Another Inventor of the Internet Wants To Gag It 250
MojoKid writes "Lawrence Roberts is just another guy with the title: 'Inventor of the
Internet' in news articles. According to Wikipedia, he's the
father of networking through data packets. And he's
turned his attention to everyone's favorite data packet topic: Peer-to-Peer
file sharing. He's established a company called Anagran, and says their devices
can sort out which file transfers on the tubes are P2P, and — you guessed it — can throttle them in favor of other, more 'high-priority' traffic."
Re:so what (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod Article Down (Score:5, Insightful)
This has to be the most ridiculous article in the history of slashdot.
"Lawrence Roberts is just another guy with the title: 'Inventor of the Internet' in news articles."
That's right, just another guy. Who just happened to be the Program Manager and principle architect for the initial design and construction of ARPAnet.
Re:so what (Score:5, Insightful)
When YOU do that to YOUR traffic, this is fine.
When SOMEONE is doing that to SOMEONE ELSE'S traffic, it is not.
P2P has legit uses. (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at the over 4,000 channels of content (much of it in hi-def) legitimately distributed via miro.
Best of luck to this company (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:so what (Score:5, Insightful)
throttling for QoS is one thing. How about when Comcast blocks them in favor of its own video streaming service?
When on /. did QoS become "gagging the Internet?" (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously - what's wrong with wanting e-mail, IM, VoIP or other packets to be ranked as higher priority? So this device the guy is fronting can detect encrypted P2P traffic - is that what is now equal to "gagging the Internet?"
Of course, Evil Corporations(TM) can use this for Bad Things(TM), Bush administration must be somehow involved, this will cause the Earth to spin off its axis, etc. But with Comcast et. al. already throttling P2P, what is it that this guy is doing that's so evil? As long as they aren't blocking P2P entirely, I'd rather get my e-mail in a timely fashion that speed up my ISO downloads which aren't time sensitive.
In other news (Score:3, Insightful)
Old people are old. Whether they helped create the system we work with today or not. First, p2p isn't the ridiculous bandwidth hog we all though it was (compared to legit streaming video). Second, p2p was designed as a means around previous circumvention measures. Future circumvention measures will have to change things pretty radically before they will be able to effectively throttle only p2p traffic.
DPI? encrypt. Throttle anything encrypted? Piss off lots of banking and e-mail customers. throttle based on header info? Spoof the headers.
I'm not arguing that it is pointless. just very hard and liable to have a greater negative net effect for non-infringing users than we would anticipate. Nevertheless that does not stop companies from doing things that will eventually be deemed not in their self interest.
Re:so what (Score:4, Insightful)
See, that I would be fine with. What worries me is the precedent it sets, and the day when specific site access is based on a cable "channel set" model.
"Browse these common subnets/domains at blazing fast gigabit speeds!*"
* Maximum throughput may vary based on peak hours. All other destinations limited to 5KiB u/d.
Course, just creating the technology to be able to do so isn't bad in my book. I'll start bitching and moaning (for serial) when someone wants to USE such techs in this manner. If they DID stick to legitimate control traffic being the only traffic shaped this way I'd be fine with it.
If someone was a jerk though they'd start the layout of such a plan exactly that way, then add "small transfers versus larger" requests next.
The rest could easily follow though.
Alternatives: (Score:3, Insightful)
Some alternate scenarios:
"more important data". Who qualifies this? (Score:5, Insightful)
If our current private internet entities fail to realize that there can be no universally determined difference between one data or another, we need to either regulate or take that power from them.
There is no 'more important data'. That term is a relativistic concept that bears no actual meaning when read by anyone but the original believer. What is more important to one person is worthless to another.
The internet is a well established virtual representation of public interaction. It has many intricate elements, all of which should be preserved in the aspect of freedom. There is no universally determinable difference of importance between one data or another; the quality is only relative.
