Teknovis

Traffic shaping is the practice of examining IP packets (but not the payload), and treating them differently, based on their characteristics. This usually consists of assigning packets priorities which determine how efficiently they are processed by networking equipment.

Traditionally, all packets within the network have been treated as equals. This worked fine when most traffic required only a small amount of bandwidth for a short durations, as is typical in web browsing and email exchange. So most ISPs were relatively happy to peer together, and carry each others traffic for free.

However, as the Internet has developed people are requiring and consuming greater amounts of bandwidth. Often this bandwidth is required across multiple ISPs’ networks, and ISPs and the intervening carriers, are increasingly charging based on the amount of traffic being exchanged. One of the main causes of significant bandwidth being required is P2P applications.

I read an article recently describing how a Canadian court granted the country’s largest ISP permission to apply traffic shaping on its core network. In particular, the court granted the ISP permission to traffic shape P2P traffic. This will effect both the retail customers and the smaller ISPs who buy wholesale services. The full article is Regulators back Bell Canada choking indie ISP traffic.

As far as I am aware, no Irish ISPs currently do any traffic shaping. However, I might be wrong about this!

My opinion is that traffic shaping will become increasingly necessary in the future to ensure that a minority of customers do not consume the majority of resources to the detriment of the majority of the users. However, I am very concerned about the prospect of traffic shaping being used by ISPs to prevent competitive services such as VoIP being used.

Would you be happy if you knew that your ISP was traffic shaping?

Tags: ISP, P2P, Peering, Traffic Shaping

The Register is running an interesting competition to test people’s ability to distinguish camouflaged mobile phone base stations from normally occurring objects. There are 20 photos in total, and most of them are quite tricky! My answers are:

1. Cellular mast
2. Cellular mast
3. Dead tree
4. Flagless flagpoles
5. Tree
6. Flagless flagpole
7. Unrelated microwave relay
8. Lonely tree
9. Suspicious black thing
10. Fire alarm bell
11. Cellular mast
12. Cellular mast
13. Ideal fixer-upper opportunity
14. Cellular mast
15. Cellular mast
16. Unexplained post
17. Cellular mast
18. Dead spot
19. Cellular mast
20. Drainage pipes

If you feel like testing yourself, then proceed to Would you know a base station if you saw one?.

Tags: The Register

I was delighted to read that the EU states set to agree to cap cost of texting from abroad. Under this proposed legislation the maximum cost of sending a text message while roaming within the EU will be capped at 11c! That is significantly lower than my current rate!

The proposed legislation also includes a cap of 1€ per MB of data while roaming within the EU. I think that this would benefit a lot of business travellers. However, it would not be of any use to me, because I am always able to use WiFi when I am abroad.

In general I feel that the telcos have not yet embraced the concept of the single European market, and they are still charging their customers extremely heavily for intra-EU services. It is unfortunate that it requires legislation to force the telcos to reduce their charges, but if that is what is required then it must be done!

Tags: SMS, WiFi

I read an interesting article in The Irish Times over the weekend (but I was too busy to write about it then :o ) The article reports that the head of the Irish Police (known locally as Garda) has asked Vodafone Ireland to provide the Internet browsing details of all of its customers. Furthermore, he wants all of this information in real time! The full article is Garda chief asks mobile phone firm to retain web-browsing data. Apparently, Vodafone are being asked to do this as a “good citizen”, or as a small favour!

I think that this is a typical example of how things are often done in an unofficial way in Ireland, where the rules (or laws) are not seen to have any relevance! I can imagine the reported conversation between the Garda Commissioner and the Vodafone Representative:

Garda Commissioner: “Right lads – could you do us a favour? We need all the Internet browsing details of all your users in real-time.“

Vodafone Representative: “Do you have a warrant for that?“

Garda Commissioner: “Nah – don’t worry about warrants. Sure we are the Garda! That’ll be grand.“

Although the article is not very clear, I think that the police want the full contents of every webpage that is viewed. It is a mystery why they want this information in real-time. In fact, it is a mystery to me why they want this information at all! Surely a targeted approach (with warrants) would be more efficient!

There are also so many ways of circumventing this proposal using software that is readily available in the Internet. So I do not think that it will deter serious criminals.

All of this is especially pointless when you consider that one can (and criminals do) legally buy a prepaid mobile phone without providing any identity information.

So who is this new measure really targeting?

My take on it is that it is the bright idea of somebody who wants to grab headlines with a great new security measure, but that this person has no concept of the practical use or implications of the idea. It certainly would not be the first time this ever happened!

Tags: Ireland, Mobile Phone, Police, The Irish Times, Vodafone, Warrant