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Time Warner to Charge Extra for Over-Quota Bandwidth

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the you-will dept.

duckygator writes: "I just came across this article on NetworkWorld discussing Time Warner's announcement that they will begin charging users a fee for exceeding a monthly download limit. The actual limits and associated fees aren't discussed. Guess I knew this would be coming sooner or later ... Now I guess I'll just have to guess where the threshold will be. Anything more than email? Active gamer? Graphic artist?"

5 of 871 comments (clear)

  1. It's been tried before by Ali+Jenab · · Score: 5, Informative
    I used to work for a large internet provider (which shall remain nameless) who had contracts with several small cable franchises for end-user internet services. As a network engineer I was responsible for planning and supervising the rollout of metered cable modem service in one mid-sized city, as a pilot program. Needless to say, things didn't work as well as we had hoped. Here are some of the problems we ran into:
    • Fraud. Several prolific warez kiddies figured out how to change their MAC address to bill their service to their neighbors or even to our own router (!). We're still not sure exactly how that happened. Sure, we cut them off and connected their modems to a high voltage source as punishment (our contract allowed it), but how many more are there who we didn't catch?
    • Billing issues. People who obviously ran up a very high bandwidth bill would call us and complain when they got their statements, asking us to lower their bills. Our position was that it wasn't our responsibility that they couldn't figure out how to close Napster or stop downloading porn. When they paid with credit card we would sometimes lose the dispute, but things were okay when they paid with cash or check.
    • Expectation of quality. As you know, a cable modem is a shared medium and cable companies are not at fault for your neighbors' downloading habits. However, it was considered a potential legal liability to be providing a service of varying quality.
    For these reasons and many others, metered cable modem service just won't work.

    /ali

  2. Save us the self-righteous diatribe... by coupland · · Score: 4, Informative

    > I'll just have to guess where the threshold will be. Anything more than email? Active gamer?

    Please spare us the drama. I've done benchmarks and an active gamer who performs regular web surfing and casual file downloads does not approach the quota limits. Quotas are designed to thwart the WaReZ PuPp13z of DC, Kazaa, and WinMX fame who are not only throttling the backbone, they're the reason your cable modem drops carrier every Saturday morning. Cry "wolf!" all you want, I signed up for internet access with a quota and I can't wait until my ISP starts to impose it on me and (more importantly) my k1dd13 neighbours. Spare us the social diatribe...

  3. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Informative

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  4. A Technical Solution by slyfox · · Score: 5, Informative
    Instead of offering xxx kbits/second and charging more per bit after a certain usage threshold, the ISPs should sell a broadband connection with a "peak" and "sustained" rating (e.g., 512kb peak and 56kb sustained.) A users would receive bursts of 512kb throughput, but after an hour or two straight at full throttle the ISP's router would slowly limit throughput to the sustained rate.

    One simple and well-known algorithm to implement this solution is a token-bucket. (More information from Cisco's web site) The basic idea is that you have a bucket that collects token at some rate. This rate corresponds to the peak rate of transfer. The bucket also has a maximum capacity which corresponds to the size of the 'burst' you'll allow. When a packet arrives and the bucket is non-empty, the packet is forwarded and one token is removed from the bucket. When the bucket is empty the packet is queued or dropped.

    Going back to the above example, consider a token-bucket where tokens arrive at 56kb/second, and the bucket can hold (60*60*512) kbits of tokens. This bucket would allow full peak allows full use for a hour or two, at which time the bucket would be close to empty and packets could only be sent the sustained rate.

    This kind of setup would not effect most users at all, but would limit the worst offenders to 1/10th or 1/100th the bandwith usage.

  5. Now that we have customers... by gad_zuki! · · Score: 5, Informative

    Sorry, but they advertised the service as faster than DSL and about the same price. Toss in quick installation and you've got yourself a customer base. Now you've got people *gasp* using the bandwidth they're paying for. It doesn't matter if you never turn your PC on or if you never shut Grokster down, you have the right to what you paid for. If their business model wasn't profitable to begin with, then they are being the disingenuous jerks that conned you into connecting into their cable network when you could be on a DSL connection instead.

    This is another example of short-sighted business plans, a desperate grass at building a customer base, and then selling-short until most of the competition in the area gets finacially hurt.

    Why people feel that the grokster 24/7 kid should be punished is beyond me. They sold him the service now they must deal with it. Conversely, if heavy users are going to be punished then give breaks to lightweight users. Of course that means the same pricing plan as DSL, which is who they're fighting and distancing themselves from. Sorry, but this is more corporate bullying than anything else.