Slashdot Mirror
AT&T Embraces BitTorrent, Considers Usage-Based Pricing
Wired is running a story about AT&T's chief technical officer, John Donovan. He contrasts his view of BitTorrent and P2P in general against the controversial policies adopted by other ISPs. Donovan also explains why AT&T is considering usage-based pricing, citing the cost of network upgrades which only affect a small number of users. AT&T is expected to test the new pricing scheme later this year, which should give them plenty of time to see how Time Warner's customers respond to the idea.
"'I don't view any of our customers, under any circumstances, as pirates -- I view them as users,' Donovan said. 'A heavy user is not a bad customer.' What he wants to do is gently encourage more efficient usage of his network, and usage-based pricing may be one of the ways that happens. Such measures may not even be necessary, as Donovan admits that users self-adjust their habits to take advantage of off-peak times. For instance, he said, BitTorrent on the company's network peaks around 4 a.m., when other traffic is at an ebb. Overall P2P traffic accounts for about 20 percent of the network's usage, Donovan said."
Isn't that an **AA policy? If you use BitTorrent, YOU WILL PAY!
Invenio via vel creo
If users are self restricting themselves to off-peak why the need for usage based pricing at all? AT&T received federal funding to get a fiber network in as well, so far they have failed to do so.
Instead of trying to make internet more expansive the United States telecoms want to make it cost more. I mean jesus christ we are one of the worst developed nations when it comes to internet connectivity. In Europe you can get double our speeds for the price of dial-up. Obviously their is very little costs on simply maintaining a network yet they continue to charge and rake in profits. These telecoms have no excuse. We fork over our money so you can maintain and grow your network...use it. Upgrade the Seconds Mile and start putting more efficient internet pipes. Obviously it has gotten to a point where it is becomes almost as bad as the oil companies. Just raking in profits and not using it for anything.
Traditionally the best bittorrent users also seed the files they have grabbed for a long time. So under the usage model, being a good torrent person means being penalized for extra bandwidth that I'm using to seed.
Sheldon
Right now AT&T has speed based pricing and they can't just set caps based on speed as some people are to far way to get higher speeds and why should they have to pay for more for going over the cap then if you where able to get a higher speed with a higher cap. If they have caps on dsl then give the users the max speed that the line can handle.
Welcome America to what the rest of the world is subject to; we all pay on a usage basis, whether its mobile phone internet or ADSL internet connection. When you make something flat rate - it will be subject to abuse.
In New Zealand we have already have experimented with flat rate; around 10 years ago there was cable internet setup for $90 per month, flat rate, unlimited internet - under the Chello brand. Within months the network was crippled, people were barely downloading above dial up speeds.
Fast forward to 1 years ago - Telecom tried the same thing again; flat rate internet with traffic shaping. Again, even with all the maneuvering they did - it was killed off because people abused the system.
People here go, "well, upgrade the network" - explain to me why they should keep upgrading the network at a frantic pace and never making enough money to recoup the infrastructure costs. Telecoms are businesses, they invest, they make their money back (with profit) then upgrade the network again. The abuse of the network which flat rate plans do simply result in unsustainable traffic growth.
Donovan admits that users self-adjust their habits to take advantage of off-peak times. I'm in the habit these days to start torrents during my free time at the workplace (remotely). Bell is doing a lot of heavy throttling these days.
To a point, I don't think that's a terrible idea. What I do have a problem with is the technical difficulties behind actually doing it fairly. For example, suppose I'm sharing files with my next-door neighbor, and our packets are never going farther than the first switch we have in common. Should I be billed the same as someone streaming gigs to Tokyo? Of course not, but that's probably not technically possible to accurately track without massive hardware upgrades, and even then it sets a bad precedent of charging extra depending on destination.
I'm not sure what to think on this one. I mean, they're acknowledging that they can't offer unlimited access, which we all knew anyway but is nice to hear them actually say. And yes, P2P probably is costing them lost of money. I don't think variable pricing is the answer, though, and I don't think their customers will either.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
But what remains to be seen is whether the actual pricing reflects this. WIthout knowing anything about the supply side, as a broadband customer, I'd be ok with a $1/GB during peak hours and $0.25/GB in the off peak. And I'd want to see the base monthly fee lowered.
According to the CIA World Factbook there were 200+ million Internet users in the US in 2007.
Given that the Internet was designed in large part by DARPA to be cheap and scalable. And indeed, the Internet is just a bunch of wires and switches. And given that even if every user pays just 1$/month, where the hell is all the money going?
Dude.. There's this neat little key next to the slash - it's called a "period." Try using it more often for $deity sakes!
The internet is a series of highways and the
ISP provides me with a rental car, and I pay
for the gasoline.
It is NOT for the ISP to tell me where to drive
or how many times I can drive to a given location.
When they sell me unlimited gasoline(bandwidth) it
becomes none of their business where I choose to
use the gasoline. I may make many cross-world trips,
it is none of their business where I go.
Now it seems like they want to control my driving habits.
Fsck That. Yeah, the DSL/Cable Modem is the car. Duh!
its the LOGICAL method in which goods/services are sold for the last 5000 years for f@ck's sakes.
you pay as much as you buy. thats the basis of goddamn trade.
why it took you so long to realize that ? ill gladly pay premium bucks if you ensure that i get full bandwidth at any given time of day for downloads, and low latency for games.
Read radical news here
It all changes when Metascore starts running the government(s).
Give me one fat pipe, and let me choose which VOIP, IPTV, and ISP companies I wish to deal with.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
It's a series of tubes, you idiot!
They're trying to not spend as much on bandwidth. It's basic business: their bandwidth is a cost and they want to lower that cost.
