131–140 of 155 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Although an open email relay would probably be some other violation of the AUP, methinks. (warning: haven't actually read AUP.)
Most likely. But it's trivial to see whether or not someone is running an SMTP server whereas it's more difficult to determine if they're running an open relay.
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The friction in these situations generally comes from the hand-wavey definition of server. Google doesn't care about your website as it currently exists. They do care if it turns into boingboing, or something more commercial. Clearly defining the point at which the line is crossed hamstrings them when unforseen situations arise. Not clearly defining it allows for capricious enforcement. At either end of the spectrum…
> They do care if it turns into boingboing Why? Really why? I'm buying a certain number of bits per second. They don't need to know nor should care about the content of those bits. If they oversubscribe and sell bandwidth "bursting" up to X, but only a small fraction of X for a sustained period then they should have to advertise that clearly and not claim "X bandwidth connection". Rather than burying it in a TOS.
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Your post is based on a lot of actual and epistemological assumptions that are either incorrect, or undefended. For example: > This is done because most home users could never afford internet, if they had to pay for full price. There is an epistemological problem here about what "full price" means, which is subjective. I would argue that "full price" is simply "whatever AT&T/Comcast charges you". You seem to want the…
We seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot -- perhaps I've been unclear : > There is an epistemological problem here about what "full price" means, which is subjective... You seem to want there to be some "other" type of price that is the "real price". I think I made this pretty clear, but I'll re-state it to try to clarify what I mean : "Real price" is not an 'epistemological problem', it's simply the cost of dedi…
So I have come to the conclusion that in part we are talking past each other. You are saying “Consider the set of people such that they need more bandwidth than is available in the pre-existing copper/fiber cabeling to the premises. In that case they need new cable/fiber. This is expensive. The fiber that they will receive is theirs alone (since, for starters, nobody else seems to need it).” Yes, that is all true.
However you are conflating this with the alternative “Anyone who does not do this shares a line with other persons and therefore can have no reasonable expectations about their level of service.” Which is not true. It is, in fact, the responsibility of the ISP to make a reasonable effort to control oversubscription. Some ISPs do not do this, of course, but the consumer is not wrong for having the expectation.
Here in Austin, we have 8x4 DOCSIS3 to the building. That’s about 340MBit/s down. If you divide that by the ten units in this building, that’s 34Mbit of (dedicated) bandwidth to each unit. Meanwhile my advertised speed is 35Mbit. I’m never going to notice if everybody saturates their connections and I lose 3% of my bandwidth. So.
There are higher packages, and so I dunno, maybe there is this class of people that is just super annoyed that they are suddenly surfing at “only” 34Mbit during peak hours. But as a huge computer nerd I am not in that set, and I suspect the number of people who are seriously annoyed by oversubscription in Austin is a rounding error.
> However, there are lots and lots of other costs your ignoring. For instance, installing copper is not cheap.
I think we are in agreement here. Essentially I am saying that the cost difference between routing 1 packet and routing 1,000,000 packets is negligible, because the cost to route 1 packet involves installing the copper/fiber (and upkeep apparently).
What you are saying is “Well, what if you need hundreds of megabits of speed at your apartment?” And yeah, that is a problem, because in that case we need to run new cable/fiber. But this is not really a “shared line” problem. There is no service here that advertises a 300mbit shared line. It doesn’t exist.
> But you have it backwards -- high-margin business connections subsidize cheap residential ones. Businesses pay for those two to three mile hops, and home users get cheaper access by virtue of being 'on-the-way' to a business.
This seems absurd to me, to the point of being unbelievable. It may be that business class fiber is installed first, because no ordinary resident will lease their own fiber. However “installed first” and “subsidizes the cost of other subscribers” are two totally orthogonal things.
If you consider a fully-connected residential network, it spans a larger area, and has a lot more cable installed (and probably is a lot more expensive to build), than a fully-connected business network. Thus, connecting an arbitrary business to a fully-connected residential network will always be cheaper than connecting an arbitrary residence to a fully-connected business network. This doesn’t have anything to do with “first” or “second”, it has to do with the size and linear feet of cable and square mileage of coverage of one type of network when measured against the other.
> Every home user signs an agreement, that clearly states what is "fair". I'm not inventing or assuming a definition of "fair", it's spelled out in detail when you subscribe for service.
This is literally the COMPLETE relevant part of my residential-class internet connection terms of service from a major ISP:
> The Services are for your reasonable, personal non-commercial use only. You may not provide the Services to any person who is not a member or guest in your household, or to persons outside your premises, whether for a fee or otherwise. You will take reasonable precautions to prevent others from gaining unauthorized access to the Services.
Can I run an HTTP server? I have no idea. Can I use 2TB a month? No clue. There is absolutely nothing "clear" about what I can or cannot do with my internet connection, and if you think being "clear" and "fair" is standard business practice for ISPs in the United States you need a real reality check.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most likely. But it's trivial to see whether or not someone is running an SMTP server whereas it's more difficult to determine if they're running an open relay.
Wouldn't it be a simple matter of just trying to send an email using the server in question? If you receive the email you just sent, then it's an open relay.
