Once More, With Feeling: The Internet Isn't At Risk Of Running Out Of Bandwidth

from the no-exaflood dept

For years, we've been hearing telco execs, telco lobbyists and politicians screaming over the coming death of the internet due to an "exaflood" of bandwidth, as things like internet video and bittorrent totally overwhelmed the internet infrastructure. There was little proof that this was actually an issue, and plenty of evidence suggesting that ordinary infrastructure upgrades would more than handle all expected growth. And, in the last few months we've been seeing more and more public reports supporting this position. In August alone we saw two separate reports noting that internet growth was actually slowing rather than increasing at an alarming rate.

And now there's a third such report, looking at internet backbone traffic and noting that there's little to worry about:

For the second consecutive year, the rate of underlying international Internet capacity deployment outpaced global Internet traffic growth, leading to lower utilization levels on many Internet backbones. Between 2007 and 2008, average traffic utilization levels decreased from 31 percent to 29 percent while peak utilization fell from 44 percent to 43 percent.

Yet, if you listen to telco lobbyists, execs and politicians, they'd have you believe that over the past couple of years, the growth of BitTorrent and internet video was flooding the networks. Hopefully, with so many reports pointing out the opposite, politicians will finally start pushing back the next time a lobbyist or exec starts claiming that the internet is at risk of running out of bandwidth.

Filed Under: bandwidth, bandwidth crunch, exaflood, studies

Bandwidth Caps Keep Getting Lower And Lower

from the don't-do-anything-useful dept

When Time Warner first announced plans to test out bandwidth caps, there was some talk that it might set the caps exceptionally low, such as 5GB/month for downloads. While Time Warner did eventually put in place a series of tiers, it admits that the 5GB tier is the "lite" tier for very basic usage. Don't tell that to the folks at Frontier. Reader Shea writes in to point out (via RochesterHDTV) that Frontier is now saying that 5GB of combined upload and download bandwidth is all you can use per month. If you go above that, Frontier reserves the right to "suspend, terminate or apply additional charges" for going over this "reasonable" usage.

See how this works? At first, we're told that such tiers will only touch on those super high bandwidth users. Then we see tiers put in place where it's admitted that the 5GB limit is for "lite" users. And now, according to Frontier, it's "reasonable" usage, and it can kick you off -- or add unspecified fees -- for going over. Welcome to the world where doing anything cool or useful online is discouraged. ISPs are working hard to make their broadband offerings less and less useful by the day.

Filed Under: bandwidth, bandwidth caps
Companies: frontier, time warner

Verizon: Bandwidth Hogs Are A Tech Issue, Not A Legal Or Business Model Problem

from the making-better-technology dept

While AT&T has been siding with Hollywood in saying that file sharing is bad (so bad!) and that it needs to filter file sharing to deal with it, Verizon very clearly stated a few months ago that it didn't think that was appropriate. However, now it appears that Verizon has gone even further, in working with a P2P software maker to improve the efficiency of P2P to make it less of a bandwidth hog.

Now, there are a few points worth making on this announcement. First, part of it is clearly just hyping up one startup that is offering a "legal" P2P file sharing offering. Second, part of this is Verizon using the opportunity to tweak AT&T and make itself look much more consumer friendly (something that doesn't often happen with Verizon, to be honest). Third, this hardly means (as some have been suggesting) that Verizon is "file sharing friendly." It only works with the one app that worked on this test with Verizon. However, what it does show is that Verizon recognizes that "bandwidth hogs" really are a technology issue that can be dealt with via technology solutions on the backend, rather than legal or business model methods that make life worse for consumers. That, alone, is a lesson that hopefully other companies in the space (and politicians) will learn.

Filed Under: bandwidth, optimizing, p2p

Time Warner's Overage Caps May Be Set Very Low

from the that's-not-overage----that's-normal-usage dept

Last week Broadband Reports broke the story of Time Warner's decision to test overage charges for their biggest users. I don't think it really makes sense for ISPs to charge in a way that makes their own services less valuable, but that's a different story. As long as the caps are clearly stated, it's worth seeing what happens. However, most of the talk about the caps seemed to suggest they would focus only on the off-the-charts extreme users of bandwidth in the "top 5%." However, Broadband Reports has another report now, suggesting that Time Warner will be testing a few different cap levels, including as low as 5GBs/month, which seems excessively low. If you're doing perfectly normal things, such as watching (authorized!) online videos or doing remote backups, 5GB can disappear mighty quickly. That doesn't seem like a way to stop "excessive" use. It seems like a way to squeeze more money out of a large percentage of users. On top of that, this gives less and less incentive for Time Warner to improve their network. The more they can claim the need for these congestion charges, the more money they can make. That seems backwards. Of course, this wouldn't be an issue if there were serious broadband competition, but that's still a long way away apparently.

