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WebBluenet
join:2009-05-30
Sainte-Rose, QC

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Re: FibreMedia.ca - Residential Gigabit Internet

Interesting.. We are simply saying that if a user goes over X usage in the month, there speed gets reduced for the remainder of the month. That cap will be anywhere from 500GB to a 1TB.

Nitra
join:2011-09-15
Montreal

Nitra

Member

WTB this in Verdun
despe666
join:2009-06-20
Montreal, QC

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How much do you plan on reducing the speed though? Are we talking in the ballpark of 50% or something crazy like 0.5-1Mbit/s?
WebBluenet
join:2009-05-30
Sainte-Rose, QC

WebBluenet

Member

Probably something like 5-10Mbps. Not set in stone yet.

rednekcowboy
join:2012-03-21

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said by WebBluenet:

Interesting.. We are simply saying that if a user goes over X usage in the month, there speed gets reduced for the remainder of the month. That cap will be anywhere from 500GB to a 1TB.

That's a big difference. 500 GB/1TB......for that kind of speed 500GB is low, IMHO....
said by WebBluenet:

Probably something like 5-10Mbps. Not set in stone yet.

Reducing by 5-10Mbps or down to 5-10Mbps???? If it's down to 5-10 Mbps, that's a little crazy.
InvalidError
join:2008-02-03

InvalidError

Member

said by rednekcowboy:

Reducing by 5-10Mbps or down to 5-10Mbps???? If it's down to 5-10 Mbps, that's a little crazy.

Down by 10Mbps from 1Gbps (990Mbps) would be completely insignificant... even a 100Mbps reduction (900Mbps) would be hardly noticeable since the remote servers would rarely be anywhere near that fast and likely neither would the end-user router - the popular N66U and the newer AC66U are only good for ~800Mbps WAN-to-LAN.

So I think he really meant down to 10Mbps.

rednekcowboy
join:2012-03-21

rednekcowboy

Member

said by InvalidError:

said by rednekcowboy:

Reducing by 5-10Mbps or down to 5-10Mbps???? If it's down to 5-10 Mbps, that's a little crazy.

Down by 10Mbps from 1Gbps (990Mbps) would be completely insignificant... even a 100Mbps reduction (900Mbps) would be hardly noticeable since the remote servers would rarely be anywhere near that fast and likely neither would the end-user router - the popular N66U and the newer AC66U are only good for ~800Mbps WAN-to-LAN.

So I think he really meant down to 10Mbps.

So if you download more than 500GB in a month on a 1Gbps link, they're going to throttle you down to 10mbps? I think I'd rather go with Bhell or Robbers if that's the case. That's just insane.
WebBluenet
join:2009-05-30
Sainte-Rose, QC

WebBluenet

Member

Well, perhaps we can charge you for going over your cap instead. Maybe we will allow a new user to chose overages vs speed cap. That could be an option
InvalidError
join:2008-02-03

InvalidError

Member

I would prefer a fair bandwidth-sharing system where for each bracket of usage you climb through, your traffic priority goes down.

This way, you can let your network load go to 100%, light users still get very good speeds during peak hours (the numbers I posted earlier would give light users a 8:1 advantage but they can always be changed for a wider gap like 63:1) while heavy users do not need to worry about caps and should still get great speeds off-peak.

This does mean having to deal with the extra complexity of setting up Ethernet CoS tagging at both the subscriber and transit edges but it also removes most of the need to worry about capacity management beyond making sure you have enough to provide reasonable speed to your moderate subscribers in 1st and 2nd priority classes.

