Keep an Eye on your ISP

A new tool that allows you to make certain you get what you pay for
February 2009
by Robin Wark

Bandwidth throttling is something Internet Service Providers (ISPs) rarely want to speak about.

Countless ISPs all over the world engage in the practice of limiting and restricting traffic, usually specifically related to the file-sharing platform BitTorrent, on their networks. Now Google and some partners are dragging the practice out into the open with Measurement Lab. The M-Lab site (http://www.measurementlab.net/) offers a variety of diagnostic tools that can be used to see what your ISP is doing.

"Transparency has always been crucial to the success of the Internet, and, by advancing network research in this area, M-Lab aims to help sustain a healthy, innovative Internet," read an official Google Blog post by Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist, and Stephen Stuart, Principal Engineer.

However, some ISPs vehemently argue that slowing down the services of "bandwidth hogs," people using a lot of bandwidth to share files during peak hours, is necessary. The major complaint is that people using Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks, usually using the BitTorrent protocol, are hurting other users. These networks can be used to share illegal music or video files, but supporters argue they are also used for legitimate purposes, such as delivering large software packages to several users at once.

In a April 16, 2008 Canwest News Service story, figures from Bell Canada stated before it started "traffic shaping," five per cent of the users were using 33 per cent of the bandwidth.

"In other words, 95 per cent of Bell subscribers were being negatively impacted by a very small minority of Internet users using P2P file sharing applications," read a statement from the company, which was quoted in the article.

In the United States, Cox Communications has been identified as that country's second biggest blocker of traffic related to BitTorrent, according to the Max Planck Institute. However, on Jan. 28, 2009, Cox announced it will be trying an alternative solution. With broadband customers in Kansas and Arkansas, Cox will be prioritizing some traffic but not "punishing" other users, as throttling does. The company's website stated that this "automatically ensures that all time-sensitive Internet traffic — such as Web pages, voice calls, streaming videos and gaming — moves without delay. Less time-sensitive traffic, such as file uploads, peer-to-peer, and Usenet newsgroups, may be delayed momentarily -- but only when the local network is congested."

Google's Measurement Lab initiative is being done through a partnership with the New American Foundation's Open Technology Institute, the PlanetLab Consortium and academic researchers. During the early part of this year Google is providing 36 servers in 12 U.S. and European locations for researchers to use. It says all of the data gathered will be made public.