owenhome
keeper of the magic blue smoke
Premium
join:2002-07-13
Wichita Falls, TX
 ·RoadRunner Cable
 ·AT&T Southwest
edit:
September 12th, @12:57PM
| reply to kamm
Re: Slingbox issues have a solution: pay per bit
To be honest, you're both right.
Every ISP oversells their capacity. This has been a constant back to the days of dial-up. For this very reason a dial-up provider only needed 30 lines and a T1 to support 200 users. Nothing has changed through today.
Your not going to find capping on DSL, not for the fact they don't oversell, which they do, but rather because the ISP generally owns their pipes, unlike some cable companies which have to buy their bandwidth from someone else.
Yes this is an issue of greed, but more so, it's an issue of practicality. There's no reason to upgrade an entire network because a handful of users are taxing it. Service providers, like Easynews, are correct in stating that 10-20 users put by far the biggest strain on their bandwidth, while the thousands of other users cost relatively nothing to service. The way their business model, and that of every ISP works, is simply on the law of averages. Average usage, average bandwidth, average cost, average profit, consolidating the entire user base down to a number. When they have aggressive users that throws that average out, they let them know.
This would be an entirely different situation if they designed their network in such a way that every user would have 100% of their bandwidth available to them, 100% of the time. But it's not, and there's no reason to. 99% of the networks capacity would go unused. That's why they build the network to support that 1%. No more is needed. Until, of course, little Johnny's warez fetish takes over and he's using 100s of times more than the average user.
Verizon, as it's well known, does not have the network resources in place to support aggressive users. They brought 3rd gen into play before they had the resources to effectively support it. They're getting better, day by day, but for the most part, EVDO from Verizon, at present, depends on low usage to function. As such, they have to take sometimes seemly drastic measures against customers to keep it running. Once these tooth-cutting issues are done and over with, we will likely hear little to nothing more about it. But for now, while EVDO is still in its infancy, and some towers are still being serviced by such things as their original T1 (gag) while having to provide service for however many people are connected to it, they will have to keep usage down.
I will be the first one to agree, we already pay for our bandwidth, but only to a point. And I will also be the first one standing up yelling at the ISP's to "tell it like it is" but the plain and simple fact of the matter is, if we were actually paying for our bandwidth, we would be paying multitudes more than we are now. The cost of bringing the network up to support 100% of every users max capacity would be astronomical, and those costs would be met by astronomical charges to its users. If an ISP specifies "unlimited" than that's exactly what it should be. If they have a magic cap, they should include such information in their advertising to avoid such situations. The FTC has failed us here, as this is obviously deceptive. But at the same time, we have to understand why these caps are in place, at least for "some" ISP's (like Verizon wireless).
But some other ISP's drastically oversell their network and/or they don't want to pay for any more bandwidth than absolutely required. This speed craze ISP's are going through now is making the situation even worse. They want to keep their customers, so they jack up speeds more and more, but they don't want to sink any more money in their network. These are by far the worst. In order to support average users, the network is already greatly overtaxed, it's already tapped out. But they are trying to keep costs down to remain profitable, so they don't invest any more to bring up capacity. These ISP's are the scum of the earth in my opinion. They depend on average users because that's all they can support. When an aggressive user comes about, using 100s of times more bandwidth than an average user, that throws their barley balanced network over the edge. These ISP's go after aggressive users with great resolve. Throttling them down, killing speeds, tossing down ridiculous caps, and seemingly driving them off like a bad employee. Hopefully, over time, such ISP's will be forced out of business or forced to support their users.
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Never argue with a fool, people might not know the difference. |
