Bandwidth hogs - are they real?

[Quest10n]

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

Exactly, we in South Africa think 3gigs is alot, WTF! Just goes to show you how pathethic we've become due Telkom's k@k, we start to think k@k and look for k@k excuses to be satisfied with 3gigs

 

[chubster]

100Mb IPC works out to R3k per mbs. Yes, signification but international is still the determining factor. While this is not true multicasting due to the nature of half duplex vrf's, it is still more cost effective than streaming IPTV internationally, which is considered data. Now sticking with the IPC example, although this is not the only broadband in SA, the ISP can exclude the 'on net' data from your data package. Therefore something to the effect of unlimited on net IPTV streaming and 10GB int data.

Rocking up 20k is realistic, repeatedly over several months, take my word for it. On a non-reseller model, yes, not quite the same, but take 1TB over a month, it works out to a 4mb line running close to 100%. What does 4mb 1:1 cost? It is unsustainable when charging a few hundred rand. Someone is going to pay for it and the ISP is depending on the subscribers to cover the cost, hence all the users effectively club in to pay for it as 'ads' explained.

While you can take a piece of bread or fish and multiply it to feed thousands, those events are rare.

Then ISPs should be more open instead of blaming their customers. The truth should be shown to everyone even the communication ministers that bandwidth is not cost-effective at 1:1.

Our communication minister must put a mandate in that states a minimum of 1:1 contention ratio to get a sustained 128kbit/s guaranteed to each end user. But because of bundles the ISPs sometimes reaches non-peak periods where nobody is using their network because of capping, now how do you resell that? again with the bundles so called "discounted unused bandwidth".

They created the mess and blame users? oh please. truth and be upfront. klaar

 

[schurtek]

Do bandwidth hogs affect the network? Yes, when the network is poorly built. No, when the network is correctly built. Since ADSL network in SA is poorly built I voted yes.

Two examples of Service Providers that both provide Wireless Access on their own networks.

WISP A: has 5x 4Mbps lines, running IS Uncapped routers. Last I checked they also had about 120 clients with an 2/3 running 256K and 1/3 running 512K all uncapped. They enourage their clients to rape the network as much as possible, downloads, torrents whatever they want.

Now these IS Uncapped routers have a threshold, so after so many GB, the line speed halves. So in reality the lines are only 2Mb each. That adds up to 10Mbps.

80x 256K= 20Mbps
40x 512K= 20Mbps

Total demand on network: 40Mbps.

Result. They are selling 4 times more uncapped bandwidth than they have. Network often not working. I left them quickly and just sprung for ADSL.

WISP2: 3 x 4MB Uncapped Router with metered bandwidth fail over (for when the threshold drops).

256K connection standard (512K on request for extra $$$). Total customers: 370.

1GB=R85
2GB=R170
3GB=R200
5GB=R300
R50 per GB there after.

Network is only congested mon-thurs from 6pm-9pm (everyone on skype, so they limited skype traffic to one router only).

Now for the bandwidth hogs out there, a new service is being tested. Corporate bandwidth not being used at night and weekends will be redirected to those who subscribe to the extra service. 25GB@256K will cost R600 and when you hit 25GB line will drop to 128K. One 4Mbps line will only serve 12 256K customers. Remember, that most ADSL exchanges operate at 10:1 - 40:1 ratios. Hopefully with the new upgrades, telkom will be having lower contention ratios.

Remember, your driveway can be 10 lanes wide, but if the road is only 1 lane, you can only move that much traffic down the driveway.

 

[moabin]

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? Who thinks it's fair just to let him carry on using all the bandwidth at no extra cost?

1) Throttle each of your friends connections to the percentage each paid towards the uncapped account.
Otherwise you're saying:

Buy a portion of this uncapped account, and use it as if you bought the full account.

Then when he does you get angry with him...

 

[AnomalyNexus]

Caps are an artificial market distortion and shouldn't feature in this discussion imo.

I wish the ISPs would put a price for 1:1 contention 4mbps. That is the cost (incl profit of course) of the bandwidth that a user downloading 24/7 is utilizing. That person doesn't carry the cost of that himself. He/She pays the same amount as everyone else. The ISP needs to recover the cost somewhere. Who ends up covering the cost?...the other subscribers.

At any given available capacity, reasonable overselling is more efficient than not doing so. Its true for airlines, hotel, restaurants, ISPs etc. Efficient meaning both from a business perspective and also in maximizing the use derived from a finite resource (ISP backhaul).

Saying that the network is rubbish & they should upgrade it is not a valid argument, since the ISP will (and should be) overselling the new & improved capacity too. i.e. Scaling up the situation doesn't remove the problem.

Don't get me wrong. I agree that its bullsht that ISPs use this to justify all sorts of data caps & shaping & whatnot.

 

[sin_x]

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

But the point is, we do NOT have real dsl speeds.
Your IPTV example is also not relevant. Surely with IPTV you would expect certain minimum service parameters, as it is more real-time. If using IPTV meant that you would pull 6.4 terabytes per month, then your ISP would take that into account before they sold the service to you, and would ensure that they have sufficient capacity for it.

