Will ISPs Spoil Online Video? 301
mrspin writes "last100 writes: "With an ever greater amount of video being consumed online, many Internet users are in for a shock. There's a dirty little secret in the broadband industry: Internet Service Providers (ISPs) don't have the capacity to deliver the bandwidth that they claim to offer. One way ISPs attempt to conceal this problem is to place a cap of say 1GB per-month per user, something which is common in the UK for many of the lower-cost broadband packages on the market. Considering that a mere three hours viewing of Joost (the new online video service from the founders of Skype) would all but use up this monthly allowance, it's clear that lots of Internet users aren't invited to the party. But what about those who (like me) pay more for 'unlimited' broadband access? There shouldn't be a problem, right? Wrong." The article then goes on to discuss the recent trend of bandwidth throttling based on techniques such as packet shaping which punishes p2p traffic whether it's legitimate or not."
Why not just let us pay for the damn bandwidth? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm with Zen Internet, based in the UK. I get x amount of bandwidth a month and when that runs out I pay for a top-up.
What's wrong with paying for what you use? Why deliberately degrade your service when you can simply get the customer to pay the difference?
Simon
Re:Why not just let us pay for the damn bandwidth? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why not just let us pay for the damn bandwidth? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why not just let us pay for the damn bandwidth? (Score:5, Insightful)
For instance, my current cable connection is advertised as 6 Mbit, but there is no limit, except the max speed, to how much data I can transfer in a month.
Internet is not the only thing sold in this way. Anything that many people use, but only a small amount use at a given time, is sold this way. There isn't enough roadway for everyone in New York to drive their car at the same time. There aren't enough cell phone towers for everyone to talk on the phone at the same time. I'm sure there are plenty more examples.
The problem here is that usage patterns are changing, and more people are going to want to use the service at the same time now. (By use I mean use 100%, instead of the small % that is typical.) Somehow, I think we'll survive this crisis. Sweden has internet connections to the house that are over 10x the bandwidth that mine is. ISPs will simply have to upgrade their infrastructure to handle it if they want to survive. If they don't, someone else will.
And let's not forget all the 'dark fiber' out there and wireless technologies that have been showing up lately. It could very well be that we decide not to use physical connections at all, and instead relay through a satellite or cell-towers for internet.
This article is either scaremongering or just plain boredom speaking. Someone recently found out about this situation and suddenly thinks they know more than everyone else in the industry, and decided to tell us the sky is falling. -yawn-
Re:Why not just let us pay for the damn bandwidth? (Score:5, Informative)
that's where things diverge. a lot of ISPs have transfer limits, which, more often than not, are not specificed (comcast for example).
Re:Why not just let us pay for the damn bandwidth? (Score:4, Informative)
The 4 packages Telus offers (per their website) are:
Download/Upload usage
60 GB/mo. - $45.95/month
60 GB/mo. - $40.95/month
30 GB/mo. - $31.95/month
10 GB/mo. - $16.95/month
source (http://www.mytelus.com/internet/highspeed/prices
The 4 packages Shaw offers (per their website) are:
Download/Upload usage
150 GB/mo. - $99.95/month
100 GB/mo. - $48.95/month
60 GB/mo. - $38.95/month
10 GB/mo. - $29.95/month ($20 if you have TV as well)
source (http://www.shaw.ca/en-ca/ProductsServices/Intern
As always there is fine print - ie, Service Agreements with Telus and you need to purchase your Modem with Shaw but I'm posting here re bandwidth and that information is clearly listed with limits.
Actual speeds etc. (Score:3, Informative)
Telus
Down/Up/Cap/Cost
6Mbps/1Mbps/60GB/$51
3Mbps/640Kbps/60GB/$46
1.5Mbps/512Kbps/30GB/$37
256Kbps/128Kbps/10GB/$22
Shaw
Down/Up/Cap/Cost
25/1/150/$100
10/1/100/$49
5/512/60/$39
256/128/10/$30
I believe I have the prices without any bundling. If you buy other services, then it can be a bit cheaper.
This is marketing fallout, plain and simple (Score:5, Interesting)
When broadband became widely available, it worked for them to push speed and ignore the issue of traffic volume as only a small minority of subscribers were capable of using large amounts of bandwidth. Safe to advertise the unlimited abyss Internet service as it appeared that way for all intents and purposes to the subscribers.
The explosion of Internet video (and other rich content) has now provided the catalyst for the "average user" to generate significant data transfer volume, and it was never the case that they could actually provide unlimited access to everyone all the time. It was a statistical game really =).
