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P2P Will Lead To Higher ISP Charges?
Lumpish Scholar writes "This Interactive Week article suggests that P2P is a wonderful thing, the direction the Internet is going ... and utterly breaks ISPs' business models, to the extent they may raise their monthly rates, or at least offer two-tier plans that will charge some users more. If true, ISPs might be seeing cost increases from two directions: more dialup ports (because users are staying on longer, so peak usage increases), and fatter pipes to their upstream or peer ISPs. On the other hand, to quote the article: "We're seeing greater decreases in the cost of the bandwidth than we are seeing increases in individual bandwidth usage." A price increase might or might not be justified, but Slashers will surely be interested if increases are coming." People have been making this arguement for a while - remember when web surfing started to become common, and people stayed on for longer, the ISPs claimed the same things.
Anyone remember when "push" technology was going to be the next big thing? I predict P2P is going to go the same way as push went, mostly out the window with a lot of money chasing after it. Can anyone actually tell me the benefits of P2P, over and above client-server, in actual and real world applications? Sure, we have GNUtella, Napster (sortof), and countless others, but these all basically just exist because piracy is illegal and it's P2Pishness helps skirt the law.
Now I'm not saying that P2P has absolutely no uses, but until someone comes up with a substantial and legitimate use, I see absolutely no reason to believe the hype.
Or, like many cable-modem customers are finding out, your packet loss will suddenly go through the roof. This is at least a little bit fairer than shutting people down.
Some years ago they thought they would get back their investments by bringing "content" that would pay for their net.
They failed miserably by competing against other ISP's with costs for their services rocketing without any results. The only outcome - a total block of good multicast services.
If ISP's aren't coming up with good multicast services across networks this will only lead to higher bandwith costs for alternative services that will be pushed onto users.
Internet is not TV, but I don't think anyone would compare a slow P2P connection to a fast mutlicast connection whatever the content.
The way things are right now, most people are being charged 19 clams(US) for terrible service, while their pals on the same service are getting better performance. Perhaps it is time for a change in the way ISPs deal with charging folks, but I'll tell you what, I'll start my own before I pay anymore for the POS throughput that I have to deal with.
Frontier Communications
Don't believe a word these people tell you. They may say that you are ready for DSL, but that doesn't mean that it is true... Well, if you want to know why I gripe about this, take a look at the site yourself: Frontier Lightning Link
I don't see how any ISP can make any money offering xDSL for a fixed rate. I know the gamble is most lines sit idle most of the time (mine averages 58/bytes second, w/BIND, Sendmail, Apache and three PCs connected), but at the same time it only takes a a few dozen people maxing their lines out to seriously dent an OC-3, and not every ISP has that much bandwidth.
The idea of metering isn't as bad as it sounds -- one thing that keeps ISPs from rolling out serious bandwidth (1.5Mbps SDSL for everyone) is that ISPs are afraid that they won't be able to meet the demands of that much bandwidth because the marginal income outpaces the marginal cost. Charging by the packet, ISPs could easily offer as much bandwidth as you want WITHOUT having to worry about where the cash for the next OC-3 will come from.
Well, under the old ISP model, you could have 500 users. You would assume, and usage statistics would back this up, that only 10% of them would be on at a given time. So, you buy enough bandwidth to handle 50-60 users. Each user gets their 56k of bandwidth and are happy.
Now, you have 500 users with 300 of them staying on and active all at once. You have to buy more bandwidth to provide the user that 56k of bandwidth that they are used to getting, otherwise you start to lose customers.
This is different from the user saying that they would like 128k of bandwidth and how much extra would that be.
Yes, a large quantity would cost more, but why should they have to pay more for their small quantity just because all these people you wooed over to your service are now using it, cutting into your profit margin.
Or you could be like my cable modem company and just not increase the bandwidth and laugh as the profit margin grows!
That's only if you make the assumption that the majority of peer to peer connections are between users of the same ISP. In the Real World (TM), I would guess this is usually not the case. Services like Napster generally make no distinction between a user next door to you and one half way around the world (except in ping time, and that's only if you find the file you need both locally and from someone in a remote location, which is probably still more infrequent).
Peer to peer doesn't imply any sort of geographic proximity, it is just a description of how two clients interact with one another.
when I get cornered into tech support on a slow day the number one complaint is that they can't get their email and then most of them use Outlook Express (which sucks on Windows), it'd be scary to have normal non-techie people running mail servers.
"I keep looking in the want-ads under 'revolutionary' but there don't seem to be any listings.. "
Think up some totally nonsensical or obvious "fact". Dress it up in some fancy language that may or may not mean what it sounds like ("the opportunity cost of network construction", indeed) and put it in some short clear paragraphs. Genius. Much better than the Urban Existential persona--and much MUCH better than the completely obvious Heidi Wall.
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
For a single host, the mail server can almost be a no-brainer. It has to only accept mail addressed to itself and permit no relaying at all. It should not be too difficult to provide such a mail server which needs no user configuration at all - reading the local hostname (which would be the only one for which mail would be accepted) from the OS.
