Having run an Internet company, I can sympathise with AT&T???s situation. Contrary to popular belief P2P customers are in the minority but their activities affect everyone on a network. This is because P2P streams data 24/7 rather than being ???bursty??? like normal Internet traffic, and this creates congestion problems during busy periods. There is no easy solution; residential business models are barely sustainable and bandwidth expensive, so increasing the size of backhaul isn???t normally an option.
Believe me ISPs don???t want to throttle, it is expensive in terms of both equipment and administration. Technical solutions involve packet sniffing (because many P2P apps incorporate port-hopping, in a deliberate attempt to evade detection) and traffic shaping; ie. throttling back P2P traffic during busy periods but allowing free-reign when the network is quiet. This powerful kit isn???t cheap.
In our company, we didn???t have the funds to purchase a full-blown shaper and P2P management became such a headache that we eventually closed the business.
Note also that customers may have paid for unlimited download packages but their contracts will also have ???fair-use??? clauses. If their activities seriously affect other customers then it is quite legal and fair to throttle those activities back.
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