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33358088 (banned)
join:2008-09-23

33358088 (banned)

Member

the facts please

I pay for what i get they are supposed ot have capacity

HOW'D you feel about driving to work and being told that form now on YOU have to go 5 miles an hour cause there are too many cars on the road.

What would the response be?

ADD CAPACITY.
THEY FAIL AND THEY ARE AIG STYLE GREEDY
Expand your moderator at work
dynodb
Premium Member
join:2004-04-21
Minneapolis, MN

dynodb to 33358088

Premium Member

to 33358088
said by 33358088:

I pay for what i get they are supposed ot have capacity

HOW'D you feel about driving to work and being told that form now on YOU have to go 5 miles an hour cause there are too many cars on the road.

What would the response be?

ADD CAPACITY.
THEY FAIL AND THEY ARE AIG STYLE GREEDY
You've never driven 5 mph at rush hour in stop-and-go traffic? Was the road widened the first time drivers experienced traffic congestion? If not, is it because the DMV was "AIG style greedy"?

As speeds increase, caps will likely become the norm. However there's a big difference between generous caps (like the Comcast 250MB/month) perhaps coupled with throttling or very low (5-10MB) caps and overage charges.
Lazlow
join:2006-08-07
Saint Louis, MO

Lazlow

Member

Re: the facts please

That is just it, caps do not address congestion issues. A user could do all his downloading during off peak hours(download many times the cap) and NEVER contribute to congestion. Conversely a person could do all their downloading during peak hours (never going over cap) and cause a lot of congestion.

As far as costs; both transit costs and hardware costs are defined by Mbps of peak time use. Off peak downloading costs the ISPs absolutely nothing extra.
dynodb
Premium Member
join:2004-04-21
Minneapolis, MN

1 recommendation

dynodb

Premium Member

Re: the facts please

said by Lazlow:

That is just it, caps do not address congestion issues. A user could do all his downloading during off peak hours(download many times the cap) and NEVER contribute to congestion. Conversely a person could do all their downloading during peak hours (never going over cap) and cause a lot of congestion.

As far as costs; both transit costs and hardware costs are defined by Mbps of peak time use. Off peak downloading costs the ISPs absolutely nothing extra.
And if the heavy users were to start downloading during what is now off-peak hours... they then become peak hours.

You're correct that it's more a matter of peak use leading to congestion, but it would be difficult and confusing to have different caps for different times of day. The person downloading 400GB/month is likely doing it both during peak and non-peak hours.

The ideal scenario from a provider perspective would be to have hourly caps, but I doubt that would go over well with consumers.

And just to remind everyone- practically ALL bandwidth on the Internet is shared bandwidth. From your serving node to internodal trunks to the ISP trunks to host capacity- all shared. It's the reason broadband costs $40/month instead of $400/month.
Lazlow
join:2006-08-07
Saint Louis, MO

Lazlow

Member

Re: the facts please

Assuming I did the numbers correctly a person on a 5Mbps tier could download over 500GB/month by downloading just 8 hrs a day(midnight to 8am), so no most of these people are not downloading all the time. Now apply that to the higher tiers and you can see how short a time period we are talking about.

If we stick with the 5Mbps tier you would have to have 8 people(assuming D2) downloading at the same time on the same channel of the same node in order to saturate. Now compare that to two users downloading at 20Mbps. So once again it is not GB/month that causes congestion. It is too many people with too high a speed downloading all at once on a system with too little capacity (for the higher speed tiers). Fifty people on 20Mbps speed tiers staying well under the cap are causing far more congestion than the relatively few users downloading 500GB at 5Mbps.

It really is not that tough to limit the Mbps on a connection either. Look at Comcast. The are using a bandwidth agnostic throttle that ONLY kicks in when a channel is saturated. If your channel is under peak load you get throttled back to your fair share of the bandwidth. As long as the channel is not under a peak load (approaching saturation) (such as midnight to 8am) you download at your full tier speed. Now contrast that to what the caps are doing. You are limited by the total amount you can download per month AND you are speed limited by the congestion on your node during peak hours.