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We started out with limited, then everybody started advertising unlimited because they never thought anyone could use a ton of data. Then things like torrentin

by Zikes 12y ago

We started out with limited, then everybody started advertising unlimited because they never thought anyone could use a ton of data. Then things like torrenting and Netflix and YouTube came along, and now everyone's using a lot of data again, so they're re-introducing data caps. Of course, data caps are ridiculous in concept. It's not like they go out and dig up infrastructure when it's not in use. It's their anticompetitive attempt to put online video services out of business and reinvigorate the outdated and overpriced cable/satellite TV model.

talaketu 12y ago
It is misleading to sell something as unlimited when that can't actually be fulfilled, and it's unrealistic to believe you can buy something of value that is unlimited. Setting a price for finite capacity that is to be reserved is a robust user-pays approach.
- Zikes 12y ago
  I don't expect unlimited, because that would be unrealistic. What I expect, if I paid for 50Mbps, is to be able to realistically consume 50Mpbs. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=50Mbps+*+%28seconds+in+a+month%29 http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=50Mbps+*+%28seconds+in+... A 16TB data cap would be realistic and reasonable.
  - jamespo 12y ago
    Maybe you should read the T&Cs, the 50mbps probably refers to the maximum speed you can expect
    - Zikes 12y ago
      T&Cs don't mean squat when you're dealing with a monopoly. They can put any sort of consumer-unfriendly terms they want in there and then say "if you don't like it, you're free to go to our competitors" of which there is only one and they are colluding.
kbatten 12y ago
Data caps seem fine as long as they keep up with technology. The problem is that even 5 years ago 300GB was barely reasonable and it is completely unreasonable today. What I mean by "fine" is I would rather have a datacap and a higher speed that could potentially exceed the data cap if used 24/7 than a slower speed that creates a soft cap anyway.
- Zikes 12y ago
  I pay for 50Mbps internet. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=300GB+%2F+50Mbps http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=300GB+%2F+50Mbps I wouldn't even have to use full speed 24/7 to hit that cap, only just over half a day.
  - thomasfortes 12y ago
    When I was in university, I shared a house with a bunch of friends, we paid for 30Mbps, then I set up a router with nice cache system, QoS and all that stuff. Most of the days we used around 100GB+, our isp called sometimes (two months interval more or less) to say that we hit our monthly data cap (which was 320GB), we got used to saying "ok, so cancel my plan, we are going to another ISP that don't put cap on our data usage" and then they continued the conversation saying that "this month we will not reduce our speed, but next time they would have to, unless you upgrade your plan", "no, thanks". Since they were a new provider in the region, guess that the infrastructure were more than enough to sustain our use, and I was really surprised that the same excuse worked for around two years (then I graduated, don't know how it's now).
    - Scoundreller 12y ago
      Given the nature of ISPs, networks and 95th percentile billing, a rational ISP would have advised you to keep it down between the hours of X and Y on days A through B. At least one ISP around here offers unlimited data, but at reduced mbps during peak times. I can understand their plan, trying to maximize their resources without trying to break the laws of physics. If only others would maximize their available resources. Since they aren't, it's (even more) clear that the caps are arbitrary and serve only to maintain video distribution monopolies.
