12 ms·

I ran an ISP. Most people max their bandwidth for: backups, downloading Steam games, torrenting, and then about a week later their usage drops to about 5-8mbps

I ran an ISP. Most people max their bandwidth for: backups, downloading Steam games, torrenting, and then about a week later their usage drops to about 5-8mbps sustained for Streaming and Videoconferencing.

whoisjuan 6y ago
One question. Why is it that ISPs don't have an on-demand offering for larger bandwidths? Like if I pay for a 300mbps but I need 1gbps for the day you can charge me 5 bucks extra per day that month. Are the unit-economics of this that bad? I never understood why ISPs have such crappy/unflexible pricing tiers. Mobile carriers are way ahead on this type of flexible offering and the math seems to work.
- battery423 6y ago
  I would like something different: garanteed bandwith + max bandwith You buy a 1gb line with 50mb guaranteed. That would allow you to use it in the night to a full extend while your ISP doesn't need to provide 1gb all the time
  - iptrans 6y ago
    This is effectively what you are already doing. The guaranteed bandwidth just isn’t explicitly defined.
    - Skunkleton 6y ago
      Not exactly. Any sort of SLA will jack the price of your connection way up. We had a 50Mbps connection at the last company I worked for, we couldn't find an isp that charged less than ~$1500 a month for this. This wasn't that long ago either.
      - iptrans 6y ago
        Depends on the market. Some regulators enforce minimum performance levels even for consumer connections.
- iptrans 6y ago
  The effort to do this exceeds the potential income.
- mattkrause 6y ago
  Mine does that for transfer. It's a bit cheaper to prepay for an extra 100 Gb than it is to eat the overage chargers. Nothing for speed, though it would be great to get a boost for big videoconferences.
- robjan 6y ago
  ISPs operate on a similar business model to gyms. They couldn't afford to provide the service if everyone maxed out what they are paying for. Allowing on demand increases of bandwidth would break this business model.
  - iptrans 6y ago
    While true in general, the cost of unoversubscribed wholesale bandwidth is rapidly approaching the cost of oversubscribed retail bandwidth. Wholesale bandwidth is 5 cents per Mbps or less at scale. Not that the ISP pays for all bandwidth, peering and CDN traffic is free. In other words, even if you max out a 1 Gbps line 24/7, you are only costing the ISP $50 per month. Add to that that most people are unable to consume even 10 Mbps on average and bandwidth costs become less and less of an issue. An average subscriber will use 2-4 Mbps of bandwidth during primetime, and primetime is all you care about as an ISP. Nothing in this means that offering bandwidth on demand is impossible or a threat to the ISP business model. It’s just that the overhead of offering an on-demand product to consumers isn’t worth the time and effort, as you’d be making peanuts while having to deal with a lot of grief. Bandwidth on demand is a thing for businesses and operators. A good example of this is Megaport, who offers virtual cross connects and transport. Price start from $100 per month plus a varying fee per Mbps, from a few cents to a few dollars per month.
    - zokier 6y ago
      > Add to that that most people are unable to consume even 10 Mbps on average and bandwidth costs become less and less of an issue. An average subscriber will use 2-4 Mbps of bandwidth during primetime, and primetime is all you care about as an ISP 4k Netflix is around 15 Mbps alone, even 1080p is >5 Mbps. And with games being now > 100 GB downloads these days, I would expect that to contribute meaningfully too to the bandwidth usage even if average person probably doesn't quite download new games daily.
      - iptrans 6y ago
        Nope. Subscribers average 2-4 Mbps during primetime, less averaged over the course of a whole month. Netflix is only about 30% of all Internet bits, and there's a limit to how much Netflix and chill anybody can do.
- proverbialbunny 6y ago