If (very) heavy subscribers want to stay in higher priority tiers until they reach higher caps or avoid dropping into 2nd/3rd/4th/5th priority tiers altogether, you can always charge extra for that and the prices could go something like $400/$200/$75/$25.

jmck
formerly 'shaded'
join:2010-10-02
Ottawa, ON

jmck

Member

they don't want people seeding torrents 24/7 and running seedboxes for their friends or hosting a rack full of servers in your home. 500GB cap is good considering TPIA cable providers are doing 300-400GB caps and the cost is cheaper than Start's 150/10 cable service with a 400GB cap.

sometimes you can't have your cake and eat it too.
34764170 (banned)
join:2007-09-06
Etobicoke, ON

34764170 (banned)

Member

said by jmck:

they don't want people seeding torrents 24/7 and running seedboxes for their friends or hosting a rack full of servers in your home. 500GB cap is good considering TPIA cable providers are doing 300-400GB caps and the cost is cheaper than Start's 150/10 cable service with a 400GB cap.

sometimes you can't have your cake and eat it too.

500GB is a complete joke for a GigE connection, but personally I wouldn't have an issue even if the connection was dropped down to 500Mbps. I can still transfer a hell of a lot at that speed and that's still many many times faster than anything the incumbents offer.

rednekcowboy
join:2012-03-21

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said by jmck:

they don't want people seeding torrents 24/7 and running seedboxes for their friends or hosting a rack full of servers in your home. 500GB cap is good considering TPIA cable providers are doing 300-400GB caps and the cost is cheaper than Start's 150/10 cable service with a 400GB cap.

sometimes you can't have your cake and eat it too.

My 30/10 connection has a 500GB cap. You can go with Acanac/Distributel here and get unlimited for about half of the cost of this. Granted they're not even close to the same speed, but really, what would you want this kind of speed for? The webpages you surf can only load so fast.

With around 13 devices (computers, laptops, gaming consoles, netflix, cell phones, ipods) we are close to our cap every month. A 500 GB cap on a GigE connection is completely unreasonable, as brad said and throttling it down to 10 Mbps would make it completely unusable for some.

A fair use policy is good if implemented correctly. Cut the speed by 25 or 50% for heavy users once they start getting close to 1TB and you can also have rules stating what users are allowed to do and what they aren't. Obviously you don't want users setting up a small server farm of seedboxes running 24/7 so put that in your TOS.

There is a way to do it, and do it fairly without crippling connections/making your prices go through the roof. However calling a GigE connection with a 500GB cap that is throttled down to a crippling 10Mbps is nowhere in the neighborhood of unlimited and extremely misleading.

jmck
formerly 'shaded'
join:2010-10-02
Ottawa, ON

jmck to 34764170

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said by 34764170:

said by jmck:

they don't want people seeding torrents 24/7 and running seedboxes for their friends or hosting a rack full of servers in your home. 500GB cap is good considering TPIA cable providers are doing 300-400GB caps and the cost is cheaper than Start's 150/10 cable service with a 400GB cap.

sometimes you can't have your cake and eat it too.

500GB is a complete joke for a GigE connection, but personally I wouldn't have an issue even if the connection was dropped down to 500Mbps. I can still transfer a hell of a lot at that speed and that's still many many times faster than anything the incumbents offer.

it's not a joke really. the speed of the connection shouldn't affect what you need, it's just faster to get what you want when you want it. it's also extremely amazing for sharing and sending large files to people.

it's almost ridiculous that you think it costs them nothing from transit providers to provide a constant gigabit per second. i know you and most of us here likely wouldn't use it, but there's always that jack ass that ruins it for the others, so limits have to be set.

furthermore i don't think simply being reduced to 500Mbit and not have a cap is anything realistic to them in terms of cost.

anyways, compare this to 150/10 cable service and caps or even 250/250 and 175/175 FTTH services from Bell/Rogers and it's insanely better, not only the top speed (4-5 times faster) but the overall monthly costs and increased caps.

is there room for a more expensive package from them with double the cap? sure but they're just launching now.

rednekcowboy
join:2012-03-21

rednekcowboy

Member

said by jmck:

said by 34764170:

said by jmck:

they don't want people seeding torrents 24/7 and running seedboxes for their friends or hosting a rack full of servers in your home. 500GB cap is good considering TPIA cable providers are doing 300-400GB caps and the cost is cheaper than Start's 150/10 cable service with a 400GB cap.

sometimes you can't have your cake and eat it too.

