I am writing as a customer of Road Runner since 1998 to complain about the implementation of the "network management tool" Road Runner has recently implemented to packet shape newsgroups, peer to peer, and other high bandwidth applications. There are many legitimate and completely legal uses of these services which have now been severely impacted by the implementation of this technology, making them nearly unusable at the "peak traffic times" Road Runner activates this technology.
What is particularly upsetting to me is that I pay an extra fee to Time Warner Cable every month for your "premium" level of service which is supposed to provide speeds approximating 15mbps down/1mbps up. The reason I pay an extra fee is to enjoy this higher level of service and compensate Time Warner for the additional impact I may place on the network while utilizing those services. That level of service has now been rendered completely useless and I can see no need for Time Warner to continue offering it if you are going to handicap your users' ability to rely on the speeds advertised.
When your packet shaping technology is in use, thruput on those services has dropped to nearly 400kbps, far less than the level of service I had with a basic, standard Road Runner account. This kind of performance is completely unacceptable, and as more and more broadband video applications rely on the kinds of peer-to-peer or newsgroup-style traffic which you feel a need to "manage," the ability of your customers to use those completely legal services becomes nearly impossible.
Road Runner has always marketed itself as the fastest high speed experience in my area. That is clearly and unequivocally no longer the case, even with the slower advertised speeds your local DSL competitor advertises. With your "network management tools" in place, their marketing department can now legitimately advertise DSL as providing a far faster user experience, something that can be easily demonstrated using common Internet applications that are now being heavily "managed" by Road Runner.
I strongly urge you to expand your network to meet the ever-growing needs of your customers who, like everyone else, are being marketed legal and fully legitimate applications which require the kinds of bandwidth that Time Warner itself has always marketed as being available from Road Runner. That clearly is no longer available from a company that has chosen to throw roadblocks up for their customers instead of properly managing and growing their network to meet the needs of your customers.
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anon @ 8th Jun 09:08AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
said by Dampier :
If you want a guide as to what to send their way on this issue, here is a copy of my complaint:
I am writing as a customer of Road Runner since 1998 to complain about the implementation of the "network management tool" Road Runner has recently implemented to packet shape newsgroups, peer to peer, and other high bandwidth applications. There are many legitimate and completely legal uses of these services which have now been severely impacted by the implementation of this technology, making them nearly unusable at the "peak traffic times" Road Runner activates this technology.
What is particularly upsetting to me is that I pay an extra fee to Time Warner Cable every month for your "premium" level of service which is supposed to provide speeds approximating 15mbps down/1mbps up. The reason I pay an extra fee is to enjoy this higher level of service and compensate Time Warner for the additional impact I may place on the network while utilizing those services. That level of service has now been rendered completely useless and I can see no need for Time Warner to continue offering it if you are going to handicap your users' ability to rely on the speeds advertised.
When your packet shaping technology is in use, thruput on those services has dropped to nearly 400kbps, far less than the level of service I had with a basic, standard Road Runner account. This kind of performance is completely unacceptable, and as more and more broadband video applications rely on the kinds of peer-to-peer or newsgroup-style traffic which you feel a need to "manage," the ability of your customers to use those completely legal services becomes nearly impossible.
Road Runner has always marketed itself as the fastest high speed experience in my area. That is clearly and unequivocally no longer the case, even with the slower advertised speeds your local DSL competitor advertises. With your "network management tools" in place, their marketing department can now legitimately advertise DSL as providing a far faster user experience, something that can be easily demonstrated using common Internet applications that are now being heavily "managed" by Road Runner.
I strongly urge you to expand your network to meet the ever-growing needs of your customers who, like everyone else, are being marketed legal and fully legitimate applications which require the kinds of bandwidth that Time Warner itself has always marketed as being available from Road Runner. That clearly is no longer available from a company that has chosen to throw roadblocks up for their customers instead of properly managing and growing their network to meet the needs of your customers.
I totally agree with Dampier. I was actually going to upgrade my service to a 15meg line but now because of what TW is doing, I am probably going to switch to DSL instead. In rochester, that means Frontier DSL, which offers slower speeds, but at least they're reliable and don't have any of this bs.
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ColorBASIC @ 8th Jun 09:18AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
said by djrobx :
7:30pm and downloading from NG server at 1180KB/sec. This shaping technology doesn't seem to have hit my area yet.
You'll only see it if the load on the network in your area warrants it. If they start to approach capacity packets of these particular activities (usenet, BT, P2P) get prioritized. If you're in a cable system that isn't under tremendous load you will likely never see any affects of packet shaping.
--
Macintosh Users Group Serving the Inland Empire
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SyphonBW @ 8th Jun 09:20AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
Well my speeds on newsgroups are @ 1800kb's a sec 15mbps a sec and that is with SSL Maybe SSL cant be seen by roadrunner or can it?
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ColorBASIC @ 8th Jun 09:22AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
said by Dampier :said by djrobx :
7:30pm and downloading from NG server at 1180KB/sec. This shaping technology doesn't seem to have hit my area yet.
That is possible, although remember this is in effect only during "peak times" whatever that means (and if someone can get them to confirm what those times actually are, that would be useful to know.)
Peak times means you'll only see the traffic shaping when the network traffic is so heavy as to require it. If you're in a cable system that never sees very heavy traffic like the one I'm in (I never see slow downs, ever) you will likely never see it. If you have slow downs in the evening then you will like get caught up in traffic shaping.
--
Macintosh Users Group Serving the Inland Empire
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niagara_man @ 8th Jun 09:52AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
Wow, and everyone complained when I bicthed about how crappy they are. How the Advertised speed issue is a problem.
Ok I understand the UP TO now from a few other posts. Now they are saying you cannot use "UP TO" without getting into issues !!
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dadarkside @ 8th Jun 09:44AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
Adelphia had been doing this for years prior to being bought out by RR. The ONLY one's who noticed, were the MOST EGREGIOUS TORRENT ADDICTS. It's VERY EASY to implement without being invasive.
I doubt ANYONE on RR would even notice unless they were doing torrents 24x7x365 full throttle.
But OH OH OH...The SKY is falling!!!!!
get a grip. This technology is an awesome way to cut down in SPAM and Virus transmission when clueless hosts find themselves unknowingly infected cause they downloaded some trojan imbeded in a torrent file.
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Dampier @ 8th Jun 09:49AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
said by SyphonBW :
Well my speeds on newsgroups are @ 1800kb's a sec 15mbps a sec and that is with SSL Maybe SSL cant be seen by roadrunner or can it?
With SSL on, supposedly you can hide your network traffic (Giganews markets an account with that option specifically to get beyond packet shapers), but some packet shaping technology can still identify traffic based on how it moves across the network (On another forum someone mentioned Cisco sells technology which can throttle encrypted traffic based on how the packets move back and forth, making it easy to identify even encrypted p-2-p traffic.)
Also, and this is very important, RR admits to using this only at "peak times" but then doesn't really define what those hours are. Peak time for Rochester apparently include late afternoons because that is when I noticed throughput going off the cliff.
When connectivity sucks, my usual routine is to check latency and other providers and what was different this time is that no matter where I went for newsgroup traffic, and no matter how many connections I opened, they all gradually slowed down to the same speed... around 400kbps for four concurrent connections. I could approximate standard RR 10mbps speed only when opening 10 concurrent connections and then shutting them off every 15 minutes or so and restarting them.
And I don't spend all day on newsgroups - usually 30 minutes a day max, so I'm hardly Mr. Piggy when it comes to network usage (and outside of technology that relies on p-2-p to deliver legal content, I don't use Bit Torrent stuff at all).