Did FidoNet not (and probably still does) run on a similar line. Each system exchanged data with others which were local to it. They in turn exchanged data with other systems which are local to them but not to you and so with the data being carried over large distances in many mutually local hops (with obvious breaks in this mutually local system caused by national borders, oceans etc.)
That's kind of true. It just used to be that dail-in and receive content people were different people than the ISP. It was really a very brief period of time when the no-frills Mom-and-pop ISP really amounted to anything. Before that your ISP was your employer or it was AOL/Compuserv and now with the real ISPs going away we're left with your connection being through something like AOL/AT&T/MSN and so forth where you're paying for their packaged content plus a TCP/IP connection to the world at large.
_____________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
Do you live outside the United States?
:)
Equal speech is not the same as free speech.
Equal Speech just means that everyone can say what everyone else can say.
that does not guarantee a persons right to say what he or she wants when they want it(which is freedom of speech)
I could say that no one can say the word "Cat" and eveyone would have equal speech because no one can say "Cat".
sorry just a bit nit-pickie
otherwise, the rest of the statment is good.
-------------------
-The American people have overpaid; I am here to ask for a refund.
I can't seeing a advertisement form my local broadband providers saying "Buy our services and be able to check your email in 2.6 seconds". Most of them are about being able to having streaming media, downloading music and movies, and killing the world wide wait (WWW). What kind of behavior did they expect?
The fact is, bandwidth itself doesn't cost money. That's why it's free to transfer as much as you want between those 100baseT boxes on your LAN. The cabling and the hub cost you $60, and that's that. That isn't the case, however, for cross-country bandwidth.
The fact is, those fiber digs cost some serious money. The cross-country transport (or transit) providers want to make their money back from the investment of actually laying or leasing cable across the country. Those big pipes cost a lot of money. That's why the majors charge $400 - $500 per megabit in transit costs.
That's right -- it likely costs your ISP $400 - $500 for bandwidth. The public has a distorted perception of how much bandwidth costs simply because of the VC-fueled fire-sale pricing broadband has had. Think broadband is too expensive? The simple fact is that the CLEC that hooked you up with DSL spent $600-$900 to get you running (no, that's not an exaggeration or typo). Then, they have to hope that you don't run a server on your connection, because if you constantly have bandwidth flowing across the connection, it'll cost them more than it costs you.
That's the danger of peer-to-peer -- it's customers setting up their own servers, sometimes (as in the case of Napster) inadvertently. It only nics the dial-up economics slightly -- the article's mostly hype. But for broadband, P2P is a huge problem.
The fact is, the nation's broadband customers are going to have to choose between one of the following:
1) Significant rate hikes. Right now, it takes 5 years to start making money on a DSL subscriber. That won't last. The article's wrong.
2) Significant limitations. Cutting people off when they do certain things, or having an extreme backend cap on bandwidth. This is the "FAPping" done by Hughes on DirecTV subscribers.
3) Poor service. Simply not purchasing enough bandwidth for customers.
The fact is, it's going to be number three. With scenarios 1 and 2, customers simply won't sign up, or will complain loudly. If everyone has the same sub-par service, though, people will just choose what's convenient. The baby bell and cable companies, are well known for charging moderate rates for severely sub-par service. This has put a squeeze on the good guys, the independent ISPs, leaving markets with a near-monopoly of unsatisfactory service.
It's already happening.
Eschatfische.
It seems to me that the source of this information needs to be considered. Todd Spangler of Interactive Week? This guy writes for ZDNet and probably wouldn't know a true daemon if it bit him in the ass.
More than likely this guy was talking to some buddy at an ISP who was tossing around some geekspeek and saw an angle for a story. Consider his thoughts on the subject of modem to user ratios; he brings up the old 40:1 ratio. How does that relate at all to cable, DSL, or Tx lines, the users who will be the ones that really change the amount of bandwidth that ISPs require, and their impact on pricing?
Go back to writing such articles as "Feeling the Spam" and leave the tech stuff to people who know what they are talking about.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Really? You don't think the tools people design and use reflect their philosophy? An odd view indeed. I'm willing to bet any decent anthropologist or philosopher will dispute that.
What the hell is an "internet supporting OS"?
Remember passing around floppies that contained "winsock.dll"? If it doesn't support IP out of the box, it doesn't support the internet. Grafting it on after realizing you're 10 years behind the competition doesn't count.
In addition, I didn't realize it was beneficial to the net for every machine to have every possible internet-related daemon/service running by default. Actually, I thought the exact opposite was true...
In our post-September times, you are right. Once, though, when people didn't have to worry about the millions of skript kiddies, thieves, and other hooligans on the net (that, or maybe everyone on the net was a hooligan of some sort), most machines ran every service they could support. Even rexd.
There are also plenty of server based apps that use as much, if not more resources, streaming audio webcasts of radio shows for example.
My point was P2P is just another connection ...what happens once two machines are connected, who knows. It cannot be said that P2P apps increase the cost of anything.
- and small change got rained on with his own 38
Running your own DNS and all that is not a problem, DHCP or not. Use an offsite DNS provider.
