Should Your ISP Be Allowed To Delay Your File Transfers?

GreyICE said:
Well if you did anything like stormwater detention tanks or green roofing, you wouldn't have to pay sewer charges, now would you?

You have options to avoid those charges. In the case of detention, it would also lower your overall water bill. If you choose not to exercise those options, it seems slightly insane to complain about getting charged.
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Para 1: You are mistaken.
Para 2: You are mistaken.
 
I don't have a problem with limiting the amount of bandwidth that people use at peak times. If I'm trying to do online schoolwork, my connection speed shouldn't be compromised by someone trying to download a terabyte a week in media files. There's a minimum acceptable level of service that everyone should receive, and if it means that heavy users have to be pulled down to that level to make sure that everyone else doesn't fall below that level, then so be it.
 
The issue I see with this is twofold:

1) Internet providers throttling bandwidth usage will permit them to deliberately extend the life of their existing performance. Docsys3 is around the corner - but if demand is artificially reduced, vendors such as Comcast and others may push off adopting it to make their balance sheets look better. (A similar situation caused the US Congress to require all broadcast networks to convert all channels to HD/Digital format by the end of 2009 - the fear was that the rest of the world would move forward while we became increasingly isolated in terms of technology and competitive use of TV.)

2) Throttling bandwidth usage will diminish creativity on the 'net. Youtube and other services would never have come about were it not for the availability of high-speed access, and future innovation may also be stifled - especially if faster speeds aren't there to take advantage of.

Just my two cents. :)
 
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geni said:
The problem is that fo the most part you are not actualy paying for for fast internet. Most companies work on the basis that most people who buy their product will not actuly use very much of it. As long as most don't those who do are subsidised by the rest. As more people use more bandwidth the system breaks down which means either various forms of complex rationing or the company has to set up a geniune premium service which will tend to be rather more expenisive than the current one.
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When the premise of all your advertising is that your service is many times faster than dial up and your service costs three times as much as dial up I think it is more than fair to expect that what you are paying for is high speed internet. If what you are getting is equivalent in performance to dial up, then what exactly is it you are supposed to be paying for with the additional cost?
 
billydkid said:
When the premise of all your advertising is that your service is many times faster than dial up and your service costs three times as much as dial up I think it is more than fair to expect that what you are paying for is high speed internet. If what you are getting is equivalent in performance to dial up, then what exactly is it you are supposed to be paying for with the additional cost?
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All the bandwidth the heavy users in your area are useing. The solution I suspect is for companies to admit what the current situation actualy is and start offering a geniune premium service at a more realistic cost.
 
Darat said:
Aren't they private companies? If so and if it's in the contract you have with them the answer is "yes".
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I think that even thought they are private companies they might be limited in how then can 'manage' your usage due to the fact that they are a common carrier. Sort of like if the phone company tried to prevent you from calling certain numbers because you spoke to them for hours on end. I don't think the phone company could prevent that and in the same way I don't think the ISP can block P2P usage either.
 
JoeEllison said:
I don't have a problem with limiting the amount of bandwidth that people use at peak times. If I'm trying to do online schoolwork, my connection speed shouldn't be compromised by someone trying to download a terabyte a week in media files. There's a minimum acceptable level of service that everyone should receive, and if it means that heavy users have to be pulled down to that level to make sure that everyone else doesn't fall below that level, then so be it.
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This is a good point but then they should cap overall usage say by reducing the maximum throughput to a fixed level that won't saturate their equipment. In this case they are blocking a specific usage which is why the FCC got involved. The problem is that the ISP wants to advertise unlimited service at the highest speeds they can support under ideal conditions but aren't delivering. It's a problem that almost certainly originated in marketing. :)
 
Does anyone know what company is regularly slowing down the JREF forum? ;)
 
WildCat said:
Does anyone know what company is regularly slowing down the JREF forum? ;)
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That isn't just a company. As near as I can tell it is a joint operation between the CIA, the NSA, and the RAND corporation.
 
In reality, it is the combined powers of Geller, Browne and Edward. With a little help from Gary Schwartz.
 
Imagine going to an all-you-can-restaurant and having them you (after you've committed to the meal), "Sure, it's all-you-can-eat, but you have to wait 20 minutes after each plate before you can go up and get another."

An ISP, like any other service provider or vendor should be required to deliver what they promise. Simple as that. When they advertise using such words as "unlimited" and "faster than everything else" but then go on to say, "Oh, wait, you're using too much, we didn't mean you could have THAT much," that's fraud. If they are going to regulate bandwidth, this should be stated up front before you sign up. As jdp pointed out, the phone company can't just limit your phone service because you talk too much. Recall that when dial-up ISPs started proliferating, the phone companies did react with panic, laughably worried that people keeping phones lines open for hours on end was going to cause untold problems with the phone system (this reminded me of how the US Post Office whined to the federal government that the new trend of everyone sending Christmas cards was going to be the ruination of the postal service by causing it to come to a grinding halt through sheer overload).

The problem is, although ISPs do usually offer various levels of service to suit different users' needs, they only promote speed, because the average consumer only understands speed. Far fewer customers understand bandwidth, so the marketers usually don't get into it. It's kind of like the way manufacturers of telescopes emphasize magnification power since that's what most people who aren't already avid amateur astronomers can relate to, when in fact such factors as aperture size and focal length are much more critical than magnification power in a telescope.

It's also worth pointing out that a lot of people also don't realize that their upload speeds are a fraction of their available download speed. It stands to reason that this would have an impact on P2P transfers--you're ability to download is only as good as your peers' upload capabilities.
 
Is there any legitimate reason to need 250 GB a month? Isn't that something like 800 hours of Youtube?
 
Smackety said:
Is there any legitimate reason to need 250 GB a month? Isn't that something like 800 hours of Youtube?
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Downloading the entire wikimedia image database would probably put you over that if you could find a copy to download (closest would be starting at the top of http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ImageList&sort=img_size&limit=50&desc=1 and working down). Leaveing the BBC iplayer would do it but I don't think comcast operates in the UK. Downloading a lot of NASA images perhaps?

There are legit ways to do it but not many and the users who do have legit reasons to move that amount of stuff would probably benifit from a geniunly premium service.
 
Alex Libman said:
It's a lot easier to switch ISP's than to switch governments.
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Depends where you are. Infrastructure costs cause the problem that one ISP frequenty manages to get a monopoly in an area.

Gets even worse once you get outside the likes of the US and europe. If you want good internet acess in much of west africa you have to go through SAT-3/WASC for example. There are also a number of countries that are very reliant on SEA-ME-WE 3 for example.
 
geni said:
Downloading the entire wikimedia image database would probably put you over that if you could find a copy to download (closest would be starting at the top of http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ImageList&sort=img_size&limit=50&desc=1 and working down). Leaveing the BBC iplayer would do it but I don't think comcast operates in the UK. Downloading a lot of NASA images perhaps?

There are legit ways to do it but not many and the users who do have legit reasons to move that amount of stuff would probably benifit from a geniunly premium service.
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I suppose you are right, it just seems like this is a non-issue for 99.9% of users.
It seems like a logical move to prevent abuse by a very small minority of users, who are mostly engaged in illegal activity anyhow.
 
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