I am a regular visitor and poster on the P2PNet.net site in
Users are unaware of the impact their online activities have on the networks.
For three days I ranted, raved (and generally got extremely frustrated) that they could not understand the concept that a one gallon jar is designed to hold only a gallon of water. Pressurising the jar at 3 Bar will allow a reasonable flow of water for a single tap. Adding taps to the jar won’t expel more than one gallon exactly – and at a steadily decreasing water pressure, no matter how many taps are added to the jar.
From minute to minute the network is finite.
Yes, the Internet is growing daily. However in our article on P2P software growth and It takes a Big Man to Negotiate a Truce we showed that P2P client software and subsequent use was growing faster than anyone could plan for.
Therefore for users to not understand that a finite resource needs to be nurtured and not attacked appears to me, to be consumerism at its darkest.
“My ISP sells me 6 Mbps therefore if I download 5.9 Mbps for 730 hours per month he is still making a profit.”
Woaaaaah!
In my ISP days we calculated utilisation based on the average user utilizing 27 minutes of internet per day. The following year it was 49 minutes per day. The year after 1 hour and five minutes.
The average Internet account was sold on a five dollars per hour basis. So I introduced the 1 cent per minute concept.
It was one cent per minute to connect.
1 cent per minute for VOIP
1 cent per minute downloading from the newsgroups (early filesharing).
And it made billing easy. Time on minus time off times 1 cent per minute; debit credit card – simple.
Connection speed? Well that was easy, I always made sure that my ISP had the fastest modems.
Bandwidth allocation……
Here comes the crunch – we oversold bandwidth by an average of eight times per subscriber.
And our profit model was calculated and based on a traditional frame relay model.
8 bits x 8 users = 64 bits per second.
(64 bits per second equals a digital datapath measuring unit called a DS0)
If that model existed today – I would not be able to oversell my bandwidth due to P2P utilisation of 56 bits per second per user…… WOW.
But consumers don’t grok this at all.
I was amazed. They genuinely believe that if they buy an access port then that bandwidth is available to then 24/7 x 365 P.A.
Pssst, I have a secret for you, it’s not. Lets do some boring old sums……
The afore mentioned example is a good place to start.
6 Mbps for 49.95 per month.
Yet according to: Digilink
in downtown
The cost of a T1 to an ISP is only
Get a T1 for as low as $275/mo (Available for a
limited time)
A T1 is only 1.5 Mbps, so something is screwy with Canadian ISP pricing.
According to my mathematics, (and the above users claim
about his 6 Mbps DSL connection) an ISP would need four T1’s at $275 per month
to service a single Canadian users home DSL line or outlay $1100.00 to recoup $49.95
resulting in a
$1050.05 monthly loss.
Of course our example users ISP might be one of the larger ones who is used to buying larger chunks of bandwidth like e.g. a T3.
Get a T3(45Mbps) for less than
$3000/mo
Which equates to 7.5 users at monthly loss of only $350.00 per month per user.
No wonder the ISP’s in
It’s interesting – In
There’s a lesson in there somewhere.
Possibly the outcome of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) hearings may be that Canadians need to be taught the simple economics of bandwidth and what the impact of file sharing is doing to their networks. Could CRTC actually teach users that a 6 Mbps IP connection does not equal a 6 Mbps constant download capacity.
Net Neutrality ?
Nope – can’t happen with Torrent clients sitting on the network – unless someone gets the users together and asks them to voluntarily self regulate.
I said this before in my article “Koltai becomes a wowser” we need some Net Commandments…..
I think we should start again…..
I <insert name> being of sound mind do hereby understand that my 6 Mbps connection is shared by at least eight other people and as a good net citizen I undertake not use more than one eighth of the capacity offered to me on my DSL plan.
Signed ………………………..
However one thing is becoming clear from the hearings – Telcos that don’t peer are having a hard time justifying their restrictive business practices to the Commission members .
We watch with interest and bated breath.
