S.Korea broadband firm sues Netflix after traffic surge

Sun Oct 10 21:57:32 UTC 2021

----- On Oct 10, 2021, at 2:42 PM, Doug Barton dougb at dougbarton.us wrote:

Hi,

> And for the record, not only have I never worked for an ISP, I was
> saying all the way back in the late '90s that the oversubscription
> business model (which almost always includes punishing users who
> actually use their bandwidth) is inherently unfair to the customers, and
> when the Internet becomes more pervasive in daily life will come back to
> bite them in the ass. I was laughed at for being hopelessly naive, not
> understanding how the bandwidth business works, etc.

I have worked for ISPs. And I remember the late 90s. Bandwidth was $35/mbit
on average, at least for the outfit where I was. Consumers paid roughly $40
for their DSL connections, which at the time went up to 2Mbit depending
on the age of the copper and distance to the DSLAM. Consumer connections
were oversubscribed, on average, 1:35 to 1:50. B2B connections got a better
deal, 1:10 to 1:15.

It was simply not feasible to offer 1:1 bandwidth and still make a profit,
unless you're charging fees the average consumer cannot afford. 

Especially considering that the average user doesn't even need or use that
much bandwidth. It's a recurring discussion. People demand more bandwidth
without considering whether or not they need it. End-users, business subs,
and host-owners at large enterprises where I worked. The last ones are the
funniest: entire racks using no more than 100mbit/s and hostowners are 
demanding an upgrade from 10G to 25G bEcaUse LaTenCy.

The last consumer ISP I worked at had a very small subset of users that 
really needed bandwidth: the "download dudes" who were 24/7 leeching news
servers, and the inevitable gamers that complained about the latency due
to the links being full as a result of said leechers. In that case, a
carefully implemented shaping of tcp/119 did the trick.

Thanks,

Sabri