One Argument Why Data Caps Are Not a Problem (fierce-network.com) 49
NoWayNoShapeNoForm writes: OpenVault believes that data caps on broadband are not a problem because most people do not exceed their existing data caps. OpenVault contends that people that do exceed their broadband data caps are simply being forgetful — leaving a streaming device on 24x7, or deploying unsecure WiFi access points, or reselling their service within an apartment building.
Yes, there may be some ISPs that have older networks that they have not upgraded. Or maybe they are unable to increase network capacity in "the middle mile" of their networks, but the Covid pandemic certainly encouraged many ISPs to upgrade their networks and capacity while many ISPs that had broadband data caps ended that feature.
Perhaps the biggest problem, according to OpenVault, is that most broadband users do not really have any idea how much bandwidth they "consume" every month. If Internet access is a service that people want to treat as a "utility", then you have to ask, Would they keep the water running after finishing their shower?
In the article Ookla's VP of Smart Communities adds that "Scrolling through social media feeds for hours can 'push' hundreds of videos to the user, many of which may be of no interest — they just start running." So the main driver for usage-based billing wasn't to increase revenue, OpenVault CEO Mark Trudeau tells the site, but to "balance the network a little more..." (Though he then also adds that sometimes a subscriber could also be reselling broadband service in their apartment building, "And that's not even legal.")
"If one or two customers on a given node is causing issues for 300 others, where those 300 are not getting the service that they paid for, then that's a problem right?" he said.
Having said that, the article also points out that "Many major fiber providers, like AT&T, Frontier, Google Fiber and Verizon Fios, don't have data caps at all."
Yes, there may be some ISPs that have older networks that they have not upgraded. Or maybe they are unable to increase network capacity in "the middle mile" of their networks, but the Covid pandemic certainly encouraged many ISPs to upgrade their networks and capacity while many ISPs that had broadband data caps ended that feature.
Perhaps the biggest problem, according to OpenVault, is that most broadband users do not really have any idea how much bandwidth they "consume" every month. If Internet access is a service that people want to treat as a "utility", then you have to ask, Would they keep the water running after finishing their shower?
In the article Ookla's VP of Smart Communities adds that "Scrolling through social media feeds for hours can 'push' hundreds of videos to the user, many of which may be of no interest — they just start running." So the main driver for usage-based billing wasn't to increase revenue, OpenVault CEO Mark Trudeau tells the site, but to "balance the network a little more..." (Though he then also adds that sometimes a subscriber could also be reselling broadband service in their apartment building, "And that's not even legal.")
"If one or two customers on a given node is causing issues for 300 others, where those 300 are not getting the service that they paid for, then that's a problem right?" he said.
Having said that, the article also points out that "Many major fiber providers, like AT&T, Frontier, Google Fiber and Verizon Fios, don't have data caps at all."
Fuck off (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fuck off (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously that "just asking questions" vibe of that non-headline is infuriating.
It's bad if someone is getting paid for this, and worse if someone is so incompetent as to do it for free.
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Yes.. Why are we asking the data cap software company their opinion on data caps? Their product has no purpose if Broadband providers simply invest the money in the network instead of spending an arm and a lag instead of on software and services designed to mitigate the lack of capacity.
What a nice "argument by hallucination"... (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, if, supposedly, most people do not exceed their data-cap, why does it even make economic sense to implement them at considerable effort and cost?
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They are rather pointless though. Even if someone were pirating as much content as their connection would allow, there's no way that they could consume it anywhere near as fast as they could acquire it. Once upon a time there may have been concerns about that, but the pipes got fatter, the compressi
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It's possible that the psy
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Suppose 100 people use a service. 99 of them use 1-5 units per day. The 100th uses 200 units per day. If you offered that service and units cost money to produce, you might consider implementing a cap of 10 units per day that wouldn't affect 99% of your users, and removes the one who costs you the most.
I'm not in favour of caps generally, but I can see a circumstance in which they would make economic sense to a comany.