What would interest me is what effect this is going to have on the cost of broadband in the near future. This is my living so I'm content paying more for a better quality connection; however, what kind of service can the "average user" realistically expect for $30/mo. or whatever. A marketing faux pas if they end up hurting their own business getting users used to the idea that unlimited data volume in and out of your home was actually something you can get cheaply.
--
~AC
Re:This is marketing fallout, plain and simple (Score:4, Insightful)
You're assuming that ISPs have a recognizable business ethic. They don't. You're further assuming that they are interested in providing the best possible service scenario for the fees they charge. They aren't. Worse yet, your fundamental assumption that criminalizing encryption and giving ISPs total control of the type of traffic crossing their networks would do anything but trigger yet another round of price increases and lowered service levels. These simply aren't people that can be trusted with that kind of power, and ultimately that is what the Net Neutrality controversy is all about.
Look up the term "common carrier", realize that ISPs (even those that are also phone companies) are generally not common carriers, and maybe you'll grasp what your proposal actually means to the consumer. In any event, your thoughts are local in scope: the Internet has been a global phenomenon for some time and all outlawing encryption in one nation will do is help competing nations, one way or another. Bad idea.
Also, I have no idea where you get the flawed idea that my being able to encrypt my own communications to prevent anyone from reading it has anything to do with "avoiding security" or "hacking". You need to understand what those words mean first. I'm sure there are any number of Slashdotters that would be happy to fill in your knowledge gaps for you.
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That is, of course, true, and will, of course, happen, eventually. The problem is that the telcos have been recieving government subsidies for years, for the express purpose of upgrading the infrastructure. To date, they've esentially squandered this money.
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BTW, your comma to word ratio was 6/11 (for the first sentence)! Awesome! You ROCK!
Re:Why not just let us pay for the damn bandwidth? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not true. In fact, the only place where I see bandwidth advertised clearly and truthfully is in web hosting, where you simply buy a fixed amount of data transfer, usually on a 10 or 100 mbit pipe. No way you'll saturate the thing with whatever you're paying for monthly, but at least you know exactly what you're paying for.
My ISP, and maybe your ISP, are likely exceptions. I pretty much have 1 Mbit, pretty much all the time. I can usually saturate it for weeks at a time with BitTorrent, and the worst I ever slow down to is half.
But most ISPs aren't as honest. They sell "burst bandwidth", which is their way of weaseling out of any responsibility. They'll claim "UNLIMITED", but what they mean by that is, you can stay connected as long as you want, and transfer as much as you can, without paying extra. They don't mean that you'll be able to saturate the 6 Mbits 24/7, unless no one else is connected.
And there are occasionally traffic jams, which suggests the infrastructure there could be improved. But whatever, I'm not paying a monthly fee specifically for the purpose of driving on roads in New York. You could argue that I'm paying my taxes there (I live in Iowa, but that's not the point), but the tax forms don't come with a glossy flier with big bold letters saying "UNLIMITED driving!"
I'm not sure how it works with cell phone towers, but I honestly cannot think of anything else that is sold by claiming you get UNLIMITED service, and then not delivering. The only thing that comes close is overbooking, which seems deceptive to me anyway.
More likely, us geeks have known about this all along, and any publicity about the situation might help encourage ISPs to go light up that dark fiber, research that wireless, and actually deliver the bandwidth they've been selling us. It's kind of like, most articles about DRM read to Slashdotters as "Well, duh!", but not everyone even knows DRM exists.
Re:Why not just let us pay for the damn bandwidth? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why not just let us pay for the damn bandwidth? (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, if the ISP would just admit to how much they are willing to sell you (think cell phones), then maybe this will work.
Re:Why not just let us pay for the damn bandwidth? (Score:5, Insightful)
The obvious question is why don't the ISPs go and buy more upstream bandwidth (funded by people who are willing to pay extra for more downloads each month)
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Re:Why not just let us pay for the damn bandwidth? (Score:4, Insightful)
Easy (Score:3, Insightful)
Some companies even offer free broadband with their phone line packages.
It's this drive for cheapness at the expensive of service quality that is ruining broadband for those who see it as mainstream entertainment, not something to shop online with and check email.
I still pay a premium price for my service £35 a month for 2MB ADSL.
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And yet what I have is nothing compared to what the Japanese or Koreans have...some of them can get fast ethernet speeds.
