[IP] Re: That 5 gigabit cap is pulled back

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

________________________________________
From: Bill Williamson [bill@bbqninja.com]
Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2008 7:14 AM
To: David Farber
Cc: Bob19-0501@bobf.frankston.com
Subject: Re: [IP] Re: That 5 gigabit cap is pulled back

On Thu, Aug 7, 2008 at 11:35 AM, David Farber <dave@farber.net> wrote:
> I STRONGLY agree with Bob djf
> From: Bob Frankston [Bob19-0501@bobf.frankston.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2008 8:56 PM
> To: David Farber; 'ip'
> Cc: 'Dave Burstein'; 'Lauren Weinstein'
> Subject: RE: [IP] That 5 gigabit cap is pulled back
>
> Why is a byte cap on local traffic fair? What am I consuming and why shouldn't I be able to watch 24x7 video streams from a local school or community event or from my neighbor?  How is that different from a byte cap for the traffic within my home? Remember when some carriers wanted to sell home networking as an added value service?
>
> I realize that pricing is an art and you have to allocate costs. This is why a restaurant bundles the cost of space in the price of a sandwich.
>
> But we are talking about our fundamental ability to communicate within our community – there better be a very good reason for imposing limits on our ability to speak using assets that are easily paid for and have low operating costs which aren't closely tied to traffic.
>
> Remember these are the very same assets that run 24x7 gigabit streams of the carriers' bits in broadcast mode. What a waste!
>


Living in Australia under the regime of Telstra (and thus expensive
uplink/peering) we are used to bandwidth capping, for better or worse
(mostly the second...).  The ISPs are mostly beholden to telstra
because THEY are directly charged based on usage... so the economics
work differently (tesltra charges differing costs for DSLAM ports
wholesale DEPENDING ON USAGE, not just speed!!!)

However, many ISPs here do some neat tricks:
-locally hosted content (via ftp/rsync/steam server mirror/etc) is quota free
-anything staying on that ISPs network is quota free (direct transfers
to my neighbor, or even friend across town, is free)
-There is a "local only" peering network called PIPE who connects
major cities.  This allows friendly ISPs to offer free traffic BETWEEN
ISPs, as long as they don't touch the telstra network (and thus are
peered through pipe)

We have a best of/worst of situation.... horrible conditions, but it's
lead to what I feel are useful innovations.
--Bill


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