UCalgary’s packet shaping is counterproductive
Posted by: dnorman in Uncategorized, tags: it, rants, ucalgaryThe U of C's connection to the commercial internet has been packet shaped for years. Back in the Napster days, they added something that makes any file ending in ".mp3" be transferred at about 2 bytes per second. The shaping filters have slowly been added to, winding up with something that basically says "is this file some form of media? then it's going to be slow…"
The latest case in point - I just tried to watch Stephen Downes' video commentary on his Group/Network whiteboard braindump. After about 25 minutes of downloading, I've managed to view the first 35 seconds of the video.
Stephen Downes' Whiteboard Braindump Video
All of this hype over "new media" and "broadband connections" is basically lost on campus. Anyone wanting to use this type of media, whether for research or other academic purposes, is completely left out. Unless the content publisher has the good grace to publish on an Internet2/CANet4 network.
We're seriously at risk of being left further behind, here. If we can't use media on campus, why bother? Should I be asking Stephen to send me a DVD via FedEx so I can see the video? By the way, he was able to post the video while travelling in New Zealand. I can't view it while sitting at my desk here in the office. That seems a little backward, no?
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Sorry to hear about your problems, D’Arcy. You’ll have to get a hold of the video somehow. It’s great and I had no problem watching it from here at SIAST.
Heather
Yeah. maybe I just need to move one province to the right or left?
It seems that things went really tight for a while as I could not get in to post this. But the video is worth watching. I wonder what Downes thinks about what might be coming with iTunes U 2.0 - http://boora.ca/blog/?p=580 ?
Raj - Dreamhost has been punking out as well. I can’t find bandwidth anywhere, apparently
I can’t even stream CJSW on there and the server is located nearby I think… The only option to me seems to be to setup my own SSL’d proxy and get to my content that way… But what are the alternatives, bandwidth at the scale that UC needs it is expensive and there are plenty of rez students which would be downloading and streaming quite a bit more if the shaping wasn’t there… Perhaps se lective shaping depending on subnets might be better?? I agree it stinks, but I do that that they have what seem be justified reasons.
They’re getting charged an insane premium for bandwidth. We had to lease a bigger pipe for one of our servers so we could use it for some presentations, and it ran us $400/month for a 2Mb/sec line (IIRC - it may have been as much as a 10Mb line) - something I could get from Telus for $50-100
Burst vs. Premium… In one of the comp sci classes a guy from IT came in and told us all that they could get from Shaw (and perhaps Telus?) would be burst and they need a continous connection and that was the reasoning for the premium… Bandwidth has never followed Murphy’s law… It sucks… In terms of non-burst bandwidth the price has only gone down slightly since the 90s… Try to get a T1+ connection to your house and it will run you around $600.. I check
why is bandwidth staying back in 1997? Sure, we have the CaNet4/Internet2 connection, but that’s not ubiquitous. And we have roughly the same available bandwidth as we did nearly a decade ago, despite being able to create and share much “larger” bits of media.
Don’t get me started on my home connection - it was faster in 1997, for the exact same price.
I agree with you guys. Bandwith prices are going up but performance is staying in the late 90’s. I seem to remember reading somwhere that residential connections in some Asian countrties were in the 50-100Mb/sec range for about $50US. My 5Mb/sec FIOS line costs the same. To get 30Mb/sec is almost $100US! Freakin insane. I agree that subnet based selective shaping would be a better alternative. We did that at my previous private university. I now work at a relatively new public university and we are just now going after assuming ownership of the dorm network. I am glad I am not involved in that project. It was bad enough at the private U.
An interesting side note: Now there are public universities banning VIOP apps. If configured and managed properly, this shouldn’t be a problem, but again our insane bandwidth costs are driving rash decisions.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060924-7814.html
Sorry Dreamhost is giving you trouble. I have used them for about a year and transfer sppeds seem good but sometimes applications (WordPress, Gallery) are a bit laggy to process requests. I am on one of their shared server plans though, and it’s not bad enough (nor is my site popular enough) to complain.
I hate it! It’s even worse over in residence