Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In part, because most video sites will adapt the stream to the achievable bandwidth. Why is that a reason to force them to use less than their fair share of available bandwidth? > In part, because if the throttle all bulk data transfers over some minimum size, all the time, most people are only going to notice on video streaming, since videos are the most frequent bulk transfers. How is that a reason for anything,…
In a world (like ours) with limited bandwidth, you sometimes want to limit flows in a way to produce the least harm. Throttling different streams has different effects on user happiness. For instance, if you are 100 Mbits over capacity, you could either: (a) Throttle 100 users Netflix streams, which drop from 1080p to 720p (b) Throttle email, it backs up causing hour-long email delays. One is obviously less harmful.
That is actually the first mistake in your argument in this context. The bandwidth limits in mobile networks are first and foremost an effect of decisions by the network operators, not an inherent property of the world.
> you sometimes want to limit flows in a way to produce the least harm. Throttling different streams has different effects on user happiness.
Well, maybe. But I would argue that that is both (a) prone to erroneous valuation, if only due to conflicts of interest, and (b) almost always only the case to any significant degree in very artificial scenarios, not in the real world.
> For instance, if you are 100 Mbits over capacity, you could either:
> (a) Throttle 100 users Netflix streams, which drop from 1080p to 720p
> (b) Throttle email, it backs up causing hour-long email delays.
> One is obviously less harmful.
Primarily, that's a nonsensical scenario. For one, you are never "over capacity". That's what capacity means: The maximum speed at which you can transfer data. You never transfer data faster than you can. You are only "over capacity" in the sense that the link is congested, but that isn't a data rate that you are "over the limit", it's just that the queue starts to grow.
But also, your scenario implies that throttling email more than its fair share somehow would cause "hour-long email delays". Now, I dunno, what would that look like? 100 users using netflix, ~ 10 Mb/s each, for a total of 1000 Mb/s, and one user sending emails at 1000 Mb/s, which would then lead to the email sender being throttled to 950 Mb/s under fair sharing, which ... still would not lead to anything remotely like "hour-long email delays", despite being a totally contrived scenario?
It looks more like you just made up one bad thing and one not so bad thing, and then noted that the worse thing is worse. Which is fine. But it is completely irrelevant to the discussion if you do not demonstrate how those two options are actually options in the same situation, and how they, respectively, compare to fair sharing.