End of the line?

Attention to all Streamyx users: P2P throttling is finally here! A brief introduction to bandwidth throttling aka traffic shaping..

Summary
Traffic shaping provides a mechanism to control the volume of traffic being sent into a network (bandwidth throttling), and the rate at which the traffic is being sent (rate limiting). For this reason, traffic shaping schemes need to be implemented at the network edges to control the traffic entering the network. It also may be necessary to identify traffic flows at the ingress point (the point at which traffic enters the network) with a granularity that allows the traffic-shaping control mechanism to separate traffic into individual flows and shape them differently.

Two predominant methods for shaping traffic exist: a leaky bucket implementation and a token bucket implementation. Both these schemes have distinctly different properties and are used for distinctly different purposes.

In computer networking, traffic shaping works by debursting traffic flows, i.e. smoothing the peaks and troughs of data transmission.

• A before-and-after example of how traffic shaping works is as follows:
  Before traffic shaping: 10 packets in one second, 0 packets in the next second, 10 packets in the next second, 0 packets the next second.
• After traffic shaping: 1 packet per 0.2 seconds.

BitTorrent
In the last year many ISPs have begun using Traffic Shaping software to curb the usage of BitTorrent and other Peer-to-Peer filesharing systems, such as DC++ and Soulseek. Nominally their reasoning behind these actions would be to decrease jitter and packet loss, but the truth of the matter is that many of them offer unlimited bandwidth at a certain speed and filesharing systems swallow a greater than anticipated amount of that bandwidth. Many have opted for traffic shaping (also referred to as "throttling") to manage the usage of this bandwidth, prioritising web browsing and on-line gaming over Peer-to-Peer traffic and ftp downloads, either because they are unable to upgrade their bandwidth fast enough, or as an alternative to upgrading their bandwidth. The unfortunate side-effect to this system is it comes across as ISPs attempting to attack and stop Peer-to-Peer connections, a perfectly legal system of data transfer (which many corporations use for their own purposes ie. Blizzard Entertainment using BitTorrent for World of Warcraft updates). Note that these statements do not hold true for all ISPs, but it is entirely likely that many use traffic shaping specifically for the purposes of curbing Peer-to-Peer usage. Depending on the country and the copyright laws in question this could represent an infringement on certain freedoms.

This is really bad news for all Streamyx (whom I believe almost all are p2p users? :P ) as we are paying >RM66 per month for 512K and above packages just for chatting, email, surfing?????? What the heck is this?????? Since information technology is a free technology, there should not be any traffic shaping! We should be allowed to use it as we like? And not to forget your broadband as you call it is tons of times slower than those offered in other countries.. (Just take singapore for example, where 4M and 8M packages are the norm!) Maybe it's time to change back to dial-up and boycott the so-called broadband.. =.="