Only A Giant Telco Could Introduce Bandwidth Throttling And Spin It As 'Network Optimization'
from the and-charging-you-more-is-merely-wallet-efficiency-management dept
Oh, Verizon. The company is ramping up its mobile data throttling on its LTE network. Basically, if you're a heavy user, your packets get "de-prioritized" (i.e., throttled). However, Verizon insists it's, like, totally, totally different.Is this the same as throttling?In other words... it's throttling. It may be temporary, and it may only impact top users, but it's still throttling. No matter what they say. As Broadband Reports notes, this bit of Orwellian speak probably doesn't work in reverse:
No, this is not throttling.
How is this different than throttling?
The difference between our Network Optimization practices and throttling is network intelligence. With throttling, your wireless data speed is reduced for your entire cycle, 100% of the time, no matter where you are. Network Optimization is based on the theory that all customers should have the best network possible, and if you’re not causing congestion for others, even if you are using a high amount of data, your connection speed should be as good as possible. So, if you’re in the top 5% of data users, your speed is reduced only when you are connected to a cell site experiencing high demand. Once you are no longer connected to a site experiencing high demand, your speed will return to normal. This could mean a matter of seconds or hours, depending on your location and time of day.
One wonders how Verizon would feel if customers stopped paying them, insisting they were simply "dynamically and intelligently altering payment transit."Of course, if the FCC actually lived up to its transparency demands, perhaps it would ding Verizon for this. What are the chances of that happening?
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Filed Under: bandwidth, clogged, network optimization, orwellian, telcos, throttling
Companies: verizon, verizon wireless
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*at 5am or if you live in the middle of nowhere.
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I don't suppose anyone knows where they get this... rather unique definition? Is this some new way to pretend that they aren't really throttling if they don't do it 100% of the time, or is this one of the "words say what we want them to say" definitions a la "unlimited".
If new, I wonder what the ultimate intention is. Maybe something to tie into the anti-net neutrality arguments? I mean, I can see why they'd want to state that peoples' connections can be throttled, and I can even see why they'd want to avoid that specific term. I'm just not sure why they'd so directly contradict themselves while doing so.
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Sent from my Verizon iPhone
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The issue is that Verizon is attempting to spin it in a positive light ... sadly.
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As long as we don't have to actually provide the coverage we promised them, spend any money to increase our infrastructure, and you idiots keep paying us higher prices as we deliver less.
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"to not allow (something) to grow or develop"
So they are "not allowing" full speed to some users during particular circumstances. Seems to meet the definition of throttle perfectly.
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Network Optimization is optimizing the network so it is FASTER and supports the customers better. This is exactly what they have been avoiding doing - you know because it can be difficult and costly.
Network Throttling is the opposite of Network Optimization. Rather than making the network better to support more demand, they ARE REDUCING THE DEMAND ON THEIR NETWORK BY SLOWING THINGS DOWN.
That is the equivalent of your water company telling you - hey, we know there are a lot of people on your street using water, and they keep building houses, so what we are going to do is make everyone's water run slower with less pressure so none of you feel more f***ed than the others. Oh, and if there is a fire, nobody's toilet is going to flush.
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Nope, better milk the users dry. Seems Verizon is jealous Comcast got 1st as the worst company in America.
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It really is a lot of 'not spending money on improving infrastructure'.
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"Limiting the effect to congested towers rather than a blanket limitation means it should have minimal impact to most of the people who could be affected."
Unless, of course, they fail to sufficiently upgrade their systems over time, and thus the towers are always congested. Which is actually one of the arguments over Netflix recently - some ISPs didn't bother upgrading and are having problems now that customers are starting to legitimately use the bandwidth they were promised. When this happens, if you've been sold an unmetered plan, then "pay us more if you want the speed you were promised" really isn't going to fly.
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Network Optimization can be the throttling of other users so that someone can have better (or worse) performance.
Network throttling of users can be performed to optimize the performance of other users.
Basically, it's the same thing. Optimization in no way is limited to non throttling optimization. Throttling is not limited to non optimizing throttling. They clearly overlap equally in all meanings except on may be construed to be positive in meaning and the other more negative as used by the industry.
