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Monday 14 March 2011

BSG pushes traffic management code of conduct for ISPs

The Broadband Stakeholder Group have managed to get some of their members to sign a Code of Conduct about making available information to users regarding traffic management policies used to throttle Internet connections.

This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com



Whilst this is obviously a good idea in the interim period (probably about another decade at this rate) until we finally break the Scarcity Model the telcos are so fond of, it does fail to address the actual issue - we need to upgrade our networks so they can cope with data usage in the 21st century.

Optical Reboot is such a nice term, and the ideology behind it is precisely what we require. We can come up with Codes of Conduct for errant ISPs wishing to avoid regulation, or we can tackle the problem head on. (Read the ADVAOptical blog, it's good.)

Today is Pi Day, and if we can celebrate a number, I think it's time we had a "Break the Network" day involving RaceOnline2012, that Online Centres bunch, BSG, BIS, BDUK, CLA, all the Unis, schools, hospitals, politicians, local authorities, and every other group who have ever been involved in technology, or should be.

The idea would be to show our telcos and government just how b0rked the network is in 2011, even with about half the country failing to comprehend what a computer is for or why anyone would even want one. If you made everyone use a computer on a specific day e.g. to fill out the census form, and then try uploading a video to the Census Dept showing what went wrong, that should cause a certain amount of network nightmares along with all the normal everyday usage that our connections struggle to cope with.

What do you think?!

3 comments:

chris said...

think a 'break the network' day wouldn't really work, because of all the traffic management. ;) Anyway its already broken. The old copper lines creak and moan but nobody listens. The suits go round patting themselves on the back bringing in still more measures to protect the cabals and at least a third of the country curses them.
We have all got to jfdi ourselves. then we can join up the different networks and get our own peering and data centres. It looks to me like even BSG isn't doing anything remotely bloody useful. Ofcom is no use and never has been. BDUK have not enough money and no power to guide the fwit councils. The whole country is b0rked unless we do IT ourselves. time to get the diggers out.
chris

Somerset said...

Chris, give up on the copper thing. What you mean is many people are happy with a few Meg as that works for them for iPlayer and email.

Let's have some sensible discussions on how do it. Please come up with a realistic business case for both rural and urban areas we can discuss.

The 'F' word does not help achieve anything. As Barry showed it's a complex subject and be realistic.

Look at some typical areas that have no or slow broadband. What are the solutions where people want to pay £10/month and the take up is eg. 30% to start with. How would the funding work?

So the BDUK money is insufficient, councils will not fund community groups with no real experience and many communities do not have the resources or expertise.

What's the answer? Barry showed that a JFDI approach will not work in the majority of places, fine in a few. The Ashby project is (relatively) about as easy as you can get.

As an example - what's the solution for a group of 350 houses, close together?

PhilT said...

With internet transit at say £20 per Mbit/s per month and the willingness to pay at around £2 per same than I don't see contention and traffic management going away anytime soon.

In fact thus far it has tended to increase as a function of end user access speed.

Isn't Ashby de la Launde contended at 800:1 ? One bittorrent instance on a PC could use the whole internet backhaul. Just an illustration.