What I don't understand is why they don't go to an individually tiered model. Your first 5 or 10GB are at their normal, or even higher, speed, (5Mb/512kb here) and the rest after that are at a fraction of that, but still high speed. Perhaps 1Mb/256kb. Those speeds alone would limit egregious down/uploaders to a more reasonable level, while still being able to operate normally.
Since the Government Attorneys aren't going to hold AT&T responsible for their unlawful spying on every customer, with statutory penalties of $150,000/each, they have *plenty* of money, so shouldn't be crying poverty, should they?
The alternative is being held accountable, and liquidating AT&T to pay the damages, which would prove the point that *every* entity is held accountable TO THE LAW.
If Martha Stewart can go to prison for fibbing while NOT UNDER OATH, why the hell is AT&T getting a pass for it's crime?
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
We have this in Australia and despite those who say "its stupid", it does actually WORK. Combining fixed caps (e.g. "you get 40GB per month on this plan and once you use it, you drop down to dialup speeds/have to pay for more") with QoS so that BitTorrent and other bandwidth hogs are sent to the back of the queue is the correct solution to (as Comcast calls it) the "P2P menace"
"What he wants to do is gently encourage more efficient usage of his network" should be read as "he wants to maximize profits and gouge his customers as much as he can get away with without going to jail", because after all mindless and perpetual expansion of PROFIT is what communications (or any other business) is all about, isn't it?
In the beginning telcos set up "toll booths" at the content provider level, and you had to pay more depending on how much content people downloaded from your site. But now that people have found a way to efficiently break up data and move it around, you might as well tax the whole world. Data is being moved without the appropriate compensation. We can't have THAT!
(begin sarcasm mode)
I know - maybe if we suck the government's metaphorical penis hard enough by providing them any info they need (under the guise of "terrorism") they will be nice to us when we try to screw consumers out of another $100 a month for something we've currently managed to provide for "free" - in fact we built and expanded internet access to what it is today at current market prices but suddenly we can't make money anymore. Those cables and routers have gone on strike and are asking for more money! I mean $60 a month for a cell phone and $60 a month for a land-line just isn't enough! Our telephone poles keep getting ripped up by tornadoes or crashed into, and our cell phone towers are rusting! Oh and we've invested billions of dollars into technology to let us screw our customers or read/modify their data but zero dollars into making our networks more efficient/increasing our capacity. We need more money!!!
(end sarcasm mode)
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
At least this cat said that he wasn't about blanket blocking of various types of usage.
But, the whole notion that they should charge more because of the higher demand on the network is bullshit, when all things are considered. Since the telecoms have gotten (maybe still getting) massive subsidies to build a high bandwidth optical network since the late 1980s, their excuses now are pathetic.
Unfortuantely I have Verizon, but ATT does serve areas close to be, so the following is still applicable. I live about 50+ miles away for Austin, TX where high bandwidth is no problem in acquiring. The best I can get, albeit it's in a rural area but not isolated, is dail up, not 53Kbps, but 26.4Kbps. For this grand luxury, I pay about $20 for a local only telephone line, no long distance, no features, just a dail tone. The kicker is that the line charge itself is just $7, while $13 is for all the taxes and other charges (a whole fucking $6 is for that Federal Interstate Line charge, which was supposed to be for the building of that previously stated optical network).
So to all you big-wigs at the telecoms, Fuck You and The Horse You Road in On. Y'all have had both the time AND money to build the network's capacity, but all you did was lie to Congress, defraud the American people, and sit on your asses for the entire time.
I am sick and tired of the excuses and outright lies from AT&T for their kludgy FTTN U-verse network when Verizon has already proven that you can profitably build a FTTH network in America. But no, AT&T would rather milk their balky copper plant and put off the one-time expense of running fiber like they'll eventually have to do anyhow.
Every time I ask an AT&T droid about that they make wild claims of Verizon having so much trouble building their network, charging $hundreds to rewire your home, etc, etc. All I know is that my grandmother, in the middle of nowhere, can get FiOS and I, in a major university town, am stuck with U-verse.
Yes, Verizon's stock took a hit when they announced FiOS. I used the opportunity to buy shares for my IRA on the cheap. That's worked out well so far.
Actually, here in NZ some ISPs are creating plans for P2Pers. Take Xnet's HSI Torrent plan, $1.50/GB on peak (8am-midnight), and 75GB/Month free off peak. I will be going on this plan very soon, and will be making the most of my 75GB a month
BS. This is like saying its 'for the children' while the government takes your rights by the bucketful.
This is just a "public friendly" way for the *AA to get their way without the average Joe having a clue it happened. Make it so expensive to download that its cheaper to buy their crap at the store ( and if you actually do buy it online, you get to pay more ).
They cant stop things via technology, so they will kill it ( and most everything else online in the process ) via monetary.
And you get to pay for incoming spam to boot. Grrr
---- Booth was a patriot ----
...about outlawing P2P?
Physics is imagination in a straight jacket. ~John Moffat
A scheme to start down the path of making HUGE profits by extracting money for every little thing a user does online...
This brought to you by AT & T... i.e the beloved phone company... Some things never change.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Donovan smiled nervously, flashing his gold teeth. "Trust me, you can trust AT@T!" he said.
Killer point.
Isn't most news text plus static pics? Not counting Must-See footage, all the news accounts for 10% of the usage and the super-interactive ads account for the other 90% ads.
Therefore, under usage pricing, allowing only "low-usage" ads keeps hard-earned dollars in our pockets.
Is this AT&T Exec smart enough to be operating at a meta level, enough to encourage less obtrusive ads?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Why? If you're on AT&T then you're already using bittorrent and have an unlimited package, why would you want to transfer to something usage-based? Why would this attract people from other ISPs? Why should bittorrent even be singled out, it's just another packet on the wire. If people start downloading a ton of videos due to subscription service, will they have "plans" that spring up to help charge you more for that too?
