11 ms·

Years back, I operated a small ISP to serve a need until cable broadband arrived in the community. I had to monitor overall usage and throttle clients frequentl

by sbr464 8y ago

Years back, I operated a small ISP to serve a need until cable broadband arrived in the community. I had to monitor overall usage and throttle clients frequently with high torrent/video usage. It was also an issue with hotspots in RV Parks/campgrounds where there was a higher ratio of video usage. There are technical limitations to spectrum/bandwidth, I'm curious why this isn't mentioned more in discussions like these?

takeda 8y ago
You should either guarantee a minimum speed with unlimited data or cap on maximum amount of data use can use. Throttling based on content means you were overselling. As an user I prefer to be in control of which applications get to use the Internet that I'm paying for.
- RangerScience 8y ago
  Welp. And you just totes changed my mind from the reply I just made. This is fantastically well put.
- sbr464 8y ago
  But from a physics/technical standpoint, a radio only has so much capacity. How would you handle the situation, if you managed a provider, and 10 people at a bar started streaming an NBA game in HD? Somethings got to give.
  - skummetmaelk 8y ago
    Then this must be clearly stated in the advertisement material.
  - stefan_ 8y ago
    The streams themselves give? That's why all the ISPs are throttling video, because it's adaptive to bandwidth and doesn't fail outright! Which also, of course, explains why throttling it all the time is not necessary and certainly not optimal.
  - DougBTX 8y ago
    The argument would go that if the radio has total capacity x and each user is allocated capacity y, then only x / y users should be allowed to join the service, otherwise it is "over selling". It is a super straight forward model, but obviously much more expensive to provide. I imagine most users would be happy to pay 1/10 of the cost to get a service that might drop to 10% performance in the worst case, as long as it doesn't happen too frequently.
    - sbr464 8y ago
      I agree, definitely. It was an interesting experiment, and the realities of the then current wireless tech were so limiting, it was eye-opening to be on the provider side for once.
      - kakarot 8y ago
        Then we shouldn't have done things like spend millions pushing 4G only to bait and switch with 4G LTE once everyone had upgraded. We shouldn't claim certain capabilities that simply aren't there. The worst thing you can do for a bad product is good marketing, and that's exactly what these ISPs are doing.
        DougBTX 8y ago
        Personally I’ve had a great experience with 4G LTE, but it is going to depend on lots of factors, including the ISP.
        sbr464 8y ago
        Curious, regarding monthly download caps, has anyone found a solution to using a 4G LTE connection for frequent Netflix consumption? It currently burns through too many gigs to be a cable internet replacement. I was looking for a solution for doing longer term domestic (US) travel.
        berbec 8y ago
- buboard 8y ago
  And add that , if you are in a sparsely used area, you can achieve even better rates? In the end it's just easier to say that your video might be throttled
- mehrdadn 8y ago
  > guarantee a minimum speed with unlimited data How in the world would you guarantee that when you might not receive a strong/clear enough signal?
  - close04 8y ago
    You don't have to guarantee a minimum speed but you have to advertise the relevant parameters that you can reach at least a certain percentage of the time. Saying just "up to" should only be allowed if you also use it for the pricing and the clients pay what they can. Saying "unlimited" should be allowed only with the dictionary definition. And all "limiting" conditions should be advertised the same way as the main offer, not small font on a buried page. So the offer could look like this: "Up to 50Mbps, with 20Mbps offered at least 50% of the time between 06:00 and 22:00. Limited to 200GB/mo after which the speed is dropped to 1Mbps." Also throttling and prioritizing types of traffic makes sense when you reach capacity. But if you suddenly find more capacity for someone paying extra by throttling others more or throttle indiscriminately and lift the limits for a price then you are not doing network management, you are are squeezing for money. And this should also be clearly stated when advertised and while doing the throttling. As a customer paying the requested price I want some SLAs. I want to know what to expect for the service and be compensated for not getting it. I want to know realtime if my traffic or service is being throttled or not when I use it.
    - mehrdadn 8y ago