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Bandwidth is not oil or fresh water. No one is going to run out of it. It also has zero marginal cost so there's no cost to "produce it".
As long as power is supplied a router will deliver bits. At ISP scales there's very little power difference between full utilization and partial utilization.
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Indeed. Here (Europe), I pay for _bandwitdh_, not usage (both wired and mobile). Incidentally, bandwidth is also what the provider pays for. It makes no sense anymore to have data-caps. The only use-case is to squeeze money out of customers, i.e. market failure.
Burstable bandwidth (Score:2)
Do you pay for burstable bandwidth or sustained bandwidth? As I understand it, caps are meant to deter customers from misusing burstable bandwidth as if it were sustained bandwidth.
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1TB is nothing when 4K TV is involved. I'm on FIOS and I just checked my devices. Our main TV 4K streamer is at 1TB just for that single device. Overall the house is at 2TB and the month isn't finished yet. 95% of the 2TB is streamed video. If the ISPs truly want to lower bandwidth demands they'd allow the streaming companies to set up more caching servers without charging them outrageous fees. To put this in perspective, if I ran my gigabit connection at capacity it could deliver about 300TB of data so I a
Re: What a nice "argument by hallucination"... (Score:2)
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if, supposedly, most people do not exceed their data-cap, why does it even make economic sense to implement them
Their purpose is to deter people from exceeding them (and it seems to work).
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The purpose of the limit is to be a limit? Seriously?
ISPs these days pay for bandwidth in their upstream. They have always paid for bandwidth in their own networks. Bandwidth restrictions make sense. Data-caps do not.
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The purpose of the limit is to be a limit? Seriously?
I was wondering why you asked. It's pretty simple really.
Bandwidth restrictions make sense. Data-caps do not.
The data cap sets the moment where you get a bandwidth restriction. Such that you know in advance, and can plan for your usage.
I have a fibre landline with "unlimited" and the ISP told me before signing that there is actually a reasonable limit, but they can't tell me what it is. I found it confusing. I totally prefer the function of my mobile phone where I have a data cap, I know how much it is from the start and I can find where I am within the limi
Approximates burst billing (Score:2)
Bandwidth restrictions make sense. Data-caps do not.
I think ISPs impose data caps as a proxy for the difference between burstable and sustained bandwidth. They must figure that nontechnical residential customers are less likely to understand burst billing than a cap.
Re: What a nice "argument by hallucination"... (Score:2)
Quid pro quo. (Score:4, Funny)
Sure. Let's treat broadband as an utility as long as those who send data over my connection do not send me ads, TV commercials, trackers, session-recording addons and similar crap. Quid pro quo. Deal?
I'd prefer the telcos follow the cell co's lead (Score:2)
Why not just slow people way down when they get above whatever arbitrary threshold the company picks? Seems like that would discourage the people who actually intend to abuse the system while not punishing the rest - including the "forgetful".
Re: I'd prefer the telcos follow the cell co's lea (Score:1)
Telco towers are hooked up to cable net lines..
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That's a problem right? (Score:3)
"If one or two customers on a given node is causing issues for 300 others, where those 300 are not getting the service that they paid for, then that's a problem right?" he said.
Ya, the node isn't capable enough. But the company would have to invest money to fix it...
Or be honest about what they sell. (Score:2)
Kind of like overbooking a flight by the airlines, then the potential passengers must deal with the repercussions.
Why aren't 'sales/purchases' considered a contract?
Re:That's a problem right? YUP! (Score:2)
There are a gazillion ISPs out there running ancient TCP software, and we get to suffer from it. I wrote about it at https://cacm.acm.org/practice/... [acm.org] For a really short explanation, there's a 5-minute video there.
And yes, Hanlon's razor applies: never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity...
Bullshit (Score:1)
Data caps are a way for ISPs to lie about bandwidth, and prevent them from running into issues when the cut corners and drastically under-provision.
