Westnet, an Australian Internet Service Provider has joined the host of other ISPs in limiting the volume of traffic used for P2P file sharing: it’s not ’shaping’, ‘throttling’ or evening limiting traffic. Now it’s ‘traffic prioritization’. Naturally it all means the same thing: that P2P file sharers suffer lower bandwidth provisions because they are seen as a hog on resources.
“Westnet has been trialing some traffic prioritisation tools on our network over the past year with very positive results. As a result, we will continue to use the tools on an ongoing basis.” Westnet states on its blog. It seems that other high consumption protocols, “ online gaming, web browsing, e-mail and VOIP”, are being negatively affected by file sharing.
The plan is not for there to be a unilateral clampdown on the bandwidth available, though, the limit will only kick in when other high capacity protocols such as VoIP challenges the total bandwidth of the ISP’s network.
Customers are currently stating that they haven’t noticed a great deal of difference in their download speeds for the year prioritization has been tested – although some were suspect that Westnet took a year to divulge this information.
Only P2P file sharing is being prioritized, though, and Westnet’s traffic prioritization doesn’t include Skype or Joost as P2P traffic. While it doesn’t seem as bad as the ’shaping’ or ‘throttling’ occurring with other ISPs, it is still limiting sharers’ resources for the benefit of other activities.