Industry standard bandwidth guarantee?

Fri Oct 31 16:56:35 UTC 2014

If you're selling to end users, under promise and over deliver.  Tell them
20Mbit but provision for 25.  That way when they run their speedtest,
they're delighted that they're getting more, instead of being disappointed
and feeling screwed.  In practice they will leave it idle most of the time
anyway.
This isn't a technical problem, it's just a matter of setting expectations
and satisfying them.  Some of the customers might be completely clueless,
but if your goal is to make them happy, then explaining protocol overhead is
probably not the right way.

-Laszlo

-----Original Message-----
From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-bounces at nanog.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Sorrels
Sent: Friday, October 31, 2014 16:14
To: nanog at nanog.org
Subject: Re: Industry standard bandwidth guarantee?

And if you look at it from the provider's prospective, they have lots of 
customers who want 12 gallons of gas worth of driving time, but only 
want to pay for 11 gallons (or worse, went to "gasspeedtest.net" and it 
showed their purchased gas only gave them 10 gallons worth of driving time).

Consider a better analogy from the provider side:  A customer bakes a 
nice beautiful fruit cake for their Aunt Eddie in wilds of 
Saskatchewan.   The cake is 10 kg - but they want to make sure it gets 
to Eddie properly, so they wrap it in foil, then bubble wrap, then put 
it in a box.  They have this 10kg cake and 1kg of packaging to get it to 
up north.  They then go to the ISP store to get it delivered - and are 
surprised, that to get it there, they have to pay to ship 11kg.  But the 
cake is only 10kg!  If they pay to ship 11kg for a 10kg cake, obviously 
the ISP is trying to screw them. The ISP should deliver the 10kg cake at 
the 10kg rate and eat the cost of the rest - no matter how many kg the 
packaging is or how much space they actually have on the delivery truck.

And then the customer goes to the Internet to decry the nerve of the ISP 
for not explaining the concept of "packaging" up front and in big 
letters.  "Why they should tell you - to ship 10kg, buy 11kg up front!  
Or better yet, they shouldn't calculate the box when weighing for 
shipping! I should pay for the contents and the wrapping, no matter how 
much it is, shouldn't even be considered! It's plain robbery.  Harrumph".

Jeff

On 10/31/2014 6:02 AM, Joe Greco wrote:
> That's fine as long as they're giving you a resource that can potentially
> transfer the 20Mbps.
>
> That *is* a silly example.
>
> A more proper analogy would be that you buy 12 gallons of gas, but the
> station only deposits 11 gallons in your tank because the pumps are
> operated by gasoline engines and they feel it is fine to count the
> number of gallons pulled out of their tank instead of the amount given
> to the customer.
>
>
> Finding new ways to give the customer less while making it look like more
> has a long, proud history, yes.
>
> ... JG

-- 
Jeff Sorrels
Network Administrator
KanREN, Inc
jlsorrels at kanren.net
785-856-9820, #2