I Couldn’t Have Said it Better…

Noah Pepper over at Public Knowledge lays it out pretty well on the whole issue about network congestion and bandwidth caps. So without further adieu –

For example, lets assume we study two users on the network, lets call them Alice and Bob. Both are on the same service plan and network, which allow them 5mbps normally, but the network gets congested during peak hours (5pm - 11pm) allowing a user to use at most 2mbps. Alice gets online at 2 am and starts downloading large files, maxing out her internet connection until the next day at 2 pm. Bob gets home from work at 5 and hops online to watch streaming videos until he goes to sleep at 11pm, using only 1mbps. At the end of a month Alice will have downloaded a huge amount of data and doubtless be tagged as bandwidth hog, yet contributed nothing to the congestion problem. Bob will be considered a normal user at the end of the marking period - but has a far more significant impact on the lower quality of service during peak hours than Alice does.

Targeting these alleged bandwidth hogs for having large total usage by restricting network access or raising rates doesn’t get at the real problem, which is congestion during times of heavy usage. These penalties are essentially punishing consumers for gaining extra utility from the service, particularly at non-peak usage hours, at no harm to the ISP or other users.

Hogging implies taking much of some resource for one’s self and preventing others from gaining access to that resource. If a customer is able to do this, then the network is not being managed properly. If the network is so constrained such that 5% of users can cause congestion, even during off peak times, then the infrastructure is clearly due for an update or the ISP has promised much more bandwidth than it can deliver.

Throttling everyone during peak usage is the only sensible solution to this problem (besides upgrading the network). Getting online and finding speeds to be slow during peak hours is akin to trying to place a cell call during especially heavy usage and getting denied service, it is an unavoidable degradation in quality of service which should not pose a problem if it happens infrequently.

Now if throttling during peak periods solved the problem well that would be fine. But long term it won’t. Here is the reason why. Automation. I or anyone with the inclination could set up a cron job with a list of the files I want. Set the time for midnight and let it fly. It could drag file after file till exhausted. The bandwidth demand just shifted.

The only solution is that the ISP need to start investing to increased the bandwidth. Not by a little but by at least a factor of 10 from its current levels.

Linky.