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swhx7
Premium Member
join:2006-07-23
Elbonia

swhx7 to Dampier

Premium Member

to Dampier

Re: [TWC] TW Officially Announces Packet Shaping for All RR User

said by Dampier:

The thing about people considering this good news is that the trends like this rarely are positive. It signals management willingness to start limiting their users' ability to use the service and spend less on improving the network. That generally guarantees more throttling for more applications they define as "abusive" and the kinds of hidden usage caps like Comcast loves are now in the realm of possibility as well. Because when management considers punitively imposing restrictions on their customers, that philosophy can quickly extend to many other aspects of their service. The key is nipping this mentality in the bud before it becomes entrenched, not because we should celebrate bandwidth piggies, but because the nature of the Internet and future applications that require broadband connections inevitably make more and more of us bandwidth piggies in their eyes.

Well said. This is why we need network neutrality legislation. ISPs ought to be, by law, "common carriers" such that it is none of their business what the customer is using the connection for. The electric utility simply bills me by the kilowatt, and has no right to try to set different terms depending on whether I'm using I'm using the watts for a light bulb or a lawn mower. Large ISPs obviously want a different rule and this has to be stopped.

Discussions of this topic always get the neutrality issue confused with the bandwidth and total-traffic issues. The question of neutrality or discrimination is about discrimination by type of traffic or origin or destination. The fact that cable companies oversell capacity is also a problem but it is a separate issue.

A reasonable policy would be (a) no discrimination (b) any limits on total traffic must be openly disclosed (c) if the ISP is going to limit usage to less than the advertised rates at any time they have to admit it in their advertising (plainly, not with "up to" weasel words).

Legislators aren't representing constituents (other than big corporations) on this. We need to whack them with clue-by-fours. Write a letter.

ColorBASIC
8-bit Fun
Premium Member
join:2006-12-29
Corona, CA

ColorBASIC

Premium Member

If you want to pay per MB, then you can compare residential HSI to electricity.

You don't pay a flat monthly rate for electricity for if you did, you can damn well bet they would be throttling your high electricity applications like your A/C unit.
niagara_man1
join:2007-05-02
Niagara Falls, NY

niagara_man1

Member

thats fine. .... i would be willing to pay. I just signed up for TW 2 meg upload / 7 meg download for 169.99 in my area.

swhx7
Premium Member
join:2006-07-23
Elbonia

swhx7 to ColorBASIC

Premium Member

to ColorBASIC
said by ColorBASIC:

If you want to pay per MB, then you can compare residential HSI to electricity.

You don't pay a flat monthly rate for electricity for if you did, you can damn well bet they would be throttling your high electricity applications like your A/C unit.

Flat rates are no excuse for overselling or for packet discrimination. Users are entitled to expect the advertised rates even at peak times.

Traffic amounts is a different issue than bandwidth at a give time; these are often confused.

Heavy users (in terms of total traffic over time) should expect to pay more. In a flat rate system - which we have with internet because people overwhelmingly prefer flat rates - that means going to a higher tier such as "business class". But if other posters' interpretations are correct, RR is actually throttling those users down to the lower-tier rates.

Sooner or later we need more capacity. Without government intervention ISPs will increase restrictions more and more instead of investing in capacity. A better solution would be taxpayer support of infrastructure, and regulation to force ISPs to pass along the benefits to customers (including network neutrality) instead of letting it be windfall corporate welfare.

ColorBASIC
8-bit Fun
Premium Member
join:2006-12-29
Corona, CA

ColorBASIC

Premium Member

Flat rates are absolutely an excuse for overselling.

Overselling is REQUIRED if you want 15Mb for $50.

Overselling is the ONLY way to provide that speed for that price.
ColorBASIC

1 edit

ColorBASIC to niagara_man1

Premium Member

to niagara_man1
said by niagara_man1:

thats fine. .... i would be willing to pay. I just signed up for TW 2 meg upload / 7 meg download for 169.99 in my area.
Call the telco and tell them you want a T-1 or T-3. It's would be $500/mo+ but it's dedicated and you can use it 24-7. Plus when it goes down they bust ass to fix it. They will not be calling you about excessive use or subjecting you to traffic shaping.

But even at $170 for 7Mb, it's going to be a shared connection. It's whether or not $170 buys you out of traffic shaping.

That's the trade off...cable network shared topology getting you 15Mb with traffic shaping for $50 or non-shared or SLA access for $500+ for 1.5/1.5Mb service.

swhx7
Premium Member
join:2006-07-23
Elbonia

1 edit

swhx7 to ColorBASIC

Premium Member

to ColorBASIC
said by ColorBASIC:

Flat rates are absolutely an excuse for overselling.

Overselling is REQUIRED if you want 15Mb for $50.

Overselling is the ONLY way to provide that speed for that price.

No, it's not true. If they're not going to build more capacity, at least let's have truthfulness enforced. Then instead of "15Mb for $50" in big print and "up to" and other negations in tiny print, it would be advertised as "maximum 15Mb, less at peak hours, maybe secret limits on total traffic, and we will degrade any traffic we choose to degrade at any time" for $50.

Another problem is the nature of these contracts. They're extremely one-sided and the ISPs grant themselves the exclusive right to change the terms at any time. This could not happen in a competitive market. Therefore we need both pro-competition policies (like equal access to the "last mile"), and regulation to impose some fairness on the contracts until there is enough competition that regulation is no longer needed.

ColorBASIC
8-bit Fun
Premium Member
join:2006-12-29
Corona, CA

3 edits

ColorBASIC

Premium Member

ISP's can't crap capacity.

If you don't want overselling, you will get 768kbps access for the same $50 you're paying today and even then it will still be oversold at the headend/CO level.
islandbound
join:2007-08-07
Canada

islandbound to swhx7

Member

to swhx7
"Well said. This is why we need network neutrality legislation. ISPs ought to be, by law, "common carriers" such that it is none of their business what the customer is using the connection for. The electric utility simply bills me by the kilowatt, and has no right to try to set different terms depending on whether I'm using I'm using the watts for a light bulb or a lawn mower. Large ISPs obviously want a different rule and this has to be stopped."

I beg to differ maybe it's different in the US of A but here in Canada, if you are a non commercial user, and you are using excessive power, they can actually contact the police, because of unusual use of electricity, aka people growing pot, or manufacturing other illegal drugs..so it DOES happen everywhere...regardless of what you may think.