That's exactly what P2P is. And ISPs don't like it. They want you to take your files off of the pretty web pages, many of which (in their master-plan) will have local caching servers ala Akamai. If you look at the TOS for most cable-modem and residential DSL providers, they specifically say "don't operate a server or file sharing program." The unpredictable downstream and upstream bandwidth that P2P generates might eventually require them to spend more money.
This is really too bad for them. As long as people have these relatively powerful machines hooked up to the net, it's inevitable that they're going to use them for more than one-way downloads and web surfing. ISPs will adjust.
1) Everyone has a high downstream:upstream ratio.
As a logical consequence, data is stored centrally on large server with large backbones. Everyone downloads from one or several major sites, upstream is used pretty much just for packet ACKs. The major servers need large amounts of long distance bandwidth, as do the ISPs the clients are using. This is the current state of affairs.
2) Everyone has lots of upstream (perhaps 1:1) and everyone has P2P software.
This means that there is a good chance a local peer will have a copy of data you want. The transfer would then take place over a small number of hops (perhaps they're even on the same ISP!) Long distance bandwidth is thus reduced as most transfers can be handled internally to the ISP.
The question is, which of examples 1 and 2 is the cheapest? Long distance links are expensive, and example 1 needs lots of bandwidth down long distances. Example 2 may require more bandwidth in total, but this is over short distances.
Well, you might say that "obviously less total bandwidth is cheaper." But think about the typical home network setup - 100mbit internal (local), 56kbit external (long distance). It's cheap because the high bandwidth carrying is short distance, and you'll be downloading once and copying between local computers.
My argument is that example 2 scales all the way to global, and the combination of P2P and greater upstream will in fact lower the cost to an ISP eventually.
That aside I don't really see how a growth in the number and usage of p2p apps will cause any substantial growth in the cost to ISPS. Greater usage of these types of applications does not indicate an inherent rise in the number of people online at any given time, or in the amount of time they spend there.
It's really just a question of where they point the bytes, to a web server, or to a desktop in a barn in Iowa. An ISP is really nothing more than a bit courier. It really makes no difference to them where the data goes to and comes from. They just care that you fork over your twenty bucks a month.
There is also the growing shift to direct broadband providers to consider. With this type of connection the users are always connected so time spent online is not really an issue.
Well that's my two cents
- and small change got rained on with his own 38
To see an article like this, showing concern about the already low price of Internet access seems kind of like whining. I shell out $20 a month for less than a thirtieth of the bandwidth an average DSL or cable user gets, plus the expense of the dedicated phoneline, another $20. For my $40, I get busy signals, dropped lines, and 3.4K downloads when I'm lucky.
Prices will rise, that's a fact right now. There are more users, spending more time online, that's for certain. But anyone trying to make a huge deal about it just hasn't thought about the economics of it all.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
How many megabytes of files do you transfer when you browse the web? Downloading the kind of files available on the Gnutella network can average 400MB(ytes) each.
Also do you think Joe Bloggs regularly goes to IRC to swap files? Course not it requires a bit of talent. Try using bearshare (www.bearshare.com) and see how easy it is for a newbie.
Oh sure, I can easily see the next lot of set-top boxes running mailer daemons, but there's two problems:
toeslikefingers.com - because
The model is actually a few thousand years older than that, and is just as effective today as ever. And, sorry to say, AOL is not anywhere near "collapse" . . . like it or not, they're still fantastically successful.
I forsee that when broadband comes, the telecoms companies will be in the most powerful position.
They already are. The ISPs are just (necessary) middlemen.
With broadband and more powerful computers, there is no reason why the average users computer cannot connect to the internet directly, and bypass the ISP model entirely.
Mail servers, DNS servers, address blocks, and about 400 other reasons come to mind.
ISP's, with their ridiculous dreams of providing direct media content and products, will die and be replaced by a devolved and more democratic network.
On one side, there are a lot of ISPs that offer low rates and no content. On the other side, a lot of people want the content offered by companies such as AOL.
Communicative equality in America, land of free and equal speech, could be reborn through the arrival of P2P, IMHO.
Nice sentiment, I suppose, but comletely unrealistic. Not to mention that the P2P concept has nothing to do with Internet connection service.
People are missing the point here. So P2P will cause a surge in bandwidth usage and connect times? Look at the Internet. It is evolving. Look at bandwidth. Just as any other technology evolves and expands, so does the amount of bandwidth available. Five years ago, how many people had 512Kbps(+) pipes coming into their bedrooms. Not many. Now, cable modem and DSL connections are becoming the norm. Analog connections are certainly still the majority, but look around at the advertisements. Bandwidth is big business. People are demanding more of it. Usage has already been increasing radically. The number of people getting on the 'net is increasing at a phenomenal pace. Just like anything else, the more you sell, the cheaper it gets. The price per amount of bandwidth has plummeted over the years. The consumer costs are not going to go up. With usage and volume ever increasing, the worst that could happen is prices may not fall as radically as they have in the past. Or, you may see less of the $7 Internet access offers. BFD. People will still be willing to pay their $50 a month for their cable modems. The majority of the people out there have jobs and are not savvy enough to schedule downloads all day while they're at work. It's pretty safe to assume that your grandma will not be on Gnutella downloading the latest ICP track. But she'll still like that cable modem because it makes her marthastuart.com pop up quicker..