 

[MadMailMan]

I think this whole thing is being over simplified in this thread. So everybody wants a 1:1 contended guaranteed 4mb DSL connection. Do you have any idea how difficult that is? Actually it's impossible. Just think about it. You get a 4mb DSL line to the DSLAM, right. Now you and say 250 other housholds connect through that DSLA to various ISPs. So the connection from the DSLAM must be at least 250*4mb (1000mb) to ALL the ISPs what does 1000mb IPC cost now? Don't worry this only helps if ALL the data you request is all at your ISP. The ISP now need to make sure (if all the 250 households use them) that they have at least 1000mb connection to every server on the internet because what if all 250 housholds want the same episode of Who's the Boss and it's only on one server. What if that server is yours on your 4mb DSL line? Must the ISP give you a 1000mb line? Now take this example and use real life numbers, how many DSL users in South Africa again?

Bandwidth hogs exist. Fact! It can be proven even on a 1gbps LAN. Then add the complexity of routers and multiple route routing techniques. This isn't rocket surgery boys, it's brain science!!

What I do agree with is Telkoms shoddy infrastructure needs an overhaul and Sipho Public in South Africa is being ridden löike a $2 whoar.

Just out of curiosity how much does Telkom make from supplying peering links between say IS and all the other ISPs? I'm betting BIG $$$$$$$.

 

[klasvaakie]

Bandwith Hogs will only adversely affect other people if the companies supplying the bandwith have a really cappy set up network. So its not the hog's fault that the people supplying the service dont know how to manage it well.

 

[Nutty Grandad]

Bah!
All this mumbo jumbo of who is a fault is sickening!
Simply put, the ISP's, Telkom and others will do anything to preserve and protect their age old, tried and tested recipies of "screwing" the hard working people of this country until the proverbial wheels fall off!

Over promise, under deliver...thats the name of the game here!

Fibre to the home should be a right in this day and age!
But why should they allow it? You the Consumer will continue to pay no matter what! It's SICK!

I always compare us to Romania! They are an impoverished EU community, with only 1 short highway, very bad infrastructure, high unemployment figures and worse, YET they have fibre to the home!!
OUR country is in a much better fiscal state, yet we are deprived of so much, just so that a few can become super-rich at our expense overnight!

 

[apogeeza]

Are you a bandwidth hog?

umm, don't know.
please give me the bandwidth, let me find out ...

 

[PsyWulf]

your ISP would take that into account before they sold the service to you, and would ensure that they have sufficient capacity for it.

Oh right...I forgot,they don't call 100% capacity users bandwidth hogs amirite? They provisioned sufficient capacity yes?

 

[chubster]

umm, don't know.
please give me the bandwidth, let me find out ...

LOL Exactly, average person uses 500mb because that average person limits him/her self into thinking what he/she can achieve. But tell the average person that you can now watch you-tube HD, what is the average user then? Suddenly the so called average user will then appear as a bandwidth hog(s).

I have a feeling that guys complaining about bandwidth hogs are guys working for ISPs and ran out of solutions, besides telling the truth that your over selling your network to the end-users. If you were upfront from the start and laid down some guarantees and controlled burst speeds etc. Then your end-users would have known what to expect. So it is your own damn fault.

 

[AndrewAlston]

I've been told that the IPTV example isnt really relevant, so I figured I'd put out a bit of a demonstration.

What follows is something being trialed on a multicast basis on our network at the moment, and I need to state that this could disappear at any time, its not considered stable yet, but I am curious to get some feedback on what the experience is like when watching it.

If you open vlc and tell it to open researchchannel.tenet.ac.za:8989 using HTTP protocol (the url unfortunately won't work in a webbrowser) you should get a live stream of what is known as the Research Channel, which is an Academic broadcast from the University of Washington.

(This is obviously NOT a multicast stream, its being fed by multicast, and then converted to a unicast HTTP stream so its accessible for non-multicast enabled users)

I need to stress, you will need a 4mbit DSL minimum for this to work, with virtually nothing else on the line at the time.

If you DO decide to test out the stream, please drop me a note and give me comments on stability, video quality etc.

 

[nevstarwader]

Are you a bandwidth hog?

Some operators argue that 'bandwidth hogs' adversely affect general broadband users while others say bandwidth hogs are merely a myth

I think you are talking about a 'data' hog. Bandwidth cannot possibly be measured in bits or bytes. Bandwidth is the capacity of a transmission medium to transmit data. It is measured in bits/second. In that sense, it is the rate at which the data is transmitted.

The incorrect use of the term 'bandwidth' continues to be perpetuated by those in the business who should know better. When we really do want to address bandwidth issues, then confusion arises.

In the context of this article, a hog would be someone who used an inordinate amount of data. A hog can only use as much bandwidth as the technology of the medium, the contention for the medium and any applied throttling allows.