---------
Anyway, if these companies want to place values on data, we need to exercise our ability consumers and citizens of this country to tell them WE DON'T AGREE WITH WHAT YOU SAY IS IMPORTANT.
I'd hate to see it, as it would probably be worse, but we could probably socialize the whole internet in the U.S. Take all those companies and acquire all their assets through some form of virtual eminent domain, etc.
Our failure to achieve our very popular goals of freedom in the US will most likely fail due to LOBBYING. Our desires as a majority are easily ignored. Hold your congressmen responsible. Write them and tell them what you want.
People of America: Take Control Back. Spread truth, refuse corruption, and get off the goddamn couch.
Re:P2P has legit uses. (Score:4, Insightful)
ISPs probably don't really care whether it's legitimate or not though, it's the impact that large amounts of data has on their network that's the issue for them.
I don't see that prioritising HTTP traffic etc is harmful though - it can provide a better quality of service to most users, I prioritise HTTP traffic myself. The real issue is whether ISPs are open to the consumer about how their traffic is shaped.
p2p interpretations (Score:5, Insightful)
In today's world there is so very little the individual can do to change laws that favor big businesses. This is simply those individuals reacting to laws that they cannot change, by finding ways to do what they believe they should be allowed to do.
In the end, the absurd laws and the p2p about negate each other, so I'm not in favor of people trying to "fix" p2p unless they are also undertaking a fixing of the laws that are providing p2p with justification.
Examine the situation from a different perspective. In the wild west there were small towns that didn't have effective law enforcement or court, and there was a wide measure of "mob rule" / rioting when a big business started running the town, getting the laws of that town changed to their favor and owning the local judges. Sure, you can work to dissolve the mob, but that doesn't really fix the problem. If you're truly interested in fixing the problem, you have to deal with the mob and the company (and it's effects/actions) that's causing the mob to be necessary. If all you work against is the mob, you've only made things better for the minority.
We've been trying for years to fix the laws and it just keeps getting worse. Then came along p2p and suddenly all the injustices were dealt a serious blow. It's still nowhere near even, but it's taken a big enough bite out of the injustice that the "mafiaa" is looking to beat down the newly formed resistance against it. Can't say as I blame them, they've got a sweet thing going and don't want to lose it. But I'm on the losing side of the issue so I'm rooting for the underdog.
Re:so what (Score:4, Insightful)
I pay for a 6mbit line every month, and I expect to be able to use it the way I see fit. ... We're paying the same amount, shouldn't we get the same service, no matter WHAT we're transferring?
That sounds like something a spammer might say.
Re:P2P has legit uses. (Score:5, Insightful)
Its necessary... (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is, what users expect is long-baseline fairness (measured over minutes to hours) evaluated between users.
What the network provides is either nothing (UDP) or short baseline fairness (measured over round-trip-times) evaluated between flows.
Thus everyone benefits if the short flows from the light users are given priority, as they don't have to wait but it has almost a trivial effect on the big heavy users.
I don't like one aspect of his solution, however, is that it focuses on apps first and then users, when it should be the opposite: focus on users first then applications.
Ancient Wisdom Applies (Score:4, Insightful)
Enjoy the ride, until you truly have to pay for what you get. Any New York lawyer will tell you "unlimited" anything is physically impossible and, thus, merely a marketing term. Your plan is "virtually unlimited," especially when compared to 2.4 kbps dial-up.
Increasing reliance on VoIP makes it essential to grade services and throttle in a reasonable fashion.
Re:When on /. did QoS become "gagging the Internet (Score:2, Insightful)
If postal services charged a flat rate, this might be a reasonable analogy.
As it is, I pay for every single piece of mail that I send. And, amazingly enough, if some piece of mail has more "priority" than another, I can pay more for it to be delivered more quickly.
Re:so what (Score:3, Insightful)
We all pay the same amount of freeways too.
Yet speed limits enforce order... those guys who own sports cars that can break 100 are screwed.