500GB is a complete joke for a GigE connection, but personally I wouldn't have an issue even if the connection was dropped down to 500Mbps. I can still transfer a hell of a lot at that speed and that's still many many times faster than anything the incumbents offer.

it's not a joke really. the speed of the connection shouldn't affect what you need, it's just faster to get what you want when you want it. it's also extremely amazing for sharing and sending large files to people.

it's almost ridiculous that you think it costs them nothing from transit providers to provide a constant gigabit per second. i know you and most of us here likely wouldn't use it, but there's always that jack ass that ruins it for the others, so limits have to be set.

furthermore i don't think simply being reduced to 500Mbit and not have a cap is anything realistic to them in terms of cost.

anyways, compare this to 150/10 cable service and caps or even 250/250 and 175/175 FTTH services from Bell/Rogers and it's insanely better, not only the top speed (4-5 times faster) but the overall monthly costs and increased caps.

is there room for a more expensive package from them with double the cap? sure but they're just launching now.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not going on the attack here (even though it may seem that way). I think it's awesome that someone is offering this package, however there has to be a better way to implement it.

As I said above, crippling the connection is not the way to go about doing this. 10Mbps would be unusable for some people and makes this offering a "no-go" for many right off the hop.

I know transit costs are not cheap, however there are different ways of implementing things. Say you blow through your cap in the first week, cut the speed in half. If you blow through more, cut it in half again. If the user continually presents a problem, that user gets terminated. All this can be laid out in the TOS.

To go from 1000Mbps to 10Mbps in 1 shot is way too drastic.
InvalidError
join:2008-02-03

InvalidError

Member

said by rednekcowboy:

I know transit costs are not cheap, however there are different ways of implementing things. Say you blow through your cap in the first week, cut the speed in half. If you blow through more, cut it in half again.

Trying to guarantee any particular speed at any usage levels at such high speeds is nearly impossible. I doubt they have the intention of providing anywhere near full 1Gbps during peak hours so for the cap to have any effect on peak-hours traffic, the speed limit approach would have to limit speed to a fraction of their performance target for light users. This is most likely where their 10Mbps choice came from.

With my Ethernet CoS/WRED proposition, whatever bandwidth is available gets dynamically distributed based on load and priority. If the weighs are at 9:1 and you have 100 low-usage subscribers attempting to use full speed and 100 heavy users attempting to do the same on 10Gbps worth of available transit, the heavy subscribers would end up with ~10Mbps each while the light users would get ~90Mbps. If the combined total bandwidth from light users is only 6Gbps, heavy subscribers would get ~40Mbps instead. No bandwidth goes to waste due to under-used links from speed caps. Light users still get much better experience than heavy users, heavy users still get to have high speeds when light users are under-using transit and once CoS-tagging/WRED are setup, the network takes care of itself on a PHB basis so the only thing left to worry about is physical upgrades to keep worst-case light-user speeds above the minimum target.
34764170 (banned)
join:2007-09-06
Etobicoke, ON

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said by jmck:

it's not a joke really. the speed of the connection shouldn't affect what you need, it's just faster to get what you want when you want it. it's also extremely amazing for sharing and sending large files to people.

it's almost ridiculous that you think it costs them nothing from transit providers to provide a constant gigabit per second. i know you and most of us here likely wouldn't use it, but there's always that jack ass that ruins it for the others, so limits have to be set.

furthermore i don't think simply being reduced to 500Mbit and not have a cap is anything realistic to them in terms of cost.

anyways, compare this to 150/10 cable service and caps or even 250/250 and 175/175 FTTH services from Bell/Rogers and it's insanely better, not only the top speed (4-5 times faster) but the overall monthly costs and increased caps.

is there room for a more expensive package from them with double the cap? sure but they're just launching now.

It is a joke, period. I don't care about a GigE connection that is that crippled. I'd rather have a 200Mbps connection with no cap over a crippled ass GigE connection.

No one is expecting a GigE connection with sustained throughput. Only you are thinking like this.

Except it is realistic. Stop drinking the kool-aid of the incumbent carriers who act as if their networks are built of gold and covered in diamonds.

