ISPs, Greed and the US falling behind in broadband availability
Tuesday, 28. October 2008, 22:51:44
So now ISPs in the US want to cap data transfers after years of unlimited use. And charge overages. It seems they want to kill the internet to me... Now I know all the arguments, I've read DSLR for years. ISPs are oversubscribed etc...
I understand that ISPs can't provide dedicated bandwidth to every user at anything like costs that home users will pay. What I don't understand is how caping is going to help. Caping doesn't alleviate conjestion - network management/QoS/throttling does. Personally I'm ok with QoS during heavy use times. I understand that if everyone is on at once, the net will slow down for everyone. Caps don't propose to try and slow down access during heavy use, they will just front load the slowdowns at the beginning of the month before everyone has used up their caps.
The worst part of course is some ISPs claiming to cap at 5GB. This is insane - I'll go back to dial up and get more data, and pay less every month. Most of my bandwidth use is in background moving of files / e-mail. Much of my other use is forums - mainly text. Oh, and I use Opera so I can of course deal with slow internet. $10/month is going to drop my bill, and back to lowest phone plan... just for the net. So they go from $100 a month to $30 a month... real way to make money or deal with internet use.
I'm also ok with the arguments that users who use more should pay more, but if we're going to do that, what's good for the goose is good for the gander - i.e. lets bill by the GB. No $45 a month to start, lets have an equivelent line fee (maybe up to $10 to keep DSL going) and some real cost of GB / month. Maybe up to $1.50 / GB though that sounds like highway robbery, it's what we pay at work, so probably reasonable to get the bandwidth out to the rural area. However, I will need a couple things - one a official billing bandwidth meter, like I get with the electric company, and a way to block stuff I don't want, like port scans, from spending my money. Maybe something like the telephone where you don't pay for incoming calls or the like...
Anyway, 5GB is absolutely useless for the internet now adays, and I think will lead to more unpatched computers etc... Bad all around.
I understand that ISPs can't provide dedicated bandwidth to every user at anything like costs that home users will pay. What I don't understand is how caping is going to help. Caping doesn't alleviate conjestion - network management/QoS/throttling does. Personally I'm ok with QoS during heavy use times. I understand that if everyone is on at once, the net will slow down for everyone. Caps don't propose to try and slow down access during heavy use, they will just front load the slowdowns at the beginning of the month before everyone has used up their caps.
The worst part of course is some ISPs claiming to cap at 5GB. This is insane - I'll go back to dial up and get more data, and pay less every month. Most of my bandwidth use is in background moving of files / e-mail. Much of my other use is forums - mainly text. Oh, and I use Opera so I can of course deal with slow internet. $10/month is going to drop my bill, and back to lowest phone plan... just for the net. So they go from $100 a month to $30 a month... real way to make money or deal with internet use.
I'm also ok with the arguments that users who use more should pay more, but if we're going to do that, what's good for the goose is good for the gander - i.e. lets bill by the GB. No $45 a month to start, lets have an equivelent line fee (maybe up to $10 to keep DSL going) and some real cost of GB / month. Maybe up to $1.50 / GB though that sounds like highway robbery, it's what we pay at work, so probably reasonable to get the bandwidth out to the rural area. However, I will need a couple things - one a official billing bandwidth meter, like I get with the electric company, and a way to block stuff I don't want, like port scans, from spending my money. Maybe something like the telephone where you don't pay for incoming calls or the like...
Anyway, 5GB is absolutely useless for the internet now adays, and I think will lead to more unpatched computers etc... Bad all around.
WIDGETIZE