It'll all be okay. Really.
-=e
It's not just the bandwidth, but also the modem banks that are affected. Before, that ISP with 500 customers could get away with only needing 100 modems, since on average 50-60 of those customers would be on (with a little buffer for peak times). If now 300 are on all the time, the ISP needs three times as many modems to support that many users just dialing in. I know that the ISP I did a little work at really hated the idea that any of their customers might get a busy signal when they tried to connect.
But I think this means that ISPs will need to change their business models. If a higher percentage of their customers will be using their service at any given time, they will have to support that -- or their customers will go to someone who can. This probably means higher costs, but the idea that only 10% of the customers will be on may be a thing of the past. Service providers change to meet the customers needs; customers don't change to meet the providers needs.
"Save the whales, feed the hungry, free the mallocs" -- author unknown
if there's a reason for a price increase, i'm sure that isp's will find a way to make the hike 'justified'.
Actually, in most places on this planet you pay gas tax, which usually goes right in to the transportation department for road maintenance. So the more gas you use the more you pay to maintain roads.
1. Cost of backbone connectivity per user keeps getting cheaper (all that OC192/768 equipment on DWDM fiber makes adding capacity way cheap)
2. It's way too expensive to measure & bill this stuff. Maybe you can measure it - but just try to link it to a biller. Major pain in the butt - and for what? A few bucks? Not worth the investment.
3. P2P is a killer app for DSL. Why do you think Speakeasy was giving away Rios? It doesn't make sense to go after a leading reason people are buying your service in the first place...
sulli
RTFJ.
Go off giving any credibility to that shit rag fish wrapper wannabe a trade magazine. They do not engage in any kind of responslible reporting. They only want to stir the pot and provoke responses from anyone not caring if the response is positive or negative. Their objective is to generate traffic for the number crunchers. "Look we had X emails last month from our readers!", not taking into account that 90% of those messages were flames for their crappy reporting.
You have to remember this is an IDG company they are in the marketing business, pro spam, pro opt out, anti-privacy, sensationalist bastards from my point of view. I have not renewed my subscription and will find other reading material for the crapper.
Rick B.
Over my cable modem connection I can currently download at a max of Two Megabytes Per Second (yes I just said MegaBytes, I am very VERY happy with my connection speed!) but I can only upload at a speed of 15KiloBytes per second.
Now then, the upload cap is actualy doing its job of keeping me from sucking massivly large amounts of Bandwidth from the local cable modem network, so I really can't complain about it, seeing as how it was designed to do somthing and it is doing that. In reality it is only an inconvience to people who are trying to download from my P2P server that I am running (defintly not Napster of Gnutella to say the least).
I can download an easy 10GigaBytes a week, which happens to be ALOT of traffic, heh:) I've actualy heard of some ISP's inserting a 2GigaByte per month Cap, a cap would I could easily bypass in a day. But in general, downstream traffic on a cable modem connection is not really a problem for the ISP or the user. Since I am mostly an off-hours surfer anyways, I am not using up all that much bandwidth that would normaly go to other users, and when other users want to use up that bandwidth, it is going to be used up. That it is the intresting part of not having a downstream bandwidth cap.
Mathmaticaly, Assuming that the tasks being performed are enough to use up all the avaible bandwidth, the same amount of Bandwidth is going to be used up no matter if one certin user is sucking using gobs of bandwidth or not. You see, the bandwidth is GOING to be used, so, there is no reason to insert a Cap on it, since used it used, mine as well make the customer happy. (yah I know there are some holes in that argument when you only have a few users on, but trust me, everybody in their right minds wants a cable modem if they can't get a T1/T3/DSL, so there is not a problem with the user numbers).
Well. . . upstream bandwidth doesn't work the exact same way. If you have BOTH upstream and downstream bandwidth uncapped, all of a sudden you can have a few users using up alot of Upstream bandwidth and taking that bandwidth away from the poor downstream people. The way that most services work (to the demands of the customers I might add) you are guarnteed so much upstream AND downstream bandwidth. In fact I am promised the I *WILL GET* that 15KBp/s, it is a reserved amount that is assigned to me no matter what. If all shit breaks loose and the network is flooded tomarrow, I am still promised the 15KBp/s. If you uncap that bandwidth and make it unlimited, all of a sudden you can no longer promise that the bandwidth will be there. Since the upstream bandwidth will then have to compete with the downstream bandwidth (granted it does so right now, but it is in such a controlled manner that they can almost be considered to be seperate) and I can no longer be promised either the upstream OR the downstream bandwidth that I am currently guarnteed.
