New Report Debunks The 'Bandwidth Hog' Myth

Broadband

from the and-data-caps-are-improving-infrastructure-how? dept

Wed, Dec 7th 2011 10:04am — Tim Cushing

ISPs and cell phone companies have long been known for raising the spectre of the "bandwidth hog" in order to justify data caps or bandwidth throttling. Considering most ISPs are also television providers, throttling and capping data usage helps push some customers back towards their TV sets. (Depending on how many other eggs are in the company's basket, this also helps push them back into theaters and tilts their heads back to regular old radio, as these caps make streaming services very unattractive.)

Karl Bode at DSL Reports has finally obtained some data which confirms what many of us had suspected all along: the Bandwidth Hog is a convenient bogeyman rather than an actual being. Analysts Benoit Felton and Herman Wagter managed to talk an "anonymous mid size DSL company from North America" into sharing its data on customer usage. Not surprisingly, despite their open invitation to the ISPs to contest their "disruptive user" argument, no other broadband/DSL service offered to provide any data, suggesting they're already well aware of what usage numbers actually show.

In a blog post, Felten notes that the pair took real user data for all customers connected to a single aggregation link and analyzed the network statistics on data consumption -- in five minute time increments -- over a whole day. What they found is that capping ISPs often don't really understand customer usage patterns, and are confusing data consumption (how much data was downloaded over a whole period) and bandwidth usage (how much bandwidth capacity was used at any given point in time).

What they discovered is data that runs in stark contrast to a lot of the claims put out there by some familiar, larger ISPs when justifying caps and overages. Among the pair's findings is that the top 1% of data consumers (which they call "very heavy consumers," instead of the already adversarial "hog") account for 20% of the overall consumption.

Looking deeper into the data, they also found that about 61% of very heavy data consumers download 95% of the time or more, but only 5% of those who download at least 95% of the time are very heavy data consumers. While 83% of very heavy data consumers are amongst the top 1% of bandwidth users during at least one five minute time window at peak hours, they only represent 14.3% of said Top 1% of users at those times.

That's a lot of percentages and percentages of percentages. Fortunately, a commenter at DSL Reports was able to use the "dreaded" highway analogy to simplify things:

1% of vehicle drivers on the road travel a disproportionate amount of miles compared to the average driver. But they are on the road all the time. Most of the time they are on the road there is no rush hour congestion.The heavy drivers are likely to be involved in rush hour traffic jams, but only represent a small, not terribly relevant, fraction of total drivers in the traffic jam.Limiting the amount of miles a driver can drive, does nothing to widen the roads and little to keep people off the roads during traffic jams, thus does not help with congestion.

In other words, internet usage tends to be heaviest at certain points of the day, and installing caps or throttling supposedly heavy users does nothing to relieve that congestion. Instead, it punishes users across the board by hitting some of them with additional fees and offering very little in the way of improving connection or speed for the rest of the users online during these "traffic jams."

Felten concludes that ISPs themselves need to better understand the difference between data usage and bandwidth consumption, or face driving their customers to more reasonable competitors. That's assuming consumers have a choice, given caps exist in many markets largely due to no competition.

That's the real problem. For many people, there are few options. And most of the ISPs are more than happy to install caps and overage fees, especially if someone in the market is already doing just that. Bode also notes the adversarial relationship with their customers that the ISPs are creating through the usage of terms like "bandwidth hog" or "disruptive user." Rather than look into improving infrastructure, they'd much rather vilify certain paying customers in order to deflect attention away from their service limitations.

Karl Bode expands on this:

It would also be naive to assume many of the larger ISPs -- stocked with number crunchers and network analysts -- don't already know everything Felten stated. However, there's a reason that ISPs don't like bandying real, raw data about -- and it's because there's a few large carriers that like to use bogus science to justify anti-consumer behavior, most recently with AT&T's announcement of caps and overages for DSL and U-Verse users. When asked to prove that these caps and overages were necessary, AT&T couldn't -- something ignored by general tech press coverage of the move.