  ISPs can. I wrote the code that lets them offer such a service, and some internet cafés in Europe do something similar, but they're pay as you go, so you just top up with a different speed tier. (I can not guarantee anyone is still doing this to today though.) I imagine ISPs do not do this, because of how they sale their service. They want to make it hard for you to get out of the deal you're in, and hopefully in a carrot kind of way where you feel like you're getting a better than normal deal so you don't want to leave. Giving people the flexibility to change their plan willy-nilly is goes against how most ISPs sell their service. They want to lock you in, not give you free range. The exception is internet cafés and hotel internet. I could see something like this for cell phone top up plans, but most of those just resell what's available, which means them giving all of the bandwidth they can get.
  - grawprog 6y ago
    >Giving people the flexibility to change their plan willy-nilly is goes against how most ISPs sell their service. They want to lock you in, not give you free range. This seems like a fundamental problem people should be demanding changes to rather than just accepting it as the way it is.
- linsomniac 6y ago
  Many, particularly smaller, ISPs pay for bandwidth based on 95%ile utilization. Years ago when I was involved in a few specialized ISPs, say I could fit in 60mbps 95% of the time, and was paying $10/mbps. A day of you using 300Mbps could cost me thousands of dollars. This is the difference between consumer and business Internet in many cases, and is why so many residential services severely limit the outbound bandwidth: it competes with their extremely profitable business service levels. (Things may have changed, I haven't been involved with ISPs for 5 years)
  - iptrans 6y ago
    The days of $10/Mbps are fortunately behind us. You can get bandwidth for 10c/Mbps or less. Also a day of 300 Mbps would not have cost you thousands of dollars as you get 36 hours for “free” when using 95th percentile billing.
    - linsomniac 6y ago
      24 hours of 300Mbps would effective change the 95th %ile to 98.35 %ile, which could be dramatically higher than the 95%ile billing. As far as $0.1/Mbps, not common around here. Maybe in CA at HE or something, but I can't touch that price around here. Correct me if I wrong, but Amazon's price for a megabit/mo is $55-ish...
      - iptrans 6y ago
        Amazon bandwidth pricing is wildly overinflated, so that's not a useful metric to use as a comparison to wholesale bandwidth costs. At scale means purchasing bandwidth in quantities of 100G. You'd be surprised how straightforward it is to get reasonable wholesale bandwidth rates almost anywhere once you cross a certain monthly spend threshold. As to the 95th percentile thing, sure, if you've already used up your "free" burst capacity, pushing a further 300 Mbps for a day will push you over the limit.
      - welterde 6y ago
        Amazon, GCP, etc. transit are completely disconnected from reality. Those sub-$0.5/Mbps you can probably get in most big metros across the US and Europe if the connection point is on-net for the ISP in question. And if you are a residential ISP you can probably handle 80% of your traffic by peering at a few internet exchanges (google,youtube, netflix, etc.)..
- im3w1l 6y ago
  Mobile uses a shared channel that needs to be used economically. With wired internet, everyone has their own line. Sure there can be upstream bottlenecks but widening them is cheap, it's the last mile that dominates cost. So the wired ISP doesn't save too much money when you don't use your BW.
- jotm 6y ago
  I had an ISP that tried that. At the time 100 Mbps was the top speed offer, I had a 30Mbps package. Could boost to 100 anytime with one click, but it was ~1 Euro per hour. Used it once lol They gave up on it, probably because no one used it. Maybe if the price was right. But technically, it seems easy to implement, at least on some network configs. But the fixed rate contract for high speeds is likely more profitable for the ISP.
- deleted 6y ago
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- deleted 6y ago
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- rasz 6y ago
  In civilized world (Europe, upc/liberty global) difference between 300Mbit and 1Gbit is $3, per month. Internet economics in US are all about maximizing profits and rubbing nipples https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbHqUNl8YFk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbHqUNl8YFk.