They're all perspective dependent. It's like the up link channel and the down link channel of a base station can be the same depending on whether you're looking from the mobile unit's perspective or the base stations perspective. The uplink of the mobile station is the downlink of the base station it is communicating with.
T
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A: I can see something like this deterring Verizon from upgrading its network and trying to use it as an excuse to justify why their network is slow at times.
B: It would be nice if there was some indicator on the phone to tell you if you would be using your limited peak hour tokens (for lack of a better term). That is if my usage isn't going to affect others then I shouldn't have my remaining limited high speed bandwidth being used up and there should be some simple way to indicate whether or not my limited high speed will be affected.
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I am baffled as to why people would think any type of throttling is acceptable. They advertise their speeds - that is what we are buying. If ANY other industry sold you something and then provided only part of it, people would be going to jail.
Can you imagine if you bought a yearly pass for parking and they stopped you at the gate on day three and said 'excuse me sir, you parked your car for more than 15 hours in the past couple of days, we need the space for other cars so you are going to need to park somewhere else today and then you can park here again tomorrow.'? Anyone in their right mind would be furious. 'I'm sorry, I know you bought an all-access pass to the concert, but you have spent just a little too much time back stage...' 'No sir, you cannot go back to the buffet again, you have had more ribs than we expected so we are going to have to cut you off'.
They have oversold their product. There are two solutions - make more product (you know, bandwidth, by improving the networks) or stop selling so much of it. NOBODY ELSE IS ALLOWED TO DO WHAT THEY DO.
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I have to disagree with you there.
Optimization:
an act, process, or methodology of making something (as a design, system, or decision) as fully perfect, functional, or effective as possible
Throttling one user to improve the speed of another does not do that. It leaves the network performance the same, just trades some bandwidth for other bandwidth. Network Optimization involves actual improvement of a network overall and that is what they are actively trying to avoid doing. They are not improving efficiency, they are simply evening out performance across all of the users - making sure it sucks equally is not optimization.
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Oh, wait, were you really asking a question?
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Even computer companies are not good at forecasting demand.
IBM decided that only 250,000 PCs would ever be sold.
Ken Olsen (cofounder of Digital Equipment Corp) of from 1977: "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home."
Thomas Watson (chairman of board, IBM) in 1943 reputedly saw a possible market for five computers world wide.
It is only the new companies which have the real foresight to understand what is happening in the world. Verizon is not one of them.
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You can't optimize something by throttling something else? WTF. I'm disappointed. Next thing you're going to tell me is that throttling one VLAN on a physical medium won't, ever, optimize another VLAN on the same physical medium? Something is wrong with the world! We're blindly using definitions!
You're wrong. It's all perspective dependent on what you're optimizing and what you're throttling. You can throttle to optimize and optimize to throttle. If not then we're goners.
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"Not throttling"
Existing payment plans and the likelihood to get someone on a better-paying plan rather than move elsewhere, however, don't usually.
Also one has to keep in mind that "network congestion" for an ISP provider points out deficiencies for him delivering the advertised product. The solution is extending the infrastructure in order to match demand with sold capabilities.
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Well they sell you a gigabyte or whatever of 'high speed' and then after that you get low speed. That's usually advertised though.
I'm not saying they shouldn't upgrade their infrastructure just that allowing unlimited high speed usage to not count against the limited high speed they sell you during non-peak hours is a good thing. The alternative is to do what they were doing before and to always let high speed count against your high speed limit whether or not it's affecting others. So in a sense you are getting more in that you now have unlimited high speed usage whenever your usage doesn't affect others in opposed to having it count against the advertised limit no matter what.
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There are a number of ways to throttle. The easiest and most objectionable one is to take your 50 meg a second LTE connection, and only feed it data very slowly, giving you an effectively slow service at all times. You pretty much get the equivalent of a 1 meg connection.
The second and much more acceptable way to do things is dynamic throttling. Basically, the heaviest users get throttled down enough to assure other users can get through. So everyone gets they 50 meg connection, but those who are constantly hammering on it (say streaming HD video) may see themselves getting throttled, so that people who are surfing eb pages or trying to get their mail don't get lagged.