Just sharing the bandwidth out still presents a problem. Right now the maxium number of real-life do able connections on a Cable Modem is about 4 (depending on your Area, some people get 50KBp/s on their cable modem from their ISP, but that is rare, yet horribley fun:). Anything more then that and you are splitting your bandwidth too many ways. Now then, 4 connections @ a sum total of 15KBp/s max is not exactly stressing the network any. But 16 connections at a theoretical max of and all of a sudden you will have more people setting up servers. Even though the bandwidth is shared equaly amonst all of the connections, you now have MORE CONNECTIONS. That is what Bandwidth caps are REALLY there for. They either discourge people from running servers, or they encourage people to run a server with a very low maxiumum user limit.
Now then, you could lift the bandwidth cap and place a connection limit cap. And in fact that WOULD theoreticaly work, and I have seen ISP's that do that. It actualy still ensures that X number of users, you can easily mathmaticaly divide how much bandwidth each user is going to be using max (BandwidthTotal/8x). But taking a second look at this, it, well, sucks.
You see, I can typicaly have 16 or more windows open at the same time loading different web pages. Put this in conjunction with the two or three files I can be downloading at an excess of 300KBp/s, and granted the increased upload speed would be nice, but shit, I would be reaching my connection limit within a matter of minutes of turning on my computer!
What is more, in any sort of large game that is not server-centric, a might have to have 16 connections "established" to other users. These will not be active connections, but they will have to stay open at all times to be ready to recieve bursts of data.
Not to mention that Windows9x/2000 have a horrible habit of leaving a dozen or so connections open long after you have closed their originating application or browser window. Not a very good thing, users would find themselves having to reset all the time, just to get their internet connection open!
Now then, what would work? After all, I do want more upstream bandwidth, but I DO NOT want unlimited upstream bandwidth for myself, because I know that since everybody else would get it too, the network would become an absolute piece of shit.
I would perfer to be able to *PAY* a few extra dollars a month to have my BandWidth cap increased. While this would still act as an excellent deterint to having users run their own servers, it will still allow for some user to run their own responsable servers (a 50KBp/s or 64KBp/s bandwidth cap is what I am thinking of) and would also double as a "Gamers Package" that would have a definte improvement on internet performance during games.
How much more would I be willing to pay for that service? I am thinking of an extra $4-$5 a month, nothing too much, and very cheap. Remember that it is just a deterint to some user setting up a server in their spare time and taking up all of the networks bandwidth.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
The Internet has *always* been a peer-to-peer network, from day one. Only for a brief period of about 5 years in the mid-90s when a large number of non-wealthy new users came on board and were forced to live without bandwidth was this not the case. If you look at the design of the protocols, and the way the internet actually works, it's fairly obvious to me that it was always fundamentally designed to be peer-to-peer. Not in the hip new let's-steal-music way, but in the sense that every machine would function as both a client and a server. Remember when every machine ran telnetd? When there were no firewalls? When "PPP" meant going to the bathroom? This ain't new, folks. But I did like it better when peer-to-peer meant the Internet was a community, not just a place to steal stuff and run DoS attacks on irc servers. The model didn't really break until people started being allowed on the Internet without an Internet-supporting OS. They never joined the community, just babbled senselessly and joined AOL in droves. It's amazing how well their OS reflects their attitude and behaviour - no services provided, but a client for everything. Take, take, take, give nothing. That's peer-to-peer? Fuck this noise.
Um I have to disagree with you there...I don't find MP3s at all objectionable. I am not interested in a flame war, I just disagree, I don't think the Napster concept is all that wrong.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
I forsee that when broadband comes, the telecoms companies will be in the most powerful position. They own the fibre that travels into the consumers home. This gives them the power. ISP's are a temporary phenomenon.
With broadband and more powerful computers, there is no reason why the average users computer cannot connect to the internet directly, and bypass the ISP model entirely.
ISP's, with their ridiculous dreams of providing direct media content and products, will die and be replaced by a devolved and more democratic network.
It is better that the communications and telecoms companies have the power than ISP's, for ISP's aim to pump media and ideas into the home whereas telecoms companies are only interested in the almighty dollar.
Communicative equality in America, land of free and equal speech, could be reborn through the arrival of P2P, IMHO.
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
I think of little else but you.
All ISPs should be interested in running their own set of "P2P servers" themselves and they'll come out ahead without needing to raise prices.
A perfect example is mojo nation: if an ISP runs several boxes with mojo brokers covering a large or full part of the mojo data address space then both the ISP and its users will benefit. Users mojo brokers will naturally prefer the ISPs mojo brokers because they have a much lower latency and a higher reliability compared to brokers elsewhere on the net (outside of the ISPs internal networks). That means less overall outside/internet bandwidth usage directly by the users due to the caching the ISPs brokers effectively perform. It's a very large content neutral distributed caching system. In the end is saves the ISP money!
People misunderstand "P2P" in its buzzword hype. ISPs are Peers too!
Have you heard of a cache?
toeslikefingers.com - because
Some ISP's have imposed maximum times (you get disconnected after an hour, and have to redial, annoying!)
The people who are online are downloading much more data than a few years ago, and this is clogging up the bandwidth. You can really notice this. Friends of mine jam up AOL lines all day downloading MP3's -- it's not fair to other users and they are getting more than their money's worth.
