Kill the bandwidth hogs

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

longword

Originally posted by Lemming
I would consider throttling back to 56k levels after 10gb to be a decent response.

I remember reading about some ISP doing this (where and who and the url escapes me at this point)

skynet.be and telenet.be (DSL and cable respectively) do that. skynet have a simple monthly cap. Come the end of the month, if you're out of bandwidth you're out of luck. Telenet do it a bit smarter, spreading the cap out on a daily basis. If you use over 300MB the first day, you'll find yourself on a go-slow until day 2. But if you use less than 300MB that balance carries over to tomorrow's cap. It's not based on calendar months, but rather it's a sliding window over the past 30 days. Very fair and you don't wind up with usage spike early in the month and underuse of capacity towards the end of the month.

Paying for excess downstream use is not only wrong in principal for a flat-rate service IMHO, but it has one really nasty little problem: If someone doesn't like you and finds out your IP address, they can flood you to their heart's content and you get to pick up the bill. Even using a single channel ISDN line, that's a 500 euro bill.

dahamsta

houston has a population of over 5 million, more than Ireland. Roadrunner Cable (timeWarner) Does not impose any cap on downloads.

Again, economies of scale come into play here. Certainly Houston is about the same size as Ireland, but Roadrunner operates nationwide, not just in Houston. Not only do they have their own fibre around the country - which is where most of their traffic stays anyway - their bandwidth buying power is enormous compared to Eircom.

adam

longword

Originally posted by daveirl
All I want to know is why people are accepting a cap at all. The whole idea of a lobby group is that you try to get as much as you can.

People are accepting a cap, at a reasonable level, to ensure that the contention ratio doesn't bite too hard. What you're paying for is not a 512k leased line. It's shared with between 20 and 50 other users. The performance of your service depends on what the other 19-49 users are doing. If one or two of them choose to max out their line 24/7, you will be very unhappy and screaming to high heaven that you're not getting what you paid for.

dahamsta

The whole idea of a lobby group is that you try to get as much as you can.

I signed up to IrelandOffline to get what I deserve, not as much as I can. So, although I certainly agree that IrelandOffline should be aiming higher in order to settle at that level...

Surely IOFFL should be aiming for an uncapped service.

...in my opinion IrelandOffline should be aiming for product diversity. We should have both.

adam

sceptre

Originally posted by Lemming
I remember reading about some ISP doing this (where and who and the url escapes me at this point)

One of the Aussie ISPs throttles users back to 28k (no, there isn't a 1 missing there) when the monthly limit is exceeded. Just enough to pick up mail.

dahamsta

One of the Aussie ISPs throttles users back to 28k (no, there isn't a 1 missing there) when the monthly limit is exceeded. Just enough to pick up mail.

Bit excessive that, people should still be able to surf at least. Someone else suggested 128k, but you can still suck down fairly hefty downloads with that if you're a persistant little piggy. 64k strikes me as a fair balance.

adam

Moriarty

One has to remember that australia is pretty bandwidth starved when it comes to international connectivity. Europe and the US have no such problems (infact its more the opposite..).

SkepticOne

Originally posted by yellum
When you're done with the bandwidth "hogs" who's next in your sights ? Or will other services be withdrawn ?

First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.

by Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945

LOL. sorry, but it's funny in this context.

longword

Originally posted by Moriarty
One has to remember that australia is pretty bandwidth starved when it comes to international connectivity. Europe and the US have no such problems (infact its more the opposite..).

Ireland isn't necessarily a part of Europe in this context.

pete

Originally posted by daveirl
All I want to know is why people are accepting a cap at all. The whole idea of a lobby group is that you try to get as much as you can.

Surely IOFFL should be aiming for an uncapped service. If people accept a capped service then that's their business but the group's policy should be to try and get as much as possible.

Do you want to be represented by powerful, respected lobby group or a bunch of cranks? (see: Greenpeace / Consumer Association vs IFA / SFA / NTDU etc)

pete

Originally posted by SkepticOne
If the cap on 'multi' was in order to create a better service for the majority of users, then why don't they apply the same logic to 'enhanced'?

This example would seem to show that Eircom regard the use of the cap as a means of making the service less attractive.

I would have said that the cap is there to assist in incentivising (read: fleece) those who need the higher performing service...

But, yes.

SkepticOne

Originally posted by pete
I would have said that the cap is there to assist in incentivising (read: fleece) those who need the higher performing service...

But, yes.

Yes. Other side of the coin. Point is to make one look worse than the other even though it costs the same to make both.

It is like when the 'Baby Belling' cooker was brought out first, it had two rings at the top. Belling got the idea to sell a cheaper one where you could only operate one ring at a time. This actually had an extra switch built in so it cost more to make than the one that allowed both rings to be operated at the same time.

