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kontos
xyzzy
join:2001-10-04
West Henrietta, NY

kontos

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Woo Hoo! Free capacity!

said by Karl Bode:

Again, there is absolutely no evidence that Internet growth is accelerating so quickly that carriers can't manage it with modest capacity improvements.
Ah, so as long as the capacity improvements are "modest" The carriers don't have to pay for them. Got it.
sjr
join:2006-08-27
Osseo, MN

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sjr

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Interestingly that is how most businesses run. They use part of their profits to maintain and expand their infrastructure. It is what one would call investing in the future. But I suppose if one can only see the next quarters profits one would never expand since that costs immediate money, never mind the payoff down the road in a year or 2 or more. Since the telecom's and cable companies seem to operate in a world of handouts and increasing investor profits every quarter they are not very good at planning ahead.

Dogfather
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join:2007-12-26
Laguna Hills, CA

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They never pay for them, their customers do.

kontos
xyzzy
join:2001-10-04
West Henrietta, NY

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kontos

Member

I'd agree with you in a metered billing price model. With that model, increasing capacity increases revenue (as long as you can get your customers to use the increased capacity).

But that's not where we're at today. Today we have the all you can eat price model.

All you can eat pricing works great when you're adding customers (revenue) faster that you're adding capacity (costs). The ISP bean counters are starting to crap their pants now because customer adds are slowing down while costs continue to rise. Their graphs are showing the cost and revenue lines starting to converge.

All that the study says is that the convergence may not happen as soon.

Dogfather
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join:2007-12-26
Laguna Hills, CA

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Dogfather

Premium Member

In all models where customers are billed, customers are paying.

There is no evidence that ISPs are seeing a "capacity" crush and when they are forced to turn over evidence, like Bell Canada, it turns out they were lying.

These moves to capping and overage fees aren't about capacity and never have been. They have always been about protecting their video revenues from competitors like Netflix, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft.

SpaethCo
Digital Plumber
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join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN

SpaethCo

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said by Dogfather:

There is no evidence that ISPs are seeing a "capacity" crush and when they are forced to turn over evidence, like Bell Canada, it turns out they were lying.
If you focus solely on the Bell table with the percentage of congested links it's easy to say there isn't a capacity issue. If you actually look through the rest of the supporting documentation published here: »The Bell Disclosure! take a closer look at the big document in the zip. The last slide showing exponential growth in the number of ATM cell loss events is most telling. The data could have definitely been packaged better, but it's quite clear that all is not well with the growth of traffic.
said by Dogfather:

These moves to capping and overage fees aren't about capacity and never have been. They have always been about protecting their video revenues from competitors like Netflix, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft.
The companies offering video services are just middle men. They built a distribution system that economically allows content producers to get their product to subscribers. If you convert to IP based services they are still going to get their cut, only it's going to end up costing you more due to the extra costs associated with IP video delivery.

The big problem is that people are expecting that they can drastically increase the usage of their Internet connection while paying the same or less than they pay now. That, I'm afraid, is an unrealistic expectation.
Lazlow
join:2006-08-07
Saint Louis, MO

Lazlow

Member

espaeth

The part you are forgetting (and ISPs are trying to hide) is that the cost per/unit has been and will continue to drop dramatically. We can all see from the stockholders reports that ISPs are making huge profits. Will expanding the capacity of their networks cost a lot of money? Certainly. But if they quit looking at next quarters numbers and instead focus on the numbers over the next few years there will be no issue.

Dogfather
Premium Member
join:2007-12-26
Laguna Hills, CA

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The bandwidth apocalypse is a total myth and Bell's claims of congestion handily debunked. This capping is all about protecting these cable and telco's lucrative VOD and other video revenues, especially from providers like Netflix which is appearing on more and more devices like the XBOX 360. By capping and charging overage fees, cable and telco operators abuse their market position to price video competitors out of the market.

It's a very simple and often repeated concept. Customers pay for their service and these companies are profitable. Just because they are greedy is not an excuse to allow them to abuse their market position and kill innovation and competition.

SpaethCo
Digital Plumber
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said by Lazlow:

The part you are forgetting (and ISPs are trying to hide) is that the cost per/unit has been and will continue to drop dramatically.
Ahh... but *why* and *where* has the cost per unit dropped? At the core, companies have been able to take leased fiber and swap out GigE optics for 10GigE optics or even xWDM optics to get N*10GigE on the same physical fiber pair.