Part of the problem is American and British ISPs have been allowed to get away wit
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If I go for the £17.99 package I get 8MB and 2GB use limit.
As you can see, the UK ADSL market is screwed. BT have a stranglehold on the UK market still.
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Who is your ISP? Surely it can't be one of the major U.S. cable companies (AT&T, Optimum Online, Cox, etc.)?
You're getting ripped off, dude (Score:5, Informative)
Within a year I should get 50 Mbps (symmetrical) FTTH.
http://www.free.fr [www.free.fr]
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Truth in advertising is a prisoner's dilemma. "OK, I'll honestly describe the service I'm offering... right after you do."
Simple (Score:2)
I have the same problem here. Recently they 'increased' bandwidth to us for our *unlimited* useage, but complained when we used it: 'its effecting our other customers '. WTF?
There's good reasons for not metering (Score:2)
Plus users can get nasty surprises: someone hijacks your wifi and downloads pr0n, that kind of shit.
By going flat rate you don't have to deal with this, and instead of spending money on administrative & police costs, you just spend the cash on actual bandwidth. I know, that's just
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Black Cat Networks do native IPv6 though.
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Re:Why not just let us pay for the damn bandwidth? (Score:5, Interesting)
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UK and US ISPs really need to shape up (Score:5, Interesting)
This problem pops up regularly on the web. I feel sorry for you people that actually encounter it IRL, because in Sweden, and I'm sure in many other countries aswell, this is not an issue.
24/1 or 21/3 Mbps DSL lines in Sweden go off for ~25/mo. If fiber is available 100/10 Mbps go for the same price. It's been this way for the last five years, and people have been playing online games, sharing files et.c. like crazy. I've never heard of anybody that had problems with their ISPs for too heavy traffic, not even with the cheaper plans.
And right now, the good old bastards at ComHem is digging to provide 4 Gbps bandwidth for every household in my neighborhood. Granted, the plan is supposed to include TV, internet and phone lines in it, but still.
What kind of crappy ISPs do you have that limit your internet access in this way? And why the hell do you accept it? Start rioting!
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Anyhow, I'm just a strong believer in getting to use as much of MY bandwidth as I want, and not having to worry about how much data I've transferred. That's a total pain in the ass for me. Be and Virgin Media manage to offer uncapped broadband, so frankly, Zen can g
Or why don't they charge less? (Score:2)
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No fucking way (Score:2)
At least that's what my hosting service [telecomitalia.fr] charges.
Simple market economics (Score:2, Interesting)
Pitfalls of unregulated markets. (Score:4, Insightful)
Some of the most successful rollouts of high-speed broadband have happened with significant government regulation and involvement: South Korea, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Denmark, among others. Conversely, in the United States where there was less regulation to begin with (and a steady push towards even less), we have seen much less broadband growth, and we are behind other countries.
[The U.S. government actually did invest in broadband (during the Clinton administration) but since effective regulatory oversight did not accompany the money, we didn't get what we'd hoped for from the Baby Bells.]
Some argue that this is because the US has a low population density: This argument ignores the fact that there still exist within the US large, dense markets on the coasts (the Northeast corridor, from Boston to Washington, for instance), that are surely as profitable as, say, South Korea, which have remained underdeveloped. Why?
There are some things that monopolies, like governments, can better provide than many smaller competing companies; infrastructure and technology research are two of the most important ones. The simple reason for this is that monopolies can be relatively sure that they will be around in many years' time to reap the benefits of their investments, whereas in a hypercompetitive market, risk is higher and the "rational" investor will focus on smaller, shorter-term investments; this maximizes his expected return.
Full deregulation in electricity caused blackouts across California in 2001. Our deregulation so far has not produced an American broadband market comparable to other countries'. So no, the evidence I see does not lead me to blind faith in 100% laissez-faire economic policies.
See The Liberal Paradox [wikipedia.org]: Markets by themselves are not sufficient to create a Pareto-optimal society.
Occasional government involvement, and well-designed, unencumbering regulation are useful and promote growth. The world is full of prisoners' dilemmas and tragedies of the commons: Markets cannot solve these problems by themselves, which is why we need government.
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The issue here is partly regulated markets. Your example of California is *dead wrong*.
What happened in California with electrical deregulation was that part of the market (supply) was deregulated, without releasing all the intermediate price controls. As such, you had electrical distributors purchasing energy at a higher price than they were permitted to sell it, resulting in huge debts. Unsuprisingly, some unsavory individuals found ways to profit in
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Besdies, YOU paid with your taxes and it didn't work out - maybe it's time to rethink this whole "let the gov't deal with it" strategy?
