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Wireless Fair Access Policy (FAP)

On November 7, 2006, Cooperative Light & Power (CLP) installed hardware that was designed to ensure quality of service and fair access for all of our wireless broadband customers. This hardware affects all wireless customers. The FAP allows for a 45 MB upload or download before the customer’s connection is set to 256 kbps. (For comparison, a dial-up connection is 54 kbps.) The FAP works as follows:

1. CLP has a total of 15,000 kbps available on the backbone network. Most wireless customers’ antennas will only transmit a maximum of 2,500-3,000 kbps. With the FAP, customers can “burst” up to 2,500 kbps (312 KB) for 30 seconds.

2. After 30 seconds of bursting, the customer will be reduced to a maximum of 600 kbps (75 KB). The customer will remain at 600 kbps until the remainder of the 45 MB limit is transferred (about 8 minutes).

3. After the remainder of the 45 MB is transferred, the customer will be reduced to a maximum of 256 kbps (32 KB) for the remainder of the download or upload. The customer will then be reset to full bursting (see rule 1) after 5 minutes of averaging below 200 kbps.

During the ramp down period, you can download or upload 45 MB before your connection will be set to 256 kbps (32 KB). If you are just surfing the Internet, you should never be under control.

When CLP’s overall network usage is above 9,800 kbps for 60 seconds, the FAP device sets a threshold at which every session on the network is automatically slowed until equilibrium is reached. During this time, flows are reduced and sessions are paced. All of this is done in a fair and economical way that doesn’t require much processing power. Depending on your antenna’s maximum throughput, the best case scenario will be after 9 minutes of downloading, your connection will be set to 256 kbps.

The FAP device that CLP utilizes also has the ability to limit the above rules to defined time periods, as well as monitor and control daily and monthly bandwidth transfer. CLP has decided not to implement these features at this time.

In addition to the rules listed above, Peer to Peer Networking (P2P) protocols will now be limited system-wide to 160 kbps upstream/downstream. In other words, all P2P protocols running on the system at any given time will not exceed 160 kbps in either direction.  We had to do this because of the abusive nature of this protocol and to benefit the majority of customers.  The specific list of filtered P2P protocols are listed below:

PEER TO PEER PROTOCOLS CONTROLLED ON THE WIRELESS NETWORK

Networks, protocols and applications

An earlier generation of peer-to-peer systems were called “metacomputing” or were classed as “middleware”. These include:Legion, Globus, Condor, ByteTornado

Multi-network applications



 
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