As we've noted repeatedly, most carriers impose caps and overages claiming it's due to either network congestion or financial necessity. In realty, caps and overages are implemented by carriers that simply want to jack up the cost of bandwidth so they can protect TV revenues from Internet video by making Internet video more costly and less appealing. The financial "necessity" of moving away from the flat-rate pricing model is proven false quarterly by earnings reports.

While it's nice to finally have some data on hand to debunk the "bandwidth hog" myth, most ISPs will be able to dismiss it as not being representative of their customers' usage patterns. After all, they're still refusing to provide any data to back up their claims. In areas without competition, this myth will still be used as a scapegoat for everything from hard caps to lousy connections.

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Filed Under: bandwidth, bandwidth hog, broadband

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Skeptical Cynic (profile), 7 Dec 2011 @ 9:37am

Clear is a perfect example of Boneheadedness
I had Clear WiMax from the day it was available in Atlanta. I left them over a year ago because they "Managed my Bandwidth" too often because of "over usage".

I dropped to less than 56k speeds for more than a day anytime I tried to watch a Netflix video at the same time as I downloaded a large file after I moved to a new house in a more affluent area. Even though my monthly usage never changed it averaged the same for ever month for the last year.

Well you say they did it because I was sucking up too much bandwidth during peak times. I say false. The bandwidth I used (85% of it, by their charts) was used during the slow period during the business day. (I do IT support so I would be doing support and watch Netflix during the business day.)

I wasn't a heavy user by any measure. 3.6GB a month.

That "throttling" pushed me away from Clear and also stopped me from recommending them. Before I saw that I was making around $1250 a month recommending them.

In the year when my service was good I had over 600 people and companies sign up for Clear.
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Scooters (profile), 7 Dec 2011 @ 10:17am

It's a problem with higher priced "services".
For the past year, Brighthouse Networks has been pushing its customers to pay more for "faster broadband". Their words, not mine. Reluctantly, I gave into the ad campaign (at the time, it was a mere $5/mo. extra which somehow turned into $15) and tried it out.

What I discovered was a blatant rip off of consumers gullible to fall for "faster" speeds. Everything at peak time dropped down to speeds my system was already seeing before the upgrade.

Here's the kicker: When I asked if they were throttling during peak time, they said no. So I asked, "Basically what you're saying is I'm paying for the privilege of driving in the fast lane but because your networks allow for slower cars to be in my lane, I have to be slowed by them?"

I dropped the extra speed and the associated charge and went right back to the speeds I can never surpass, all for the wonderful price of $Suck it, customer (tax not included, as well as "fees").

I contacted my local government regarding a data hub and bandwidth service as a means to offset their inability to allow competition to enter the marketplace, restricting us only to Brighthouse.

Hear that laughter? Yeah, it's been over two years. I don't think they'll ever stop until someone's bold enough to help finance most of the cost to get it done.

Sometimes, I truly despise Corporate America.
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anonymous, 7 Dec 2011 @ 10:21am

just another way to make more money, by increasing the number of customers, without having to do anything to improve the service by upgrading networks or putting more pipes into operation. typical company ploy. profits far more important than service given or customer satisfaction. sounds very much like another industry to me!
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PlagueSD (profile), 7 Dec 2011 @ 10:21am

As a test, I turned my wifi off on my phone for a month just to see how much "data" I used. I didn't change my habits, and intentionally streamed movies that month to push my data usage up. At the end of the month, I was JUST over 3gb.

I'm sure if I did nothing but stream movies, I could get pretty high, but that's a little unreal. About 90% of the people will NEVER go above 1gb a month.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Dec 2011 @ 10:25am

This makes me happy. For once an easy explainable to non tech savy people the difference between bandwidth and downloads. Sure my bittorrent sometimes gets 1MB(Yes Big B) a sec, but normally it just trickles along at around 26KB a sec.
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rubberpants, 7 Dec 2011 @ 10:26am

Brown Sugar
Government-granted monopolies are the heroin of the business world.