And there is bandwidth limiting (Score:4, Insightful)
There seem to be a number of ISP's now doing this at peak times. Again this is probably due to the lack of capacity in their infrastructure.
Now we see BT (here in the UK), AT&T(USA) and many others starting to offer IPTV. If there is one thing that is guaranteed to burn bandwidth then it is broadcasting TV this way. Other ISP's will sure follow this but win't have the kit in place to handle the traffic.
Therefore, on one hand we have ISP's promoting 'new' services and on the other limiting the amount of data they will let you receive.
In the words of a UK Politician, they are most likely "Not Fit for Service"
Bah Humbug
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As you point out this model breaks when people really do want "unlimited" bandwidth for things like
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Another poster (below) mentions the dark fibre of the dot-com era. It's out there, and it's being used. Telewest are not on a wholesale bundle deal with BT. They peer at Telehouse and their network has thousands of miles of dark fibre should they require more bandwidth. As a result they operate completely differently to the DSL ISPs and don't throttle their traffic. You buy a 10Mb connection, you get a 10Mb connection. The only contention is from other subscribers on your segment; ie Telewest customers in the same street.
But Telewest have now been taken over by Virgin, who do throttle their traffic [theregister.co.uk]. As a Telewest (now Virgin) customer, I have experienced a drastic decrease in the quality of service since the takeover, with outages of a couple of hours at a time once or twice a week. Since the whole reason for moving to cable in the first place was to get away from a dodgy old BT line so that we could have a more reliable service, I'm very disappointed and am seriously considering moving back to the dodgy old BT line - it
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Someone can't count ... (Score:5, Funny)
Bad math alert. An 80% restriction would be more like it. A 100% restriction would be a total cut-off. What would 500% be - take back the bits you already downloaded?
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S U E (Score:2)
if they hadnt the capacity, they shouldnt have advertised and sold that nonexistent capacity.
R E A D (Score:5, Insightful)
N O (Score:2)
"in no country, items in contracts that contradict with the existing law are tolerated. even in turkey, if you have such an item in the contract, and you dont explicitly state in an item that says "in case one of the items in this contract is contradictory with law, this will not nullify the whole contract, but just the item itself".
providing false advertising is fraud. selling it is fraud."
even being "subject to change without notice" cant cover an arse. they are still advertising tho
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Unless you have a commercial contract with QoS you are outta luck, legally.
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If you dont belive me, then go ahead and sue and watch how fast the judge slaps you back down.
nay (Score:2)
providing false advertising is fraud. selling it is fraud.
Economics and competition (Score:2)
How do you propose to light the fiber? (Score:2)
Wouldn't this just make economically viable all that dot-com dark fiber we used to hear about?
Fiber remains dark because equipment for lighting the fiber still costs money. And how much of this fiber crosses the Pacific Ocean (between New Zealand and the United States) and the North Atlantic Ocean (between the United States and the United Kingdom)?
With 3G (EVDO, etc.) in the competitive mix with DSL and cable, I find it unlikely there will be cooperation amongst the competitors to withhold bandwidth from business customers.
Fixed.
It's called marketing (Score:3, Insightful)
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"$29/mo for 20GB plus $5/GB beyond that, and we throttle bittorrent when our backbone connection is at full capacity" would be acceptable.
"$39/mo for unlimited access. There's a transfer li
you get the ISPs you deserve (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're not getting the service you expect form your ISP, you should call them (which by the way, really costs them quite a bit of money), and complain. If they can't or won't satisfy you, you should find another SP who will. Competition is important, and while it's difficult to find in the US and perhaps even moreso in the UK, alternatives should be encouraged. Just remember that you can't get something for nothing. That bandwidth does cost money.
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I agree it costs, but the customers shouldn't care about that. If we'll be encouraging competition, then the customers should go straight to the best offer, never mind if they thing in their mind it's fair or not. This is how competition works (because you never know if there's no inno
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Re:you get the ISPs you deserve (Score:5, Insightful)
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Your options:
pros: cheap
cons: you may weait very very long
pros: politicians will do your job but
Also (Score:2)
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Exactly, my ISP doesn't even bother to enforce it's traffic caps, (Telus, Canada) even though I can clearly see I'm 30 gigs over when I check my account. I'm guessing the customer support call when they cut someone off isn't worth it. I actually called up when I had "misconfigured" Azureus to have enough simultaneous connections to crash Window's netwo
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real numbers (Score:2)
It looks like major players are paying $10 USD / Mbps for backbone access.[1] (Yes that paper predicts a short term backbone supply problem.) In my case, that's actually the same rate I'm paying my ISP for 2.5 Mbps. And from the sounds of it, Americans get gouged a lot worse.
