Internet Service Providers

The simplest solution is a priority management that favors important applications over less important with a huge bandwidth usage. It can be as simple as having a single bandwidth management rule that assigns P2P file sharing a lower priority than all other traffic. This approach is not only simple and highly effective, it also provides a fair bandwidth sharing model for all subscribers. P2P users get all the available bandwidth, but as soon as the demand of other applications rises, for instance during office hours, P2P is slowed down to accomodate for the increased demand.

The screenshot below is taken from the statistics section of a PRX Traffic Manager deployed at an ISP network and shows the effect of this simple one-rule configuration. Clearly visible is the mirror-like behavior of the P2P (red) and non-P2P (blue) line. As non-P2P traffic rises in the late afternoon – due to mostly residential customers – P2P traffic is pushed back all the way down to zero to make room for the more important traffic. This picture alone provides an idea of how poor the network performance would be without this kind of traffic management.

Advanced Priority Management

Using multi-tiered priorities enables the offering of improved quality of experience (QoE) for interactive and real-time applications. For instance, all Voice over IP (VoIP) traffic gets the highest priority, Web browsing and audio and video streaming get high priority, P2P file sharing gets the lowest priority and everything else the default priority.

The result is that VoIP packets will be dropped last, which can only happen if the link is saturated with VoIP – a very unlikely situation. P2P packets are always dropped first until no P2P is possible, if the demand from all other applications is that high. And between these two, Web browsing and streaming will operate faster in a congestion situation then all other, non-time-critical applications.

Most ISPs use either volume-based or flat rate pricing models – with the latter being what customers have come to expect. If a significant portion of subscribers is excessively using their available bandwidth with services like P2P file sharing, the infrastructure costs will rise – not only for the operator, but for all subscribers, even those not using P2P at all. As these are the majority, the result is that most subscribers are unfairly overcharged.

Going back to a volume-based charging model for all customers is usually out of question. Instead, many ISPs revert to data rate limitation for these power users. As this indiscriminately slows down all applications, it also degrades the service quality (QoS) of interactive applications. This means poor service and drives valuable customers away.

A much better approach is a multi-tier bandwidth model with optional per-subscriber allowances for high-bandwidth application traffic. As a result, a standard flat rate Internet access can be offered at a lower price. If customers would like to use P2P file sharing, they can simple book an option that gives them a certain monthly download volume. The result is a much fairer pricing model for all customers.

Important interactive applications such as Internet telephony (VoIP), instant messaging (IM) and Web browsing could always be given a guaranteed bandwidth and higher priority to ensure high QoE and customer satisfaction at all times. In addition, an ISP offering its own VoIP service can offer special QoS guarantees as a key differentiator from third-party offerings.

PRX Traffic manager can be used to enforce legal requirements ISPs may face based on local laws. P2P file sharing traffic can be filtered for copyright-protected content. This can be accomplished using ipoque's unique BitTorrent tracker withelisting. BitTorrent, as opposed to most other P2P networks such as eDonkey, Kazaa, Soulseek, Filetopia and WinMX is significantly used to exchange legitimate content including open source software, online games updates and large, public-domain multimedia files.

The content control for P2P networks can also be done on file level. In the method, each file's unique hash value is checked against a reference database of legitimate or undesired content. This works not only for BitTorrent, but for most popular P2P file sharing networks.

In addition to P2P, some legislations require special control of Internet telephony. PRX Traffic Manager allows to flexibly monitor VoIP traffic, including SIP, Skype, H.323 and IAX, and to define subscriber-specific rules to manage the call behavior.