Bandwidth hogs - are they real?

Do you think bandwidth hogs adversely affect other users on the network?

  • Yes

    Votes: 84 29.4%

  • No

    Votes: 202 70.6%
  • Total voters
    286
LancelotSA said:
Funny then that the US etc have started implementing caps.....
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Only because they have been counting the gigs, and saw an opportunity to make more cash. It is hard times after all ;)
 
ads said:
Let's try a little experiment.

You get together with some friends and build a local Wireless User Group, and all put in some money to buy uncapped Internet connectivity. One of your members has a room full of PCs, and several small businesses on the side, running torrents over your network more or less permanently, so that none of the rest of you ever see more than half the available bandwidth.

Do you:

  • Educate him with a baseball bat?
  • Disconnect him (implement a fair use policy)?
  • Make him pay (i.e. start billing for download)?
  • Implement soft-capping (i.e. bill him, and no-one else)?
  • Implement hard-capping, to give the rest a chance?
  • Spend some more of your own money, and shape his bandwidth?
Actual prices, actual bandwidth etc aside, is the problem now obvious?
Click to expand...


Close the network down since you are not getting value for your money...
 
ads said:
Let's try a little experiment.

You get together with some friends and build a local Wireless User Group, and all put in some money to buy uncapped Internet connectivity. One of your members has a room full of PCs, and several small businesses on the side, running torrents over your network more or less permanently, so that none of the rest of you ever see more than half the available bandwidth.

Do you:

  • Educate him with a baseball bat?
  • Disconnect him (implement a fair use policy)?
  • Make him pay (i.e. start billing for download)?
  • Implement soft-capping (i.e. bill him, and no-one else)?
  • Implement hard-capping, to give the rest a chance?
  • Spend some more of your own money, and shape his bandwidth?
Actual prices, actual bandwidth etc aside, is the problem now obvious? What do you think is actually the fairest mechanism?
Click to expand...

Simple, you shape p2p to uselessness ;)
 
If South Africa's typical caps were between 50 - 150 gb this would not be an issue in the first place.
 
yavahn said:
Now y'all know, I don't know nuthin'.....but I see a lil halo around this word: "CONTENTION"
Am I the only who doesnt get the reason/need for this anomoly?
When you sign up with your ISP, do they tell you, whether printed in your contract, or when the agent is trying to convince you why their service is that much better, that you will in fact not be able to use, what you "think" you are going to pay for?
Why am I MADE to share anything? With anyone? Am I paying, like Cat011 suggested for: TimeShare?
Obviously I'm ranting, but I'd like to see if someone can justify this for me.
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If you wanted an uncontended service it would be significantly more expensive. I'm sure there are ISPs who would happy to give it to you if you're willing to pay.

Drunkard #1 said:
We all know about contention, however you've misinterpreted the biggest complaint amongst SA consumers. Price.

"This is awesome for consumers because they can get a higher burst speed at a much lower cost..."

Here's your mistake ^^^. A "much lower cost" would be R50 per month, uncapped. (If we all followed your recommendation of not abusing an uncapped line.) An example: DFA sells a 40 Gbps line for R 100 000 pm. Assuming the end user has a 4 Mbps line and the ISP can implement a contention of 20:1, that portion of the link should cost the ISP R 0.50 per user, per month. Telkom will provide that same line, but charge several million.

It's not the bandwidth hogs that skew prices in SA, it's the 6 or so "real ISPs" and Telkom.

And even if I want 1:1 contention (IE: using the line to it's maximum, all day, every day) on a DFA line, 4Mbps would cost R10 per month. Admin should be negligible for a big ISP, and a big onward link to London is going to be cheap as chips on any of the new undersea cables once the rest of them land. (Not that Seacom costs all that much, even today.)
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There are a lot more costs involved than what you are mentioning. Contention is going to be with us for some time, there's no way around it.
 
Garyvdh said:
Anybody who uses the term "bandwidth hog" is admitting that their network is pi$$ poor and not designed for modern Internet demands. Get with the program. Lay some fiber. Give the consumers the internet they demand... or someone else will.
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If only it where that simple.
 
Garyvdh said:
Anybody who uses the term "bandwidth hog" is admitting that their network is pi$$ poor and not designed for modern Internet demands. Get with the program. Lay some fiber. Give the consumers the internet they demand... or someone else will.
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Someone else?
 
