[isf-wifidog] Traffic shaping, part 1

[Benoit Grégoire]

This conversation started on IRC.  While we had this conversation on the list 
before, I think it's worth answering here.  But first the (largely edited) 
conversation tha led to this (this is copied here with edobe-'s permission):

edobe-: hmm, how about the case of one client doing P2P and filling all 
available bandwidth?

benoitg-laptop: I don't see how port blocking is going to help with that.

edobe-: I was thinking that blocking P2P ports could help that case

benoitg-laptop: There are very long messages concerning our plans for abuse 
control that doesn't just add a step to the arm's race.  Sadly, they are all 
in french.

benoitg-laptop: There is no such thing as P2P ports these days.   
If the IT community would stop trying to outsmart p2p authors and passing 
value judgement over which service is/isn't legitimate, that problem would be 
long gone.  What is needed is better fair queing and scarce resource 
management.  I hope to do just that, but alone that's a very big task.  And 
so far few people in IT seem to be able to think midterm, not short term.

edobe-: i see...

benoitg-laptop: Basically, you want to punish people for using too much 
bandwith (network resources you provide), not for what you presume (through 
more or less educated guesses) they do with that bandwidth. Otherwise it 
leads to ridiculous situations, like a large canadian ISP throttling down any 
encrypted connections.  People pay for Internet access, I presume they didn't 
expect their ISPs to consider online banking and connecting to the office's 
VPN to be objectionable usage in every case...  And off course, the P2P apps 
probably figured out a way around that by now.  But your Online banking won't 
get any faster...

edobe-: hmm, I hadn't thought about it like that.. but you have a point... on 
the other hand, how you deal with situations where one user uses too much 
bandwidth with bittorrent, leaving others with a slow access? considering 
that currently wifidog does not do traffic shaping?

benoitg-laptop: That's why we need real fair queuing.  That's a big part of 
what wifidog was originally designed for, but in Montreal where it was born 
it's barely a practical problem yet, and while everyone say they want it, so 
far no one has devoted any time or money towards it.