      > You don't have to guarantee a minimum speed but you have to advertise the relevant parameters that you can reach at least a certain percentage of the time. But this still suffers from exactly the same problem, just in a statistical way. i.e., what if someone's frequently in a place that has poor signal? How are you going to predict what percentage of the time they'll be in such a situation?
      - close04 8y ago
        Then you compensate that person for not being able to provide the service. Just as you'd expect in any other case when a service is not delivered. And if we're being honest, that's not actually the reason most of us get throttled. Most of the time it's not even network management, it's just a money grab. I don't intend to go into the technicalities because they're irrelevant. The point is they should offer a quality level at least "statistically".
- Tsagadai 8y ago
  All ISPs, as a rule, oversell. They oversell at a ratio of usage in part due to how networks are structured (8-10 times bottleneck bandwidth is seen as "good" service, source: I am in the industry). There are bottlenecks in almost every network. The problem is when they oversell at an unacceptable limit for regular usage. Bottlenecks can be mitigated but that costs money and like almost every rent seeking business there is no incentive to spend any money or invest until there is risk of a losing enough users to be unprofitable. The economics of ISPs suck which means ISPs will suck pretty much as a rule.
RangerScience 8y ago
I don't know either. The significant thing shouldn't be that video vs pics vs text is throttled (although that's an important thing that should be part of purchasing information), but whether Hulu vs Netflix are throttled.
- lucb1e 8y ago
  Yep, there's a reason that's legal under net neutrality laws: - If you need to block streaming video because that's the only way your public WiFi on trains is going to work, iirc you can do that without any legal issues. - If you zero-rate music services as a marketing stunt, go ahead, but then you shall zero-rate all music services. (Still seems annoying, as a music service, to go around the world and apply to every ISP offering this (i.e. it still makes it slightly harder for newcomers), but I guess it's not unreasonable.)
  - buboard 8y ago
    i thought the old american NN rules did not allow zero rating
    - lucb1e 8y ago
      Not sure. The old Dutch ones certainly didn't, but after t-mobile didn't care and went to the ECJ, Dutch laws were brought in line with European ones and this is what we have now.
ddtaylor 8y ago
I think the issue is that most ISPs are not transparent and their advertising comes off as double-speak. Watching their promotional materials they attempt to mislead consumers into thinking they are getting unlimited connections they are free to do whatever they want with when in reality they are getting a very specific bandwidth limit with a lot of strings attached.
- largespoon 8y ago
  The problem is that no consumer will buy internet advertised as conditionally rate limited.ISPs have no reason s to stop what works.
  - woah 8y ago
    It is false advertising though. I’m not sure why it’s allowed.
  - ti_ranger 8y ago
    > The problem is that no consumer will buy internet advertised as conditionally rate limited.ISPs have no reason s to stop what works. And consumers have proved that they believed the first liars^H^H^H^H^Hmarketers who took this approach, so the rest, having tried the approach of being truthful and having lost market share, had to adopt the same approach ...
sbr464 8y ago
Just a side note while I was reminiscing about the pain of being an ISP. Here's a couple photos of the tower for this project. I got frustrated with satellite internet, and bought a 140' tower from the scrap yard before it was chopped up for about $2k. Got a good deal on some Tranzeo 5.8ghz equipment from a cable company and the learning experience commenced. I think I was 23 in that photo. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1yoBltbqtUWMN-cHMsHTdx_fkx3N-EPkq?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1yoBltbqtUWMN-cHMsHTd...
- benbristow 8y ago
  Sounds like an interesting story. You should write an article or something. I'm interested and I'm sure some other folk here would be too!
  - sbr464 8y ago
    Thanks, I do need to! Funny thing, it was located on the same road where Tabasco sauce is made. I'm sure a tour bus passenger or two randomly caught me standing on top doing the (Brazilian) Christ the Redeemer (statue) pose. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_the_Redeemer_(statue) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_the_Redeemer_(statue)
- pathseeker 8y ago
  >Got a good deal on some Tranzeo 5.8ghz equipment from a cable company and the learning experience commenced. Did you have to get a license to operate on 5.8ghz in your country? If so, what was the process like to get one with permission to offer commercial service?
  - sbr464 8y ago