America internet is a joke however and the speed limit is effectively 30mph because we are still on dirt roads.
Re:"more important data". Who qualifies this? (Score:3, Insightful)
There is no 'more important data'. That term is a relativistic concept that bears no actual meaning when read by anyone but the original believer. What is more important to one person is worthless to another.
Maybe not, but it's obvious that some types of data are more time-sensitive than others. If your P2P connection spikes and dips regularly it makes no real difference; if your average speed is fine it doesn't even matter if sometimes it drops to 0 to make way for other types of traffic. VOIP and regular streaming video are very time sensitive, and need a solid connection; they don't necessarily need the same average downspeed as P2P, but they need to be able to guarantee a minimum speed (especially for VOIP, which doesn't benefit from buffering). In this context it's not a system that is denying the use of P2P, but a technology that makes it possible to use VOIP and many other systems that require consistent speeds.
Of course, it depends on how it's used; maybe it will be used by ISPs to simply reduce their load. However, used intelligently, a system like this could give priority to time-sensitive applications when load is particularly high, knowing that the load will return to sub-100% soon enough, at which point it will stop throttling P2P, allowing it to make up for lost time.
Re:Mod Article Down (Score:1, Insightful)
Waiting and waiting? What are we on, dialup?
This is the issue: realtime services are losing priority and thus unsuable:
aka VOIP, gaming, servers, interactive stuff such as google maps with the interactive map.
Nobody's going to wait 20 minutes, but I'd like it if my games were as reliable as mapquest since I pay to use the connection as I choose.
P2P is just the wedge (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Best of luck to this company (Score:5, Insightful)
Tell me all about your internet usage... Do you have Broadband ?.. what would warrant you to have broadband as opposed to dialup ? .. is your internet connection slow because of all these large file downloaders ? .. I think it's nice that you pay for all and your movies and music... but I don't game, why should I pay for the bandwidth of gamers ?... You see there are probably millions of people who use much less bandwidth than you.
You know, we did the whole per hour and limit of bytes thing back in the 90's.. and it sucked... ask the people who got $400 AOL bills for a months usage.. Stop worrying about who uses what number of bytes for what.. That's not the issue.. the issue is upgrading the network to deliver the bandwidth that you pay for at a flat rate.
Re:P2P has legit uses. (Score:1, Insightful)
Personally, I would support traffic shaping P2P in favour of more time-critical protocols, like VoIP (I mean, your latest porno is a lot less important than someone's call). Of course, the ISP should state that they do so.
Re:When on /. did QoS become "gagging the Internet (Score:3, Insightful)
If the USPS become deluged with junk mail, to the point that the average piece of mail was "degraded" by 2-3 weeks, wouldn't you want the USPS to offer a way to prioritize your rent check to arrive in a more reasonable time? Some applications are flat out *unusable* when the link is congested, because everything has equal priority today. Other applications can tolerate this congestion more easily, so why not exploit this fact and make everything work as well as it can when things are congested?
Re:so what (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Metcalfe and Roberts both have it wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
So the problem with this approach is one of cost/administration. The QoS-enabled path must be a QoS-trusted path. That is, you have to ensure that everyone in that path is going to be honest and respectful with their QoS flags, and honor them appropriately. Otherwise, everyone is going to start prioritizing their random BitTorrent downloads so they'll go faster, and we'll be stuck right where we are today with everything prioritized equally (high).
The second problem is political. What you're proposing is the exact definition of a "non-neutral" Internet.
Re:so what (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, well, all ISPs have terms and conditions like that that you have to agree to. Pretty well all commercial software has EULAs you have to agree to granting them powers far beyond what is allowed for under the law. Take part in any charity fund raising event and you have to sign a waiver that says they are not responsible for anything that happens to you even if they are directly responsible for injuries you sustain. Same with tickets to any sporting event, concert or whatever. On the back of it something to the effect that by using this ticket you agree that they are not responsible for anything.