chatmasta 12y ago
The problem is a fundamental incongruence between the costs to ISP's, and the corresponding costs to customers. It's not just consumer ISP's that are guilty of this racket, either. Most "cloud" hosts, Amazon included, are making huge margins by charging their customers for total data transferred, but only paying upstream for rate of transfer, i.e. bandwidth capacity at any given time. To simplify, let's ignore last mile costs and at ISP's who own their own infrastructure. Let's also ignore peering. ISP's, and hosts like Amazon, pay for IP transit on a capacity basis, i.e. data per second, e.g. "$1 per month per mbps." They buy this IP transit from providers like Level3, Cogent, Hurricane Electric, etc. What this actually means is that they pay a monthly fee for some amount of fiber optic cables to plug into their servers/switches. These cables have a set bandwidth capacity, like 1gbps. They could charge their customers in the same way, E.g. "$2 per month per mbps," and make up to 2x on each customer, but this would quickly become unsustainable because there simply is not enough cable in the world to do that, and make customers will not be using their full capacity 99% of the time anyway. Instead, the companies "oversell" their capacity by advertising a certain capacity to customers, but then capping the total transfer so that the customers cannot operate at peak capacity 100% of the time, since there is not space for that many electrons on the fiber optic cables. Amazon charges $0.1 per gb transferred. In bulk, IP transit from hurricane electric can cost as little as $0.50 per mbps. If you operate a low bandwidth site on Amazon, and you transfer 1 mbps for an entire month, that totals to 155.52 gigabits, or 19 gigabytes. You pay $1.90, but Amazon only pays $0.50. If you transfer at a consistent rate of 1 gbps, you total 324 terabytes of transfer, which costs you $3,240 @ 0.01/gb (I think that's their bulk price?). Amazon, meanwhile, only pays $500. Lots of people don't know this is how the hosting industry works, and Amazon is gouging the shit out of them on price. Lots of companies paying for the convenience of "the cloud" are getting ripped off. For high bandwidth sites, it's far more cost effective to colocate at a datacenter and buy the IP transit yourself. I'm sure Amazon offers custom transit pricing to big customers, but you need to transfer a ton of bandwidth to get that, and by then you're already getting ripped off anyway.
- nicktelford 12y ago
  You're quite right here, with two exceptions: 1) Fibre transmits photons, not electrons. 2) The fundamental infrastructure limits aren't the cable themselves, but the equipment at either end. This technology improves every year, permitting the same cables to transfer more data. This is why installing fibre through the streets is such a good investment: it scales up over time, without having to dig it up and replace it. Also, the issue you touched on with customers sharing the same bandwidth is called "contention", and it's possible to determine the "contention ratio" (i.e. how many people are sharing a unit of bandwidth) for ISPs (at least, it is in the UK). Last I checked, in the UK, the contention was always better on DSL services than cable; but the maximum bandwidth and minimum latency on cable is correspondingly better. Though I've not checked the Openreach FTTC offering, which I imagine has a better contention at the moment due to a smaller customer base.