The thing about people considering this good news is that the trends like this rarely are positive. It signals management willingness to start limiting their users' ability to use the service and spend less on improving the network. That generally guarantees more throttling for more applications they define as "abusive" and the kinds of hidden usage caps like Comcast loves are now in the realm of possibility as well. Because when management considers punitively imposing restrictions on their customers, that philosophy can quickly extend to many other aspects of their service. The key is nipping this mentality in the bud before it becomes entrenched, not because we should celebrate bandwidth piggies, but because the nature of the Internet and future applications that require broadband connections inevitably make more and more of us bandwidth piggies in their eyes.
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ccbadd @ 8th Jun 09:55AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
I don't mind the traffic shaping if need be, but I wish they would not include VoIP as a high bandwidth application. I use Packet8 and they use very little of my bandwidth and that is only when I am on the phone. I see this as a way to stifle competition with there own over-priced VoIP offering.
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anon @ 8th Jun 09:55AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
If they are using anything like Ellacoya DPI (deep packet inspection) technology then we are royally screwed. Read the link for more info or just go to the Ellacoya site to see with DPI really is.
»www.screenplaysmag.com/Editor/Ar···ult.aspx
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Doctor Four @ 8th Jun 09:55AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
You know, if they only did this when the node you were on
was at or fairly close to being saturated (say > 75% of its
capacity in use), I would be OK with this.
I can always time shift my Usenet downloading so that it
occurs after 10-11 PM, which is past the peak usage period.
But I do think they are going to have a lot of angry
customers who will consider switching to DSL. And if
FIOS is in an area where this traffic shaping is widely
implemented, you're going to see a lot of former TWC
customers who will gladly jump ship.
--
"The trouble with computers, of course, is that they are very sophisticated idiots." - Doctor Who (from Robot)
We are the Hacker Collective: Resistance Is Futile - All Your AACS Keys Will Be Assimilated.
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ColorBASIC @ 8th Jun 10:00AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
As I mentioned earlier, peak times has less to do with the times than the peaks.
All this traffic shaping is doing is deprioritizing packets of high bandwidth applications. If your cable system is not running near capacity, even deprioritized traffic still runs full speed.
If your local cable system is near capacity nearly all day, then you'll see the effects of traffic shaping all day. In other local cable systems that aren't near capacity, those users may never see any effects of traffic shaping because there are no "peak" hours.
I haven't seen the effects of traffic shaping yet (knocks on wood) but I also use encrypted usenet service from Giganews. Then again I've NEVER seen a slowdown in my area under TWC I may never be affected by this traffic shaping, encryption or not.
If I ever am, I also happen to be in the FiOS hotbed that is SoCal and one call to Verizon and all my traffic shaping problems disappear in a week or two. FiOS while offering the same 15/2 speeds has so much network capacity they can let their users run willy-nilly 24-7 and they don't seem to give a crap.
Even with SSL they can look at throttling prot 563 (traditional SSL NNTP port) just like they did 1214 for Kazaa. Luckily Giganews also acception SSL connections on 443 which is the traditional HTTPS port. TW may have to do a bit a tail chasing to stop those determined to circumvent the traffic shaping or resort to Comcast's just cancel heavy users approach.
--
Macintosh Users Group Serving the Inland Empire
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mnmsmith @ 8th Jun 10:02AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
Yeah, this sucks, I cancelled my 'Premium' subscription when I noticed my newsgroups had been affected. I wish there was another alternative here, only Embarq (Sprint) DSL, who knows, I may have to move that that...
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koolkid1563 @ 8th Jun 10:03AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
said by Dampier :
Our primary service is to provide you with a high speed connection to the Internet for loading websites.
So, now they are telling us what the "Internet" really is to be used for. Websites!!! No gaming, no videos, no VoIP (unless it is through them I am sure)...What is going on here? Eh, I am curious if this will go into the Earthlink subscriber base on the TWC network, someone else mentioned this above.
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mnmsmith @ 8th Jun 10:04AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
Maybe my cable system is at capacity then, because since this was implemented, my Newsgroup speeds are down to nothing no matter what time of day.
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ColorBASIC @ 8th Jun 10:09AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
My TW news server speeds have always sucked so I don't use them as a guide. I've been just watching my Giganews speeds which for both encrypted and unencrypted traffic have remained a steady 14.5Mb from my 15Mb service.
You could be in a burdened cable system cause there are at least 2 cable systems here in SoCal (mine headed out of Lake Elsinore, and another near LA) that we aren't seeing any effects of traffic shaping yet...at least that I can see.
So I think what this will do is for those cable systems that have evening slow downs...what we'll see is the evening slow downs get far worse for BT, P2P, and usenet users by the slow downs are lessened for all of the other users. Those in areas with no slow downs may just continue that way.
But who knows...cable operators can be a devious lot and we may not be seeing traffic shaping because we have SO MUCH FiOS competition here. From Corona to Huntington Beach and farther north, a lot of the TWC footprint is paralleled by FiOS service.
--
Macintosh Users Group Serving the Inland Empire
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Doctor Four @ 8th Jun 10:19AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
If this was implemented system wide back on the 6th, then
I'm not seeing any impact yet here. I still get a full 6 Mbps
from Giganews, even during peak usage times.
My guess is that not many people on my node use their
bandwidth a lot. Either that, or they have AT&T (the
main alternative to cable where I live).
--
"The trouble with computers, of course, is that they are very sophisticated idiots." - Doctor Who (from Robot)
We are the Hacker Collective: Resistance Is Futile - All Your AACS Keys Will Be Assimilated.
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Dampier @ 8th Jun 10:29AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
said by ccbadd :
I don't mind the traffic shaping if need be, but I wish they would not include VoIP as a high bandwidth application. I use Packet8 and they use very little of my bandwidth and that is only when I am on the phone. I see this as a way to stifle competition with there own over-priced VoIP offering.
I think they use weasel words in the stuff I got over this application so I cannot confirm they are actually doing this because I cannot imagine it would use that much bandwidth, unless you had one of those business VoIP systems that run multiple lines. I have Vonage here and during the throttling of newsgroups, I had no problems at all using Vonage. I am not really sure they are bothering with VoIP stuff right now, but they obviously reserve the right to. I wouldn't be too worried about VoIP, at least not yet.
BTW, I just received a second canned e-mail response from RR about the policy. This one is abbreviated and seems to only talk about newsgroups and p-2-p:
Thank you for choosing Time Warner - Road Runner E-mail Technical Support.
I understand that you are experiencing a slow connection with your peer 2 peer connections or newsgroups.
I can assist you with this.
Time Warner recently implemented a network management tool to improve the operation of the network for all subscribers. As a result, a small minority of users may experience slower speeds during peak hours when using certain applications that consume lots of bandwidth. You can address this situation by reducing your use of bandwidth-intensive applications during peak hours. "Peak hours" are generally in the evenings.
If you view our Acceptable Use Policy found here: »help.rr.com/aup, please take note of the second and third bullets, which state:
* The Road Runner service may not be used to engage in any conduct that interferes with Road Runner's ability to provide service to others, including the use of excessive bandwidth.
* The Road Runner service may not be used to breach or attempt to breach the security, the computer, the software or the data of any person or entity, including Road Runner, to circumvent the user authentication features or security of any host, network or account, to use or distribute tools designed to compromise security, or to interfere with another's use of the Road Runner service through the posting or transmitting of a virus or other harmful item or to deliberately overload or flood that entity's system.
I do apologize for any inconvenience this may cause!
If you have any further questions or problems, please feel free to e-mail us again for further assistance. When replying to this address, please include this message as well as all previous correspondence regarding this issue.
Thank you for choosing Time Warner - Road Runner and have a great evening!
Time Warner - Road Runner Technical Support Department.
