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Will Capped Data Plans Kill the Cloud?
theodp writes "With the introduction of its Chromebook, Google is betting big on the Cloud. As is Apple, with its iCloud initiative. So too are Netflix and Skype. Unfortunately, their very existence is threatened by data-capping carriers, who have set a course to make sure that the network is NOT the computer. 'I don't know what the solution is,' writes David Pogue. 'I don't know if anyone's thinking about this. But there are big changes coming. There are big forces about to shape our lives online. And at the moment, they're on a direct collision course.'"
The solution is taking the networks away from those who don't want to provide the service they promised to provide when they were given monopolies by the government.
"Only in the United States, where caps are popular." But in truth, I'd be more concerned about unbrided capitalism and monopolistic practices killing not just the cloud, but any hope my country has of competing in a global marketplace. We've already hamstrung ourselves on an antiquidated patent and copyright system that is forcing our talent overseas to produce, we have our government busy chasing down music pirates while ignoring the massive amounts of identity theft and fraud perpetuated by malware and botnets, and the list goes on.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
There are datacaps, but also, and most of all I'd say : connexion speeds !
Even when you have a fast download bandwidth, upload is usually shitty, like 10-15% of the download on usual DSL...
FTTH is another story and could make the cloud worthwhile, but I'm still waiting for that to happen, and I live in Paris...
It's sad to see everyone trying to kill it from different angles.
Sony Movies Pulled From Netflix Streaming Service Over Starz Contract Issue
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/18/sony-movies-netflix-instant-play-starz_n_879727.html
I think it may be worse news for the carriers. If they wont provide suitable bandwidth, eventually someone will develop a more popular alternative that bypasses their speed bump altogether.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
I like the cloud for some things. But i also like it if a device which has more memory than i need for all my personal documents (including 10000 Photos) is used wise enough not to require 24x7 online access.
That's a matter of personal preference.
capped data is the expression of a physical reality vs. a marketing tool used to push users quickly into freshly build networks without investing in the sw and forcing them to new phones.
Capped data is a joke. It's a movement towards charging per-unit prices for a service that has no meaningful per-unit cost. Sure, it costs money to build a network, blah blah blah. But there is no fixed cost for moving data around. A Gbit switch costs about as much as a 100 Mbit switch did a few years back, and moves 100x as much data in a unit of time as the 100 Mbit one. It uses about the same amount of electricity, regardless of how much data is being moved.
Where did that per-unit cost go?
Because of this, I figure it's only a matter of time before this whole "cap the user" nonsense goes away.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
If it were the truth, but it isn't. Plenty of other countries have caps. At least in the US the caps are usually not super low, so you can still do a reasonable bit of "cloud" type stuff and not hit them. Talk to the Australians, they have some pretty severe caps, enough they have to limits their regular Internet usage.
Caps are not a US thing. They are found in various places all around the world. They also aren't universal in the US. You can find non-capped Internet providers. Probably not in all areas, unfortunately, but they exist.
How big are data caps?
How big is the content you have?
Netflix should worry, iCloud... not really.
E.g. I have 20Gb of MP3 files.
Btw I wonder if it all goes through iCloud or if, for example, I have my Mac and iPhone on the same network it syncs locally.
how long until
Canada has some horrendous data caps from it's major ISPs. From the numbers I've heard, Americans have almost 10x the bandwidth allowance that most Canadians have. For online services (cloud, netflix, etc.), this is a major concern. While I'm looking forward to iCloud, I will be closely monitoring my bandwidth for the first little bit to make sure I don't go over and, if I do, I'll be figuring out what service I use needs to get cut and, quite frankly, I'd rather the ISPs just offer better service than forcing me to not use what's available...
The Internet should be like any other basic utility, with rates being regulated and networks being installed for everybody to have unrestricted accees to. People would pay on a per-use basis but ISPs would not be able to raise the rates as they please.
A Gbit switch costs about as much as a 100 Mbit switch did a few years back, and moves 100x as much data in a unit of time as the 100 Mbit one.
Math fail there. a Gigabit switch moves 10x as much as a 100Mbit switch in a given time, not 100x.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Its not the per data cost of the lines, it is the cost per port that is expensive. Replacing the 100 MB switch with the GB switch, and then the GB switch with the 10 (100) GB switch in 5 years is what costs. This doesn't include ongoing maintenance and management, and uplink costs. Paying for bandwidth is an easy solution to mitigate against some of that, and makes sense from this standpoint. However, when people like Comcast deliberately choke off data at a single point, in order to charge Netflix and others to bring them into the network (and still restricts this data) that is where I have an issue. If you're overselling/over subscribing your trunks, and aren't upgrading them when they are full, time for class action lawsuit.
I'm just wondering when someone is going to sue Comcast for not providing the service they are selling. Must be in the TOS contract that they don't have to provide any.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
There are people who prefer their devices to stop working when the network stops? "I can't access my photos because the net is down. Hooray!"
