4 ms·

I don't want to dismiss this work that I find interesting but still there is something sad about it. Estimating the cost of a connection can hardly be done with

by rixed 9y ago

I don't want to dismiss this work that I find interesting but still there is something sad about it. Estimating the cost of a connection can hardly be done without a change in the transport protocols, because the device do not know the cost of a fetch just by looking at the type of network it is connected to. Think about WiFi hotspots to cellular network. Think about data bundles. This is way easier to address in the transport protocol. Why can't we spend any effort fixing the root causes of anything and instead treat every early tech as a given and spend so much effort in developing workarounds?

jonreem 9y ago
> Why can't we spend any effort fixing the root causes of anything and instead treat every early tech as a given and spend so much effort in developing workarounds? Network effects.
toyg 9y ago
> a change in the transport protocol Deploying network infrastructure is the hardest and most expensive element of networking. You want to do it as little as humanly possible, and anything that can be retrofitted on top of already-deployed hardware is an instant winner. Changing network protocols would likely require hardware replacement all over the place.
- marvy 9y ago
  Now you made me think. I agree this sounds really hard, but it's not clear that this requires hardware changes. After all, transport protocols are written in software. In fact, I don't think that this needs changes to the transport protocol either. Consider, your ISP knows most of this information. For instance, if you have 2 GB of 4G cell service and then it throttles to 3G, then the cell company must have real time info of how much data you have left, or they would not be able to throttle you. They will often give you an app so you can check how close you are to the limit. The only trouble is that there is no STANDARD way to ask them any of this. So make one up. This is one of the few cases where network effects mostly take care of themselves. Here is a straw man proposal. Feel free to bike shed this. Let's say we extend DCHP so that in addition to giving you the default gateway, it also gives you cost parameters for the current connection, or possibly the IP address of who to ask for the cost. If the network supports this, the OS can find out when connecting and then provide it to apps via an API. If the network doesn't support it, the OS can still expose the API, but fall back to heuristics such as whether you're on cell or Wi-Fi. Of course, the user typically knows what they are paying, so you should allow them to override the heuristics and supply real data. The apps need not know whether the data came from the network of from heuristics or the user.
  - rixed 9y ago
    This could be easier: your phone could query periodically your balance(s) and figure out the price of various connections. All you need for this is telcos providing real time balance in a standard protocol.
    - wutthrow 9y ago
      Spoken like the generation taught to not conserve data. /s The phone itself could easily record the returned file size of all requests within a threshold. My old Note3 has these alerts built in with separate limits for mobile vs wifi.

by rixed 9y ago

jonreem 9y ago

> Why can't we spend any effort fixing the root causes of anything and instead treat every early tech as a given and spend so much effort in developing workarounds? Network effects.

toyg 9y ago

> a change in the transport protocol Deploying network infrastructure is the hardest and most expensive element of networking. You want to do it as little as humanly possible, and anything that can be retrofitted on top of already-deployed hardware is an instant winner. Changing network protocols would likely require hardware replacement all over the place.

marvy 9y ago
Now you made me think. I agree this sounds really hard, but it's not clear that this requires hardware changes. After all, transport protocols are written in software. In fact, I don't think that this needs changes to the transport protocol either. Consider, your ISP knows most of this information. For instance, if you have 2 GB of 4G cell service and then it throttles to 3G, then the cell company must have real time info of how much data you have left, or they would not be able to throttle you. They will often give you an app so you can check how close you are to the limit. The only trouble is that there is no STANDARD way to ask them any of this. So make one up. This is one of the few cases where network effects mostly take care of themselves. Here is a straw man proposal. Feel free to bike shed this. Let's say we extend DCHP so that in addition to giving you the default gateway, it also gives you cost parameters for the current connection, or possibly the IP address of who to ask for the cost. If the network supports this, the OS can find out when connecting and then provide it to apps via an API. If the network doesn't support it, the OS can still expose the API, but fall back to heuristics such as whether you're on cell or Wi-Fi. Of course, the user typically knows what they are paying, so you should allow them to override the heuristics and supply real data. The apps need not know whether the data came from the network of from heuristics or the user.
- rixed 9y ago
  This could be easier: your phone could query periodically your balance(s) and figure out the price of various connections. All you need for this is telcos providing real time balance in a standard protocol.
  - wutthrow 9y ago
    Spoken like the generation taught to not conserve data. /s The phone itself could easily record the returned file size of all requests within a threshold. My old Note3 has these alerts built in with separate limits for mobile vs wifi.