Coming from the desk of Technical Support Agent Brian, 02587
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djrobx @ 8th Jun 11:14AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
For me, doing something to limit rampant use of services known to be used in a continual manner during peak usage hours is not surprising with areas moving to 10-15mbps caps.
With a 10mbps connection and the included newsgroup service you can easily suck down around 100GB per day and you can bet there are people doing it. I love my newsgroup downloads, but I simply don't think it's reasonable to expect Time Warner to deliver every customer 10mbps 24x7 for $54.95 per month. Residential pricing and speeds are based on sharing intermittent use.
So in my mind there must be limits. When someone is walking out the door with the all-you-can-eat buffet table, what are the options? Impose monthly download limits? Give everyone lower speed caps so we're all stuck with 1.5mbps 24x7? Charge extra per gigabyte downloaded? Take away the free news server? Cancel people's accounts? Yes, they can beef up their back end to support the "hogs", but the circuits required to carry this kind of transit aren't cheap and there's a point where it's not cost effective to do so. An OC3 is 155mbps. That whole thousands-of-dollars-per-month circuit will be filled with just 10 people maxing out 15mbps caps! Even at the undiscounted $54.95 per month price, the money they collect isn't going to cover the cost!
Given the choices, I like TW's approach. I find it comforting to know I can queue up gigs and gigs worth of downloads in my newsreader and know that my downloads are not negatively impacting someone else's online game play. As long as I can still enjoy full speeds when the network is not so busy it's overall still worthwhile for me. And it's nice to know I'm not going to get some nasty letter from TW. Compare that to Comcast who cancels their users, or Cox who advertises a 60gb per month limit for their premier customers!
Nobody likes limits but they're part of life. If you don't like the limits you have to find another service that doesn't have them. For most people that alternative is much slower DSL.
--
Laser eye surgery rocks! I love frickin' laser beams.
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ColorBASIC @ 8th Jun 11:48AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
The problem isn't whether it's reasonable or not...TWC's major SoCal competitor, Verizon, permits 24-7 use with both their DSL and FiOS products.
So TWC is free to limit their service but with true wireline competition in SoCal, people like me will simply leave as Verzion has no trouble supporting the "hogs".
The fact is whether it's RR, Cox, Cablevision or Comcast; current cable system topology doesn't support providing these 15Mb speeds and in order to do it they have to select which customers and applications can get it. With SDV, DOCSIS3 and improved compression technology they will soon be able to but in the meantime these changes for me say "cable can't compete" with emerging telco wireline competition like we have in many many areas of SoCal.
IOW...limits are part of life...IF you're a cable customer. But for users in Temescal Valley, Huntington Beach and some other SoCal areas there are alternatives that are just as fast and about the same price but have none of these use restrictions.
--
Macintosh Users Group Serving the Inland Empire
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anon @ 8th Jun 11:58AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
So, just what exactly are those limits? Anyone care to elaborate? Any TWC disclosure agreement or TOS we can read that specifically states what those limits are? Amazing what they can get away with.
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ColorBASIC @ 8th Jun 12:01PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
Limits on what? Throughput? The limits are having to put up with traffic shaping which is dynamic depending on load on the cable system. While they traffic shape, they don't cancel you for excessive use like Comcast does.
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Macintosh Users Group Serving the Inland Empire
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anon @ 8th Jun 12:10PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
limit on bandwidth and throttling....because no one here knows what those limits are and when they are in effect.
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swhx7 @ 8th Jun 12:13PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
said by Dampier :
The thing about people considering this good news is that the trends like this rarely are positive. It signals management willingness to start limiting their users' ability to use the service and spend less on improving the network. That generally guarantees more throttling for more applications they define as "abusive" and the kinds of hidden usage caps like Comcast loves are now in the realm of possibility as well. Because when management considers punitively imposing restrictions on their customers, that philosophy can quickly extend to many other aspects of their service. The key is nipping this mentality in the bud before it becomes entrenched, not because we should celebrate bandwidth piggies, but because the nature of the Internet and future applications that require broadband connections inevitably make more and more of us bandwidth piggies in their eyes.
Well said. This is why we need network neutrality legislation. ISPs ought to be, by law, "common carriers" such that it is none of their business what the customer is using the connection for. The electric utility simply bills me by the kilowatt, and has no right to try to set different terms depending on whether I'm using I'm using the watts for a light bulb or a lawn mower. Large ISPs obviously want a different rule and this has to be stopped.
Discussions of this topic always get the neutrality issue confused with the bandwidth and total-traffic issues. The question of neutrality or discrimination is about discrimination by type of traffic or origin or destination. The fact that cable companies oversell capacity is also a problem but it is a separate issue.
A reasonable policy would be (a) no discrimination (b) any limits on total traffic must be openly disclosed (c) if the ISP is going to limit usage to less than the advertised rates at any time they have to admit it in their advertising (plainly, not with "up to" weasel words).
Legislators aren't representing constituents (other than big corporations) on this. We need to whack them with clue-by-fours. Write a letter.
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ColorBASIC @ 8th Jun 12:14PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
The limit is that they traffic shape and the traffic shaping is always in effect. You only see it when the network nears usage capacity (so-called peak times).
Traffic shaping is a service limitation but is a dynamic one. The effects change from second to second.
--
Macintosh Users Group Serving the Inland Empire
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djrobx @ 8th Jun 12:16PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
quote:
IOW...limits are part of life...IF you're a cable customer. But for users in Temescal Valley, Huntington Beach and some other SoCal areas there are alternatives that are just as fast and about the same price but have none of these use restrictions.
They don't now. Time Warner didn't a week ago either. I'm just not so certain that these limits are only being imposed due to "cable topology" problems. Anyone know how many 38mbps DOCSIS QAM256 channels are in simultaneous use on an average system? There's TW's peering/transit to the rest of the world to consider as well.
Verizon might actually want heavy usage statistics to prove the need for FIOS to their investors. :)
--
Laser eye surgery rocks! I love frickin' laser beams.
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anon @ 8th Jun 12:20PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
Rant follows: There needs to be a fundamental change in their business model. For example, if I pay for unlimited Phone service with Verizon, I get just that…unlimited usage, no caps, no peak times. I can use my phone 24/7/365 if I want. For those not willing to pay a premium for unlimited calls, then there are less expensive plans with a minutes caps. Same with my wireless provider. I get what I pay for, and I know exactly what I get. Unlimited means unlimited. 1000 minutes means 1000 minutes. It’s all spelled out. For TV service, I know what channels I pay for. I can watch them 24/7/365 if I want. If I want more channels, I pay for it.
OK, now let’s look at the voodoo, smoke and mirrors Internet plans from TWC (and others as well). Say I have premium 10/1 service. But what does that mean? God only knows (and TWC). We are all reminded that speeds are not guaranteed…ok. But what does that mean? What is guaranteed then? Nothing is guaranteed. Kind of like those mpg rating on cars, YMMV.
Since TWC and their ilk do not and will not adequately disclose the details and restrictions on their Internet plans, then local or federal govt should mandate a MINIMUM level of service based on the ADVERTISED level of service. For example, if I buy the up-to 10/1 advertised service, then the ISP should be required to provide at least, lets say, 95% of the service 24/7/365 as the MINIMUM requirement. If they can not do it, then do not advertise it. Pretty simple. If there is some hidden bandwidth cap or throttling going on based on time of day, or usage, or whatever, …then they must disclose what it is. Pretty simple. Of course, the odds of this happening are slim to none considering how the cable and telco companies grease and lobby legislation to their benefit only.
The only way this will change is if enough people complain to the local govt representatives. Otherwise, we are at their mercy, so get used to it.
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ColorBASIC @ 8th Jun 12:25PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
If you want to pay per MB, then you can compare residential HSI to electricity.