whoisjuan 6y ago

One question. Why is it that ISPs don't have an on-demand offering for larger bandwidths? Like if I pay for a 300mbps but I need 1gbps for the day you can charge me 5 bucks extra per day that month. Are the unit-economics of this that bad? I never understood why ISPs have such crappy/unflexible pricing tiers. Mobile carriers are way ahead on this type of flexible offering and the math seems to work.

battery423 6y ago
I would like something different: garanteed bandwith + max bandwith You buy a 1gb line with 50mb guaranteed. That would allow you to use it in the night to a full extend while your ISP doesn't need to provide 1gb all the time
- iptrans 6y ago
  This is effectively what you are already doing. The guaranteed bandwidth just isn’t explicitly defined.
  - Skunkleton 6y ago
    Not exactly. Any sort of SLA will jack the price of your connection way up. We had a 50Mbps connection at the last company I worked for, we couldn't find an isp that charged less than ~$1500 a month for this. This wasn't that long ago either.
    - iptrans 6y ago
      Depends on the market. Some regulators enforce minimum performance levels even for consumer connections.
iptrans 6y ago
The effort to do this exceeds the potential income.
mattkrause 6y ago
Mine does that for transfer. It's a bit cheaper to prepay for an extra 100 Gb than it is to eat the overage chargers. Nothing for speed, though it would be great to get a boost for big videoconferences.
robjan 6y ago
ISPs operate on a similar business model to gyms. They couldn't afford to provide the service if everyone maxed out what they are paying for. Allowing on demand increases of bandwidth would break this business model.
- iptrans 6y ago
  While true in general, the cost of unoversubscribed wholesale bandwidth is rapidly approaching the cost of oversubscribed retail bandwidth. Wholesale bandwidth is 5 cents per Mbps or less at scale. Not that the ISP pays for all bandwidth, peering and CDN traffic is free. In other words, even if you max out a 1 Gbps line 24/7, you are only costing the ISP $50 per month. Add to that that most people are unable to consume even 10 Mbps on average and bandwidth costs become less and less of an issue. An average subscriber will use 2-4 Mbps of bandwidth during primetime, and primetime is all you care about as an ISP. Nothing in this means that offering bandwidth on demand is impossible or a threat to the ISP business model. It’s just that the overhead of offering an on-demand product to consumers isn’t worth the time and effort, as you’d be making peanuts while having to deal with a lot of grief. Bandwidth on demand is a thing for businesses and operators. A good example of this is Megaport, who offers virtual cross connects and transport. Price start from $100 per month plus a varying fee per Mbps, from a few cents to a few dollars per month.
  - zokier 6y ago
    > Add to that that most people are unable to consume even 10 Mbps on average and bandwidth costs become less and less of an issue. An average subscriber will use 2-4 Mbps of bandwidth during primetime, and primetime is all you care about as an ISP 4k Netflix is around 15 Mbps alone, even 1080p is >5 Mbps. And with games being now > 100 GB downloads these days, I would expect that to contribute meaningfully too to the bandwidth usage even if average person probably doesn't quite download new games daily.
    - iptrans 6y ago
      Nope. Subscribers average 2-4 Mbps during primetime, less averaged over the course of a whole month. Netflix is only about 30% of all Internet bits, and there's a limit to how much Netflix and chill anybody can do.
proverbialbunny 6y ago
ISPs can. I wrote the code that lets them offer such a service, and some internet cafés in Europe do something similar, but they're pay as you go, so you just top up with a different speed tier. (I can not guarantee anyone is still doing this to today though.) I imagine ISPs do not do this, because of how they sale their service. They want to make it hard for you to get out of the deal you're in, and hopefully in a carrot kind of way where you feel like you're getting a better than normal deal so you don't want to leave. Giving people the flexibility to change their plan willy-nilly is goes against how most ISPs sell their service. They want to lock you in, not give you free range. The exception is internet cafés and hotel internet. I could see something like this for cell phone top up plans, but most of those just resell what's available, which means them giving all of the bandwidth they can get.
- grawprog 6y ago
  >Giving people the flexibility to change their plan willy-nilly is goes against how most ISPs sell their service. They want to lock you in, not give you free range. This seems like a fundamental problem people should be demanding changes to rather than just accepting it as the way it is.
linsomniac 6y ago
Many, particularly smaller, ISPs pay for bandwidth based on 95%ile utilization. Years ago when I was involved in a few specialized ISPs, say I could fit in 60mbps 95% of the time, and was paying $10/mbps. A day of you using 300Mbps could cost me thousands of dollars. This is the difference between consumer and business Internet in many cases, and is why so many residential services severely limit the outbound bandwidth: it competes with their extremely profitable business service levels. (Things may have changed, I haven't been involved with ISPs for 5 years)
- iptrans 6y ago
  The days of $10/Mbps are fortunately behind us. You can get bandwidth for 10c/Mbps or less. Also a day of 300 Mbps would not have cost you thousands of dollars as you get 36 hours for “free” when using 95th percentile billing.
  - linsomniac 6y ago
    24 hours of 300Mbps would effective change the 95th %ile to 98.35 %ile, which could be dramatically higher than the 95%ile billing. As far as $0.1/Mbps, not common around here. Maybe in CA at HE or something, but I can't touch that price around here. Correct me if I wrong, but Amazon's price for a megabit/mo is $55-ish...
    - iptrans 6y ago
      Amazon bandwidth pricing is wildly overinflated, so that's not a useful metric to use as a comparison to wholesale bandwidth costs. At scale means purchasing bandwidth in quantities of 100G. You'd be surprised how straightforward it is to get reasonable wholesale bandwidth rates almost anywhere once you cross a certain monthly spend threshold. As to the 95th percentile thing, sure, if you've already used up your "free" burst capacity, pushing a further 300 Mbps for a day will push you over the limit.
    - welterde 6y ago
      Amazon, GCP, etc. transit are completely disconnected from reality. Those sub-$0.5/Mbps you can probably get in most big metros across the US and Europe if the connection point is on-net for the ISP in question. And if you are a residential ISP you can probably handle 80% of your traffic by peering at a few internet exchanges (google,youtube, netflix, etc.)..
im3w1l 6y ago
Mobile uses a shared channel that needs to be used economically. With wired internet, everyone has their own line. Sure there can be upstream bottlenecks but widening them is cheap, it's the last mile that dominates cost. So the wired ISP doesn't save too much money when you don't use your BW.
jotm 6y ago
I had an ISP that tried that. At the time 100 Mbps was the top speed offer, I had a 30Mbps package. Could boost to 100 anytime with one click, but it was ~1 Euro per hour. Used it once lol They gave up on it, probably because no one used it. Maybe if the price was right. But technically, it seems easy to implement, at least on some network configs. But the fixed rate contract for high speeds is likely more profitable for the ISP.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
rasz 6y ago
In civilized world (Europe, upc/liberty global) difference between 300Mbit and 1Gbit is $3, per month. Internet economics in US are all about maximizing profits and rubbing nipples https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbHqUNl8YFk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbHqUNl8YFk.