Digital Distribution to be hampered by bandwidth caps

[Zeus]

http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3169521

Makes sense when you think about it. Adds yet another negative to digital downloads, particularly if you're getting charged the extra $2 per GB like Rogers and Bell are putting up our asses here.

[SineSwiper]

Blame P2P. Broadband has increased standard internet speeds over 250x in the past 10 years (MUCH faster than Moore's Law), but the demand has far exceeded supply in the world of unlimited bandwidth. We're at the point where people just needs to be responsible with how they use their bandwidth.

[Don]

I think P2P is responsible for like 90% of the traffic out there?

[SineSwiper]

It used to be 95%, but it's actually now 44% and HTTP is starting to creep up there, due to YouTube. Although, in terms of pure upload, P2P is still about 75%. Over in our ISP, it's clearly in the 90% range, which really hurts with an asymmetrical bandwidth model (more download than upload).

Typically, 2% of the people are using 98% of the bandwidth, and visa-versa.

[Imakeholesinu]

It used to be 95%, but it's actually now 44% and HTTP is starting to creep up there, due to YouTube. Although, in terms of pure upload, P2P is still about 75%. Over in our ISP, it's clearly in the 90% range, which really hurts with an asymmetrical bandwidth model (more download than upload).

Typically, 2% of the people are using 98% of the bandwidth, and visa-versa.

So throttle those 2% and don't touch the rest.

[Zeus]

Blame P2P. Broadband has increased standard internet speeds over 250x in the past 10 years (MUCH faster than Moore's Law), but the demand has far exceeded supply in the world of unlimited bandwidth. We're at the point where people just needs to be responsible with how they use their bandwidth.

It's very simple as far as I'm concerned: if I pay for a 7mbit connection, that bandwidth is mine to use as much as I want. You have to assume that everyone's using all of the bandwidth they're entitled to. You can make the calculations all you want over how much people generally use but at the end of the day, I pay for that connection to use at my leisure. It's essentially my digital land.

This whole charging for "overusage" is bullshit 'cause initially the ISPs figured "sure, we'll give you 7mbit, but on average, people will only use about 5% of it, so we have that much extra capacity" and they basically oversell their services based on that assumption. Then torrents come along and all of a sudden, you have TONS of people using TONS more, severely decreasing their "capacity".

Basically, the consumers are now being punished for fully utilizing what they're paying for.

[Tessian]

Zeus is right, unfortunately. And Barret-- they can't throttle it; at least not in the US. Comcast has been fined for doing exactly this because it violates Net Neutrality.

North America is atrocious when it comes to bandwidth availability. As far as I know all other developed nations put us to shame in terms of speeds available to their people. I know even Time Warner is "experimenting" in some areas with charging customers by bandwidth used instead of normal bandwidth which I hope dies a quick death. Companies need to actually be able to deliver the bandwidth they promise, not just change their model to fuck everyone over further.

And Sine-- I think that 75% is still pretty overblown and NOT the cause of a bandwidth squeeze; mainly it's as Zeus said that ISP's oversold and promised customers a service they couldn't deliver. You got any articles to back this claim of 75% up? I'm finding plenty of articles about companies restricting how much bandwidth you get in a month (5gig is OBSCENELY LOW) but nothing about what % each service is taking up on the internet.

[Zeus]

You'd seemed shocked to discover I'm actually not completely wrong :-)

See, what Time Warner is "experimenting" with in Texas is far too strong a reality up here. As of June 1, Rogers and Bell - our two nationwide ISPs - decided to, without any collusion whatsoever, each start charging between $2 and $5 per GB (that's right, each GB ) once you exceed your limit of anywhere between 2GB and 60GB per month, depending on the service you're paying for (that's right, if we pay $53 a month for a 7mbit connection, we only get 60GB, combined download and upload; crock of shit ain't it?). Coincidentally, the limits and charges per additional gigabyte for each of the levels of service each company provides are nearly identical. Good thing our competition laws don't allow for oligopolies / collusion to occur (sorry if you got whacked by the avalanche of sarcasm).

Even worse? These two sodomizing companies have also decided - independantly of each other, of course - to each start charging 15 cents for every incoming text on cellphones for essentially the same reason, overselling of capacity. Imagine getting a junk mail text and paying 15 cents for it. If that ain't illegal, what is?

