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Comment by closeparen | Hacker News Reader

I would expect rationing of the available bandwidth to become more important, not less, as the entire population is stuck at home using it all day.

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That’s if congestion was ever actually a problem to begin with.

That's what I've been wondering ... will they ever try using "we need zero rating to prevent network overload" again if they'll demonstrate now that they don't?

I wish I could say no, but: Yes. In time they could claim - potentially truthfully - that an increasing number of increasingly connected devices engaging in more complex applications by ever more data hungry end users drove additional demand relative to the levels seen in the past, even during past crises.

Reality is that peak usage (at least in Canada) is in the evening hours. Impact from WFH during office hours will just use excess daytime capacity.

WFH (RDP/Webex/VPN) uses much less bandwidth than streaming Netflix.

But the kids being at home might make a big difference.

Having kids at home without an internet connection these days is something most parents would rather not experience. Right up there with lack of electricity but lower in the priority list.

I'd have thought Netflix in particular would use less bandwidth than video conf because of the amount of peering / caching tricks they can do to bring their service "closer".

Note: I'm not talking purely bits transferred - I'm referring to network boundaries. In-network congestion should be easier to manage for an ISP and I'd expect plenty of them make it so Netflix and others' traffic is effectively "in-network".

Sure, but any sane ISP in a big enough metro will have ports are the local Internet Exchange where Amazon, Netflix (if you exceed the appliance), Google, MSFT, etc. all peer at.

After that, what’s left?

In Canada, it’s actually the incumbents that largely refuse to peer freely.

What is more important is that WFH traffic is far more balanced in it's up/down ratio and hence is likely to have neutral pearing costs if it leaves the ISP's network at all.

Not to mention that most of the people now moving to home office will be spending their time working in relatively low bandwidth applications not sitting video conferences.

Aussie Broadband have announced unlimited bandwidth for those on limited plans, but also that those few making extreme use of available bandwidth will be throttled. They might slow their connections down, too.

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