koitsu
Premium
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
| reply to G_Poobah
Re: Translation
The true/core problem has nothing to do with the actual ISP -- it has to do with the arrangements they have with their upstream provider (Level3, Cogent, Verio, Abovenet, AT&T, MCI, Sprint, Telia, etc. etc.).
In these scenarios, the ISP is bound by their agreement to only utilise a certain percentage of traffic (and if they exceed that amount, they are billed for extra usage -- and this isn't cheap, as it adds up quickly). The funniest thing is that many of these providers sell "solutions" which involve non-symmetric measurements for bandwidth usage. In English: they expect you to use only 20% of your upstream, while it's fine to use 90% of your downstream. Remember, this is applying to large pipes such as OC48s.
Commercial connectivity (i.e. non-residential) is a purely symmetrical medium and always has been. That DS1 you buy gets you 1.5mbit up AND 1.5mbit down -- symmetrically (some people call this "3.0mbit" but that's generally incorrect).
There is absolutely NO REASON OR JUSTIFICATION behind differentiating between the direction of traffic flow. Downstream, upstream, it's all the same. So who's really to blame?
Marketing/sales.
The instant these jhonkas figured out that different kinds-of services utilise bandwith differently, they jumped at the chance to create -- financially -- a difference between a standard 45mbit DS3 and a 95th percentile DS3, a utilisation-based DS3, or any other sort-of non-symmetric method. For example, web server farms will be *sending* lots of traffic, but usually won't be downloading much -- in this situation, a customer may want to buy a package that has a lot of upstream capability but only pays for, say, 512kbit of downstream traffic. So in the case one of the administrators downloads a 650MB ISO from that server farm, well, they'll get billed extra.
It's all about marketing. And let me tell you -- it didn't used to be this way. When you purchased a pipe, you got exactly what speed the physical pipe was -- and you got to use as much of that pipe as you wanted (i.e. 100% in both directions). Now, marketing has created little stipulations and other madness to try and "save people money" when the actual goal is to hope they exceed limits which results in the seller *making* more money.
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Making life hard for others since 1977. In memory of 2005... |