I shouldn't rag on them too much, it's not completely their fault. We actually have our FCC equivalent, the CRTC, which is SUPER anal and gives their blessing for all of these things to happen. They're essentiall creating the oligopoly / collusion behaviour...and sanctioning it

[Tessian]

I only know of Rogers and Bell Canada because they're my company's biggest clients in our Canada region... but yeah, luckily for US it seems Comcast / Verizon are on pretty unfriendly terms, if judging just by the commercials that come out bashing each other. I haven't heard either one attempting this, cause really Verizon's the one with more bandwidth and a better designed network (Verizon's a normal packet-based network just like a normal home network whereas Comcast is the old method where they have to push all channels to you at once) so if Comcast decided to go with a pay-per-GB model I think Verizon would use it to their advantage and clean up.

Can't believe you Canucks are letting them collude like that. I mean... if it happened in the US we wouldn't stop them either, but I tend to hold you guys to a higher standard than us cause we're a bunch of idiots.

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

That you guys get "unlimited" bandwidth has always seemed weird to me. Why sell a limited resource as though it's unlimited? Did your ISPs just assume that demand would never increase?

We've always had bandwidth caps in Australia. Hit that cap at any reputable provider and your speed gets throttled. I get 25G per month during peak time, and 40G in off time. That's ordinary usage + multiple seasons of a TV show pretty comfortably. At $80 a month for that much bandwidth at (optimally) ADSL2 speeds, plus VOIP, I don't feel ripped off.

[Kupek]

Did your ISPs just assume that demand would never increase?

I think we have a winner.

Bandwidth caps are reasonable, they just need to advertise it as such.

[Zeus]

Did your ISPs just assume that demand would never increase?

I think we have a winner.

Bandwidth caps are reasonable, they just need to advertise it as such.

No they're not. Considering that the Internet is moving towards a much more multimedia oriented service, it's not inconceivable for a family of 4, even nowadays, to hit the 60GB limit with Youtube, Hulu, trailers, sharing of pictures/personal home videos, etc.....and that's without torrents (don't forget, in Canada, downloading a torrent ain't illegal). Once you start adding in HD multimedia, it's easy as fuck to hit that limit.

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

No they're not.

Wait, are you arguing that your bandwidth caps aren't reasonable? Or that the very idea of bandwidth caps aren't reasonable?

If the former, fair enough, although I would again argue that no-one is going to hit 60GB in conventional current internet usage. I'd argue also, though, that HD media will be a non-issue until we're all sitting on fibre connections. The amount you can download is going to be naturally constrained by your bit rate, and average bit rates aren't high enough for HD multimedia distribution to be really practical.

If the latter, you're wrong. Bandwidth is a limited resource. Until it's unlimited, it's reasonable to cap usage.

[Kupek]

If the latter, you're wrong. Bandwidth is a limited resource. Until it's unlimited, it's reasonable to cap usage.

Bingo. There either needs to be a cap on it, or it needs to move to the same model as water, electric and gas: you pay what you use.

Zeus, as Andrew pointed out, I hope you mean the current bandwidth caps. A flat rate for truly unlimited bandwidth is just not possible.

[Tessian]

If the pricing model was reasonable on a pay-per-GB basis I wouldn't hate it, but any model I see seems to just ensure that someone who regularly uses the internet will pay MORE than what they did before the cap; I'm talking someone who doesn't do torrents or shit like that. If I didn't JUST replace my router last night I could have told you how much bandwidth I use in a month, but I'd say $1/gig UP and $.75/gig DOWN would be reasonable. I already pay almost $50/month for internet (when I own the modem!) and switching to that kind of system should SAVE me money, not cost me more each month. It seems Rogers/BC are just raising their rates to adjust for the fact that they oversold which is just wrong.

[Zeus]

If the latter, you're wrong. Bandwidth is a limited resource. Until it's unlimited, it's reasonable to cap usage.

Bingo. There either needs to be a cap on it, or it needs to move to the same model as water, electric and gas: you pay what you use.

Zeus, as Andrew pointed out, I hope you mean the current bandwidth caps. A flat rate for truly unlimited bandwidth is just not possible.

OK, a 250GB bandwidth like Comcast is talking about is reasonable....for now. That's 10GB a freakin' day, I don't even think I can download that every day if I tried.

So yes, the current bandwidth caps we Canadians are having shoved up our asses are unreasonable (luckily we have Primus to which Bell is forced to sell bandwidth to at a reasonable price and who does not have bandwidth caps). But at the same time, once the infrastructure of the Internet is fully upgraded, there will be greater capacity. And with the changing of internet usage to a far more multimedia-driven service, we'll need it.

It's the precedence set now with the 60GB or 100GB limits which are very low even now that's ridiculous

[SineSwiper]

Funny. You guys argue as if you know what the fuck is going on. I WORK FOR A CABLE COMPANY! Shit, I'm knee-deep in this type of debate. Our CEO's been trying to publicly explain it for a while now.

