[IP] Re: Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Overage Fees with DJF comment

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

I should point out that it is essential for the carrier to  NOT exempt their services (like VOD via the internet path) from the cap. As someone pointed out that would give an unfair advantahe to the carrier and create justifiable yells of netneu. djf

________________________________________
From: W.B. McNamara [whitney@absono.us]
Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2008 10:52 AM
To: David Farber
Cc: rs9174@gmail.com
Subject: Re: [IP] Re:  Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Overage Fees

For IP, if you wish.

Ralph -

There are too many variables for us to answer "how many movies"
accurately, but to give some sense of what that 250GB/month means,
consider this:

If you have a connection that offers 1.5Mbit downstream and you were
using that downstream to its *full theoretical capacity* 24 hours a day,
7 days a week, you'd pull down about 475GB of data in the course of a 30
day month. If you're using your entire downstream potential for 6 hours
a day, every day over the course of that 30 day month, that's 119GB.

While I think that the next round of interesting stuff is likely to
happen where people have a lot of bandwith (both down *and* upstream),
I'm happy enough to accept explicit caps from my ISP -- there are caps
in place anyway, and it's a much bigger pain in the ass to deal with a
fuzzy, undocumented, variable cap than an explicit one.

As a provider of content on the Internet I pay for a hosting account
that includes a set amount of data transfer, and if I get Dugg or
Slashdotted and burn through that transfer I have the option of buying
more at a set price; I'm happy enough to work on the same logic as a
consumer of content on the Internet.

I wrote about this issue (a couple of years ago now, frighteningly
enough)  here:
http://smr.absono.us/2006/03/lunchtime-musings-broadband-wall-math/

- Whit

**
W.B. McNamara
whitney@absono.us
646-NEptune7-7791


David Farber wrote:
> ________________________________________
> From: Ralph [rs9174@gmail.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2008 7:43 AM
> To: David Farber
> Subject: Re: [IP] Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Overage Fees
>
> 250GB would give you the bandwidth to download how many movies per
> month?  0? 1? 5? 25?
>
> Ralph Sierra
>
> -------------------------------------------
>


-------------------------------------------