Twinstiq, game news
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of..." Lesser Deals. (Subset of Happiness.)
It dates from the second paragraph of our existence.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Ok so it will not work everywhere but if you are charged for usage you will very quickly clean up your systems once you get your monthly usage bill.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Under the pay for usage model, then the spam and zombie problem needs to be fixed by the networks. Customers will then be paying to receive spam and that will not go over well.
Donovan's comment makes me curious as to whether he understands networking at all. BT data transfers happen over TCP, which naturally contends with other TCP connections and ends up sharing available capacity more or less equally among connections. The fact that BT traffic is heaviest when other usage is lowest is therefore a truism--those BT connections go faster when they're not competing for bandwidth.
What AT&T should be doing is trying to keep the P2P traffic entirely on their own network. The most expensive thing any ISP can buy is generalized Internet bandwidth. And yet P2P traffic could just as well stay within their own network, as the content for any one transfer is the same everywhere.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Like with hosting rules don't seem to apply and you can promise everything under the sun. An 8 meg unlimited connection probably will be anything but 8 meg or unlimited. So why in the hell is it ok to advertise it as such?
It's a free market, let the ISPs do what they want with their traffic but they better tell the consumer *exactly* what is done so the consumer can make a decent decision.
Whoa. There's a little ire in the above posts - obviously this isn't a popular thing.
I personally think this could be implemented in a manner that is "fair" to everyone involved. What I'd like to see is a tiered setup similar to that of the IgLou ISP: their DSL customers pay for a fixed amount (say 10 GB) of "high-priority" traffic, and the rest is de-prioritized to "bulk." Thus, a DSL subscription is truly "all-you-can-eat", but users with greater needs are encouraged to pay for what they're using.
I think this kind of scheme could work great if paired with a QoS setup on the end-user's part. What if I could prioritize my own traffic? (Not something I think IgLou lets its residential DSL customers do.) Then, you could de-prioritize P2P traffic and super-prioritize VoIP or shell traffic (maybe "pay" double?) -- everything runs more smoothly. The casual users' web-browsing speeds stay high, and the power users have an incentive to mark bulk traffic for what it is.
And then we can kiss the 'public' internet goodbye as it heads back to a mostly 'commercial' network as only companies will be able to justify/afford the bill.
..
Too bad most of you young people don't even remember how bad it was when it was all metered service. ( even in the BBS days, lots had limits on use ) None of the real time communication we have today would have been practical, and downloads, well they were almost out of the question. Trying to get a few files would easily push you over your monthly limit and you were stuck until next month to even read your mail.
This will kill small businesses who rely on people idly surfing to find their products
Online gaming.. another casualty.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So have they fixed the spam problem, or do we get charged for all our non-solicited traffic?
Ya, thats what i thought. Why should they fix it now? It means more revenue for them.
This will raise hosting rates too i bet. No more dinky 5 dollar a month web-pages or mailing lists.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"maybe we should pay for the things we use and care about and not the things we don't. Wow! Logic is awesome!"
Well, it is, and your logic is less than compelling is because infrastructure has to be universal or it isn't terribly useful.
Let's take a couple of common things: The only people who should pay for schools are those that use them. Well, kids can't pay. So the next step is to force their parents to pay. So, if you aren't rich enough, you don't get education? It's an interesting idea, but this model was slowly abandoned because it led to a noble class and a serf class. So in this case, a universal system seems to work best for society as a whole.
Let's take roads. By the model you suggest, people travelling between two major cities would have 18 lane highways, lots of trains, airports, seaports. The usage tax would support that. But if you moved 50 miles away from this path, you could never build roads because you couldn't recoup the cost.
How about airports. Most people never fly, but they end up having to use tax revenue to support the airports. Seems pretty unfair and illogical.
Flat rate postal rates? What a rip off. I send a letter next door and it costs the same as sending it across the country. I am getting ripped off.
Let's talk about private industry. Verizon has flat rate, no-long-distance phone service. How could that work? Aren't people just calling to call? Aren't people abusing the system? Seems pretty unfair to me, I hardly call people. But I looked into it and they do have plans as you suggest. The only trouble is they charge more money for them. So I'm locked into a flat-rate plan, and am forced to pay less so I subsidize other users.
The world sure doesn't seem logical.
Just out of curiousity, just how easy do people think it is to 'upgrade the network'? I see that brought up a lot in the comments (i.e. "AT&T should just upgrade their network" "Given Moore's Law, the network should be cheaper" etc. etc.) It certainly gives the impression that people think that a nation-wide IP network is as easy to upgrade as their personal computer as as proportionally cheap.
When I was working in telecom, network upgrades (and maintenance) could be ferociously hard. If you wanted to upgrade the link between two co-location facilities, besides the problems of running the lines, you could run into issues if you needed to upgrade your networking equipment at either end -- suddenly, you had to stock new on-site spares, make sure the technicians were prepared, deal with power, space, and cooling issues. (If you needed to replace your current router with a newer router that was physically bigger, there had to be rack space available for it. If it needed more power/cooling, that had to be available. If space/power/cooling wasn't there, *someone* had to pay for the upgrades, or you had to move to a new facility and re-home all the network connections there. Not trivial and just the man-hour costs could be huge. (And in some places, the co-locations were subject to union rules, which placed additional restrictions on work.))
(Actually, for some network facilities, the fields would refuse to go without a security escort, because they weren't going to be responsible for driving trucks full of valuable equipment into some areas and leaving them outside while they worked inside. That increased the cost noticeably.)
