 qdemn7Smurf in My LoopPremium
join:2003-09-16
Fort Worth, TX | Charge by the Gigabyte The idea of "unlimited broadband" is going to eventually go away, IMO. Either the ISPs will be forced by government action to change their advertising to reflect reality, or else, more likely, they'll start charging by the gig.
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Those who complain the loudest about their loss of rights under the Patriot Act seem to be the first ones to try to take away others rights under the Second Amendment. |
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 justbitsMore fiber than ATT can handlePremium
join:2003-01-08
Chicago, IL
 ·AT&T Midwest
·AT&T Yahoo
2 edits | Charging by gigabyte wont work well... who gets charged when your Internet connection gets flooded with unsolicited network traffic? (Ping flood, tons of spam, etc.)
Actually, in the case of spam, you'd have a much better case for (financial damages) to go after spammers, so maybe that would be a good thing. |
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 DaSneaky1Done wall to block them allPremium,MVM
join:2001-03-29
The Lou
 ·Charter
| Cable networks average about 1GB a month simply in ARP traffic...and that is counted as bandwidth consumption. I believe it was Comcast that brought that to the fore several years back.
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:: my trivial ramblings :: |
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 IgnitePremium,VIP
join:2004-03-18
UK | Easy to not count, also cable networks can have no downstream ARP broadcasts at all now using readily available features and can instead consult DHCP servers to obtain MAC / IP translations. |
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openbox9
join:2004-01-26
Alexandria, VA
kudos:2 | reply to DaSneaky1D
Simple. Only count count traffic that leaves the provider's network. There will be traffic that the use didn't specifically request, but that's the cost of doing business. After all, the user probably doesn't want to count DNS lookups, TCI acks, etc. |
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fiberguyMy views are my own.Premium
join:2005-05-20
kudos:3 | reply to justbits
said by justbits:Charging by gigabyte wont work well... who gets charged when your Internet connection gets flooded with unsolicited network traffic? (Ping flood, tons of spam, etc.) Who get's charged?? You! That's who... as you should! Either protect your computer so it's not attacked and turned into a spam sending drone... AND, with Webmail, and ISP hosted spam services, you can minimize what you actually download. So, it's not an excuse.
As the TOS says, you are responsible for all traffic over your line - and that includes spam.
In the pecking order of things.. The ISP goes after you, rightfully so, for charges. It's then up to YOU to attempt to go after others. Just because someone else, a spammer, used a ton of your transfer, it doesn't mean that you can tell comcast to fight them.. in the end, it's your responsibility, not theirs.
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"Wipe out the national deficit over night... Tax the stupid!" - about 50 gMail invites available. PM if you'd like one. |
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| reply to qdemn7
said by qdemn7:The idea of "unlimited broadband" is going to eventually go away, IMO. Either the ISPs will be forced by government action to change their advertising to reflect reality, or else, more likely, they'll start charging by the gig. Ultimately, I believe that charging by bandwidth usage rather than speed will be the way service will be billed. Whether that charge will be by a flat "by the byte" fee; thru usage tiers related to amount transferred; or some other usage system is yet to be seen.
The tier structure might be something like:
$40/mo gets you a connection and 20 GB/mo
An additional $10 gets another 20 GB/mo for a total of 40 GB/mo
Another $10 gets another 20 GB/mo for a total of 60 GB/mo
etc.
etc.
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| reply to fiberguy
Protect your computer? And how do you suggest that you protect yourself against a ping flood or something of the sort? It doesn't matter *what* hardware/software you have in place, if they decide to start sending unrequested data to your IP address, to your ISP, this would be tracked as data downloaded, and you have no way of stopping it. |
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fiberguyMy views are my own.Premium
join:2005-05-20
kudos:3 | You CAN drop packets if you want. You CAN change your IP address... there are things you can do to be proactive and minimize it.
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"Wipe out the national deficit over night... Tax the stupid!" - about 50 gMail invites available. PM if you'd like one. |
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| It doesn't matter if your computer/router/whatever hardware drops the packets, they have already made it as far as your DSL/Cable modem, so they count as traffic...
And I don't know about you, but I can /release and /renew all day and the IP only changes when my ISPs DHCP server feels good and ready to change it. |
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