Slashdot Mirror
Will ISPs Spoil Online Video?
mrspin writes "last100 writes: "With an ever greater amount of video being consumed online, many Internet users are in for a shock. There's a dirty little secret in the broadband industry: Internet Service Providers (ISPs) don't have the capacity to deliver the bandwidth that they claim to offer. One way ISPs attempt to conceal this problem is to place a cap of say 1GB per-month per user, something which is common in the UK for many of the lower-cost broadband packages on the market. Considering that a mere three hours viewing of Joost (the new online video service from the founders of Skype) would all but use up this monthly allowance, it's clear that lots of Internet users aren't invited to the party. But what about those who (like me) pay more for 'unlimited' broadband access? There shouldn't be a problem, right? Wrong." The article then goes on to discuss the recent trend of bandwidth throttling based on techniques such as packet shaping which punishes p2p traffic whether it's legitimate or not."
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
Generally, IPTV has a separate bandwidth allocation with guaranteed bandwidth, typically using RSVP and DiffServe to protect the IPTV streams, and these streams are multicast to conserve bandwidth. The customer's Internet use gets what's left over. As the number of channels and amount of content people want to view increases, this will have to break down, at least in part. I think that we will move to a future where there are many sources of content; most or all being viewable through your set top box (or Apple TV or ... ), and only a few having protection from the ISP.
In the UK, a 2Mb line (we dont use T1) would be nearer $4000 per month.
The ISPs by law can not examine what data is being transmitted without loosing common carrier status (at which point, they get a lot more government regulation)
Which would be very comforting if ISP's had common carrier status to begin with.
I don't understand who keeps spreading these rumors but for the last time, ISP's do NOT have common carrier status. They are what are called ESP's (Enhanced Service Providers) and do not warrant the protection that common carrier status provides.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Seriously, I don't believe you.
At my company I recently needed an additional connection for a few servers to play with. 20Mbit up/down over fiber, $550/month. It's not hugely more expensive to go to 50 or 100Mbit from there.
(Sweden)
uses peer-to-peer technology similar to that used by 'illegal' file sharing networks..
There are no illegal networks, we have enough FUD as the MAFIAA cartels say they are illegal, we do not need the blogger community to call them that... and btw WTF is it with posting a blog entry as a story? when did Digg acquired slashdot?
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
but there is no limit, except the max speed, to how much data I can transfer in a month.
that's where things diverge. a lot of ISPs have transfer limits, which, more often than not, are not specificed (comcast for example).
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
I pretty much represent a small ISP in rural Washington state. Bandwidth prices for us are so outrageous, $300 per mb, and this is only because there is one major seller of bandwidth in our area, NOANET. So we have to throttle types of connections, Bit-Torrent is the major one. We would love to open the net to what it should be but its just not possible with the price gouging that happens every place but the cities.
So as an ISP I'm saying we could do it if we didn't get bent over all the time for bandwidth.
I pay 29 EUR a month for 24 Mbps down / 1 Mbps up. Plus free international phone. Plus wifi. Plus TV. Free PVR which I don't even use for lack of a TV. Also 1 GB of hosting space, unmetered.
Within a year I should get 50 Mbps (symmetrical) FTTH.
http://www.free.fr
As much as Comcast has both a terrible service department and a terrible PR department, how they do it is correct.
You pay a "high" price for service ($45-60) per month, depending on the plan, and you can have as much bandwidth as you want, as long as you aren't adversely affecting the node that you are on.
This means be reasonable. Right now, their "flexible" bandwidth cap is 200 GB. Even better, it's not like that boot you after one month of 200 GB usage; and they don't charge you again, either. They monitor your usage over a couple months, and if you're over 200 GB on average, they send you a warning, and then boot you.
It's also notable that this number has gone up significantly as they've upgraded their network, and I suspect it will continue to go up.
At my office we pay approximately $275 for a dual T1. This gets us, at most, 900 GB per month (that's maxing out the connection 24/7/365). I'm happy to pay 18% of that for 22% of the bandwidth, with burst speeds vastly in excess of that (my cable modem bursts at 24 Mbps for up to 10 minutes).
As I said; their PR doesn't explain this well, and their service people (both on the ground and at their call centers) tend to be not up to part with their competitors. However, the companies polices are more than reasonable, and they do an excellent job upgrading their network. I would have never thought that the cable cos would be competitive with FTTN or FTTP, but Comcast is beating the crap out of AT&T's U-verse, and is approaching the speeds of Verizon's FTTP network.
You guys really should stop whinning. 200 GB a month is plenty in this day and age, and I pity the people who pay $15,$30, or more for 1-70 GB a month.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
With the exception of a very few high-priced services, no ISP has as much back-end bandwidth as they have customers. Instead, they have enough to guarantee a certain level of service on average, plus some extra for bursts of load.
This has been true since the days of the 300-baud acoustic coupler, and isn't going to change. Unless, of course, everyone hits the lottery jackpot at once and decides to give a million or two to their favorite ISP.
What one does to deal with finite bandwidth is to prioritize interactive traffic over file transfer, which is a variant of what we're seeing here. The problem is that the mechanisms used to tell interactive from batch gets the wrong answer right now.
So we (::= the IETF) improve the technology and prioritize video streams tagged "real-time" over streams tagged "on my way to Dave's PVR"
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
In Western Canada - the two high speed providers - limits are set.
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The 4 packages Telus offers (per their website) are:
Download/Upload usage
60 GB/mo. - $45.95/month
60 GB/mo. - $40.95/month
30 GB/mo. - $31.95/month
10 GB/mo. - $16.95/month
source (http://www.mytelus.com/internet/highspeed/prices
The 4 packages Shaw offers (per their website) are:
Download/Upload usage
150 GB/mo. - $99.95/month
100 GB/mo. - $48.95/month
60 GB/mo. - $38.95/month
10 GB/mo. - $29.95/month ($20 if you have TV as well)
source (http://www.shaw.ca/en-ca/ProductsServices/Intern
As always there is fine print - ie, Service Agreements with Telus and you need to purchase your Modem with Shaw but I'm posting here re bandwidth and that information is clearly listed with limits.
Telus
Down/Up/Cap/Cost
6Mbps/1Mbps/60GB/$51
3Mbps/640Kbps/60GB/$46
1.5Mbps/512Kbps/30GB/$37
256Kbps/128Kbps/10GB/$22
Shaw
Down/Up/Cap/Cost
25/1/150/$100
10/1/100/$49
5/512/60/$39
256/128/10/$30
I believe I have the prices without any bundling. If you buy other services, then it can be a bit cheaper.
They don't have common carrier status but they have some protections in Title 17, 512. Limitations on liability relating to material online. To most people, even on slashdot, the concepts are confusingly similar. Under section (a) about acting as a relay, one of the requirements is "(2) the transmission, routing, provision of connections, or storage is carried out through an automatic technical process without selection of the material by the service provider." To most people they read that as "ISPs must carry everything" which to them equals "Common carrier". In laymen's speak it sounds reasonable, it's just that legally "Common carrier" has a specific meaning, which ISPs are not.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Well said, sir.
6Mbps / 8 bits in a byte * 30.5 days in a month * 24 hours in a day * 60 minutes in an hour * 60 seconds per minute = 1,976.4GB monthly limit.
People can call it what they like, but there's NO SUCH THING as unlimited throughput.