Most of the business plans (at the time) assumed that equipment would be paid off over a period of years, not months. People would be expensive new telecom gear and plan to pay it off over the course of three or four years so they could set their monthly rate to customers at X, rather than try to pay it off in one year by charging customers more -- the lower prices/competition may have appeared great to the customers, but once the rush of entrants into the ISP business died out and people stopped pumping money in, the equipment upgrades got stalled because business realities demanded that the providers pay off the old equipment first.
So providers had gone in with models saying they would buy equipment for their networks, charge customers X amount, and, say just for kicks, maybe 5% of that amount went to paying off equipment. Of course, every time there was an unexpected cost, or they had to lower their rates to stay competitive, less money could be used to recoup their capital expense in hardware, which meant they couldn't afford to upgrade. (Of course, at a certain point, some couldn't afford to not upgrade, either, and self-destructed.) So the 'life span' of old equipment kept going because no one could raise rates due to the competition, who also couldn't for the same reasons, and new entrants coming in with fresh capital/investments that kept the rates of the moment low. The 'rapid advances' in technology were in part due to the money being poured into the marketplace (investment of one sort or another), *not* the success of the business models. Once the party was over and the reality of the bills hit, a lot of the upgrades stalled pretty hard.
It's not that Moore's Law hasn't affected the cost of providing bandwidth, it's that people are still struggling with buried (sic) infrastructure costs from previous technology. If you feel you are paying 2004 prices for 2004 technology, network-bandwidth-wise, rather than the equivalent 2008 price/performance, it's because you probably are, because the 2004 technology is still getting paid off.
(Let's say that, oh, I could get a 48 port DSLAM for $2400, or $500 a port. So just to recoup my capex on buying that sucker, I need to make $500 per port. If I can throw $10/port a month at the hardware cost, that's 50 months, or over four years until I can justify upgrading it. It can be surprisingly
Whenever some schumck CEO says that they are considering pricing internet access according to usage they mean that they are going to charge more for the people who do a lot of downloading and run high traffic websites.
They never mean that they are going to reduce the ISP access fees to pennies a month for the people who use their internet access for only about five minutes a day, to read e-mail, etc...
Their computers could be programmed to make these microcharges, but they won't do it. They love having a minimum pricing floor that everyone must pay regardless of how little they access the web.
Young people are beginning to realize that every word that comes out of the mouth of a white-haired, white male American corporate CEO is just horseshit designed to keep the CEOs and their class rich.
"On a side note: anyone want to join in a class action suit against Chevron and all the oil companies for repeated ass raping. Every time I go to the pump I feel like a prison bitch."
Then get a home biodiesel refinery. Make your own fuel and end the cycle. Maybe then you'll stop complaining. I don't mean to be harsh, but in this very thread I've seen you make statements like "They need to stop making excuses...". Is that just something you say, or do you genuinely believe that?
There are options available. If you dislike them because they're inconvenient or difficult or expensive, you're making excuses. Shut up and do it if you think you're getting bent over, don't come up with weak justifications why you're a willing accomplice.
I'm surprised at this, honestly.
Here we have a guy in charge of the biggest telecom company in the US, and he actually seems to know what he's doing. More than that, he actually wants to give his customers what they want for a fair price as opposed to being influenced by some lobbying group or external forces.
It seems so obvious but it's been so rare with companies this large recently. I don't expect it to last long (the CFO will probably figure that claiming unlimited access when it's not is still more profitable and override him) but if AT&T does this, they've seriously made me look at them in a whole new light.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
the problem is that 99% of users that have had their accounts for more than a year were signed up to "unlimited" accounts.
Now ISPs and comcast want to alter the deal. They want to offer us less for the same price. This is not acceptable. I signed up for unlimited usage.
I don't think it's fair, ethical, or legal for them to just change the terms without notification or consideration. I'm not paying the same price for such limited usage. Everyone needs high bandwidth, high throughput service now. The ISPs clearly didn't think things through and now they are taking a hit. While they were lining their pockets, they should have been building out new infrastructure.
Sure AT&T got federal funding to implement a new fiber network. They also had to agree to full Air Force/NSA monitoring of the entire network in exchange. There's no free lunch apparently. So we will have 100Mbit lines from AT&T for umpteen hundreds of dollars per month. However, when they let Joe Sheriff and Johnny Officer have full access to the monitoring, they will start putting file sharers in jail because the MPAA and RIAA have the money from their profitable litigation venture to buy new laws from congress that make it illegal.
Thus file sharing will become a thing of the past and people will again have 100Mbit lines but only use 5 or 6 percent of them. Then we will see unlimited contracts again. Then the cycle will repeat.
The issue here is one of greed. The issue is also because of unethical congressmen passing laws written by industry lobbyists.
AT&T is again a monopoly and they have made their deals with the government for monopoly power in exchange for full network access without pesky rules or laws or courts. Yep, you'll have your bandwidth and you'll have to exchange that for privacy. No more tentacle porn, no more mp3s, no more xvid movies or blu-ray rips.
The government has sold its citizens for cash. When we finally get some congress people with integrity, they might possibly undo these bad laws.
As far as I'm concerned, most congresspeople are nothing more than petty whores. They have their price, but instead of giving handjobs, they're selling America.
They're using their grammar skills there.
http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/biodiesel.htm
You can find what you need to set up your own refinery, and then you'll be doing something instead of talking.
Sure glad I switched from AT&T to Cox last week. The truth is, it's crazy that I didn't do it sooner. My plan with AT&T was for 3mbps down and 512kbps up. They only guaranteed 1.5mbps down and of course, over the 4 years I had the service, I never saw anything much over 1.5.
I switched both my phone and internet to Cox. In return, I'm getting 12mbps down, 1mbps up, and a handful of phone services (3-way calling, call forwarding, and some other services I actually have uses for) and I'm paying 25% less.
AT&T needs to get competitive, and charging yet another fee is just going to push more people away to their competitors (where people actually have a choice, at least).
