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Who Confirms The Accuracy Of ISP Usage Meters?
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2010 15:39:16 -0500
Begin forwarded message:
From: Jason Livingood <jason_livingood () cable comcast com> Date: January 13, 2010 3:26:52 PM EST To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>, ip <ip () v2 listbox com> Subject: Re: [IP] Who Confirms The Accuracy Of ISP Usage Meters?
This post on Broadband Reports came out last week. The main concern I had at the time was a specific claim about Comcast's transparency on the matter, rather than the general question of meter accuracy (which seems a logical question to ask, and which we anticipated). Here is my response to that,which was posted on their forum last week: <BEGIN QUOTE OF BBR POST>Karl wrote: "Comcast recently unveiled their new meter in Portland, using a firm of their choice to determine it's accuracy. The firm they hired, of course, proclaimed proudly that the meter was accurate to within 0.5% eachmonth. Who'll confirm this? Nobody."While I can understand the generalities of your story*, the specific ding against how Comcast released the meter seems unjustified. In an environment where an ISP could simply release a meter, it seems an objectively good thing that we used an independent party to audit the meter, that we had them share a report on the matter, and that they fully described how the systemfunctioned and how they tested it. If you question their independence or background, which I think is unfounded, you can find out who they are here: http://netforecast.com/ContactInfoFrameset.htm - Scott Bradner - http://netforecast.com/biography%20Scott%20Bradner%20.htm - Rebecca Wetzel - http://netforecast.com/biography%20Rebecca%20Wetzel%20.htm - John Bartlett - http://netforecast.com/biography%20John%20Bartlett.htm - Peter Sevcik - http://netforecast.com/biography%20Peter%20S.htm You can see their client list here: http://netforecast.com/ClientFrameset.htmAnd I can tell you they were highly recommended by members of the Internetcommunity. Jason -- JL Comcast* I think it is completely fair to ask how you can stand behind a meter and is it accurate. And for that reason, I think the basics of your story prompt a worthwhile discussion. When we planned the meter, I thought that it'd be the case that the question of proving its accuracy would logically be raised and so I suggested having a 3rd party audit it and - further - share theresults of that with our customers and the public. <END QUOTE OF BBR POST> http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r23607298-Hmmm Jason Livingood Comcast - Internet Systems Engineering On 1/13/10 2:19 PM, "Dave Farber" <dave () farber net> wrote:Begin forwarded message: From: "George Ou" <george_ou () lanarchitect net> Date: January 13, 2010 1:16:58 PM EST To: <schlake+gmail () gmail com>, "'Bob Poortinga'" <nnsquad () k9sql us> Cc: nnsquad () nnsquad orgSubject: [ NNSquad ] Re: Who Confirms The Accuracy Of ISP Usage Meters?This kind of paranoia is just getting silly. It's basically assuming thatthe ISP is committing fraud that is easily detectable.There are so many easy ways to measure this it's not even funny. If you're running a firewall like IPCOP or for example, it has extensive usage reports which will almost certainly match what the ISP is reporting. Moreover, you can measure the internal Ethernet interface which does not include DoStraffic because it gets blocked by the firewall. You can also easily enable PERFMON logging built into Windows and getsecond-by-second usage data. This only gives you measurements on a single computer though but a lot of people only have one computer. You could logdata from multiple computers and just merge the data though. George -----Original Message----- From: nnsquad-bounces+george_ou=lanarchitect.net () nnsquad org[mailto:nnsquad-bounces+george_ou=lanarchitect.net () nnsquad org] On Behalf OfSchlake Sent: Wednesday, January 13, 2010 9:02 AM To: Bob Poortinga Cc: nnsquad () nnsquad orgSubject: [ NNSquad ] Re: Who Confirms The Accuracy Of ISP Usage Meters?So what we need is a independent device that can measure that network usage. It should be open source, to be verifiable, and cheap. It won't fix the problem, but it would put a solution in the hands ofmany users. The more users that have it the more accountability whichcould be imposed on the service providers. A small box with two ethernet ports, one for the outside world, and one for the inside world. A web server on the inside world that displays statistics. An NTP server that keeps the time up to date. A configurator page that lets users configure ip blocks to be tracked separately (unmetered streaming video from the service provider for instance). A NAT-like interface that can count packets at a variety of resolutions. Total packets through would be the main one, but what about attacks on peoples homes where you send a large amount of traffic at an IP address to raise their bill? If that was detected and listed as a separate line item it could be useful. In general, the more data a person can store about their own traffic the more useful it would be (I'm sure law enforcement would agree on this point). It would need a good robust data storage system internally, and a way to automatically synchronize the data into a machine on the inside world for backup purposes. Obviously if someone implements this you should send me some of the money you make from my idea! [ Actually, much of this functionality already exists in, or could be added to, somewhat higher-end commodity cable/DSL modem/routers. But what happens if a subscriber's locally gathered usage statistics turn out to be at wide variance from the ISP's official figures? Then the real fun begins. -- Lauren Weinstein NNSquad Moderator ]On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 8:35 AM, Bob Poortinga <nnsquad () k9sql us> wrote:Here's a good article in DSL Reports which brings up some importantpoints:<http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Who-Confirms-The-Accuracy-Of-ISP-Usage-M eters-106292>-- Bob Poortinga K9SQL Bloomington, IN US
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