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Wouldn't it be a simple matter of just trying to send an email using the server in question? If you receive the email you just sent, then it's an open relay.
So now you have to have an email account somewhere that allows anything and everything to be sent to it (no spam filtering), and you need a system to send emails and correlate that with received emails. This is all certainly possible and not necessarily that difficult, but compared to seeing if a service is running on port 25 it's about a hojillion times more hassle.
I still don't think this comports with the net neutrality rules, which focus on network management at a user/protocol level. Commercial/non-commercial is a business distinction -- which is exactly what net neutrality was meant to stop (e.g. Comcast throttling BitTorrent). Google Fiber shouldn't care a whit if my server is commercial or non-commercial (what does that even mean?) If my usage hurts the network, then GF…
It started as a contractual distinction. Home DSL is cheaper because it is not guaranteed to be up so you can't sue your ISP for lost business, etc... Then the big telcos got the game, and started to elaborate among themselves how to remove service and add fees. Someone saw the non-commercial vanilla clause, and had the great idea of using that premise to shut down inbound connections by the most insanely idiotic ass…
Both the upstream and the downstream systems were shared among the 250 or so homes fed from a fiber-optic node, and the performance of your system was related to what your neighbors were doing with their Internet (this is still the case). When DOCSIS was standardized, they started with the Motorola QAM system. The whole cable system is tailored to deliver information to a home, with a very limited upstream, which is the exact opposite of what's needed for a high-bandwidth server (which needs relatively little downstream and a very large upstream.
Internet as originally provided outside of dial-up was expensive (I was paying $700 per month for 1/3 T1 in the mid-nineties), and the phone companies were pocketing a large amount of money from business customers who were buying Internet OR connecting their facilities with frame-relay. When home DSL became available, the telcos didn't want to cannibalize their business service, so the no-servers, home service tiers there are protecting the (now significantly cheaper) business tier cash flow.
I had a rack of servers in my basement that were Internet connected, and I can tell you that for outbound services (web content etc), my customers/readers/users get much better performance being served by a single $20/month Linode server than they ever did through my line-of-sight microwave connection. Even beyond the last mile, the distribution plant isn't a place for anything but a hobby server.
I still don't think this comports with the net neutrality rules, which focus on network management at a user/protocol level. Commercial/non-commercial is a business distinction -- which is exactly what net neutrality was meant to stop (e.g. Comcast throttling BitTorrent). Google Fiber shouldn't care a whit if my server is commercial or non-commercial (what does that even mean?) If my usage hurts the network, then GF…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot -- perhaps I've been unclear : > There is an epistemological problem here about what "full price" means, which is subjective... You seem to want there to be some "other" type of price that is the "real price". I think I made this pretty clear, but I'll re-state it to try to clarify what I mean : "Real price" is not an 'epistemological problem', it's simply the cost of dedi…
> "Real price" is the cost of a connection that "never" slows down, because it is literally dedicated to you and only you. So I have come to the conclusion that in part we are talking past each other. You are saying “Consider the set of people such that they need more bandwidth than is available in the pre-existing copper/fiber cabeling to the premises. In that case they need new cable/fiber. This is expensive. The f…
Close. I'm saying 'Considering the set of people that need more bandwidth than is available regardless of the pre-existing infrastructure.
It's a subtle difference, but it matters. Your next point is a good example of why :
> Here in Austin, we have 8x4 DOCSIS3 to the building. That’s about 340MBit/s down.
Pause here, this is a faulty assumption. Yes, your buildings line is capable of 340Mbit/s down. But your line is (probably) never maxed out like that.
For a provider to offer you 340Mb dedicated to your building, they'd have to pay for a dedicated 340mb to your building. I don't know the prices in Austin, but in Urban Michigan, just getting a 200x200mb backhaul connection costs roughly about $2,000 to $2,600/month.
If there are ten units in your building, to let your building share 200x200 would mean your ISP would have to have a backhaul cost of $200 to $260 per unit, just on backhaul alone!
(That doesn't include the cost to have copper in the building, or the cost for the ISP to get that backhaul from their data center to your buildings demark, or the cost to have your traffic routed / shaped nicely, or the cost for a telephone operator to offer you support, ect)
I presume your buildings units are residential; if that's true, there's no way your paying $300 or more per unit for home internet, so your ISP likely can't even afford to provide a 200mbit line to your building. They likely have a line capable of 300+, but with service only capable of around 100mbit at the highest.
That also assumes you can even get all the units to subscribe to the ISP service. Comcast / Charter / Time Warner / ect can make that assumption because they have a monopoly. But any players smaller than them, can't make that assumption. We might only get 20-50% of the units in a building to switch, which (if we're still delivering 200mb to the building) doubles the per-unit expenses to about $400/month each.
Remember, your not just sharing the line, your also sharing the backhaul (the ISP's connection to the internet at large).
>This seems absurd to me, to the point of being unbelievable..., connecting an arbitrary business to a fully-connected residential network will always be cheaper than connecting an arbitrary residence to a fully-connected business network.
