shaping from the major ISP’s. I like the authors arguments and stance, we really do not know what our ISP (comcast, att, verizon) are doing with our traffic. We sign up for DSL and Cable under the assumption that we will get our 4 megabits of bandwidth. At some level we probably do, from your cable modem to your ISP, they then get to choose / Route your traffic to the internet. At high consumption times they throttle you down to some level and at low peak times they may let you go.
What the article depicts is a time where the ISP will actually look at what the traffic is and then determine if it should go or not go. Example: P2P is often used to share illegal files, the ISP may see that P2P is being used and instead of your normal 1megabit it throttles it down to 256k.
In theory that would help justify how the ISP saves bandwidth, and I am not opposed to that (in the end it saves me money). Where I am opposed or upset is when they look at what the P2P traffic is. I use P2P to backup my machines to other machines and in that process they are slowing down my backup. I also use my internet connection to share access to my files / Source control, etc…
I think we will be hearing a lot about this in the near future. The reason is simple $$ (money). Bandwidth costs money, the more our kids use it to stream video, share files, and make calls the more we need. We begin to expect service, and also expect performance and reliability. In the past people have been ok with slow downs, but now we are dependent. Our ISP’s should offer that as a service if they do intend on filtering traffic. I would pay more to guarantee my bandwidth. Right now the ISP’s are making the decision for us.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20071026/cm_huffpost/069960