    I didn't have to (USA). You were able to offer 900mhz, 2.4ghz, 5.8ghz without a license. There are regulations on total output power of a device, which comes from the antenna's dB gain and the output power of the wireless radio inside. I believe there are other higher bands that are unlicensed, but I didn't use those. I built a lot of the equipment using m0n0wall/soekris/pcengines gear.
nsomaru 8y ago
I’ve been looking to install WiFi internet for some tenanted accommodation (think 8 flats or so). As it’s an “included with rent” perk, I need a way to dynamically throttle based on number of clients and protocol. Is there a simple prosumer solution for this? My current path is leading me towards openwrt on a beefy router with some custom firewall rules.
- sbr464 8y ago
  You can install a separate box running pfSense to act as a gateway, configuring different rules/load balancing etc. It also has a plugin ecosystem to enable additional features. That would allow you to size the box and grow as you need. I usually virtualize it with VMWare on Dell Server hardware. That way you get good remote management via Dell idrac, and can make config changes/reboot without losing access. https://www.pfsense.org/ https://www.pfsense.org/ On the access point side, if you want more granular control to handle congestion, Ubiquiti Unifi and their various mgmt platforms work well. I can't recommend their Security Gateway Appliance (frequent reboots), but the backhauls, APs and CPEs are solid. That will allow you to visualize utilization using a gui, and adjust limits per device/group easily. If you already have the APs, then a gateway device may be better. https://www.ubnt.com/ https://www.ubnt.com/ I've found over the years, and in the datacenter, that running pfsense on server hardware is very reliable. You can run on a single board computer kit but the CPU doesn't hold up to heavier traffic/vpns etc, worse remote management.
  - nsomaru 8y ago
    Thanks! That seems quite expensive in terms of hardware needed and the license for VM Ware. Any thoughts on this (this is an investment decision for low cost housing in Africa)? Also, is there a way to charge for traffic beyond a certain quota? There’s a product called Sputnik with some firmware you can download for various router brands which lets you run a hotspot/captive portal with billing
    - sbr464 8y ago
      The regular VMware vSphere Hypervisor is free, and works on most hardware. You could go used, or check delloutlet.com. (sub $1k) It doesn't need high specs at all. The reason I mention is that usually you end up needing other small services. Virtualizing allows you to have a single box and add VMs as needed. It's also easier to setup carp/failover later if the system grows and you need redundancy. Running an ISP is 24/7 so being able to have full console access, and confidently reboot services saves late night trips. It's been a while so am not familiar with the current hotspot products.
belorn 8y ago
The article brings up that. The throttling was not done in order to ease congested network traffic. It is not a response to hotspots of high traffic, nor is it even classification of data types such as torrent and video usage. If you use Boost ISP and watching sports on NBCSport it will work fine but watching the same match later on youtube is not. If you sit at CSpire and watch a paid movie on Youtube Red you will get worse experience then if you paid and watched the exact same movie on Netflix. If you sit at GCI and have both Netflix and Amazon Prime then go and unsubscribe your netflix as it will be much worse experience than amazon thanks to your ISP throttling. This is not small ISP that monitor overall usage and throttle clients based on high usage and hotspots of traffic. The article is not about congestion control but rather marketing choices where one streaming service is favored over the other within the captured market of an ISP customers.
- close04 8y ago
  This kind of throttling is done to squeeze more money from anything crossing their network. All ISPs want a piece of the pie so they will charge at both ends anything coming in and anything going out to you.
  - pas 8y ago
    Can customers/subscribers of the ISP sue for damages? I guess the ISP has a pretty defensive ToS though. :(
    - close04 8y ago
      No because the contract you have with them has no enforceable SLA and you can't really prove any damages.
    - standerman 8y ago
      Almost every large business has a forced arbitration clause now.
  - nbhuik 8y ago
    That is just how the Internet works. Everyone is selling and buying access to networks. Whether directly or in the form of agreements. And most people are of course trying to get more for less. One could certainly wish that things would be different, but it isn't like they are doing something especially nefarious.
woah 8y ago
It sounds like you were implementing metered bandwidth in a very haphazard way.