1. As soon as a business get's a taste, they're hooked. They can rarely transition back to a competitive environment.

2. They'll spend millions lobbying and influencing policy to make sure they can keep getting high.

3. When people try to give them an intervention, they lash out with anger, hostility, and complete denial.

4. They'll systematically destroy their customer relationships, waste their future opportunities, and eventually wind up bankrupt in the gutter.
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TtfnJohn (profile), 7 Dec 2011 @ 10:30am

In some respects I'm not at all surprised by this revelation. Network designers in telcos and cablecos have known this for years at both analog and digital levels of transmission. It's why the networks are designed the way they are.

It's designed to withstand short bursts of increased (i.e. hogging) traffic and survive it quite nicely, thanks. It's also designed to be unnoticeable to the customer. (Poorly designed or rural and suburban cable subscribers can and do still notice that bandwidth decreases between 4 and 8pm when people come home and flip in the TV and computer. The bandwidth goes back to normal after 8pm. A great deal of that is the "shared" aspect of coaxial cabling vs twisted pair.)

It's largely been a false argument from the start. Where there is fibre to the house it's a completely false argument as, theoretically, the bandwidth/bitstream in fibre is infinite. And before any screaming starts that there is still copper out there, I know that. The closer your bit of copper is to a cross connect that itself is fed by fibre the less the copper restricts bandwidth/bitstream transmission. (though if you wire your house with cat 3 [cheap] tel wire you deserve what you get.)

It's a money grab, pure and simple. There's little or no technical validity to it at all.

PS: And as AT&T well knows 99% of all data and voice switching is not done externally and internally by light not copper or relays or any of that junk in the central offices.
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Skeptical Cynic (profile), 7 Dec 2011 @ 10:31am

Re:
I think that is true but the issue is that they buy and pass the cost on to us for the total bandwidth whether or not it is used. In IT it is simple, Bandwidth is the size of the pipe total download amount is what is used. The average company pays for Bandwidth but uses much less than that "pipe" can do in any month. But they charge us as if we did.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Dec 2011 @ 10:31am

Re:
Yeah maybe right now, but the point isn't the current user with current services. The amount of usage will only grow, not shrink. It is a matter of time till the average user is akin to the "power" user of today.
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TtfnJohn (profile), 7 Dec 2011 @ 10:31am

Re:
The last sentence SHOULD be:

PS: And as AT&T well knows 99% of all data and voice switching is done externally and internally by light NOT copper or relays or any of that junk in the central offices.
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:Lobo Santo (profile), 7 Dec 2011 @ 10:42am

Re: Brown Sugar
Well said! I'll be "stealing" this analogy and repeating it to many people over the coming weeks.
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Paddy Duke (profile), 7 Dec 2011 @ 10:42am

In the UK, along with the data caps, the big ISPs (with the possible exception of Virgin, the cable/fibre network operator) also throttle internet speeds at peak times.

Ostensibly this throttling is to ensure heavy users don�t hog bandwidth while there are a lot of users online. I see two huge problems with this:

First, the providers have oversold their network. They have sold more bandwidth than they are capable of providing at any one time. This is blatantly dishonest. We pay for an 3.5MB BT connection (the fastest available in my postcode) but rarely see speeds of even a third of that. A recent OFCOM study found that most UK internet users get speeds well below what they signed up to.

Second, the result of this throttling is that at the time when most people are online, the experience is at it�s worst. In the evenings on my connection it is often not possible to stream a 1 minute YouTube video in its entirety. If other users are similarly affected, the ISPs will have a lot of peeved off customers.

The rate at which the big ISP networks in the UK are being updated is also abysmal. BT have only recently started offering 20MB (though in reality this is closer to 8MB) fibre connections in heavily built up areas.

