State Super-DMCA Too True

Sun Mar 30 20:57:31 UTC 2003

On Sunday, 2003-03-30 at 09:07 CST, Jack Bates <jbates at brightok.net> 
wrote:
>  Please see Saphire worm. Then tell me that an ISP doesn't oversell
> services. The fact is, the entire Internet is oversold. If everyone did
> their full capacity, it would crash. DSL is also based on this
> assumption. 

It's fine to oversell your capacity, as long as you inform your customers 
that that is what you're doing.  And it's ok to put bandwidth limits on 
usage (or tiered pricing), as long as you're up front with your customers 
about it (don't advertise a 2 Mb/s connection for $50 and then, in the 
fine print, say that the customer can't average more than 50 kb/s).

It's not fine (although an ISP can do it if they choose) and it is 
somewhat stupid to try to control what you care about (bandwidth) by 
limiting something that is not necessarily related to that resource (NAT, 
certain apps, etc.).

In summary, charge appropriately for what costs you money.  NAT does not 
cost you anything.  Charge for bandwidth, helpdesk calls (not due to ISP 
problems), whatever really is a direct expense to the provider.  Again, 
tell the customer plainly about these limitations (before they commit to 
them).

Tony Rall