You don't pay a flat monthly rate for electricity for if you did, you can damn well bet they would be throttling your high electricity applications like your A/C unit.
--
Macintosh Users Group Serving the Inland Empire
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djrobx @ 8th Jun 12:27PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
quote:
For example, if I buy the up-to 10/1 advertised service, then the ISP should be required to provide at least, lets say, 95% of the service 24/7/365 as the MINIMUM requirement. If they can not do it, then do not advertise it. Pretty simple. If there is some hidden bandwidth cap or throttling going on based on time of day, or usage, or whatever, …then they must disclose what it is.
95% of 10/1 guaranteed 24/7 is unreasonable for a $54.95/month service and they do not advertise it as such. Go price out "guaranteed bandwidth" business packages with speeds similar to that and see what pricng you come up with.
They are doing right by disclosing the existence fo the packet shaping. They tried to explain what a peak usage hour is as best as possible, "usually the evenings". As ColorBASIC poitned out, assuming this is implemented correctly, it should be dynamic and only restrict certain types of usage when the network can't support it.
--
Laser eye surgery rocks! I love frickin' laser beams.
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ColorBASIC @ 8th Jun 12:28PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
People have been saying "they don't know" about telco wireline services for 10 years. The nature of telco wireline is they don't have the bottlenecks in the same spot as the cable operators do. Cable bottlenecks are often at the node level which isn't an issue for DSL or FiOS. Rarely if ever is the bottle neck at the headend or CO. It's just the nature of the two network layouts that cable HSI is more susceptible to slowdowns casued by the so-called hogs.
So I have no doubt in my mind that TW is implementing traffic shaping because they are facing these bottlenecks that are a simply the nature of cable internet topology.
--
Macintosh Users Group Serving the Inland Empire
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niagara_man @ 8th Jun 01:04PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
thats fine. .... i would be willing to pay. I just signed up for TW 2 meg upload / 7 meg download for 169.99 in my area.
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swhx7 @ 8th Jun 12:32PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
said by Dampier :
3) The company is warning customers who are smart enough to circumvent these by encrypting or moving their packets off the "usual ports/traffic neighborhood" that it is a violation of the AUP to do so and potentially puts your account in peril.
I hope this is not true.
As an occasional BT user (for things I consider legitimate, not "stealing movies") I expect not to be affected much by bandwidth limits, because I carefully regulate it to avoid affecting the neighbors or attracting attention from RR.
However, like almost all knowledgable BT users I avoid the standard ports. As far as I'm concerned it is normal, with any network technology, to use any ports that work and don't cause problems for anyone. If this is going to be considered evasion of AUP, that's a problem.
Likewise, it's unacceptable for an ISP to expect users to leave all their packet unencrypted just because it helps their throttling efforts. It's none of their business what my packets are about, their job is just to deliver them as well as possible.
If they don't have the capacity to deliver all the traffic then they should be forced to restrain their advertising of rates until they build enough infrastructure to live up to it.
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ColorBASIC @ 8th Jun 12:33PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
What you're asking for is called an SLA and the pricing is very simple.
Unlimited use = Price is insane (T-1, T-3 etc)
Limited use = Price is typical of residential pricing
You will not EVER see true unlimited use for typical residential pricing with current cable HSI network topology. The network isn't designed for it and in order to update the network so that it could support it would result in insanely high residential pricing.
While new emerging cable network technologies come out like SDV and DOCSIS 3, you will see these limitations mitigated but never eliminated.
To eliminate it completely you would have to remove the source of the bottlenecks (the nodes) or upgrade them significantly which is extremely cost prohibitive (read insanely high residential service prices).
--
Macintosh Users Group Serving the Inland Empire
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swhx7 @ 8th Jun 12:54PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
said by ColorBASIC :
If you want to pay per MB, then you can compare residential HSI to electricity.
You don't pay a flat monthly rate for electricity for if you did, you can damn well bet they would be throttling your high electricity applications like your A/C unit.
Flat rates are no excuse for overselling or for packet discrimination. Users are entitled to expect the advertised rates even at peak times.
Traffic amounts is a different issue than bandwidth at a give time; these are often confused.
Heavy users (in terms of total traffic over time) should expect to pay more. In a flat rate system - which we have with internet because people overwhelmingly prefer flat rates - that means going to a higher tier such as "business class". But if other posters' interpretations are correct, RR is actually throttling those users down to the lower-tier rates.
Sooner or later we need more capacity. Without government intervention ISPs will increase restrictions more and more instead of investing in capacity. A better solution would be taxpayer support of infrastructure, and regulation to force ISPs to pass along the benefits to customers (including network neutrality) instead of letting it be windfall corporate welfare.
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djrobx @ 8th Jun 12:56PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
People have been talking about cable blockage being at the node since the days when service was capped at 1500kbps. Somehow we've stepped up to 6-10mbps and the same topology seems to be handling it. We've only gone from QAM64 (29mbps) to QAM256 (38mbps),
I'm on node SC71, which I'm guessing means there are at least 71 nodes in Santa Clarita (I also know that due to a certain planning blunder we were one of the last nodes). 71 * 38mbps = 2698mbps. Yet all tracerts show we go through a gigabit ethernet connection to Tujunga. Hmmmmm...
Of course, from what I understand a node is just a fiber->coax conversion, and what we're really referring to are DOCSIS channels. Couldn't there be more than one DOCSIS channel per node? Perhaps many nodes are sharing the same channel? Those are the questions I'd like to see answers to, but I suppose we're getting off topic. :)
-- Rob
--
Laser eye surgery rocks! I love frickin' laser beams.
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ColorBASIC @ 8th Jun 12:57PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
Flat rates are absolutely an excuse for overselling.
Overselling is REQUIRED if you want 15Mb for $50.
Overselling is the ONLY way to provide that speed for that price.
--
Macintosh Users Group Serving the Inland Empire
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ColorBASIC @ 8th Jun 01:02PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
38Mb per channel, not total. It's not the "node" per se that is the limitation...it's how many channels are dedicated to throughput.
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TelecomJunky @ 8th Jun 01:05PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
This is very interesting if true. It may be just a coencidence, though I doubt it, but the local ISP I work for began getting reports from Time Warner users of extremely slow throughput to our network to the point that sites wouldn't load and email wouldn't download.
We also provide voip and some of our voip customers on time warner began having extremely bad lag and echo. Since our VoIP are located on other networks, we knew more was going on than just a routing issue to our network. We also had several time warner customers in the area that had no problem what-so-ever.
Through working with our users and theirs we also found out that they were having similar problems with several major banking sites.
My guess this all had to do with their implementing this packet shaping.
Let's see if the FCC is going to do anything about them degrading voip so they can force people onto their digital phone. We have long suspected them of blocking voip ports on certain voip customers of ours that use their cable network...
--
-----
»hotcarl.diaryland.com
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ColorBASIC @ 8th Jun 01:16PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
said by niagara_man :
thats fine. .... i would be willing to pay. I just signed up for TW 2 meg upload / 7 meg download for 169.99 in my area.
Call the telco and tell them you want a T-1 or T-3. It's would be $500/mo+ but it's dedicated and you can use it 24-7. Plus when it goes down they bust ass to fix it. They will not be calling you about excessive use or subjecting you to traffic shaping.
But even at $170 for 7Mb, it's going to be a shared connection. It's whether or not $170 buys you out of traffic shaping.
That's the trade off...cable network shared topology getting you 15Mb with traffic shaping for $50 or non-shared or SLA access for $500+ for 1.5/1.5Mb service.
--
Macintosh Users Group Serving the Inland Empire
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swhx7 @ 8th Jun 01:21PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
said by ColorBASIC :
Flat rates are absolutely an excuse for overselling.