Meanwhile the smaller Virgin, whose customers actually do get the advertised speeds, and sometimes even higher ones, are rolling out 100MB connections in cities. Four years ago, when I lived in the centre of Belfast, we had a 20MB Virgin connection. It will be another two years before I can get a 20MB BT connection the large town I live in now.

Even here where we have greater competition, there is very little to differentiate between any of the providers. The prices are much the same, the speeds are much the same and the throttling and caps are all much the same. I�m not sure how this situation came about, but I find it problematic.

The only exception is Virgin. Their service and support seem to be pretty great but they are not widely available outside urban residential centres.
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MichaelG, 7 Dec 2011 @ 10:44am

two ways to avoid the problem
Here are two ways the ISPs could improve their lives if they actually needed to or wanted to.

1. At night (1am to 7am), I assume their network is almost completely idle. So introduce a modified BitTorrent client that only downloads during that period (or price bandwidth based on day/night use). If you want a movie or TV program, get it at night for viewing the next day. They wouldn't see any strain from bandwidth hogs at all.

2. Clone the NetFlix streaming library inside their walls. At 500 meg an hour for video (350 meg is more typical), a $50 terabyte drive holds 2000 hours. If NetFlix has 100,000 hours of streaming video, that's 50 drives ($2500). Even hardened and replicated, it would cost nothing to put that much data inside the cable system servers. Then all the bandwidth currently going outside the system to NetFlix disappears with no difference to the customer. Kick some of the money saved to NetFlix. Problem solved.
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Skeptical Cynic (profile), 7 Dec 2011 @ 10:46am

Re: Re:
And technology moves on and improves. 15 years ago a 1.5mb T-1 connection cost around 14k a month. Today you can get it for less than $500 and get a near reliable 20+mb connection for less than $200.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Dec 2011 @ 10:48am

But it's much more fun to demonize your own paying customers rather than spending some hard earned money/profits on making your service better!
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Skeptical Cynic (profile), 7 Dec 2011 @ 10:50am

Re: two ways to avoid the problem
Smart, very smart. Take the Akamai model of media distribution to a controlled library internally.

Better experience for all.
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Skeptical Cynic (profile), 7 Dec 2011 @ 10:52am

Re: Re: Re:
I meant a near reliable DSL or Cable connection for less than $200.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Dec 2011 @ 10:52am

It's a little bit misleading, because they don't seem to want to consider what these "constant" users do to available bandwidth pools.

Most users take data in short and peaky ways, usually loading a webpage with images and / or a video clip in short order, and then sitting reading it / watching the video with no additional bandwidth usage for a period of time. A great example is writing a comment here, downloading the page was a short burst, followed by the time it takes the write a comment as "dead" time.

Constant users "raise the floor" and leave less space for the burst users to get their data. If you have a 10 gig connection, but 5 or 6 gig of it is constantly in use by downloaders, you effectively only have 4 or 5 gig to support all your other burst users. It becomes more critical as you get down to the ends of the network (last mile), where you might have only a 100 meg network connection providing service to a group of end users. You get a few people downloading constantly, and much of that bandwidth disappears, slowing the burst users access.

It's why things like Netflix are such a problem for many ISPs, because they represent a data flow that is not in keeping with their network designs or bandwidth plans.
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Skeptical Cynic (profile), 7 Dec 2011 @ 10:54am

Re:
It's not that. It's that they just are not informed enough of what to do. They only see the P/L statements and don't see the way to bring in more people or make more people loyal.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Dec 2011 @ 10:54am

Re: Re: Brown Sugar
Ahh man, I wanted to steal this analogy, but if you've already taken it, it is obviously gone now, and no one else can make a copy or ever use it again unless someone sees you use it, and steals it again.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Dec 2011 @ 10:57am

There is a reason the U.S. is falling behind the rest of the world in bandwidth provision (and just about everything else). Because our government won't stop granting monopolies on everything.