Garyvdh said:
It has already started. A year ago I was on a 5 Gb cap for R500 a month. Today I am on uncapped. No complaints here. :D
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And I'm sure it is contended. Probably quite highly.
 
Right,selling burst capacity...

Tell me why those fantastic 1gig cap adverts advertised you being able to download 300 songs or whatever. With my 100gig cap i want to get 30 000 tracks then thank you

Overselling and underdelivering has been fantastic to bump profits,I mean - charge for the possibility of maybe getting exactly what they advertised on an ideal day with a power outage countrywide and you on a generator right?
 
Hogs do exist.

At month end the internet is slow and unresponsive as everyone is downloading the biggest load of rubbish just to use up their caps.

You do not need Season 1 of Who's the Boss or Pumpkin Patch. You will not play Doom 3.iso and you certainly don't need to re-watch Scary Movie or Dude Where's my Car in Bluray format.

I will admit that this is a symptom of small caps in the first place, but I know that even if we had 100GB caps or uncapped, this practice would get worse, not better.
 
The issue is that ISPs buy their bandwidth up front and by capacity, not by the MB/GB. Once bought they are paying for the capacity regardless of the amount of traffic going over the line, they will pay the same full or empty. Shaping and capping allows ISPs to extract greater value (profit) from its investment. When selling accounts ISPs know how much cash is coming in (users) and how much is going out (capacity payment), usage is not really an issue other than handling users online experience. As Dominic has alluded to, ISPs are trying to squeeze too many users onto their limited capacity to extract maximum value (profit). I think it comes down to reasonable profit and what exactly that means...and its impact on the general profit of SA inc too as a corner shop plying its trade in the world.
As an aside, I think shaping things like torrents is O.K. although ISPs should be striving to let users keep their lines near capacity (but not at congestive overload). Another option is kick off your top 3 users every month :)
 
Gaz{M} said:
Hogs do exist.

At month end the internet is slow and unresponsive as everyone is downloading the biggest load of rubbish just to use up their caps.

You do not need Season 1 of Who's the Boss or Pumpkin Patch. You will not play Doom 3.iso and you certainly don't need to re-watch Scary Movie or Dude Where's my Car in Bluray format.

I will admit that this is a symptom of small caps in the first place, but I know that even if we had 100GB caps or uncapped, this practice would get worse, not better.
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If you paid for 5gigs, and it will expire if you don't use it, so will let it expire, or use it?

The end-of-the-month bandwidth rush has more to do with ISP selling you something is only valid for a certain time, thus forcing you to use what's left at the end of the month. If it carried over, or if caps wasn't an issue, there wouldn't be a rush for bandwidth at the end of the month.
 
icyrus said:
And I'm sure it is contended. Probably quite highly.
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Doesn't matter, it runs at a speed quite acceptable to me for the price... and from here on it can only improve as more and more people lay backhaul. Hence my comment about the laying of Fibre.

On a side note... the uncapped service I use is throttled during business hours... and I in fact do not even make use of it at all during business hours. But after hours I use it to the max. That is one way of avoiding the whole hog scenario and one that I am quite happy with.
 
Gaz{M} said:
Hogs do exist.

At month end the internet is slow and unresponsive as everyone is downloading the biggest load of rubbish just to use up their caps.
Click to expand...


Oh my word. You paid for 5gigs worth of downloads. You used it,now you are a bandwidth hog?

Instead of offering uncapped solutions at 1:20 contention ratios and complaining when they do squeeze near a terrabyte out of the lines perhaps they should re-model their sales system to a high-cap rollover.

Paying a premium for gigs and then seeing them vanish into oblivion due to line speed issues or just being away and not being allowed to "hog" bandwidth is a **** story
 
I find the concept of a bandwidth hog to be bizarre... what they are saying is "Don't use the bandwidth heavy content"

Look for example at how much bandwidth you would eat if you were feeding IPTV at decent quality across a line. I've seen fairly high quality content (high enough to fullscreen on a 42" tv) streaming at 2.7mbit/second using x264. That would run at 29gigs every 24 hours or 874gigs a month. If we had REAL dsl speeds (24mbit as it fairly commonplace elsewhere), you could do 20mbit high def TV... at 9gigs an HOUR (or 6.4 terabytes per month).

Now, am I a bandwidth hog because I'd wanna watch high def tv for 3 hours a day? (Eating 800gigs of bandwidth)? I don't think so (I'm just a tv addict).

Seriously... people talking about bandwidth hogs must get a grip
 
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