Next, I max out at 60 gigs of video in a month (and that means I would have spent all my spare time watching high-quality p2p movies and television and also downloaded a few entire seasons of tv shows and then decided not to watch
Move house to find a better ISP? (Score:2)
The real reason they don't want you to download (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The real reason they don't want you to download (Score:5, Informative)
Which would be very comforting if ISP's had common carrier status to begin with.
I don't understand who keeps spreading these rumors but for the last time, ISP's do NOT have common carrier status. They are what are called ESP's (Enhanced Service Providers) and do not warrant the protection that common carrier status provides.
Re:The real reason they don't want you to download (Score:4, Informative)
Australia (Score:5, Informative)
Its a lie to control the price (Score:5, Insightful)
...of a transceiver? (Score:2)
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Illegal networks? Which illegal networks? (Score:3, Informative)
There are no illegal networks, we have enough FUD as the MAFIAA cartels say they are illegal, we do not need the blogger community to call them that... and btw WTF is it with posting a blog entry as a story? when did Digg acquired slashdot?
Joost is almost certainly a violation of any AUP (Score:2)
Re:Joost is almost certainly a violation of any AU (Score:2)
The bandwidth? Or the CONTENT?
It's like a celluloid film manufacturer threatening a movie studio for re-selling their celluloid film... come on. If it's sold, its NOT YOURS ANYMORE. No amount of fine
That's a bad analogy (Score:2)
Internet not ready (Score:3, Insightful)
The cheapest bandwidth in this area still costs around $100 per meg (OC-3, 155Mbps). Users on Comcast get 6 megs for half this. Broadband ISPs deliver the product most users want, intermittent very high download speed without sustained bandwidth use.
All ISP and even phone companies are based on what is called over subscription. ISPs buy bandwidth based on actual demand not theoretical maximum demand. Phone companies have infrastructure to support around 1 in 20 people making a phone call at the same time.
What is needed is for the ISP to be more forthcoming in there product descriptions. We sell a wireless broadband connection for around $38 per month and advertise 2meg download speeds. We are also up front that excessive p2p usage may result in throttling and or account suspension. This is explained before service is installed not just buried in the terms on service. Comcast terminates accounts without any warning and even deny there is any bandwidth cap on users accounts. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
ISP web caches? (Score:3, Interesting)
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To those of you who aren't aware, peering points exist in just about every major city. They're generally nonprofit or extremely cheap. Some to gigs upon gigs of traffic. Torix [torix.net] for example, the Toronto exchange, moves over 4Gbit/s.
If the major players in the backbone industry stopped their aggressive peering agreements (Minimum 100 meg throughput, regardless of type?), and content providers lik
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One problem is that often the ISP is a content provider. Take Time-Warner Cable, for example. Notice the name. Now, do you think thier ISP division is not connected to their cable-television, movie production, music distribution and other divisions? If it isn't, those other divisions probably want it to be. They want to make sure that, while their content is available to their Internet users (under suitable controls, naturally), everybody else's content is throttled and generally horrible.
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I'm an ISP (Score:4, Informative)
So as an ISP I'm saying we could do it if we didn't get bent over all the time for bandwidth.
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The obvious question is whether you could get a point to point to Seattle, Portland or Eugene, use the cheap bandwidth available out of there,
and save money over all.
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It'll sort itself out... (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides, I'd think the P2P hogs should have pushed the envelope far enough that they can't really stop people starting to use these services a little - and that's what they're concerned about anyway, the masses moving. That guy who wants to watch IPTV 24/7 is more of the exception.
Umlimited* Pipex (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm an ex-Pipex user because they kicked me off for over-use of an ADSL package sold as unlimited, when I phoned up to complain about the situation of paying for an unlimited package but being told my account was to be suspe
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The government should take away their "fair use" policy. After all, the government is good at that - they've done it before...
(mods: it's a JOKE, stupid)
Comcast does it right (Score:4, Informative)
You pay a "high" price for service ($45-60) per month, depending on the plan, and you can have as much bandwidth as you want, as long as you aren't adversely affecting the node that you are on.