Overselling is REQUIRED if you want 15Mb for $50.
Overselling is the ONLY way to provide that speed for that price.
No, it's not true. If they're not going to build more capacity, at least let's have truthfulness enforced. Then instead of "15Mb for $50" in big print and "up to" and other negations in tiny print, it would be advertised as "maximum 15Mb, less at peak hours, maybe secret limits on total traffic, and we will degrade any traffic we choose to degrade at any time" for $50.
Another problem is the nature of these contracts. They're extremely one-sided and the ISPs grant themselves the exclusive right to change the terms at any time. This could not happen in a competitive market. Therefore we need both pro-competition policies (like equal access to the "last mile"), and regulation to impose some fairness on the contracts until there is enough competition that regulation is no longer needed.
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ColorBASIC @ 8th Jun 01:26PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
ISP's can't crap capacity.
If you don't want overselling, you will get 768kbps access for the same $50 you're paying today and even then it will still be oversold at the headend/CO level.
--
Macintosh Users Group Serving the Inland Empire
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Digital @ 8th Jun 02:49PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
Too bad I can't get a good connection on TOR, I'd forward all the traffic coming off of the router through that. Heh. I haven't really seen any packet shaping on the linux isos i've got on bit torrent lately, but newsgroups are slower than dog crap.
--
One only needs two tools in life: WD-40 to make things go, and duct tape to make them stop.
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Dampier @ 8th Jun 04:55PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
The packet shaping is in place again this afternoon here in Rochester. Four concurrent connections to Giganews which used to max out my 15/1 account are now reduced at the moment to under 400kbps. Increasing to 10 concurrent connections brought it to around 950kbps.
I have been doing initial trial testing to SSL encrypted connections using Giganews and the Giganews Accelerator. From what I am seeing right now, SSL encryption notwithstanding, newsgroup data packets are still being throttled despite a different port number and 256 bit encryption.
However, some providers now permit up to 20 concurrent connections and I find that with 15, I can get my old speeds back. I have further testing to be done. I am not using any Bit torrent p2p stuff so I won't be looking at that.
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anon @ 8th Jun 04:57PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
Well, why pay the extra money for faster speeds above the "standard" Time Warner speeds, if you can't use it. Even if you can "at certain times only."
I guess I'll call and have my speeds reduced, since I can't use what I got anyway. And pay ALLOT extra for.
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Dampier @ 8th Jun 05:01PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Replies to Complaint
Here is the reply I received from the corporate office today. Like Madge, we're soaking in the boilerplate language, but the more who complain, the better the chance this policy is modified:
Executive Response Center to me
Hello,
Thank you for writing. You have reached the email address of the Time Warner Corporate Customer Care Department for Road Runner.
I appreciate you taking the time to provide feedback regarding our services and performance issues you have recently incurred. Such feedback helps us to improve our services for you our valued customer. I have forwarded your email to our network services groups for further review and consideration. I thank you again for your comments regarding our service.
Should you have any future comments regarding our services, please feel free to contact me.
Sincerely,
Gerald Joa
Customer Care Manager
Road Runner High Speed Online
Corporate Customer Care
customercare@ndc.rr.com
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Dampier @ 8th Jun 05:03PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
said by just my thought :
Well, why pay the extra money for faster speeds above the "standard" Time Warner speeds, if you can't use it. Even if you can "at certain times only."
I guess I'll call and have my speeds reduced, since I can't use what I got anyway. And pay ALLOT extra for.
We pay $10 more for Premium access here in Rochester. Since I seem to have found a workaround that gives me some speed back, I am going to leave things alone. I am not sure what I can recommend the Torrent folks do to bypass this.
Remember, before making a decision about your account, you should weigh the impact of this packet shaping on your own account usage. If it doesn't affect you much, no need to change. But I'd start with a written complaint no matter what you decide to do, especially if you downgrade.
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scottyk87 @ 8th Jun 05:25PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
Good timing because I am jumping ship to AT&T U-verse that was just introduced in my area. IPTV + fiber to the node, copper to the home internet. 6 mbit down / 1 mbit up for less than the price of TW.
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swintec @ 8th Jun 05:27PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
said by scottyk87 :
Good timing because I am jumping ship to AT&T U-verse that was just introduced in my area. IPTV + fiber to the node, copper to the home internet. 6 mbit down / 1 mbit up for less than the price of TW.
Do us a favor, when you switch and call TW to cancel and they ask why, tell them your gripes about the packet shaping, it is so bad its making you cancel. ;)
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Dominokat @ 8th Jun 05:49PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
I honestly can cope with the packet shaping when using newsgroups considering what it is often used for.
But this packet shaping seems to have also effected my use of Itunes, a perfectly legal and legit program to download movies, music and TV shows to your Ipod.
What used to take 15-20 minutes to download a subscribed to TV show, now can take up to 4 1/2 hours......
(sarcasm) Yea. This packet shaping really helps my experience. (/sarcasm)
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anon @ 8th Jun 05:58PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
time warner rochester does absolutely no packet shaping, the news group servers are not even hosted locally (they used to be) i use my rr turbo to the max all the time without any issue, i seed linux distros on bittorrent, i upload to my friends at max rate, i constantly max out my download speeds.
sounds like the original poster doesn't know his ass from a hole in the gorund and is bitter because he can't download his illegal content as fast as he would like... boo fucking hoo... and btw, that "article" he posted... fake ;)
tool
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Dominokat @ 8th Jun 06:01PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
Whether he knows his ass from an elbow is mute.
SOMETHING has changed. My Newsgroups is slow during "peak" hours, AND SO IS ITUNES.
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hwirt @ 8th Jun 06:02PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
Thanks for the heads up Dampier!
I started noticing that my connection to Giganews was much slower than usual a couple weeks ago. Use to download at almost the cap speed of my modem, now seems to limited to about 1 megabit down. Another new and exciting feature from Time Warner.
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punker @ 8th Jun 06:05PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
It seems to be Working Well
i do not think it is installed on Palmdale's system yet but is installed on others and it helps A LOT
last night i was getting Odd ping times
like 50ms to NY (dslr)
and 15ms to TX (pcpitstop)
the network i am on dose not seem to be used alot
so they might not install this hardware
out of all the houses on my block they use Suck big crap(sbc/ATT or DSLX)
there WiFi shows it ;)
--
Global warming did not eat my homework.
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Dominokat @ 8th Jun 06:23PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
Speed test, with packet shaping can and will give normal results.
Its the ports that Newsgroups and Itunes use that are getting shaped.
I can get my normal speeds on a speed test, but my Newsgroups and Itunes are slow as hell.
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anon @ 8th Jun 06:33PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
i want to see the link to the article, otherwise, i call shannanigans.
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swintec @ 8th Jun 06:38PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
said by create :
i want to see the link to the article, otherwise, i call shannanigans.
It was a memo sent out to TW employees.
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anon @ 8th Jun 06:41PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
proof?
if anyone has a copy of the memo, i would be more than happy to take it, i can provide an email address to send it to
//still calling shannanigans
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anon @ 8th Jun 06:51PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
Just got off a chat with RR:
Smidget: for some reason around 4ish until later at night all my internet downloads are being slowed down, but before that and after around 9-10ish they go back up to full speed
Ken M: What kind of downloads? We are / have implementing a network management policy that may be responsible for slowing down certain type of downloading to reduce network stress and improve quality of access for the bulk of our users.
Smidget: oh... newsgroup downloading as well as some bittorrent, i guess those would be affected, it's just throttled very badly since i normally get 1MB/s (i am a premium user) and currently i am getting ~150-200KB/s
Ken M: P2P and newsgroups are what would be affected, yes.