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Re: Bullshit (Score:2)
just wait for cable co's to see TV drop and then t (Score:2)
just wait for cable co's to see TV drop and then the caps will come down to make up for the loss of $
Wait a moment (Score:2)
US-ians have data cap on residential broadband? I thought they were a thing only on mobile...
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Some do, some don't
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I was prompted to check and I do not.
This isn't an "argument" (Score:5, Informative)
As someone who does know about network engineering (after 40+ years I ought to), I can tell you that it costs more to implement data caps than not. Why? Because they have to be put in place, mechanisms built to implement them, accounting and billing set up to handle them, customer support set up to deal with the fallout, etc. It's not just a technical measure that exists in vacuum, it incurs a lot of cascading costs including significant human time. It's easier and cheaper to just add capacity -- and it gets easier and cheaper every year.
So why do ISPs do this? Artificial scarcity and plausible deniability. It's an excuse for exorbitant pricing and network congestion. And this dirtbag is playing right along with them.
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It's shilling by a lying corporate weasel who knows nothing about network engineering and is attempting to cover for greedy behavior by incumbent ISP monopolies/duopolies
Well yeah, that is literally his job, although he would describe it in a more positive light.
But they've spent the effort to support it now. (Score:2)
I agree they're a shill, and there is added work/effort to support data caps...
But big companies already support the ability now. Incremental work is likely small compared to the added profits.
I'd look at this like tax preparation though. It's extra work that someone who won't be doing it decided everybody else must perform. It has no or little real value to the people doing the work. And somehow society decided it's normal/OK.
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not just a technical measure that exists in vacuum, it incurs a lot of cascading costs including significant human time. It's easier and cheaper to just add capacity -- and it gets easier and cheaper every year.
Data caps, create revenue streams. They also do not incur capital expenses that would otherwise dig into the executive bonus coffers.
Increasing capacity, will incur cost. And might result in increased revenue.
Not really a dilemma for the executives making that decision.
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Ok but this is really a question for accounting, not engineering. Engineers aren't very good at accounting, that's why you almost never hear them talking about things like technical debt.
I'm shocked, shocked, I say! (Score:2)
per wikipedia:
OpenVault LLC provides network management, policy control, data integration, and business analytics software as a service that is designed to help communication service providers (CSPs) achieve revenue and operational goals.
So the guys that sell software to nickle-and-dime customers don't think data caps are a problem? Astounding! /s
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And there it is, the hidden agenda. Their sales go down if ISPs simplify their network management by committing to no caps.
A gigabit connection can download 400GB an hour (Score:2)
Data caps ARE a problem, because "cap"! (Score:2)
Look -- I'd find it acceptable for an ISP to throttle a really high speed connection after you exceeded a large enough monthly quota. But by that, I mean such things as "1Gbit download speeds cut in half to 512MB/sec" until the next billing period.
That would help alleviate the claimed excess traffic generated by forgetful people who leave some streaming video going non-stop while they're out of town for 2 weeks or ?
But these greedy bastards always have proposals that start charging you excessive "per GB" ty
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I would not disagree that there are greedy corporates out there who want to maximise revenue while minimising investment.
However, if you turned it around, if there are 2 out of 300 customers per node who are causing issues, then why wouldn't the company just want to get rid of those two customers and not have to invest more and actually have 298 happy customers and however many happy executive and shareholders. I am sure they would rather not have the other 2 as customers.
That being said, I would expect a c
Bad argument (Score:2)
No problem? Great! Then don't have data caps (Score:2)
Lack of tools (like OpenVault supposedly sell)? (Score:2)
"We cannot manage the network to prevent that person hurting 300 other people, so we're just going to charge them extra." Sounds closer to reality.
And I'm confused, was that statement by OpenVault too (that Google says create broadband management tools)? This summary mentioned Ookla as the source.
I can't remember what Ookla does beyond my landline across internet device that they recently stopped supporting [bought forever ago... was likely to happen eventually].
What a stupid argument (Score:1)