by sbr464 8y ago

takeda 8y ago

You should either guarantee a minimum speed with unlimited data or cap on maximum amount of data use can use. Throttling based on content means you were overselling. As an user I prefer to be in control of which applications get to use the Internet that I'm paying for.

RangerScience 8y ago
Welp. And you just totes changed my mind from the reply I just made. This is fantastically well put.
sbr464 8y ago
But from a physics/technical standpoint, a radio only has so much capacity. How would you handle the situation, if you managed a provider, and 10 people at a bar started streaming an NBA game in HD? Somethings got to give.
- skummetmaelk 8y ago
  Then this must be clearly stated in the advertisement material.
- stefan_ 8y ago
  The streams themselves give? That's why all the ISPs are throttling video, because it's adaptive to bandwidth and doesn't fail outright! Which also, of course, explains why throttling it all the time is not necessary and certainly not optimal.
- DougBTX 8y ago
  The argument would go that if the radio has total capacity x and each user is allocated capacity y, then only x / y users should be allowed to join the service, otherwise it is "over selling". It is a super straight forward model, but obviously much more expensive to provide. I imagine most users would be happy to pay 1/10 of the cost to get a service that might drop to 10% performance in the worst case, as long as it doesn't happen too frequently.
  - sbr464 8y ago
    I agree, definitely. It was an interesting experiment, and the realities of the then current wireless tech were so limiting, it was eye-opening to be on the provider side for once.
    - kakarot 8y ago
      Then we shouldn't have done things like spend millions pushing 4G only to bait and switch with 4G LTE once everyone had upgraded. We shouldn't claim certain capabilities that simply aren't there. The worst thing you can do for a bad product is good marketing, and that's exactly what these ISPs are doing.
      - DougBTX 8y ago
        Personally I’ve had a great experience with 4G LTE, but it is going to depend on lots of factors, including the ISP.
        sbr464 8y ago
        Curious, regarding monthly download caps, has anyone found a solution to using a 4G LTE connection for frequent Netflix consumption? It currently burns through too many gigs to be a cable internet replacement. I was looking for a solution for doing longer term domestic (US) travel.
        berbec 8y ago
buboard 8y ago
And add that , if you are in a sparsely used area, you can achieve even better rates? In the end it's just easier to say that your video might be throttled
mehrdadn 8y ago
> guarantee a minimum speed with unlimited data How in the world would you guarantee that when you might not receive a strong/clear enough signal?
- close04 8y ago
  You don't have to guarantee a minimum speed but you have to advertise the relevant parameters that you can reach at least a certain percentage of the time. Saying just "up to" should only be allowed if you also use it for the pricing and the clients pay what they can. Saying "unlimited" should be allowed only with the dictionary definition. And all "limiting" conditions should be advertised the same way as the main offer, not small font on a buried page. So the offer could look like this: "Up to 50Mbps, with 20Mbps offered at least 50% of the time between 06:00 and 22:00. Limited to 200GB/mo after which the speed is dropped to 1Mbps." Also throttling and prioritizing types of traffic makes sense when you reach capacity. But if you suddenly find more capacity for someone paying extra by throttling others more or throttle indiscriminately and lift the limits for a price then you are not doing network management, you are are squeezing for money. And this should also be clearly stated when advertised and while doing the throttling. As a customer paying the requested price I want some SLAs. I want to know what to expect for the service and be compensated for not getting it. I want to know realtime if my traffic or service is being throttled or not when I use it.
  - mehrdadn 8y ago
    > You don't have to guarantee a minimum speed but you have to advertise the relevant parameters that you can reach at least a certain percentage of the time. But this still suffers from exactly the same problem, just in a statistical way. i.e., what if someone's frequently in a place that has poor signal? How are you going to predict what percentage of the time they'll be in such a situation?
    - close04 8y ago
      Then you compensate that person for not being able to provide the service. Just as you'd expect in any other case when a service is not delivered. And if we're being honest, that's not actually the reason most of us get throttled. Most of the time it's not even network management, it's just a money grab. I don't intend to go into the technicalities because they're irrelevant. The point is they should offer a quality level at least "statistically".
Tsagadai 8y ago
All ISPs, as a rule, oversell. They oversell at a ratio of usage in part due to how networks are structured (8-10 times bottleneck bandwidth is seen as "good" service, source: I am in the industry). There are bottlenecks in almost every network. The problem is when they oversell at an unacceptable limit for regular usage. Bottlenecks can be mitigated but that costs money and like almost every rent seeking business there is no incentive to spend any money or invest until there is risk of a losing enough users to be unprofitable. The economics of ISPs suck which means ISPs will suck pretty much as a rule.

