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View Full Version : Taming the Wild Wireless World

Hooch Tan
06-18-2010, 09:00 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/06/deep-packet-inspection-soon-to-be-15-billion-business.ars' target='_blank'>http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...on-business.ars</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"What will DPI devices be used for? According to ABI, "optimizing" mobile networks will be one of the chief uses&mdash;and by "optimizing" they mean limiting or prioritizing traffic from data-hungry mobile devices. "Brute force won't solve this problem," said ABI's Aditya Kaul. "If you double the number of smartphone users, you can't just spend $10 billion to double the capacity of your infrastructure.""</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1276873545.usr20447.jpg" style="border: 0px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>Lately, companies have been trying to find every way possible to make more use out of what they have and will go to great lengths to reduce their costs.&nbsp; Deep Packet Inspection, aka DPI, is known to be one of those options.&nbsp; Being in Canada, I see a fair amount of use for this with the wired kind of Internet connection.&nbsp; Both Bell and Rogers limit the speeds of customers that are using BitTorrent at certain times of the day. The result is that I feel like my internet connection is hampered.&nbsp;&nbsp; The result is that I do not use the Internet like I used to bgfore.&nbsp; If I want to do certain things like watch particular videos, share some files, etc, I have to take into account if my ISP is going to put me in the slow lane for doing so.&nbsp; Now it seems like it is coming to wireless networks as well.&nbsp; The end result is that if DPI wins, I feel that our use of the Internet will be reduced.&nbsp; It will no longer be a site of wealth and information, but a limited, destination based form of commuication.</p>
Reid Kistler
06-20-2010, 06:16 PM
To a degree, am sympathetic to the idea of bandwidth caps, and possibly even throttling, given sufficient "proof" that either abuse is taking place, and/or that doing so will provide a fairer playing ground for other system users.

The devil, of course, is in the details: What constitutes "proof?" And whom can we trust to provide it?

Of course, not being a BitTorrent user, I find absolutely nothing wrong with throttling that service during times of peak usage :D : when we still received internet service from our local cable tv provider, our connection speed would plummet in the late afternoon - when the kids got home from school and fired all their systems up.

That is part of the problem of having a shared pipe, and perhaps cable companies are now doing a better job of Always Limiting the Peak Speed available to any particular connection. Nevertheless, when we switched back to DSL we saw an appreciable increase in overall throughput AND consistency of same - even though, in theory, we took a 50% REDUCTION in connection speed!

Clearly - from a personal perspective - one of the primary things that should be considered in caps, throttling, or "optimization" is the OPENNESS of the process: if Comcast advertises "unlimited bandwidth at XXX speed" then they should be prepared to provide it. But if they tell you up front that your cap is 250GB / month, or that they will throttle speeds under certain conditions, then you have at least been forewarned.

(At the same time, am aware of the possibility for mischief that technology like DPI presents - and presumably not only on the part of the local ISP.)