4 ms·
It looks to be related to the above paragraph: “Websites that require high-bandwidth will not be included. Services should not use VoIP, video, file transfer,
by slimsag 12y ago
It looks to be related to the above paragraph:
“Websites that require high-bandwidth will not be included. Services should not use VoIP, video, file transfer, high resolution photos, or high volume of photos.” — Facebook points out that operators are giving up resources for the project for free, so this is a limit to prevent them totally being taken to the cleaners.
Perhaps HTTPS is too heavy for the large number of users on such crippled networks?
- cheese1756 12y agoMaybe the service providers are caching heavily, and that's impossible with HTTPS? That seems likely, but I don't know a ton about the protocol.
- ripdog 12y agoAssuming a dumb pipe, SSL is no harder on the ISP than unencrypted traffic. It's likely that they want unencrypted because the data is then easily cacheable, drastically reducing cost on network operators.
- will_hughes 12y agoSurely for network operators the cost isn't in external connectivity, its in radio channel capacity at the edge.
- jsnell 12y agoIn the west, sure. But that can't be generalized to all over the world. In some developing countries the internet connection costs of an operator can be very significant. High enough that it's been profitable to deploy expensive caches even for non-HTTP protocols, which account for a very small proportion of traffic. In the most extreme cases it's not just that the connectivity is expensive, it's that there's an absolute hard cap on bandwidth for a whole country, which is rationed among all the operators. No amount of money could buy a bigger portion in a sensible amount of time.