It's important because like it or not, there are actual bandwidth limits on mobile networks that are very hard to get around. The solution isn't bring in an extra wire or something like that, it's "add a whole new cell site". That isn't easy, it isn't quick, and it's certainly not cheap to do.
Verizon (and almost every other mobile data provider) has to do things to assure their customers get the best experience possible - and that means ALL of the customers, not just the heaviest users. It's just sort of what has to get done.
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THIS AINT THROTTLING!
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Another concern I have with this, as pointed out by others, is that they can try to throttle your high speed even when there is extra available bandwidth just to convince you to buy more high speed. Or (as I said) they can avoid upgrading their infrastructure in opposed to providing you with more unlimited high speed which will lower the supply and increase the price of buying additional high speed.
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and this I agree with.
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'throttling' still overly-sanitized
'Throttling' isn't the term I would use; I would say 'bait and switch. This is every bit the same as a refrigerator store that offers a high end product in a sale but delivers the low end model to your door. On second thought, no, this isn't the same. When selling physical objects, knowing and showing the bait-and-switch is easy. Verizon can play games and hide what they are doing... or they can at least obfuscate and hinder detection.
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Oh dear, even on an article this short, you still manage to miss the point and dive in to white knight whoever's being criticised.
The actual arguments are the following:
1. Verizon is trying to pretend this is not throttling, when it clearly is. You know, the entire point of the story you're responding to, including the headline. How did you miss this?
2. Something addressed in the linked article but not the one above - they are not planning to throttle all traffic, just those users who pay for unlimited data. In other words, they give priority to who paid them more, not the needs of their network. Most would not have a problem with this if it affected all users equally for pure infrastructure reasons, but people who pay more don't get throttled. While some throttling is unavoidable, does this not sound like an excuse for a cash grab?
3. In some areas, they are in a monopoly position, meaning that customer cannot simply move providers if they find this unacceptable and/or cannot even get the speed they thought they were paying for.
Do you wish to address these actual arguments, or just the one that sounded nice in your head again?
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Not necessarily (e.g. rolling blackouts, water restrictions during droughts). Admittedly, those examples are probably more government than private infrastructure, but those were clear examples that came to mind.
If it's a part of standard business practice, then heads should roll, especially if it's part of an abuse of monopoly positions. A company that repeatedly refuses to provide a customer what they paid for to maximise their own profit deserves what they get. But, these things can happen for legitimate reasons as well.
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However, if they are selling 10 people 10mb/s connections and can only support 2 concurrent connections at that speed, they are not providing what they are selling.
They should feel free to start advertising that their published speeds are under the best possible conditions, but may be woefully slower most of the time.
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Because it's completely unacceptable to use a term that makes it sound like they're strangling their customers. It's understandable really, though I wish they had just not addressed the term "throttling" at all rather than lying about it. They certainly could have explained this practice in the FAQ without mentioning that word.
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"No, this is not throttling."
You clearly accept that what they are doing is throttling and that is the point that makes your comment stand out from theirs.
While dynamic throttling is not inherently bad, it is still mostly a reprioritizing of ressources. A more "fair" - whatever that means - distribution of limited ressources. But calling dynamic throttling network optimization to make it sound positive and denying it is throttling is rather 1984. It is a bit to the "clever" side of marketing. We are definitely closing in on straight up lying.
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It's probably more common than you think. Airlines oversell their seats. Movie theaters give out free movie passes that don't work for 75% of shows. All you can eat buffets reserve the right to throw customers out if they eat too much. I'm sure there are many others.
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Re: "Not throttling"
You seem pretty sure of this. How do you know?
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It's quite easy to understand that the maximum link capacity of an individual handset times the number of people might exceed the tower's total link capacity.
In fact the problem isn't even that easy, as with most wireless system like wifi etc. the maximum wireless link capacity isn't an on/off switch, it's a gradual increase of errors resulting in dropped packets or codec errors approaching a point where the quality degrades to unacceptable or the codec can no longer correct errors.
'Throttling' in the vernacular implies slowing an individual handset's speed when the tower's link is not being reached.
QoS is technical throttling when we're hitting hard limits of the hardware at hand.
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I think the other way around, isn't it?
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5am users may experience less than optimum speeds due to "sleepy bit syndrome".
Middle of nowhere customers may be subject to tower under-utilization fees.