Zeus, if you got a 1:1 ratio for your bandwidth that you were expected, your cable bill would be $5000/mo to justify the cost of all of those systems. Let me explain it to you in mathematically terms, and know that this applies to other technologies (DSL, FIOS, etc.) in different areas:

An DOCSIS upstream at 16QAM (which is the highest a DOCSIS 1.1 modem can get) has 9.0112Mbps of bandwidth (after subtracting overhead). Typically an upstream gets around 100-150 customers. We sell 10/1 service. That's 1Mbps of upload. So, it would take about 9 customers in that upstream (with 150 customers), running full blast upload at the same time, to hamper the rest of the customers on that upstream. We could split upstreams up into small chunks (and we ARE), but that costs a LOT of money. (CMTSs are expensive!)

Bandwidth usage like that is unheard of, though. Phone companies have a 5:1 ratio on call traffic. Dial-up ISPs had a 10:1 ratio on phone lines. People used to check their email, download stuff, play games, etc., but nobody was using upload 24/7.

Not until P2P.

Now, by default, P2P apps will sit on your taskbar and constantly upload traffic. Worse yet, the latest version of P2P, BitTorrent, uses multiple connections to essentially circumvent TCP/IP protections against congestion. (Multiple connections from one source means that one HTTP connection from another source has much less priority.)

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

Thanks, Sine.

[Tessian]

Funny, Sine you talk like you're an insufferable dick... shit, I almost forgot you were. How about for once you try posting your opinion in a matter that does not start off instantly with you being a giant douchebag... shit if you omitted the first paragraph there you would have been fine, wtf? Seriously, some times I wonder what the fuck goes through your head-- is the dickishness totally accidental or do you go out of your way to be hated for no reason?

And on the topic-- I'm pretty sure the system you explain only pertains to cable networks; not FIOS/DSL. The whole appeal of DSL back in the day was that you had a dedicated pipe whereas Cable has you share a larger pipe with your neighbors. FIOS might be more in line like a cable network, but I know they're designed totally different (with my aforementioned packet network vs service network post).

BitTorrent is on the decline; the sites are monitored and FINALLY there are much easier ways to get it (Hulu instead of downloading tv shows, for example) and it will only eventually be replaced by something else that's even more decentralized, anonymous, fast. You can bitch all you want about P2P being the downfall of the internet, but the fact remains that the US is far behind in bandwidth speeds as opposed to other countries. Besides, the high caps like Comcast has are specifically to curb heavy users of P2P which is your biggest problem, not the other 98% of the customer base. That kid who needs to download every movie, every song, every game and then seed them all. I just wish Comcast would admit where their bandwidth cap is... they prefer to keep that a secret so they can revoke service at will.

[SineSwiper]

Also, to address a few other points:

Yes, Barret, they are looking at (politely) bitching out the offenders and leaving the rest alone. It seems like a good idea, though I think some of it should be automatically done. (Calling people takes time, and other customers could be suffering because of them.)

Tessian, I could log into work and pull up a graph to prove my point about P2P percentages, but it would be the kind of information that I couldn't pass around. Instead, I'll quote the source I used for the Internet in general. Frankly, based on the graphs I've seen, I find the figures to be rather low in P2P percentages.

Also, Tessian, you seems to think that other countries live in this "Internet utopia". You mean like Japan? They are really cracking down on P2P users.

And Kupek/Andrew, at first, the "unlimited" model worked. The ratio was high enough that you could buy more bandwidth (or upgrade equipment, split nodes, etc.) when you needed it. Now, with the use of bandwidth far exceeding its demand, the model doesn't work. Yes, companies are now advertising bandwidth caps, because they realize that the unlimited model no longer works.

[SineSwiper]

Funny, Sine you talk like you're an insufferable dick... shit, I almost forgot you were. How about for once you try posting your opinion in a matter that does not start off instantly with you being a giant douchebag... shit if you omitted the first paragraph there you would have been fine, wtf? Seriously, some times I wonder what the fuck goes through your head-- is the dickishness totally accidental or do you go out of your way to be hated for no reason?

Sorry, I got pissed off at what looked like a bunch of car mechanics trying to argue about nuclear physics, as if they knew anything like that, when a nuclear scientist comes in to correct their problem and they STILL argue against what he said. Or, to put it another way...

And on the topic-- I'm pretty sure the system you explain only pertains to cable networks; not FIOS/DSL. The whole appeal of DSL back in the day was that you had a dedicated pipe whereas Cable has you share a larger pipe with your neighbors.