However, with DSL and cable, things don't work the same.
Charging my the meg would solve the problem (and create lots more) for permanent connections rather than flat charges. But, for dial-up this would not work very well since a double-charge could be imposed.
In my opinion, access charges should be high for "unlimited" plans, while they could be based upon data transfer with lower monthly charges.
I read the article, and all I see is the quote that P2P "will break the ISP business model". I dont see how me having some sort of P2P running off my DSL line is any different than me being on IRC with files offered, or surfing, or anything else.
The rate that bandwidth is expanding at right now is phenomenal. The case in this part of the world is such that there are people walking around with fibre licenses with no idea what to do with them. The Southern Cross pipe opened up and that's got a combined size of 80Gig right now, I think 160Gig in a year. At least, that's the old stats.
P2P isn't anything compared to that stuff. Bring on the holographic conferencing!
toeslikefingers.com - because
This should come as no surprise to ISPs as before its consumerisation the Internet was a p2p system, exchanging information between peers.
On the one hand, it seems hardly a matter of debate that if people use more bandwidth, they are going to have to start paying more. It is a well accepted economic principle that a large quantity of a good or service will cost more than a small quantity.
:)
On the other hand, bandwidth is an odd sort of resource. Unlike coal, iron or wheat, it is wholly manmade. While it is correct to point out that the physically devices such as routers and switches are in fact made of natural resources, this is not the limiting factor of their production.
Rather, human ability and inginuity is required for the manufacture of IP networks. To build larger networks, effort must be taken from some other task and applied to its construction.
How does this relate to ISP prices? Quite simply, the opportunity cost of network construction goes down as demand for the service rises. Thus, even though more net bandwidth will be used, the total cost will actually be less than it is now. The tradeoff, though, is that some other good or service will lose manufacturing precedence and increase in price and lose market priority. It is anyone's guess what this good or service may be.
I suppose we could always hope it is Microsoft
- qpt
--
Domine Deus, creator coeli et terrae respice humilitatem nostram.
There are clearly higher costs associated with bigger usage. The reason the initial growth in web usage did not cause cost inflation is that the associated growth of users brought economies of scale.
There are two separate economic situations here. In the first, usage increased, but vastly increased scale and improved technology brought economies of scale.
In the second case however, growth is much shallower, and even if their is massive growth, the large size of the existing market means that there is less room for economies.
In this case, where it is a change in usage patterns more than user numbers, there are certainly implications for ISP costs.
The cost increases are still, however, likely to be small, simply through competition and improved technology.
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Hi!
This all just wrong. The net should be getting cheaper, and faster. Technology keeps moving forward able to move more data faster all the time. If the Telco's, ISP's, ETC would just take advantage of what they already have we would be in much better shape. 1. A 1.5 SDSL line should be standard equipment if your within the reach of the connection. 2. We hear all the time about all the dark fiber in the information corridor, light that fiber up. 3. Stop installing old outdated equipment, only install the stuff thats capable of providing the latest advances.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
My elderly mother pays hundreds of dollars each quarter for the privilege of being able to flush her shit into the local water treatment plant. It never makes headlines, though.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
Which is what the original ISPs used to do. The provision of additional content/value came later.
People have a reason to use the net more ergo ISP's need to charge more. That's called not estimating consumer demand correctly and then playing catch up. It's called we the consumer don't need your worthless fucking 'portals' anymore so now you have to charge us to cover the pass through advertising rates that dried up. Let's not wrap this in some grand sociological shroud.
The ISPs, wether the big boyz or the mom and pop shops (who have to go through the big boyz wire, cable or fibre,) are starting to count the number of packets they send to your IP address.
They don't need to do more than count and log. Hit the limit and you'll get a message saying you're cut off. I already have.
Got a 24kbps modem, you might never hit it. Got DSL, you will probably hit it. The more you surf, the faster you'll get cut off.
Belong to an active news group, retrieve a lot of files (a typical Smalltalk image is 100MB where I work, that's a lot of MP3s,) you could find yourself cut off from the world real fast.
Unless you pay (and pay [and pay {and pay}]) for plans with different limits you'll be sucking on a dry pipe.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I've started to do this over mail, and now have some 45 gigs of mp3's. A modest collection, considering some people's 350 gig+ collection. (i'd love to see the RIAA make them pay the 250,000 dollars a pirated album)
Karma...Police...
Arrest this man...
He speaks in numbers,
He buzzes like a fridge..
01101001 01100001 01101101 01101110 01101111 01110100 01100001 01101100 01100001 01110111 01111001 01100101 01110010
I went with BellSouth precisely because they own the wire. Sure, Telocity may have better customer service, but who is Telocity gonna call when the line goes bad? Riiiiight.
And in all honesty, I'm pleased with the service. I ordered the self-install kit and got it running with minimal trouble. I received the kit about 10 days after placing the order, and I was online about 4 hours after receiving the kit. This included making it work with my home network even though BellSouth specifically doesn't support home networking. I just went through the normal install for Internet Connection Sharing (yeah, I'm using Win98, sue me).
