Bloated leeches force rule changes

By CHRIS BARTON

This is a tale of mystery, mathematics and mayhem. It began last week after I wrote about vampires doing big downloads, 24 hours a day, on Xtra's flat rate Jetstart service, and how Xtra was limiting the use of peer-to-peer file sharing applications.

I wrote: "Apparently, on Jetstart's 128Kbps always-on connection five gigabytes (Gb) per day is feasible. That's 150Gb a month."

As many have pointed out the mathematics says that is simply not possible:

* 128 kilobit per second is the connection speed.

* 128Kbps/8 = 16 kilobytes per second (KBps) - the potential speed and something you never get for any measurable period.

* Therefore: 16KBps x 60 seconds x 60 minutes x 24 hours = 1382400KB or 1.38 GB - so it's 1.38GB, not 5GB per day, and 41.4GB a month, a far cry from 150.

As one reader put it: "1GB a day I'd believe, and even if they (your sources) are being picky and including uploading, that still isn't 5GB, and you won't get 2x due to the way it works with Xtra's traffic shaping. So potentially 2GB a day, but even that I'd take bets can't be done."

Of course he's absolutely right and I am an idiot - although I did use the word "apparently" which was meant to indicate scepticism. But to borrow a phrase from the surreal TV series Twin Peaks, "the owls are not what they seem."

And real vampires posses super-human powers - "apparently" finding ways to kick Jetstart into Jetstream speeds.

There's also anecdotal evidence that Jetstart sometimes goes "uncapped" by mistake: "For those few hours I managed to get around 250Kbs - 'eyes pop out of head' - download speeds from local servers and around 180Kbps from overseas."

Or: "Speeds for me vary greatly I will get maximum download speeds of 25KBps a second for a single file but I can download multiple files at the same rate - I've downloaded six movies at the same time where the speeds varied between 20KBps to 25KBps a second for all of them."

It seems like users have also found ways to bypass Xtra's present constraints on file sharing applications by either manually changing their access port settings or using a range of different applications such as Hotline, AudioGnome and Direct Connect).

And that's not all. Some vampires and gamers appear to be playing cat and mouse with Xtra by intermittently running servers - flouting the internet provider's conditions that this is not permitted on Jetstart.

In other words Xtra's Jetstart is in mayhem - which is why Xtra has stepped in and announced a new and improved Jetstart to be called JetStream Starter.

From June 10 the service will have a 5GB per month cap on international traffic but no limit on traffic downloaded from New Zealand sites. Additional international usage will be charged at 10c per MB. Xtra will also provide an online usage meter that will allow customers to keep an eye on their usage on a daily basis, and plans to email customers if they get near the international data cap.

But from the mayhem that arrived in my inbox last week and online discussions at NZgames.com and comment on Slashdot, the changes will annoy a lot of users.

The gist of the argument is that if a service is sold and marketed at flat rate - then that's what it should be. After all, a contract is a contract - and Xtra in limiting downloads has arrogantly varied that contract without consulting its customers.

Remember, too, that 128Kbps isn't that fast in the first place - below the threshold of what the OECD considers broadband.

There are questions, too, about just how much Xtra is paying for bandwidth and whether in fact cost is the real problem.

Thanks to Michael Hallager of Comsolve Networks, who told me that internet providers in New Zealand are paying between $250 and $500 per 64Kbps "timeslot" which roughly equates to $10 to $25 a GB or 1c to 2c a MB. But as others have pointed out, arriving at a number like this is difficult as bandwidth at wholesale level is bought as a circuit.

In this sense, bandwidth is a bit like water pressure - with internet providers having to gauge how much to provide to ensure water keeps coming out the taps of all its customers at a reasonable rate.

With some power users, leeches, vampires or whatever you want to call them, running their taps 24 hours a day - sucking bandwidth at the rate of 500MB, 1GB and maybe more a day, there's a drain on the system that Xtra clearly hasn't allowed for.

As Wade Tregaskis, a student at La Trobe University, puts it: "They're trying to provide approximately free pipes with enough capacity to fill a swimming pool, but they hope you'll only water your pot plants. If enough people do fill their swimming pools, it'll cost so much in water they'll [Xtra] go broke."

As he points out, bandwidth costs are a complicated beast.

"When you pay for a stamp, the majority of the cost goes to delivery expenditures," he says. "Not so for electronic data. What you are paying for is a kind of quota that is set arbitrarily, in order to cover the start-up costs of getting the cables laid and so forth. It's not a running expense, and so it's very difficult to equate it to an end-consumer cost.

"Ultimately the price is fixed almost at random by some board of executives somewhere, and generally has little to do with actual usage."

So how will Jetstream Starter be received?

The feedback I've got suggests many users accept flat-rate broadband is unsustainable in New Zealand, and will welcome the differentiation between local and international traffic. But users also want more choice, including:

More speed: users crave a competitively priced, 256Kbps service. Caps and costs to suit usage, such as normal usage (up to 2GB), power users (2GB to 8GB) and vampires (8GB to 20+GB).

The right to run servers, especially for gamers.

Xtra to act as a conduit for internet traffic, not as an arbiter of what users may or may not download.

The company also needs to do some serious fence-mending with its customers - many of whom are annoyed by its lack of communication.

* Email Chris Barton

Hotline

AudioGnome

Direct Connect

NZ Games.com discussion forum

Slashdot