Traffic Shaping: A Nuisance Turned Controversy

Listening to the latest edition of the TWiT podcast – oh, sorry Leo, netcast – I took particularly close notice of what was being said between the host and his guests about the common and currently quite controversial practice of traffic shaping. Or is it “bandwidth throttling”? Maybe it’s a mix of the two.

Anywho, it’s happening (in the US, at least), and it’s now gained the notice of many a broadband lover, stirring so much noise that the people doing the throttling (ISPs) are having to answer to customer complaints that they’re providing the data transfer rates they’re paying for. The service providers’ argument generally falls along the lines of: “There’s only so much space within our network for the data you’re sending off and receiving, so we need to fiddle with the switches and sometimes slow down users’ transfers to keep the entire customer base happily connected. If that means putting a squeeze on some of those hefty digital downloads of yours (both legal and not), well, then perhaps you’re just unlucky sacrifice.”

Only, that begs a fairly important question: Should ISPs – you know, companies that have interests of their own concerning various technologies – be the ones to decide who gets their data streams snagged, and when? Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t a number of ISPs in the States double as telecom (phone service) providers? Wouldn’t they then naturally wish to disabuse customers using their Internet service(s) of the notion that they could do things such as place VoIP calls at no cost via third-party products like Skype or Gizmo Project? They could do so simply by targeting heavy users of such free offerings and provide those users with a low bitrate so as to make Skype or Gizmo calls unpleasant experiences. So why wouldn’t they?

More examples of traffic shaping are being discussed today as well, but we won’t bore you. What’s important to know is that there is a great enough prevalence of hints that such throttling of data does go on, despite ISPs’ refusal to acknowledge such behind-the-scenes activity, to warrant consumer concern. Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to prove tuning of individual connections is indeed happening, at least when it comes to pinning the puppeteers for isolated incidents. Instances are, after all, fleeting, lasting perhaps a few hours maximum. Thus, the ISPs more or less “irritate” heavy data users to the point that many simply shy away from “excessive” use of bandwidth heavy services, despite purportedly having access to an unlimited supply of bits each month.

Going back to the question postulated above, the answer is fairly basic: No, ISPs should not be in control of data streams themselves. Yes, they’ve been the ones investing in their networks, but they do so on the revenue gained from their customer bases. So customers should rightly decide the best course of action to take, and given the option, they would likely choose to have Internet traffic regulated, or “shaped” in a neutral fashion.

The Internet has in roughly a decade’s time become a sort of universal utility, so it would make sense to equalize the field, and establish, across the various collection of private and public networks, an automated system to route traffic in a way that maintains reliability whilst allowing competitors to, well, compete.

As biased entities, ISPs should not have the capability to decide how and how much their customers use the network access supplied to them.