North American Network Operators Group

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Re: Points on your Internet driver's license (was RE: Even you canbe

  • From: Adi Linden
  • Date: Sun Jun 13 11:40:38 2004

> The better analogy is what happens when you leave your oven on for 8 days 
> straight? Assuming your house doesn't burn down, should you have to pay the 
> electric bill for those 8 days? Hell yeah. It's impossible to separate what 
> was "legit" energy use and what was from the oven, and it's not their fault 
> you didn't turn it off anyway. And in the worst case, if your house burns 
> down, it's STILL not their fault!

This had somewhat deviated from the original post and who is responsible 
for the bandwidth bill. When you buy a metered service, be it electricity, 
water, bandwidth, you pay what you use. It is not the suppliers 
responsiblility to determine what you do with it and question your 
consumption.

I think it is foolish to buy a metered service without ceiling and leave 
things wide open. When I buy metered bandwidth I demand a hard limit. If I 
reach this hard limit I expect to be notified and cut off. If my upstream 
neglects to cut me off, consumption above and beyond the hard limit is 
their burden since they didn't meet their contractual obligation. A simple 
solution.

> Commodity internet access is a one-size-fits-all game plan. At most, 
> there's a second size, residential or business. But any user of either plan 
> can be compared to any other user of the same plan, and the provider will 
> treat them the same. It's too difficult, and doesn't pay, to try and treat 
> them differently. The extra $10 a month isn't going to justify the $20 
> spent making the changes or talking to the person on the phone.

And that is a problem. Unlike your electricity, where the supplier has an 
obligation to provide a certain level of clean energy, there is nothing 
like it with internet bandwidth. All the crud and exploits are dutyfully 
forwarded to the customer.

Some argue that clueful internet consumers are the answer. Prove your 
knowledge in being able to secure devices connected to the internet and 
maintain them properly. The "Internet driver's license" is proof of 
proficiency in this case.

I argue that this is way overboard. I don't believe anyone should require 
any particular knowledge to obtain an internet connection and use the 
internet. Instead internet needs to be available as a clean conditioned 
service for consumption by the clueless.

The reason this isn't economical today is because ISP lack any 
responsiblity. It is cheaper for an ISP to buy more bandwidth and pass the 
worms and viruses customers PCs spew to the internet than it is to deal 
with the problem. Seriously, if I send an ISP reasonable proof that a 
broadband customer hits my mailserver with thousands of emails an hour I 
should be able to expect an immediate response. Not hours, days or weeks, 
minutes and the originating account should be shut down. If this doesn't 
happen I should be able to go to the upstream of the ISP, present my 
case, and have connectivity to the ISP suspended. 

Adi