I think my ISP is strangling iChat....
I"m having bandwidth issues with iChat and I think I might have an idea why..but need some help. (There are answeredable quesitons at the bottom that I need help on I promise....) 
PREAMBLE:
My ISP wants to Charge for a service named "Quality of Service". No I"m not making that up, for an additional $10 a month I get quality of service, how nice of them to offer it to their paying customers. I guess I am currently paying for the POS serrivce plan....
Anyway My question / problem is this. the QoS came out as a service (product) right when the 3rd party VOIP companies apeared on a signifigant scale (in Canada). The service "will enhance [3rd party VOIP] services when used over the [ISP's] Internet network. Without this service customers may encounter quality of service issues with their voice over Internet service". Note that when QoS was made avaliable, my ISP rolled out its own VOIP offering.
The reason stated is that my bandwidth pipe may be to skinny to get all the upstream data thorugh, and VOIP packets will suffer time delays/be lost.
With their QoS they treat the VOIP packets different, give them priority and send them along faster than the rest. Fact of note: they can discern what a VOIP packet is.
On numerous tests wiht my ISP's speed test, my DL is ave at 3000-5000Kbit/s, UP 150-230Kbit/s. Wiht multiple trial iChat connections, since the the "option" for QoS was given, Never has my outbound iCHat connection gone over 50kbit/s (except at the very start of an iChat). And no I"m not running P2P, email, Widgets or racoons in the background: activity monitor tells me my network upload speed is minimal. And yes those I"m connecting to are on either Cable or UNi networks, and I used to chat 300K flat no probs with them.... SO now even though iChat thinks I can multiple video chat (3 green panes) once I get in an iChat it's crapy and I can't add other users (yes they can/should/used to multichat with me).
So some ponderings;
A) My ISP says Vonage etc. shouldn't be able to use my ISP's networks for nothing so... say a $10 tax on lost business sounds about right....(as I said my ISP recently developed its own VOIP solution - exactly the same time QoS showed up - and
"Quality of service issues do not apply to [my ISP's VOIP product] because [ISP product] operates on its own separate, managed network. ... so you can be confident [ISP product] will deliver the service reliability and performance you expect."
(I think) because my ISP has now 'capped' the avaliable upload bandwidth of "VOIP" packets...iChat gets classed as a dirty3rd party network bandit and clamped at 50K/s UP
Q: for all of you people far more techinally inclined than me.
1. Is there a way to prove this theory?
2. what my ISP says it is doing is not illegal, and would be a nice service to have. What (I think) they are doing, is it illegal in Canada?
3. SHould I be mad and raise heck thorugh my ISP - or should I suck up that capitalism is capitalism and be glad I'm not trying to sneak out of N. Korea?
4. how can I make my iChat work propperly again!!
thanks so much for the help!
PREAMBLE:
My ISP wants to Charge for a service named "Quality of Service". No I"m not making that up, for an additional $10 a month I get quality of service, how nice of them to offer it to their paying customers. I guess I am currently paying for the POS serrivce plan....
Anyway My question / problem is this. the QoS came out as a service (product) right when the 3rd party VOIP companies apeared on a signifigant scale (in Canada). The service "will enhance [3rd party VOIP] services when used over the [ISP's] Internet network. Without this service customers may encounter quality of service issues with their voice over Internet service". Note that when QoS was made avaliable, my ISP rolled out its own VOIP offering.
The reason stated is that my bandwidth pipe may be to skinny to get all the upstream data thorugh, and VOIP packets will suffer time delays/be lost.
With their QoS they treat the VOIP packets different, give them priority and send them along faster than the rest. Fact of note: they can discern what a VOIP packet is.
On numerous tests wiht my ISP's speed test, my DL is ave at 3000-5000Kbit/s, UP 150-230Kbit/s. Wiht multiple trial iChat connections, since the the "option" for QoS was given, Never has my outbound iCHat connection gone over 50kbit/s (except at the very start of an iChat). And no I"m not running P2P, email, Widgets or racoons in the background: activity monitor tells me my network upload speed is minimal. And yes those I"m connecting to are on either Cable or UNi networks, and I used to chat 300K flat no probs with them.... SO now even though iChat thinks I can multiple video chat (3 green panes) once I get in an iChat it's crapy and I can't add other users (yes they can/should/used to multichat with me).
So some ponderings;
A) My ISP says Vonage etc. shouldn't be able to use my ISP's networks for nothing so... say a $10 tax on lost business sounds about right....(as I said my ISP recently developed its own VOIP solution - exactly the same time QoS showed up - and
"Quality of service issues do not apply to [my ISP's VOIP product] because [ISP product] operates on its own separate, managed network. ... so you can be confident [ISP product] will deliver the service reliability and performance you expect."
(I think) because my ISP has now 'capped' the avaliable upload bandwidth of "VOIP" packets...iChat gets classed as a dirty3rd party network bandit and clamped at 50K/s UPQ: for all of you people far more techinally inclined than me.
1. Is there a way to prove this theory?
2. what my ISP says it is doing is not illegal, and would be a nice service to have. What (I think) they are doing, is it illegal in Canada?
3. SHould I be mad and raise heck thorugh my ISP - or should I suck up that capitalism is capitalism and be glad I'm not trying to sneak out of N. Korea?
4. how can I make my iChat work propperly again!!
thanks so much for the help!
Comments
BLog Splot
Press Release
The Kids Revolt
Oh interslice..where do you find out all you know...
now does anybody know the fix?
I could be wrong, but I think the only way to find out exactly what is happening is to talk to the sysadmin that deals with the router programming for the isp. This could be a like finding a needle in the haystack though.
I remember reading a white paper for a router that I was designing an ad for many years ago that listed as a selling point, the ability to throttle bandwidth per port and or per application transparently to end user... It specifically mentioned the ability thwart excessive P2P bandwidth usage.. This was at the height of the Napster downfall.. As linked above and for any router tech, this quite common knowledge though.
erms..
Some angry words to my ISP and "removing any VOIP devices" magically jumped my ichat bandwidth from 50k to 400K.
Although if I turn on bittorrent (~30k up, ~40k down) everything else crawls now