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Just as every other service that uses oversold networks? The electricity grid is oversold. Do you normally notice that? No! The flight network is oversold. Do

Just as every other service that uses oversold networks? The electricity grid is oversold. Do you normally notice that? No! The flight network is oversold. Do you normally notice that? Not really. And if you do, they have to pay you for failure to perform, cover your costs ... So, they get to decide whatever bandwidth they want to advertise, possibly they could reserve the right to cancel the contract if the line turns out to be too bad after all (in which case you obviously don't have to pay anything), and then they have to make sure that you never notice that the network is actually oversold by monitoring load and adding capacity to their network as needed to avoid congestion. Up to three minutes of congestion per month is acceptable. Beyond that, they have to reimburse your payment for the month because of failure to perform. Obviously, it is perfectly fine to advertise different speeds for different times of the day, as long as you don't advertise "1 Gb/s" and then a footnote saying "from 3 am to 4 am, otherwise 10 Mb/s". Or you could advertise burstable service ("100 Mb/s, 10 minutes burstable to 1 Gb/s").

Spivak 9y ago
Sure, but if every internet company started advertising their internet packages more transparently as 'best effort, capped at $speed' would you suddenly be happy with your terrible internet? I don't thing changing the marketing rules will suddenly bring about the sweeping infrastructure changes you imagine.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
  "best effort, capped at $speed" is not transparent, it's just different wording for "up to $speed". "Best effort" is a completely meaningless term in this context, as it is completely up to the ISP to decide how much infrastructure they build, and thus what speed you can achieve. There is no fundamental reason why an ISP could not provide you full 100 Gb/s duplex 24/7 at any point whatsoever on this planet--it is all a matter of how much money they decide to spend on it, which is not your problem as a customer. So, wording of that kind in effect simply means "we don't owe you anything in particular, we will decide after the fact what you get in exchange for the payments that you owe us." The point of actually transparent marketing is not to directly improve the connectivity you get, but to enable a market to actually work. If customers cannot know what service they will be getting for their money, then competition cannot possibly work. Imagine all packages in the grocery store were labeled with "up to 1 liter" or "up to 1 kg", and no way to weigh them yourself before you buy them ... how would that possibly allow the better product to win out? What if someone truthfully labeled their product "100 g" ... how could people figure out whether that's the better product than the "up to 1 kg" package right next to it? Nothing guarantees that better products would actually happen, but at least, if they do get offered, customers would have some chance to actually know, and thus for the better product to gain customers.
  - Spivak 9y ago
    > is a completely meaningless term It's not totally meaningless, and people would understand what it actually means https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best-effort_delivery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best-effort_delivery. > There is no fundamental reason why an ISP could not provide you full 100 Gb/s duplex 24/7 at any point whatsoever on this planet Well yeah... with enough money. I guarantee that you wouldn't like looking your internet bill when you have those kinds of guarantees. > What if someone truthfully labeled their product "100 g" The internet version of this would be 100Mb guaranteed with an SLA. Or 'business class internet' which few consumers buy because it's expensive. It's not like it isn't available -- it's popular among streamers.
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
      > It's not totally meaningless, and people would understand what it actually means https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best-effort_delivery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best-effort_delivery. Please don't quote out of context. Also, as you claim that it is not totally meaningless in this context: Assume an offer of "best effort internet, capped at 100 Mb/s". Please tell me what actual bandwidth I can expect to achieve 90% of the time, and how you derived that value from that offer. > Well yeah... with enough money. I guarantee that you wouldn't like looking your internet bill when you have those kinds of guarantees. You are simply missing the point. > The internet version of this would be 100Mb guaranteed with an SLA. Or 'business class internet' which few consumers buy because it's expensive. It's not like it isn't available -- it's popular among streamers. No, it's not. There are other possibilities besides "you have a 100% guarantee that 100 Mb/s is available every second of every day" and "if you are lucky, some of your packets may get delivered". Also, how exactly would a product become more expensive merely because the ISP told you what the product actually is? If an ISP connects up to 10 1 Gb/s links to one 1 Gb/s uplink, say, how exactly does the price of that product become higher if the ISP told you that informartion (or equivalently, that you have a minimum bandwidth of 100 Mb/s available at all times)?!

Spivak 9y ago

Sure, but if every internet company started advertising their internet packages more transparently as 'best effort, capped at $speed' would you suddenly be happy with your terrible internet? I don't thing changing the marketing rules will suddenly bring about the sweeping infrastructure changes you imagine.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
"best effort, capped at $speed" is not transparent, it's just different wording for "up to $speed". "Best effort" is a completely meaningless term in this context, as it is completely up to the ISP to decide how much infrastructure they build, and thus what speed you can achieve. There is no fundamental reason why an ISP could not provide you full 100 Gb/s duplex 24/7 at any point whatsoever on this planet--it is all a matter of how much money they decide to spend on it, which is not your problem as a customer. So, wording of that kind in effect simply means "we don't owe you anything in particular, we will decide after the fact what you get in exchange for the payments that you owe us." The point of actually transparent marketing is not to directly improve the connectivity you get, but to enable a market to actually work. If customers cannot know what service they will be getting for their money, then competition cannot possibly work. Imagine all packages in the grocery store were labeled with "up to 1 liter" or "up to 1 kg", and no way to weigh them yourself before you buy them ... how would that possibly allow the better product to win out? What if someone truthfully labeled their product "100 g" ... how could people figure out whether that's the better product than the "up to 1 kg" package right next to it? Nothing guarantees that better products would actually happen, but at least, if they do get offered, customers would have some chance to actually know, and thus for the better product to gain customers.
- Spivak 9y ago
  > is a completely meaningless term It's not totally meaningless, and people would understand what it actually means https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best-effort_delivery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best-effort_delivery. > There is no fundamental reason why an ISP could not provide you full 100 Gb/s duplex 24/7 at any point whatsoever on this planet Well yeah... with enough money. I guarantee that you wouldn't like looking your internet bill when you have those kinds of guarantees. > What if someone truthfully labeled their product "100 g" The internet version of this would be 100Mb guaranteed with an SLA. Or 'business class internet' which few consumers buy because it's expensive. It's not like it isn't available -- it's popular among streamers.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
    > It's not totally meaningless, and people would understand what it actually means https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best-effort_delivery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best-effort_delivery. Please don't quote out of context. Also, as you claim that it is not totally meaningless in this context: Assume an offer of "best effort internet, capped at 100 Mb/s". Please tell me what actual bandwidth I can expect to achieve 90% of the time, and how you derived that value from that offer. > Well yeah... with enough money. I guarantee that you wouldn't like looking your internet bill when you have those kinds of guarantees. You are simply missing the point. > The internet version of this would be 100Mb guaranteed with an SLA. Or 'business class internet' which few consumers buy because it's expensive. It's not like it isn't available -- it's popular among streamers. No, it's not. There are other possibilities besides "you have a 100% guarantee that 100 Mb/s is available every second of every day" and "if you are lucky, some of your packets may get delivered". Also, how exactly would a product become more expensive merely because the ISP told you what the product actually is? If an ISP connects up to 10 1 Gb/s links to one 1 Gb/s uplink, say, how exactly does the price of that product become higher if the ISP told you that informartion (or equivalently, that you have a minimum bandwidth of 100 Mb/s available at all times)?!