5 ms·

The QoS issue wasn't that bittorrent was blocked, but that ISPs were heavily deprioritizing bittorrent and potentially other unwanted traffic through packet ins

• A_COMPUTER 12y ago
  I didn't feel like going into that level of detail, but since you brought it up you are right. ISPs were using tools like Sandvine to detect bittorrent traffic and throttle it down to unusably low speeds. The ostensible reason was that the Bittorrent protocol was using a ton of data transfer (that the customer thought they had bought, boo hoo) and that the packet storm was causing the performance of everything else to drop to shit quality (legitimate.) I guess QoS could mean many things to many people, but in this example, I think it was techinically incorrect for them to say they were doing it for the performance of the network when they were dropping the speeds to far below what would have simply stopped the bufferbloat problem. They were mad because people were bittorrenting rather than just sending an email now and then and checking out a webpage. So when I say FUD, I mean you can justify a lot of rotten shit to prop up your business and call it QoS. I may be wrong because this is not my area of expertise, but you can prioritize packets based on protocol in ways that keep your network working without engaging in draconian throttling and caps. I mean, if the argument is that NN means everyone can bittorrent at full speed even if it makes the entire network run like shit, well then I would be against Net Neutrality too.