4 ms·

Well, in this case T-Mobile is not modifying your packets, they are just slowing them down, so maybe they would still qualify?

• jwr 11y ago
  Ok, add "no selective throttling based on packet content" to the definition then. I'm sure it needs to be worked out, but my point still stands.
  • ars 11y ago
    Why? It's not like there is unlimited bandwidth available. There isn't. If people followed your plan no one would have any bandwidth for anything. At least this way it's just video which can handle it. Your cure makes things worse, not better.
    • jwr 11y ago
      I would like there to be options — 1) "Internet" which means IP traffic, cap it or throttle if you wish, but without "better" or "worse" providers of content and all the other options, which do whatever the marketing department thinks the customers will bear. I really don't see how it follows that "no one would have any bandwidth for anything".
    • intended 11y ago
      The cool part of this argument is that if you limit bandwidth, you can get more out of people by doing less. (Adding bandwidth/infra is expensive - vs - finding ways to charge people more or double charge them for what was normal)
    • Retric 11y ago
      Bandwidth is not limited by protocol. If you can offer HD video streams you can offer plenty of bandwidth for just about every other use. Congestion is real, but it takes place at specific times of the day. Outside of that a customers using bandwidth is irrelevant to your bottom line.
      • acdha 11y ago
        Bandwidth isn't limited by protocol but the effects of latency vary widely. It'd be really helpful if the discussion could shift to prioritization and reservation so ISPs could implement a better version of this feature where e.g. any traffic flagged as latency-tolerant costs less but you could simply pay to have a greater share when the network is congested.
        • deleted 11y ago
          [deleted]
        • Retric 11y ago
          Your trying to micro optimize things that cost ISP's effectively nothing. Further, the rest of the internet is going to ignore your high vs low latency tag so all an ISP is going to do is decide which network a packet ends up on. Sure, it might make a slight difference, but far less than your probably thinking.
          • acdha 11y ago
            > Your trying to micro optimize things that cost ISP's effectively nothing. Have you looked at how many billions of dollars ISPs spend for wireless spectrum or deploying cell towers? Buying more is neither fast nor simple, so there's a real benefit to figuring out how to allocate a naturally limited resource fairly. The approach of charging for total bandwidth consumption doesn't do a good job of this since it's only a crude proxy for the actual problem. > Further, the rest of the internet is going to ignore your high vs low latency tag QoS has had various standardized forms for a long time so “the rest of the internet” hasn't been a factual statement since at least the 90s, although it's certainly far from a universally-deployed feature. More to the point, however, we were talking about the last-mile network which tends to be both the most congested and the only point where pricing is surfaced to the user. It doesn't matter whether, say, a backbone provider does anything other than deliver the packet if your wireless carrier does use that flag to throttle packets at different rates when the network is congested. Many ISPs have already deployed equipment capable of doing this but the industry billing models do not reflect that, which is something I'd like to see change.