Upgrades at the core are easy because: the technology is there to provide 1000+% increase in capacity over GigE on the same fiber path, the interfaces are available for existing network hardware already used in core positions, and the core represents a handful of physical connections in relation to all of the ports at the edge.

Growing bandwidth at the edge isn't so simple. Hardware is cheap and purpose built. You want to upgrade to DOCSIS 3.0, you need to swap out every single cable modem on the plant to get the true full benefit. You want to upgrade to VDSL? You need to deploy more remotes closer to the subscribers at massive costs *AND* swap out every existing customer DSL modem with a VDSL capable model. You want to upgrade FiOS BPON to GPON, you have to replace every ONT on the network segment you upgrade to be GPON. Even then, you still top out at about a 300% increase in capacity over what you have today at ridiculously high costs.

The growth model at the core and the edge is highly disproportional. At the edge you spend a ton of cash to get minimal gains; at the core you can get massive gains with minimal cash investment.
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said by Dogfather:

The bandwidth apocalypse is a total myth and Bell's claims of congestion handily debunked.
If any actual network engineer (not just the people who claim to be on these forums) looked at the Bell numbers and didn't see a problem, then I feel sorry for their customers and can only hope someone helps them find work in a different field soon. Network delay breaks real-time applications while only causing minor impairment to file transfers. While the world mourns that users in Canada have their P2P transfers slowed down, I'm sure the other people who can actually make VoIP phone calls, play online games, and remote desktop into work without facing application-breaking latency are better off.
said by Dogfather:

This capping is all about protecting these cable and telco's lucrative VOD and other video revenues, especially from providers like Netflix which is appearing on more and more devices like the XBOX 360. By capping and charging overage fees, cable and telco operators abuse their market position to price video competitors out of the market.
The majority of their revenue is already protected by the sharp consumer learning curve for setting up these services. While there are indeed millions of people that take advantage of these services, they are still the minority and will continue to be so for some time. Still, when you order VoD from your LEC or MSO on their infrastructure, the cost of delivery is already factored into the content. When you download it off the Internet, the cost of delivery gets factored into HSI delivery costs. The problem is right now the ISPs are struggling to find a good method to recover the excess service delivery costs the extra IP traffic generates.

Make no mistake, you're going to be paying for the distribution either way. The Internet option will be more expensive because IP infrastructure is more expensive to build out than traditional video delivery systems.
said by Dogfather:

Just because they are greedy is not an excuse to allow them to abuse their market position and kill innovation and competition.
No matter how hard anyone tries, it's impossible to kill a good idea. The corollary to that is that it's amazingly easy to kill half-ass ideas. Right now a lot of the business models are based around:

1) Put content on the Internet
2) ?????
3) PROFIT!

Not a lot of people figuring out that #2 step...

Dogfather
Premium Member
join:2007-12-26
Laguna Hills, CA

4 edits

Dogfather

Premium Member

It's very easy for companies in dominant market positions like telco and cable operators to kill good ideas, that is why we have antitrust law.

1. Put content on the internet.
2. Charge monthly fees or PPV fees (eg Microsoft, Apple, Netflix, Amazon).
3. Profit
4. Cable and telcos abuse market position to cap and charge overage fees pricing #2 out of market thus protecting their own video services from good ideas.
Lazlow
join:2006-08-07
Saint Louis, MO

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"You want to upgrade to DOCSIS 3.0, you need to swap out every single cable modem on the plant to get the true full benefit."

espaeth

That is patently false. Docsis 3.0 is backward compatible to previous versions. The only cable modems that need to be replaced are those of the high speed users. You bond their channels off the channels(on different channels than) used by the earlier Docsis versions. This gives the high speed users (presumably high capacity as well) a clear path and it drops them off the capacity load on the channels being used by the older Docsis versions (more bandwidth for the Docsis 2.0 users to share). Yes, only those users that have the Docsis 3.0 modems will be able to get the speeds above 30meg(I think that is the limit for 2.0). But most of the ISPs are claiming that only a small percentage of their users are soaking up the majority of the bandwidth. Presumably these(high capacity) user are usually the high speed users. Even if all the above was not true, every single piece of equipment you mentioned is cheaper today than it was a year ago and a year from now it will be even cheaper. So as time goes on the price/unit drops regardless.