Why can other parts of the world provide better bandwidth at a cheaper price?
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deadzone (profile), 7 Dec 2011 @ 11:08am

Re: two ways to avoid the problem
Or maybe all of the major isp's could address it in a more meaningful way through investment by upgrading their aging networks to all Fiber.

The differences in areas with fiber buildouts are telling. You see 2 major things that you won't see in your typical broadband monopoly/duopoly market: Competition and No Caps or Throttling.
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Trails (profile), 7 Dec 2011 @ 11:08am

My experiences
My household is huge media consumer. I work from home, and part of my work involves imaging and dealing with 100s of meg asset files. We have netflix on computers and Wii, we also have this asian (legal) tv over ip we pay ~$40/mo for to get overseas content.

I recently switched from Rogers (the incumbent cable provider in my neck of Canuckistan) to Teksavvy a recent startup.

I couldn't be happier. No caps, no throttling (which was hitting among other things my encrypted uploads of said 100s of megs asset files). We cancelled all cable tv, and I pay substantially less for a better connection.

The idea of caps and throttling is lame, I was paying ~$65/mo +tax for a cap of 100 gigs/mo, which, in this day and age is ludicrous. So I was paying on avg another $20-$40/mo in overage charges.

That plus throttling affecting my work, and Rogers contant billing errors (all in their favour), left me cranky as hell.

I am thrilled with the new service and will never go back to capped and throttled. Anyone who is able to switch from Bell/Rogers to Teksavvy, I HIGHLY recommend.
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pixelpusher220 (profile), 7 Dec 2011 @ 11:10am

Re:
Don't need studies, basic logic says they're blowing smoke.

ISP claim: 1% of users are using too much bandwidth

ISP Solution: Set limits that affect 80% of users

Real world cure: Set limit just below that which the 1% are using that is causing the problem. You only affect the problem people.

Or, you know, actually market and sell what you can reasonably supply rather than unlimited data for 25Mb+ down for everybody that WILL overload your networks when people actually use that much.
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Don, 7 Dec 2011 @ 11:11am

My solution to being capped
If it should happen, I will cancel my cable service completely and go back to reading books. I love to read anyways and all you get from TV is what not to do in real life - which i pretty much know already. At least with books you can either be entertained or educated. Either is mental stimulation that TV lacks. I will be sad to lose the internet but i lived before it and will probably live much better without it. All those chores i avoided will finally get done.
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pixelpusher220 (profile), 7 Dec 2011 @ 11:13am

Re: Brown Sugar
This is why those 'monopolies' are regulated. If you don't like what they're doing, file a complaint with your local oversight committee.

I just got a $10 credit for calling Verizon's FiOS bullsh!t onto the carpet.

This stuff gets logged and come renewal time, they have to answer for it.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Dec 2011 @ 11:18am

Re: Re: two ways to avoid the problem
Akamai pisses me off. I block it every chance I get. I like the idea, but they do strange crap like upload log files randomly to their servers. Lots of network chatter. Makes it really hard to read log files and packets.

Forget you Autodesk and Adobe. I'll just grab the install media later.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Dec 2011 @ 11:19am

Re: It's a problem with higher priced "services".
"I don't think they'll ever stop until someone's bold enough to help finance most of the cost to get it done."

Cities have already tried that, then corporate lobbyists come in and ban the whole projects.

What we need is someone willing to fund political campaigns that will allow competition.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Dec 2011 @ 11:33am

Re: two ways to avoid the problem
2. Clone the NetFlix streaming library inside their walls.

