So just let the market pressures dictate this. A WISP can switch upstream providers if they are being treated unfairly. It may not be cheaper but they have that right. Upstream providers are in the business of selling bandwidth so it is unlikely that they will do this if you are truly purchasing bandwidth from a wholesale provider. The purchaser should carefully examine the terms of THEIR contract and if they are purchasing bandwidth from a competitor they should understand the risks of doing so. The free market system can and will work especially with all of the new competitive systems that are being built with stimulus money. The government does not need total control of everything with the idea that reasonable humans can't do it on their own without them.
As much as the whiny consumers can complain, I ask this question, if every ISP did not work on some sort of oversubscription model then why is it that a consumer won't go out and buy a 10 meg connection from an upstream provider and pay the prices all ISP's do? The business owner should have the right to regulate and manage the capacity of their network as they see fit. They know what it is capable of, what is profitable and what they feel they can handle. Having to deal with outside forces that have no idea what that individuals business model is working under is plain wrong. Will a business owner make mistakes in some of their practices, no doubt. Will they piss off consumers and lose customers if they do? Certainly. Last time I checked that is still a free market system and one of the beauties of being an American citizen. Government cannot and should not try to keep these mistakes from happening. If government should be in the place of protecting and taking care of the poor consumer then why don't they start having grocery store Nazi's dictate what you buy and eat to protect you and your health and keep the health care costs down. They know what is a better diet for you so they should dictate what you are allowed to buy and eat...just saying that at some point the government needs to stop thinking they are going to be everyone's savior. Brian From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jack Unger Sent: Wednesday, August 04, 2010 12:10 AM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] net neutrality, there may be hope yet... Comments inline. Fred Goldstein wrote: At 8/3/2010 09:03 PM, Jack Unger wrote: Fred, Many WISPs throttle throughput according to the terms of the contracted service that each customer purchases. For example, if a WISP sells 1 Mb down and 512k up then they limit throughput to somewhere near those levels. Under those conditions, a customer can have a file or web server and it does not adversely affect the overall WISP network performance. Sure it does. Last week's discussion confirmed that the average ISP retail residential customer generates a load of about 50-100 kbps. A lot higher when "using" it, near zero at other times. But a file server can pump an Mbps or more all day and night. The whole trick to low residential pricing is a high oversubscription ratio, and this is especially true with wireless. Then put a monthly bandwidth cap (or caps) into your Terms of Service and price your service accordingly. This level of throughput management should come under the "reasonable network management" definition that service providers are allowed to perform. This throttling is also application-independent so no selective throttling by application is needed. Finally, the throttling is implemented in routing tables full time and once programmed, it requires no human interaction. "Reasonable" is a "rule of man", not "rule of law" construct. Blocking the pirate CDN was not considered "reasonable" when it was not done by an ILEC. I would rather allow ISPs to do as they please, at risk of displeasing their customers, rather than follow rules designed to please a cheapskate pR0n distributor. And banning servers is a good way to keep the average load and thus the cost and price down. With no rules, what are you going to do when your upstream provider decides to block or throttle your network for whatever the reason? They are after all just "doing what they please". Without some kind of network neutrality protection, there's no law against blocking you, right? Fred Goldstein wrote: At 8/3/2010 06:24 PM, Jack Unger wrote: Why would customers installing file servers cause you a problem if you limited their throughput to the Terms and Conditions of their contract where you would specify the amount of bandwidth that you were supplying them and limiting them to? You could limit throughput "neutrally", provided that it limited upstream file service and interactive applications like gaming and telephony equally. That's basically what Comcast consented to do. However, those applications usually require a person to be there; content distribution runs 7x24. Their ToS (I'm a customer) prohibited file and web servers; the FCC found that unreasonable. I do believe that if someone had complained about such activities on Verizon's or ATT's part, the K-Mart FCC would have found it perfectly desirable. Fred Goldstein wrote: At 8/3/2010 04:58 PM, Mike Hammett wrote: That's what I don't understand... some people are so for Net Neutrality, but every unhappy incumbent customer is a potential sale. I've long opposed "network neutrality" rules on grounds that it could put most WISPs out of business. You'd be forced to live by the same rules that the urban ILECs and CATVs do, even though your cost of both last-mile capacity and middle mile (if rural) is much higher. Thus you'd be required to allow customers to install file servers at their subscriber locations, even though it's much cheaper (overall) to have them at a fiber backbone site. Recall that Vuze, who made the big stink, is a pR0n distributor using subscriber-site file servers and home-user computers to undercut other CDNs on price. I think Verizon actually favors such rules, on grounds that FiOS is hurt less than most others, including cable, and they'd be happy to see WISPs go away. (When I see them opposing it, I think of Bre'r Rabbit and the brier patch.) -- Fred Goldstein k1io fgoldstein "at" ionary.com ionary Consulting http://www.ionary.com/ +1 617 795 2701 -- Fred Goldstein k1io fgoldstein "at" ionary.com ionary Consulting http://www.ionary.com/ +1 617 795 2701 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- WISPA Wireless List: [email protected] Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- Jack Unger - President, Ask-Wi.Com, Inc. Network Design - Technical Training - Technical Writing Serving the Broadband Wireless, Networking and Telecom Communities since 1993 www.ask-wi.com 818-227-4220 [email protected]
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