Dogfather
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join:2007-12-26
Laguna Hills, CA

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Dogfather

Premium Member

And given the prices that cable operators like Comcast charge for their pre-DOCSIS 3 tiers ($150/mo) I think they can afford to kick down a modem.

SpaethCo
Digital Plumber
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join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN

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said by Dogfather:

It's very easy for companies in dominant market positions like telco and cable operators to kill good ideas, that is why we have antitrust law.
.. and despite heavy anti-competitive attempts by Sun, Intel, IBM, and Microsoft (among others) we are still seeing more and more Linux servers being used in enterprise environments. You can't kill good ideas.
said by Dogfather:

2. Charge monthly fees or PPV fees (eg Microsoft, Apple, Netflix, Amazon).
That fee covers their content cost and their end of the distribution costs.

Again, you keep implying that your HSI usage should be able to drastically increase without there being some impact to price. It costs money to build capacity -- if you are going to be consuming a greater amount of data requiring the buildout of additional capacity, that money needs to come from somewhere. The cost model that current HSI pricing is based on will not be valid if the push for higher consumption continues.
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said by Lazlow:

"You want to upgrade to DOCSIS 3.0, you need to swap out every single cable modem on the plant to get the true full benefit."

espaeth

That is patently false. Docsis 3.0 is backward compatible to previous versions. The only cable modems that need to be replaced are those of the high speed users.
My statement is still accurate. Even if you build out DOCSIS 3.0 in 4 channel clusters and balance all of the existing D1.1/2.0 users across those channels, it is still easy to saturate a single channel of the bundle if your heavy users end up on the same channel.

Take a situation where 5 users with 8mbps downstream connections all try to max out their downstream capacity. On D1.1/2.0 platforms with single channel attachment, if they all land on the same channel they will exceed the 38mbps channel capacity and congestion will result.

The full benefit of D3.0 would be if those users all had access to the 152mbps (38x4) shared bandwidth pool. In that case it would be 40mbps out of a total channel capacity of 152mbps so there would be plenty of headroom left over.

There are definitely gains to be had just by adding the additional downstream channels, but the real full benefit doesn't come until a significant portion of your user base has converted.
said by Lazlow:

But most of the ISPs are claiming that only a small percentage of their users are soaking up the majority of the bandwidth. Presumably these(high capacity) user are usually the high speed users.
Not necessarily. I illustrated my point above with just (5) 8mbps users on a segment. Look at all the people in the forums talking about running P2P on the entry-level cable tiers.
said by Lazlow:

Even if all the above was not true, every single piece of equipment you mentioned is cheaper today than it was a year ago and a year from now it will be even cheaper. So as time goes on the price/unit drops regardless.
DOCSIS 3.0 modems are significantly more expensive than DOCSIS 2.0 modems. They have multiple radio tuners which adds costs to the manufacturing. The DOCSIS 2.0 stuff will continue to decline in price as demand diminishes.

The problem is that upgrades at the edge generally aren't about simply adding more, it's about forklift upgrades. DOCSIS 3.0 at the head-end required the complete replacement of DOCSIS 2.0 CMTS hardware with D3.0. To tap in the the capacity at the home you need a new modem. Growth at the edge is a matter of replacement, not expansion.

Dogfather
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quote:
.. and despite heavy anti-competitive attempts by Sun, Intel, IBM, and Microsoft (among others) we are still seeing more and more Linux servers being used in enterprise environments. You can't kill good ideas.[/quote

Only because Microsoft was kept in check by the government...lest you forget Microsoft was sued by Sun over anticompetitive conduct.
quote:
That fee covers their content cost and their end of the distribution costs.

Again, you keep implying that your HSI usage should be able to drastically increase without there being some impact to price. It costs money to build capacity -- if you are going to be consuming a greater amounts of data requiring the buildout of additional capacity, that money needs to come from somewhere. The cost model that current HSI pricing is based on will not be valid if the push for higher consumption continues.
Yeah, that fee covers their distribution costs and the customers fee to the ISP covers the delivery and capacity expansion costs and proved by Verizon's $21 B customer funded expansion (all without caps and overage fees BTW).