You and others who use the "you agreed to the terms when you signed up for the service" seem to be arguing that if a corporation deems it we must agree to it. What network neutrality legislation would do is prevent ISPs from colluding with each other to ensure no one can gain access to the Internet without first agreeing to have their traffic throttled at the whim of their ISP.
Re:When on /. did QoS become "gagging the Internet (Score:2, Insightful)
Do you want the postal service to charge different amounts for different levels of service?
I don't know about you, but to me that seems like a really good idea.
Re:so what (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, but on freeways, you actually get told what the limit is. If the government told you that you can go as fast as you want, and then if you go over 75, a cop will show up and give you a ticket, anyway, wouldn't you complain, too?
All's fair if you predeclare, as they say - but predeclare you must.
Re:When on /. did QoS become "gagging the Internet (Score:5, Insightful)
Most ISPs already advertise packages on the basis of bandwidth but penalize customers who actually use it, so there's plenty of reason to distrust them in making any decisions on which content should be favored. Hint: if they're making a buck on it, it will have higher priority. If it's costing them money, lower. Nothing to do with what you want or need. Big ISPs don't give a shit about your interests.
And *YOU* Own the Internet? (Score:4, Insightful)
From my understanding, various entities actually own and maintain different parts/sections of the Internet. So when you pay your ISP for internet access, you should only be entitled to whine about the parts of the internet they actually control. It amazes me to think how many people seem to believe they have a true "end to end" connection through their ISP to every computer in the world! The sense of entitlement they exude is almost nauseating. If the route your connection is taking to "GothicKitty42" (a legitimate business associate in Denmark) is being throttled as it passes through Briton, feel free to take control and re-route your own path through the internet. Oh wait... You're too busy watching that DVD you just burned. You certainly can't be bothered to monitor your own QoS when you're paying as much as you do for that broadband connection!
And here's where I actually have to take issue with Bit Torrent type clients. While they don't overload a centralized server, they actually make less efficient use of the network as a whole since everything usually finds its way through the same old trunks of copper and fiber time and time again. All those little packets swimming around like a puddle of sperm looking for an egg... It's a redundancy nightmare of exponentiating proportions.
I'd love to see how some of these people would react if tomorrow they woke up with a peer to peer mesh network instead of their current arrangement. I bet they'd cuss to no end whenever they saw traffic freeloading through their node. They'd probably be racing to the computer store and buying software to shake off those pesky packets so they could get the most out of their internet connection.
But that's just my opinion.
Re:When on /. did QoS become "gagging the Internet (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Best of luck to this company (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll let the market dictate the price. As time goes on and more competition comes into being, the price will drop.
What the hell are you talking about? There is no "market". That's the problem.
Re:When on /. did QoS become "gagging the Internet (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you want a postal service to decide how quickly to deliver letters based on their content?
I don't know about you, but that's absolutely horrifying.
Actually virtually all letters you send are a single application of 'first class mail'.
Read up on the postal service, you might be surpised that in addition to first class mail, there are several other classes. In the US there is first class, periodicals, standard mail, bulk mail, parcel post, media mail (book rate), priority mail, registered mail, express mail, postal money orders, and a variety of other services and options.
Different 'applications' have different rates, delivery time gaurantees, etc.
Right now, ISPs are starting to do the same thing.
Interestingly, by not charging a differential rate, but still sorting by application they are creating a problem for themselves, if they prioritize voip and de-prioritize p2p, the p2p people are going to try and have their p2p masquerade as voip. And we already see this happening...this is the game of cat-mouse we are currently dealing with, and its only going to get worse. And if bitcomet or whatever figures out a way of dodging the latest ISP throttle by having their traffic look like voip and gets the highest download speeds the p2p crowd will jump all over it to the detriment of everyone involved.
QoS can't work if the ISPs apply it, but don't charge for it. Misbehaved applications/users/developers will try to get their traffic into a higher QoS class and use its performance advantage as a competitive advantage.
