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Throttling of users for questionable Internet Traffic

While I certainly hope this doesn't apply to anyone on this forum, or will be attempted by anyone be aware that Verizon will be throttling pirates starting this month. The equipment is already in place and this will mean slower network performance for all, even if you are not throttled. The gear used to monitor traffic does cause latency and definitely reduces the "Snap" you'll feel. I see it all the time at places with web filtering and bandwidth management for pesky users.

http://torrentfreak.com/verizon-will-reduce-speeds-of-repeated-bittorrent-pirates-121115/

So, say Thank You! 🙂 I'll be having fun cooking equipment. The ToS already covers this. There is no need to add extra provisions to deter piracy. I would also be aware of a lot of false positives, which is common for any "systematic" monitoring of web traffic.

Comments

prisaz

Though I do not torrent, my fear is the guilty until proven innocent! If I start really using a continuous stream, of what I pay for, is Verizon going to question excessive traffic, and start pushing back on their routers to throttle my bandwidth? Sounds like CAPS to me. Comcast and Verizon are learning from each other! We shall see. Many want more bandwidth can't get GPON, and would love to share Personal Video and photo content between family and friends. What I send to someone used to be my business, and now it is getting more to be everyone's business. Next 1984 and the thought police. When do we start burning books so no one can read the truth. Are we going to need to do this in the clear now so everyone can watch?

Sorry but I am just a strong privacy advocate. Not piracy advocate. One must just accept there is no privacy on the internet, and always be aware of the person/whatever in the middle. Even encrypted data can be read depending on how bad it is wanted.

bigm001

This probaby explains the "latency" issues or reduced "Snap" for many FiOS users lately. This is bull!! Many people including mysellf will cancel FiOS if falsely accused and harassed for pirating. I was doing fine before i had the internet and i will survive very well without it! It's time to go outside and physically view our beautiful (now) socialist country.

mm112

I agree entirely with the previous posters especially about being falsely accused of something that you did not do. It is simply outrageous that a internet provider would put its need to try to satisfy content providers who do have a legitimate case about piracy where it would come at the expense of the customers who could be subjected to false accusations. Some companies like cox cable and charter refuse to participate in what inevitably will be a witch hunt to try to justify the fact that the reason hollywood is not making the kind of money that they used to is because they are not really making anything original anymore that could entice people to go to the movies.

bigm001

This is just bad business and the only thing the isp's will accomplish is infuriating their customers. Piracy will not be

solved and many lawsuits including a class action lawsuit will entail if this practice does materialize. Why even bother

having broadband or FiOS quantum speed internet if i may get penalized for using it to it's capacity. I might as well

go back to my old slowwwwwww 56K dial-up where i can't download 10 Gigabyte files in 2 minutes. At least I won't get falsely accused of pirating but i can (sloowwwwly) check my e-mail and only surf the web real slooooowwww. That seems safe...is it?? Or better yet i should just turn off the computer and go outside into the real world. I don't need this crap..

ronzie1

Does anyone have a link to an official Verizon announcement about how this is supposed to work, i.e. will they just be going after p2p or will they be blocking or throttling traffic to certain sites, what effect it will have on legitimate users, etc.?

The spell checker on this forum doesn't realize that the word "will" isn't always a proper name in need of capitalization.

EWTech

Just noticed that the Verizon Overlords have made it impossible to give kudos to any post on this thread. Clods! Like it matters...

I use torrent as one of the options to download openSuse Linux to my personal system. I have other users on my network (daughters) and it can be set to limit bandwidth use so they don't get locked out of their own favorites while I collect another new version of the OS as it comes out (usually about 2-3 months after first announced). This is MY version of traffic shaping. The whole idea of bitorrent is to download over a longer time using other users bandwidth shared over the network. It cuts both ways as far as I'm concerned.

prisaz

@bigm001 wrote:
This is just bad business and the only thing the isp's will accomplish is infuriating their customers. Piracy will not be
solved and many lawsuits including a class action lawsuit will entail if this practice does materialize. Why even bother
having broadband or FiOS quantum speed internet if i may get penalized for using it to it's capacity. I might as well
go back to my old slowwwwwww 56K dial-up where i can't download 10 Gigabyte files in 2 minutes. At least I won't get falsely accused of pirating but i can (sloowwwwly) check my e-mail and only surf the web real slooooowwww. That seems safe...is it?? Or better yet i should just turn off the computer and go outside into the real world. I don't need this crap..

If you read the TOS, most class action law suites are prevented by the binding arbitration clause, that you agree to by continued use of the service after a given date for existing customers, or for signing up as a new customers. MSN just sent that out a while back regarding their services, and xBox among other services. Many companies are protecting themselves this way. Not being a lawyer, I can't say if this would prevent a class action, but one would thing so. This is going to ruin the internet. And net neutrality, which I believe does not exist. A friend can download on Concast at 20Mbps from most sites, so why can't I send him files at 20Mbps since my upload speeds far exceeds that capacity. Looks like it is based on where and how they want to route the traffic. SURELY NOT NEUTRAL!

prisaz

@ronzie wrote:
Does anyone have a link to an official Verizon announcement about how this is supposed to work, i.e. will they just be going after p2p or will they be blocking or throttling traffic to certain sites, what effect it will have on legitimate users, etc.?
ps
The spell checker on this forum doesn't realize that the word "will" isn't always a proper name in need of capitalization.

That sure could slow down some games. Just as if the use of a wireless phone was to slow down the network, I believe they can limit that right now. But with the fact you are paying mega bucks per GB, I believe that would be counter intuitive.