If Verizon can manage a $21B fiber deployment project without resorting to caps and overage fees, so can Comcrap and AT&T.

SpaethCo
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said by Dogfather:

And given the prices that cable operators like Comcast charge for their pre-DOCSIS 3 tiers ($150/mo) I think they can afford to kick down a modem.
The entry price for pre-DOCSIS 3 service for Comcast is $62.95/mo for the 22/5 tier. (the obvious qualification is that your area needs to be upgraded to get that)
SpaethCo

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said by Dogfather:

Yeah, that fee covers their distribution costs and the customers fee to the ISP covers the delivery and capacity expansion costs and proved by Verizon's $21 B customer funded expansion (all without caps and overage fees BTW).
Verizon is currently carrying the debt of building out that network as a long term investment. Let's see how Verizon starts running things when they have to start getting serious about repaying that debt.
Lazlow
join:2006-08-07
Saint Louis, MO

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On the Docsis channel thing: IF they would stop advancing speeds for a while and increase load capacity (until they upgrade the system to handle the load) it will be a non issue. I am assuming that you did not intend to share the same channels between Docsis 3 and pre-Docis3 in your example(that would essentially defeat the purpose). Getting those high capacity users over to Docis 3 modems would (of course) be a priority. Getting those users off the pre-3.0 channels should open a significant enough amount of bandwidth to handle the next year or two(?). The higher end users will be motivated to switch over to 3.0 modems so that they see less congestion (self curing problem). The rest will probably see an improvement over the situation that they are in today and will slowly migrate over to the 3.0 modems (probably about the time 8 channel is coming in).

You cannot compare the prices of Docsis 2.0 modems to 3.0 modems. You need to compare apples to apples. What was the price of a 3.0 modem a year ago (still prototype?) and what is it today? Compare the price of a D3 cmts today and a D2 cmts when it was introduced. While I do not know for certain I am willing to bet that the price for the D3 CMTS in real dollars is significantly less than(but possibly the same due to the increased number of transmitters/tuners) the D2 units.

a333
A hot cup of integrals please
join:2007-06-12
Rego Park, NY

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said by SpaethCo:

While the world mourns that users in Canada have their P2P transfers slowed down, I'm sure the other people who can actually make VoIP phone calls, play online games, and remote desktop into work without facing application-breaking latency are better off.
Uh-huh.....that like....totally explains the fact that Bell Pathetico opened up their OWN online video store barely weeks after starting wholesale throttling...yep. I see.
Doesn't take a PhD in network engineering to realize that this is just Bell's way of sabotaging it's competitors. Yep that's right...when you can't beat them, sabotage them...

SpaethCo
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join:2001-04-21
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SpaethCo

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said by a333:

Uh-huh.....that like....totally explains the fact that Bell Pathetico opened up their OWN online video store barely weeks after starting wholesale throttling...yep. I see.
Doesn't take a PhD in network engineering to realize that this is just Bell's way of sabotaging it's competitors. Yep that's right...when you can't beat them, sabotage them..
They're throttling P2P traffic, which would affect download'n'play offerings like Vuze.

They are not, however, throttling the direct streaming video competitors to their offering like Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, or the video download services from Sony PSN, or Xbox XBL.

If you want to continue arguing that Bell is trying to beat down video competition by not touching 99% of legally distributed Internet video, then I guess all logical argument is pointless.
SpaethCo

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said by Lazlow:

On the Docsis channel thing: IF they would stop advancing speeds for a while and increase load capacity (until they upgrade the system to handle the load) it will be a non issue.
It's somewhat counter intuitive, but in a statistically-muxed network increasing access speeds actually tends to improve performance across the board. The reason for that is simple: the less time it takes me to get the content I want, the faster I'm off the network, and the more "idle" time that will be available to the other users on the network.

