Pay-As-You-Use High-Speed Internet?
Rob Nelson
ronelson at vt.edu
Fri May 14 22:38:16 UTC 2004
At 06:19 PM 5/14/2004, Jonathan M. Slivko wrote:
>Bill - I'm not saying dedicate a whole T1 to a single customer, i'm saying
>share a T1 or T3 among many customers in a small geographic area, but let
>each customer have fair use of the T1/T3.
>
>BTW, we have been doing this for the last 6 years in a colo environment
>and more recently a residential/corporate building with about 300 units
>(50 of which are lit by us) with a single T1.
>
>As far as the local loop cost being zero, I *know* that that is not
>feasible, but what is feasible is to make a fixed cost aside from the
>bandwidth of say $30-$50 per customer per month to cover the cost of
>e-mail service, support, etc.
What's your cost on managing the bandwidth? You're basically creating
on-demand frame circuits, and balancing them is tricky (actually, deciding
on an oversubscription ratio is easy, dealing with the customers is the
tricky part!) on a low-margin basis. Of course, if you're a BofH or a sales
guy, I expect that to be less bothersome than if you're a techie who has to
actually talk to the customer when their neighbor takes up their bandwidth.
Sometimes I wish I could be a bit more slimey to make paying the bills less
painful *sigh*
Something I'd be more interested in for personal use would be protected the
usefulness of my site, as well as the cost of it, against a slashdotting.
If I get slashdotted on the first of the month, I essentially pay the same
as if my site gets slashdotted on the 30th. The difference is in 29 days of
downtime. And no, I don't have a solution to offer for that one, but that's
what always annoys me - to see a site get slashdotted at the beginning of
the month, knowing my attention span won't last until next month :)
Rob Nelson
ronelson at vt.edu
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