Recently I had a problem with my regular phone connection -- no dial tone. (Oddly, the DSL continued to work throughout this episode.) This required BellSouth to send out a tech, and replace the line running from the pole to my house. He arrived on time, worked like a dog, kept us informed of everything he found and did, and corrected the problem. Telcos are not necessarily evil, though the procedure for putting in the service call was pretty anonymous and bureaucratic. I groaned when they said "we'll check it within 36 hours," but then they actually did.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
My DSL shares happily with my voice fones. You do have to put the filters on all your voice equipment as some (but not all) of them will interfere with the DSL. I have not noticed any bandwidth hit when the voice fone is in use and I regularly see the 1.5Mbps down / 200Kbps up I was promised when I signed up.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
While it might be different in other places, in my town we are suffering from the third teleco to lay fibre along the same route in the last 6 months. With the current one, the same contractor is digging up the same roads and paths which they themselves dug up for the previous teleco less than a month before. How much money could be saved if for the "popular routes" just one trench was dug and all of the telecos laid their fibre in it?
...with broadband is that the telcos have been moving the goalposts since they've worked out that (shock horror) a broadband customer might actually use quite a chunk of bandwidth. One provider now has a policy of kicking off any customers using 10 times the AVERAGE amount.
This, of course, means that the average amount drops each billing period. Mathematically cute, but it's certainly stopped me signing up. When I use any P2P services, I do so on a slow (but free) dialup line in my sleep.
Buckets,
pompomtom
Buckets,
pompomtom
"There's an exception to every rule. Except for some rules"
Hi All,
What costs an ISP more, a customer transfering X amount of data from a remote web site or transfering X amount of data from another customer of the same ISP? Answer: the first option makes use of the ISP's upstream connection, so it costs more. Peer-to-peer is Good for ISPs because it means that data is obtained locally.
Really.
P.
Hehe
He called you guys Slashers
Hehe
Very, very well put!
Way too many people believe in the Free Lunch concept. The harsh truth is free meals don't last more than a couple of days, if they're offered at all. My ISP is the local telco (a rural telephone cooperative) and is the only one in the area offering DSL service. 2.2 Mbit ADSL was first offered by them for $60/month. The price soon raised to $90/month. About two months ago they explained that to feed their DSL customers alone was costing them 2x what they were bringing in from monthly charges. Rather than further increase the monthly cost, the ISP has chosen to no longer have any guarantees of thruput as their current customer base is already saturating one OC3 and one T3 circuit. Their monthly cost for those circuits to Sprintlink and Cable & Wireless, as well as their equipment upkeep and tech support has been to too high, even with hundreds of customers.
The simple fact is, the per-customer cost to them is higher than what they can reasonably charge without sacrificing service. They're not venture capital funded, they're a local telephone cooperative and cannot afford to bleed that much money.
To answer a FAQ, yes, they do offer lower-thruput DSL services at much lower costs. 384/128 Kbit ADSL is offered for $15/month + equipment rental or purchase.
In many areas the local monopolies have driven competition right back out the door. I get my DSL through Verizon the ONLY game in town. While they do have increased costs for the benefit of always on, or nearly always on connections, you will have to forgive me if I do not feel they are losing money on this deal. Aside from most people shutting down their connections, ISP can/do enable software shutdown/wakeup so a dead connection is truly a zero resource user.
The price "scare" is very similar to what the cable companies did a while back. First mention you have to have a large increase [Sorry the price is going up $20/month]. Let everyone get outraged at the ridiculous increases and get the utilities commission involved. Then "relent" to a meager increase of $8. Everyone thinks they win.
--The problem is not that most people are sheep, it is that most people think they are wolves.
...and a commendable observation and opinion-rant.
These guys already seem to be in a soup. Here's an example.
High-speed ISPs nationwide have faced many difficulties providing competing DSL service with data competitive local exchange carriers (DLECs) and Baby Bells.
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
The messages transferred between two different peers in a p2p network is very small, as they communicate with small messages.
That's true. But at the moment, very few of the major p2p services look too closely at network topology. When this becomes more common, you probably will see ISPs reacting more favorably.
I don't see someone who is paying for 'unlimited network access' who actually uses it 24/7 as 'abusing' their service, or being 'unfair' to others.
Just because my idea of internet use is different than yours doesn't mean I'm 'abusing' it.
@home loves doing this. They say it's 'hundreds of time faster than dialup' and 'unlimited' and 'always on' and then they freak out if you use too much bandwidth.
I don't think so. I view SETI@home et. al and IMing as simply outside of the scope of the hype. The SETI@Home-type efforts are really not commercialized or something that the average consumer is interested int. And instant messaging is an old concept that has been around for ages. Either way, it's not part of the hype. The hype of focused around Napster-type technologies and/or GNUtella-type technologies, which presumably bring a lot of people _new_ things that they desire.
As for slashdot, that's simply ridiculous. Slashdot is no more P2P than any public forum. The only thing that is P2P about it is that the users, the clients, are generating content, but the same can be said for any number of database applications. It's still the same old client-server technology.