Applications like P2P that assume that all "idle" network capacity belongs to you obviously kill any stat-mux gains of finite duration transfers.
said by Lazlow:

I am assuming that you did not intend to share the same channels between Docsis 3 and pre-Docis3 in your example(that would essentially defeat the purpose).
You don't have the luxury of *not* sharing between D3 / non-D3 modems. DOCSIS 1.1 / 2.0 modems will attach to the first channel they successfully tune to; DOCSIS 2.0 at least has the ability to be sent a channel change command so they can be distributed across the channels. Open channel space is a precious commodity for MSOs, they had to fight to make room for the 3-4 channels of DOCSIS 3 they are deploying now.
Lazlow
join:2006-08-07
Saint Louis, MO

Lazlow

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While I agree with the first point to a certain extent, I think it is a matter of degree. A lot of systems went from 5meg (top service) to 16meg without a similar increase in capacity increase. Jumping from 5-10 this way was "in range" but jumping on up to 16 just tipped the cart over.

With the number of analog channels that have been removed from service on most systems they could easily isolate the Docsis 3 from the pre3 channels. We both know that you can define the list of channels that the modems can select from and that you can use separate lists for 3/pre3. But they want that recovered bandwidth for HD only. Again it goes back to greed.

SpaethCo
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SpaethCo

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said by Lazlow:

While I agree with the first point to a certain extent, I think it is a matter of degree. A lot of systems went from 5meg (top service) to 16meg without a similar increase in capacity increase. Jumping from 5-10 this way was "in range" but jumping on up to 16 just tipped the cart over.
To be fair, when Comcast started deploying Blast! on the east coast they put a lot of money into node splits to reduce subscriber density per DOCSIS channel. It's not like they just rolled out new profiles without making any changes to the infrastructure.
said by Lazlow:

With the number of analog channels that have been removed from service on most systems they could easily isolate the Docsis 3 from the pre3 channels. We both know that you can define the list of channels that the modems can select from and that you can use separate lists for 3/pre3. But they want that recovered bandwidth for HD only. Again it goes back to greed.
In order to do the most effective upgrade you do a one-for-one replacement of DOCSIS 1.1/2.0 CMTS hardware with DOCSIS 3.0. The old equipment doesn't stick around, if for no other reasons than the diagnostic capabilities of the D3.0 line cards are so much better than earlier revisions. (although the real reason tends to be space, power, fiber constraints) Since DOCSIS 3.0 requires new modems in the field, to not put your existing clients on the same channels would be pointlessly wasteful. The DOCSIS 3 modems will balance around the available channels, so if one happens to become saturated the traffic will simply be diverted to the other links -- it can route around single channel congestion.

As far as them "keeping the channels for HD" -- let's be honest here, it's not for "them," it's for the customers that call them up every day asking for more HD channels. Not to mention that a vast many customers are actually willing to pay more for more HD content. Reserving capacity for services that are profitable is what smart businesses do.

a333
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Bell's argument was that p2p users were somehow using up bandwidth that was way out of proportion for their population ("5% of their users using 90% of their bandwidth", if I remember correctly). Apparently, that is not the case, given the fact that now Bell sees fit to open their own online video store. Also, they seem to be fine with giving users free speed upgrades. Unless they have some new medium to get videos to their customers, one would only say that Bell isn't facing nearly the bandwidth crisis they're making it out to be...

And the use of the p2p protocol by itself does NOT bog down a network, unless you grossly misconfigure your client. This has been proven, and arguing over it is purely useless considering the number of debates that've taken place about it. P2P does not magically make you get 10x upload/download speeds, it just gets the file faster through its use of numerous simultaneous connections to different peers.

And BTW, in case you didn't notice, Bell pissed off a LOT of customers by their failure of a throttling scheme, as it also blocked pretty much anything encrypted, including VPN connections.
Lazlow
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Saint Louis, MO

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"Since DOCSIS 3.0 requires new modems in the field,"

NO, it does not. It is backward compatible with older versions of Docsis. A Docsis 2.0 modem will function just fine on a Docsis 3.0 CMTS. No, the older modems will not be able to take advantage of the newer 3.0 features. Which gets us right back where we started from. Where I said the "power users" (or whatever term you like) will be the first to upgrade to the 3.0 standard (to gets those features) and the rest will upgrade over time (just like the migration from 1.0 to 2.0). You should still be able to split those channels (3.0 from pre3.0) so that you can increase the capacity of both the 3.0 and the pre3.0. In the end that is what will occur when they switch to 8 channel anyway.