...but I haven't hit it yet.
They're based on the reality that the ISP oversold their capacity and are trying to make it so that you can't actually use the capacity that you paid for. To an extent I'd rather have caps than deal with oversold capacity, but I'd rather rather have the FCC tell ISPs that they can't fraudulently claim to provide more capcity than they're capable of. "Up to" isn't a legitimate claim unless there are significant periods of time during the month when you hit that rate. As it is, I rarely hit even 3mbps on my 5mpbs connection.
Given Apple's cash reserves couldn't it just buy every major carrier in the country? I'm sure it could buy ATT, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, et al, with the loose change in the couches at the Apple campus. :) Given Internet access is pretty much already a local monopoly with no competition what would it matter? At least with Apple in charge they would have an incentive to get rid of the caps.
In Canada, you're hard pressed to find an ISP that doesn't have a cap. It makes streaming movies, etc. a pain in the butt.
Capped data plans won't kill the cloud. Capping will only be a temporary inconvenience (until capping is gone through competition between carriers).
There are nice-to-have cloud syncs that use a lot of data (music, video, images) and need-to-have cloud syncs (mail, calendar, documents). The urgens syncs usually fit in a data plan. The 'leisure' syncs can be done whilst on wifi.
The real inconvenience will be data roaming charges (eg abroad) where they charge you an arm and a leg for everything :(
Bandwidth capping is NOT the problem. There is a marginal cost curve associated with increased bandwidth use and it is only appropriate that this cost be reflected in the price we pay for our services. Without usage based fees, those who underutilize the service are subsidizing those who overutilize it (which I guess the latter would be highly overrepresented here at /.). The problem is lack of competition and effective regulation perpetuated by political overrepresentation of service providers. Please be willing to give up your internet subsidy and get in touch with your elected officials, friends, and family to let them know that their ISPs are screwed up and we could have faster, cheaper internet if we take back the reins.
The ISPs pay for bandwidth in a similar fashion, it's just the consumers who pay for all they can use. The problem is that they've been overselling capacity to pay for larger yachts for the CEO rather than investing in their infrastructure. And because most of the country is covered in monopolies and duopolies, and if you're especially lucky an oligopoly, there's little to no way of voting with your wallet. I'm with Qwest primarily because they don't cap their bandwidth, and apart from gaming they do a fine job. I just wish they would actually provide the bandwidth that I'm paying for.
Around here I could get Hughes, Clear, Comcast or a cellular based connection, and I think that's about it. All of the options I know of except for the neighbors and Qwest involve caps and in most cases also slower speeds than the pathetic 5mbps that Qwest offers.
well video chat with family has been around since dialup, I think its a tad silly to expect video conferencing to NEED to be in 1080 Resolution with dolby digital, if you have the bandwidth to piss away on that fine, if not there are plenty of other ways to video conference at low speeds and low bandwidth, as its been a novelty for around 10 years
But there is no fixed cost for moving data around.
What you are saying is more or less correct but your terminology is wrong. What you are describing is properly called a variable cost not a fixed cost. The equipment used to build and operate the network is largely comprised of fixed costs. It costs the phone company the same money whether they send one packet or one million packets. The costs associated to a specific packet would be variable costs and as you rightly point out, the direct variable costs are negligible. As equipment is used, the fixed costs get amortized over a large volume of data and in time become negligible on a per packet basis. This doesn't mean they become zero but they start large and become small asymptotically.
That said there IS a cost that you are not considering. IF there is insufficient bandwidth available to serve all requests, then there is an opportunity cost associated with the data packet. If your data can't get through because someone else is hogging the pipe, you as a customer will get pissed and possible switch services (if possible). Since we know that the telecom providers have a large but finite amount of bandwidth available, opportunity costs matter. Hence data caps. They cannot serve all possible requests until their network has the capacity to do so. If they allow unlimited usage and people actually do use it that way (and some do), the telecom incurs an opportunity cost in the form of being unable to serve some of their customers.
In THEORY data caps make economic sense. In REALITY, it's probably more greed by the telecoms than a real problem most of the time.
No, it won't kill the cloud. Nearly every Internet service here is capped in some way.
Most service contracts and agreements quite explicitly state that you, the customer, are expected to pay your bills on time or be subject to debt collection and/or litigation. But they, the provider, have no obligation to provide any service whatsoever.
While I disagree with that in general, it is quite easy for a household with multiple people in it to hit the cap. The cap isn't per user, it's per household.
Actually not a math fail, but it is a little overestimated. Just looking at the low end Cisco stuff, and I'm sure the high-end gear has seem more improvement, according to the datasheets, a Catalyst 2900 series switch with 100Mbps ports (circa ~1998) has a total switching capacity of 1.6 Gbps. A more modern Catalyst 2960 (not the 2960S, which has 10Gbps uplink ports) can switch up to 32Gbps. The 2960S series can switch at up to 80Gbps. But it does depend on the particular data traffic. For a switch use to aggregate multiple endpoints to a single uplink, you are correct and it's only a 10x increase. But for a switch at the core of a network with multiple servers or routers attached, modern switches can move much more than 10x the data of yesteryear's switches.