Short of getting muliple OC192's from the same provider (good luck), there is almost NO WAY to get around having to spend $300 - $500 per megabit for access to a Tier 1 backbone provider (Sprintlink, UUNet, etc).
Say your ISP is in or near a major city and they can get a T3 or OC3 for $300 per megabit (155 x $300 = $46,500 per month). 155 Mbit, perfectly distributed and not oversold, can feed 103 1.5 Mbit DSL users. However, done that way, it's costing the ISP $450 per user per month. You're not going to see that happen. So, ISPs usually oversell by 10 - 20x, which will drop the per user bandwidth cost to, say, $45 at 10x overselling.
So, *excluding* their manpower, sysadmins, hardware costs, electricity, heating, cooling, tech support, etc --AND-- given that they can buy bandwidth at $400 per megabit, --AND-- given the gamble that at any moment, only 10% of their DSL users will be maxing out their connection, the ISP stil has to charge at least $45 per month per 1.5 Mbit DSL user. More likely it will cost at least $90 before they even -begin- to bring in a profit.
Peer to Peer filesharing is a Big Thing and is growing at a huge rate, they're no denying that. With Napster alone many people are finding their unattended PC using almost half of their DSL thruput at any given moment.
There is no free lunch, your ISP, no matter how well connected, can't create bandwidth from nothing. Regardless if you get 5 Mbit access via your cable modem or can overclock your Pentium 4 to 1.8 GHz.
The DNS was designed from ground up as a client/server system, putting much too high obstacles in the way of someone who wants to run a machine with a somewhat decent host name...
And it is a lot older than AOL, Windows and other Internet user dumbification devices.
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Usage insensitive pricing of Internet access can support market development initiatives, particularly when relatively few players participate, each having made a significant commitment to lease or invest in transmission facilities. With the passage of time, more ISPs have entered the marketplace, often without the need for, or interest in making substantial investments in facilities. Later entrants may serve smaller geographical regions, and may have a deliberate strategy of "free riding" the facilities investment of other operators who still agree to accept traffic at quasi-public interconnection points. Likewise, because end user access to the Internet is typically priced on a low, flat-rated, "All You Can Eat" basis, no facility conservation incentive exists and therefore congestion can readily occur. As congestion threatens to impede quality of service, some ISPs have responded by prioritizing traffic streams, and by varying the price of network access on the basis of the transmission capacity and traffic volume of other ISPs seeking interconnection. This demand-based responsiveness soon might include reserved bandwidth that would provide higher service reliability and quality for a premium price. Resorting to traditional pricing mechanisms means parties causing congestion, or contributing comparatively less to congestion abatement, will incur higher costs of doing business. The responsible parties include smaller ISPs who lack the traffic, subscribership and transmission capacity needed to sustain highly reliable service in the face of increased demand and new Internet applications that require more bandwidth. Requiring payment for access to the facilities of other larger companies constitutes an efficient outcome, but one that likely will impose comparatively higher costs on smaller and rural ISPs and their subscribers.
The biggest barrier to consumer broadband has been the myth that you can get high-bandwidth, uncapped service for $40/month. Obviously, the people selling that myth were hoping that consumers would hardly use the bandwidth at all. When that turned out not to be true, profitability was threatened. Universities respond to this by trying to restrict the rights of their captive consumers. The crop of quotes in this article suggests that commercial ISP's, on the contrary, are seeing this as a legitimate usage that should be charged for. Ideally, I'd like to see them charge for transfer, rather than adopting a tiered scheme. But even the tiered scheme is a huge step in the right direction, away from the idea that "people who move lots of bits are troublemakers" towards the idea that "people who move lots of bits are our best customers".
This could have two wonderful effects. First, mega-corporations might find that it's more profitable to sell consumers transport, and remain content-agnostic than it is to build proprietary lock-in schemes and badly admin'ed caching proxies.
Second, of course, the US government tends to see only profit-making activities as legitimate. When the ISP's are profiting from p2p, they might serve as a counterbalance to the IP cartel that is currently 'educating' Congress on the evils of p2p.
Anyhow, charging per GB transferred is by far the healthiest business model because it gives ISPs incentives to upgrade their bandwidth, since pipes now show up as revenue producers to the bean counters. Anyone who sells 'bandwidth', on the other hand, is incentivized to minimize the customer's use of that bandwidth, whether by outages, restrictive AUP's, or other hassles.
Comcast@Home has a clause in their TOS that forbids being a server. Sorry, Napster-like participation is a no-no. It is probably a mainstay in ISP TOS by now. It's goal is to reduce unmonitored data transfers and "protect" the average home user, aka e-mail and occasional surf.
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ISPs will (hopefully) start moving away from the model where they try to provide everything they can on their homepage and will change focus to doing things like hosting e-mail and handing out IP addresses. Basically, the system will just be setup to do the basics and support (believe me, there will be incompetent Winblows users for YEARS to come that don't know how to do internet, and they WILL pay...)
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!
SIG: HUP