Issue Seven - Conversations on Technology, Business and Society

COVER STORY
32
AGGRESSIVE MANAGEMENT
Some form of traffic management may be
inevitable, but there are some instances when
ISPs have resorted to underhand tactics in
their bid to keep infrastructure costs down.
In 2007, an investigation by Associated Press
revealed that Comcast, America’s third largest
ISP was using a technology called Sandvine to
interfere with file-sharing traffic. File-sharing
networks have a reputation for being hives
of stolen material (Rapidshare, for example
is said to have “everything”), but they’re also
used to disseminate Linux distributions and
other open-source software. The problem is
that file sharing also creates lots of traffic.
With Sandvine in place, whenever a
Comcast customer tried to share a new file
(known as seeding), after a few seconds the
Sandvine system would pretend to be the
user accepting the upload and send a reset
message to say he no longer wanted the file,
which halted the upload.
The civil liberties group, Electronic Frontier
Foundation (EFF) took issue with Comcast
not only for blocking the BitTorrent protocol
used by file sharing applications, but for
the way it did so. “One objective aspect
of Comcast’s conduct is that it is spoofing
packets,” says an EFF spokesperson. “Comcast
is essentially deploying against its own
customers techniques more typically used
by malicious hackers… It is true that some
broadband users send and receive a lot more
traffic than others, and that interfering with
their traffic can reduce congestion for an ISP.
This does not imply that protocol specific
packet forgery is a necessary or
legitimate means of responding to
the congestion; there are some more
reasonable mechanisms available to
ISPs to ensure that low volume users
are not crowded out by high volume
users.”
The EFF’s report on the affair
(tinyurl.com/EFFcomcast) had this to
say: “A Comcast representative told
us that while Comcast did perform
‘network management’ that might
interfere with particular subscribers
in rare circumstances, it did not block
a target any application or protocol.”
This clearly wasn’t true.
In Germany last year, T-Mobile
came under fire for blocking Skype
traffic. In some cases, it left users
without a phone service, but
according to one campaign group,
the argument that it was done to
protect available bandwidth doesn’t
hold water.
THE LIBERATED INTERNET
The issues surrounding traffic
management and net neutrality
aren’t limited to the conflicting
interests of ISPs and its customers. In
situations such as the Iranian election,
the very nature of the internet
comes into question. Is it simply
a commercial commodity that should be
Dark Matter:
PC TECH | SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2010 | pctechmagazine.com
As far back as 2005, rumors surfaced
that Google was exploring ways to create
an alternative internet using something
called dark fibre. This is a dense network
of fibre-optic links that over-ambitious
telecommunications companies laid
down across the US in the late 1990s
in preparation for the coming internet
boom.
With the dot com crash of 2000,
however, investment in new fibreoptic
network all but ceased, and the
thousands of miles of fibre that had been
laid were never used. It was left “dark”.
Google has been very busily buying up
thousands of miles of dark fibre across
the country. In February 2010, the
company’s purpose for this redundant
cabling became clear.
“We are planning to build and test
ultra high-speed broadband networks in
a small number of trial locations across
Google’s Alternative Internet
the United States,” said the company in a
statement.
Google’s plan in impressive. “We’ll
deliver more internet speeds more
than 100 times faster than what most
Americans have access to today.” It
will initially offer 1Gbit/s broadband
connections to 50,000 homes, rising to
500,000. “Our goal is to experiment with
new ways to help make internet access
better and faster for everyone.
Google’s stated aim is to free
innovators from fear that their
applications might have mandatory
bandwidth management applied or even
blocked completely. We want to see
what developers and users can do with
ultra high-speeds, whether it’s creating
new bandwidth-intensive ‘killer apps’
and services, or other uses we can yet
imagine.
“Consistent with our past advocacy,
we’ll manage our network in an open,
non-discriminatory and transparent
way,” says a spokesman. It remains to
be seen whether this network will link
with the rest of the internet at similarly
fast speeds as the will cost Google
substantial fees to other ISPs.
However, if high-bandwidth web
services are its ultimate aim, it may be
willing to find the cash to back up its
support for net neutrality.
Campaigns such as SAVE THE INTERNET may increase awareness about net neutrality, but
legislation could be ultimately required to protect future innovation