----- On Oct 10, 2021, at 2:42 PM, Doug Barton dougb@dougbarton.us wrote: Hi,
And for the record, not only have I never worked for an ISP, I was saying all the way back in the late '90s that the oversubscription business model (which almost always includes punishing users who actually use their bandwidth) is inherently unfair to the customers, and when the Internet becomes more pervasive in daily life will come back to bite them in the ass. I was laughed at for being hopelessly naive, not understanding how the bandwidth business works, etc.
I have worked for ISPs. And I remember the late 90s. Bandwidth was $35/mbit on average, at least for the outfit where I was. Consumers paid roughly $40 for their DSL connections, which at the time went up to 2Mbit depending on the age of the copper and distance to the DSLAM. Consumer connections were oversubscribed, on average, 1:35 to 1:50. B2B connections got a better deal, 1:10 to 1:15. It was simply not feasible to offer 1:1 bandwidth and still make a profit, unless you're charging fees the average consumer cannot afford. Especially considering that the average user doesn't even need or use that much bandwidth. It's a recurring discussion. People demand more bandwidth without considering whether or not they need it. End-users, business subs, and host-owners at large enterprises where I worked. The last ones are the funniest: entire racks using no more than 100mbit/s and hostowners are demanding an upgrade from 10G to 25G bEcaUse LaTenCy. The last consumer ISP I worked at had a very small subset of users that really needed bandwidth: the "download dudes" who were 24/7 leeching news servers, and the inevitable gamers that complained about the latency due to the links being full as a result of said leechers. In that case, a carefully implemented shaping of tcp/119 did the trick. Thanks, Sabri