App To Keep ISPs Honest About Bandwidth Caps 172
alphadogg writes "A browser-based app developed by Georgia Tech researchers is designed to help Internet users make better use of their bandwidth – and to make sure ISPs are holding up their end of the bandwidth bargain. The Kermit app, which is being shown off Wednesday (PDF) at the CHI 2011 Conference on Human Factors in Computing in Vancouver, emerges at a time when service providers are starting to place bandwidth caps not just on wireless services, but on wireline services, too. AT&T, for example, is putting such caps in place this month for its DSL and U-verse customers. At least initially, such caps aren't expected to affect all but the very heaviest bandwidth users."
Browser based? (Score:5, Insightful)
How is a browser based app going to keep track of all TCP/IP traffic?
Also, Kermit is a terminal emulator. Pick a different name.
Re:Exactly (Score:5, Insightful)
At least initially... (Score:5, Insightful)
"...such caps aren't expected to affect all but the very heaviest bandwidth users."
Last month, I used 350gb of traffic; all of which was legitimate, split between services like NetFlix for television and movies, Steam for gaming, iTunes for music and podcasts, and the rest of normal day-to-day traffic. I may be on the extreme end for most people at this point in time, but the point is that technology keeps moving, and eventually usage like mine will be the norm, not the exception.
What the bandwidth caps will do is stifle technological progress. To use the required car analogy, they are like putting a 40mph cap on the newly-invented automobile, simply because few, if any, people need to go that fast. At some point, people did need to drive 40mph, then 50mph, then 60mph, and so on and so forth. It will work the same way with internet usage, and that is why bandwidth caps are such a serious problem. A decade ago, most of the country was still on dial-up, and the ideas of streaming video, social media, and the proliferation of modern media over the internet were still in their infancy. 150gb then would have been, literally, an unreachable amount of data to consume in a month. However, times change, and today 150gb is next to nothing for someone who uses the internet to its current full potential.
So many people may look at these, if they notice them at all, and say, "Who cares? I don't use that much data." But the point is that they don't use that much data now, and this is an attempt to keep them from using that much data ever.
Because let's not mince words about this. Infrastructure is fairly expensive, but once it is in place bandwidth across it is extremely cheap (often approaching as low as 3 cents per gigabyte, according to several studies). Corporations like AT&T and Comcast aren't doing this because the bandwidth usage is expensive. They are doing it because they are terrified of a future where consumers don't need their multiple services anymore. If you can get your television, movies, music, games, e-mail, social contacts, phone service, etc. all through your internet connection, there will be zero incentive to pay for locked-down cable television and movie rentals, and highly priced telephone service. They are not about to let that happen, and this is a major salvo in their war on that.
That's what people need to be aware of with this. It's not about the cost, it's about controlling the flow of information and stifling technological progress to secure corporate profits. And nobody should stand for it.
Re:Vote with your wallet! (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't have a choice in voting. Sure there's the "option" of moving and going to a location that has choices for broadband internet access but my wallet doesn't have that kind of voting power.
Block advertizing (Score:4, Insightful)
That expectation has changed significantly over the past decade, and not for the better. Now your choice of operating system or application is taken as an implicit invitation for it to use your network connection in ways that are not necessarily intended for your benefit at all. That's why it sometimes makes sense to configure a separate firewall device even for personal use. You can't, theoretically, prevent a proprietary protocol from tunnelling whatever data it likes, but you can at least perform a practical kind of triage over the traffic passing across your network.
As the Web becomes an increasingly general transport for applications, it becomes a network management exercise in its own right. And the concepts are similar to firewall management. Given that I'm paying for my system resources and my network bandwidth, I certainly don't want to waste them transporting and processing content that isn't valuable to me. Advertizing is not valuable to me. Therefore, I block it, just as I block any protocol that isn't valuable to me. As a consequence, I get very high signal-to-noise in my use of the network.
My ISP should be grateful.