Egypt Calls for Bandwidth Rationing

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Egypt's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has called upon its citizens to ration their internet usage. This comes after two of its three undersea fiber optic links were recently severed. The cut cables have caused communication difficulties for millions of people throughout the Middle East. Ministry spokesman Mohammed Taymur was quoted as saying, 'People should know how to use the Internet because people who download music and films are going to affect businesses who have more important things to do.'"

Business more important than my porn? NO!

[node159]

One would think that those businesses affected who depend on their network connection would see its value and have the appropriate SLA. Otherwise they should fall under the rest who need to fight over the limited data cause by a lack of investment of inferstructure. I have no sympathy, if line failure means a reduced capacity, that isn't a backup.

God talking heads piss me off some times. Get a clue.

Who is it more important to?

[hoojus]

I think it is pathetic to say that big business internet usage is more important than that of a home user. I for one work from home and my internet usage is closely tied to my pay. So to me it is definitely more important that corporate office people sending chain emails.

I do admit that the curbing of music downloading for personal use may be helpful... but there are musicians who require this for their income as well.

No way I would drop my usage at all.

Re:"More important things to do"

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a stupid and ignorant view. Those companies might seriously rely on their Internet connections for business, which helps the economy (could be small or big business). They're actually contributing something to the society - you jerking off however to some fansubs isn't, so society doesn't really care.

Just like with the power outage on the East coast in North America, in times of temporary resource shortage, it is expected that everyone try to help out so that society as a whole does better.

Otherwise, while your jerking off to your fansubs, the local economy might experience some serious problems.

However, that's not to say that the premise of bandwidth "rationing" itself is ignorant - if this was a truly serious emergency, the government could step in and allocate a certain amount of bandwidth to business. Or they could pass some legislation to force ISPs to start throttling users who are using too much bandwidth during peak times.

Re:Next up...

[Zorque]

All it's asking is that people try and refrain from heavy downloading (music, movies, etc) for a little while until the lines are fixed. They're not asking people to give up the internet entirely. It would be pretty stupid of them to have a large portion of their economy collapse just so people could torrent.

Re:Ah, good times

[Anonymous Coward]

Not every country can afford the redundancy mate. It's called being poor.

Re:These cables were cut on purpose

[Anonymous Coward]

Whose to say it was the NSA? Maybe it was Islamic fundamentalists cutting the cable because they did not want their countryment access to western influences?

It would seem that previous history of the NSA indicates their desire for no detection, as compared to an obvious interrruption.

Re:Who is it more important to?

[QuickFox]

appealed to the public's common sense

Never heard of this what is it?

Why are Americans so parochial? Just because the public in the US has no common sense doesn't mean it's the the same in the rest of the world.

Re:These cables were cut on purpose

[Erpo]

If that is how you feel, you should be encrypting sensitive information. There is never a guarantee that someone isn't looking at information you send in the clear over the Internet.

Re:Compromise

[ps236]

Oh come on. How many companies anywhere in the world have a satellite link 'just in case'? Never mind the problem of being able to afford to actually use it.

Most companies will have one DSL connection. Possibly they'll have an ISDN or second DSL available as backup - but that wouldn't help in this case. All that WOULD help would be a satellite link.

The businesses could well be paying more for their Internet link than individuals anyway - we pay about 6 times more for our DSL than a 'home user' account costs. That gives us a lower contention ratio, plus a basic SLA.

Even in the UK, if two of our transatlantic links were severed at the same time, things would slow to a crawl as data gets routed through Germany etc instead. I remember one failing not too long ago and it was very noticeable.

Two out of three failing at the same time is an exceptional event so you can't really expect a developing country to have more than one redundant link available for their two normal ones. How would your region handle the case where **all** their 'normal' Internet links out of the region were severed and they had to fall back to their redundant links???

They're not asking individuals to stop using the Internet at all, just to cut back on all the movie downloads. One movie download is a few hundred thousand emails after all (most of which will be spam..). Also, using the Internet within the country itself would not be a problem

Re:Ah, good times

[darthflo]

First of all, "poor" applies to people. Natural people, you see? Businesses are legal people. Just like there's no welfare for businesses, there's no "poor" businesses. (Obvious exemption: Gov't-subsidized public services. They're not poor, they're simply not competitive but the government deems them to be important enough not to die.) Either a business makes money, is using up stockpiles (including credits) of money or it's bankrupt. An internet-dependent business unable to afford basic redundancy is, however evil this may sound, badly led.

Re: Network neutrality again

[Andrewkov]

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. True in politics, and bandwidth allocation. ISPs cannot be trusted to police Internet traffic.

Re:These cables were cut on purpose

[cayenne8]

"Ministry spokesman Mohammed Taymur was quoted as saying, 'People should know how to use the Internet because people who download music and films are going to affect businesses who have more important things to do.'"

Ok..so exactly when was the internet created and instantiate PRIMARILY for the use of businesses? Oh..that's right...it wasn't.

Thank Goodness!!

Thankfully, it was created so that any computer hooked to it..was just as important as any other...a peer.

I'm all for businesses using it, makes things convenient for many, but, I get irked when you hear things now that sound like the internet IS there primarily for businesses, and that the common user is a tolerated menace.