Do you pay for packets lost with congestion?

[km2]

Does anyone know how the data accounting works with ISPs when there's congestion on the Telkom exchange? I will have anywhere up to 20% packet loss depending on the time of day, and I'm interested in how this may impact my data billing. Am I being charged for those packets which get lost by my ISP and potentially losing 10GB of a 100GB package into the Telkom ether? Do the ISPs have some way of knowing about successfully delivered packets and take that into account?

Congestion is annoying enough as it is and I'm wondering if I need to feel further outrage from losing data.

 

[Gtx Gaming]

nope , adsl is a best effort service , its connected then you pay for it, even if its dead slow .

 

[ponder]

You signed up for a service witch come with very little guarantees, you pay for whatever happens or does not happen.

 

[km2]

I'm well aware that it's a best effort service, Telkom has made that abundantly clear to me when I've spoken to them. I'm not expecting to get any money back from them for having a 4MB line that frequently performs like a 512kb one or worse.

What I care about is being charged for data that I never receive. If I pay for my ISP for 100GBs of data and Telkom has a congested exchange and loses 10% of them, does my ISP "know" or do they just bill me for 100GB even though I only received 90GB of data.

Basically is Telkom's exchange congestion actively costing me money by eating data that I've paid for.

 

[pgs]

No, IMHO the ISP only knows what type of traffic you are initiating not size. The packet loss is a Telkom error not an ISP issue.

 

[ambo]

The traffic counting for billing purposes is normally done in one of 2 places: at the point where the ISP connect to Telkom's IPC or at the ESR. Both of those points are upstream of your local exchange.

As the traffic flows downstream to you it is counted at one of those points and the records are sent back to the ISP's systems. If the traffic is then dropped at any point beyond that (exchange backhaul, DSLAM, ADSL line, modem or your LAN) then you will be billed for it regardless.

 

[km2]

The traffic counting for billing purposes is normally done in one of 2 places: at the point where the ISP connect to Telkom's IPC or at the ESR. Both of those points are upstream of your local exchange.

As the traffic flows downstream to you it is counted at one of those points and the records are sent back to the ISP's systems. If the traffic is then dropped at any point beyond that (exchange backhaul, DSLAM, ADSL line, modem or your LAN) then you will be billed for it regardless.

Thanks, that does make sense. I think I need to just do some network monitoring and tie it up to my ISPs stats to see if there's a big enough difference to make it worth switching downloads off while there's heavy congestion, and avoid paying for too much lost data.