The communications markets really need to be opened up more to inspire true competition. Not all markets offer a choice of internet providers, for example. Especially in rural areas. There are only really 4 options where I live, and AT&T and Cox are by far the best alternatives.
A clever person at AT&T has realized that users want their P2P, so why not prepare and encourage it? Pirates will equal cash cows once metered bandwidth goes into place.
Unlimited use flat pricing is based on low average usage, and high ratio of core:edge bandwidth. This is increasingly less true; edge capacity demand is outpacing network core technology growth, so it's more expensive to meet demand now than it used to be. Don't be surprised to see it in your monthly bill; no ISP will be able to maintain unlimited-use flat pricing while demand outpaces technology. If/when the core catches up, edge pricing will ease.
You also can't bitch when said website users cut off your access to their site based on leeching content without paying. I understand you don't want to see obtrusive (or in this case extremely resource heavy) ads. However, you must keep in mind that the reason such content is free is because the ads are seen by people and that their funding helps bootstrap the site and keep it alive. In a lot of cases with smaller to medium sized websites the ads are what are keeping the site alive. When the adblockers is limited to just zealot nerds who have a hatred to sales there's little impact. When it passes on to our friends, family and all sorts of other people it's going to lead to new models to keep content running that you may not like. Product Placement, Affiliate Marketing, AdBlockBlocking, or just decent but small sources of content shutting down altogether. Is this really what you want?
You also can't bitch when said website users cut off your access to their site based on leeching content without paying. I understand you don't want to see obtrusive (or in this case extremely resource heavy) ads. However, you must keep in mind that the reason such content is free is because the ads are seen by people and that their funding helps bootstrap the site and keep it alive.
In a lot of cases with smaller to medium sized websites the ads are what are keeping the site alive. When the adblockers is limited to just zealot nerds who have a hatred to sales there's little impact. When it passes on to our friends, family and all sorts of other people it's going to lead to new models to keep content running that you may not like.
Product Placement, Affiliate Marketing, AdBlockBlocking, or just decent but small sources of content shutting down altogether. Is this really what you want?
Roads are like most public things paid for via taxes. In particular a lot of their budget comes from gas tax. If you break down the price of gas, you discover a good deal of it is tax. This ends up being an approximately usage based way of taxing people. If you drive more, you use more fuel, and thus pay more tax. Also it means that over all if people drive more in a given area, they pay more tax, which is needed since the roads need more maintenance.
It's not perfect, of course, you'll discover some municipalities whining because people are driving more efficient vehicles and thus reducing the tax per mile driven they get, but it does come out to be a usage based system.
Something similar could work just fine for Internet. You pay a base fee for a given speed of service, and then more for bandwidth increments. For example $30/months gets you 12m/1m cable modem service with 10gb transfers. Every 10 additional gigs is another dollar. If you are a light user who just wants fast net access, you get it for $30/month. You want to do a ton of transfers, maybe you pay $60/month. The ISP is happy since they can afford to have high usage users since those users pay for what they use.
You can already do this to a degree with business/professional grade accounts. I have business class cable to my house. I wanted static IPs, which you can't get on consumer cable, and I didn't want to have to worry about usage. Well, I don't. I can use as much as I like. I host 3 servers here, which is allowed under the SLA (there are no ports blocked). There's never a peep out of them about my usage. Reason is, I pay enough that I can use the line full out all the time and they can still afford it. However, that means I pay more than a normal consumer. I'm ok with that, I'm not a normal consumer.
One of the students who worked for us for a time got yelled at by the cable ISP because of bittorrent. He had a ton of torrents going and he left them on 24/7. Used a tremendous amount of bandwidth. Perhaps some economic incentive is needed to ensure that people do this.
Every ISP I've been with thus far has been just fine with me as a heavy user, they all just want more money for it. Qwest, Speakeasy and Cox have been my high speed ISPs over the last decade and in all cases I've been a heavy user. I've run multiple web servers, e-mail servers and the like, and none of the ports have been blocked. I've done some amazingly heavy bandwidth usage months, and not a peep has been heard out of them.
The reason is I buy business class service. I know I want to do these things that they don't like for normal users, and I know I want things you don't get on normal accounts (like static IPs and more upstream) so I pay more to get what I want. They are all quite happy as far as I can tell. As I said, none of them have ever complained about usage, all of them have tried to keep me when I decided to switch to the next service.
ISPs are perfectly happy with heavy users like me, who will pay for it. They are also perfectly happy with casual users that want to pay less, but don't use so much. What they aren't happy with is people who want to use like I do, but pay like a casual user does.
I can understand that, bandwidth isn't cheap, and one of the ways that we keep it fast and cheap is by sharing it. The idea is that we probably aren't all trying to use the connection at the same time. Thus we don't need dedicated bandwidth for each person, we can share it, and everyone still has fast access. However that breaks down if everyone wants to use all their bandwidth 100% of the time. Then you do need dedicated bandwidth.
On campus it works like this. Most users have 100mbit connections (though more gig to the desktop is being rolled out all the time). You discover that you generally get all of that too. I've downloaded Linux ISOs are basically full speed. However, we don't have dedicated bandwidth. Most buildings have 2gbit (2 redundant 1 gig lines that will team when they are both up) back to the distribution layer. This is despite the fact that most buildings have way more than 20 computers in it. Likewise, all of campus only has somewhere in the realm of 500-700mbits of Internet connectivity and a gig of I2 connectivity.
So how come it's fast? Well because not everyone is using it all the time. I download that Linux ISO, then when I'm done and I've seeded it back I stop. People share the usage so it works out that we all get a blazingly fast connection. So long as you aren't a jerk about it, nobody yells at you.
