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> Because from a networking point of view, data caps is an artificial thing. How so? If I limit you to 1MB a month, good luck clogging my pipes. I said it's no

> Because from a networking point of view, data caps is an artificial thing. How so? If I limit you to 1MB a month, good luck clogging my pipes. I said it's not an effective method of approaching the problem, so I'm not defending them at all. > Your connection is not unlimited anyway; the max you can get out of it is MAX BW * seconds/month. Not true, if you have a data cap. Hence why data caps theoretically could serve a purpose. Again though, I'm not defending them. > Since the providers don't have guarantees about the max bandwidth, it can vary depending on the demand from the other users, I don't see why you need an artificial data cap. I agree. My point however is that complaining about data caps is besides the point entirely. We're lacking an SLA, we're lacking any way to ensure that we are getting what we're paying for. Data caps provide no real benefit to the idea that they sell of reducing network congestion. The only way they could is to have a very aggressive data cap, resulting in a large X% of your users not even having internet access due to being capped. This of course, is basically impossible, as people would flip out. By focusing on data caps we are, in my opinion, focusing on the red herring. Rather than getting what we're paying for on bandwidth, we're focusing on how much total data we can download.

noncoml 8y ago
> > Because from a networking point of view, data caps is an artificial thing. > How so? If I limit you to 1MB a month, good luck clogging my pipes. I said it's not an effective method of approaching the problem, so I'm not defending them at all. Is your argument that "data caps" are not an artificial thing because you can have.. "data caps"?
- notheguyouthink 8y ago
  I guess I misunderstood your idea of artificial, apologies. I thought you meant meaningless, rather than manmade, constructed, etc. In that context yes I agree, they are artificial.
gascan 8y ago
The only way they could is to have a very aggressive data cap, resulting in a large X% of your users not even having internet access due to being capped. The point of a data cap is to get users to self-manage their usage, not to block a large percentage of users. Rather than getting what we're paying for on bandwidth... I think by and large we get exactly what we pay for. Have you noticed that business class service, which has SLAs & generally better-delivers agreed speeds & bandwidth at all times, costs a lot more? Residential users are paying for sparsely provisioned links, and that is what they are getting. But most do not realize that.

noncoml 8y ago

> > Because from a networking point of view, data caps is an artificial thing. > How so? If I limit you to 1MB a month, good luck clogging my pipes. I said it's not an effective method of approaching the problem, so I'm not defending them at all. Is your argument that "data caps" are not an artificial thing because you can have.. "data caps"?

notheguyouthink 8y ago
I guess I misunderstood your idea of artificial, apologies. I thought you meant meaningless, rather than manmade, constructed, etc. In that context yes I agree, they are artificial.

gascan 8y ago

The only way they could is to have a very aggressive data cap, resulting in a large X% of your users not even having internet access due to being capped. The point of a data cap is to get users to self-manage their usage, not to block a large percentage of users. Rather than getting what we're paying for on bandwidth... I think by and large we get exactly what we pay for. Have you noticed that business class service, which has SLAs & generally better-delivers agreed speeds & bandwidth at all times, costs a lot more? Residential users are paying for sparsely provisioned links, and that is what they are getting. But most do not realize that.