Time Warner to Charge Extra for Over-Quota Bandwidth 933
duckygator writes: "I just came across this article on NetworkWorld discussing Time Warner's announcement that they will begin charging users a fee for exceeding a monthly download limit. The actual limits and associated fees aren't discussed. Guess I knew this would be coming sooner or later ... Now I guess I'll just have to guess where the threshold will be. Anything more than email? Active gamer? Graphic artist?"
It's been tried before (Score:5, Informative)
- Fraud. Several prolific warez kiddies figured out how to
change their MAC address to bill their service to their neighbors or even
to our own router (!). We're still not sure exactly how that
happened. Sure, we cut them off and connected their modems to a high
voltage source as punishment (our contract allowed it), but how many more
are there who we didn't catch?
- Billing issues. People who obviously ran up a very high
bandwidth bill would call us and complain when they got their statements,
asking us to lower their bills. Our position was that it wasn't our
responsibility that they couldn't figure out how to close Napster or stop
downloading porn. When they paid with credit card we would sometimes lose
the dispute, but things were okay when they paid with cash or check.
- Expectation of quality. As you know, a cable modem is a shared
medium and cable companies are not at fault for your neighbors' downloading
habits. However, it was considered a potential legal liability to be
providing a service of varying quality.
For these reasons and many others, metered cable modem service just won't work.Save us the self-righteous diatribe... (Score:4, Informative)
> I'll just have to guess where the threshold will be. Anything more than email? Active gamer?
Please spare us the drama. I've done benchmarks and an active gamer who performs regular web surfing and casual file downloads does not approach the quota limits. Quotas are designed to thwart the WaReZ PuPp13z of DC, Kazaa, and WinMX fame who are not only throttling the backbone, they're the reason your cable modem drops carrier every Saturday morning. Cry "wolf!" all you want, I signed up for internet access with a quota and I can't wait until my ISP starts to impose it on me and (more importantly) my k1dd13 neighbours. Spare us the social diatribe...
Cable modem vs. DSL (Score:3, Informative)
In the DSL world, you normally have a existing dedicated pair back to the central office, and bandwith from the CO usually isn't the limiting factor. And all the equipment is either at the customer or in the central office.
Re:Yeah well....they sink thier own boat..... (Score:2, Informative)
They offer a service. They advertise that service. Some people extraordinarily abuse that service.
They CAN handle more users, it's just that these bandwidth pigs cost more than anyone else. It's called ROI. Look into it.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Maybe this is kind of a stupid comment... (Score:3, Informative)
Excellent point. Add to that the fact that the courts have made them open up their networks to competitors. If someone is faced with high bills from TW/Roadrunner, switch to Earthlink. They're not gonna raise your rates and bend you over like that (at least not for a little while longer). Maybe it will buy you enough time to get DSL installed.
Re:Security patches may be costly (Score:3, Informative)
Consider just the updates to critical packages of this "certain very popular Linux distro", and I'm sure you'll come up with different numbers.
A Technical Solution (Score:5, Informative)
One simple and well-known algorithm to implement this solution is a token-bucket. (More information from Cisco's web site) [cisco.com] The basic idea is that you have a bucket that collects token at some rate. This rate corresponds to the peak rate of transfer. The bucket also has a maximum capacity which corresponds to the size of the 'burst' you'll allow. When a packet arrives and the bucket is non-empty, the packet is forwarded and one token is removed from the bucket. When the bucket is empty the packet is queued or dropped.
Going back to the above example, consider a token-bucket where tokens arrive at 56kb/second, and the bucket can hold (60*60*512) kbits of tokens. This bucket would allow full peak allows full use for a hour or two, at which time the bucket would be close to empty and packets could only be sent the sustained rate.
This kind of setup would not effect most users at all, but would limit the worst offenders to 1/10th or 1/100th the bandwith usage.
Re:Welcome to Australia (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Dumb question (Score:3, Informative)
I haven't priced things recently but I suspect that despite the lines from my house to my ISP getting MUCH faster at the same price, the lines from my ISP to the backbone still cost about the same.
Why does it cost so much on the backbone? Well they've laid thousands of miles of wire that they need to maintain and still make a profit, and those border routers and hardware for same don't come cheap. Not to mention a NOC, salaries for the guys who make sure the network stays running... it adds up.
Now the immediate response to this is "Add more backbone" but that's what companies were doing during the tech boom a couple of years ago. Now all that excess capacity sits unused and unprofitable. I don't think anyone will be adding more capacity to the network anytime soon.
Now that we have customers... (Score:5, Informative)
This is another example of short-sighted business plans, a desperate grass at building a customer base, and then selling-short until most of the competition in the area gets finacially hurt.
Why people feel that the grokster 24/7 kid should be punished is beyond me. They sold him the service now they must deal with it. Conversely, if heavy users are going to be punished then give breaks to lightweight users. Of course that means the same pricing plan as DSL, which is who they're fighting and distancing themselves from. Sorry, but this is more corporate bullying than anything else.
Re:Sucks, but makes sense (Score:3, Informative)
> remember when DSL companies (and cable) were
> dropping left and right?
The DSL companies dropped like flies when Rep Tauzin (R-LA) introduced a bill to essentially repeal the Communications Act of 96 and restore the Baby Bells to their 'rightful' place as monopolies over the local loop. Fear of that bill passing dried up the venture capital to the DSL providers at a time they were building out like mad and were short on cash, since when it passes CLECs disappear, leaving all of the DSL providers who aren't regional Bells screwed. That shit running downhill screwed the telco equipment makers like Nortel & Lucent, and pretty much lead to the dot.bomb meltdown. Put the blame where it belongs, Billy "Bell Boy" Tauzin. He is a Rep from my home state of Louisiana, but not my district so I can't vote against him.
Ignorance is not an Excuse (Score:3, Informative)
Just because a user doesn't know that they can monitor their bandwidth doesn't give them an excuse.
In Win2k or better, you can just look at the properties for your network interface and see how much traffic has been passed. I am also 90% sure that there are countless freeware tools that do the same. In fact, the provider probably has a web page where a user can track their usage.
The bigger issue here is trying to get users into the habit of watching their usage. If you leave a room, you turn off the light. Do you know what a "kilowatt-hour" feels like?
Belgium, Europe (Score:3, Informative)
500MB/Month at like 25/Month
10GB/Month at 40/Month
20GB/Month at 65/Month
Unlimited at 90/Month
Each additional MB is invoiced at 0,05
Maybe this is what will happen in the states too??
Good luck!