1. cFosSpeed doesn’t solve jitter. I’ve tested it. Even if it worked, it would only work for upstream traffic. Downstream has to be handled on the ISP end because queue management happens on the transmit end.

2. For you to say there’s “no need for any traffic shaping” after admitting that you have to turn off BitTorrent is truly arrogant. Many people have more than one computer in the house and more than one person using the broadband connection. Those people have the right to ask their ISP for real solutions that allow all applications to work well together.

3. I never said this needed to be solved on a global network. It only needs to be solved at the localized level where the queues build up. It doesn’t even matter if BitTorrent or any other P2P application masqueraded their port numbers and pretended to be a VoIP application (not to mention they’d get called out for bad behavior if they pulled such a stunt), the application’s behavior (e.g., shoving the router queue with hundreds of packets in a 20 ms time frame) will determine the classification behavior.

Well, when I want to play a game, I turn off my torrents. Same when I want to use Skype. If I wanted all of that to work I would get two lines — one for the torrents, and another for VoIP and gaming.

Another solution is to download on a dedicated machine overnight, use Skype and gaming during the day.

I see plenty of options to satisfy everyone, and absolutely no need for any throttling and traffic shaping.

If you absolutely need to have everything working at once, then by all means use cFosSpeed to traffic shape your own network:
http://www.cfos.de/speed/cfosspeed_e.htm

It works very well, even amongst several computers.

What you are suggesting to be solved on the global network level would never work — as soon as ISPs start classifying traffic, people will have to start paying more for higher priorities, and BitTorrent will still be able to intentionally tag its packets as VoIP or gaming traffic and go through unharmed.

“maybe you have to shut down your torrents to make a phone call”

Maybe you should let other people make that decision to let engineers at the Telco or at the IT department fix this for them. Most people want everything to work at the same time. They want BitTorrent to be unthrottled while VoIP and gaming work flawlessly. They don’t want to shut down BitTorrent just because it causes jitter when it’s such an easy solution to fix jitter without any performance penalties on BitTorrent.

The ISPs in the US are generally viewed by people I know as greedy and unmotivated to improve the infrastructure. It is much easier (and need I add cheaper?) to point a finger at BitTorrent than to clean your own house.