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I've been seeing a lot of hot takes about how this shelter in place and ISPs waiving their data caps is proof that the data caps is just a money grab, and I've got some thoughts on the matter... 
When you buy a 300Mbps Internet connection with a 1TB data cap, in QoS terms what you're really buying is 3Mbps burstable up to 300Mbps.
And I would much rather pay for that than for the ISP to price my Internet connection assuming that I'm going to run it flat out all month
And I would much rather pay for that than for the ISP to price my Internet connection assuming that I'm going to run it flat out all month
In the *best* of transit wholesale markets, 300Mbps of Internet transit is ~$30/mo, and in non-competitive markets it can be many times that.
And remember, "BGP transit" means a port on a service provider router in a data center. An ISP has to somehow pay to get that to you too
And remember, "BGP transit" means a port on a service provider router in a data center. An ISP has to somehow pay to get that to you too
Cross connect fees, space/power/hardware inside the data center, an entire city's worth of cable plant to distribute it to you, paying employees, and you only want to pay twice the wholesale price for Internet?
The more I learn about Internet costs, the more I'm amazed that ISPs can make any money at all.
But my point is that ISPs absolutely must over-provision their transit to downstream customers to make any money. To do otherwise would be ungodly expensive...
But my point is that ISPs absolutely must over-provision their transit to downstream customers to make any money. To do otherwise would be ungodly expensive...
And kind of pointless too. Most reasonable users easily stay within the <1% average usage the ISP provisions them for. Maybe not right now, but usually.
But back to my original point...
But back to my original point...
ISPs have a few options for how to manage the inevitable congestion on their network:
1. Let everyone suffer due to gross over-utilization during peak hours
2. Punish the small number of excessive users until they stop using so much data
3. Have peak/off-peak service speeds
1. Let everyone suffer due to gross over-utilization during peak hours
2. Punish the small number of excessive users until they stop using so much data
3. Have peak/off-peak service speeds
4. Take the T-mobile approach and if you exceed some threshold, meter you down to your commit rate for the rest of the month.
5. Identify excessive users and apply Quality of Service policies to de-prioritize all of their traffic or the excessive flows.
5. Identify excessive users and apply Quality of Service policies to de-prioritize all of their traffic or the excessive flows.
The problem is that 1 sucks for everyone, 3 would be hard for people to understand and they'd be pissed that they aren't getting their 300Mbps Thursday nights, 4 would be technically complicated to implement, and...
5 users scream like banshees about net neutrality when ISPs try to manage traffic at all, regardless of if they even understand what they're talking about.
I would love for ISPs to offer "use as much bittorrent as you want, but it's deprioritized" service, because bittorrent legitimately is an AF13 application. It's not jitter, latency, or packet loss sensitive.
But it's a slippery slope, and it's practically impossible to differentiate between traffic being classified as AF13 for technical network engineering reasons, or for tactical business reasons.
Itd be easier if ISPs hadnt lost all their good will, but thats the world we live in
Itd be easier if ISPs hadnt lost all their good will, but thats the world we live in
So I think data caps are shitty, and I would LOVE for my ISP to just automatically drop me down to 3Mbps when I hit my monthly limit and let me chose to log in and buy more capacity, but I can understand tying netops and billing together like that would be hard and brittle.
So I do believe that the fact that they can make extra money plays into it, but I think all the alternatives to 1TB data caps are either technically more difficult or more difficult for consumers to understand than many people appreciate.
The reason that ISPs networks aren't generally melting down right now is because shelter in place traffic is totally different than just more peak hour usage.
ISP networks are mostly idle during the work day, so everyone staying home is still using less capacity than Thus night
ISP networks are mostly idle during the work day, so everyone staying home is still using less capacity than Thus night
So as long as most of the additional usage during this pandemic isn't centered around normal peak times, it's entirely viable for ISPs to deliver multiple TBs of traffic to each user per month, but that wasn't the problem they were trying to solve with data caps.