by Zikes 12y ago

talaketu 12y ago

It is misleading to sell something as unlimited when that can't actually be fulfilled, and it's unrealistic to believe you can buy something of value that is unlimited. Setting a price for finite capacity that is to be reserved is a robust user-pays approach.

Zikes 12y ago
I don't expect unlimited, because that would be unrealistic. What I expect, if I paid for 50Mbps, is to be able to realistically consume 50Mpbs. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=50Mbps+*+%28seconds+in+a+month%29 http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=50Mbps+*+%28seconds+in+... A 16TB data cap would be realistic and reasonable.
- jamespo 12y ago
  Maybe you should read the T&Cs, the 50mbps probably refers to the maximum speed you can expect
  - Zikes 12y ago
    T&Cs don't mean squat when you're dealing with a monopoly. They can put any sort of consumer-unfriendly terms they want in there and then say "if you don't like it, you're free to go to our competitors" of which there is only one and they are colluding.

kbatten 12y ago

Data caps seem fine as long as they keep up with technology. The problem is that even 5 years ago 300GB was barely reasonable and it is completely unreasonable today. What I mean by "fine" is I would rather have a datacap and a higher speed that could potentially exceed the data cap if used 24/7 than a slower speed that creates a soft cap anyway.

Zikes 12y ago
I pay for 50Mbps internet. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=300GB+%2F+50Mbps http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=300GB+%2F+50Mbps I wouldn't even have to use full speed 24/7 to hit that cap, only just over half a day.
- thomasfortes 12y ago
  When I was in university, I shared a house with a bunch of friends, we paid for 30Mbps, then I set up a router with nice cache system, QoS and all that stuff. Most of the days we used around 100GB+, our isp called sometimes (two months interval more or less) to say that we hit our monthly data cap (which was 320GB), we got used to saying "ok, so cancel my plan, we are going to another ISP that don't put cap on our data usage" and then they continued the conversation saying that "this month we will not reduce our speed, but next time they would have to, unless you upgrade your plan", "no, thanks". Since they were a new provider in the region, guess that the infrastructure were more than enough to sustain our use, and I was really surprised that the same excuse worked for around two years (then I graduated, don't know how it's now).
  - Scoundreller 12y ago
    Given the nature of ISPs, networks and 95th percentile billing, a rational ISP would have advised you to keep it down between the hours of X and Y on days A through B. At least one ISP around here offers unlimited data, but at reduced mbps during peak times. I can understand their plan, trying to maximize their resources without trying to break the laws of physics. If only others would maximize their available resources. Since they aren't, it's (even more) clear that the caps are arbitrary and serve only to maintain video distribution monopolies.

chatmasta 12y ago

The problem is a fundamental incongruence between the costs to ISP's, and the corresponding costs to customers. It's not just consumer ISP's that are guilty of this racket, either. Most "cloud" hosts, Amazon included, are making huge margins by charging their customers for total data transferred, but only paying upstream for rate of transfer, i.e. bandwidth capacity at any given time. To simplify, let's ignore last mile costs and at ISP's who own their own infrastructure. Let's also ignore peering. ISP's, and hosts like Amazon, pay for IP transit on a capacity basis, i.e. data per second, e.g. "$1 per month per mbps." They buy this IP transit from providers like Level3, Cogent, Hurricane Electric, etc. What this actually means is that they pay a monthly fee for some amount of fiber optic cables to plug into their servers/switches. These cables have a set bandwidth capacity, like 1gbps. They could charge their customers in the same way, E.g. "$2 per month per mbps," and make up to 2x on each customer, but this would quickly become unsustainable because there simply is not enough cable in the world to do that, and make customers will not be using their full capacity 99% of the time anyway. Instead, the companies "oversell" their capacity by advertising a certain capacity to customers, but then capping the total transfer so that the customers cannot operate at peak capacity 100% of the time, since there is not space for that many electrons on the fiber optic cables. Amazon charges $0.1 per gb transferred. In bulk, IP transit from hurricane electric can cost as little as $0.50 per mbps. If you operate a low bandwidth site on Amazon, and you transfer 1 mbps for an entire month, that totals to 155.52 gigabits, or 19 gigabytes. You pay $1.90, but Amazon only pays $0.50. If you transfer at a consistent rate of 1 gbps, you total 324 terabytes of transfer, which costs you $3,240 @ 0.01/gb (I think that's their bulk price?). Amazon, meanwhile, only pays $500. Lots of people don't know this is how the hosting industry works, and Amazon is gouging the shit out of them on price. Lots of companies paying for the convenience of "the cloud" are getting ripped off. For high bandwidth sites, it's far more cost effective to colocate at a datacenter and buy the IP transit yourself. I'm sure Amazon offers custom transit pricing to big customers, but you need to transfer a ton of bandwidth to get that, and by then you're already getting ripped off anyway.

nicktelford 12y ago
You're quite right here, with two exceptions: 1) Fibre transmits photons, not electrons. 2) The fundamental infrastructure limits aren't the cable themselves, but the equipment at either end. This technology improves every year, permitting the same cables to transfer more data. This is why installing fibre through the streets is such a good investment: it scales up over time, without having to dig it up and replace it. Also, the issue you touched on with customers sharing the same bandwidth is called "contention", and it's possible to determine the "contention ratio" (i.e. how many people are sharing a unit of bandwidth) for ISPs (at least, it is in the UK). Last I checked, in the UK, the contention was always better on DSL services than cable; but the maximum bandwidth and minimum latency on cable is correspondingly better. Though I've not checked the Openreach FTTC offering, which I imagine has a better contention at the moment due to a smaller customer base.