Now suppose network ops decided to instead say ok, we are going to limit each person to the amount we can guarantee. A dedicated bandwidth situation. Well then we'd all have about 128k connections. ISDN speeds, in other words. It'd suck. Sure, we could all use it full blast all day and night with no worry about interfering with other users, but it'd be a tiny connection.
Instead, I like it how it is where we get larger connections, but we have to share them. It's nice n' fast when you need something, however you need to be polite and keep your usage low when you don't.
Part of what we need, I think, is just smarter P2P systems that are able to find peers on the same network and prefer those. For example if I'm transfering at work it should first try to find people in my building (subnet), if not then find peopel on campus, and only then go out to the Internet at large. That could relaly cut down on the impact of P2P on networks.
Just this past Monday I went from dial-up-aol to first-tier dsl. 8.5 years I've waited, after giving up a T1 to my own desk, to care-give for my parents in their basement. I've already upped my pc to sid, current, and got the stubborn Bcom chip to behave.
Note: I will use the torrents if I so choose. I don't clog the webs, every byte is FOSS, and I will use my paid-for bandwidth. Want to charge by the byte? I'll get another line, from someone else. I've had to wait enough, and I'll not tolerate throttling.
So you just made a ton of excuses. At what point will you realize all the tough sounding language in the world can't hide that?
"Biodiesel for one is fundamentally flawed because we would be doing the world even less of a service by cannibalizing our food supply."
You can make biodiesel out of rapeseed, which isn't a food. That excuse doesn't work.
"Besides I don't have a flex fuel car so how would that help me."
Buy one. If you were as upset about the situation as you claim, that wouldn't be any hardship at all.
"And yah because I'm going to trade in my year old car for a hybrid which costs an extra three thousand dollars"
Irrelevant, you don;t need a hybrid, any diesel will do. That straw man goes nowhere.
"Hydrogen cars are a joke because they have no power, it costs way too much to make hydrogen,"
You are simply ignorant, especially regarding the "have no power" argument. The RX-8's rotary has been modified to run simply and efficiently on hydrogen, making more power than the gas version.
And you sir have no idea what I am talking about.
Yeah, that makes two of us.
Of course the ISPs are making excuses.
Yes, they remind me of you.
Have a nice day in your world of endless complaining with no real desire to do anything. You're a vile little prick who can wallow in misery for the rest of his pathetic life for all I care.
In the late 1990s Pacific Bell was laying fiber-optic cable in my neighborhood in San Jose, California in order to deploy high speed internet. After AT&T bought them the project was canceled and the fiber was dug up and removed to prevent it from being ever used.
:-(
It's hard not to remember this every time I read about the multi-billion dollar tax breaks AT&T has been enjoying since I think 1996 that were supposed to help them provide high speed internet.
If anybody wants to double check this you can search old issues of the San Jose Mercury News in the library, or online if you want to pay a charge.
You could be the stupidest poster I've ever seen, and I've been here since the beginning.
...you really need to get a life.
Seriously, 20+ posts in one day, and virtually all of them childish rants.
Get a life, then get a girlfriend, maybe then you won't have to splatter your middle school type rants all over the board.
PS, I hope you get AIDS, then your family gets asshole cancer, which, seeing as they're your family would be poetic justice.</quote>
and you call me childish?
Um all I can say is
Oh because I make intelligence that maybe aren't the same as everyone else. I'm sorry for posting a comment.
"Well, you have a wrong system - capitalism. In capitalism, if the owner makes money, he doesn't owe you anything. He doesn't have to invest back to infrastructure."
That is wrong, here's why. If the owner doesn't respond to customer needs, eventually the dissatisfaction with the company reaches a point that either competitors will emerge or less effective alternatives will be used.
If you don't invest in infrastructure, when someone else comes along who does, you're finished.
"But no, no, you actually don't want this. Because you are afraid of the word "socialism"
No, I don't want that because I don't want people like you making my consumption choices for me, and I really don't want the inevitable speech restrictions that come from government control of information sources.
"Nevermind it doesn't have anything in common with the two above strategies, and was just another sort of oligarchy."
You say that as though the oligarchy wasn't the inevitable result of socialism. Government control begets more government control, until someone comes along who doesn't feel compelled to act in the best interest of the people.
Denying it doesn't make it untrue, and playing the "socialism is misunderstood" victim role is distasteful in its disingenuousness.
Seriously?
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
I gave you options and you gave me excuses and copouts.
At that point I stopped caring about anything you think, and your scientific ignorance was just confirmation.
"Hydrogen is insanely inefficient as an energy source and it requires a large amount of energy just o create it."
Wrong.
"Hydrogen is highly combustible and doesn't burn it simply ignites. now would you really want to drive a car where static can cause you to die instantly."
Wrong, and you drive with a tank full of gas every day.
"For one where would I get bio diesel from"
You would follow the link I so graciously gave you and make your own at your own convenient time and place. Or you could keep making excuses like you have been.
"And obviously I have a paid off car that is only 5 months away. I am not rich and I can't afford to just trade in my car."
But you can afford to pay 4 dollars a gallon to fuel it, as opposed to about 1.50 a gallon for biodiesel you make. You're an economic genius.
"And no I'm not making excuses "
Yes you are. You can't admit it, but thay're obvious and not even very good excuses either.
"The cost of living is insane here in florida"
I live in Florida. Save THAT excuse for someone who doesn't know it's bullshit.
"And jesus christ I WASNT TALKING ABOUT GAS"
Yes you were, you just got caught making an ass of yourself and now you're backpedaling.
Now, as a favor to you, I'll say this. You are ignorant on this subject and today you've left a trail of posts that show exactly that in black and white. You acn use that ridiculous "you're a troll" nonsense to deflect it, but the statements you made exhibit quite clearly that you have no idea what the facts are on this subject.
