North American Network Operators Group

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RE: SlashDot: "Comcast Gunning for NAT Users"

  • From: Deepak Jain
  • Date: Thu Jan 31 17:14:19 2002

In the referenced message, Greg Pendergrass said:
>
> It doesn't make sense that an ISP should complain that customers use 100%
of
> what they pay for. So if 1% of your customers use %50+ of your bandwidth,
> your 1% is getting their money's worth. If you don't want the customer to
> use it, don't sell it to them.

The point is that customers don't pay for 100% of the available bandwidth.
Customers couldn't afford to pay for guaranteed 100% BW to all desinations
all the time. Hence, companies determine how much BW a typical user
is likely to use, build to that, and charge the customers based on how
much it cost to provide it. When folks use the service atypically, they are
using resources they didn't pay for.

If you think otherwise, build a company that doesn't aggregate flows, and
gives every customer (simultaneous) guaranteed MAX BW 24x7 to every
destination
within their network and at least the first-hop into non-customer networks.

---

This is a pricing question, as aggregation always is. If a provider
discloses whatever amount the network has been arbitrarily
built/designed/costed out to perform at, and then charges disclosed rates
for usage above that, everyone can be happy. The problem is that providers
that want to charge for atypical usage never want to tell anyone where their
thresholds are.

Deepak Jain
AiNET