This might in theory be true if you have a government blessed monopoly. (Even then, the margins on business service are much higher and cover the lower margins on residential)
But if your ISP is any smaller than Comcast, you probably don't have this. So you won't get every house in a residential area. Which means you'll be paying for a fully-connected residential network, but only collecting revenue on 20-50% of those houses. Which means you'll be paying for lines connected to hundreds of homes which you collect zero revenue on. (Remember, each foot of that network is 33cents, regardless if it's in use, regardless of whether you've subscribed service on it).
Businesses subsidize residential use. The degree to which that happens fluctuates wildly (Comcast for instance, can also use high-margin HBO and TV / pay-per-view / other subscriptions to subsidize their residential costs. "Pure ISPs" cant do that).
> Can I run an HTTP server? I have no idea. Can I use 2TB a month? No clue.
If you don't understand the agreement you signed, call your cable company. They will very clearly tell you "no" and suggest you buy a business class service (which should spell out the extra restrictions you've removed -- or at least, Comcast Business Class does here)
> if you think being "clear" and "fair" is standard business practice for ISPs in the United States you need a real reality check.
We're arguing two different things here. Your saying "my ISP is evil, they use X, Y, Z to do evil, therefore, X, Y, and Z are evil"
I get that. I'm not defending Comcast / AT&T / other shitty ISP's. I'm fully aware that Comcast crazy oversells backhaul in many markets, or is super overzealous on what they allow home users to do. (I live with this reality every day -- Comcast is the only ISP at my home).
But those things aren't evil because Comcast / AT&T use them for evil. If Comcast hops into an fast car and hits a bunch of pedistrians, that doesn't make "fast cars" evil. It makes Comcast evil.
Bandwidth caps aren't inherently evil, they're a useful way for low-volume users to save cash on their connection. Shared connections aren't inherently evil, they're a useful way for home users to get faster burst speeds that they normally couldn't afford.
Does Comcast use those restrictions to do evil things? Absolutely. Does Comcast lie about their restrictions, or purposly mislead folks around them. Certainly. Should ISP's be infinitely more transparent about their pricing and services? Absolutely! (and some already are).
Should we abolish these things just because Comcast uses them for evil? Not at all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be clear, I'm not defending most of it. I'm only defending 'ISP's can charge less to home users in exchange for them agreeing not to do specific things'. I'm not defending the anti-competitive nature of laws in the USA. I'm not defending overzealous use of 'home/business' seperation. And I'm not defending overselling backhaul - - - In your example, you use an rented apartment. This is a perfect example, a rented a…
600GB is not huge. It it tiny. That is half my steam library. A quarter of my backblaze backup. A crash event and I will have to wait half an year to recover my stuff. I see your math problem. And it has some solutions: 1. Nightly speeds - this was used in my country by the ISP-s when all caps on speed were removed after 1am to 6am with QoS on 80/443 2. Non guaranteed top speeds - you allow people to go up to some sp…
That's half your steam library. As in, you could re-download literally 50% of every Steam game you've ever purchased in your entire life.
It's also not a hard cap. It's just a warning light. If you go over 600GB, police do not show up at your house and cut off your internet service. It's simply an goodwill indicator. If your routinely jumping over 600GB use, you ought to be paying for a higher tier plan, like a 'power user home plan'. (If you restore your entire backblaze and steam library every single month -- something is wrong)
But otherwise, I agree with you on many of these points.
- Nightly Speeds : If the lines aren't saturated, your free to use as much as you please. (ISP's have to pay for that connection 24/7, so if it's not in heavy use, your free to run wild. Won't bother me any). This is done already.
- Non-guaranteed top speeds : This is also already done. Plans are advertised with separate dedicated and bursting speeds. Just because Comcast is deceptive on advertising, doesn't mean all ISP's are.
- Metered : I personally am fine with metered billing, if the price is right. However, literally no regular person is ok with this. Unless your super technical, you won't know how much bandwidth your using, and won't sign on for this plan. (especially now that Verizon / Sprint / AT&T charge $15 per gigabyte, people are conditioned to flinch whenever they hear anything remotely similar to 'metered billing').
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I would prefer minimum service guarantees rather than maximum usage allowances . If I want to maximize my use of my connection, the only thing my ISP should do is reduce my throughput when someone else is trying to check their email, so that I do not get in their way. Other than that Internet connections should be a free-for-all. The real problem here is that ISPs are so grossly overselling their networks' capacities…
If you want minimum service guarantees, buy a dedicated line. They generally run somewhere around $2500 a month for symmetric 50 Mbps. If you don't want to pay that much, but you still do want the option of bursting to 50 Mbps (or more), shared bandwidth, like you get from your average residential plan, is your best bet. And I don't know about your experience, but more often than not, I do get the advertised speeds,…
Frankly, I think this solution is not so bad: I get lower priority as I consume more bandwidth, until I am getting only the minimum throughput for my service class. Thus people can still get their burst speeds, and I can still seed torrents or run a web server or whatever else.
My real point is that I do not see why people should be punished for using their connection continuously. Comcast did not offer me "burst service," they offered me "always on" service with "speeds up to X." I feel little sympathy for an ISP that massively oversold service and then claimed that it is abusive for customers to actually use what they are paying for.