Slashdot Mirror
Managing Bandwidth and Bandwidth Costs?
"I'd like to illustrate the second concept. When you have your (for example) T1 and you're not really using it, you are still paying for all that bandwidth. It's like the car that sits in your garage, you're still paying insurance and car payments on it even though you're not using it. But then you put up a new game, serve new media or suddenly become the 'Site of the Day' and your bandwidth is flooded and maxed out. For that case, it's like you've bought a car that only goes 40 miles an hour but while the demand exists and only while that demand exists, you need a car that goes 150 miles an hour. You don't want to pay the money for a car that goes 150 because you only need it occasionally. Later, you know you'll need that car to go 220 but you're not there yet.
So if this makes sense with regards to bandwidth, it is like you'd want burst-bandwidth depending on need. Do any of you face this problem? If you do and have solved it, I'd love to hear about your strategy. Once this is solved, we get back to the first question, how do you manage that cost, put a number on it and either fit it in to your business model or pass it on to your customers?"
If you had to pay for your bandwidth, would you give it for free to some company from which you are currently downloading a product update? I wouldn't...
P2P realizes the two facts that you obviously don't:
1) Not everyone uses their Internet connection 24 hours per da
2) Most people don't need hard drive space these days (i.e. storage is cheap)
Combine these two developments, and you have a lot of upload bandwidth sitting idle. I would argue that P2P becomes MORE effective, not less, as you move to legitimate files, because people are more likely to leave it running when they aren't afraid of the RIAA/MPAA tracing their connection down. Since ISPs have been reluctant heretofore to ban P2P traffic (after all, it is a driving factor for adoption of high-speed Internet access), all those hours people are sleeping with a P2P program open is free downloads for the rest of us.
There are valid complaints against P2P (untrusted incoming executable data, very high latency, no centralized validation of data, etc.) Use them instead of the bandwidth non-issue if you don't like P2P.
(Author here)
What you're missing is that if you end up using your client's bandwidth to distribute your software without their knowledge or permission, you're screwed.
In serving the general public, something like this would be subject to a large negative reaction not to mention the problem of "have you ever gotten a file from bit torrent that was invalid?" I have.
Though technically neat, practically, it's unfeasable for a mass market product.
1) You can't impact/rely on the user base to help you deliver your product.
2) Added chance for error introduces risk and jeapordizes your distribution model and therefore business model.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
He'd be happy to make money customizing it for people...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
What I would do is colocate all my servers in a datacenter.
Take a burstable bandwidth, let's say that can burst to 100mbs, but to control your bandwidth in most time to ensure you do not go over the cost, you configure your router to not allow more than let's say 1mb of bandwitdh or whatever you want as a maximum and willing to pay for in normal time.
You should then monitor your bandwidth usage in real time, as well as the logs on the machines, and adjust the traffic shaping to the amount of traffic you want to allow.
For example, you know what on that day, you will do a marketing operation, and you are willing to spend $xxx more for the bandwidth, you then change your setting right before your marketing plan to the maximum of bandwidth you are willing to pay.
my 2c...