Nov 24 2009
EU Blow to Eircom and Illegal File Sharing
Delighted to read Threat to Eircom ‘three strikes’ plan. It will be interesting to see how Eircom reacts!
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Jan 31 2009
Eircom and Illegal File Sharing
I remember reading a while ago that some of the record companies were taking legal action against Eircom, because Eircom would not police and prevent illegal P2P music sharing within its network. I think that Eircom would have been mad to do this!
Like many other people, I think that the record labels are still living in the past by spectacularly ignoring the realities of current technology!
So I was very interested in reading this week that this action has been settled out of court. The agreement seems to centre on the record labels detecting illegal downloading themselves without any special access to Eircom’s network. They can then pass the relevant IP addresses to Eircom, and Eircom will serve the offending user with a warning. If the record companies detect that the user persists in sharing illegal music files then Eircom will disconnect the user.
I think that this is a big win for Eircom, and a big loss for the record companies, for the following reasons:
- Eircom does not need to modify or police its network.
- The record companies must do the policing themselves. I am sure they would have loved to pass that burden to Eircom!
- The record companies will not get any special access to the network. So, they will have as much detection abilities as I do!
- Consequently, it will be relatively easy for users to avoid detection.
- The record companies will not get access to any personal details of users who are performing illegal downloading.
The full details about this are in Big four music labels and Eircom in landmark piracy settlement.
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Dec 17 2008
Virgin Broadband
I read an interesting article earlier in the week describing how Virgin Media has launched its new broadband service. This service will be available throughout the UK in the next six months, and it providers users with a maximum download speed of 50Mbps. This will make Virgin Media the fastest ISP in the UK.
More details about this can be read in Virgin unveils next-gen broadband.
The same article describes how BT is beginning a fibre to the cabinet trial that will provide users with speeds up to 40Mbps.
This is very interesting, because in the middle of 2007 I attended an event hosted by T-Com in Berlin. One of the topics at this event was broadband, and T-Com told us that it would have fibre to the cabinet deployed in the 50 largest cities in Germany in 2008. This would be capable of supplying 17 million homes. At that time T-Com had already installed fibre to the cabinet in the 26 largest cities in Germany, and we were shown some of the new cabinets on the streets in Berlin. It was then easy to spot these new cabinets ourselves, because they are slightly larger than the standard cabinets, and if you listen carefully you can hear the cooling equipment running inside them! T-Com were offering a triple play service of phone, television, and Internet to customers using this infrastructure. There were some BT representatives at the meeting also, and I recall them being impressed :o
Independently, it appears that Virgin Media will start traffic shaping P2P traffic next year according to Virgin Media to dump neutrality and target BitTorrent users. I wonder if the Net Neutrality war is being lost in Europe :|
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Dec 05 2008
ISP Traffic Shaping
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?
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