Smidget: ok, so i guess there's nothing we can do about this other then try those services at non-peak hours? is there certain times that would be better to use these hours?
Ken M: I'd imagine it would be non-peak times, unfortunately I do not have exact information on when. I just know that we are doing so. We call it the Network Management Policy. Mind you, I too am a user that falls in to the 10% that use more than the other 90% and my ISP also throttles torrents (but not newsgroups thankfully). We are also told to direct people to help.rr.com/aup if they want more information on why we do this (or why we think we can).
Ken M: Roadrunner implemented their Network Management Policy which throttles the bandwidth allocated for peer 2 peer applications and Newsgroups. This should only impact binary groups, particularly for customers using 3rd party software that attempts to DL on multiple streams. Inform the caller that TWC is deploying network management tools to improve the operation of the network for all subscribers.
Ken M: ^ That's the notice we've been given regarding the newsgroups.
Smidget: oh ok, well i guess that's it, thank you and i guess even if i'm purchasing the premium package i'm still affected
Ken M: Well, we'd almost want to affect you more right? You technically would likely be more of a problem for the type of thing we are trying to improve (not accusing or trying to insult you, just saying). You'll still have your speed for everything else, just not those types of traffic.
Smidget: right true, well thank you very much for the info
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ssault @ 8th Jun 07:23PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
said by Dominokat :
Speed test, with packet shaping can and will give normal results.
Its the ports that Newsgroups and Itunes use that are getting shaped.
I can get my normal speeds on a speed test, but my Newsgroups and Itunes are slow as hell.
I'm feeling your pain in Damariscotta, it has been terrible here. Newsgroups goes down to 500-1000kbps anytime from afternoon till midnight.
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Cogdis @ 8th Jun 09:30PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
I used the online chat as well and confirmed they've implemented it for TWC in NYC.
Since theres never that much traffic in my area, I haven't noticed any issues yet, but just the fact that they would consider VoIP bandwidth intensive makes me happier than ever that fios is comming. So long to the crooks at TWC... Hello to the crooks at verizon :p
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sheik28 @ 8th Jun 10:34PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
Well, Dampier it seems you are correct. I had some time tonight and I contacted live chat. Unfortunately, they said the same to me... the details of my chat are below:
quote:
Lee M: Thank you, with what technical issue may we assist you?
me: I am having trouble downloading with Itunes.... is the network having toruble? Ity seems very slow
Lee M: I'm not sure. We can do a slow browsing test if you like.
me: well before i contacted you i searched., and i saw some people saying something
about packet shaping. i read some more but i seem confused. does time warner use packet shaping technology to slow down stuff like that... p2p or whatever it's calleeD?
Lee M: Yes actually, recently they changed the protocol with p2p programs and that may slow your downloading a little bit with programs like itunes or limewire
me: wow that stinks. why?
Lee M: To level the bandwith for weveryone, torrents and p2p takes a lot more bandwith than normal browsing and it was affecting speeds accross the board.
me: well i guess that explains it. thanks for your help
Maybe I just didn't want to believe it.
--
There is no such thing as a stupid question, and yes, the camel types. ;)
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hayabusa3303 @ 8th Jun 11:51PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
I think it has hit here in south carolina now. I use to download videos like ign and other sites and now its going slow to stop.
I dont use any P2p software at all. I do alot of downloading like on linux on the iso just to mess around.
Xbox live in not effected nor my voip is still running fine.
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saber11 @ 9th Jun 08:57AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
Yet another reason to call and write your congress critters. Make sure they support NET NEUTRALITY !!!!
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Dampier @ 9th Jun 10:06AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
said by saber11 :
Yet another reason to call and write your congress critters. Make sure they support NET NEUTRALITY !!!!
This is a good idea in any case, but actually isn't directly related to this. It's more important to contact TW management and complain about packet shaping impacting your user experience.
What bemuses me about some of the earlier comments from those who seem pro-packet shaping is the short sighted thinking they have used to come to support this kind of activity.
I'm not for Bill up the street running his bittorrent client all day and night and slowing down the neighborhood either, but I am strongly against pitting user against user and worrying about what someone else in the neighborhood might be doing. I am worried about my broadband provider implementing technology that forestalls the necessary network investments that are going to be required to meet the growing bandwidth demands of customers in the future.
As someone who has reported on this industry since the 1980s, this is a pattern I've seen before. Management implements restrictions and punitive measures against customers who respond to their endless marketing campaigns promising "unlimited" usage, "blazing speeds"/"the fastest Internet in city x", and marketing campaigns that even wink wink at illegal online activities (especially peer-2-peer traffic), and then when users utilitze those services, they get all huffy.
Restrictions are sold in press releases as "improvements to the customer's user experience," and there are always some shortsighted folks out there who misunderstand the implications and accept that reasoning (if not applaud it because they now think their specific problems with their provider are solved because it was sold as entirely the fault of some kid up the street downloading adult videos).
But in the end it's always the same - those network management tools start to creep into other high bandwidth applications. Remember, RR itself says explicitly their priority is rendering web pages. So if you didn't care when p-2-p stuff got throttled because you don't use it, and you never bother with newsgroups, this is not relevant to you right now, but wait.
But when it expands to slow your iTunes downloads, restricts your ability to use legal movie or TV download services, makes Joost unusable, or whatever other future online applications that are bandwidth intensive, then you'll probably join the chorus, but by then management will have cemented the mentality that handicapping their network is more cost-effective than actually maintaining it to the standards that are going to be required to meet the demands of these services.
Yes, competition can play an important role in limiting one player from getting away with too much restrictive access, but most cities in this country face just one other choice - copper wire DSL, which has been having trouble competing with Road Runner for speed. FIOS is a great product that is either years away for many of us, or will never be available in our area, and is a unique offering from Verizon that some stockholders are upset is being offered at all.
I'd fight against packet shaping like this even if it only applied to peer to peer networks which I don't even use, because some applications rely on this technology to deliver their broadband content even if you don't realize it.
One example: In the UK right now, Channel 4 has discovered their efforts to deliver video on demand services to broadband customers have run right into packet shaping and usage caps imposed by many British ISPs, rendering the service totally useless for large numbers of people. It relies on a peer to peer distribution model.
I continue to encourage people to look beyond pitting user against user and instead focus on pressuring Time Warner to make the smarter choice for everyone on the network - take some of the enormous profits that TW earns from their cable division and invest them into building a broadband network that can easily meet the growing needs of broadband applications either now available or soon will be, some of which are being built in-house by TW itself. Then you won't need to spend money to implement technology which only reduces the customer's user experience.
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djrobx @ 9th Jun 12:54PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
quote:
and Itunes use that are getting shaped.
I think the iTunes problem may be unrelated. I am seeing packet loss on Level3 trying to get to Apple's website. I see the same loss from DSLExtreme.
In this case the loss "seems" to normalize out by the time it gets to apple, but I see erratic downloads and sluggish performance at the Apple.com website from both providers.
From dslextreme:
This particular trace from DSLX definitely suggests issues at level3. :)
--
Laser eye surgery rocks! I love frickin' laser beams.
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ssault @ 9th Jun 01:24PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
said by djrobx : quote:
and Itunes use that are getting shaped.
I think the iTunes problem may be unrelated. I am seeing packet loss on Level3 trying to get to Apple's website. I see the same loss from DSLExtreme.
This particular trace from DSLX definitely suggests issues at level3. :)
»Road Runner HSI Forum FAQ »Why is there so much packetloss on Level 3?
Covers Level 3 issue, read FAQ.
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punker @ 9th Jun 09:51PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
It Might Only be FOR Select areas Were there are a Shit Load of users
--
Global warming did not eat my homework.
