[100235] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Comcast blocking p2p uploads
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Eric Spaeth)
Fri Oct 19 18:08:10 2007
Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 16:01:56 -0500
From: Eric Spaeth <eric@spaethco.com>
Reply-To: eric@spaethco.com
To: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
CC: nanog@merit.edu
In-Reply-To: <20071019195847.77d49440@berkshire.machshav.com>
X-SpaethCo-MailScanner-From: eric@spaethco.com
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> Personally, I see a big difference between rate-shaping and sending
> RSTs. (I suppose you could view RSTs as allocating 0 bps, but that's
> not a helpful distinction.)
>
I see a big difference as well.
With rate-shaping they would need to have the P2P identification widget
in-line with the data path to be able to classify and mark traffic so
that it can be queued/throttled appropriately. This means that overall
network availability would now be tied to a device that isn't really a
proven piece of network hardware. To send TCP resets, on the other
hand, all that is needed is a span session to the inspection probe to
let it determine which connections to shutdown and issue the resets
completely out of band. If the inspection probe kacks, everything on
the network continues to function and only the P2P throttling
functionality would be impacted.
As a network engineer focused on availability, I have a very clear
preference in implementation.
-Eric