"Of course the ISPs are making excuses."
Is ISP your screen name? It should be.
All you've done here is reinforce that you're an ignorant prick with an grossly uninformed opinion, who thinks calling people trolls isn't "get(ing) you rocks off trolling slashdot and insulting strangers on the internet."
So you're not only ignorant, childish, uninformed, and vitriolic, you're a hypocrite too.
I mean, like, do regular upgrades to their network, but if all bandwidth is in use, just do something like make this a list of priorities:
1. VoIP
2. Web browsing
3. Streaming media
4. P2P
If there isn't enough bandwidth, make each one lower get less to still be able to be used. Why isn't something like this in place?
Usage based pricing is a horrible idea and not much better than discriminatory bandwidth throttling of certain sites. I would much rather have a bandwidth cap which applies to all data regardless of which site than either selective throttling or usage based pricing. ISPs want to advertise far more bandwidth they can offer, in a deceptive practice, and and then compensate for this deceptive advertising with selective throttling and usage based pricing. Either they should be able to provide the bandwidth they advertise or should not advertise it. I would rather see minimum per user bandwidth guarantees, which users would be able to reach, and which can be provided to all users, and then depending on network conditions, users may have additional bandwidth avialable depending on network load (which can be advertised as a maximum rate, during low use periods the amount of bandwidth per user increases). This keeps single users from saturating the network while maintaining flat pricing.
Message to all ISP's:
Usage-based pricing is fine. If you want to offer such a product, present the details and stop talking about it.
HOWEVER, you've already sold me an unlimited usage plan at a certain price point. Presumably I would SAVE money by switching to a usage-based pricing plan, and you would lose money. Don't think for a minute that I'm willing to pay more for what I use today so you can 'encourage' me to reduce bandwidth usage. If that is your business plan, its doomed to fail and there will ALWAYS be alternatives to your service that offer unlimited usage and reasonable rates. If you think you can charge more for what most people use today, get ready to be wireless's bitch. You'll be sadly surprised when wireless takes your customers.
"lol wow all I can say is that someone needs to get a life."
Nice, they say the first step is admitting you have a problem.
"Apparently if you say anything ther is always a troll around the corner using childish insults."
Well, you shouldn't be so hard on yourself, you probably can't help it.
"It is bcause of red neck americans who think they are right about everything and believe that making an intelligent conversation is a waste of tim."
I don't know how you'd know that until you become capable of actually making an intelligent conversation, or being right about something. You've done neither so far.
Lastly, read the bolded print
At that point I stopped caring about anything you think, and your scientific ignorance was just confirmation.
The fact that you responded means you still don't get it.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
Set up a new free internet service with the ISP - call it the data availability protocol.
Your client asks the ISP - is this a bad time? ISP: yup, everyone is downloading stuff right now, and some jackass is uploading a 1TB file right now.
Your client - k, low usage mode engaged.
Later - ISP server to client, idiot uploading 1TB file is done. The network is clear!
your client - TORRENTING AWAY!!!!!
Also, recently one of the arpanet founders discussed the use of a protocol agnostic throttling program. Hopefully that gains traction within the companies that decide to implement these restrictions.
I mean, seriously. Just publish the peak times and the low usage times. Is it that hard?
---- Liquid was a patriot ----
Yeah, the talk sounds nice, but they've got a lot of actual work to do to make up for past karma.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
I simply comment on reality.
I said that already, to you. SO all you can say is "I know you are but what am I" and you ask me why I call you childish.
No, because you make sentence that are incomprehensible to other of readers. Like my impression of your shitty writing there? It sounds as stupid as what you post.
And really, it's because you're a childish asshole. Don't get upset if you get called out for what you yourself have portrayed yourself as. YOU DID IT.
And I'm sorry your mother didn't do the smart thing and get an abortion. I'm sure she feels the same.
http://www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/8_131041
Bell South tests internet access over fiber.
in 1999.
At&T have laid fiber. Verizon has FIOS all over the place in the southeast
http://www.dslreports.com/gmaps/fios?typ=s
You are wrong.
Why can't internet be providing by or funded completely by the government?
The internet should be free for all, it is important for social communication and progress.
What took you so long to come back. You KNEW you'd be back right? WE did!
Now bend over and think happy thoughts!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
You would NOT be so pleasantly surprised if you knew what I know, that last year AT&T paid out $145 Million to their former CEO Ed Whiteacre for his golden parachute.
Think of how much infrastructure that would have paid for before you get all warm and fuzzy about the latest AT&T charlatan who is pulling the wool over your eyes.
I'm assuming that every corporate executive spouting horseshit to keep himself rich is an Honorary White Male whether they are that in reality or not.
Considering AT&T's 1st quarter PROFIT was over $3 billion, they have more than enough money to work on infrastructure, etc, regardless of golden parachutes and whatnot....
At night I drink myself to sleep and pretend I don't care that you're not here with me
interestingly, this would seem to 'monetize' bittorrent/p2p traffic, suddenly putting it in the telecom's *interest* that users trade (huge volumes of) files. this has obvious political consequences for p2p/bittorrent, under the interpretation of politics as the interaction between governments and corporations' bottom lines.
Pretty much every P2P app lets you set your transmit and receive caps, but I've yet to see one that lets you automatically vary them by the time of day. Such a feature would help many of us be better good citizens about how we use our bandwidth.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Their legal and marketing departments must be having so much fun figuring out how to explain bandwidth and file sizes and cappings to the (probably slowly decreasing) set of users who don't really understand any of it. They can't just let the users screw up 'cause the potential lawsuits are frightening, but on the plus they could end releasing all sorts of useful education tools.