Filed Under: bandwidth, caps, overage charges
Companies: time warner cable

Time Warner Cable Experimenting With Overage Charges For Top Users

from the bait-and-switch dept

Broadband Reports notes that internal memos from Time Warner Cable suggest the company is experimenting with overage fees for their highest bandwidth users in Beaumont, Texas. If those overage charges work, the idea, of course, would be to then roll them out nationwide. On the whole, overage charges are a lot more palatable than unpublished traffic shaping rules or "fuzzy caps" where the top users are cut off without any explanation of what line they crossed. The key, of course, is that with both of those latter "solutions," the subscriber is told they're getting unlimited service, but the reality is different. Assuming that the overage charges and the rules surrounding them are clearly communicated, such charges are more reasonable. However, there are still questions about how consumers will react to such a change, especially after being sold on an "unlimited" service. The bigger issue is that capping bandwidth usage is a way to slow down internet-based innovation. If there had been overage charges a few years back, services like YouTube might never have caught on, as people would be too worried about how much bandwidth it would suck up. If the cable companies can't provide enough bandwidth, that's clearly an issue -- but most reports suggest that claims of a bandwidth crunch are overblown. Update: Just saw Adam Thierer's amusing pre-emptive reply to me on the topic. I'm not as against the idea as he suggests, though I do think, in the long run, it's not a very good solution.

Filed Under: bandwidth, caps, overage charges
Companies: time warner cable

The Myth Of The Bandwidth Crunch Just Won't Die

from the this-again? dept

A few months back we noticed a trend. Whenever we heard fear mongering reports about the internet running out of capacity, they almost always came from folks who weren't technologists. Instead, they tended to be telco business folks, lobbyists or politicians. When it came to actual technology people who had real experience and real data concerning what was happening on the network, we would see over and over and over and over again that the "threat" of a bandwidth crunch is pretty much a myth. We're not running out of bandwidth, and the ongoing upgrades to the network should be able to handle whatever growth comes along. There's no reason to panic... yet, that's not the message that the telcos want you to hear. After all, it's in their interest to work up fears of internet capacity problems so that politicians will pass legislation providing them with subsidies or other unnecessary benefits.

So, when Broadband Reports pointed us to an op-ed piece in the Boston Globe by a Harvard professor talking about the coming bandwidth crunch and the need to switch to metered pricing (another telco favorite, after they were too clueless to accurately predict that unmetered pricing would lead to more usage), it wasn't difficult to guess that she didn't have a technology background. Instead, it appears her background is entirely in public policy. There's certainly nothing wrong with folks looking at this issue from a public policy position (in fact, it's important). But, before they claim that the internet is running into trouble, shouldn't they look at what those who actually have the data have to say about the matter?

Filed Under: bandwidth, internet growth, net neutrality

You Don't Promote Innovation By Holding Back Those Who Push The Boundaries

from the push-the-limits,-find-solutions dept

Mark Cuban has weighed in on the whole Comcast bittorrent kerfuffle, siding with Comcast, noting that he wants it (and other ISPs) to block P2P traffic because such traffic clogs the last mile and that's inefficient and a problem. This is, unfortunately, the same kind of thinking that the telcos love: that the internet is somehow running out of bandwidth, and the more controls that are put on it, the better. However, that's static thinking. It assumes a steady state, or, at best, linear growth of innovation and change. Unfortunately, that's not how innovation works. The more people push the boundaries, the more demand it creates for better, more efficient solutions, and the more incentive there is to create such solutions. Rather than begging for artificial barriers to be put up, Cuban (and others) should be encouraging such uses. They push the boundaries to the point that people learn where the next big friction point is, and they innovate to get around it. When people are using up last mile bandwidth, all it's doing is creating additional incentives to solve the problems and provide much larger pipes into and out of homes. For a content distributor, such as Cuban is these days, you would think that would be a good thing.

Filed Under: bandwidth, bittorrent, mark cuban, p2p, traffic shaping

What Bandwidth Crunch?

from the doesn't-look-so-bad-this-way dept

While you have lobbyists, consultants and politicians claiming that the internet is on the verge of collapsing due to running out of bandwidth, it seems that the techies would beg to differ. We already pointed out that the report put out by D&T consultants was later refuted by the folks who run the nodes that D&T insisted were at risk of being overwhelmed. Now we have Andrew Odlyzko adding more weight to the idea that the bandwidth crunch that so many lobbyists and telco execs seem to be screaming about is something of a myth. Odlyzko, of course, is also the guy who pointed out that Worldcom was lying back during the dot com boom when it insisted that internet traffic was doubling every 100 days. Now he's noting that internet traffic growth is slowing -- which very few of the doomsday estimates take into account. Internet traffic is still growing, of course, but not at nearly as rapid a pace. That isn't surprising, after all. The internet is starting to reach maturity in terms of the number of folks who are joining in the developed world. Certainly, those people are using more and more bandwidth, but not at an overwhelming pace, and there appears to be plenty of capacity to keep up with the pace of growth. Once again, it looks like those warning of the imminent death of the internet are basing it either on faulty data or are extrapolating based on data that doesn't take into account slowing growth. Either way, it is interesting that the actual technologists never seem all that worried about running out of capacity. Hell, even when any telco exec breaks the party line and admits that the threat of a bandwidth crunch is completely overstated, it's always been the CTO who says so. Somehow, I get the feeling that the technology guys have a lot better handle on this than the lobbyists and the politicians...

Filed Under: bandwidth, internet growth, net neutrality