Telecom Trends

While some internet service providers (ISPs) may claim that they perform no network management, no ISP can sustain that position for the long term.

Network management covers a range of activities that help protect the integrity of the customer experience. For example, service providers need to guard against denial of service attacks - that is network management. ISPs need to watch for and manage spam - both incoming and outgoing - that is network management.

Yesterday, Rogers held a briefing to provide insights on its philosophy and approach to its network management.

A question on many people's minds is how does my ISP deal with peer-to-peer file transfers.

Rogers appears to have taken a different approach from other ISPs in Canada. It does not interfere with download capacity for torrent-type traffic. Instead, Rogers divides its upload bandwidth into two segments: a P2P file transfer portion; and everything else in the other portion.

The allocation is largely static; it doesn't change based on time of day. Rogers doesn't interfere with encrypted packets; it does not block traffic; it does not manage the downstream traffic; it does not inspect the content of packets.

Their approach was determined to have the least customer impact in that most customers aren't even aware when their machine is being used as a server. It does not affect the downloading of content and Rogers does not differentiate based on the content or the application - just on the characteristics of the application: if it is a P2P file transfer application, then its upload demand goes into a different bucket.

The objective of all network management techniques is to balance the internet experience for all subscribers, even those heavy downloaders. Some of the data indicates that 34% of all users are now downloading music and 18% are downloading video. These kind of figures mean that more than just students are beginning to use file download software. Downloading has crossed into the mainstream.

Is the Rogers approach more consumer friendly and competitively neutral?

Mike Lee, Rogers' Chief Strategy Officer, will be speaking next week on the Net Neutrality panel at The 2008 Canadian Telecom Summit, June 18. Have you registered yet?

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Rogers, Canadian Telecom Summit, net neutrality