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dontsleep @ 9th Jun 09:57PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
Wow.I pay for 12/768 in Queens NY and I might not get it all the time because of this idea? Actually I don't get that speed half the time anyway:(.Grrr
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punker @ 9th Jun 10:08PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
it's not installed in my area yet
i am getting full speed when downloading Windows XP SP1a
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swintec @ 9th Jun 10:29PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
said by punker :
it's not installed in my area yet
i am getting full speed when downloading Windows XP SP1a
What are you downloading it by?
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ColorBASIC @ 9th Jun 10:39PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
I just DLed the AllThingsD Jobs/Gates video podcast got about 8Mb from my 15Mb connection. Now I'm getting paranoid :D Every time I don't max my pipe I'm going to be wondering if it's just general traffic at the host or if it's traffic shaping.
--
Macintosh Users Group Serving the Inland Empire
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punker @ 9th Jun 11:08PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
from microsoft website
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SyphonBW @ 9th Jun 11:26PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
I also get 15mb d/ling the sp1a and i also get 15mb d/l when using SSL with usenetserver
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punker @ 9th Jun 11:50PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
yes i bet it's Only for Select areas were they have overloads
i have not gotten any email via rr account
they would have told every one by now
--
Global warming did not eat my homework.
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swintec @ 9th Jun 11:51PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
said by punker :
from microsoft website
That type of connection is not going to get shaped. It is Usenet and peer to peer file sharing applications, during the peak usage times which I would venture to guess is between 6-10 or so. Simply downloading SP1a was not even a blip on the radar to them. Try HARDER! :D
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djrobx @ 10th Jun 12:26AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
Aware of that phenomenon. Read my entire post. Once again:
"In this case the loss "seems" to normalize out by the time it gets to apple, but I see erratic downloads and sluggish performance at the Apple.com website from both providers."
--
Laser eye surgery rocks! I love frickin' laser beams.
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punker @ 10th Jun 12:36AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
yea what ever
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anon @ 10th Jun 05:37AM:
msg deleted
deleted by a moderator
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anon @ 10th Jun 06:13AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
Man, must suck to be you guys...
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anon @ 10th Jun 08:39AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
I can't see how this affects Usenet providers that support encrypted connections and multiple ports. Unless they are going to throttle by ip address or domain.
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anon @ 10th Jun 09:12AM:
msg deleted
deleted by a moderator
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LikwidN2 @ 10th Jun 09:54AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
Anyway, it looks to me like in the next few years we're in for a rude awakening. When anything created by people without commercial intentions use is subsequently commercialized, you'll see restriction, limitations, and poor implementations. Why do we bother to have standards ratifications groups if ISPs in their quest for billions are going to ignore the rules of the road simply because they can and there's nothing we can do about it? All of you praising FIOS are too short-sighted to see that as soon as one of them gets away with it, they'll all be justified in doing it by their corporate herding rationalization. The internet is on the verge of severely negative transition, and the ones at the controls are out there for greed, and that's it.
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anon @ 10th Jun 09:54AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
Ya, It's affecting me. Our RR adverts are claiming 8mbits.
A couple months ago I was getting about 6.5 but during the last three measurements I am averaging only 4.5mbits.
I feel it is either false advertising or a breach of contract, or both.
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anon @ 10th Jun 10:17AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
Wow.. This packet shaping thing is really helping me out as well ;)
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anon @ 10th Jun 10:33AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
Apparently the idiots posting speedtests don't understand packet shaping technologies. It doesn't affect speedtest sites which are running over HTTP. It affects protocols and ports. Most companies are using deep packet inspection and don't just look at the packet headers. Yeah, I can post a speed test showing 12/1, but that doesn't mean my P2P downloads don't slowly dwindle down to 0kbps.
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anon @ 10th Jun 10:46AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
We understand.. Some are meant to be funny.
Besides, we cant exactly post a speed test to our VOIP providers. How helpful is this to you?
server*CLI> iax2 show peers
Name/Username Host Mask Port Status
NuFone 66.225.202.72 (S) 255.255.255.255 4569 Unmonitored
voicepulse02/ 64.61.93.90 (S) 255.255.255.255 4569 OK (34 ms)
voicepulse01/ 64.61.93.87 (S) 255.255.255.255 4569 OK (34 ms)
3 iax2 peers [2 online, 0 offline, 1 unmonitored]
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ColorBASIC @ 10th Jun 10:47AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
What usenet providers accept encrypted connections uncommon multiple ports? Giganews accepts them on 563 and 443 which are common (563 for SSL usenet, 443 for HTTPS) so it wouldn't take much effort to throttle them.
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Macintosh Users Group Serving the Inland Empire
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anon @ 10th Jun 10:49AM:
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anon @ 10th Jun 10:58AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
If this becomes more commonplace, I wonder what the market would like like to VPN routing ISP companies.
A server you can VPN (encrypt) traffic over your 1st tier ISP, that routes your traffic to the internet un-shaped. Kinda like another 2nd ISP (monthly fee) in addition to your 1st tier.
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Rook008 @ 10th Jun 11:11AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
I'm finding that the traffic shaping, if it's been implemented here, is not really a problem, yet. I was able to still get full speeds on news servers last night. And that's when I do most of my downloading anyway.
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ColorBASIC @ 10th Jun 11:17AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
People will only see it if their cable system traffic nears capacity.
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antdude @ 10th Jun 11:29AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
/. and Digg have this story now: »slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/10/0645232 and »digg.com/tech_news/Time_Warner_T···RR_Users
Yay.
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anon @ 10th Jun 11:30AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
This is a total cover for net neutrality, or at least a precursor to it. They might as well say "We're limiting what types of revenue-generating traffic can cross our networks and developing business-grade internet service plans in order to allow those traffic types to pass unhindered to their destination."
If I want to run VoIP, I'll run VoIP. If I want to watch video, I'll watch video. If I want to download demos, I'll download demos. Quit over-selling your bandwidth to such a high degree and supply a legitimate service to your customers, TW!
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hwirt @ 10th Jun 11:43AM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
"People will only see it if their cable system traffic nears capacity"
Judging by the number of responses and the locations listed, it seems pretty wide spread.
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Rook008 @ 10th Jun 12:13PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
Do you mean when traffic nears capacity? Because I'm seeing full speeds right now, but during peak times it slows to about one-half to three-quarters of full speed.
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saber11 @ 10th Jun 12:23PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
You know if you make this a support nightmare for TWC they will get rid of it.
Anytime your traffic is being shaped, call tech support and complain. The more people that call support, the more agents they have to hire. If they don't hire more agents hold times increase which get's people with real problems mad, which means they cancel their service.
Like I said a support nightmare. Make traffic shaping too exspensive for them to support
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Shadus @ 10th Jun 12:49PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
What a load of crap, well, I've been pondering DSL and if they're going to screw up my bandwidth this way I'll just go elsewhere. End of story, I've been very happy with NEO TWC until the last few weeks when the lag has become absolutely intolerable, if they're implementing packet shaping on the routers that would explain why. Screw them.
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snoopvelo @ 10th Jun 01:18PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
Packet Shaping does not affect Business Class Accounts just got off the phone with Business Class Tech support.
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ColorBASIC @ 10th Jun 01:59PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
If/when is what I mean. From the looks of what is going on we're seeing typical traffic shaping, the deprioritizing of certain packet types. If the network isn't near capacity even a deprioritized packet will be delivered at full speed (barring any other sources of slowdowns between the host and customer).
Once the network starts reaching capacity you see the effects of being 'last in line' in terms of priority.
Those cable systems with chronic problems, meaning they're near capacity all the time, will see the effects of traffic shaping all the time. Others will see it only during peak times, periods of time where the system is near capacity in terms of throughput (eg evenings).
