| reply to Gbcue
Re: Anti CC fans ? said by Gbcue:said by jmn1207:Why even have throttling and caps? If the caps are a necessity to protect the infrastructure, and not just about conditioning and "educating" consumers into a future money grab by the ISP's, it seems that effective throttling should be able to take care of the looming exaflood. Why not just have enough capacity for everybody to do whatever they want? You don't see "caps" on the highway systems.... Speed limits, that's good. A cap on how far you can drive in a month? Bad. You already pay per mile. It's called gasoline. |
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 GbcueAlmost P.E.Premium
join:2001-09-30
Santa Rosa, CA
kudos:8
 ·AT&T U-Verse
| said by fifty nine:said by Gbcue:said by jmn1207:Why even have throttling and caps? If the caps are a necessity to protect the infrastructure, and not just about conditioning and "educating" consumers into a future money grab by the ISP's, it seems that effective throttling should be able to take care of the looming exaflood. Why not just have enough capacity for everybody to do whatever they want? You don't see "caps" on the highway systems.... Speed limits, that's good. A cap on how far you can drive in a month? Bad. You already pay per mile. It's called gasoline. That's like the electricity you'd use to power your modem/router.
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openbox9
join:2004-01-26
Alexandria, VA
kudos:2 | Paying your electric bill supports the electric grid, not the ISP's network infrastructure. Gasoline taxes support the roadway system. Metering your internet connection and billing-by-the-byte, would be the equivalent. |
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| reply to Gbcue
said by Gbcue:That's like the electricity you'd use to power your modem/router. Nope not really.
In the cost for a gallon of gas you have the cost of the crude, refining, transport etc plus various assorted taxes.
The gasoline taxes fund road maintenance, so indeed you are paying per mile. |
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| reply to openbox9
said by openbox9:Paying your electric bill supports the electric grid, not the ISP's network infrastructure. Gasoline taxes support the roadway system. Metering your internet connection and billing-by-the-byte, would be the equivalent. The cost of network maintenance and upgrades is paltry compared to initial capex. Highway and electricity analogies don't belong in a discussion about bandwidth limitations. |
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openbox9
join:2004-01-26
Alexandria, VA
kudos:2 | said by sonicmerlin:The cost of network maintenance and upgrades is paltry compared to initial capex. Highway and electricity analogies don't belong in a discussion about bandwidth limitations. Take that up with Gbcue  . FWIW, I think comparisons can be relevant. The initial outlay for just about every possible infrastructure build will outweigh O&M. The real point of the discussion though was that roadway and electric grids are billed based on consumption. The more the resources are used, the more maintenance and infrastructure expansion are required. |
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GbcueAlmost P.E.Premium
join:2001-09-30
Santa Rosa, CA
kudos:8 Reviews:
·AT&T U-Verse
| reply to sonicmerlin
said by sonicmerlin:said by openbox9:Paying your electric bill supports the electric grid, not the ISP's network infrastructure. Gasoline taxes support the roadway system. Metering your internet connection and billing-by-the-byte, would be the equivalent. The cost of network maintenance and upgrades is paltry compared to initial capex. Highway and electricity analogies don't belong in a discussion about bandwidth limitations. How do the analogies not belong?
They're very similar.
Highway maintenance is peanuts to the initial construction.
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| reply to openbox9
said by openbox9:said by sonicmerlin:The cost of network maintenance and upgrades is paltry compared to initial capex. Highway and electricity analogies don't belong in a discussion about bandwidth limitations. Take that up with Gbcue . FWIW, I think comparisons can be relevant. The initial outlay for just about every possible infrastructure build will outweigh O&M. The real point of the discussion though was that roadway and electric grids are billed based on consumption. The more the resources are used, the more maintenance and infrastructure expansion are required. Again, you're ignoring the reality that electricity requires expensive production at an energy plant and building or maintaining a new road requires building and maintaining along the length of that road. Broadband connections send bits in the form of electrons, which do not cost anything. Upgrading does not require updating the entire line, but simply updating equipment at the ends of the line.
Furthermore, the speed and power of that equipment increases and the cost decreases according to Moore's Law. This is perhaps the single biggest difference with electricity production and road construction. |
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GbcueAlmost P.E.Premium
join:2001-09-30
Santa Rosa, CA
kudos:8 Reviews:
·AT&T U-Verse
2 edits | said by sonicmerlin:said by openbox9:said by sonicmerlin:The cost of network maintenance and upgrades is paltry compared to initial capex. Highway and electricity analogies don't belong in a discussion about bandwidth limitations. Take that up with Gbcue . FWIW, I think comparisons can be relevant. The initial outlay for just about every possible infrastructure build will outweigh O&M. The real point of the discussion though was that roadway and electric grids are billed based on consumption. The more the resources are used, the more maintenance and infrastructure expansion are required. Again, you're ignoring the reality that electricity requires expensive production at an energy plant and building or maintaining a new road requires building and maintaining along the length of that road. Broadband connections send bits in the form of electrons, which do not cost anything. Upgrading does not require updating the entire line, but simply updating equipment at the ends of the line. Furthermore, the speed and power of that equipment increases and the cost decreases according to Moore's Law. This is perhaps the single biggest difference with electricity production and road construction. Really, so you don't upgrade copper to fiber?
Also, since you brought up Moore's law, then the cost of internet should drop every year, but quite the contrary, it almost increases yet it becomes cheaper and cheaper to build, maintain, and upgrade that infrastructure.
Where's that $ going?