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Usage
The difference is if a tower is highly congested, then the users that are flagged will get between less and no bandwidth compared to other users.
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A bit? It's just plain lying.
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Yes. I love this example. They give you your money back or another seat, they don't tell you to walk or take a bus. They are regulated to NOT INTENTIONALLY oversell.
I'm not one to look at the airlines and suggest that they have good business practices, but if internet providers had to act the same way airlines did, every time I went to use my internet connection and got a lower speed, I would get a discount or more bandwidth would be made available than I paid for at a later time.
I would actually be happier with that than paying for something, not getting it when I ask for it, and then just being told "well, that's just because we sold it to someone else also".
I bought 4 pounds of peanuts - give me all 4 pounds when I want them, and if you sell 4 pounds to someone else, they still cannot have the 1 pound I am not going to eat.
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What are you calling an "unfair amount". I would say that an "unfair amount" is more than I paid for. If I paid for 5GB of 10mb/s internet and then an unlimited amount of 2mb/s, unfair would be more data usage than 10mb/s until 5GB is entirely used up (you know, constant streaming of data) or more than 2mb/s for the remainder of the billing period. If you call anything less than that unfair, you are saying that it is unfair to use exactly what you paid for.
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That's like giving congress the least untruthful answer to a question under oath.
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I've never heard "throttling" described this way, but then again, it's coming from the same company that uses the term "optimization" to describe worse service.
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1. their network is weak, so they want to deter the heavy users.
2. users in the top 5% probably have unlimited plans, meaning they can't be charged for going over a limit, whereas occasional users can go over the limit and be charged fees.
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Nope. What you are describing is not network optimization, you are describing network prioritization. To increase the optimization of a network, you need to get more data through it in the same amount of time or the same amount of data through it in less time. What you are describing is not doing that, it is simply making some data higher priority than other data.
Next thing you're going to tell me is that throttling one VLAN on a physical medium won't, ever, optimize another VLAN on the same physical medium?
This is not optimizing the physical network, it is just setting priority for one VLAN over another. Now, if you have specific times when traffic is low on one VLAN and high on the other and then the reverse at other times, assigning more bandwidth to the high-traffic VLAN at the right times could improve the optimization of the entire network.
To optimize, you need to use the most of your UNUSED bandwidth. If you have no unused bandwidth and you cannot pack things together more tightly, all you can do is prioritize or improve your infrastructure.
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If you cannot support the requirements of your users, pick a small group that can be easily demonized and make them suffer. Then when they are complaining that they are being throttled, you can simply point and say - 'well, you are a bandwidth hog and using more than your share' and the majority of your customers will not care.
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Either way, someone's getting choked to death...
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And yet they do intentionally oversell seats. I was at an American Airlines counter recently, and they even have a sign there saying that they do this.
That they refund money or rebook the seat they took from underneath you doesn't make the practice OK. It's still awful, and that refund/rebooking doesn't make it OK that you missed a critical business meeting.
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They have taken a page from the DOJ playbook and come up with their own secret interpretation of lots of words.
They call it the: "Dick-Shun-Airy" after themselves, what they intend to do to their customers, and the light, fluffy feeling they get from rolling in piles of money.
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Won't this lower the amount the top users can download? So with a bit of luck Verizon can continually lower how much a top data user uses. Thereby they can change what the definition of what a top user is.
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Isn't this what naturally happens to all users when there is congestion due to high demand?
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Enron had lots of reporting too.
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We prefer the term "truth optimization".
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Spin and lying is a good idea?
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I have never gotten a refund from Verizon when I went to use my phone and the network was so clogged up I couldn't download any porn.
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It's the opposite of this. Throttle means reducing network speed. Verizon is reducing network speed to people with unlimited plans once they've met a certain threshold, or limit, of data usage.
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up to* 6 bottles of beer = $7.99
up to* 2.5 hours of the new Avengers movie, in up to* 3 dimensions = $9.50
up to* 900 pages of the new George R. R. Martin book = $19.95
up to* 1/4 pound of "meat" in your meatburger = $2.99
up to* 100% of recommended safety features in your new car = $30,000
*Actual product may be significantly and deliberately less than advertised. Get bent and go pound sand.
