8 ms·

Major Canadian ISP admits throttling World of Warcraft

93 points by pieter 16y ago

rpledge 16y ago
Interestingly WoW uses bit torrent to distribute patches to users, so its not uncommon to have P2P traffic occurring while playing WoW.
- suraj 16y ago
  By default P2P is disabled during gameplay.
- marshray 16y ago
  It's worth pointing out that "peer to peer" is a network protocol architecture, one that the Internet was designed for. Technically it's unrelated to illicit file sharing, other than that game companies, free operating systems, and pirates all distribute large DVD-sized files and thus seek the most efficient way to do so.
  - mrcharles 16y ago
    Yes, but that doesn't stop the ISPs here from treating all P2P traffic with the same hammer. As far as they are concerned, P2P = bad for network, and so they throttle it.
    - afterburner 16y ago
      To them, P2P=bad for entertainment monopoly.
    - drdaeman 16y ago
      ISPs (I work for one) dislike traffic, which heavily saturate channels. Total uplink capacity is comparable with total customer demand at peak hours. So, ISPs have to distinct between immediate (VoIP, gaming, SSH), normal priority (web browsing, email) and bulk (BitTorrent et al) cases. Although, throttling to pre-defined per-customer value seem like stupid idea, but putting them into different buckets is a must. ISPs also dislike high-PPS low-packet-size (significantly lower than MTU) UDP traffic of uTorrent's uTP protocol, because it quite negatively affects the network hardware. And, most important — ISPs, in fact, love P2P traffic when it happens between their peers, because such traffic does not consume uplink channels. When it's legally possible — they endorse it (for example, by setting up gaming servers or introducing locally-hosted software-update mirrors), when it's a gray waters of file sharing — they just don't stick their nose in other's business (unless law enforcement requests them so). Of course that's unless they want to make customers dissatisfied their service as network connectivity providers.
      - slyn 16y ago
        >> "ISPs also dislike high-PPS low-packet-size" This is presumably what was specifically causing the WoW throttling from the article. >>"We recently introduced a software modification to solve the problems our customers are experiencing with World of Warcraft. However, there have been recent changes to the game, which has created new problems. A second software modification to address these new issues will not be ready until June." I'm not 100% sure, but iirc the "recent changes" had to do with WoW changing the TCP ack frequency when running, more than doubling or tripling the total number of packets sent over any given period of play time. They turned this on with a recent patch, but hotfixed it off temporarily because, as you said: "it quite negatively affects the network hardware". People with crappy routers/modems were apparently having problems staying connected. A blizzard dev writes more in detail about it here: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1965992365?page=15#287 http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1965992365?page=15#2...
btmorex 16y ago
Can anyone explain to me why Canada has such poor internet service? I kind of understand why countries like Australia and New Zealand don't have great internet plans, but Canada is right next to the US and yet has far worse service.
- kgermino 16y ago
  Canada is far less dense than even the United States and internet access is controlled by a duopoly, which is a bad combination for competition or affordable access.
  - dmix 16y ago
    Also the regulatory body (CRTC) thats is supposed to be watching over these companies is run entirely by ex-staff of said companies. So it's very similar to the big banks in the US (their negative actions don't have market repercussions because of their ability to dominate the market with the help of regulatory bodies).
  - idlewords 16y ago
    Most of Canada lives in a few large metro areas, so density is not a factor (unless those metro areas are getting fantastic Internet service, which other posts in this thread suggest isn't the case).
  - alsocasey 16y ago
    People like to point to population density but I find the answer a little too easy - about 80% of Canada's population lives within 100 miles of the US boarder and a similar proportion live in one of 3 dense urban areas (Quebec City - Windsor corridor, Calgary - Edmonton corridor or BC's Lower Mainland.) Moreover, network infrastructure was heavily subsidized by the government and service to rural areas remains heavily subsidized to this day. All that to say, there really is no excuse for how badly we lag behind except for the de facto duopoly.
- naz 16y ago
  I think for the same reasons as the US. Entrenched, equally-terrible service providers who co-conspire in their shitness. It's just magnified because Canada is so vast.
delinka 16y ago
I keep reading too much from the unwashed masses about how this throttling works. ("They see the process that does P2P and throttle anything coming from the same process." - I do not and will never install ISP software on my systems.) Since the ISPs are not forthcoming with that information, could someone do an excellent writeup on the different throttling methods and then provide a left-field guess as to what these "access providers" are doing?
Locke1689 16y ago
If anyone's interested, this[1] paper highlights why P2P, especially in gaming applications, isn't going away any time soon. Unfortunately, P2P authors really need better systems to keep inter-AS traffic to a minimal level, but the current Internet wasn't really designed with that in mind. There are a number of different research efforts and fielded methods out right now, but none seem to have taken a really strong hold. [1] http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/72879/donnybrook.pdf http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/72879/donnybrook.pdf
apperoid 16y ago
It must be noted that according to the article they are not throttling WoW specifically but are slowing down all P2P traffic.
sskates 16y ago
Jeeze this is awful. If you're Blizzard and an ISP starts throttling your game, at least you have a little muscle to fight back (and even so their response is "oops, sorry, we'll try to have it fixed by June"). But if you're Random Web Startup that is dependent on P2P and your users have to deal with this I can't imagine there's much you can do. What a horrible barrier to entry.

