Next week, the CRTC’s hearings into ISP network management practices opens.
Dave Caputo had a great set of animations to illustrate the challenges in operating a network that delivers fair usage to its subscribers.
The graphics used the highway metaphor for the ‘net, but he described the impact of a truck that suddenly got to be four lanes wide, consuming all the capacity that was available to it.
The percentage of the total highway capacity that is used by the truck wasn’t relevant; the issue was the behaviour of the truck that didn’t restrict it to stick to its own lane. Adding more lanes wouldn’t relieve congestion. It would simply allow the truck to expand even wider.
That is how peer-to-peer file transfer applications work. By design, they expand to consume all the capacity that is made available. The analyses that look at peer-to-peer as a percentage of total traffic tend to ignore the behaviour of the applications.