With the equipment that I work and sell, NetEnforcers from Allot Communications, we can segment and throttle the traffic all the way to layer 7, that means we can even control the bandwidth each applicacion is using, for example if I send a large email (with an .mp3 attached) using Outlook and that email goes through the equipment, I can throttle or control the speed of the email that is being sent to not clog up other traffic as well.
You have the option to control it by IP, the protocol of the data (UDP, ICMP, FTP, Telnet and HTTP), Ports (port 25 is what an email server would use)
You mention that you find Flash sites quite slow, they just have to identify the protocol that Flash videos use for streaming which is RTSP, then segment the traffic in their backbones that uses such protocol and proceed to control it, or how we call it better: throttle it. That way every site that has a flash movie or video will be slowed down to their will.
I have the knowledge that Codetel has Allot NetEnforcer and Packeteer equipments, both do the same but Packeteer is way more complicated, so they are moving all their QoS equipment to Allot.
We sold Tricom Allot equipments and for all I know they only throttle P2P for home users in weekdays only in worktime (9-5) so business users have priority in their backbones.