RangerScience 8y ago

I don't know either. The significant thing shouldn't be that video vs pics vs text is throttled (although that's an important thing that should be part of purchasing information), but whether Hulu vs Netflix are throttled.

lucb1e 8y ago
Yep, there's a reason that's legal under net neutrality laws: - If you need to block streaming video because that's the only way your public WiFi on trains is going to work, iirc you can do that without any legal issues. - If you zero-rate music services as a marketing stunt, go ahead, but then you shall zero-rate all music services. (Still seems annoying, as a music service, to go around the world and apply to every ISP offering this (i.e. it still makes it slightly harder for newcomers), but I guess it's not unreasonable.)
- buboard 8y ago
  i thought the old american NN rules did not allow zero rating
  - lucb1e 8y ago
    Not sure. The old Dutch ones certainly didn't, but after t-mobile didn't care and went to the ECJ, Dutch laws were brought in line with European ones and this is what we have now.

ddtaylor 8y ago

I think the issue is that most ISPs are not transparent and their advertising comes off as double-speak. Watching their promotional materials they attempt to mislead consumers into thinking they are getting unlimited connections they are free to do whatever they want with when in reality they are getting a very specific bandwidth limit with a lot of strings attached.

largespoon 8y ago
The problem is that no consumer will buy internet advertised as conditionally rate limited.ISPs have no reason s to stop what works.
- woah 8y ago
  It is false advertising though. I’m not sure why it’s allowed.
- ti_ranger 8y ago
  > The problem is that no consumer will buy internet advertised as conditionally rate limited.ISPs have no reason s to stop what works. And consumers have proved that they believed the first liars^H^H^H^H^Hmarketers who took this approach, so the rest, having tried the approach of being truthful and having lost market share, had to adopt the same approach ...

sbr464 8y ago

Just a side note while I was reminiscing about the pain of being an ISP. Here's a couple photos of the tower for this project. I got frustrated with satellite internet, and bought a 140' tower from the scrap yard before it was chopped up for about $2k. Got a good deal on some Tranzeo 5.8ghz equipment from a cable company and the learning experience commenced. I think I was 23 in that photo. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1yoBltbqtUWMN-cHMsHTdx_fkx3N-EPkq?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1yoBltbqtUWMN-cHMsHTd...

benbristow 8y ago
Sounds like an interesting story. You should write an article or something. I'm interested and I'm sure some other folk here would be too!
- sbr464 8y ago
  Thanks, I do need to! Funny thing, it was located on the same road where Tabasco sauce is made. I'm sure a tour bus passenger or two randomly caught me standing on top doing the (Brazilian) Christ the Redeemer (statue) pose. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_the_Redeemer_(statue) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_the_Redeemer_(statue)
pathseeker 8y ago
>Got a good deal on some Tranzeo 5.8ghz equipment from a cable company and the learning experience commenced. Did you have to get a license to operate on 5.8ghz in your country? If so, what was the process like to get one with permission to offer commercial service?
- sbr464 8y ago
  I didn't have to (USA). You were able to offer 900mhz, 2.4ghz, 5.8ghz without a license. There are regulations on total output power of a device, which comes from the antenna's dB gain and the output power of the wireless radio inside. I believe there are other higher bands that are unlicensed, but I didn't use those. I built a lot of the equipment using m0n0wall/soekris/pcengines gear.