Don't fool yourself. Why do you think DSL sells an asymmetrical service? Same problems with that technology, too.

And the "dedicated pipe" with DSL is a myth. Look up DSLAM. It's like a DSL version of a CMTS. And it subject to the same type of bottlenecks.

[Kupek]

And Kupek/Andrew, at first, the "unlimited" model worked.

I never disagreed with that, and nor did Andrew, I think. When "unlimited" usage still has a known limit, it can be dealt with. Take the pricing model amusement parks use: you pay once (either per day, week or season pass). Because you have to physically be there, and one person can only use up a relatively small amount of resources, they can pretend that a single person gets "unlimited" use. In reality, each individual person costs the park a different amount, but it's easier to apply one pricing model to everyone.

That used to be the case with bandwidth due to computer speed, data storage limits and the fact that there wasn't much data for the consumer anyway. That's changing, so the model of unlimited usage has to change with it.

[SineSwiper]

That's changing, so the model of unlimited usage has to change with it.

It IS. We're discussing ISPs implementing these caps, -and- announcing them. It's just that with customers so used to "unlimited", it's a hard sell, and the transition is going to be painful.

[Kupek]

Sine, before you respond to someone, you really need to ask yourself "Is this person actually disagreeing with me?"

[Tessian]

[Rant on Sine being a douchebag later omitted cause I don't care enough to deal with the fallout...you can all guess from Andrew's response on what was said ]

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

People skills-- get some. Until then fuck off.

I... no. This is too easy.

[Don]

The price you buy your bandwidth was never a price where they intended you to use the maximum potential 24/7. It's like you can't go to an all you can eat place and just take all the food on a truck and leave. They expect you to only eat so much and the amount they charge makes profit on how much they expect the average guy to eat, and sure once a while you got these competitive eating guys but even those guys only eat say 5 times more food, as opposed to 500 times more food. If a competitive guy can eat 500 times the food as a normal guy you can bet he'd be banned in all you can eat places too, and that seems to be about how much extra bandwidth someone with P2P running 24/7 uses compared to a normal guy.

On the issue of Japan, I remember reading the guy supplying the manga for Winny was arrested and it set the piracy efforts back by 2 days (e.g. new manga comes out on Wednesday instead of Monday), which is actully pretty significant because without these 2 days you could get the pirated stuff before the real Shonen Jump was for sale!

[Zeus]

And I'M A FUCKING ACCOUNTANT AND ECONOMIST, I UNDERSTAND HOW THE FUCK COST/PRICING AND COMPETITION WORKS. Just to make sure I'm not left out of the yell-fest :-)

Here's the thing: I don't give a flyin' fuck about the costs to the company. I, the consumer, am only willing to pay so much for a certain level of access. And it's not like the companies were hurting before. Even when I had no bandwidth cap and paying $45 a month for my 7mbit line, they were raking in the coin. They just want more like the greedy ex-monopolies who are trying to hang on to that behaviour that they are.

What they're trying to do is simple: change the "value" of the access so that people are willing to pay more for less in order to get more revenue out of their limited resources (on a side note: companies don't price something based on how much it costs them, they determine whether or not to sell the good/service based on the market price; look up something called "target pricing"). In Canada, because we don't really have open competition (even with Primus and local ISPs, they don't reach a good chunk of the market), the two big ISPs can collude and implement the same bullshit at the same time. In the US, you guys don't have the FCC fully protecting the ISPs and allowing them to collude, so they're trying to figure out what they can and cannot get away with. If there was real competition up here, there would be no chance Rogers and Bell would have the caps they do now.

And what I'm trying to say is the current caps in Canada are unreasonable based not only on what the Internet will become in the future but what it is now. Like I mentioned above, I think the 250GB cap is very reasonable but 60GB? That's fucking fleecing just like our gas companies having the price of gas higher when the barrel of oil is $113 than when it was $125.

[SineSwiper]

Understood, but it sounds like a problem with CA's ISPs, not really caps in general. I'm surprised that satellite and DSL isn't trying to enforce competition over there.

[Zeus]

Understood, but it sounds like a problem with CA's ISPs, not really caps in general. I'm surprised that satellite and DSL isn't trying to enforce competition over there.

The CRTC (our FCC) block all competition unless they go through an insane approval process. That's really the biggest problem, you essentially have a parent (CRTC) enabling the children's awful habits

[SineSwiper]

It's official. Comcast just announced their 250GB cap.

[Zeus]

It's official. Comcast just announced their 250GB cap.

At least that's reasonable