The ISP Sandwich
By Simon Bisson & Mary Branscombe in Editorial
Posted in Uncategorized on
The UK government wants ISPs to control the traffic of illegal file sharing through their networks. If they don’t, the government is planning to introduce legislation to ensure they do. I’m left stuck with an image of King Canute trying to hold back the tide. Failed business models don’t need to be propped up with legislation…
So why isn’t it going to work?
First, some basic numbers. The BBC article on the government proposals suggests that there are 6 million broadband accounts downloading illegal files every year. That’s a hefty proportion of the UK’s 15 million or so broadband users. While broadband analysts Point-Topic predict that number to grow significantly over the next few years, it’s reasonable to expect file downloading to grow at a similar (or, More likely, faster) rate.
Then there’s the problem of identifying the traffic. While it’s possible to roughly identify the application sending each packet, it’s impossible to say exactly what it’s being used for. There’s no point in just labeling BitTorrent connections as illegal downloads, especially as many open source projects use it as a tool for reducing the load on their servers and for giving users faster downloads. There’s also the issue of identifying BitTorrent connections, as many clients connect on random ports and encrypt their connections. To a packet monitor a BitTorrent client delivering a copy of Open Office looks much the same as the latest episode of Doctor Who.
Traffic volume isn’t a signifier, either. That big download could be an MSDN file transfer of an ISO of Visual Studio or Windows Server 2008. It could even be someone using a cloud storage service like Mozy to upload several gigabytes of photographs to a secure online backup service. Or perhaps it’s someone using 4OD or the BBC iPlayer to download a TV programme they missed. With consumer DSL finding a business role as a tool for connecting branch offices it could even be an estate agency updating its database (with the myriad digital photos a house sale needs these days), or an insurance broker delivering a batch of scanned and signed forms to head office.
The bottom line is quite simple: it’s virtually impossible for ISPs to economically identify and filter user actions that infringe on copyright files. The cost of implementing filters is prohibitive (look at how long Google took to even start filtering YouTube), and the time needed to identify exactly which users do what over the network will detract from actually managing and running a commercial network.
There’s also another part to this story.
Running a consumer ISP is hard enough without having to cope with the additional demands of regulators. Customers are on the phone 24×7 demanding service levels that any business IT department would find impossible to implement. An increasing range of IP connected applications and services are stretching thin budgets to the very limit, as network engineers try to emulate a Star Trek chief engineer putting the Enterprise back together with nothing but string and sealing wax.
It’s an issue I’ve had personal experience with, as I used to run the technical side of UK Online - and that was back when dial-up connections were the norm. If it was virtually impossible then to manage usage, what’s it like for today’s ISPs that see an explosion of protocols and packets across their fragile networks.
Illegal filesharing is the least of an ISPs problems. Legal file sharing is a much bigger problem, as the protocols used by services like the iPlayer are inefficient compared to BitTorrent, and the expected traffic volumes are more than likely to overstress existing interconnect and backhaul bandwidth. It’s probably fair to say that ISPs are now finding themselves squeezed from both ends.
If bandwidth is an issue, then ISPs will find ways of controlling it. Plusnet is traffic shaping to reduce network load at peak times. It also produces graphs to show just what type of traffic is used - and when.
Plusnet also produces indivudual reports for each user to show what traffic they were generating. It’s an approach that helps users schedule their own downloads to appropriate times - reducing overall load, and letting users choose their own quality of service.
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