TekSavvy → Why are uploads "free"?

I can understand why downloads aren't free, but why are uploads free?

There's always talk about a download line costing x if used 100 percent, why is there no talk of the same for uploads?

Hello Fefrie,

Uploads are free as we have to buy symmetrical interconnects with our vendors (100Mbps/100Mbps - 10Gbps/10Gbps), as such a vast majority of the upload on these interconnects remains unused.

Regards,

Joseph

Because the last mile connections are all asymmetrical, but the entire back end network is all symmetrical..

Once you've paid the $x/mbps, it has been paid for in both directions, might as well try and use it

Does cCable in quebec also have unlimited upload?

Yes

I think at one time (maybe even today?), ISPs used to offer webhosting services, in order to take advantage of (or try to monetize) that imbalance (since webhosting is mostly "uploads" from that perspective, the bandwidth is "free").

IOW uploads aren't "free" after all. That cost is being "subsidized" by all the people who stream videos on Netflix et al

A better question then is why are uploads so limited in speed then? Just to limit home servers?

We can only offer the packages that our vendors offer to their retail customers.

There are technical reasons.. No commonly used data communication protocol is inherently full duplex. I must be forgetting something fundamental, because I know full duplex on a single link is possible (by subtracting the transmitted signal from the total measured on the receiver), some other factor makes it impractical. Whatever, it is never done.

Copper Ethernet gets around this by having extra wires, a pair for each direction, basically. DSL and Docsis get around this by frequency division multiplexing. Downloading on some frequencies, uploading on others. That means the provider has to make a decision about how to allocate upload and download bandwidth.

Here's a chart of how spectrum is allocated in DSL:
»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As ··· plan.svg

I believe that DSL could theoretically reverse the speed split pretty easily, but Docsis has other issues. Upload on Docsis is limited to the lowest frequencies due to power output of the modem--it would have to be much beefier, and expensive, to output enough power to make use of high frequency channels. Docsis has further problems with interference at some frequencies:
»Re: Cisco DPC3848 - Modem gateway

GPON, for FTTH, uses wavelength division multiplexing--different colours of light for upstream vs downstream, essentially. That relaxes the trade off a lot, it is a lot like copper Ethernet having wires dedicated for each direction. It still seems like there is some asymmetry in upstream and downstream data rates though.. Maybe somebody can add some details on this..

there's no subsidization going on with uploads, it really comes at no cost to TSI because of how the billing from it's providers works out.

nobody ends up paying for a customer that ends up using their upload 24/7 at max speed.

I used the terms "free" and "subsidizing" in quotes for a reason.Only because of the asymmetric imbalance between media streaming and other high volume download usage vs. file sharers, cloud sharers and other uploaders. The former create the situation and pay for the extra costs of provisioning it that allows the latter to do their "free" uploads. In that sense they subsidize them.