NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: EVDO Observation
I just experimented with copying bits from MIT using my 50Mbps Verizon connection and I did indeed get the performance. But MIT is directly peered with local carriers -- do such bits count against caps. Same for Comcast. This goes to the point I raised earlier -- where is the cap meter located. Obviously not within my home network. The real question is what is the factor that the carrier uses to measure the concentration of users per peered bit which is a real, though artificial cost. How much is against their own physical infrastructure. This is a matter of accounting and the accounting models they use -- are these models public? Perhaps disclosed to the FCC? It would be useful for the purpose of the list to understand the assumption they are making in justifying their pricing/usage model. I won't mentions of a startup I not only declined to invest in but wanted to short but they tried to save the carriers money by having them use peer distribution. It was totally nutty but the people involved were the kind of people who make such policy decisions so it would be very useful to know more about their models and assumptions. -----Original Message----- From: Robb Topolski [mailto:robb@funchords.com] Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2007 22:13 To: Bob Frankston Cc: Brett Glass; Phil Karn; nnsquad@nnsquad.org Subject: Re: [ NNSquad ] Re: EVDO Observation On 11/18/07, Bob Frankston <Bob19-0501@bobf.frankston.com> wrote: > I don't know if this is relevant to this list or should be a side discussion > but we shouldn't assume that "bits per second" is the only measure. Within > my home I "subscribe" to a copper wire and can run it as fast as I can. > > Are we just measuring service provider promises or can we measure against > available facilities and view arbitrary caps on the use of the facilities > akin to creating measures like "minutes" which are purely accounting > fictions over IP? Here is an example where bps over a minute is treated differently than bps over a month: Users who transfer something above an unknown amount (believed to be 200-300 GB/mo.) get a warning call from Comcast's Abuse department for "excessive usage." Users who violate the unknown cap again are suspended from the service for 12 months. What this pencils out to is that users who subscribe to Comcast's 6 Mbps tier can exceed the "Invisi-Cap" even if they limit their usage to 25% of that amount. There are no pre-purchase or Terms-of-Service descriptions that clearly describe this behavior. Comcast takes this action based on a clause in their TOS that says that they prohibit use that "restrict, inhibit, interfere with, or otherwise disrupt or cause a performance degradation, regardless of intent, purpose or knowledge, to the Service or any Comcast (or Comcast supplier) host, server, backbone network, node or service, or otherwise cause a performance degradation to any Comcast (or Comcast supplier) facilities used to deliver the Service." (Apparently simply using the service is akin to a Denial-of-Service attack.) -- Robb Topolski (robb@funchords.com) Hillsboro, Oregon USA http://www.funchords.com/