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Simple: mobile bandwidth in a given coverage area isn't infinite. There are limits. The alternate to throttling to balance the network is cutting people off completely, or total congestion and poor network response for all.
The reality is that if a lot of people are suddenly in a a cell zone, they can (and do) overload the finite network.
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Almost no one will notice if they are getting 50% of the promised rate, but when you are getting 2-10% you sure do.
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"We sold more than we have, so f*** you, it's going to be slow now."
Give me a refund when this happens, improve your network so it doesn't, or sell less of it.
We are reaching the physical limits of a cell BECAUSE THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH OF THEM. We are not reaching the physical limits because they have run out of space on their towers.
If you buy a dozen eggs, get 10, and are then told that the other two went to someone else because there just aren't enough eggs, are you going to be ok with it?
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This is sortof true, however I do know people who have purchased full-fare tickets, checked in on time, and still have been bumped. It's rare, but it happens.
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Yeah, because, you know, fuck those assholes for "hammering" the service by actually USING what they paid for. They deserve to get less for their money for being selfish for wanting to get what they paid for.
Because a 50 meg connection that you pay for is SO much more useful when its cut down to 1 meg without any compensating reduction in the cost.
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To optimize you absolutely do not need to use the most of your unused bandwidth. That's absurd and idiotic.
Let's add de-throttling to the mix. Where does that fit? That's a form of optimization and of throttling. So when you de-throttle you're also throttling to optimize - except in the reverse of wherever is forward. Does that mean we aren't optimizing now? Does it mean we are optimizing now? HALP!
Your definitions are shitty and meaningless. Why? Because they are your definitions.
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1. There are a LOT of airlines to choose from, competition is very fierce, and margins in that industry are pretty thin. In the broadband industry this isn't quite the case.
2. The fuel and maintenance costs of operating aircraft is very high. Fuel costs tend to fluctuate wildly and maintenance is a constant expense. In the broadband industry while the cost of building the initial infrastructure is really high, most of the maintenance costs (other than the occasional massive upgrade) is not anywhere near the same.
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So your definition of network optimization does not, in any way, require improvement in the traffic going through that network? I think you have done a great job of re-defining optimization.
when you de-throttle you're also throttling to optimize
I'm not sure where to start with that one. I think your argument is that reverse is just forward in the other direction.
If you are throttling on a network that is not 100% saturated, you can de-throttle (not sure where you made up that term, but I'll use it) without throttling anything else. It's easy - you have 50mb/s available bandwidth, you have 3 users being limited to 2mb/s, you can increase them to 5mb/s with no impact - and guess what, you just OPTIMIZED THE TRAFFIC BECAUSE IT ALL GETS THROUGH FASTER.
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I have no actual issue with the practice described above with my cell carrier. My company does it in exchange for my unlimited data plan, and when my last carrier moved to a 1 gig ceiling... I moved to a different, more local carrier (Thank you Wind) who has the same practice, but a 5 gig ceiling. Talking to the sales rep, I confirmed more than once that this wasn't a 'cut off' or a 'charge point' but simply 'throttling', and he agreed.
I get that everybody and their grandmother has a smartphone now adays and that data congestion may (I can't say honestly one way or another without more data) be an issue. I get that somebody else having crap data service because I >HAVE speeds.
The important thing to me, is that the rep explaining it was upfront about it, didn't try to hide or talk around it, and even was willing to bring up and go through the TOS with me. (Beleive me, thats a rarity in sales reps.)
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The problem here is that Verizon is discriminating against particular customers, for non-technical reasons -- not equally against anyone in that "top 5%" of heavy users.
And then they try to deny hat they're actually throttling.
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So basically, Verizon's Network Optimization practices are throttling with 'network intelligence'. (Scare quotes for the fact that mobile networks are amongst the most unintelligent network providers, and the most unintelligent here in the UK.)
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Which he likely didn't actually say...
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We're not lying...
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As for the optimization isn't throttling argument, I'll even give them that. Direct definitions are awful things to go by when you're putting out statements to the general public. What words potentially imply are more important, because 95% of the people that read what you put out don't actually understand what they're reading very well. They'll key in on a few words. Call it throttling, and most your customers think everyone is being throttled all the time, regardless of what else you say. Call it optimization (and it IS optimizing how it handles data at peak capacities), and people don't all think their virtual world is ending. Lets be honest here, there's nothing wrong with this at all.