ConsultingSvcs

@Smith6612 wrote:
[...] Verizon will be throttling pirates starting this month. [...] The gear used to monitor traffic does cause [...]

Have you actually looked into this? Verizon isn't doing any interception and monitoring of your traffic at all; MPAA and RIAA use MarkMonitor to monitor P2P networks, browse the files that users are publicly sharing (as any one of us could) and when MarkMonitor identifies a P2P user sharing copyrighted material, the provider (Verizon, TWC, etc) is notified of that user's IP. Verizon has actually been quite supportive of consumers' privacy rights; they even went to court to fight part of the DCMA subpoena provision.

@Smith6612 wrote:
The equipment is already in place and this will mean slower network performance for all, even if you are not throttled. The gear used to monitor traffic does cause latency and definitely reduces the "Snap" you'll feel. I see it all the time at places with web filtering and bandwidth management for pesky users.

What is your basis for this claim? More than likely Verizon will simply use QOS on their routers to throttle users, which they already do in order to give tiered connection speeds 50, 75, 150, 300 etc. I doubt if this requires any new "gear" at all. The "gear" we're talking about are backbone internet routers designed for multi-gigabit networks that process traffic so fast, that any latency caused by running QOS would be undetectable to end-users.

smith6612

@ConsultingSvcs wrote:
Have you actually looked into this? Verizon isn't doing any interception and monitoring of your traffic at all; MPAA and RIAA use MarkMonitor to monitor P2P networks, browse the files that users are publicly sharing (as any one of us could) and when MarkMonitor identifies a P2P user sharing copyrighted material, the provider (Verizon, TWC, etc) is notified of that user's IP. Verizon has actually been quite supportive of consumers' privacy rights; they even went to court to fight part of the DCMA subpoena provision.
What is your basis for this claim? More than likely Verizon will simply use QOS on their routers to throttle users, which they already do in order to give tiered connection speeds 50, 75, 150, 300 etc. I doubt if this requires any new "gear" at all. The "gear" we're talking about are backbone internet routers designed for multi-gigabit networks that process traffic so fast, that any latency caused by running QOS would be undetectable to end-users.

I've spent what little time I actually have looking into this, and what turned up was nothing more than very broad interpretations of what could be taking place. No solid, technical details on how this is being done per provider, no solid mention of who or what is going to be doing the monitoring and reporting, and on the throttling aspect, no mention on how they will be implementing it. If they're throttling right at the routers by adjusting rate limiting or traffic handling, then that is as you state, no different than what they're already doing (besides making their profiles a mess in the routers which they already are...). If they're using equipment from Sandvine for example for throttling, that equipment is nutorious for falsively identifying traffic as it is. If they're doing Protocol-based QoS, who's to say it's going to affect anything that is not a "super mainstream" application?

As far as I'm concerned, if they're using MarkMonitor they have no need to join into such a plan. They have been obligated since inception of DMCA to do something about reported infringers. It doesn't mean instant boot, but it also doesn't mean instant throttle or heavy handed approaches. Plenty of provisions are already in place to deal with abusers. I've always appreciated Verizon standing up against issues they feel affects customers like the cases you mentioned against the DMCA, so don't get me wrong on not keeping that in mind.

If you do have some nice, juicy information for me to go on what Verizon is done, I'd appreciate it and if it's completely different from what I'm anticipating I'll go away. Always open for info. I haven't had the chance to squeeze that info out from Verizon yet. For now, I'll continue sitting 50 feet away from a Juniper router I configured that handles 180Gbps (yes, Gigabits) of traffic on a routine basis that doesn't spit bricks because it is being asked to do more than a router was intended to do.

skyliner34

Is this for real? This is completely stupid why don't they just block the website instead of slowing down our speed. I play

lots of ps3 and games on computer also I use pandora 24/7 when I am at home so what will happen to my gaming

experience and my music that I am listening to? I hope this doesn't actually happen because that will not be good for

gamers and music or for legit people? I also have an Iphone on the network over wifi and 2 ps3's using and 2 computer

using so what will happen to my internet connection?

mm112

November 28 was to have been the start of the six strikes policy where verizon, comcast, cablevision, time warner and at&t were to start penalizing their customers if a customer was believed to have engaged in anything online that was deemed suspicious where the perception was that movies or other content that is available online for people to see for free was being downloaded. Now things have changed and it may be a good sign for customers who have those companies as their internet service provider. It was just announced today that the six strikes policy will be delayed until at least early 2013 and it could even be longer than that because hurricane sandy ended up affecting the testing schedules of CCI (The Center Of Copyright Infringement) where first they have to make sure that everything is fine with their system before they start tracking the customers of those companies where they then accuse them of engaging in illegal activities where they are esentially guessing at who they believe might have broken the law. They are using markmonitor which will track down according to them anyone who has downloaded anything illegally. CCI executive director jill lesser said they want to make sure that they cross the t's and dot the i's before they start accusing customers of the five companies who have signed on for the policy of illegal activity. Now there have been countless cases of people being falsely accused of downloading things where if you needed some examples then google "torrentfreak grandma" and click on the second link to see how a 70 year old was falsely accused of downloading x rated movies. In that story you will see two other links for a blind man and a dead man who were also falsely accused of downloading things that they did not. The delay might also have to do with the customer outrage over this new policy and if more verizon customers speak out along with the customers of some of the other companies maybe verizon and some other companies will think about opting out of this policy. Class action lawsuits will be filed against the internet service providers once the false accusations are made against customers so perhaps they should start targeting the websites who have that content on there rather than hard working good customers. Google "six strikes" to see more news about the six strikes policy delay.

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