----- On Oct 10, 2021, at 2:42 PM, Doug Barton [email protected] wrote: Hi,
> And for the record, not only have I never worked for an ISP, I was > saying all the way back in the late '90s that the oversubscription > business model (which almost always includes punishing users who > actually use their bandwidth) is inherently unfair to the customers, and > when the Internet becomes more pervasive in daily life will come back to > bite them in the ass. I was laughed at for being hopelessly naive, not > understanding how the bandwidth business works, etc. I have worked for ISPs. And I remember the late 90s. Bandwidth was $35/mbit on average, at least for the outfit where I was. Consumers paid roughly $40 for their DSL connections, which at the time went up to 2Mbit depending on the age of the copper and distance to the DSLAM. Consumer connections were oversubscribed, on average, 1:35 to 1:50. B2B connections got a better deal, 1:10 to 1:15. It was simply not feasible to offer 1:1 bandwidth and still make a profit, unless you're charging fees the average consumer cannot afford. Especially considering that the average user doesn't even need or use that much bandwidth. It's a recurring discussion. People demand more bandwidth without considering whether or not they need it. End-users, business subs, and host-owners at large enterprises where I worked. The last ones are the funniest: entire racks using no more than 100mbit/s and hostowners are demanding an upgrade from 10G to 25G bEcaUse LaTenCy. The last consumer ISP I worked at had a very small subset of users that really needed bandwidth: the "download dudes" who were 24/7 leeching news servers, and the inevitable gamers that complained about the latency due to the links being full as a result of said leechers. In that case, a carefully implemented shaping of tcp/119 did the trick. Thanks, Sabri