It isn't insanely better to me when its taking a step backwards. The monthly costs and caps are not better. I don't care about being on a connection with a link speed of GigE. That's only for bragging rights; e-penis +1.

jmck
formerly 'shaded'
join:2010-10-02
Ottawa, ON

jmck

Member

so stay with Rogers or Bell then? i don't know what to say. some people want the massively fast upload, and some people want to be able to get all their cloud data at a moment's notice when restoring a system.

so it's not for you, great. move along or rather stay with what you have and be happy. i'm sure they'll be tweaking and making changes going forward, no reason to get all butt-hurt because of it.
34764170 (banned)
join:2007-09-06
Etobicoke, ON

1 edit

34764170 (banned)

Member

said by jmck:

so stay with Rogers or Bell then? i don't know what to say. some people want the massively fast upload, and some people want to be able to get all their cloud data at a moment's notice when restoring a system.

so it's not for you, great. move along or rather stay with what you have and be happy. i'm sure they'll be tweaking and making changes going forward, no reason to get all butt-hurt because of it.

I don't even live in Montreal so it doesn't matter. But they should be offering other options other than just a burstable GigE connection and a small cap.

I wasn't getting butt hurt. You're interpreting what I am saying.

rednekcowboy
join:2012-03-21

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said by jmck:

so stay with Rogers or Bell then? i don't know what to say. some people want the massively fast upload, and some people want to be able to get all their cloud data at a moment's notice when restoring a system.

so it's not for you, great. move along or rather stay with what you have and be happy. i'm sure they'll be tweaking and making changes going forward, no reason to get all butt-hurt because of it.

No one is getting all butt hurt at all, with the exception of maybe you. We are all having an intelligent discussion about a system not yet set in stone and I would imagine part of the reasan Skynet started this thread is for some feedback.

I even said that I'm happy that someone is providing this option, however I don't agree with severely crippling a connection, to the point that it's almost unusable, because someone is a heavy user. If you are that concerned with it, don't offer that high of a speed, increase the cap and then deal with the heavy users through traffic shaping, but again not down to 10 Mbps. Be reasonable about it and if someone is constantly over-using then terminate them.

Going from a GigE connection down to 10mbps for using 500GB worth of data really is laughable, or at least it would be if it wasn't seriously being discussed.

Companies like Acanac offer unlimited (albeit at a much lower speed) with a stipulation that they may have to reduce speeds during peak (where it costs the most) but even they only cut the speed in half and they have never implemented that yet.
despe666
join:2009-06-20
Montreal, QC

despe666

Member

I guess we can just go to all the other providers that offer any kind of GigE fiber connections for 89$. Oh wait... I have no particular reason for defending Skynet, but you guys are acting like spoiled brats.
InvalidError
join:2008-02-03

1 recommendation

InvalidError to rednekcowboy

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said by rednekcowboy:

I even said that I'm happy that someone is providing this option, however I don't agree with severely crippling a connection, to the point that it's almost unusable, because someone is a heavy user.

I don't see that much of a problem with it. If you use a residential connection much more heavily than intended to, something has to happen.

Why should a company refrain from offering high speeds to occasional/burst users just because heavy users who may have a different idea of what "normal" use is than the ISP exist?

As for what the minimum speed might be, if SkyNet gets their transit for ~$1/Mbps, has internal distribution costs of ~$1/Mbps and amortization on their fiber plant costs them ~$50/sub/month, they should be able to afford aiming for ~20Mbps.

If you look at Google Fiber, even Google does not like the fact that their RESIDENTIAL internet service is getting a lot more attention from businesses and would-be online entrepreneurs setting up shops in residential neighborhoods to abuse Google's service than the normal people Google was aiming for. How this will ultimately play out remains to be seen.

rednekcowboy
join:2012-03-21

rednekcowboy

Member

said by InvalidError:

As for what the minimum speed might be, if SkyNet gets their transit for ~$1/Mbps, has internal distribution costs of ~$1/Mbps and amortization on their fiber plant costs them ~$50/sub/month, they should be able to afford aiming for ~20Mbps.