This is why the cap in Eircom's case is more to do with extracting as much money as possible from as many as possible.

pete

I agree... the problem is that unlike your cooker example - which has a clearly identifiable, tangible thing you can point your finger at at shout "Come see the violence inherent in the system!" or equivalent at - we're up against this oft-repeated mantra of "ah yes, but bandwidth is expensive" - I mean I'm not saying it's not expensive (i have no idea how much it is - funnily enough it doesn't seem to be a cost factor in either my 56k eircom line here, or our 512k nevada telecom line in work), it's just that I just haven't seen anything concrete that can be held up as a valid reason for 3/4/6gb caps (other than allowing eircom to do better average usage levels / probable capacity analysis to go for higher contention ratios).....



I need to learn punctuation.

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

SkepticOne

I agree... the problem is that unlike your cooker example - which has a clearly identifiable, tangible thing you can point your finger at at shout "Come see the violence inherent in the system!" or equivalent at - we're up against this oft-repeated mantra of "ah yes, but bandwidth is expensive" - I mean I'm not saying it's not expensive (i have no idea how much it is - funnily enough it doesn't seem to be a cost factor in either my 56k eircom line here, or our 512k nevada telecom line in work), it's just that I just haven't seen anything concrete that can be held up as a valid reason for 3/4/6gb caps (other than allowing eircom to do better average usage levels / probable capacity analysis to go for higher contention ratios).....

Exactly. The bandwidth argument holds no water because it is the same bandwidth being applied to both services: 512k at a 24:1 contention ratio. However, Eircom realised that the non-capped service was more attractive to its potential marks and therefore charged more. In a non-competitive environment, a company gets to charge according to the utility or percieved attractiveness of the service rather than the underlying costs of providing that service.

The high wholesale bitstream price saw to it that for the first year of operation, there was no direct competition and therefore they could get away with this practice.

Via who are now operating using Eircom's bitstream don't use a cap, presumably to attract customers.

This new 54 euro service, provided Eircom fulfill their regulatory obligations, will also have a wholesale bistream service and this will be much lower than the current bitstream price so it should be possible for ISPs like UTV to come in and provide a service.

Therefore we should not get too worked
up about Eircom applying a cap, because we can all go over to UTV (or whoever).

The point I'm making is that some ISPs will use different techniques to share out the bandwidth. If someone actually wants a capped service (there may be legitimate reasons), then they can go over to Eircom.

longword

Originally posted by SkepticOne
Exactly. The bandwidth argument holds no water because it is the same bandwidth being applied to both [Eircom DSL and Nevada leased line] services: 512k at a 24:1 contention ratio.

Not true. If you have a 512k leased line, that's a private dedicated circuit between you and the ISP. Nobody else shares that. Needless to say that costs rather a lot more than a DSL line. On every DSL service I've ever seen, the link between the DSLAM in the exchange and the ISP is shared between many users. 50 users seems to be the going rate for most European nations, with 20:1 or thereabouts for more expensive DSL services targetted at business users.

That includes the UK where BT's 20:1 business service has prices similar to Eircom's I-Stream - 180 euro per month EX VAT for their Business 1000PLUS service which is nearly identical to the €165 ex. VAT I-Stream Enhanced. BT install for free until the end of March though you'd make back Eircom's install costs in a year. BT also supply an ADSL router.

Yes it would be nice if backhaul bandwidth was cheaper and more available. It would be nice if we had 10:1 or 5:1 contention ratios for free. It would be nice if international bandwidth was free. But life is different in the Real World. In the Real World we need caps - but we need them to be reasonable, and fairly implemented. €37 per gigabyte over the limit is just silly.

/me waits patiently for the accusations that he works for Eircom

jmcc

Originally posted by longword
Not true. If you have a 512k leased line, that's a private dedicated circuit between you and the ISP. Nobody else shares that. Needless to say that costs rather a lot more than a DSL line.

The cost of even a 128K is high and sales droids would be sent back bit by bit if dedicated bandwidth was snarfed by DSL users.

But life is different in the Real World. In the Real World we need caps - but we need them to be reasonable, and fairly implemented. €37 per gigabyte over the limit is just silly.

The main problem for ISPs/telcos is that they cannot assign a value to the actual data they are carrying. Thus the old distance based calculations don't work. It would not be improbable that a dual tiered net emerges from this until someone sorts out a valuation model. The one thing that will kill a flat rate system is bandwidth hogs troughing all the bandwidth at the expense of other users.

Regards...jmcc

leeroybrown

I agree that if someone wahts to transfer vast quantities of data in a month that they should have to pay for the privelidge, but the existing caps are rediculous.

At 4Gb a month downloading a Linux Distro would almost ensure that you'll be passing the cap. (I use Debian so it would be apt-get butif I wanted the 7 latest CD's that would be 4 Gigs ... with no source code)

The only real reason I can see for tiny caps is that they make a good selling point for unlimited services. I'm not even sure if the DSL providers will ever bother charging the extra money but they reserve the right to do so. That makes an uncapped offering more attractive to customers (in €ircoms mind anyway).

That and some people just like to be awkward.

KdjaCL

A note to those who dont have DSL you will blitz 3gb just by surfing and downloading patches and demos and a few game maps.