This means be reasonable. Right now, their "flexible" bandwidth cap is 200 GB. [digg.com] Even better, it's not like that boot you after one month of 200 GB usage; and they don't charge you again, either. They monitor your usage over a couple months, and if you're over 200 GB on average, they send you a warning, and then boot you.
It's also notable that this number has gone up significantly as they've upgraded their network, and I suspect it will continue to go up.
At my office we pay approximately $275 for a dual T1. This gets us, at most, 900 GB per month (that's maxing out the connection 24/7/365). I'm happy to pay 18% of that for 22% of the bandwidth, with burst speeds vastly in excess of that (my cable modem bursts at 24 Mbps for up to 10 minutes).
As I said; their PR doesn't explain this well, and their service people (both on the ground and at their call centers) tend to be not up to part with their competitors. However, the companies polices are more than reasonable, and they do an excellent job upgrading their network. I would have never thought that the cable cos would be competitive with FTTN or FTTP, but Comcast is beating the crap out of AT&T's U-verse, and is approaching the speeds of Verizon's FTTP network.
You guys really should stop whinning. 200 GB a month is plenty in this day and age, and I pity the people who pay $15,$30, or more for 1-70 GB a month.
This is normal, no-one owns enough T1s (;-)) (Score:3, Informative)
With the exception of a very few high-priced services, no ISP has as much back-end bandwidth as they have customers. Instead, they have enough to guarantee a certain level of service on average, plus some extra for bursts of load.
This has been true since the days of the 300-baud acoustic coupler, and isn't going to change. Unless, of course, everyone hits the lottery jackpot at once and decides to give a million or two to their favorite ISP.
What one does to deal with finite bandwidth is to prioritize interactive traffic over file transfer, which is a variant of what we're seeing here. The problem is that the mechanisms used to tell interactive from batch gets the wrong answer right now.
So we (::= the IETF) improve the technology and prioritize video streams tagged "real-time" over streams tagged "on my way to Dave's PVR"
--dave
Of course they don't have the bandwidth (Score:3, Interesting)
Use of p2p 24x7 continuously by a customer has to be traffic shaped for the economics of packet switching to work. If you want guaranteed bandwidth for your p2p use you had better be prepared to pay a lot more for your service.
This is one thing I don't get about IPTV - the economics of this sort of service over packet switching don't make a lot of sense unless it is not a large fraction of the total traffic. That doesn't appear to be true.
Scarcity... (Score:5, Insightful)
But there isn't some big conspiracy by ISPs to kill internet video. There is actually SCARCE BANDWIDTH!!! There simply isn't enough bandwidth for everyone to be watching high-def streaming video, or sharing multi-gig video files, legit or not. Thus far, people have gotten away with that sort of thing because only a handful of users actually used that kind of bandwidth... it was easy enough for the ISP to allow a few "power users" to hog the bandwidth, because the vast majority of people used so little. With the popularity of video with common users, that is all changing.
While ISPs should be more honest about their policies to restrict bandwidth, that doesn't mean that they shouldn't restrict bandwidth. If the ISPs don't intentionally throttle bandwidth on hogs like P2P and streaming video, it means that bandwidth will be restricted randomly (like when you need to send an important email, or when you are trying to telnet into your server).
Unlocked Bandwidth (Score:5, Insightful)
DSL and telco fiber has to compete with that, or install their own coax (plus fiber, probably). Verizon has FiOS for 20-30-50Mbps, but Optimum cablemodems deliver 30Mbps (plus the 4Mbps TV channels).
In other words, ISPs have the bandwidth (or their bizmodels and net infrastructure is too 1990s to survive to satisfy modern consumers). They're just screaming as usual to get exceptions to market demand, while they build cartels and monopolies on government subsidized infrastructure. It was all BS when 9600bps, then 19.2Kbps, then 33.6Kbps, then 56Kbps, then the jump to 1.5Mbps they said was impossible, now the 3-6-8-20-30Mbps. The fact is that these bandwidth investments not only get cheaper every time the market demands it, at higher prices, to many more customers. The bigger bandwidth makes more apps possible, apps closer to the ease and appeal of watching movies, without even the infrastructure and licensing investments to produce/buy more TV channels to sell people. Plus it gives the ISP the infrastructure to deliver on-demand movies and live events that are wildly profitable, and sell even more subscriptions, plus the "triple play" including telephone.
ISPs want all that, plus exceptions to further subsidize them when they do provide the bandwidth. Every time, it's the same. But this time, we can google for their whining the last time it was "impossible".