nsomaru 8y ago

I’ve been looking to install WiFi internet for some tenanted accommodation (think 8 flats or so). As it’s an “included with rent” perk, I need a way to dynamically throttle based on number of clients and protocol. Is there a simple prosumer solution for this? My current path is leading me towards openwrt on a beefy router with some custom firewall rules.

sbr464 8y ago
You can install a separate box running pfSense to act as a gateway, configuring different rules/load balancing etc. It also has a plugin ecosystem to enable additional features. That would allow you to size the box and grow as you need. I usually virtualize it with VMWare on Dell Server hardware. That way you get good remote management via Dell idrac, and can make config changes/reboot without losing access. https://www.pfsense.org/ https://www.pfsense.org/ On the access point side, if you want more granular control to handle congestion, Ubiquiti Unifi and their various mgmt platforms work well. I can't recommend their Security Gateway Appliance (frequent reboots), but the backhauls, APs and CPEs are solid. That will allow you to visualize utilization using a gui, and adjust limits per device/group easily. If you already have the APs, then a gateway device may be better. https://www.ubnt.com/ https://www.ubnt.com/ I've found over the years, and in the datacenter, that running pfsense on server hardware is very reliable. You can run on a single board computer kit but the CPU doesn't hold up to heavier traffic/vpns etc, worse remote management.
- nsomaru 8y ago
  Thanks! That seems quite expensive in terms of hardware needed and the license for VM Ware. Any thoughts on this (this is an investment decision for low cost housing in Africa)? Also, is there a way to charge for traffic beyond a certain quota? There’s a product called Sputnik with some firmware you can download for various router brands which lets you run a hotspot/captive portal with billing
  - sbr464 8y ago
    The regular VMware vSphere Hypervisor is free, and works on most hardware. You could go used, or check delloutlet.com. (sub $1k) It doesn't need high specs at all. The reason I mention is that usually you end up needing other small services. Virtualizing allows you to have a single box and add VMs as needed. It's also easier to setup carp/failover later if the system grows and you need redundancy. Running an ISP is 24/7 so being able to have full console access, and confidently reboot services saves late night trips. It's been a while so am not familiar with the current hotspot products.

belorn 8y ago

The article brings up that. The throttling was not done in order to ease congested network traffic. It is not a response to hotspots of high traffic, nor is it even classification of data types such as torrent and video usage. If you use Boost ISP and watching sports on NBCSport it will work fine but watching the same match later on youtube is not. If you sit at CSpire and watch a paid movie on Youtube Red you will get worse experience then if you paid and watched the exact same movie on Netflix. If you sit at GCI and have both Netflix and Amazon Prime then go and unsubscribe your netflix as it will be much worse experience than amazon thanks to your ISP throttling. This is not small ISP that monitor overall usage and throttle clients based on high usage and hotspots of traffic. The article is not about congestion control but rather marketing choices where one streaming service is favored over the other within the captured market of an ISP customers.

close04 8y ago
This kind of throttling is done to squeeze more money from anything crossing their network. All ISPs want a piece of the pie so they will charge at both ends anything coming in and anything going out to you.
- pas 8y ago
  Can customers/subscribers of the ISP sue for damages? I guess the ISP has a pretty defensive ToS though. :(
  - close04 8y ago
    No because the contract you have with them has no enforceable SLA and you can't really prove any damages.
  - standerman 8y ago
    Almost every large business has a forced arbitration clause now.
- nbhuik 8y ago
  That is just how the Internet works. Everyone is selling and buying access to networks. Whether directly or in the form of agreements. And most people are of course trying to get more for less. One could certainly wish that things would be different, but it isn't like they are doing something especially nefarious.

woah 8y ago

It sounds like you were implementing metered bandwidth in a very haphazard way.