93 points by pieter 16y ago

Interestingly WoW uses bit torrent to distribute patches to users, so its not uncommon to have P2P traffic occurring while playing WoW.

suraj 16y ago
By default P2P is disabled during gameplay.
marshray 16y ago
It's worth pointing out that "peer to peer" is a network protocol architecture, one that the Internet was designed for. Technically it's unrelated to illicit file sharing, other than that game companies, free operating systems, and pirates all distribute large DVD-sized files and thus seek the most efficient way to do so.
- mrcharles 16y ago
  Yes, but that doesn't stop the ISPs here from treating all P2P traffic with the same hammer. As far as they are concerned, P2P = bad for network, and so they throttle it.
  - afterburner 16y ago
    To them, P2P=bad for entertainment monopoly.
  - drdaeman 16y ago
    ISPs (I work for one) dislike traffic, which heavily saturate channels. Total uplink capacity is comparable with total customer demand at peak hours. So, ISPs have to distinct between immediate (VoIP, gaming, SSH), normal priority (web browsing, email) and bulk (BitTorrent et al) cases. Although, throttling to pre-defined per-customer value seem like stupid idea, but putting them into different buckets is a must. ISPs also dislike high-PPS low-packet-size (significantly lower than MTU) UDP traffic of uTorrent's uTP protocol, because it quite negatively affects the network hardware. And, most important — ISPs, in fact, love P2P traffic when it happens between their peers, because such traffic does not consume uplink channels. When it's legally possible — they endorse it (for example, by setting up gaming servers or introducing locally-hosted software-update mirrors), when it's a gray waters of file sharing — they just don't stick their nose in other's business (unless law enforcement requests them so). Of course that's unless they want to make customers dissatisfied their service as network connectivity providers.
    - slyn 16y ago
      >> "ISPs also dislike high-PPS low-packet-size" This is presumably what was specifically causing the WoW throttling from the article. >>"We recently introduced a software modification to solve the problems our customers are experiencing with World of Warcraft. However, there have been recent changes to the game, which has created new problems. A second software modification to address these new issues will not be ready until June." I'm not 100% sure, but iirc the "recent changes" had to do with WoW changing the TCP ack frequency when running, more than doubling or tripling the total number of packets sent over any given period of play time. They turned this on with a recent patch, but hotfixed it off temporarily because, as you said: "it quite negatively affects the network hardware". People with crappy routers/modems were apparently having problems staying connected. A blizzard dev writes more in detail about it here: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1965992365?page=15#287 http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1965992365?page=15#2...

btmorex 16y ago

Can anyone explain to me why Canada has such poor internet service? I kind of understand why countries like Australia and New Zealand don't have great internet plans, but Canada is right next to the US and yet has far worse service.

kgermino 16y ago
Canada is far less dense than even the United States and internet access is controlled by a duopoly, which is a bad combination for competition or affordable access.
- dmix 16y ago
  Also the regulatory body (CRTC) thats is supposed to be watching over these companies is run entirely by ex-staff of said companies. So it's very similar to the big banks in the US (their negative actions don't have market repercussions because of their ability to dominate the market with the help of regulatory bodies).
- idlewords 16y ago
  Most of Canada lives in a few large metro areas, so density is not a factor (unless those metro areas are getting fantastic Internet service, which other posts in this thread suggest isn't the case).
- alsocasey 16y ago
  People like to point to population density but I find the answer a little too easy - about 80% of Canada's population lives within 100 miles of the US boarder and a similar proportion live in one of 3 dense urban areas (Quebec City - Windsor corridor, Calgary - Edmonton corridor or BC's Lower Mainland.) Moreover, network infrastructure was heavily subsidized by the government and service to rural areas remains heavily subsidized to this day. All that to say, there really is no excuse for how badly we lag behind except for the de facto duopoly.
naz 16y ago
I think for the same reasons as the US. Entrenched, equally-terrible service providers who co-conspire in their shitness. It's just magnified because Canada is so vast.

delinka 16y ago

I keep reading too much from the unwashed masses about how this throttling works. ("They see the process that does P2P and throttle anything coming from the same process." - I do not and will never install ISP software on my systems.) Since the ISPs are not forthcoming with that information, could someone do an excellent writeup on the different throttling methods and then provide a left-field guess as to what these "access providers" are doing?

Locke1689 16y ago

If anyone's interested, this[1] paper highlights why P2P, especially in gaming applications, isn't going away any time soon. Unfortunately, P2P authors really need better systems to keep inter-AS traffic to a minimal level, but the current Internet wasn't really designed with that in mind. There are a number of different research efforts and fielded methods out right now, but none seem to have taken a really strong hold. [1] http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/72879/donnybrook.pdf http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/72879/donnybrook.pdf

apperoid 16y ago

It must be noted that according to the article they are not throttling WoW specifically but are slowing down all P2P traffic.

sskates 16y ago

Jeeze this is awful. If you're Blizzard and an ISP starts throttling your game, at least you have a little muscle to fight back (and even so their response is "oops, sorry, we'll try to have it fixed by June"). But if you're Random Web Startup that is dependent on P2P and your users have to deal with this I can't imagine there's much you can do. What a horrible barrier to entry.