People do pay for a certain bandwidth. They should be able to get it.
Same thing with overbooking on airplanes. You paid for a seat you should be able to use it.
Your argument wouldn't work there either.
Not sure why I have to say this, but, networks are not airplanes.
Oversubscription is not the cost-restrictive mandate it once was.
Not oversubscribing is a cost multiplier at every level. 1 million 1 Gbit customers in a city is going to need 1000 100Gbit connections out of that city and the same for transit, and that will have no impact on pricing? And everything is on average used at 1% of capacity.
And if they choose to gamble, advertising and entering into contracts promising "unlimited data", which they think will be more profitable across their entire customer base? Then they've got to do supply what they promised in the adverts. They chose to gamble that way, and if they lose money gambling that's their business.
I take you are fine with paying 10x or even more for your no oversubscription Internet connection then?
Oversubscription is not gambling. The way it works after your last mile connection is that ISPs look at link usage in their network, city level distribution, city to city, transit, peering, etc, once it reaches 60-80% utilization at peak you start looking at adding more capacity. Bad ISPs (most US ISPs) will let this go too far though.
Sure it is.
If I promise 30 people they can have a burger at my barbecue, but I only buy 20 burgers, I'm gambling that 20 people or fewer will show up.
It might be a reasonable gamble, based on past barbecues - but the guests left hungry will still be hungry, and I'll have broken my promise to them.
I do not buy your argument.
People buy a certain level of service, they should be able to enjoy it as in the rest of the world.
Please max out the line rate for a month or so straight and then tell me how happy your ISP is with you.
They are banking on the fact that you’re pulling 100mbps at the most, with bursts to 10gbps occasionally.
So then 300Mb/s transit, which is around the services these incumbent dinosaur ISPs are offering, is $20/mo? And $20/mo is only 10-20% of their large monthly bills? You're basically proving the opposing argument here in the general case [0].
For reference, I've asked my 1Gb/s municipal provider if they have bandwidth caps, and they told me "no" and that they are not concerned with how much bandwidth I use.
[0] The specific case is that most users are streaming video from large entertainment providers, for which the ISP isn't even paying transit but rather merely the electricity and rack units of CDN edge boxes.
As long as they also provide people the bandwidth sold to them when they want it.
Otherwise compensation should be in order if they throttle.
Same logic for interstate. You lay fiber once and scale equipment as needed. If you already have the fiber there then just use better modules.
If ISPs sell you a bandwidth per month they should deliver it.
You're the one that's short changed if you accept the throttling.
Flying is a one-time service with a specific and fixed point at which the service is provided. Its peak usage is the expected usage.
Internet access is a continuous service promise where it's nonsensical to expect the provider to predict exactly when every customer would want to use it. The peak usage is not the expected usage.
These are not comparable situations.
You pay for a certain level of service, you expect it delivered.
Second: If you're going to play the "I paid for this" game: this stuff is generally in the contract anyway. It is the level of service you paid for. The overbooking possibility? You paid for it, it was in your contract. Throttled service? That was in your contract too. You're getting what you paid for.
Large systems have their own rules.
If everybody watches the superbowl at the same time I'd expect the power grid not to fail.
If everybody gets home at around the same time from work and start powering on devices I'd expect power grid not to fail.
If it suddently gets cold and people turn on heating around same time, I'd expect it not to fail.
Those seem valid expectations and are met.
Therefor when I say if everyone starts streaming netflix it should work, then this is also valid expectation and should be fine.
> It is the level of service you paid for. The overbooking possibility? You paid for it, it was in your contract.
I get what I pay for when I want. I have 1gbps, I can run full speed as much as I want and sometimes it's nice to do that.
I am also in europe. I don't get throttled service and what you say is not in my contract.
What do you say to that?
> If everybody watches the superbowl at the same time I'd expect the power grid not to fail.
"I get what I want immediately" to "the system won't fail" is a nice way to shift goalposts. If everyone shows up to their flight then the flight won't crash, it'll depart just fine with the capacity it has and offer everyone else on the next available flight. You know, the same thing that happens when the power grid is turning back on. They do it one piece of the grid at a time. Which results in you getting less than what the person next door paid for. Because that's reality.
> I am also in europe. I don't get throttled service and what you say is not in my contract. What do you say to that?
When there are a ton of people crammed in the same location overloading the network, you get throttled, whether intentionality or not, whether you like it or not. There is no way on Earth that you being in Europe somehow makes you immune to reality.
Plus compensation which is an admission of fault on airlines.
> There is no way on Earth that you being in Europe somehow makes you immune to reality.
Perhaps you can think of how that might work, i can think of:
- large fiber pipes capable of accomodating spikes
- average out traffic for large systems - have predictable traffic at scale, scale up as needed, power on/off equipment, etc
The rock bottom rate for IP transit is $60/gbps. None of the infrastructure cost is included here.
And that’s with Hurricane Electric. They are a bit notorious for having probably the worst routing in the industry, but they are also the cheapest in the industry.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_transit
It’s nowhere near as simple as “large fiber pipes capable of accomodating spikes”.
There are very good reasons why hyperscalers are building their own intercontinental undersea fiber networks. So they don’t have to pay for the _extremely_ expensive intercontinental transit.
Last I checked renting a wave capable of doing 400gbps between Amsterdam and New York was close to $80k/mo. A wave is basically a dedicated wavelength of light guaranteed to you and only you.
You don’t want your ISP to oversubscribe? Become your own ISP. Get an AS number. Get your own IP space (both of these can be done on the cheap, /36 of v6 is basically free and /24 of v4 can be had for $100 a month). Get a BGP session with a transit provider. Pay them for transit.
Get IXP links so you have direct access to AWS, Google and Netflix. Save on the transit costs there! But the IXP peerings aren’t cheap and on a small scale will certainly cost more than transit.
Congratulations, you’re now paying $1000 a month for 1gbps guaranteed. It gets cheaper with scale, but scale also increases your infra costs.
Everyone would be on 10mbps if ISPs weren’t allowed to oversubscribe.
I became my own ISP as a hobby (https://bgp.tools/as/200676). This hobby costs me $200/mo, and I don’t have any real transit, just cheapo VPSes in locations convenient for me.
Wanna know what my residential ISP whom I pay €19/mo for 1gbps residential service quoted me for a BGP session at my home on a business connection? €9800 in setup fees, €2000/mo, min. 3 year commitment + transit. Of course that was a “fuck off, we just don’t want to do this” quote, but the only alternative I have here is to pull my own fiber.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/coronavir...
> Netflix and YouTube have already agreed to switch to standard-definition streaming in Europe to reduce bandwidth demand.”
You can change quality back to whatever. You can also use other services or use the connection for other things.
Dedicated Internet access is a thing, but it's expensive; and I'd argue that even that is oversubscribed if you go far enough up the chain.
The only way to get internet access that’s not oversubscribed is by renting (or pulling your own) layer 0. By that I mean either renting a wavelength between certain PoPs or just pulling your own fiber.
As long as they make a fair guess and I get my bandwidth whenever I want, all is good.
That seems to be the case right now.
Dedicated internet access is a different thing, I agree, it also provides different guarantees, support, etc.