20Mbps wouldn't be bad. It would still allow the connection to be usable.

All you other guys getting offended, there is no need to take this so personally. We're just suggesting possible alternatives/better ways to implement this. Personally, I don't see a need for a GigE connection for personal use whatsoever other than to say you have a GigE connection, ie bragging rights.

Actually, if you really want to get into it (and I'm not talking about skynet here so don't get your panties all into a bunch):

There is no way a personal user needs this kind of speed. I run a lot of devices on my network (4 laptops, an htpc, 3 gaming consoles, 2 cell phones and 2 ipods and soon to be 2 iptv boxes and voip) and I have more than enough with my 30 Mbps connection.

If they just kept the speeds at a reasonable level, we could have caps at a reasonable level and costs would be, well, reasonable. These insane speed packages that the few use and abuse is skyrocketing the cost for the rest of us.
InvalidError
join:2008-02-03

1 recommendation

InvalidError

Member

said by rednekcowboy:

If they just kept the speeds at a reasonable level, we could have caps at a reasonable level and costs would be, well, reasonable. These insane speed packages that the few use and abuse is skyrocketing the cost for the rest of us.

Actually, lower speeds to light/moderate use subscribers may ultimately be more expensive to provide when all the GbE equipment is already there since providing lower speeds means (even more) grossly under-utilizing the equipment most of the time and increases missed opportunities to complete one usage burst before another begins.

By giving everyone Gbps access by default, this allows everyone to complete whatever they are doing as fast as available capacity will allow at any given time, which is the most efficient way to run a network when managed properly.

What is expensive is not the burst speed. It is the North American consumer's strong sense of entitlement to full-time full-speed that raises costs due to extra over-building and reduces speeds to mitigate the magnitude of that over-building. Once you get rid of that, things get much cheaper and more efficient.

Practically no speed guarantees is how ISPs all over the world manage to offer 100+Mbps service for as low as $30/month.

rednekcowboy
join:2012-03-21

rednekcowboy

Member

said by InvalidError:

said by rednekcowboy:

If they just kept the speeds at a reasonable level, we could have caps at a reasonable level and costs would be, well, reasonable. These insane speed packages that the few use and abuse is skyrocketing the cost for the rest of us.

Actually, lower speeds to light/moderate use subscribers may ultimately be more expensive to provide when all the GbE equipment is already there since providing lower speeds means (even more) grossly under-utilizing the equipment most of the time and increases missed opportunities to complete one usage burst before another begins.

By giving everyone Gbps access by default, this allows everyone to complete whatever they are doing as fast as available capacity will allow at any given time, which is the most efficient way to run a network when managed properly.

What is expensive is not the burst speed. It is the North American consumer's strong sense of entitlement to full-time full-speed that raises costs due to extra over-building and reduces speeds to mitigate the magnitude of that over-building. Once you get rid of that, things get much cheaper and more efficient.

Practically no speed guarantees is how ISPs all over the world manage to offer 100+Mbps service for as low as $30/month.

On a hardware level, I'd have to take your word for it. I am, in no way, shape or form, a network engineer but I will say that, taking into consideration what you say, the more GigE connections you have, the more hardware and maintenance costs you will incur vs having X number of subs at smaller packages. How that translates into cost and time management costs to administer I have no idea.....

I'm talking about a billing/cap level/ratio. By offering an insane speed that no one needs with a small cap, it allows charging more for the "normal speed" packages while combining it with even lower caps.

If you provide a GigE connection with a 1Tb cap (instead of a 500GB cap) that allows for higher caps with the lower speed package. However providing a GigE connection with a 500 GB cap means that you will not get a 500Gb cap at a 30Mbps package but probably only a 100GB/less cap (theoretically) because incumbents tie caps to the speed offerings. The lower the speed, the lower the cap. So you want a high a cap as possible on the highest speed tier so that the lower speed packages also gets the advantage of a higher cap.....

