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I agree with you but then I believe that with the recent developments in video streaming (becoming mainstream) it would then be totally reasonable for ISP's to

I agree with you but then I believe that with the recent developments in video streaming (becoming mainstream) it would then be totally reasonable for ISP's to start charging a lot more for packages that give you the data to stream that much video. It just seems like underlying the whole NN debate is the very large uptake in the average user's data usage over the last 10 years that is just sort of ignored when it comes to how do such upgrades get paid for and before such upgrades take place, who or what gets slowed down in the case of congestion?

revelation 9y ago
Moore pays for that. My internet hasn't gotten 10 times as fast, but networking equipment did. So much exponential growth and here you are discussing if we can really deliver 10 Mbit to the population? ISPs want to pay so little industry is still spending R&D money on how to make that fucking copper cable go all the way to Shannon capacity. G.fast is now doing over 100 Mbps on 500m copper.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Radio spectrum does not follow Moore’s Law. It is finite.
  - TheCoelacanth 9y ago
    The radio spectrum isn't the bottleneck for wired Internet. The bottleneck is in the routers, switches, etc. that sit in between the pieces of wire. Moore's law is highly relevant to how much bandwidth they can handle.
ploxiln 9y ago
I agree that ISP's may need to charge a lot for a lot of data. Like say $200 for 1TB if you really need that much (made-up numbers for sake of argument). But the fact that you use it for Netflix vs any other service or reason should not affect the price. There's also the issue mentioned in the sibling comment of the fact that internet use is naturally over-sold to consumers - the cost to guarantee a speed "at any time" is way higher than offering that speed "most of the time". I think that's also fair: if everyone in a city starts streaming a few different 4k shows at the same time one evening, it's fair if service slows down, as long as the advertised speed really is available the rest of the time. SLA (service-level agreement) is just another orthogonal aspect of the service that is sold (and businesses are generally willing to pay a lot more for consistent speed than a consumer, and this is also fair). It just comes down to unfair treatment of competing services/uses by a monopoly or duopoly ISP. Bytes should be bytes. Like the electrons you get from your electricity provider.

revelation 9y ago

Moore pays for that. My internet hasn't gotten 10 times as fast, but networking equipment did. So much exponential growth and here you are discussing if we can really deliver 10 Mbit to the population? ISPs want to pay so little industry is still spending R&D money on how to make that fucking copper cable go all the way to Shannon capacity. G.fast is now doing over 100 Mbps on 500m copper.

toomuchtodo 9y ago
Radio spectrum does not follow Moore’s Law. It is finite.
- TheCoelacanth 9y ago
  The radio spectrum isn't the bottleneck for wired Internet. The bottleneck is in the routers, switches, etc. that sit in between the pieces of wire. Moore's law is highly relevant to how much bandwidth they can handle.

ploxiln 9y ago

I agree that ISP's may need to charge a lot for a lot of data. Like say $200 for 1TB if you really need that much (made-up numbers for sake of argument). But the fact that you use it for Netflix vs any other service or reason should not affect the price. There's also the issue mentioned in the sibling comment of the fact that internet use is naturally over-sold to consumers - the cost to guarantee a speed "at any time" is way higher than offering that speed "most of the time". I think that's also fair: if everyone in a city starts streaming a few different 4k shows at the same time one evening, it's fair if service slows down, as long as the advertised speed really is available the rest of the time. SLA (service-level agreement) is just another orthogonal aspect of the service that is sold (and businesses are generally willing to pay a lot more for consistent speed than a consumer, and this is also fair). It just comes down to unfair treatment of competing services/uses by a monopoly or duopoly ISP. Bytes should be bytes. Like the electrons you get from your electricity provider.