Arr, the math is off by a factor of 8 (Byte vs. Bits).
1 Byte = 8 bits
250GBytes = 2,000GBits
150GBytes = 1,200GBits
250GBytes / 1.5Mbits/s = 1,333,333sec = 22,222min = 370.37hr
150GBytes / 1.5Mbits/s = 800,000sec = 13,333min = 222.22hr
Still, these numbers are not unattainable with a household with many viewers with different tastes (for our family, we watch the same shows and talk throughout, even pausing at times to discuss stuff). 370hr / 31 days ~=12 hr/day. That's extreme for a single person (well, I'd hope), but say a household of parents and 2 teens, who all watch something different, that's down to 3 hr/day.
Not sure how that factors in with gaming numbers. Also not exactly sure how that factors with more HD content. The last LAS was just under 54 minutes and 650GBytes in size, so seems about on par with the numbers I show above (their show is pretty static, not really much movement).
I liked the old model of buy bandwidth, use it or not, but you should get what you pay for in terms of availability.
The problem is the reality of something made amusing in the Broadway show, The Producers. Bandwidth is unbelievably oversubscribed, and the only saviour to this has been diffuse destinations-- meaning that data comes from many places. Just use a script-halting plug in on your favorite browser to learn that a simple web page probably has a dozen or more different sources (and probably destinations, too).
The content farms (CDNs, iTunes, AppStores) suddenly need huge pipes because the constant demand for these sites are huge. They use load balancing to service clientele, sometimes hundreds of thousands of simultaneous streaming clients. If you're Comcast or Verizon, suddenly, you have a bottleneck. That bottleneck has to be assuaged or the congestion starts to become objectionable.
And gosh darn, you're not making hardly any money from that NetFlix and other streaming stuff, so it's in your best interests to charge in a tiered plan. Comcast in my area never used to have a cap. There was a nebulous artificial cap that was referenced, but now it's that 'law'. If you're a node or supernode on a p2p or torrent-ish network, then you're not following the hierarchical model, and many of these users raises the floor of quiescent activity through various daily demand cycles.
So metered data is their obvious solution, as we're not talking rocket scientists here, we're talking companies that want to be utility monopolies in your area-- now building content where they can if they're not outright buying it (hello, NBC).
In the bad old days, we just had data. Now we have data, but also stuff that requires comparatively clear pipes or protocols for isochronous data that have to work to prevent congestion and latency else the desired service becomes objectionable.
My method to fix this remains: let those that need QoS protocol support pay for that. For the rest of us, be it gamers, browser users on Facebook, or other largely aperiodic transaction users, pay less than those that need expensive and clear pipes.
Otherwise, each ISP will have to build infrastructure to the greatest possible denominator of usage profile, and that's not really practical-- ISPs have to make money somehow, monopolistic as they are. So what do you do? Let those that must be entertained or enjoy p2p network infrastructure pay for it. Downstream, ISPs are going to have to build huge networks anyway-- why not let evil telcos get rational funding for it?
Imagine a household with four teenagers, mom and dad (I know, science fiction, right?) that are all streaming content concurrently. One tenth of a GigE might do it if they all stream. Now add up 100 houses in the same subdivision or half of a city square mile. You can start to see how the bandwidth needs climb geometrically, and where the bottlenecks start to occur. Something has to give. The ideal world: in 1980, we deployed 100% fiber to the home and we don't have this problem. But we didn't, and we won't, because we're evilly fragmented and consumers through community governments have become the natural enemy of the utility-turned-monopoly telcos.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
It may kill unlimited HD video downloads and put a crimp into companies that use that as their business model.
Just about everything else is not affected by these "caps" because the data volume is so tiny in comparison to video downloads.
And please tell me this..... How is Apples Magical Cloud going to sync your iPhone to your PC when you are out and about and need some new tunes??? Remember you said its not over the net.
I said it will not be *streaming* music over the net, that it would be synching. With streaming the music is not stored locally and every time you listen to a song it must be delivered from the cloud or some other net-based source. With synching the device has local storage and a song only needs to be delivered once, playing the song generates no additional network traffic. iCloud only does synching, unlike other music services that are streaming based. My point is that synching based services are far less vulnerable to data caps than streaming based services.
Indeed, I could, but 400 movies is a fraction of what I have available from the cloud. Which was largely the point, it's kind of silly to load up on that many movies when there are alternatives available. Each extra copy is an extra copy that I have to keep an eye on. It's a lot less of a problem than it used to be, but I still need to know that I have a copy that hasn't been corrupted and which one is still good.