On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 8:41 PM, Jimmy Hess <mysidia@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 7:10 PM, William Herrin <bill@herrin.us> wrote: [snip]
gets a 200 amp electrical service. The problem with that notion is that A) consumers are hooked on "unlimited," and B) your toaster Consumers aren't getting "unlimited right now". They're getting (unknown number of databytes)/month, before the ISP speed caps, throttles, rate limits them or turns them off for "excessive usage".
They're being told they're getting unlimited and for 99% of them it's true in the sense that their usage does not induce their ISP to impose its cap. Point is: they expect unlimited and a service which doesn't claim to be unlimited is, therefore, a non-starter. Back in the day I faced this problem at my dialup ISP. We had a 240 hour per month cap on dialup usage so that the 24/7 users would buy a 24/7 account or go elsewhere. We started losing business from folks using 30 and 40 hours a month because the other guy was "unlimited." So we did some fancy wordsmithing and came up with "unlimited _attended_ hours" meaning you had to be in front of your computer. How did we know? Because you sleep too so if you're online for 23+ hours per day every day, your usage isn't "attended." Our salesfolk tested the waters, but we couldn't sell a $5/month plus $0.10/hour product even though that would have resulted in most customers paying less. When I say consumers are hooked on unlimited, that's what I'm talking about.
Your toaster is plugged into an outlet that probably has a 20 amp circuit breaker on it. If someone hacks it without your knowledge to eat 200 amps, it will get turned off.
A similar mechanism could be built into network CPEs.
A similar mechanism is built in to network CPEs. It's called the port speed and the choices are 10, 100 and 1000. The electrical company metaphor breaks down here. Wiring an appliance so it can consume your entire electrical service has no desirable traits. Wiring your computing equipment so they can communicate at higher speeds within the building than leaving the building is the opposite. Regards, Bill Herrin -- William D. Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com bill@herrin.us 3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/> Falls Church, VA 22042-3004