So - referring to the 'data hog' question, users have widely varying data requirements. What appears extravagant to one user is the minimal bread-and-butter requirement for another user. If the data is available - use it!

 

[AndrewAlston]

100% agreed. There are users who wish to just browse the web and read their email, they are free to do so. There are users who wish to watch their video content, download their iso images and push the limits of what the internet can actually offer them. They should also be free to do that.

To quote Bob Dylan... The times they are a changin'... and the fact is that more and more our lives are impacted by online content and what we can see and do online. We are a far more high tech world than we were a few years back, and with the rest of the world moving into a content rich (and data volume heavy) environment, to constrain the data available to South African users is widening a digital divide.

Online content can be used to educate, to enlighten, to uplift, and to restrict what content is available to who based on the size of their pockets does nothing by serve to widen the gap between the rich and the poor, and don't we have enough problems with that in South Africa already?

Obviously there are always going to be differences in what people can afford to buy, thats the nature of things (however sad it may be), but to then sell someone the ability to do something and get upset when he uses it to its full potential.... thats madness...

I think you are talking about a 'data' hog. Bandwidth cannot possibly be measured in bits or bytes. Bandwidth is the capacity of a transmission medium to transmit data. It is measured in bits/second. In that sense, it is the rate at which the data is transmitted.

The incorrect use of the term 'bandwidth' continues to be perpetuated by those in the business who should know better. When we really do want to address bandwidth issues, then confusion arises.

In the context of this article, a hog would be someone who used an inordinate amount of data. A hog can only use as much bandwidth as the technology of the medium, the contention for the medium and any applied throttling allows.

So - referring to the 'data hog' question, users have widely varying data requirements. What appears extravagant to one user is the minimal bread-and-butter requirement for another user. If the data is available - use it!

 

[Tpex]

I voted no,
This myth is obviously BS created so as an excuse for crappy service and a reason to cap

 

[nictron]

Funny then that the US etc have started implementing caps.....

Most of these Caps are done by cable companies. Why? Because piracy directly affects their cable business.

No offence to those here, but if you are downloading > 100Gigabyte a month you are not downloading Linux distros!

It is unfortunately in the nature of human beings to abuse the available system. Most of us don't care about the consequences. Law needs to be enforced hence the emergence of Caps in the world.

 

[Kosmik]

No offence to those here, but if you are downloading > 100Gigabyte a month you are not downloading Linux distros!

While I don't totally disagree, you do realise that proper streaming video eats bandwidth? And before you suggest that I'm being silly about how many folks use it for streaming content, you do realise that TV's are now being sold with LAN ports to connect to internet directly precisely for this?

 

[zamicro]

You mean there are people that use the bandwidth that they pay for? Oh my god what next people will be using all the petrol they buy or eating all their food, heaven forbid.

The poll is skewed, is it really these people's fault if they adversely effect a network because they use what they've paid for?

No. You are not using what you paid for. You paid for a 20th/50th share in the pipe. Not for the full pipe.

But, this is what the article is about. If you use as much as you can (even the full pipe), your share will diminish as more users need bandwidth. Thus you might start the day with downloads running at full connection speed, but when another user starts with his own downloads, then hopefully the pipe will be shared 50:50 between you 2. Etc, etc.

 

[maraisl]

IPTV is indeed a reality. I've been testing this with the help of Andrew Alston and can confirm that it is absolute magic. The link provided is still for a small Multicast stream of 3 Mbps. There are some of the multicast streams that are available from Greece at 26 Mbps. So why don't service providers let you use it...well that would let you expose the oversubscription on the DSLAMS even further. There is nothing like a bandwidth hog and you are entitled to use the access that you have paid for in which manner you wish. Just think for yourself - most service providers peer at JINX and CINX thus if one service provider was already pulling the multicast feeds from overseas everyone else could pull it as if it was local from that local SP - thus no international congestion...that said if networks are design properly and PIM-SM is implemented at that SP.

As far as application of IPTV goes, I know that MNET and DSTV has been testing I think even telkom and the applications are vast. I could attend a live lecture at home or watch Etv or just listen to your favourite radia station.

Who is hogging who?

I've been told that the IPTV example isnt really relevant, so I figured I'd put out a bit of a demonstration.

What follows is something being trialed on a multicast basis on our network at the moment, and I need to state that this could disappear at any time, its not considered stable yet, but I am curious to get some feedback on what the experience is like when watching it.

If you open vlc and tell it to open researchchannel.tenet.ac.za:8989 using HTTP protocol (the url unfortunately won't work in a webbrowser) you should get a live stream of what is known as the Research Channel, which is an Academic broadcast from the University of Washington.

(This is obviously NOT a multicast stream, its being fed by multicast, and then converted to a unicast HTTP stream so its accessible for non-multicast enabled users)

I need to stress, you will need a 4mbit DSL minimum for this to work, with virtually nothing else on the line at the time.

If you DO decide to test out the stream, please drop me a note and give me comments on stability, video quality etc.