Talk:Traffic shaping
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[edit] Intro Paragraph
What does the acronym BW mean in the sentence: "Recent BW needs from Internet users have led ISPs to also shape their traffic by blocking certain ports." Is it suppose to mean bandwidth? 76.208.25.23 00:59, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] BitTorrent
Perhaps this section should be changed to ISPs, as it mentions ISPs throttling other types of traffic. What does everyone think? --Eneufeld 00:31, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Cleanup / Attention notes
- Traffic shaping — difficult to follow, could use major improvements. I made some edits, but I'm no expert. -Markaci 2005-05-24 T 05:21 Z
Moved from Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Computer science 15apr06
Have edited the "Bit Torrent" section to remove some blatantly non-NPOV statements. There are legitimate reasons to prioritise real-time applications (web, VOIP) over downloads (ftp, bittorrent). At the same time, ISPs using traffic shaping as an excuse to avoid upgrading their infrastructure is still an issue.
"Bit Torrents" looks very wrong to my eye. There is no plural to that word I believe. Should be BitTorrent or BitTorrent traffic. If no objections I'll go change it.
[edit] Overhaul
I've worked on projects relevant to traffic shaping so I can give a little of a behind-the-scenes look. I'll be trying to overhaul this page a bit in the next few days. Any questions and comments can reach me here on the talk page. Scriptedfate 22:07, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Okay. That's part 2. Most of my experience is with the ISP angle, so I can't really comment on the Network/Information Theory parts of shaping. If you have any comments, bug me about 'em. Might need some wikification, as I'm sure I'm missing a bunch of relevant cross-links. Cheers! Scriptedfate 17:09, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
- While I am not an expert in this area, I know a lot about closely related fields. So, I really can't judge the quality of your changes, but I have read them and I didn't see anthing that was obviously wrong or horribly biased. There were a few more buzzwords than I like ("forward-thinking", "upsell", etc.), and I think some of the grammar could be clearer ("they care not/little if they", etc.), but it wasn't "bad" enough for me to consider changing.
- I do think you might want to add a larger section on "critisisms", and in particular, relate it to net neutrality. Wrs1864 18:14, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
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- Along the lines of 'Traffic shaping, especially when applied to single protocols, is seen as a move away from Network neutrality which some view as a desirable goal'? The way I'm seeing it is that Network Neutrality involves specifically degrading the QoS of specific protocols, of some applications, or (in the more publicized case) of access to specific servers. In other words, if an ISP blocks or severely degrades the QoS of Skype (which is not as easy as it sounds), the speed of FTP (again, not so easy, and for similar reasons), or access to eBay (website ransom)... that would be anti-NetNeutrality. However, what if the ISP degrades the QoS of all VoIP, the speed of all file transfers, or access to all websites?
- That's what I'd call being 'Categorically Neutral'. The ISP has chosen what services it doesn't want to encourage its subscribers to use. If subscribers continue to want to use those services, supply will meet the demand and an ISP will pop up offering the exact reverse. Or market analysts within the restrictive ISP will try to upsell (add extra revenue by offering an incremental service alongside an existing committed service. Sorry if it sounds buzzy) guaranteed QoS (or guaranteed non-throttling) on VoIP or what-have-you.
- It's still not what I (as an avid BT user) would necessarily want... but I'm hoping for a time when I can pay $5 for HTTP and SMTP and an additional $9.95 for best-effort P2P... and who knows? Maybe even a $5.95 for a guaranteed 500Kbps five times a month for streaming movies over RTSP. I think a better model (better than claiming you're purchasing 3Mbps up to 60GB transfer each month when, in reality, you're sharing your 3Mbps with up to 25 other people (look up 'oversubscription' as a business model)) would make most of these problems go away.
- But that's a bit idealistic, even for me.
- There are criticisms of traffic shaping out there, especially those that go against net neutrality. I definitely don't want my Skype killed just to force users to switch to the in-house VoIP 'solution' (it has happened, but not in the western world (to my knowledge)). But if my BT is labelled 'best-effort' so that my VoIP 911 call can get through... *shrug*.
- ... The reason I'm talking at this length is (aside from my inherent verbosity) so I can hear your thoughts on this. I don't want to write that section until I hear what you're thinking in terms of what I was thinking. Scriptedfate 21:51, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