The solution to the problem is in fact to charge different rates for different service classes. voip will be more expensive than http/pop/imap/smtp/im, which in turn will be more expensive than ftp/p2p. Voip will get through faster and at higher priority, http/pop/imap/smtp/im/irc will be a level below that, and then bulk p2p/ftp/streaming hidef video/etc will fill up the rest of pipe. Ideally rather than have the ISP choose the QoS level, applictions can choose their own.
So SSL users should be able to pick what QoS level to use -- so if they are using p2p they can choose bulk to keep costs down, or choose real-time if they are doing voice communications.
Re:so what (Score:5, Insightful)
Your analogy isn't accurate; here, I'll fix it for you!
First of all, the sports cars are to be limited to 50kph on certain sections of the road whereas the other drivers would still enjoy the full 100kph speed limit in the same section.
Secondly, driving to certain locations such as a beach, movie theater, or concert would be limited to 30kph the entire trip even on the freeway no matter what car you drive.
Thirdly, the providers of the freeway would justify the speed limits on sport cars by claiming that there are just too many sport cars and they are interfering with the other drivers, even though 95% of the freeway is empty at any given time, and none of the non-sport car drivers have ever complained or been affected by the super-fast sport cars.
Fourthly, the freeway providers limit speeds because they have their own plans to introduce their own sport cars that have no speed restrictions, yet have less features, cost more and don't go as fast as the other sport cars.
Fifthly, the providers of the smaller freeways that want to provide faster speed limits at lower prices would have their traffic limited, or shaped, by the larger freeway providers.
There, that's better.
Re:so what (Score:3, Insightful)
In fairness, the 600 MB ISO over HTTP is a single sustained connection. BitTorrent is a whole bunch of simultaneous connections. There are a number of reasons why the second is actually more 'expensive' than the first for the network. Even when you throttle it in terms of throughput, there's still the expense needed of opening multiple connections at once to talk to all the peers, etc.
But I'm not entirely convinced that difference in expense is the huge burden on the network they want us to believe.
I /will/ grant that there's probably enough of a difference to worry them. "What if everyone starts using it?" may be a valid fear, and I'll grant that the networks would probably become unusable due to congestion if literally every customer were BitTorrenting stuff. Through quantity of opened connections, if nothing else.
But I remain unconvinced that 'we must promise people X bps speed and unlimited bandwidth, and then choke that!' is the correct solution.
Re:so what (Score:5, Insightful)
We all pay the same amount of freeways too.
Yet speed limits enforce order... those guys who own sports cars that can break 100 are screwed.
America internet is a joke however and the speed limit is effectively 30mph because we are still on dirt roads.
Good analogy. But I might add net neutrality is failing where the speed limit is different depending you are going to NY or Chicago, Sears or Walmart, White, Black or Hispanic. Equal access then goes out the door. While Lawrence Roberts may be a co-founder of early network technology, this does not make the idea right. It does make it easier for him to get venture capital and start a company to selectively discriminate against protocols.
We need to look at the real picture. Your ISP wants to generate revenue to "preferred" paid traffic. This is what it is about and Roberts is going to capitalize on it. I am not against his capital spirit, but the idea sucks. It is akin to packet/protocol racism.
ISPs today can and do throttle traffic, a statement like "if (overlimit()) throttle();" can be had in any cable router. But this has one huge disadvantage. It isn't as easy for the ISP to go to Google, YouTube or others and say pay me for "preferred" access or else we throttle.
Roberts efforts here are capitalistic and not honorable in the spirit of the Internet. Make no mistake, this is about money and to hell with net neutrality.
Re:P2P has legit uses. (Score:3, Insightful)
ISPs probably don't really care whether it's legitimate or not though, it's the impact that large amounts of data has on their network that's the issue for them.