Ooooh, but you would be making a copy. The content providers would go apeshit.
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Some Other AC (profile), 7 Dec 2011 @ 11:36am

Re: Re: Re: Re:
As a lucky user of FIOS from Verizon, my current connection is listed as 35Mb up and 35Mb down. Thru multiple test sites and times, i was able to confirm 37 to 40 down consistently and 30 to 33 up consistently. As part of a bundled package with TV and phone, retail cost is less than $150/mo before taxes/fee and includes the top tier base package and STB rental cost.
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David Muir (profile), 7 Dec 2011 @ 11:37am

Re: My experiences
Not available in my area of Canada, sadly. I was with a fantastic independent cable company... but they were bought out by Rogers several years ago and it has been nothing but a headache ever since.
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Skeptical Cynic (profile), 7 Dec 2011 @ 11:40am

Re: My solution to being capped
I do understand what you are saying and would like to provide a basic example of it.

Look to the generational differences with regards to answering the phone.

I always answer the phone unless it just would not be appropriate. Because I grew up with the idea that all calls were worth answering.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Dec 2011 @ 11:41am

Re:
As a test, I turned my wifi off on my phone for a month just to see how much "data" I used. I didn't change my habits, and intentionally streamed movies that month to push my data usage up. At the end of the month, I was JUST over 3gb.

I'm sure if I did nothing but stream movies, I could get pretty high, but that's a little unreal. About 90% of the people will NEVER go above 1gb a month.

Yeah, I'd find it difficult to use more the 3GB on my Evo, but I can very, very easily exceed 3GB in under a day on my home DSL connection by just buying a couple of games on Steam.

This post, the article it points to, and the research discussed there is about broadband service, not mobile service, which is a whole other kettle of fish. Conflating the two is at best confusing and at worse intellectually dishonest, muddies the discussion, and ultimately works to the advantage of the entrenched telecoms that trying to extract monopoly rents from their customers in exchange for actually lowering the quality of service.
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Skeptical Cynic (profile), 7 Dec 2011 @ 11:44am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
All I can say is FU. I am on UVerse (best I can get in a 400k plus neighborhood) and can't get anywhere near that. So! Just simply FU. Lucky BSTD. ;-)
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mike allen (profile), 7 Dec 2011 @ 11:45am

Re: It's a problem with higher priced "services".
"Sometimes, I truly despise Corporate America."

only sometimes?
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mac84, 7 Dec 2011 @ 11:48am

Bad analogy
your analogy is fun but not accurate. If you are downloading large files and streaming content and... then you're not just another car on the freeway but a three lane wide roadblock that no one else can pass.
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Skeptical Cynic (profile), 7 Dec 2011 @ 11:50am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
400k is the home price not the Bandwidth. I get 16mb to the house in bandwidth.
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Skeptical Cynic (profile), 7 Dec 2011 @ 12:01pm

Re: Re: Re: two ways to avoid the problem
Oh how I agree with you. I won't get in to the issues I have seen but yeah they need it to be more transparent and less nig brother.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Dec 2011 @ 12:12pm

"As we've noted repeatedly, most carriers impose caps and overages claiming it's due to either network congestion or financial necessity. In realty, caps and overages are implemented by carriers that simply want to jack up the cost of bandwidth so they can protect TV revenues from Internet video by making Internet video more costly and less appealing."

This is complete bullshit! What about the ISPs who are not involved in marketing television, the local telcos, or local wireless ISPs. They do it in an attempt to limit the usage.

Highways will only support so much traffic, and it isn't just the number of cars on the highway that causes issues, but the size of the cars (the number of packets). If you imagine the bandwidth as the highway system, you need to refine the analogy to get an acurate picture. Each service running on each actively communicating device in a home transfers some data, some more than others. Instant messaging clients typically use very little data, email without attachments is also very little (those can be SMART cars), Web sites and emails with photo attachments we will call sub compacts, music streaming services would be buses, and video streaming services would be caravans of 18 wheelers. Video files are huge, enormously huge compared to other network traffic.