But alas, we are severely derailing this thread as this part of the discussion really does not relate to what Fibremedia is offering.
InvalidError
join:2008-02-03

InvalidError

Member

said by rednekcowboy:

On a hardware level, I'd have to take your word for it. I am, in no way, shape or form, a network engineer but I will say that, taking into consideration what you say, the more GigE connections you have, the more hardware and maintenance costs you will incur vs having X number of subs at smaller packages. How that translates into cost and time management costs to administer I have no idea.....

What is the cost difference of providing a 1Gbps ONT with a 1Gbps port on the OLT to a subscriber who wants 30Mbps vs one who wants 1Gbps? The same since it is all the same equipment anyway, just like how wholesale VDSL2 costs the same for 15/10 and 50/10 - same equipment, hardware and administrative costs regardless of speed and things are more or less the same on cable too. The ISP saves little to nothing from offering lower speed tiers there.

If the OLT has 432 ports with 2x10GbE uplinks, what is the interconnect cost difference between allowing 432 ports to run at full 1Gbps vs 30Mbps? None since the two ports are required for redundancy regardless of whether or not they are required for bandwidth. This means ~45Mbps of uplink available per port and with an utilization ratio likely much lower than 10:1, typical performance should be well over 500Mbps at this point.

Beyond that, we enter the core network where bandwidth within a given chassis is dirt-cheap so the name of the game is merely deciding the balance between available transit capacity across core routers vs potential demand from attached subscribers and minimum speed target.

So the total cost difference between providing 30Mbps over infrastructure meant to carry 1Gbps? Nearly $0 since most of the equipment is required regardless of speed until average load per subscriber exceeds 40Mbps or so at which point additional interconnects at a one-time cost of 7.5-10k$/10Gbps amortized over 5+ years and 2000+ subscribers (less than $0.50/sub/month each) would be required between OLTs and routers. Until then, the only significant capacity-bound cost is external transit.

How soon is average load likely to reach 40Mbps? Sandvine and Cisco's reports say average usage is still under 20GB/month which would be under 0.1Mbps average load; shockingly low considering how much of a vested interest they have in inflating figures as much as possible - that's less than 1Mbps even if you squeeze it in a 4h peak-hours window. Most people on DSLR likely still use less than 300GB/month and that would work out to 1Mbps average use, 6Mbps if you lump it all in a 4h window. So, average usage from average people reaching 40Mbps is not going to happen any time soon.

The reason why incumbents lump higher speeds with higher caps is because higher speeds do not really cost them anything more to provide as long as usage remains generally intermittent.

rocca
Start.ca
Premium Member
join:2008-11-16
London, ON

1 edit

rocca

Premium Member

I don't normally comment on other ISP threads, but I've been through this several times so thought it'd be relevant.

The issue isn't with the average user, ie let's say the average user is 1Mbps at peak for easy math. The problem with higher maximum speeds is "how much more than the average a single customer can impact costs", ie with a 20Mbps connection the worst a single customer can do is 20x the average whereas with 1Gbps that same single customer can do 1000x the average. Put even more simply, a single user can cost you 1000x the average, which is what you've based your pricing model on.

This is why unlimited plans on higher speed packages become much more problematic/risky. It only takes 0.1% of the customer base using it maxed out at peak to double the overall average capacity cost. Ie 1000 users @ 1Mbps = 1000Mbps or 999 users @ 1Mbps + 1 user @ 1000Mbps = 1999Mbps - therefore that 1 user (or 0.1% of the customer base) can double the average costs for everyone else. Or if 1% of the customers use it fully at peak then it's 990 users @ 1Mbps + 10 users @ 1000Mbps = 10990Mbps, or increasing the average cost by 11x for the other 99%.