IF you do not think that virtually everything they do is in their best interest you really need to step back. As we have seen recently (bailout anyone?) there is a huge difference between "smart" business and honest business, and you are right I think they are running the same type "smart" business as the mortgage people. You can make an honest profit without a lot of the things that go on. When they offer people (current customers not new ones) 6 month or a year special deals do you really think that they are taking a loss on those deals? No, they are just dropping their profit margin. In a lot of markets 5meg service is given on special for 6months (to existing costomers) for $15/month while the standard price is $60 (stand alone price on both).

As far as Comcast Blast deal; in a lot of markets they did just drop it in without making major changes until AFTER the congestion showed up(just check the old threads). But yes, they did split a lot of those nodes to ease the problem. Which just shows that they are capable of handling marked increases in bandwidth without resorting to caps.

In the ISPs defense, the FCC screwed the pooch on this transition. They should have made everything switch at once(free up all the old analog bandwidth). But they should have made the ISPs keep the same channel line up, only broadcasting on clear Qam(for basic). The $40 digital converters should have had a qam tuner in them as well. This would have eliminated the company owned set top boxes(that we fought so hard to get rid of the first time around) and still kept a decent basic cable lineup(in digital). To go along with that they should have made no distinction between digital/analog as far as the broadcast stations were concerned(same rebroadcast rules should apply to digital as analog).

SpaethCo
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said by Lazlow:

"Since DOCSIS 3.0 requires new modems in the field,"

NO, it does not. It is backward compatible with older versions of Docsis.
Quit dancing on that point, you know what I mean. You're not going to get DOCSIS 3.0 speed and capacity increases without DOCSIS 3.0 endpoints.

In relation to my earlier statement, since there will be a scarce few DOCSIS 3.0 modems out on the network in the near term it makes poor sense to set aside multiple DOCSIS channels just for a handful of D3.0 customers. It makes better strategic sense to spread your existing DOCSIS 1.1 / 2.0 clients across those channels and get some use out of them.
said by Lazlow:

IF you do not think that virtually everything they do is in their best interest you really need to step back. As we have seen recently (bailout anyone?) there is a huge difference between "smart" business and honest business, and you are right I think they are running the same type "smart" business as the mortgage people.
The mortgage people couldn't do it alone. Do you honestly think not a single person who suddenly qualified for a loan even though they never qualified before and got setup with sub-prime rates didn't think something was up? The mortgage situation has two guilty parties, and while the actual mortgage brokers should have played a better "parent" role and stopped people from making bad financial choices, it still stands that we got here because a vast many people made horrible financial choices.

Residential customers have an artificially low perception of what it actually costs to operate a network infrastructure because of the "unlimited" connection pricing that is engineered such that the average subscriber has no chance of hitting anything close to "unlimited." Customers are being sold timeshares, but they think they are buying their own permanent residence. We're in this mess now because even though people keep saying there's a huge demand for bandwidth, the most popular service tier remains the absolute cheapest service that the broadband providers offer. Customers want Max(Bandwidth) for Min(Price) -- something has to give.
said by Lazlow:

You can make an honest profit without a lot of the things that go on. When they offer people (current customers not new ones) 6 month or a year special deals do you really think that they are taking a loss on those deals?
Of course they take a loss on those sales. They want to introduce you to a product at a low introductory rate so you will stay a customer going forward. This sales tactic is used universally from street drug dealers offering a free "taste" to selling game station consoles for less than the hardware manufacturing costs with the hopes of making it up in game sales after the fact. It's called a loss leader for a reason.
Lazlow
join:2006-08-07
Saint Louis, MO

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Lazlow

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Quit trying to insinuate that the only gains that can occur on the 3.0 systems are when all the modems are 3.0. Will the maximum gain be if all the modems are 3.0? YES, but if you can move just the top 10% of the bandwidth consumption clients over to 3.0(at least if you trust the ISPs earlier statements), most of the congestion will be a non-issue(assuming you split the channels) and without resorting to caps. Bandwidth consumption will continue to increase, as it increases more and more people will switch to 3.0 modems. By the time the vast majority has switched over to 3.0, the bandwidth consumption/speed requirements will probably be high enough to require 8 channel Docsis 3.0. So at that time the 4 channels that had been dedicated to pre3.0 use can be reintegrated to the 3.0 8 channel systems.

edit about your edit. I assume you meant scarce few? That is why the ISPs should push the 3.0 modems on those customers that are using the most bandwidth.

further edit: rather than overage charges or banning a customer just require them to move to a 3.0 modem.

