Re: utility capacity, was Verizon Policy Statement on Net Neutrality

[Mel Beckman <mel () beckman org>]

John,

That's an excellent point. Consider Google fiber, for example. And customer could theoretically demand a gigabit of 
traffic. Even Google admits that this doesn't scale and that they are highly oversubscribed.

 -mel beckman

On Feb 27, 2015, at 3:05 PM, "John Levine" <johnl () iecc com> wrote:

> > Water, gas, and to a great extent electrical systems do not work on
> > oversubscription, ie their aggregate capacity meets or exceeds the needs of
> > all their customers peak potential demand, at least from "normal" demand
> > standpoint.
>
> Hi, former municipal water and sewer commissioner here.  We size the
> system to meet likely demand, but not peak demand.  If it's a hot dry
> summer and everyone wants to water their lawn, or there's a big fire
> that's drawing a lot of water from hydrants, we can have capacity
> problems.  We deal with it by interrupting service to a few large
> customers, a car wash and a golf course.
>
> But it's not really comparable to broadband service, because on the
> Internet, nearly every consumer end user device could easily saturate
> the entire network if it wanted to.  It's like every house having a
> 100,000 gallon toilet.  Better hope you don't have a lot of people
> flushing at once.
>
> R's,
> John