Here in New Zealand, the Sale Of Goods act prevents any company invoicing for products not specifically ordered.
Given that Internet connection pricing is generally broken into two parts, a Connection part and a Data Traffic part, it seems obvious to me that in the "data" part of the bill, you are being invoiced for packets you not only did not request, but your PC did not even send an ACK packet for!
Your router may be configured to dump all packets not requested, or sent to any but specific ports. They never reach your PC, and yet your ISP will still charge for those packets.
The "packet" is the basic unit of exchange on the Internet, and its the combined packets which accumulate for your bill. I think in a court of law it can successfully be argued that unrequested data traffic (Hacker attacks etc) can not be legally billed to the client. This would amount to Pro Forma Invoicing, and a lot of precedent says you just can't do that!
This places ISPs in a sticky situation - how can you accurately measure the (requested) data traffic for a client? Do you have to examine every packet and match an equivalent ACK packet before that packet is added to your traffic? That seems like an incredibly expensive option!
How about a client-side program which runs constantly, which disabled your internet access if shut down? This might work, but is open to H@x0r1|\|6 on the client-end.
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_11/tuomi/inde x.html
This is much better article IMO.
It doesn't say Moore's Law isn't a powerful force for technical and social engineering, or that it doesn't drive the PC and high-tech industry, but the simple truth is that Moore's Law doesn't exist as a law at all - and the only place it does exist is in the minds of journalists!
Heh! I am familiar with one of the chief architects of the XTRA network, and have been using Jetstart since the week it was released in NZ. I had disconnect issues early in the service - esp when the Souther Cross cable came on line and only 20% of it was operational...
I had huge arguments with tech staff (Not the phone desk people - the engineers) about the unforgiveable ping times... which have since dropped to ALMOST acceptable levels...
Over-all the Jetstart DSL service is outstanding. Awesome up time (Except for 3 weeks ago when ALL O3 and 04 phone line DSL customers were out for most of a week...
Great bandwidth (Esp when the port breaks and delivers 760KB/s!:) ) which easily reaches 90-100% of capacity of 128 Kb/s - so no complaints there!
The IP issue has been long since resolved, and I have not failed to be assigned an IP for months. Of more interest to me is people wanting static IPs! Why would you want one? A hacker's wet dream come true! And an ISPs nightmare, as every DSL customer sets up a web server or a game server... so I totally understand the dynamic IP issue.
My major gripe is not with Xtra, but with TELECOM - because those bastards have placed the maximum permissable Interleaving on ALL DSL connections in New Zealand. They use 24ms + 24ms for a combined total of 48ms to your first hop! This is ostensibly to keep your connection alive and prevent modem retraining from noisey lines disco'ing you... BUT... the simple fact of the matter is that 90% of DSL phone lines have very low noise levels and could EASILY be dropped to 3ms + 6ms for a 9ms first hop.
I know of SEVERAL Xtra personnel who have had interleaving COMPLETELY removed at the exchange, so their first hop really is 0ms!! Telecom would probably fire the persons responsible at the exchange, and get very very jumpy indeed when you start discussing this issue with their tech people.
Their official stance is that the Interleaving policy is for reliability, but in fact that is bullshit, they are just too lazy to reduce it and offer decent pings, and it permits them to offer DSL to customers who would NOT be able to maintain a DSL connection because of distance to the exchange.
To my mind, it's completely reprehensible to offer a premier broadband connection, and then cripple it with 10 times the first hop latency that should be available.
I have no beef with Xtra at all, and consider them to be a fine ISP. I've been a customer of there's since 1995, but I will leave like a shot as soon as Cable is available to me. AFAIK cable connects in NZ suffer no interleaving or buffering of any kind. First hops of under 4ms and pings to the USA on the order of 160 ms in California - the same as the E1 (T1) line here at work. *sigh*
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Here in New Zealand, the Sale Of Goods act prevents any company invoicing for products not specifically ordered. Given that Internet connection pricing is generally broken into two parts, a Connection part and a Data Traffic part, it seems obvious to me that in the "data" part of the bill, you are being invoiced for packets you not only did not request, but your PC did not even send an ACK packet for! Your router may be configured to dump all packets not requested, or sent to any but specific ports. They never reach your PC, and yet your ISP will still charge for those packets. The "packet" is the basic unit of exchange on the Internet, and its the combined packets which accumulate for your bill. I think in a court of law it can successfully be argued that unrequested data traffic (Hacker attacks etc) can not be legally billed to the client. This would amount to Pro Forma Invoicing, and a lot of precedent says you just can't do that! This places ISPs in a sticky situation - how can you accurately measure the (requested) data traffic for a client? Do you have to examine every packet and match an equivalent ACK packet before that packet is added to your traffic? That seems like an incredibly expensive option! How about a client-side program which runs constantly, which disabled your internet access if shut down? This might work, but is open to H@x0r1|\|6 on the client-end.
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_11/tuomi/inde x.html
This is much better article IMO.
It doesn't say Moore's Law isn't a powerful force for technical and social engineering, or that it doesn't drive the PC and high-tech industry, but the simple truth is that Moore's Law doesn't exist as a law at all - and the only place it does exist is in the minds of journalists!
Heh! I am familiar with one of the chief architects of the XTRA network, and have been using Jetstart since the week it was released in NZ. I had disconnect issues early in the service - esp when the Souther Cross cable came on line and only 20% of it was operational...
... which have since dropped to ALMOST acceptable levels...
:) ) which easily reaches 90-100% of capacity of 128 Kb/s - so no complaints there!
I had huge arguments with tech staff (Not the phone desk people - the engineers) about the unforgiveable ping times
Over-all the Jetstart DSL service is outstanding. Awesome up time (Except for 3 weeks ago when ALL O3 and 04 phone line DSL customers were out for most of a week...
Great bandwidth (Esp when the port breaks and delivers 760KB/s!
The IP issue has been long since resolved, and I have not failed to be assigned an IP for months. Of more interest to me is people wanting static IPs! Why would you want one? A hacker's wet dream come true! And an ISPs nightmare, as every DSL customer sets up a web server or a game server... so I totally understand the dynamic IP issue.
My major gripe is not with Xtra, but with TELECOM - because those bastards have placed the maximum permissable Interleaving on ALL DSL connections in New Zealand. They use 24ms + 24ms for a combined total of 48ms to your first hop! This is ostensibly to keep your connection alive and prevent modem retraining from noisey lines disco'ing you... BUT... the simple fact of the matter is that 90% of DSL phone lines have very low noise levels and could EASILY be dropped to 3ms + 6ms for a 9ms first hop.
I know of SEVERAL Xtra personnel who have had interleaving COMPLETELY removed at the exchange, so their first hop really is 0ms!! Telecom would probably fire the persons responsible at the exchange, and get very very jumpy indeed when you start discussing this issue with their tech people.
Their official stance is that the Interleaving policy is for reliability, but in fact that is bullshit, they are just too lazy to reduce it and offer decent pings, and it permits them to offer DSL to customers who would NOT be able to maintain a DSL connection because of distance to the exchange.
To my mind, it's completely reprehensible to offer a premier broadband connection, and then cripple it with 10 times the first hop latency that should be available.
I have no beef with Xtra at all, and consider them to be a fine ISP. I've been a customer of there's since 1995, but I will leave like a shot as soon as Cable is available to me. AFAIK cable connects in NZ suffer no interleaving or buffering of any kind. First hops of under 4ms and pings to the USA on the order of 160 ms in California - the same as the E1 (T1) line here at work. *sigh*