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Don't Terminate People's Internet Connections

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121–130 of 132 posts

Re: Don't Terminate People's Internet Connections

#121
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most other utilities charge based on how much you consume.

Most other utilities have cost structures that scale with actual consumption rather than capacity. If you use more water, even if there is plenty of delivery capacity, they could literally run out of it. There is only so much in the reservoir. If you use more electricity, even if there is plenty of transmission capacity, they have to burn more fuel to generate it. Transferring more bits doesn't risk depleting the sup…

ISPs have cost structures that scale with actual usage. Cables and routers have a fixed maximum capacity. Within that capacity each marginal bit is virtually free, but as traffic increases they eventually they have to pay for hardware upgrades. Cisco doesn't give routers away for free.

Legitimacy or lack thereof is irrelevant when setting prices.

Re: Don't Terminate People's Internet Connections

#122

If the current strategy of making telecommuting the default takes hold post corvid-19 the governments of the industrialized world is going to be forced to treat internet the same way it treats other core infrastructure like roads or railways which means that nationalization will happen if the industry fail to deliver high speed and low prices to the undeserved rural areas.

I'm not an expert, but my local MUD board has made basically no improvements since the invention of plumbing. I happen to know how their systems work and they are designed to be the deadest-simple things that will work reliably forever. There's no such thing as a "high performance sewage system" unless you count a really big one as high performance. This attitude generalizes to civil engineers in general who prefer s…

Plumbing or Highway constructions were/are highly complex high-tech when the government decided the private industry was unable to maintain it to the standards society needed 50+ years ago.

You might also be mistaking the fad driven high margin web for the rather stable internet sitting underneath it, especially if you go all the way down to the cable duct where a lot of rural houses are still using copper put down in the 30ies.

The problem here is that laying down cable ducts requires both "right of way"(often exclusively held by whoever laid down telephone cables in the 30ies) expensive survey work and real physical labor(someone have to an actual trench), all of which requires capital and if you already own the copper cable for no significant increase in revenue.

Things can be done with radio signals and i suspect whenever 6G mobile arrives it might be municipal, but radio will likely never match the bandwidth potential of even the first optical cables ever laid down.

Re: Don't Terminate People's Internet Connections

#124
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most other utilities have cost structures that scale with actual consumption rather than capacity. If you use more water, even if there is plenty of delivery capacity, they could literally run out of it. There is only so much in the reservoir. If you use more electricity, even if there is plenty of transmission capacity, they have to burn more fuel to generate it. Transferring more bits doesn't risk depleting the sup…

ISPs have cost structures that scale with actual usage. Cables and routers have a fixed maximum capacity. Within that capacity each marginal bit is virtually free, but as traffic increases they eventually they have to pay for hardware upgrades. Cisco doesn't give routers away for free. Legitimacy or lack thereof is irrelevant when setting prices.

> ISPs have cost structures that scale with actual usage. Cables and routers have a fixed maximum capacity.

In other words, they don't scale with actual usage, they scale with maximum capacity.

When you take your monthly cable bill and divide it by what it pays for, almost all of it is going to things that don't scale with capacity. Having routers that are ten times faster doesn't require you to have ten times as many staff. They don't use ten times more electricity. They don't require ten times more office buildings or utility poles.

If you take the cost of the capacity upgrade and amortize it over total usage during peak hours, it adds a couple of bucks to the bill for the people who use the most. But that's not enough to deter usage by so much that you don't need the capacity upgrade. You need the capacity upgrade whether you charge per bit or not. At which point the upgrade is a sunk cost and charging for usage is inefficiently discouraging use of a resource that is being paid for either way.

Re: Don't Terminate People's Internet Connections

#125
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australia. The only country that makes the USA look good for broadband...

While I think both countries' ISPs like to compete for a yearly "silliest restriction and worst customer experience" award, the NBN in Australia is a government screwup mostly due to the actions of vested interests and vested politicians. An entire political party decided that the internet was just for "movies and entertainment", "You don't need fast internet" and similar comments. This guided them towards penny pinc…

... and now I learn that NZ has done similar things to AU.

