3 ms·

People. Like 15% of hn users and the like

by flattone 7y ago

malvosenior 7y ago
I think everyone would notice the much higher data usage bill.
- jstarfish 7y ago
  More and more carriers are moving to "unlimited"/throttled plans. The days of worrying about data usage will soon join the days of worrying about how many minutes you have left.
- jascii 7y ago
  Since said 3 letter agencies often work together with the telcos, I assume it wouldn't be too hard to keep that bandwidth outside of the users bookkeeping.
swiley 7y ago
Between the larger phone bill and the decreased performance and battery life I feel like most people would notice. Not to mention most phones heat up when they stream anything.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  It's a shame this doesn't happen when people's IoT devices become botnet nodes on their "unlimited" wifi. It would totally change the DDoS market and IoT security for the better. "0/5 stars. This product doubled my bandwidth bill."
  - swiley 7y ago
    I will never ever ever go back to paying by the byte though. No one writes sane enough software (or even freaking documents) to make that doable.
    - hombre_fatal 7y ago
      I think it's necessary in the long run. It's the only way anything will ever change. And bandwidth is a finite, shared resource. You also pay per electron that flows through your blender and drop of water you drink from your faucet. Right now the internet is basically built on a bunch of "gentlemen agreements" to play fair, all the way from BGP down to ISPs ("please filter egress, pretty please!") to end-users ("please don't actually use all of your bandwidth because we're overprovisioned!"). Of course, the fee has to be tiny. For example, you don't reconsider hydrating yourself to save some money. But you may reconsider leaving your heater on 24/7 when you can just wear a jacket indoors. It would have to be priced similar to that. Though other things will have to change as well, like we'd need the ability to shop between ISPs in a region. Most people are already paying per byte, but in the most roundabout marketing-mislead way and I see that as a problem that only really helps ISPs. Imagine if it was a fully commoditized utility instead. On the other hand, look at the effects of the status quo. People have so little insight into their usage that you can buy enough residential botnet egress to take down any site for $5 which empowers centralization like Cloudflare DDoS protection. I suppose you either don't see this as a problem or you can think of other solutions.

People. Like 15% of hn users and the like

malvosenior 7y ago

I think everyone would notice the much higher data usage bill.

jstarfish 7y ago
More and more carriers are moving to "unlimited"/throttled plans. The days of worrying about data usage will soon join the days of worrying about how many minutes you have left.
jascii 7y ago
Since said 3 letter agencies often work together with the telcos, I assume it wouldn't be too hard to keep that bandwidth outside of the users bookkeeping.

swiley 7y ago

Between the larger phone bill and the decreased performance and battery life I feel like most people would notice. Not to mention most phones heat up when they stream anything.

hombre_fatal 7y ago
It's a shame this doesn't happen when people's IoT devices become botnet nodes on their "unlimited" wifi. It would totally change the DDoS market and IoT security for the better. "0/5 stars. This product doubled my bandwidth bill."
- swiley 7y ago
  I will never ever ever go back to paying by the byte though. No one writes sane enough software (or even freaking documents) to make that doable.
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
    I think it's necessary in the long run. It's the only way anything will ever change. And bandwidth is a finite, shared resource. You also pay per electron that flows through your blender and drop of water you drink from your faucet. Right now the internet is basically built on a bunch of "gentlemen agreements" to play fair, all the way from BGP down to ISPs ("please filter egress, pretty please!") to end-users ("please don't actually use all of your bandwidth because we're overprovisioned!"). Of course, the fee has to be tiny. For example, you don't reconsider hydrating yourself to save some money. But you may reconsider leaving your heater on 24/7 when you can just wear a jacket indoors. It would have to be priced similar to that. Though other things will have to change as well, like we'd need the ability to shop between ISPs in a region. Most people are already paying per byte, but in the most roundabout marketing-mislead way and I see that as a problem that only really helps ISPs. Imagine if it was a fully commoditized utility instead. On the other hand, look at the effects of the status quo. People have so little insight into their usage that you can buy enough residential botnet egress to take down any site for $5 which empowers centralization like Cloudflare DDoS protection. I suppose you either don't see this as a problem or you can think of other solutions.