techjoe
Premium
join:2004-02-20
Schererville, IN
1 edit | Wow
Well I honestly didn't read the entire article but I do know this: ISPs will not reduce the cost of service for the average users, they'll just increase their average profit margin on each customer if they cut off (or drive away) the "power users".
I'm 100% against metered bandwidth. What's to stop me from sending you data you never asked for? Not even DoS, imagine cases to where some evil person decided to send a trickle of data constantly to you, masked as something as silly as an HTTP response you never requested? Or after-scatter of bittorrent traffic, or a misconfigured server spewing crap at your IP instead of the intended address? There's a zillion cases to where "bogus" inbound traffic can get received. SPAM even! What if the user has a POP account and PC-level anti-spam? You're paying for spam then too. That's like having to pay postage on the junk postal mail when it arrives in your mailbox. It's hilariously not logical and is doomed to failure.
I use a metered line from time to time and we'll have a metered burst on our new pipe at work. However, they offer fast reaction access to have upstream filtering put in place and offer us protection from unwanted traffic. Do you think the ISPs can actually offer DDoS filtering, customizable firewalling, advanced route troubleshooting, all that crap to the average users? No, right? Well how can they ensure that the users only have the traffic they asked for then?
It's just the wrong way to go. I wouldn't object heavily to (ab)users getting disconnected for excess usage, however those limits and terms need to be made clear at sign-up and not be generically termed as "reasonable" and "not reasonable" usage.
I'm one of those high-bandwidth evil hogs that uses what's available when I want to, too. I've never had the lowest tier of service no matter what service I had, if higher tiers were available. I would be ticked if I was disconnected for my usage sure, I have to be honest, but it is not MY system and if they don't want my monthly fees (and the associated usage) well more power to them. Again though, those limits should be made clear AT LEAST in any contract-based agreement.......
/soapbox
edit: Wouldn't it be easier to sit down and crunch some numbers on what the usage limits should be, than to switch to metered service? Me thinks one of them makes the ISP more money.... 
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