We never see 'evening slowdowns' here in my cable system area so thus far I haven't seen the effects of traffic shaping which is always "on". I'm grabbing some stuff off RR's news server right now and am doing it at 10Mb which for me is faster than usual. From Giganews I'm still getting 14.5Mb from my 15Mb RR service.
I'll say though that I'm in a FiOS area and the second I see the effects of traffic shaping I'm gone for greener fiber pastures.
--
Macintosh Users Group Serving the Inland Empire
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Rook008 @ 10th Jun 02:04PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
Thanks for clearing that up.
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ColorBASIC @ 10th Jun 02:05PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
said by hwirt :
"People will only see it if their cable system traffic nears capacity"
Judging by the number of responses and the locations listed, it seems pretty wide spread.
That's because of 2 things.
1. People not seeing it aren't coming to this thread as much as those seeing the effects of it.
2. A lot of cable systems have the so-called 'peak times' where their system is near throughput capacity and then only during those times at which the cable system is operating at near capacity.
According to TWC, ALL their cable systems have implemented traffic shaping, but only those which reach near capacity will pass on those effects to customers.
For an oversimplified example...lets say RR has a 100Mb capacity and you have 5 10Mb customers that happen to be using the service at the same time. Traffic shaping will always be sorting the packets and some are deprioritized, but because the system is under capacity all the packets will be delivered at 10Mb because you have a 100Mb capacity and only a 50Mb demand.
Now let's say you have during the evening 15 customers now on at the same time with 10Mb service. The system is going to give priority to some people over others so some traffic will be delivered at say 9Mb while others will get hammered down to 1-2Mb because the system can deliver 100Mb while having a demand of 150Mb.
IOW, traffic shaping is always in effect whether they system is busy or not, but you only "see" it if demand for services by all the customers exceed the cable systems capacity to deliver it.
--
Macintosh Users Group Serving the Inland Empire
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anon @ 10th Jun 02:31PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
These speed test results don't mean a thing. If they are shaping packets properly, that means only data of specific types are being slowed. If they are doing this right, they will give speed test packets higher priority to show you better results than you really have.
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grandpinaple @ 10th Jun 02:35PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
The only problem I have with this packet shaping is that they throttle specific services with impunity. I pay 25 dollars a month for a giganews account and I damned well expect the same packet priority as someone paying for voip from a third party provider. It is arguable that the giganews packets should be prioritized over http packets just because it is a pay extra service. If this is the effect of Time Warner bringing back free usenet then I hope they just get rid of usenet service and forget traffic shaping. Freedom is better than these petty placations they may offer.
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anon @ 10th Jun 04:05PM:
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anon @ 10th Jun 04:06PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
RR is absolutely shaping in NY - I'm trying to download a 96MB podcast over Azureus, for which there are 384 seeds and 15 leechers (including me).
The file is coming down a 7kb/s, and has 2 hours to go. Last week, the prior episode of this podcast, with a similar number of seeds and leechers, during roughly the same time, was down in 5 minutes.
Hello, FIOS.
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jkfan4 @ 10th Jun 04:56PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
ssault...NO ISP is able to give full advertised bandwidth to every single subscriber.
Because it would be a HORRIBLE business plan to do that. A complete waste of resources since most would go unused. To turn ANY profit they would nbeed to charge double what they currently do if they had to pay to upgrade their network to do that. It would be pointless. You really think Google has the storage space to give every single Gmail user 2.8 Gigs of storage? They don't.
I hope for your sake you don't plan on going into any career related to business.
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grandpinaple @ 10th Jun 05:09PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
In response to the google question: 500 gb drives on newegg are now 120 dollars. That is less than 25 cents per gig. Now google probably gets it cheaper in bulk so lets say it costs 25 cents per gig after all retention etc is taken care of. That is 75 cents per person. How many total gmail users are there? According to forbes gmail has roughly 6 million users. Assuming an average of 2 accounts each that makes 12 million total. That amounts to 9 million dollars to run gmail. Now there exists a possibility that google isn't overselling or if it is then it is dangerously close to the total amount needed. Sorry I know it's off topic, but I couldn't resist biting.
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anon @ 10th Jun 05:22PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
I have Road Runner in Syracuse, NY. Here are my results:
Service was advertised as 3Mbps when I signed up in 1998, not sure if that has changed.
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OB Kenobi @ 10th Jun 05:27PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
Everyone is moving to 15-30Mbps, while Time Warner is throttling 10Mbps.
This wouldn't matter if customers had a CHOICE. But thanks to the corrupt FCC, these cable monopolies have us trapped.
There should be a class-action suit to open up the market to competition. I don't want to be a Time Warner customer, but they have hijacked my neighborhood!
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swintec @ 10th Jun 05:39PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
said by OB Kenobi :
There should be a class-action suit to open up the market to competition. I don't want to be a Time Warner customer, but they have hijacked my neighborhood!
Any company can come in, they just dont choose too :) Not TW's fault.
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tlg @ 10th Jun 05:42PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
VOIP? This is just anti-competitive, and probably illegal.
1.) VOIP uses about 100Kbits (not bytes) per seconds, minuscule compared to the amount of bandwidth the end user is buying.
2.) The federal government stepped in and made all of the VOIP providers provide 911 services to their providers. For TWC to interfere with 911 services is most likely illegal, and would set them up for a major law suite if someone should be damaged in some way by not being able to use the 911 services provided by their VOIP provider.
--
MacBook Pro
Mac Mini, 1.42GHz, 1G RAM
iMac DV, 400MHz, 256M RAM
G4 iPod, 40GByte
G5 iPod, 30GByte
iPod Nano, 2Gig
iPod Shuffle, 512MByte (two)
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anon @ 10th Jun 05:46PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
Looks like it's time to switch to FIOS.
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rec9140 @ 10th Jun 06:55PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
said by swintec :
said by OB Kenobi :
There should be a class-action suit to open up the market to competition. I don't want to be a Time Warner customer, but they have hijacked my neighborhood!
Any company can come in, they just dont choose too :) Not TW's fault.
Most certainly IT IS (insert name of ) crapble company.
Most (thats most, not all, there are few exceptions) franchise agreement's do NOT PERMIT multiple carriers in the territory covered.
I wanted to kick what at the time was the very early beginnings of Adelphia out or at least bring in another company which at the time was TCI (Centre Video) to clean up the mess from the previous crapble company Eastern Telecom. The franchise agreement that was signed had very specific EXCLUSIVITY clauses. These were there specifically because of the crapble companies and any attempt to remove them, was a deal breaker. This is they way they operate and why VZ wants to get most of the franchise agreements overturned, as well as only deal with one bought and paid for group of sleazoid politicos. I personally could care less about Fios video, it won't work for my requirements, so I feel they are wasting time in holding up deployments over video crap.
As for RR, when Fios comes to my door and they are digging in my area now. Kiss RR goodbye! I was planning to keep them both for redunancy and some other reasons, but now.... OUT THEY GO.
This is a prime example of why I despise crapble.
And:
NO I am NOT MOVING
NO DSL is NOT AVAILABLE to me
NOR is WISP(s)
BUT
when the Fios Fiber gets to me.... :)
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swintec @ 10th Jun 07:02PM:
Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User
As far as I have heard/know, exclusitivity deals are no longer put into cable franchise deals. Keep in mind, when I say other cable companies can freely come in, they would have to put up there own lines and such..build there own infrastructure..most cases nothing stopping that, except the OTHER company does not want to pony up the money. Ever hear of the cable company RCN?? They are primarily an overbuilder that goes into neighborhoods and puts there own infrastructure to compete with the existing one...I'll leave it to you to read what there current status is. If the other company doesnt want to pony up the money to build there own network, why is that TW's fault?
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[TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR Users
