 pnh102Reptiles Are Cuddly And PrettyPremium
join:2002-05-02
Mount Airy, MD | Duh You don't need a study to confirm this. Anyone with basic reasoning skills can see that a combination of low caps, high speeds and overage charges are just another revenue stream for an ISP. There's no financial incentive to upgrade network infrastructure if your existing structure can earn you tons of money in overage charges.
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"Net Neutrality" zealots - the people you can thank for your capped Internet service. |
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 ptrowskiGot Helix?Premium
join:2005-03-14
Putnam, CT
kudos:4 | Of course. But this is good as it is using real data to counter the claims of the ISP's an doesn't use the same mythical data the ISP's use. Poking holes in fiction with real numbers is always fun. |
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| Laymans terms I'm not a fan of car analogies but this is the gist of the report.
1% of vehicle drivers on the road travel a disproportionate amount of miles compared to the average driver. But they are on the road all the time. Most of the time they are on the road there is no rush hour congestion.
The heavy drivers are likely to be involved in rush hour traffic jams, but only represent a small, not terribly relevant, fraction of total drivers in the traffic jam.
Limiting the amount of miles a driver can drive, does nothing to widen the roads and little to keep people off the roads during traffic jams, thus does not help with congestion. |
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| Why we have caps How quickly people forget.
»news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10004508-38.html
Comcast decided to throttle/filter bittorrent which was hammering their network. Bittorrent is one of the highest users of bandwidth.
FCC said that was illegal, and you have to disclose how you manage your network, and it must be fair.
No problem, 250GB cap for all... up front, disclosed, fair.
I think the crowd here won't be happy until they get the most speed available, unlimited bandwidth with no conditions at all for a rock bottom price. |
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| reply to del ftl
Re: Laymans terms Layman or not great analogy. |
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| reply to fifty nine
Re: Why we have caps Except, they were kicking people off anyway before that- roughly the top 1,000 hogs a month I think. Now they cap, but offer no overages. Leaving stockholders and customers that would prefer that option scratching their heads. |
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elray
join:2000-12-16
Santa Monica, CA | If the 'Bandwidth Hog is a Myth' Then caps are of no consequence. |
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 DarkLogixTexan and ProudPremium
join:2008-10-23
Baytown, TX
kudos:3 | reply to fifty nine
Re: Why we have caps you're getting actions and reactions mixed
the 250GB cap is due to the FL attorney general ordering them to state what they called high usage as they were already booting people for using to much, but the cap is soft and they still really only go after people that are causing issues not just over the cap
the bittorrent issue was, bad network managment and an FCC order which held almost no weight but they changed their managment to a protocol agnostic one
also comcast doesn't have overages |
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| Concurrency Congestion issues are about concurrency - the number of people clogging up the pipes at any given time. The utility companies try to promote non-peak-time energy usage to combat the same problem. But it's hard to see that approach working with the Internet. I can save my laundry load for the late night, but I'm not going to hold off working online or watching Netfllix until off-peak hours. Caps are crude, but better than nothing as far as carriers are concerned. |
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rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO | reply to thistool
Re: Laymans terms To me, it's crystal clear what they are trying to say. Capping miles driven per month or even per day to smooth traffic jams doesn't work. It doesn't work because there's no incentive to drive your allotment when it's not rush hour.
What might work is converting the roads to tollways and permitting free travel during off-peak times and charging stiff fees during peak hours.
So what's your problem with this analogy?
Applied to ISPs, it means going to 100% UBB where they charge less for off-peak hours and more for peak hours. There could even be "free" periods much like cell companies offer free nights and week ends. The free periods would cause the "hogs" to make sure their activity is performed when most other folks don't use the system.
The power companies incent business to use less power during peak periods by charging them less per Kwh during off-peak periods. Of course power is a poor analogy because building a new plant is crazy costly vs. upgrading a CMTS to handle channel bonding and employing other technological advances that transfer 10 times the data over the same strand of fiber. |
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| reply to elray
Re: If the 'Bandwidth Hog is a Myth' said by elray:Then caps are of no consequence.
Logic fail. |
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| reply to msilbey
Re: Concurrency The problem with regular utilities is they have real scarcity.
The majority of "scarcity" on networks is self inflicted through bad network management and absolutely pitiful amounts of corporate greed. The unwillingness to speed even a small % of profits for upgrades unless direct and real competition is at hand.
When cable competes with Fiber they often somehow, magically are able to offer faster uncapped plans. Funny right? |
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| Congestion occurs when the isp tries to deep packet inspect every packet , slowing the network down so it can resell the (legally ? really ?) obtained data to advertisers to spam its own customers to maximize profits, not service while not improving the network hardware or software.
Therefore the net hogg does exist in the form of fat greedy major isp s 
in other words you penalize the victims.... 
only in kanadu you say ? |
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rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO | reply to elray
Re: If the 'Bandwidth Hog is a Myth' I disagree. Caps do have a consequence. There's always a cause and effect. I believe what the article and Karl are trying to state is that caps are being used for reasons that cannot be substantiated by facts. Rather than targeting the "Bandwidth Hog", the facts conclude that caps simply target those who transfer a lot of data in a given time period and that the correlation between "a lot of data per month" and "peak bandwidth usage" (aka the bandwidth hog) is weak.