Lets say you can get 1000 sedans driving down the highway at 65mph, if you throw a bunch of 18 wheelers onto that same highway the congestion will slow the entire road down substantially. Drivers complain about the slow traffic and no one wants to pay for a larger highway so you limit traffic by putting up throttling red lights at highway entrace ramps. You limit the number of people that can get on the highway to improve the efficiency of they highway system.

This used to happen back in the days of dial up when you would attempt to connect and get a busy signal. Now that everyone has always on connections its just a flood of traffic.
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Kevin H (profile), 7 Dec 2011 @ 12:15pm

What they say:

"We need caps to offer better service for all."

What they mean:

"We are too cheap to upgrade the network in your area so we are going to lie about usage instead and tell you to spend more money"
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lucidrenegade (profile), 7 Dec 2011 @ 12:18pm

Re: Re: Brown Sugar
Oh, how naive you are.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Dec 2011 @ 12:43pm

Re:
"We are too cheap to upgrade the network in your area so we are going to lie about usage instead and tell you to spend more money"

I think you meant, "We, the customers, are too cheap to pay the additional fees to that would required to upgrade the network in our area..."
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Dec 2011 @ 12:47pm

Re:
The reason semi's slow down a highway is because they physically cannot get up to speed as fast as smaller car.

When trying to make the case of saying video files are like semi's, these would have to be semi's that maintain the same speed as the SMART car at all times, it's just the end of the SMART car would cross the finish line before the end of the semi would.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Dec 2011 @ 12:48pm

Re: Re: Brown Sugar
I just got a $10 credit for calling Verizon's FiOS bullsh!t onto the carpet.

10 dollars. 10 DOLLARS! Wow, you're rolling in it. That's just over .5% of the average annual cost of service. I bet I could get my bill permanently reduced by 10 dollars a month, all you have to do is bitch at a bunch of customer reps.

The point is that people want a high quality of service when paying a high price; no one is really concerned with saving 10 dollars, if it means crappy service.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Dec 2011 @ 1:09pm

Re: Re:
We, the customers, have been paying for years now, only to not see a return on investment in the company we have chosen.

It's like if you hired a housekeeper, and every year, your house got messier and messier because the quality of her service degraded......that's kinda how it feels....
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rubberpants, 7 Dec 2011 @ 1:17pm

Re: Re:
Prices are rising and service isn't. How do you explain that? Because the company is putting the money in it's pay checks and not it's network. Why? Because it can. Most people have at most 1 or 2 other options for Internet in their area.

Talk about blaming the victim.
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Bengie, 7 Dec 2011 @ 1:44pm

Re: Re:
How much should we pay?

Bulk rates for internet bandwidth is $1/mbit/month for dedicated bandwidth with a SLA.

So maybe a nice 900% profit, so $10/mbit/month?

Hey, I'm willing to pay $100/month for 10mbit of symmetrical dedicated bandwidth, even though I would be getting price gouged.
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John Nemesh, 7 Dec 2011 @ 1:45pm

Oh they understand alright....
The ISPs understand perfectly well that "bandwidth hogs" are not a problem. They ARE, however, a convenient excuse to move us all towards metered billing and overage charges. ISPs are making a money grab, and everyone is LETTING THEM!
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The eejit (profile), 7 Dec 2011 @ 2:00pm

Re:
Uhh, Virgin do traffic shape, but their fair-use cap is over 300GB. I say this as a Virgin customer who hit that limit and had a massive throttle put on (Damn you STEAM re-installs!)
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The eejit (profile), 7 Dec 2011 @ 2:02pm

Re:
Then, perhaps, just mayyybe, it's time to consider alternative network provisions.
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Mike Kevitt, 7 Dec 2011 @ 3:48pm

Bandwidth Hog Myth
Please excuse whatever gross ignorance I exhibit by my question. Does the bandwidth hog myth, data caps, bandwidth throttling, etc. have something to do with something called internet neutrality? (I don't even know what a "cookie" is. Do some have peanut butter in them?)
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Dec 2011 @ 5:43pm

I think this must be the only issue I don't agree with hMike on.