You're also forgetting that the internet doesn't work without electricity. So in a sense, you must power the internet with electricity. Almost like generating electricity.
Giant server farms, server racks, KVMs, A/C units, cooling towers aren't free.
When you rebuild a road, you don't rebuild the *whole* road. You only upgrade sections of it at a time.
You don't see the government replacing the entire Interstate-80 from the west coast to the east coast...
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| Internet goes up every year? I'm sorry but when did Comcast raise Internet rates last? Also TWC?
The only thing that goes up is the speed and prices stay the same.
Cable TV goes UP not the Internet. |
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GbcueAlmost P.E.Premium
join:2001-09-30
Santa Rosa, CA
kudos:8 | You don't think the money spent for Cable goes towards their internet infrastructure? |
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| said by Gbcue:You don't think the money spent for Cable goes towards their internet infrastructure? The infrastructure is getting to be so intermingled now it's becoming difficult to tell the difference.... the same edge devices can be used for both, the same backbone, aggregation bandwidth, etc.
Most of the major players now just distribute their video streams around their network same as their customer data, converting them to analog or QAMs at the very edge when it can't be transported as IP anymore.
The big thing that the video side has to pay that HSO/HSI doesn't is broadcast licensing rights per customer required by the channel owners |
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| reply to Gbcue
said by Gbcue:Really, so you don't upgrade copper to fiber? Also, since you brought up Moore's law, then the cost of internet should drop every year, but quite the contrary, it almost increases yet it becomes cheaper and cheaper to build, maintain, and upgrade that infrastructure. Where's that $ going? You're also forgetting that the internet doesn't work without electricity. So in a sense, you must power the internet with electricity. Almost like generating electricity. Giant server farms, server racks, KVMs, A/C units, cooling towers aren't free. When you rebuild a road, you don't rebuild the *whole* road. You only upgrade sections of it at a time. You don't see the government replacing the entire Interstate-80 from the west coast to the east coast... I don't know why you're attacking my argument. I'm pretty sure we're on the same side here buddy.
I *know* ISPs have been pocketing the profits from decreasing network costs for years. Their financial statements tell the story in detail.
As for electricity, no, running the internet is not like generating electricity. The electrons sent through the pipes are infinitesimal compared to electric company wires. Furthermore, ISPs don't have "server farms" the way Google or any other content provider does. Their electricity costs are relatively fixed costs, and adding subscribers doesn't alter that cost significantly.
As for roads, if you want to build another lane, you have to eventually build the entire lane across the length of the road. Your quip about fiber replacing copper doesn't acknowledge that fiber is a one-time investment, and you're not really increasing actual bandwidth when you replace the copper. Increasing speed requires updating equipments at both ends of the line. |
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| reply to Gbcue
said by Gbcue:said by sonicmerlin:said by openbox9:Paying your electric bill supports the electric grid, not the ISP's network infrastructure. Gasoline taxes support the roadway system. Metering your internet connection and billing-by-the-byte, would be the equivalent. The cost of network maintenance and upgrades is paltry compared to initial capex. Highway and electricity analogies don't belong in a discussion about bandwidth limitations. How do the analogies not belong? They're very similar. Highway maintenance is peanuts to the initial construction. No, it isn't.
Roads have significant marginal costs, both in terms of maintenance, and expansion.
State and local DoTs spend billions every year on road maintenance. Patching potholes, sealing cracks, and eventually having to resurface the entire road, sections at a time.
The costs of road expansion, that this to say: adding another mile of lane, costs as much, if not more than the cost of paving that original lane-mile of road.
I live on the peninsula, and your favorite highway and mine, US-101 has loads of potholes and cracks. That's because it so heavily used, particularly by trucks. And it costs a lot to deal with that.
Bandwidth is not like this at all.
If you have 100 Mb/s of capacity, but use only 50 Mb/s, the marginal cost of increasing use up to 100 Mb/s is 0. In fact you could use 100% of your capacity, and still have no more maintenance costs than if you used less than 10%. The costs are fixed, and paid for largely up front in the initial investment.
Increasing bandwidth available does have marginal costs. But if your on fiber, the marginal costs are low, as you only have to swap equipment on both ends. And the cost of going from 1 Gb/s to 10 Gb/s, actually reduces cost per bit. Once 40 GigE, and particularly 100 GigE gets economies of scale, cost per bit will come down even further.
In short: assuming spare capacity is available, the costs of sending another bit is zero; the cost of another mile of driven on the road (in terms of the road) is non-zero. Assuming capacity constrained, the marginal cost of increasing bandwidth is far lower relative to the cost of paving an additional lane mile. The costs to increase bandwidth 10x is less than 10x the cost of the initial outlay, for roads it would cost at least 10x (if it were even possible). |
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| reply to fifty nine
One of the biggest problems with U.S. road system is that fuel excise taxes (on gasoline and diesel), ~$0.20/gal by feds and ~$0.20 by states, don't come remotely close to paying the cost of roads.
The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDoT) did a study on this issue, and showed that fuel taxes only pay for 10-20% of the cost of highways, toll roads might be around 50%. The taxpayer at large is forced to pay the difference, subsidizing the driving public like nobody's business. They estimated fuel taxes would have to be as much as $2.50/gal, but we all know there's no political stomach for that. There's a reason why fuel costs at least $5/gal in most other developed countries.
Here's a couple links discussing the study:
'»www.austincontrarian.com/austinc···ves.html'
'»www.streetsblog.org/2009/06/02/r···e-facts/'
The current situation isn't sustainable, with governments spending many billions on roads every year, especially with government budgets as stressed as they are. |
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