Vint, I have patiently asked for clarification on 3 or more separate emails to which you have not responded. If I misunderstood you, I apologize. But you’ve made it hard to understand you since you continued to ignore a few questions all the while criticizing usage caps.
95th percentile is still used for commercial Internet access and data centers. It has never applied to consumer grade broadband which are sold for 1/20th to 1/40th of the cost of a commercial grade connection. And because residential broadband is so cheap, it’s not surprising that it’s also so oversubscribed. The problem that the broadband industry faces is a lack of clear communications and people mistakenly believe that “up to” means “at least”. So again, you say you have a problem with this level of over subscription but I hope you’re not calling for a ban on this business model or level of oversubscription. Any ban or limitation on oversubscription simply means prices either have to go up or peak rates have to go down for consumer broadband, and neither is a desirable outcome.
“what I am against is the broadband access provider making decisions that interfere with the subscriber's freedom to go anywhere he or she likes on the net and run any applications desired”
This does not happen on wired broadband access. Wireless broadband providers however routinely sell you partial Internet access such as the Peek Simply Email device which charges users $15/month for unlimited email to 5 email accounts. At that price, I have no problem with the carrier limiting what I can and can’t access. Amazon goes a step further and tells me what websites and blogs I can view, and the network operator even charges the content provider for the onramp AND offramp which would be outlawed under Markey’s 3rd net neutrality bill. The tradeoff there is that I pay very little money through the cost of the E-books. So there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the carrier offering partial and even walled garden access to the Internet so long as the terms of the contract are clear and it suits the customer’s needs. The problem is that when net neutrality bills want to ban this type of business model because it doesn’t suit someone’s ideal of what the Internet should look like, then there is the risk that the Internet will be regulated to death.
So again I ask you, so that I don’t misunderstand you, do you support or oppose these bills that would ban these limited use Internet models?
George
George,
you have either misunderstood or completely distorted what I was trying to say. I actually think fractional access makes sense - it's sharing of a broadband channel. I think that's fine. You pay a fraction of the cost and get high burst rates. The only time your "fractional share" becomes a potential issue is if the shared channel becomes congested. At that point, you should be shaped in a way that is pro-rated according your putative share of the channel. what I am against is the broadband access provider making decisions that interfere with the subscriber's freedom to go anywhere he or she likes on the net and run any applications desired. If the system becomes congested (regardless of cause), the then-current users should experience traffic shaping commensurate with the fraction of the access channel they have subscribed for. Essentially, your share of the channel is a function of the "tier" you subscribe to and the utilization of the channel by you and others who share it. There is a question about oversubscription (a common practice in residential networks). If the oversubscription is significant and if the channel is regularly congested then you may not experience the kind of burst freedom that you value in your note below. Your traffic will always be shaped as a result. You would be well-advised to institute some kind of measurement practice to figure out, in that case, just what kind of service you are getting (peak and average bit rates).
When I was at MCI, we charged customers based on the 95th percentile traffic rate they sent or received. That is, we ignored the 5 percent peaks and charged at the 95th percentile rate.
Users could subscribe to various tiers of traffic level depending on their anticipated 95th percentile requirements.
v
On Aug 30, 2009, at 11:40 PM, George Ou wrote:
There is nothing “silly” about comparing fractional ownership of an airplane to fractional ownership to a piece of copper or fiber. In each case, fractional ownership means fractional cost and that means little guys like me aren’t priced out of the market. What is so wrong with a collocation offering 3% ownership of a 100 Mbps circuit at $25 (other $25 for electricity and rack space) which is 2.3% of the cost of having 100% ownership of a 100 Mbps circuit? Having a service that can burst to 100 Mbps on demand that includes 3 Mbps average for $25/month (I have the option to buy more anytime) is absolutely wonderful to me. If we outlaw fractional ownership of Internet connection circuits, which is something Vint seems to be suggesting but refuses to clarify, then I’m either stuck with paying $1100 or the ISP will simply cap my bandwidth to 3 Mbps with zero usage caps. That effectively cuts my average performance down to probably well under 1 Mbps even though I’m paying for 3 Mbps simple because I cannot guarantee that my web visitors will produce a consistent 3 Mbps demand. So the type of regulatory restrictions that Vint Cerf is apparently lobbying for is harming small businesses, which would severely curtail the competition for Google because they’re one of the few companies that have the kind of scale that can justify purchasing full ownership circuits. So the only thing that’s silly and malicious is someone who would have government step in and take away my flexibility and freedom.