It used to be that customers would get nervous if they thought that their ISP was traffic shaping but nowadays customers should become concerned with ISPs that have not invested in Traffic Management systems. Andrew Dickinson, Sales and Marketing Director, Griffin Internet investigates.
Traffic shaping is a technique whereby some application types are prioritised over others. For example as a business-only ISP Griffin wants to ensure that business applications take priority over things like peer-to-peer, file sharing and gaming. Just as important is the management of cost. An 8Mbit/s circuit running at full capacity for a month costs an ISP £1200. If too many people do this then either the network becomes congested or the ISP has to put up prices to stay in business. Every month we see ISPs that cannot afford to install traffic management closing their doors and this can be very traumatic for their partners and customers.
Just like anti-virus and anti-spam, traffic management is a constant battle with hi-tech individuals that operate on the fringes of the internet community. If it is possible to get £1200 worth of bandwidth for £14.99 then there will be some people that use their broadband line to constantly download the latest movie releases from the USA. They then burn them onto DVDs which they sell down the market or on ebay. These criminals move from ISP to ISP hiding their file sharing applications inside standard business protocols to prolong the time before they are discovered. At Griffin we have invested hundreds of thousands of pounds in Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) systems that are updated monthly with the latest peer-to-peer scams.
Since these ‘chronic downloaders’ are trying to imitate commonly used protocols it can sometimes happen that legitimate business applications are caught by mistake and de-prioritised. ISPs have to educate their partners as to what to look out for e.g. slow speeds only at certain times of the day or only with certain applications; and then have a process where these can be quickly reported, identified and protected.
If you have any comments to make on this article or would like to understand more about Traffic Shaping and Deep Packet Inspection then email marketing@griffin.com.
Source: Comms Dealer April.
Andrew Dickinson