Let me rephrase that. The ISP hasn't provided enough upstream bandwidth for their user base and now wants to charge the destination URL for preferred access.
I don't see that prioritising HTTP traffic etc is harmful though - it can provide a better quality of service to most users, I prioritise HTTP traffic myself. The real issue is whether ISPs are open to the consumer about how their traffic is shaped.
It is harmful. It sets the precedent that the ISP can now charge providers of services on the internet for preferred paid access. And these interests have squat to do with your benefit, it is about the ISP charging the likes of Google for access. ISP/Money/profit then will dictate to you what is usable on the internet. You know this is going to work out this way as if it only was about limiting a few abusers, then the ISP can already rate throttle the whole IP at the cable/DSL modem. This is a sneak play by the ISP to toss net neutrality out the window. Nothing less.
Roberts is just cashing in his name for profit. I agree with profit, but this is what this is.
Re:so what (Score:4, Insightful)
My ISP happens to be the organisation that is the connection between me and the internet. How does that put him in a position to regulate in what way I may use the service?
You are using their bandwidth under terms of service they have set out. They are exactly the people in a position to regulate how you use the service.
Could you imagine your power provider telling you that you can't use that washing machine or AC because it gobbles up too much juice? Or demand that you should cook with gas instead of electricity because it reduces the strain on their power network? How about your phone company telling you to limit your long distance calls to the nights and other non-office hours to free up their lines for office use?
Actually, these things already happen. The power company can shut you off for draining too much juice and threatening the grid. And the phone company doesn't mandate that you call during off-peak hours, but they do charge you less to incentivize you to do it.
If you are getting a "home Internet" package of X bandwith for $Y, it is priced based on terms of service based around shaping your usage to approximately Z fraction of X actual usage (Z being a profitable number). If you want to use 2Z, 3Z or more bandwidth - then you can expect that your ISP will either throttle something to keep you around Z bandwidth or may ask you to buy a higher-grade (business) connection.
Now, I agree ISPs should do a better job of explaining what the "real" limits are. But it is essential for all of us who want to understand both sides in this debate that while we should be guaranteed the right to unfettered access to the Internet, that does not mean that we should be guaranteed the right to that at the lowest possible price. If you don't use the Internet like grandma, it's reasonable for ISPs to expect you to not pay like grandma. You or I may not like it as consumers, but there is a reason for this, it's not just ISPs being jerks for the fun of it. Just my $.02 as someone who used to work for small Internet Service Providers....
Re:so what (Score:5, Insightful)
Not if your contract with your ISP allows them to prioritize traffic. What does it say about the issue?
Well, if it deprioritizes all the traffic *I* want to run so I don't get the expected service, I'd call that fraud no matter what it says in the contract. Not unless they start adding "* up to X Mbit to selected websites using selected protocols, everything else is sent to the slow lane so you won't even get close".
Re:so what (Score:4, Insightful)
That 6 mbit or 10 mbit pipe isn't designed to be used at full capacity 24/7 by each subscriber, it's designed to be a shared service between multiple people, splitting the cost of the full 6 mbit or 10 mbit pipe between them.
I would love to see that as a comcast commercial.
Re:The problem is scaling and cost (Score:3, Insightful)
If you are a small ISP with a OC-3 and you have 1000 lines, that means if all lines are active, each one would only have an average speed of 6Kbps.
155Mbps/(1 OC-3) * (1 OC-3/1000 lines) = 155Kbps/line.
Re:Best of luck to this company (Score:3, Insightful)
What market?
Whoever owns the infrastructure is the market. In most countries it is a monopoly and there is no competition. All independent isps lease packages from the infrastructure provider. It's up to the individual isps to structure consumer data plans.
A few isps provide faster upload speeds to cater for voip and sell these plans for much more than a 256/64 - 512/128 basic plan. They do this to offset high capacity, fast d/u plans.
