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The reason this happens is because of how ISP business models work and specifically over-subscription. I'm not defending comcast, quite the contrary, but you're

by waps 13y ago

The reason this happens is because of how ISP business models work and specifically over-subscription. I'm not defending comcast, quite the contrary, but you're going to hit this problem with every ISP, because of over-subscription. Consider the following: 1) you have to build out a certain type of network to provide a good experience, and this includes a minimum bandwidth allotment that is quite high. 2) because "normal" bandwidth usage is extremely bursty there is no reason (almost) to ever upgrade the bandwidth to the edge nodes. 3) bandwidth to edge nodes is constrained, even for incumbents. There's 2 cases, non-incumbents have to buy it from a monopoly, which is expensive. The other case is incumbents. They can get it cheap, until they hit a specific point (the bandwidth initial buildout that was done decades ago). When they hit that point it takes a massive investment to increase it. 4) the reason people go over bandwidth limits is peer to peer traffic. This unfortunately has two properties. Firstly, it's a consistent download, not bursty. Second it doesn't go out of their network (if it's a large network that is), meaning anyone that does this creates a constant traffic flow in TWO points of their network, and every component in between. This means that the bandwidth needed to support p2p is a factor more than the bandwidth your client actually reports to you, and exponentially more than needed to support browsing (even youtube). 5) If some ISP decides against this (they're small for example, in which case it all goes over cheap transit or even peering) that brings them extra costs, but not extra customers (because only the expensive customers like you, which can't be supported by the infrastructure, will switch over) 6) Most customers refuse to pay more. (e.g. switch to the business account) 7) Nobody is ever going to pay for a network that can support exponentially increasing bandwidth. It's not possible, for obvious reasons. When you're as big as comcast is, the investment for a 5% upgrade would require ridiculous amounts of capital, so they don't want to. (replacing the current infrastructure with fiber MAY fix this, however the people who control the current infrastructure like Comcast have an interest in blocking that for obvious reasons. However there are problems with fiber too, the root of the problem is the constant light -> electrical -> light conversions that are necessary at lots and lots of points and make the capital investments quite high)

pstack 13y ago
The tax-payers have subsidized massive broadband expansion that never happened. Many of the players pocketed the savings and just never followed up with their end of that deal. Also, network congestion has nothing to do with bandwidth limits (data caps, really). If you are transferring large amounts of data at 3am on a Tuesday when the rest of the network usage is almost non-existent, then you are not impacting anything. If you are doing it at 8pm on a Friday night, you probably are contributing to network congestion. So, why apply the concept of a limited resource (data) across the board? We are done with the lie from telecoms that data is somehow a precious resource. It is an artificial constraint used to justify both lack of infrastructure investment and jacking up prices on customers. This is no longer a point of contention as it is finally known industry-wide and covered by the press (finally) as of a couple years ago. Think of data caps in relation to a freeway. That freeway can carry a certain number of cars at one time. That is the only constraint. Cars that are driving at 2am when the freeway is empty are not eating into tomorrow's rush-hour-drive freeway traffic capacity. It is a constant. Likewise, it is not your 300gb of data per month that is impacting the network. It is when you are transferring that data. And, finally, since the telecoms claim that "only two percent of users use a lot of bandwidth" and that something like 95% of users do nothing but check their email and watch one or two youtube videos a week, then there should be PLENTY of bandwidth left over for these bandwidth hogs. The solution is simple if that is the reality (which it isn't): Make email the highest priority in your traffic shaping. That way, those horrible people consuming a ton of bandwidth are not impacting the flow of those 12 kilobyte messages passing by here and there. Oh, and finally, people do not go over their bandwidth limits because of p2p traffic. They go over it because it is 2014 and Netflix movies run several gigabytes per hour and people consume a lot of movies/tv shows every month and multiple people live in a single home. They go over it because they listen to lots of podcasts or watch video podcasts which run a gigabyte an hour. They watch streaming online networks, listen to streaming music, use remote online backup services, use VOIP, watch youtube, watch twitch.tv, stream to twitch.tv. Youtube and Netflix account for just over 50% of traffic. P2P accounts for 10%.
- waps 13y ago
  > The tax-payers have subsidized massive broadband expansion that never happened. Many of the players pocketed the savings and just never followed up with their end of that deal. All I can say is that subsidies -believe it or not- do not exempt anyone from mathematics. If you are unable to see that packets travel more than one "freeway" there is nothing to say at all. Hell, even freeways don't work like that. Believe it or not, cars on a freeway come from somewhere and go somewhere. This affects the capacity of the freeway for obvious reasons. If people did on freeways what they do with p2p, random any-to-any travelling, there would be no possible way to keep freeways uncongested, and yet there'd be loads and loads of "free" space. And yes, we would all be talking about making more intense users pay more, or get them off the roads alltogether. Hell, we're doing that now.

by waps 13y ago

pstack 13y ago

The tax-payers have subsidized massive broadband expansion that never happened. Many of the players pocketed the savings and just never followed up with their end of that deal. Also, network congestion has nothing to do with bandwidth limits (data caps, really). If you are transferring large amounts of data at 3am on a Tuesday when the rest of the network usage is almost non-existent, then you are not impacting anything. If you are doing it at 8pm on a Friday night, you probably are contributing to network congestion. So, why apply the concept of a limited resource (data) across the board? We are done with the lie from telecoms that data is somehow a precious resource. It is an artificial constraint used to justify both lack of infrastructure investment and jacking up prices on customers. This is no longer a point of contention as it is finally known industry-wide and covered by the press (finally) as of a couple years ago. Think of data caps in relation to a freeway. That freeway can carry a certain number of cars at one time. That is the only constraint. Cars that are driving at 2am when the freeway is empty are not eating into tomorrow's rush-hour-drive freeway traffic capacity. It is a constant. Likewise, it is not your 300gb of data per month that is impacting the network. It is when you are transferring that data. And, finally, since the telecoms claim that "only two percent of users use a lot of bandwidth" and that something like 95% of users do nothing but check their email and watch one or two youtube videos a week, then there should be PLENTY of bandwidth left over for these bandwidth hogs. The solution is simple if that is the reality (which it isn't): Make email the highest priority in your traffic shaping. That way, those horrible people consuming a ton of bandwidth are not impacting the flow of those 12 kilobyte messages passing by here and there. Oh, and finally, people do not go over their bandwidth limits because of p2p traffic. They go over it because it is 2014 and Netflix movies run several gigabytes per hour and people consume a lot of movies/tv shows every month and multiple people live in a single home. They go over it because they listen to lots of podcasts or watch video podcasts which run a gigabyte an hour. They watch streaming online networks, listen to streaming music, use remote online backup services, use VOIP, watch youtube, watch twitch.tv, stream to twitch.tv. Youtube and Netflix account for just over 50% of traffic. P2P accounts for 10%.

waps 13y ago
> The tax-payers have subsidized massive broadband expansion that never happened. Many of the players pocketed the savings and just never followed up with their end of that deal. All I can say is that subsidies -believe it or not- do not exempt anyone from mathematics. If you are unable to see that packets travel more than one "freeway" there is nothing to say at all. Hell, even freeways don't work like that. Believe it or not, cars on a freeway come from somewhere and go somewhere. This affects the capacity of the freeway for obvious reasons. If people did on freeways what they do with p2p, random any-to-any travelling, there would be no possible way to keep freeways uncongested, and yet there'd be loads and loads of "free" space. And yes, we would all be talking about making more intense users pay more, or get them off the roads alltogether. Hell, we're doing that now.