Copyright Law

New Study Concludes That, Yes, Israeli ISPs Throttle P2P

By Drew Wilson

There’s apparently been rumours floating around that ISPs in Israel have been throttling P2P traffic like BitTorrent. Now an in-depth study by Jonathan Klinger has been released that concludes that, yes, ISPs in Israel throttle P2P traffic.

YNetNews is reporting that one of its bloggers has just finished and published what is being billed as the most comprehensive study that looks in to whether or not ISPs in Israel is throttling P2P.

“Our findings are that at least 2 of the 3 major ISPs perform manipulation on traffic,” the study concluded, “and especially peer-to-peer traffic. We were able to show that deep packet inspection and P2P-caching is performed by at least one ISP and that another one probably operates some kind of preference on specific ports.”

“We believe that P2P-caching is the most troublesome of all activities and that it should be inspected by the regulatory authorities. Moreover,” the study continued, “we believe that further research is required to show actual use of restricting technologies and the use of RST packets or other mechanisms. While we could not determine which technologies are being used, we believe that the use of such technologies could be used to block competition, free-speech and allow wiretapping of voice over ip conversations. The use of preferring technologies should be regarded as restriction of access and be stopped.”

Israel currently has three major ISPs and the study did break down their results on a per ISP basis. From YNetNews:

Netvision was found to perform partial interference with traffic and it likely operates both deep packet inspection.

Bezeq International?s results were inconclusive. It cannot be determined with certainty that Bezeq blocks or interferes in traffic.

Internet Zahav?s results were the hardest to obtain. Nevertheless, we found strong indication of traffic shaping.

The study also looked in to the legality of such activities and noted that ISPs cannot interfere in free competition in the telecom market and ISPs cannot harm the public interest. It also cites clause 29 of the Israeli Telecommunication Act (1982) that says that if an ISP interferes or blocks the electronic communications going over their network, then that ISP is liable for a criminal offence. Apparently, the ISPs don’t feel that they are obligated to withhold the principles of network neutrality.

Whether or not regulators will act on these new findings remains to be seen, but this study certainly adds more fuel to the speculation that Israel ISPs throttle P2P traffic.

[Via /.]

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Full post as published by ZeroPaid on December 14, 2009 (boomark / email).