4 ms·

> why wouldn't a very simplistic metering be acceptable by that definition? It would be perfectly acceptable (assuming I've understood you). I think the reason

by _greim_ 12y ago

> why wouldn't a very simplistic metering be acceptable by that definition? It would be perfectly acceptable (assuming I've understood you). I think the reason nobody is championing it is twofold, ISPs don't like it because it would make them that much more utility-like, which they strenuously want to avoid. Active internet users don't like it because their bandwidth is largely subsidized by less-active subscribers, and leveling the playing field would be a net loss for them. To me it looks like pure selfishness on both accounts.

dublinben 12y ago
Active internet users don't like metered billing because they understand it is a ruse. If I use my connection at full capacity all day long, except during the evening prime time, I might rack up several TB of data each month. I'm not causing any network congestion or costing the ISP any money though. The basic user who 'only' streams several shows on Netflix each evening might only use several dozen GB of data each month, but they cost the ISP much more in peak bandwidth congestion.
- M2Ys4U 12y ago
  So have a peak rate and an off-peak rate. That's exactly what my ISP (Andrews and Arnold[0]) does. I pay for a specific number of 'units' which are consumed faster at peak times (09:00-18:00) than at all other times. A&A's policy[1] is to never be the bottleneck in the network and they also kick up a stink with their transit providers (mainly BT) when they detect a problem (which is very often, as they monitor their network's health closely). They even publish statistics[2] on dropped packets classified by their uplink - for instance over the last 28 days they have a 98.48% success rate at a 1-second granularity one of BT's backhauls, and 100% on TalkTalk's backhaul. They do work out to be more expensive than other ISPs (I pay ~£33 a month for a 40mbit FTTC connection with 4 units) but you pay for a good service and competence. [0] http://aaisp.net.uk/ http://aaisp.net.uk/ [1] http://aaisp.net.uk/broadband-speed.html http://aaisp.net.uk/broadband-speed.html [2] http://clueless.aa.net.uk/linkreport.cgi http://clueless.aa.net.uk/linkreport.cgi

by _greim_ 12y ago

dublinben 12y ago

Active internet users don't like metered billing because they understand it is a ruse. If I use my connection at full capacity all day long, except during the evening prime time, I might rack up several TB of data each month. I'm not causing any network congestion or costing the ISP any money though. The basic user who 'only' streams several shows on Netflix each evening might only use several dozen GB of data each month, but they cost the ISP much more in peak bandwidth congestion.

M2Ys4U 12y ago
So have a peak rate and an off-peak rate. That's exactly what my ISP (Andrews and Arnold[0]) does. I pay for a specific number of 'units' which are consumed faster at peak times (09:00-18:00) than at all other times. A&A's policy[1] is to never be the bottleneck in the network and they also kick up a stink with their transit providers (mainly BT) when they detect a problem (which is very often, as they monitor their network's health closely). They even publish statistics[2] on dropped packets classified by their uplink - for instance over the last 28 days they have a 98.48% success rate at a 1-second granularity one of BT's backhauls, and 100% on TalkTalk's backhaul. They do work out to be more expensive than other ISPs (I pay ~£33 a month for a 40mbit FTTC connection with 4 units) but you pay for a good service and competence. [0] http://aaisp.net.uk/ http://aaisp.net.uk/ [1] http://aaisp.net.uk/broadband-speed.html http://aaisp.net.uk/broadband-speed.html [2] http://clueless.aa.net.uk/linkreport.cgi http://clueless.aa.net.uk/linkreport.cgi