nanog mailing list archives

Re: BitTorrent swarms have a deadly bite on broadband nets


From: Sean Donelan <sean () donelan com>
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 00:35:21 -0400 (EDT)


On Mon, 22 Oct 2007, Majdi S. Abbas wrote:
        What hurt these access providers, particularly those in the
cable market, was a set of failed assumptions.  The Internet became a
commodity, driven by this web thing.  As a result, standards like DOCSIS
developed, and bandwidth was allocated, frequently in an asymmetric
fashion, to access customers.  We have lots of asymmetric access
technologies, that are not well suited to some new applications.

This doesn't explain why many universities, most with active, symmetric
ethernet switches in residential dorms, have been deploying packet shaping technology for even longer than the cable companies. If the answer was
as simple as upgrading everyone to 100Mbps symmetric ethernet, or even
1Gbps symmetric ethernet, then the university resnet's would be in great shape.

Ok, maybe the greedy commercial folks screwed up and deserve what they got; but why are the nobel non-profit universities having the same problems?


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