
UTorrent 2.0 To Elimininate The Need For ISP Throttling - rms
http://torrentfreak.com/utorrent-2-0-to-elimininate-the-need-for-isp-throttling-091031/
======
mikedouglas
The article is a little light on technical facts. The previous Bittorrent
protocol used TCPs congestion control. Any reason to believe that their
UDP+µTP replacement will outperform it?

Edit: found the draft RFC: <http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0029.html>.
Looks like the congestion control is window- and latency-based.

| "The window size in the socket structure specifies the number of bytes we
may have in flight (not acked) in total, on the connection."

| "Each socket aims to never see more than 100 ms delay on the send link. If
it does, it will throttle back."

~~~
tybris
It's very unlikely. I've seen a bit of the research in this area and all this
stuff has been tried before with marginal success. Van Jacobson did a pretty
good job.

~~~
wmf
The point of uTP is not to outperform TCP but to _underperform_ it, using the
network's idle bandwidth but not competing with regular TCP.

------
wmf
uTP spec: <http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0029.html>

Previous uTP discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=877510>

A more general proposal for controlling Internet congestion:
[http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-moncaster-congestion-
exposu...](http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-moncaster-congestion-exposure-
problem-01.html)

------
tumult
I like the way they are spinning this. The new protocol, over UDP, is more
difficult for ISPs to throttle without harming everything else on UDP (VoIP,
games, streaming video, etc) that people regularly use (AFAIK.)

That being said, they really did create the new protocol to have more elegant
throttling. Morris: "It’s not QoS, but rather a congestion management
mechanism implemented at the end-user’s layer 7 [Application]. This will stop
uTP from eating up traffic bandwidth reserved for latency sensitive apps like
VoIP and gaming. What’s more, the congestion management mechanism isn’t
something we implemented as an afterthought – it’s the whole point of uTP."
from [http://torrentfreak.com/utorrent-2-0-to-elimininate-the-
need...](http://torrentfreak.com/utorrent-2-0-to-elimininate-the-need-for-isp-
throttling-091031/)

Looking forward to it, even though Comcast doesn't seem throttle my BitTorrent
traffic at my location (North Bay area.)

~~~
wmf
Who's spinning it that way? I didn't see that in the article. Also, DPI or
traffic analysis can easily distinguish different UDP-based protocols.

~~~
tumult
Is that really feasible for ISPs? I know you can traffic shape anything, but
would they bother? I remember there was a pretty big ruckus when this was
first announced, since many of the uT guys were talking about how it would be
much harder to throttle.

~~~
smokinn
Obviously you don't live in Canada.

Over here, all the major ISPs do DPI to throttle torrents and about 6 months
back the only way to not be throttled was to go with a smaller DSL ISP that
leased lines from Bell. Then, one day, Bell turned around and started doing
DPI on wholesale client lines and throttling their torrent traffic too. Some
people raised a stink about it and it got to the CRTC for a decision and, in
typical CRTC fashion, they issued a non-decision that essentially said DPI
should only be used when necessary. Nothing changed. It's now impossible* to
get an internet line that doesn't throttle torrents in most of Canada.

* Not impossible to run torrents without being throttled though, you just have to set Azureus to its "RC5 encryption" settings and Bell won't be able to analyze your packets though this will break any private trackers that don't use https (most do).

------
pierrefar
Can an ISP fake a network congestion that uTorrent detects and automatically
slows itself? That would be the next logical evolutionary step for people
hell-bent on stopping filesharing. That's ISPs, RIAA, etc...

~~~
drkevorkian
ISP's don't have any vested interest in stopping filesharing. In fact I'm sure
many of them would love to have it since its a great reason to use their
service.

~~~
sorbus
The ideal customer is someone who pays for a fast connection, and then uses it
to check their email once a week.

Lower bandwidth usage leads to more profit for the ISP, since they can get
away with overselling their infrastructure. Thus, ISPs do have a vested
interest - especially considering that many of them oversell their
infrastructure. And if this leads to more people using torrents (because they
won't be noticing as many issues, and this will lead to usage getting closer
and closer to network capacity), it will cut into profits, and potentially
require investments in new infrastructure.

------
MikeCapone
If this works out as planned and ISPs trust it enough to ease up on the
throttling, seems like everybody will win.

~~~
tomjen2
They won't. All this does is remove a convenient excuse they have to throttle
the bandwidth.