Re: Don't Terminate People's Internet Connections

#126
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this is their speak to make it clear you cannot use that data while roaming. There are not enough resources hosted within the region to make the distinction pointed out by donavanm worthwhile, unlike e.g. China or Russia. The local data from my plan gets used up predictably while I access resources in any part of the Internet.

Could it be that they're including the rest of China in local? Are peering arrangements between HK and the rest of China such that this would make sense?

No, China and Macao both mean roaming data (not included in “local data” quota on regular plans), though the rates are good.

Re: Don't Terminate People's Internet Connections

#127
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on that? Do you mean like the RDP marketplaces should slow down so people cant find a computer near the skimmed credit card they bought so that visa transactions go through? Or something more like corporate hacking? Or back to the RDP to install monero mining botnets? I’m just trying to figure out which one you are referring to as “overtaxing”

similar to the virus or with any sort of lotka/voltera dynamics you cant take so much of a targets budget that it cant survive, that means if you subsist off others like animals do [consumers] those others[producers] must have enough "stuff" left to stay afloat or everyone goes down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotka%E2%80%93Volterra_equatio... there is a basis for mutual coexistence, it is a maladaptation for anyo…

oh, it would be weird for a hacker to do that kind of thing.

the vast majority of "hacks", the kinds with efficient markets, don't have those kinds of consequences, almost negligible consequences really.

nobody is trying to overload internet-connected generators or some infrastructure where there are consequences.

I just can't imagine what kinds of hacks you think are actually happening to fit your dynamic.

Re: Don't Terminate People's Internet Connections

#128
post #6

Here in Australia, a few responsible providers like Aussie Broadband have already announced unmetered data usage and temporarily stopping all service suspensions. https://www.aussiebroadband.com.au/blog/aussie-broadband-ann... Edit: The real test though will be the bandwidth of our gov-sponsored, substandard, widely FTTN (instead of full FTTP).

As a kiwi it blows my mind how bad your broadband is over there. My cousin recently moved to some rural Aussie town and will be getting 25 megabit, tops. Here in NZ we're rolling out 4 gigabit connections nationwide over the next 6 months. EDIT: props for getting rid of limits and disconnects though. NZ providers are just saying we'll be able to cope with everyone working from home because we have a fancy network.

how much international bandwidth are you getting now though? when i lived in auckland more than a decade ago, the local bandwidth was rather irrelevant to me, as most of the websites that i needed to access were overseas and i paid about a dollar per GB for that.

a fast local internet is useful mostly for local streaming services. (does youtube count as local in NZ now?)

Re: Don't Terminate People's Internet Connections

#129

If the current strategy of making telecommuting the default takes hold post corvid-19 the governments of the industrialized world is going to be forced to treat internet the same way it treats other core infrastructure like roads or railways which means that nationalization will happen if the industry fail to deliver high speed and low prices to the undeserved rural areas.

in germany this is already the case. there is a supreme coirt ruling from 2013 that defines internet access as a basic right, at the same level as access to water and electricity, or a landline. there was a case several years earlier, that a landline could not be terminated even if the payments have not been made. having internet as a basic right should affort it the same treatment

Re: Don't Terminate People's Internet Connections

#130
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it sucks, and what's worse is that there's no near-future course correction by the policy makers. This is going to come back and bite us in some very uncomfortable places. Kudos for the multi-gigabit fibre, when we can only imagine of a gigabit lottery.

I'm confused, what do policy makers have to do with it?

"Here in Australia Labor’s plan was for a nationwide network with 93 per cent FTTP coverage. Under the Coalition’s model, only around 20 per cent of NBN Co customers will enjoy FTTP. Around a third of fixed-line premises will be lumbered with FTTN."

https://independentaustralia.net/business/business-display/n...

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