I certainly won't comment on what appropriate shaping/triggers are for any given ISP, but I can't imagine anyone can argue that $89 for unlimited guaranteed-1Gbps-speed-at-all-times is really possible at this time? If so then I'm severely overpaying for my transit. Overall I suspect their package will do quite well and kudos to them for the work they are doing. As long as any company is upfront about their policies or limits then people can make an informed decision on whether that product makes sense for them and just because it doesn't work for every person doesn't mean it won't work for most.

edit: For what it's worth, I completely agree with the comment about "as long as usage remains generally intermittent", yes, in that case 30Mbps vs 1000Mbps for the typical average user does not have a significant cost difference. The issue is that as speeds increase the non-typical-sustained-usage-user has the ability to individually skew numbers by a large factor.
InvalidError
join:2008-02-03

InvalidError

Member

said by rocca:

This is why unlimited plans on higher speed packages become much more problematic/risky.

It is neither problematic nor risky if you make no speed guarantees or only very low ones.

If you have 999 users pulling 1Mbps and someone comes along trying to pull 1Gbps with only 1Gbps of uplink available, everyone gets ~1Mbps. If you had 10 subscribers doing 100Mbps each and an 11th jumps in trying to do 1Gbps, all 11 of them drop to ~90Mbps. Zero change in costs - your heavy subscriber cannot cause network usage to magically rise to 200% of existing capacity so your cost can never exceed 100% of what you configured.

But to let links run at ~100% all the time without severely degrading light/medium users' experience, you need to apply CoS/QoS with appropriate PHBs across the network. Once that is done, you only need to worry about upgrading capacity when your load from light/moderate subscribers warrants it while heavy subscribers automatically get whatever additional leftovers this may create.

This approach turns the whole capacity provisioning problem upside-down: instead of worrying about provisioning for peak-hours bandwidth required to maintain the illusion of dedicated bandwidth to end-users, you simply let congestion and CoS/QoS/WRED dynamically sort speeds out and only need to arrange for extra capacity when speeds drop below acceptable levels.

What is most cost-effective? Links that run at 20-30% of their peak-hour rates 16-20h/day or links that run at 70-100% 24/7? In an ideal world, isn't (closer-to-)100% 24/7 exactly what ISPs would like to achieve with things like off-peak unlimited - eliminate the 3:1 to 5:1 disparity between peak-hours and dead-of-the-night?

That's why giving up on the illusion of dedicated speed reduces costs so much - even more so when you control your own first-mile so you do not need to worry about inefficient and fragmented incumbent interconnects.
prairiesky
join:2008-12-08
canada

prairiesky

Member

@ invalid. I'd agree 100% with what you're saying, i've contemplated the same thing with my network. But the end user doesn't get it or understand the intricacies of running the network. They want predictability and It doesn't matter that it's super fast during the day, what matters is that their speed tests differ from hour to hour. It's not an easy spot to be in. From my perspective, I'm paying for transit that I'm not using most of the day. It doesn't matter if it gets put to use as I'm still paying for it.... it all comes down to the customer and their expectations
34764170 (banned)
join:2007-09-06
Etobicoke, ON

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I am perfectly fine with what you have proposed. As a so called "heavy user" (which I think is nonsense for so little traffic) I have zero expectation of full speeds or anywhere near it; as long as the connection is providing reasonable speeds (10 - 20 Mbps is not) unlike the "light" users that would complain like crazy if they are not seeing pretty much full speed even at peak hours. As long as the upstream backhaul links are not congested and upgraded appropriately then that would still allow for reasonable speeds and no ridiculous arbitrary cap.
InvalidError
join:2008-02-03

InvalidError to prairiesky

Member

to prairiesky
said by prairiesky:

it all comes down to the customer and their expectations

Hence the importance of breaking expectations.

North America is one of very few markets in the world where people have grown to expect/demand full speed all the time. Until that sense of entitlement gets broken, there will be no way to achieve high speeds without caps for a reasonable price.
said by prairiesky:

From my perspective, I'm paying for transit that I'm not using most of the day.

ISPs face the same problem too: they have to grossly over-provision and over-build for peak-hours to meet people's expectations of full-speeds during that time and most of it goes to waste for the rest of the day.

No matter how the problem gets sliced and diced, people will always find ways and reasons to feel like they're paying for someone else. There isn't anything that can be done about that other than decide which version of it is the lesser evil but that too is up to each person's "preferences."