[AFMUG] Limelight Networks and TCP congestion control

[Ken Hohhof]

This has been discussed in previous threads, but I just got off a call with 
a customer where I was able to identify what content was being distributed 
via LLNW and causing problems.  Customer had bought a new Xbox and it was 
downloading game updates.  He was complaining that the game update seemed 
stuck getting to 100%, plus Internet on his other devices was painfully 
slow.

LLNW seems to aim for 50% packet loss.  I always seem to see almost exactly 
2X the customer's rate limit hitting our border router.  Of course this 
causes all traffic to that customer to experience random 50% packet loss, 
which few applications can tolerate.  It is also consuming our upstream and 
backhaul bandwidth beyond what the customer has subscribed to, since we do 
rate limiting at the tower router.

Other than getting a Procera box and setting up some kind of rule to catch 
this at the border (plus maybe a penalty for LLNW being such dicks), I don't 
know what to do about this, but it pisses me off.