Comments on: Canada Needs Some Net Neutrality Enforcement http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2008/03/27/canada-needs-some-net-neutrality-enforcement/ As honest as a gambling man can be Sat, 11 Oct 2008 12:56:25 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 By: Homo Sum » Blog Archive » Monday Miscellany http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2008/03/27/canada-needs-some-net-neutrality-enforcement/#comment-49613 Homo Sum » Blog Archive » Monday Miscellany Mon, 31 Mar 2008 16:46:42 +0000 http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2008/03/27/canada-needs-some-net-neutrality-enforcement/#comment-49613 [...] The “inside story” of how the CBC came to release a show via BitTorrent (as mentioned here). [...] [...] The “inside story” of how the CBC came to release a show via BitTorrent (as mentioned here). [...]

]]> By: Homo Sum » Blog Archive » I love it http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2008/03/27/canada-needs-some-net-neutrality-enforcement/#comment-49553 Homo Sum » Blog Archive » I love it Sun, 30 Mar 2008 03:51:20 +0000 http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2008/03/27/canada-needs-some-net-neutrality-enforcement/#comment-49553 [...] “ask and ye shall receive”, [...] [...] “ask and ye shall receive”, [...]

]]> By: Graeme Williams http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2008/03/27/canada-needs-some-net-neutrality-enforcement/#comment-49477 Graeme Williams Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:10:51 +0000 http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2008/03/27/canada-needs-some-net-neutrality-enforcement/#comment-49477 It depends. A customer has a contract with an ISP for a certain amount of traffic. The ISP has a contract with the bandwidth provider. The bandwidth provider is constrained by the second contract, not the first. When the ISP reaches the amount of traffic it has contracted for, all its customers are going to be affected, independent of what SLA they have with the ISP. There's a difference between content-neutral traffic limiting (which is what Bell Canada seems to be doing) and limiting specific sorts of traffic (e.g., P2P, which is what Comcast seems to be doing). Bell Canada should be transparent about it, but it has to do something to handle traffic peaks. What's driving this is that networks are sized to handle a certain peak traffic. Increasing the peak is very expensive, and anyway in the short term when the network reaches the peak, there's no place for the traffic to go. It depends. A customer has a contract with an ISP for a certain amount of traffic. The ISP has a contract with the bandwidth provider. The bandwidth provider is constrained by the second contract, not the first. When the ISP reaches the amount of traffic it has contracted for, all its customers are going to be affected, independent of what SLA they have with the ISP.

There’s a difference between content-neutral traffic limiting (which is what Bell Canada seems to be doing) and limiting specific sorts of traffic (e.g., P2P, which is what Comcast seems to be doing). Bell Canada should be transparent about it, but it has to do something to handle traffic peaks.

What’s driving this is that networks are sized to handle a certain peak traffic. Increasing the peak is very expensive, and anyway in the short term when the network reaches the peak, there’s no place for the traffic to go.

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