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AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

adriano.fyi

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Re: AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

#101

Post by kevin_nisbet »

fjni wrote: post #55
crazygringo wrote: post #34

But why would AT&T be throttling Cloudfront requests specifically? That's not traffic shaping, it's just dumb. Traffic shaping is slowing down types of traffic like torrents or video in order to prioritize regular sites. But this is degrading regular sites that are usually what benefit from traffic shaping if there's overall network congestion. I'm not questioning anything the author reports, it all seems extremely w…

I think the era of traffic shaping as you describe it is no longer. Most connections are encrypted these days, a good thing. But that also means, me as an ISP in the middle, I only see the layer 4 packet. So I know where a packet is coming from and where it's going (and ttl and some other not really helpful data for this purpose.) I don't even know the port. So I'm left with doing (dumb) traffic shaping by destinatio…

So I had this conversation with one of the traffic shaping vendors many years ago. At the time when encryption still wasn't that common, they didn't sound too worried about the shift to all encrypted connections. Their product was already starting to use a behavioral analysis to shape the traffic most of their customers were interested in.

So to detect bittorrent, they'd build a profile about how many bit torrent clients operate, the packet and connection creation patterns used, and then slap a throttle on. Looking at some independent analysis, these products might only detect 50% of the bittorent traffic, and have a false positive rate, especially for bittorent users also doing something else. And the ISPs don't care, they get what they need if they clamp 50% of the traffic.

So I'm not disputing that everything encrypted is a good thing, just pointing out that because it's encrypted doesn't necessarily mean the shaping equipment can't figure out enough to throttle bit torrent.

> If I had to guess, I'd say that they incorrectly thought that some specific IP address (range) serves predominantly one type of data. So they throttle by the only data point they have, destination ip, and the collateral damage is everything else hosted on that ip address.

This is plausible. As I recall, the way some of the equipment worked was it would sniff out DNS requests, and then mark the IP address as this destination. So if someone set's a rule for example.com, it might accidentally apply to alice.com using the same IP address.

My knowledge on the industry is out of date though.

Re: AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

#102

Post by dhosek »

patmcc wrote: post #94
neurostimulant wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that my ISP bundles Netflix subscription into their internet plans, access to netflix and fast.com now practically saturate the fiber link, while before it was outright blocked. Hooray for no net neutrality I guess. Another fun part: when netflix IPs was blocked by this ISP, it's pretty much impossible to use netflix because the only way to get around the block was to use VPN, but netflix itself blocks VPN access…

Your ISP entirely blocked netflix? That's incredible shitty.

Early in the pandemic, I spent a while without wired internet using a wireless hotspot from the library which would not connect to Netflix but any other streaming video service was fine. I forget who the wireless vendor behind the hotspot was—I think it might have been Verizon.

Re: AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

#103

Post by zamnos »

horsawlarway wrote: post #84
judge2020 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing with Fi is that it is T-Mobile, and you'll always be in a lower priority block of customers compared to people paying for T-Mobile directly, which mean you'll see slower traffic in congested areas at peak times (including e.g. during rush hour traffic).

If you're travelling, I find it hard to beat Fi. You literally land in a new country, turn your phone back on and you get a "Welcome to [country] - your data rate is the same" message almost anywhere. Personally - I've flown from Taiwan to Brazil to Amsterdam and then back to the US and I don't have to think about my phone. It just works. --- Outside of the travel use-case, I would also probably pick something else,…

With eSim and the Airalo app, international travel is fairly painless. It costs a few bucks and a couple minutes to setup (which can be done while waiting at the airport to leave) to get a data-only sim for your destination county. If you're paying for an expensive domestic account for international reasons instead of a cheaper $40/mo eg Mint mobile plan, it might be worth investigating theirs plans to see if it would end up saving money, given your travel requirements.