(Though really, my mom's youtube kills our network worse than my one torrent-when it's even working at all 'cause verizon just seems that screwy lately.)
open source modern art: laser taggi
I know that even my lowly utorrent client has a time of day setting in the prefs somewhere. I dont personally use it but I know its there, I just set everything to d/l at night anyway since I might need the bandwidth for Vonage or Skype instead when Im awake.
There is a MASSIVE amount of telecom astroturfing on slashdot and this news post proves it.
look at the sheer number of posts fawning over this company like a 12 year old girl over the latest boy band for trying to bill for internet as if it were a cellphone service.
the number of posts complaining about the horrible USERS and bemoaning the cost of network upgrades or complaining that "bandwidth isn't free".
Hell I think there are even people paid to keep stacks of mod points handy given the types of posts with +5 in this thread.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
"Usage-based pricing trials will be, he says, an attempt to encourage greater efficiency in the way customers use capacity."
That's not how the market is supposed to work. YOU are the producer, WE are the customer.
we are buying from you, not the other way around. It's not about what you want, it's about what we want, and what we want is the data we want, when we want, under the unlimited plans you advertise.
any company which attempts to start billing per minute or capping my transfers will be paying for the audiologist to correct the hearing of the poor customer service rep who takes my "IM CANCELLING MY ACCOUNT AND @#$@ YOU" call.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
What ever happened to the P4P idea from before? That sounded like it solved the "bandwidth problem" before this talk of pay by the Mb came around. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proactive_network_Provider_Participation_for_P2P
I just had an idea- what if the makers of limewire, azureus and utorrent offered special editions for download which contained plugins / default settings that throttled the download speed during peak times. it would be up to the user to change these settings which most wouldnt know how to do anyway. The isp's could sponsor the developers and host the installer file themselves - then the website www.limewire.com, azureus.org or utorrent.org could simply check where the user is coming from and 'recomend' the isp's mirror to download the install file from.
If the default settings were something like 40kBps down / unlimited up during peak times, with the option to turn off time based throttling in the software, most would be happy anyway. The teens downloading music etc. would still be happy as its still downloading faster than it plays and the isp has less congestion from these high users. The intelligent ones will turn off the throttling but if they are in a place like NZ, wouldnt notice much of a difference anyway
Ugh, I'm forecasting a slow, painful death of BitTorrent because of disincentives for people to upload.
Back when there were no transfer limits, uploading (sharing) for a torrent only required a person to keep his computer online.
But now with transfer limits -- and especially per-gigabyte pricing -- there is a clear disadvantage for uploading. In the case of transfer limits, the download and upload are often combined into one limit, so doing more uploading means being able to do less downloading. In the case of per-gigabyte pricing, there is a clear price to pay for uploading material.
As fewer people upload, more torrents will dry up, thus slowly ending the era of file sharing and putting us back into the world of server-client networking.
I'm both amazed and appalled by this seemingly effective long-term strategy.
"And jesus christ I WASNT TALKING ABOUT GAS i was just throwing that in as a joke you stupid troll. Of course the ISPs are making excuses. You know how cheap internet is europe. It's not because they can magically get cheap internet. The ISPs in Europe are still getting hefty profits. We are just a country full of corrupt politicians that are owned by large corporations."
Yes, and Europe has a hell of a lot denser population, making it a FUCK load cheaper to put in better, faster lines (kind of like living with a few roommates, instead of living in a house by yourself reduces the costs of living allowing you to buy better things). Its not magic its simple fucking economics. Shit you should try comparing, say, cell service in Canada (very spread out population) to the US. The cost of making and maintaining the infrastructure is just fucking insane.
But if the worst thing you have to worry about is the price of your internet then good for you, I'm happy for you.
Now get the hell of my series of tubes, I have much trolling to do and your using my bandwidth.
the idea that at&t should be able to du usage based pricing is lame- usage based pricing on cable is to encourage those on the same community pipe to slow down a bit- at&t is DSL - dedicated lines- they upgrade the infrastructure and you go to town, that is the benefit of DSL over cable- there are no "peak hours"- which is why you get a solid 5-6 mbps on a 6 mps connection.
I wonder though, what the deal will be with those of us like me that are under contract with them already- will they just terminate it? that doesn't seem feasible, though if they offer speed upgrades with bandwidth caps I can sort of see charging for usage, though it is still lame as hell since you are giving someone the ability to easily overuse their data transfer- I for one don't want to end up paying $300 a month for data transfer because I decided to watch youtube too much or was gaming too much- or I decided to update my software- etc. etc. etc.
granted, I prolly don't hit the cap of '40 gigs' that they put on transfer for cable (I am prolly about half that) on my PC, but I have no idea how much I am using on my wii and my ps3 when I am online gaming or browsing youtube
I recently got nicked by Dishnet/Wildblue Fair Use Policy. I am paying 69.99 per month for service when available that could be matched by 2 phone lines and 2 modems. The price for the service is on one web site with a dead link to the fair access policy on the other. I suspect that the family tree for echostar is a wreath. Thier pitch seemed extremly attractive, until u get to the terms and conditions. simplified it is my at my usage level not what was represented by sales. i am limited to 12 Gb bit bucket for a rolling 30 day period. the valve is turned down to a trickle 500kbs>128kbs>3900bps when the bucket is 60% full. Most of the time I get the 128kbs burst rate. 2 say that I am disatisfied with the service is putting it mildly. Also the contract points to a difficult to find clause that is not on the paper you sign. If you decided you got hosed and cancell, you still have to pay $30.00 per month for the remainder of the contract. If you upgrade and cancell another additional $25.00 is added to the fee. I guess if this business tactic works for the Dish they will follow suite after they get you locked in. I would say that putting a portion of the fees collected to improving bandwidth is not as attractive as keeping it & forcing you to pay more for less.