Re: WORTH READING Third Major ISP AT&T Testing Bandwidth Caps in the Fall [with a comment by me djf]

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: Tony Lauck [tlauck () madriver com]
Sent: Sunday, June 08, 2008 1:06 PM
To: David Farber
Subject: Re: [IP] Third Major ISP AT&T Testing Bandwidth Caps in the Fall [with a comment by me djf]

Dave,

Along this line, Bob Briscoe's work is relevant. I believe this link was
previously published on IP, but here it is again for the benefit of
those who missed it:

http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/bbriscoe/projects/2020comms/refb/fair_ccr.pdf

This paper has two key ideas:  (1)resources need to be allocated
according to economic interests (e.g. customers) and not technical
objects (e.g. TCP connections or IP addresses), (2)when ascertaining
resource usage by customer for purposes of providing fair allocation,
only resource usage by a customer that delays *other* customers is
relevant.

There are political, regulatory and emotional issues involved when large
government regulated monopolistic corporations are involved. Rather than
debate those here, I will give a simple example of a cooperative network
among three friends. This will clearly illustrate the idle resource issue.

Suppose that three friends live a long way away from IP access and they
decide to pool their resources and build a cooperative network. For
geographical reasons the only significant cost of this network is the
cost of building and operating a shared access link. Being somewhat
frugal, they purchase a link with limited bandwidth. It provides good
service when only one user is actively transmitting or receiving
packets, but noticeably poorer service when two or more users are
active. User C is the first to use the service and quickly becomes used
to good service. After a while A and B also begin to use the network,
and user C starts to experience reduced performance.

Now suppose user C becomes annoyed at his poor performance when he uses
the network in the evening. He decides to do something about it and
identify which of his friends is causing him the problem, hoping to
persuade that friend to send or receive fewer packets or to kick in a
larger share so that a faster access link can be afforded. He looks at
monthly usage statistics and concludes that he and user A are "moderate"
users, but that user B transmits and receives ten times as many packets,
clearly "excessive" usage. He decides to complain to user B.

User B points out that he *never* uses the network in the evening and
that he is not affecting user C's performance at all.  He does a lot of
bulk transfers in the middle of the night while A and C are sleeping,
accounting for his heavy monthly usage. He suggests that C talk to A
instead.

While the situation is complicated in a real-world ISP situation by
contractual, economic and political factors, not to mention more complex
technical factors such as multiple bottlenecks and many more customers,
the basic principle is the same. Usage of otherwise idle resources can
never be considered excessive.

Tony
www.aglauck.com



David Farber wrote:
> I am at a loss to see how such a cap will really help. The issue is not
> the amount of bits you move but when you move it. If the competition for
> the bandwidth is sleeping then you can send with no impact. If you try
> when the kids get home from school things are busy and so large
> transfers slow things down. All an issue of busy hour design.  What such
> caps DO create is an additional cost for people who
> are transferring large objects across the net -- like HD programs
> LEGALLY. Several of such transfers can eat up your allocation and then
> if they charge say $1/gig -- a HD can cost you what $3 to $4.  Now
> usually the cable operator (and the FIOS) uses another channel to
> deliver VOD  so, if I understand it right, they have created, by such a
> capacity model, a CLEAR competitive advantage in favor of themselves.
>
> Neat way around the NetNeurality potholes.
>
> Am I missing something.
>
> Dave
>
>
>
> http://gizmodo.com/5014290/welcome-to-the-future-of-broadband-third-major-isp-att-testing-bandwidth-caps-in-the-fall
>
> AT&T chief tech officer John Donovan has told Wired that they're going
> to test bandwidth caps in the fall, making them the third of the four
> major ISPs to do so
> <http://gizmodo.com/378760/will-your-isp-f-you-in-the-a-bandwidth-hogs-beware>.
> (Verizon stands alone, but for how long?) He lays out the familiar
> rationale, a small group of users (5 percent) pillage the network (40
> percent) and they've got to stop them. But then he slips what's probably
> the real reason they've moving to caps: "Traffic on our backbone is
> growing 60 percent per year, but our revenue is not."
>
> It is more or less accepted that a minority of users use
> disproportionate of bandwidth, but what they're using it for is
> changing. It's increasingly video, not BitTorrent
> <http://gizmodo.com/382691/10-percent-of-broadband-subscribers-suck-up-80-percent-of-bandwidth-but-p2p-no-longer-to-blame>.
> The whole pro-BitTorrent thing is a smokescreen
> <http://gizmodo.com/373162/comcast-n-bittorrent-bff-whats-good-what-sucks>,
> because BitTorrent is less and less of an issue—video, and increasingly,
> HD video will be the real one. (Along with any number of other
> increasingly bandwidth-intensive apps.) And it'll be more and more
> competitive with providers' TV offerings—we've already seen Time Warner
> cry about it
> <http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/the-real-fight-over-fake-news/>.
> But there's no legitimate way to block it and protect their content.
>
> They can, however, make it more expensive for you to download with
> bandwidth caps (which is conveniently net neutral
> <http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/net-neuterality/att-considering-scary-content+recognizing-anti+piracy-filter-for-entire-network-320689.php>).
> And that's what I think this is partially about—protecting their TV
> business, not just curbing voracious bandwidth appetites. Regardless of
> the motivations, it's definitely coming. Comcast's tests will probably
> start soon
> <http://gizmodo.com/5012735/comcast-starts-net-neutral-slowdowns-of-heavy-broadband-users>,
> Time Warner's are already underway
> <http://gizmodo.com/5012427/time-warner-monthly-data-caps-detailed>and regional
> ISPs have
> <http://gizmodo.com/377955/the-future-of-broadband-were-totally-screwed> been
> doing it for a while. It's looking very much like the future of
> broadband here.
>
> At least if we're using it less maybe the internet won't explode now
> <http://gizmodo.com/381782/att-the-internet-will-explode-in-2010>.
> [Wired <http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/06/att-embraces-bi.html>]
>
>
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--
"Difficulties can never be greater than your capacity to solve them."
    - P. R. Sarkar

Anthony G. Lauck
PO Box 59
Warren, VT 05674
Southface 5 (for UPS and FedEX)
81 Park Ave
Warren, VT 05674
(802) 583-4405 (802) 329-2006 (FAX)




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