Re: AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

#104

Post by twoodfin »

themagician wrote: post #88

A decade long fight about Net Neutrality in the public, and the ISPs just went and did what they were always going to do anyway in the background. No surprise. No news. No fanfare. Just, “Here’s your broken internet where every websites loads at a different speed. Get Unlimited* access with a 35GB limit before more limits kick in. Some websites are unusable. Enjoy. * Some limits apply. See T&C for details. ”

Net Neutrality was never going to apply to mobile networks under any FCC proposal.

Re: AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

#105

Post by Scoundreller »

rsaxvc wrote: post #38

When I had AT&T VDSL they had weak peering. Some traffic that should have gone across town would routinely get routed several states away before coming back to town, because they hadn't peered with the local exchanges. Some traffic was ok. When I switched to an ISP with local peering, ping times between my home and my server downtown dropped to a few milliseconds. It's like being on my LAN. If this is still an issue…

Same issue in Canada: our big ISPs historically refuse to peer freely at our domestic IXs like TORIX. So smaller ISP and DCs end up peering with them in the USA and your packets would make circuitous cross-border round trips to go a few km.

Some national players do have ports at domestic IXs, but only as backup links or for negotiated (paid?) access.

The hazards of ISPs also being backbone providers.

(It looks like Rogers has gotten better with this behaviour)

Re: AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

#106

Post by avidiax »

radicaldreamer wrote: post #90
LoganDark wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> add another home router after it which is completely under your control and let the ISP-provided one only do the most necessary, eg. (DSL modem / ONT) parts. Oh absolutely, I used that trick once in order to use a router that I could configure over web interface instead of Over The Cloud With A Spyware Mobile App (aka Internet Of Shit). Unfortunately my ISP smartened up to this and started cutting the line whenever…

You need to file an FCC complaint about this, Xfinity has an executive response team for all FCC complaints. Document every time you called them and your equipment details.

I had to do this when they let a new renter cancelled my cable internet multiple weeks before my move-out, even after I told them that the new renter's dates were wrong when they called to confirm. Regular support wanted me to sign a new contract and pay an install fee to reactivate.

It was a really shitty situation that should never have happened, but the executive team was what all customer service should strive to be. A single person, with ample time in their day to fully understand the problem and blow past all the usual roadblocks on the way to a solution. Was still a few hours on the phone, but at least I wasn't treated as though it was my fault.

Re: AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

#107

Post by LoganDark »

radicaldreamer wrote: post #90
LoganDark wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> add another home router after it which is completely under your control and let the ISP-provided one only do the most necessary, eg. (DSL modem / ONT) parts. Oh absolutely, I used that trick once in order to use a router that I could configure over web interface instead of Over The Cloud With A Spyware Mobile App (aka Internet Of Shit). Unfortunately my ISP smartened up to this and started cutting the line whenever…

You need to file an FCC complaint about this, Xfinity has an executive response team for all FCC complaints. Document every time you called them and your equipment details.

Honestly, that experience was years ago, and I don't really care enough to raise a fuss about it just today, since their first-party router is "not too terrible".

About Xfinity in particular though, assuming someone else uses them, I did learn just recently that at least Xfinity allegedly offers a special decoder box (or something) that is, I believe, free of charge, and lets you hook up your router directly rather than putting it through theirs as a DMZ, and it's supposed to get them to not cut the line. Some self-install kit or something. You can only get it by asking over phone call.

Re: AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

#108

Post by fjni »

kaszanka wrote: post #70
fjni wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the era of traffic shaping as you describe it is no longer. Most connections are encrypted these days, a good thing. But that also means, me as an ISP in the middle, I only see the layer 4 packet. So I know where a packet is coming from and where it's going (and ttl and some other not really helpful data for this purpose.) I don't even know the port. So I'm left with doing (dumb) traffic shaping by destinatio…

Wait, why wouldn't they know the port? I'm not aware of any cases where the TCP header itself is encrypted.

You are correct. The port is part of the tcp header and my statement above is incorrect!

Re: AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable

#109

Post by Bluecobra »

Makes me wonder if it’s just something as simple as suboptimal routing and the path it’s taking is through a hop experiencing packet loss or some other issue further upstream. I would think that there’s a higher chance of AT&T being incompetent then doing something nefarious.
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