Why do some ISP's have bandwidth quotas?

Adrian Chadd adrian at creative.net.au
Mon Oct 8 14:10:07 UTC 2007


On Mon, Oct 08, 2007, Joe Greco wrote:

> With respect to the AU thing, it would be interesting to know whether or
> not the quotas in AU have acted to limit the popularity of services such 
> as YouTube (my guess would be an emphatic yes), as I see YouTube as being 
> a precursor to video things-to-come.  Looking at whether or not AU has
> stifled new uses for the Internet, or has otherwise impacted the way users
> use the Internet, could be interesting and potentially valuable 
> information to futurists and even other operators.

.. or try to attract those sorts of content delivery networks into Australia
to serve said content locally and bypass the whole US transit issue.

Of course, the Australian market is so god damned small compared to the American
one, let alone trying to get content providers over to the West Coast when
there's two million people here, and 15+ million over east.

Some ISPs played around with Youtube caching. I won't name names, but there
were more than two of them. Its whats inspiring me to start getting some numbers
on bandwidth saved. What they found is that caching Youtube under test
conditions gave -immediate- traffic savings, but it skewed the TX/RX ratios.
Their inbound dropped but their outbound stayed the same, so their links were
"just as utilised." They then judged it not to be worth it at this time.
Of course, I'd say "can't you invent something to put in place of your now
lower RX utilisation?" but I'm just an Arts student, what do I know about
content? :)



Adrian
(Why don't I move overseas again?)



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