Based on these conclusions, either the ISPs are clueless as to managing their network or they employ caps for different reasons. Those reasons could be to control total data transferred in an effort to make the service unattractive for uses that require a lot of data to be transferred. One possible service is video. To put another way, streaming DVD-quality H.264 video doesn't use too much bandwidth (~1.5Mbps-2Mbps) but with caps, over time it transfers too much data. |
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axus
join:2001-06-18
Washington, DC | reply to pnh102
Re: Duh Since so few people hit the caps currently, I don't think it's good as an immediate source of income. I'd guess it's more to save on current infrastructure costs that would be needed for future growth.
I suppose it's possible that slowing progress in wired connections makes wireless more attractive, which can charge more for. Investments in lobbying and buying out wireless competitors seems like a better use of funds than going into FTTH and better backbone. |
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| reply to elray
Re: If the 'Bandwidth Hog is a Myth' Carriers have realized that Forced Artificial Scarcity is a very large potential revenue source.
In a totally open market they would simply be competed out of existence, but since special interests and government keep a largely Duopoly / Monopoly market under the corporate mindset of financial growth or die , we the consumer are Fucked.
America is on the fast track to last in Tech/Communications, public transportation, health care, and job prospects. A wealthy nation squandered by Corporate special interests and their strangle hold over State and Federal government.
Look at this site, it is regularly trolled by Corporate shills who try to tell us why we should accept shitty rates and even shittier service.
A real Mind Fuck isn't it? |
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rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO | reply to DataRiker
Re: Concurrency said by DataRiker:... The unwillingness to speed even a small % of profits for upgrades unless direct and real competition is at hand. I have no problem with that. The problem isn't necessarily corporate greed (that's more an ethics/scruples discussion). If I was an investor in said company, I would want more dividends rather than watching the company invest when it doesn't have to. (As a consumer this sucks but that's beside the point.)
As you inferred, the problem is competition. Either we regulate them or figure out a way to introduce multiple (dozens) of competitors. However, regulation may not work since that could lead to fixed prices and crappy service. What really doesn't work is incumbents throwing up road blocks to prevent competition so they make money in spite of anti-consumer practices. |
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 LinklistPremium
join:2002-03-03
Longport, NJ
kudos:5 | reply to rradina
Re: Laymans terms said by rradina:Applied to ISPs, it means going to 100% UBB where they charge less for off-peak hours and more for peak hours. There could even be "free" periods much like cell companies offer free nights and week ends. The free periods would cause the "hogs" to make sure their activity is performed when most other folks don't use the system.
That is an interesting idea on how to manage bandwidth usage and is worth a try by a big ISP just to see how it worked.
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The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
»www.politico.com/rss/2012-election-blog.xml
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 BF69Premium
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN | reply to elray
Re: If the 'Bandwidth Hog is a Myth' said by elray:Then caps are of no consequence.
Sure they are. My cap is 250 GB thus the cap is causing me to not be able to use more than 250 GB. Just because I'm using 250 GB or even 1 TB does not make me a "hog" |
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Prespd
join:2004-03-10
Wyoming, MI | bandwith vs. caps I tried to read between the lines with this summary and I think it captures the debate pretty well. Nice reporting. It does raise a question I would like to pose based on a conversation I had with my wife in the car.
Bandwidth, while available isn't able to be conserved liked say the allowed minutes on a rollover phone plan. At any given time, a network has a certain amount of available bandwidth and the capability to serve a certain number of users.
I'll assume Sprint for a second here and go with my theory. I am Sprint. I want more customers and i know my total instant bandwidth available, and number of users I can support. The technology for 4G is pretty much limited to 8Mbps, so if I am running my network and I want good return on my equipment, I want to my customers to have all the available bandwidth I have, since it's lost if not used. So if Joe user 1 wants to stream whatever, he can have it and as much as he wants so long as i can support my user base. I want a 10-20% overhead of spare bandwidth for other reasons of backup, safety, etc... As more users get on, they all get the highest speed I can supply until my available bandwidth is consumed at that instant. I dynamically manage it to maintain the highest speeds for the users. As the system fills with my happy paying customers, I must slow down the network speed for each to allow the 200,001st user to also join in the fun.
I wouldn't cap anyone, and as long as I can keep it up, and utilized at 90% rate, my customers get my best effort and when congested the whole group balances to a steady if slower pace.
By using all my capability to provide bandwidth, I attract more customers which allows me to profit and add more equipment to add capacity.
Did I just sum up Sprint's plan?
If I use 1TB of data a month, but it's during the least congested time, say when available bandwidth is >50% of total capacity, why wouldn't my ISP want to let me have it to keep me a happy customer?
We all know why, to get ever larger profits. If only we could have a corporate structure that balanced profit and customer service to make everyone happy, life would be good. Now, the system is tilted toward the corporate profits and pissing on the customer. Only 1 guy doesn't do this yet, and Sprint quickly walling that ideal garden off to only allow smartphone unlimited. hmmm...
I think they can keep making money this way. Customer service plus large user base= large profits. I hope Sprint can do both and humble the other guys a little.
Note I am talking about Sprint and it sounds like I advocate throttling. Only as much as is need to keep giving all users access at the highest speeds possible. It sounds alot like the tiered speed plans you get with cable internet. Pay more for more guaranteed speed. |
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