SpaethCo
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said by a333:

Bell's argument was that p2p users were somehow using up bandwidth that was way out of proportion for their population ("5% of their users using 90% of their bandwidth", if I remember correctly). Apparently, that is not the case, given the fact that now Bell sees fit to open their own online video store. Also, they seem to be fine with giving users free speed upgrades. Unless they have some new medium to get videos to their customers, one would only say that Bell isn't facing nearly the bandwidth crisis they're making it out to be...
At a high level P2P is different for one main reason: infinite duration transfers. A P2P client's work is never done; it will continue seeding your content for as long as you allow it to run approaching infinity. When you download a movie using HTTP or other streaming protocol, once you have the movie you don't transfer any more on the network. Your work is done, the network capacity you were using goes back to the idle pool for everyone else to tap into.

For fixed duration transfers, increasing the access speed actually tends to do more good than harm. If I go to grab a Linux ISO, if I can download it in 7 minutes instead of 20-25, that means that I am statistically less likely to be tying up shared capacity when someone else wants to be engaging in a large transfer. If I can download it faster it doesn't mean I'll download it a 2nd or 3rd time, it just means more idle time for the network after I get my stuff.
said by a333:

And the use of the p2p protocol by itself does NOT bog down a network, unless you grossly misconfigure your client.
Again, it's not about speed, it's about duration.
said by a333:

And BTW, in case you didn't notice, Bell pissed off a LOT of customers by their failure of a throttling scheme, as it also blocked pretty much anything encrypted, including VPN connections.
I agree the approach is poor, just like I think firing tear gas into a crowd is a horrible approach. At the same time though, for both events there are situations where it needs to be done. There are certain places where it is impossible to quickly build your way out of congestion -- ultimately adding capacity is the only long term solution but when things start hitting the wall there needs to be some action in the here and now. At a high level it's easy to decide priority because while latency due to congestion slows down file transfers, latency due to congestion breaks real-time applications. Clearly broken is worse than slow, and if we could get everybody to agree on that we might be able to avoid the arms race crap between P2P developers working to build in better encryption and stealth vs DPI engineers trying to stay one step ahead to keep the traffic manageable.
Lazlow
join:2006-08-07
Saint Louis, MO

Lazlow

Member

Ok, this reply goes towards that paragraph or two you added (edited into) your after my earlier reply.

A lot of those people had no experience with the system before they bought those houses and may have honestly thought that was just the way things worked. But I agree they(the borrowers) should have known better. My point is not about the borrowers but the lenders. The lenders got themselves into trouble by making loans that they knew were far to risky. But greed drove them. High risk loans have the greatest returns (assuming a significant number of them do not default, our current situation). The reason we had to bail them(the lenders) out was becuase if they went under they would take the entire financial system down with them. This is "smart" business at work, instead of honest business. There were a lot of finical institutions out there they did not make these kind of "smart" loans and they are in much better shape than the ones that did (at least before the bailout). These are the same types of "smart" business practices that a lot of the ISPs are doing.

"They want to introduce you to a product at a low introductory rate so you will stay a customer going forward. This sales tactic is used universally from street drug dealers offering a free "taste" to selling game station consoles for less than the hardware manufacturing costs with the hopes of making it up in game sales after the fact. It's called a loss leader for a reason."

That would be true IF they were only offering it to new customers or old customers using new products, but they are not(which I mentioned above). What you have described is what they USED to do. Which I agree was/is a great idea. They currently are offering some(most?) existing customers the lower rates for the same services that they are currently subscribed to. It is common enough they even have a name for it(deal hopping? something hopping at any rate, its late zzzz). This relatively new (couple or years at most?) behavior does not fit into the loss leader theory (at least as I understand it). Many people are able to jump from one special (as it expires) to the next. If the ISPs were not making money (at the special rates) they would not allow this, they could not afford to. Since they have been doing this for quite a while and continue to do so, the only logical conclusion one can reach is that they are in fact making money even on these special rates.