Industry Forums > Wireless Service Providers > b\w Meter?

reply to robbin

Re: b\w Meter?

There would not be any legal requirement for any ISP to meet to make a meter. None of them I have seen have anything special. You go by what they say and trust they're right or don't use their service.

a scale and power meter are different. Scales measure how much something weighs and an electric meter is actually a regulated service so it would have to be calibrated. bandwidth charges are not measured by "anyone" the Internet is not regulated as far as that goes.

Because if it was true about having to have some type of calibrated device i'm sure everyone would know about it by now and know who makes it especially when Comcast would have to use it along with Hughes Net and WildBlue and every other whole sale bandwidth provider that allows you to pay her byte/gig.

From what I can tell, there's no certification process for measuring bandwidth. Bits are a digital quantity so it's hard to have "fuzz" in measurement as long as you know what you're measuring...

Betcha Frontier, TWC, Comcast (who probably doesn't have a real b\w meter, they just "feel" the impact of an individual user), JetBroadband, Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, HughesNet, WildBlue, Telstra and more don't have a "certified" internet usage meter. Then again, the internet isn't regulated and nobody is complaining too much about fairness on the meter unless they're being charged $1+ per GB in a fixed-broadband setting.

My DD-WRT router and Sprint's cellular data uage systems seem reliable enough to me...

At any rate, my main question is of what solution to use. I understand the financial ramifications of bill-per-byte (would probably be round-down-to-the-GB to make everyone happy) and as of yet everything is in a theoretical state; I want everything nailed down before the chips hit the table. Big chips; I still have the crazy idea of using WiMAX equipment to serve up the last mile...

But if Mikrotik can handle by-IP usage tracking, and the system can be put on, say, a low-power SFF box with dual GigE (in\out) that certainly wors.

As to the non-technical details, again this seems like an easy way to get "hogs" to pay their dues, keep the network peppy enough for everyone skirt around "fairness" concerns and generally avoid a bad rep about implementing caps and other such crud later when demand puts a strain on network resources disproportionate to the amount paid by those putting said strain on said resources.

Make any sense? Again, thanks for everyone's input.

P.S. I plan, as I might have stated before, to rely on Cogent for my main internet uplink, plus either AT&T or L(3) for "peering insurance" in a smaller quantity, probably offered as a VPN'd connection for people to use when needed at first, then BGP'd later. So my at-the-backbone b\w costs will be low enough that, even with a high markup to cover network costs, people won't be complaining about $1-$2 per GB pricing like Frontier and TWC are getting so much publicity about now.

TWC is only doing trials of it. They have not said anything about doing it nationwide like Comcast. TWC is per region on anything like that. Don't look for TWC to put in the 40gig cap nationwide. Frontier can do that only because in many areas they are the ONLY provider including Dial-up and cable is not available in many of their areas.

I would use anything that could keep track of your users such as PPPOE using radius. You could give them a block of say 5gigs or so per month and anything over you charge. that would keep the "hogs" off your network as well. Especially the ones that think they need a new linux distro every 5 minutes.

I'm familiar with why TWC is doing what they're doing, why Frontier is doing what they're doing, etc. Also, the 5GB deal is something I wouldn't be able to put up with, and I want an internet service that everyone can put up with...it'll just be that heavier users pay proportionately more so I can reinvest in the network to support them. Granted, most users will be light ones, and that's fine; I'm thinking MRC + b\w (cheaper as b\w usage increases) so billing, admin costs are covered upfront, and SU costs are amortized over the long run, along with some base station and other network costs.

Totally unrelated and might need to go in a different forum: anyone know how AT&T and Level(3) would compare with each other on b\w costs for a low-capaccity (10 mbit probably to start) line in the San Antonio area? I'm assuming they wouldn't be too bad but still rather costly since a few weeks ago I asked Grande Communications about a 50 Mbit commit in one of their lit buildings and IIRC it was upwards of $80 per Mbit on a 3-year cntract.

not sure about AT&T but i know sprint and TWC circuits out of SA are fairly comperable to grande. Cogent is gonna be your cheapest solution by far but they have a very limited number of breakouts in the city.

As far as wimax for the last mile. You will need some big time cash if you plan to start with a full Wimax network. We just started 2 new wimax deployments and the thruput is good (Alvarion 2.5ghz gear). But im a little worried about the SU/AP ratio. I cant see providing upwards of 20-30, 2 or 3meg accounts on a 12 meg AP radio. and with that low of a subscriber ratio your infrastructure costs will be quite high. Alvarion gear is around $60k for a 90deg sector

Heh, Sprint...I'd rather get a company who hasn't been in a recent peering dispute with Cogent. TWC works even though their parent (AOL) had issues with Cogent maybe six years ago...

About the WiMAX stuff, from what I've heard you can get systems that will give better throughput on 7 MHz channels. Still haven't heard back on whether 10 MHz channel equipment is available yet from Alvarion. I know that Proxim has the stuff, and they have 34 or so Mbps as the top speed in aggregate over 10 MHz.

TWC's parent is TWC. They were spun off remember. Just TW owns 51%+ of TWC. AOL has been pretty much kicked to the curb and its now just Time Warner.

Understood...but beside the point.