There shouldnt be a download cap ,i wouldnt abuse it if it wasnt there, im only abusing it as its a certain ISP and this gives a me a little payback


Kdjac

longword

Originally posted by leeroybrown
I agree that if someone wahts to transfer vast quantities of data in a month that they should have to pay for the privelidge, but the existing caps are rediculous.

At 4Gb a month downloading a Linux Distro would almost ensure that you'll be passing the cap.

It has to be said though, a 4GB cap is a more than fair distribution of the available bandwidth to the 50 users of a 512k connection. Strictly speaking it should be even lower than that.

Mark_irl

Does anyone know of a program that records the amount of bytes you use while online? I seem to have used 9.2 mb just generally looking at web pages for 2hrs 45 mins , no down loading whatsoever! so a 4gb cap would very quickly be used up,

longword

Originally posted by Mark_irl
Does anyone know of a program that records the amount of bytes you use while online? I seem to have used 9.2 mb just generally looking at web pages for 2hrs 45 mins , no down loading whatsoever! so a 4gb cap would very quickly be used up,

4GB a month is more than you think. At the rate you quote, you could do that for eight hours a day, every day of the month, and still only use about 800MB in a whole month. Download four VideoCDs of your favourite TV show (about 450MB a shot, lets ignore the piracy issues for now) and you're still only talking about another 1800MB. Still enough left to do a fairly complete network install of RedHat 8.0.

PiE

I'm confused. Why on earth are you arguing for a 4GB cap? (Not in so many words, but thats the way it comes across).

It's not really the cap that bothers me, it's the charge thereafter which means we'll be doing the exact same thing that we're doing with UTV now... watching that little omnipresent NoFrillsTimer at the top of the screen.

longword

Originally posted by PiE
I'm confused. Why on earth are you arguing for a 4GB cap? (Not in so many words, but thats the way it comes across).

Because I seem to be one of only a handful of people here who have a grasp of basic math pertaining to a 512k connection shared among 50 users in the real world. Have calculators suddenly been banned or what? Hell even a pen and paper! The numbers aren't that big and we're not talking about transcendental functions.

You can argue for a lower contention ratio. Or for a faster service at the same ratio. But given the parameters of the service as they stand (assuming a 50:1 ratio on the new cheaper service), a cap is all but required, and to be equitable it needs to be smallish.

It's not really the cap that bothers me, it's the charge thereafter

No argument there. I'd love to see an equivalent of telenet.be's solution, with a day-by-day sliding cap and a drop to 56k for the rest of the day if you go beyond that.

PiE

Caps may be necessary, but how come DSL providers in other countries provide larger caps on the same speeds with no major loss in performance for the 50 people?

4GB may be (logically speaking) more than each person would be able to get if everyone was connected, but it doesn't work like that as you know. So if one person only uses 1mb of his 4GB in a month... the "spare" 3999MB are going to waste.

Fact of the matter is, Eircom aren't capping it cos they're afraid of peoples DSL being degraded by constant-downloading, they just want more cash.

Sure haven't they (and Esat) got shed-loads of unlit fibre if they need more bandwidth anyway?

David C

Hmm..
The person i spoke to on the phone to Eircom was insisting that the cap would still be 3GB..
I don't think it actually said 4GB in the press release, or did it?

jonski

soz if this is in the wrong place ,and i have already read all of this thread and can't find the answer to my question..which is ,how much would i d/l just playing online games and surfing and being on mirc..bear in mind that i'm in a clan so i would be playing for about 1 hour a day adverage.3 hour if we have a war ?

just wondering cause i really don't have a clue

longword

Originally posted by PiE
Caps may be necessary, but how come DSL providers in other countries provide larger caps on the same speeds with no major loss in performance for the 50 people?

Short answer: They don't. In some places, ADSL sucks. At peak times you get worse performance than a 56k modem and ping times a 2400bps modem would be proud of.

4GB may be (logically speaking) more than each person would be able to get if everyone was connected, but it doesn't work like that as you know. So if one person only uses 1mb of his 4GB in a month... the "spare" 3999MB are going to waste.

All it takes is about 5% of unrestricted hogs to destroy the quality of everyone's service. Certainly you could argue that 4GB is a little low - but that's already predicated on the assumption that for every user that downloads 4GB there's another user who only downloads 2GB. Increase the cap further and you're relying even more on other users paying good money for a service they're not using. Users who have eschewed a cheaper FRIACO dialup service in favour of DSL. Does that seem reasonable to you?

Sure haven't they (and Esat) got shed-loads of unlit fibre if they need more bandwidth anyway?

That's a separate issue, though beyond that you also have to consider international bandwidth. That's not something the country has in abundance. And it is expensive.

Praetorian

Originally posted by Mark_irl
Does anyone know of a program that records the amount of bytes you use while online? I seem to have used 9.2 mb just generally looking at web pages for 2hrs 45 mins , no down loading whatsoever! so a 4gb cap would very quickly be used up,

http://www.praetorian.digihive.com/dumeter3.zip

Thats the program i use...Its excellent. 30 day trial tho