First, some caveats:
- I love unlimited data caps (I have one, and I'm a "data hog")
- Competition kills data caps eventually (I'm in Australia: 5 years ago my cap was 10GB, the highest cap was around 50GB. Now there are caps of 350, 500, 1000GB, and even unlimited.

But there is simply no denying that caps DO reduce congestion (even if, as this data shows, it's only really relevant at peak times). 10-15% at peak times is nothing to be sneezed at.
I have a degree in computer science, if that makes the slightest difference to the credibility of my opinion.
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Jeremy7600, 7 Dec 2011 @ 7:11pm

Re: two ways to avoid the problem
Except that hard drives prices are through the roof because of the floods in Thailand.

I don't think you can find a 1TB for under $100 these days. (there is one one pricewatch, all others start at $105)

so your 2500 figure goes up to $5000 but not bad still.

Either way, Content Delivery Networks already do this sort of thing.
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GreatBigBore (profile), 7 Dec 2011 @ 9:43pm

Download 95% of the time? Huh?
Sorry, I must be on drugs. What does it mean to "download 95% of the time" in this passage:

61% of very heavy data consumers download 95% of the time"

Does that mean download non-stop for 23 hours a day? I imagine not, but I can't guess what it does mean.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Dec 2011 @ 9:45pm

Re: two ways to avoid the problem
I have been cloning my dvd rental store for years now.
If the ISP won't do it, I sure will LoL
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Dec 2011 @ 3:47am

Re: Re:
Network architectural isn't something you just go "ding, here new setup", especially when you look at "last mile" companies that might have tens of thousands of nodes connecting to their network (and dozens of customers on every node). They cannot just wander out and buy a whole bunch of new networking equipment or sling miles of fiber optic cable on a whim.

When you consider that network hardware is typically purchase on anywhere between a 3 year and 10 year depreciation cycle, you will understand that changes just don't happen overnight.

It should also be said that if they were working their networks to be able to handle the P2P onslaught (which most seem to agree is slowly subsiding), they may find themselves once again with a network that isn't optimized for the current trends - and by the time they change it again to be there, the target will have moved again.

Just as importantly, the ISPs continue to face downward pricing pressures in their businesses, and yet the consumers are expecting them to spend more money, to raise connectivity speeds, and to provide an endless fountain of bandwidth - all at that lower price.

You have to remember it is a real world business, and that business doesn't move at the speed of the internet.
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Ninja (profile), 8 Dec 2011 @ 4:20am

Re: Download 95% of the time? Huh?
Last week I spent 72 hours downloading non-stop at max speed. I admit my habits were worse for the isp a while back when I'd spend 100% of the time for weeks using over 80% of my downstream/upstream (I had to use traffic shaping to properly navigate through the web at the time). ISP never ever throttled me. But fast forward 3 years of intensive marketing (and tons of new users) with zero investment in new infra structure and they couldn't handle the demand at peak times (to the point I kept getting kicked out by the antenna I used to connect to). And I jumped boat. My current ISP throttles the hell out of the connection so I have to use encrypted connection and download in several chunks to avoid it. But it's going down the same path and the throttling is getting worse and worse. Solution? Sit and cry, there's no other competition.
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Bengie, 8 Dec 2011 @ 6:21am

Re:
"caps DO reduce congestion"

They have shown time and time again, that one average, most people don't even know there are caps, yet alone change their data usage because of caps.

Most people can't link what they do with data consumption. As far as they care, reading an email takes as much bandwidth as P2P or Netflix.

Most people rank their data consumption in time spent on the internet, not on types of web services they use.
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Paddy Duke (profile), 12 Dec 2011 @ 1:44am

Re: Re:
Yeah, I wasn�t sure whether they did or not. But unlike the other providers, I don�t know any Virgin customers who�ve noticed it or found it a problem.
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