Of all the shit I've seen people give Telcom's shit for, this is by far the dumbest.
By all means, if you disagree, write up a better optimization they can implement. At least then we have a discussion besides how much you don't like giant Telcom's or how witty you are with using the word optimize. Saying congestion should never happen isn't really a solution, and I'll agree that adding capacity is a solution, but it's only a long term solution. It's the difference between a tourniquet (this optimization) and getting to the doctor (Building more capacity).
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Comdex.
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Step 2 - if your network is so overburdened why are you trying to force more people onto it?
Step 3 - Stop promising what you can't deliver. Perhaps try the concept of underpromise & over deliver.
Step 4 - Perhaps not screw people who you signed an agreement with that no longer looks as lucrative for you.
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Your arguments also don't take into account that networking like this was generally setup on the basis of a short period of intense communication (to download a webpage and related images) followed by an extended period of doing nothing. Basically, you need 50 meg a second for a few seconds, and you are done... then spend a minute or two reading, scrolling, writing your reply, etc.
people streaming video don't do that. They use 2- 5 meg a second CONSTANT for an extended period of time.
Now, let's say a tower can support 1 gig a second. In the first example, given say 5 meg a second for each user for 3 seconds at a time, they tower can handle 200 streams (and that is really low number, it's probably 10 to 100 times higher than that). In a minute, with 5 meg of data per user per second, they can handle 4000+ requests a minute. Reality is something between 40,000 and 400,000 request a minute, because most people aren't downloading 15 meg webpages :)
Now steaming, well... conservative 2 meg a second, with each user watching the video for that full minute (and usually much longer) the tower handles 500 users. Yup, it's hammering when you use up 8 to 800 times more resources.
You have to remember, networking isn't single instant, it's also a question of duration.
Because a 50 meg connection that you pay for is SO much more useful when its cut down to 1 meg without any compensating reduction in the cost.
You make the standard error of assuming that a 50 meg connection means you can have and obtain 50 meg a second 100% of the time all of the time without consideration for anyone else. Connection speed and total data volume are not 100% connected together.
Do yourself a favor. Go to a site like pingdom or similar and use that to test the load time and page size of techdirt. I tested it, 850k took almost 5 seconds. So when you pull Techdirt to your mobile phone, it doesn't matter one bit what your connection speed is much past about 1 meg a second, because the website isn't getting delivered that fast anyway. See, even Techdirt has to deal with the fact that their servers and connections are finite resources, and their webserver software automatically prioritizes and limits requests on the fly, effectively throttling your access. Perhaps you should get made at Techdirt for not having infinite amounts of server resources.
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Throttling has other meanings. Perhaps there's something Freudian happening if they can't consider the other definitions!
"I wish they had just not addressed the term "throttling" at all rather than lying about it."
Yep. there's other things to discuss had they merely presented it as "network optimisation" or "congestion mitigation" or something else, but at least they'd be relatively honest. Openly trying to redefine common language is not the best tactic.
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"Verizon is reducing network speed to people with unlimited plans once they've met a certain threshold, or limit, of data usage"
Erm, so what I said then? If there's a limit, it's not unlimited. People who pay per month for "unlimited" data are being throttled, while those who pay more per meg are not. How is that different to what I wrote?
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Not only do you ignore the actual points in the article, not only do you have to act the smug fool spouting off as if you know everything (you don't, by the way). But, you can't resist turning a rambling comment on bandwidth allocation into an offhand attack on the site you choose to read on a daily basis, even as you fail to white knight Verizon against the one actual accusation made against them in the article. Pathetic.
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Having been trained in the physical sciences, I cringe when I hear an attorney use the term "theory." Social workers tend to stress the need for "positive feedback," while to an engineer the term "positive feedback" can evoke fear and horror.
Programmers and analysts need to be careful of their language around different clientele. At least in the past, the happy term default was anathema to bankers. Abort was very negative to people of certain religious beliefs.
"Throttle" is just a word, the meaning of which depends on field and connotation.