The problem here is that a typical isp's monthly traffic is dynamic. They oversell their capacity like webhosting companies do. Most consumers don't use their full quota at all but as consumers start to fill their plans due to marketing like Apple and other legitimate a/v providers, the isps take notice and are forced into throttling.
However, the infrastructure was designed primarily for single 'peer-peer' connections, not multiple peers to single peer which is what p2p is about. The data flow is maxed out, routing tables full and http/ftp dies. Happens all the time.
The world infrastructure isn't capable of sustained high speed high capacity traffic to a billion users who all want to download (legitimate or otherwise) video content.
I'm amazed by the assurances of some who believe that DVD (Blue Ray) is dead as it will be replaced by downloadable content! Think of the consumer costs just to be able to download 1GB/day.
Most spend $1000+ for the computer system plus exorbitant monthly isp fees and line rental.
Most of the time it's just not worth it. Unless you want HD video, it's a whole lot cheaper to go out and buy a DVD or even series nowadays.
So by throttling p2p AND legitimate video downloads AND pricing video media lower AND upgrading the infrastructure, will the problem be solved. The halcyon days of the Net are coming to an end.
Sold as "unlimited" and users expect that? Gasp! (Score:5, Insightful)
If the government told you that you can go as fast as you want
Roads without speed limit signs (and there are a lot of them, at least here in NY) are limited to the state speed limit (55 in our case).
He didn't say or even imply otherwise. He came up with a hypothetical analogy which said " if [my emphasis] the government told you that you can go as fast as you want".
You can argue that this is or isn't a good analogy, but that's beside the point.
You'll complain that 99% of people don't get "ticketed" but that still doesn't change the fact that you were abusing the service. That 6 mbit or 10 mbit pipe isn't designed to be used at full capacity 24/7 by each subscriber, it's designed [etc]
You can argue all you like that their system isn't designed to be used like that. I'll mostly agree with you- we all know that most consumer broadband services couldn't deliver if they were used to their true "unlimited" capacity.
:)
But again, this is beside the point- you *can't* accuse people of "abusing the service" if it was sold as "unlimited". Even- no, *especially*- if the limitations were stated via some obscure, vaguely-worded small-print in the contract, or some handwaving reference to a "see elsewhere" weasel-worded "fair use" policy.
Many ISPs promoted their services as "unlimited" because it sounded better, even though this relied upon most people not using anything like the full capacity they were given. If this situation changes, it's *their* problem for overselling something they can't deliver, not the customers' for "abusing the system". I'm not going to come up with another trite analogy to illustrate that
Frankly, I've nothing against the principle that (much) heavier users should pay for what they use and not expect to be subsidised. I'm not even entirely opposed to QoS being used so long as it's applied in a relatively neutral and fair manner, and doesn't lead to "second-class citizen" Internet access. I'm only opposed to it when used as some BS excuse to coerce user behaviour, favour the ISPs' vested interests and/or cover-up and weasel out of the limitations of an oversold Internet service, as it is at present.
Re:so what (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, I agree ISPs should do a better job of explaining what the "real" limits are.
Bingo! They want to be able to sell their service as "unlimited" without actually having to provide that- they want to have their cake and eat it, but that's their problem.
I'm sure we'll both agree that it's unreasonable to expect a true "unlimited" service at the prices charged by some broadband providers. But it's also unreasonable for them to sell it as such when it isn't, and then rely on small-print and vaguely-worded "fair use" policies which they know *damn well* that most people won't see or notice.
You're Not Helping Sir! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Al Gore never claimed to invent the internet (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:so what (Score:1, Insightful)
Isn't that what an average user's cable modem is. A box rented from the cable company for use in the house?
It seems to me that they already have the means to hit a large portion of their userbase with custom modems and still not, as you mention, use specialized software you don't want running on your computer...
How many people are lemmings? I doubt you'll hear much argument as long as it doesn't interfere with your privacy in an obvious AND detrimental way.
Re:so what (Score:2, Insightful)