4 ms·

What you're asking for already exists. They are dedicated business circuits. I get where you're coming from, but there is a reason that the consumer advertiseme

What you're asking for already exists. They are dedicated business circuits. I get where you're coming from, but there is a reason that the consumer advertisements always say "up to X mbps". If ISPs didn't oversell, consumer Internet would either be unbearably slow or obscenely expensive. A guaranteed 1 gig circuit is on the order of thousands USD month. An oversubscribed consumer fiber provider like Google Fiber is an order of magnitude cheaper because they can oversubscribe based on consumer traffic models that cover 99% of users. Also keep in mind that your model isn't really straightforward at all. The ISP can only provide you guarantees within the lines they control. There could be any number of choke points at IXPs that mean the user can't reach site X at their guaranteed rate. So ISPs never even offer hard guarantees on connections to the wider Internet. The most you will be able to buy is dedicated circuits to their core, an IXP, some branch office, etc. Are you okay with gyms selling more unlimited memberships than the number of machines they have?

chii 8y ago
> Are you okay with gyms selling more unlimited memberships than the number of machines they have? Yes, but with a gym, you can switch if you keep seeing overcrowdedness. Not so with an ISP that has a monopoly.
- zaroth 8y ago
  The monopoly is a “natural” one in that there is only so much spectrum to go around and two companies can’t share it. Oversubscribing is a vastly preferable economic solution in this case. Everyone who can pay a small amount gets access to the network, and most of the time they get the bandwidth they need. Selling a limited number of tickets at a massively increased price, or selling a massive number of tickets each with a dedicated data rate that was almost always idle are both strictly inferior solutions by very wide margins. That throttling is essential to network management is undisputed. There were even carve outs in the old NN refs for it. The problem is if the “throttling” is not just limited video streams in general during peak times, but actually just limiting just certain services’ streams.
- rayiner 8y ago
  First, that’s not relevant to this particular thread, since there are several major wireless ISPs. Second, it’s besides the point. All gyms oversubscribe because that’s the only sensible model for consumer access. If you didn’t allow oversubscription, Google could sell only a 75/35 service (each GPON has 2.4G down /1.2G up shared by 16-32 users). Would that be better?
- ti_ranger 8y ago
  > Yes, but with a gym, you can switch if you keep seeing overcrowdedness. Not so with an ISP that has a monopoly. And this is the real problem. The U.S. should require access-network sharing (at least for fixed-line, mobile seems to limitations here), like most other countries do ... Then you wouldn't need to over-regulate how ISPs operate ... you could let the market decide.

chii 8y ago

> Are you okay with gyms selling more unlimited memberships than the number of machines they have? Yes, but with a gym, you can switch if you keep seeing overcrowdedness. Not so with an ISP that has a monopoly.

zaroth 8y ago
The monopoly is a “natural” one in that there is only so much spectrum to go around and two companies can’t share it. Oversubscribing is a vastly preferable economic solution in this case. Everyone who can pay a small amount gets access to the network, and most of the time they get the bandwidth they need. Selling a limited number of tickets at a massively increased price, or selling a massive number of tickets each with a dedicated data rate that was almost always idle are both strictly inferior solutions by very wide margins. That throttling is essential to network management is undisputed. There were even carve outs in the old NN refs for it. The problem is if the “throttling” is not just limited video streams in general during peak times, but actually just limiting just certain services’ streams.
rayiner 8y ago
First, that’s not relevant to this particular thread, since there are several major wireless ISPs. Second, it’s besides the point. All gyms oversubscribe because that’s the only sensible model for consumer access. If you didn’t allow oversubscription, Google could sell only a 75/35 service (each GPON has 2.4G down /1.2G up shared by 16-32 users). Would that be better?
ti_ranger 8y ago
> Yes, but with a gym, you can switch if you keep seeing overcrowdedness. Not so with an ISP that has a monopoly. And this is the real problem. The U.S. should require access-network sharing (at least for fixed-line, mobile seems to limitations here), like most other countries do ... Then you wouldn't need to over-regulate how ISPs operate ... you could let the market decide.