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What they are planning is not optimization, they intend to reduce bandwidth for some of the connections for a group of people that they can complain about without alienating most of their customers.
Without seeing their network, suggesting optimizations that they can implement is nearly impossible, but there is certainly the option of increasing the number of cells and switches for the data to travel through. Clearly, they are running into bottlenecks - rather than trying to reduce the amount of traffic running through these bottlenecks, it seems to me that since they have already sold more bandwidth than they can currently provide, they need to start adding more.
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Throttling has other meanings. Perhaps there's something Freudian happening if they can't consider the other definitions!
This is PR though. They have to think about the ways their customers might perceive the word, not just what the dictionary says. Though as I said it's something they didn't even need to bring up.
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Computer networking
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Also note that computers and networks are complex things. Another meaning of the term would be to buffer. My disk drive consumes fewer resources because it "throttles" or buffers information until it either has enough information to make a write worthwhile, or a specified time interval has passed. This is why you need to do a "u[n]mount" or "eject" on a removeable drive. Information needs to be flushed to the disk before it is removed.
But quarrelling over throttle or optimize is meaningless. The difficulty here is not what anyone calls the process, it is that the ISP does not provide the deliverable. They get around it by saying up to, but while legal, it is ethically fraud. Time to make it illegal. Sell rates by averages, have those averages tested.
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Version's new plan is actually a bit better in that they are going to throttle the top users once they have exceeded their cap, but only if the connection they are using does not have enough bandwidth for all of the other users. Basically, they are going to lower the packet priority of these users so as long as they don't interfere with anyone else they continue with the full bandwidth, but once they interfere, their connection will have a lower priority when it comes to allocating bandwidth.
Both plans, however, are ridiculous on their face because Verizon (and Sprint) should be providing the bandwidth they have sold their customers. Playing these kinds of games will, at best, hide the fact that their networks are too oversold and they need to actually optimize them or upgrade them to support their customers.
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It means the same thing in that context: "A throttle is the mechanism by which the flow of a fluid is managed by constriction or obstruction. An engine's power can be increased or decreased by the restriction of inlet gases (i.e., by the use of a throttle), but usually decreased. The term throttle has come to refer, informally and incorrectly, to any mechanism by which the power or speed of an engine is regulated. What is often termed a throttle (in an aviation context) is more correctly called a thrust lever."
Another meaning of the term would be to buffer.
Throttling and buffering are not the same thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Throttling_process_%28computing%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Da ta_buffer
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Network optimization can involve optimizing jitter, latency delay. Optimizing for those factors can decrease traffic going through a network, therefore not improve traffic going through a network.
You are looking at a network as a singular water pipe which you can either optimize or throttle. That is a laymen interpretation.
A network is a huge pipe with many different pipes within that pipe that are created and destroyed dynamically - therefore optimized - to, hopefully, benefit all users.
So wait, you're agreeing with me then? You must be.
FYI: Reverse is forward in the opposite direction.
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Well, yes and no. Arguing over which definition is most appropriate is splitting hairs, but the blatant attempt by Verizon to try and pretend that their actions do not constitute throttling at all deserves some comment.
"They get around it by saying up to, but while legal, it is ethically fraud. Time to make it illegal."
Not only does that open a massive can of worms, but it does so in many industries well outside of Verizon's sphere. I understand the sentiment, but there's ways to address this without making necessary technical work impossible and thus negative affecting customers. e.g., what if you have a tower that's normally running at 20% capacity but suddenly jumps up to 100% while there's a random music festival in the area for one week. Does the network engineer risk breaking the law because he tries to mitigate the problem? There are other reasons for throttling than "screw the customer, we don't want to upgrade".
Deliberate and repeated attempts to treat customers according to the ransom they pay should be addressed, especially if the company is in a monopoly position. But, we have to be measured in the methods used.
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This is not merely a theoretical, mathematically derivable consideration, but one that has been proven (through analysis of actual ISP logs) to bear out in actual practice.
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And taking away cells and base stations you still need because your consumer base hasn't shrunk. Amirite, EE?
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funny
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That and the launch of windows where they plugged in the scanner and it bluescreened on stage, and he makes some joke about testing... cause windows is buggy, its funnys
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