BIll, I have to take exception to your example. "All utilities work by oversubscription: electric, natural gas, water and sewer. When the sewer authority fouls up their oversubscription model and your pee ends up in my basement, guess who pays for the cleanup? They do." Water, gas, and to a great extent electrical systems do not work on oversubscription, ie their aggregate capacity meets or exceeds the needs of all their customers peak potential demand, at least from "normal" demand standpoint. If someone decides to go to every house in an area served by a water tower and turns on all the faucets at the same time, that's malicious behavior and will exceed the pressure the tower can provide, but I think we'd all(?) agree that's malicious behavior and not customer demand. The only one of those that really works that way is electrical power and even then it's not usually a matter of the lack of transmission, but a lack of generation during hot periods. Further, I don't believe that you can get the power company/water/gas company to pay for a failure to meet a capacity demand. Your example of the sewer system is also very dependent on circumstances. http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/story/21432309/sewage-spill-coon-rapids-homeowne... http://www.horizonservicesinc.com/reference/tips-articles/sewer-backup-cause... The most common point of contention is the lateral, which is almost always the home/business owner's responsibility http://www.sfgate.com/homeandgarden/sweatequity/article/Replacing-sewer-late... A much more apt comparison for over subscription is of the course normal POTS service, but again I am not aware of any recompense you can get from your phone company if you get an "All circuits are busy message", though you can of course complain to the FCC. Scott Helms Vice President of Technology ZCorum (678) 507-5000 -------------------------------- http://twitter.com/kscotthelms -------------------------------- On Fri, Feb 27, 2015 at 1:54 PM, William Herrin <bill@herrin.us> wrote:
On Fri, Feb 27, 2015 at 1:34 PM, Mel Beckman <mel@beckman.org> wrote:
On Feb 27, 2015, at 9:56 AM, William Herrin <bill@herrin.us> wrote:
Deceit is Bad Behavior. If you sell me an X megabit per second Internet access service, you should do everything reasonably within your power to make sure I can access the Internet sites of my choice at X megabits per second.
This is not feasible. ISPs work by oversubscription, so it's never possible for all (or even 10% of all) customers to simultaneously demand their full bandwidth. If ISPs had to reserve the full bandwidth sold to each customer
Hi Mel,
Respectfully, that's a straw man argument. You alter the parameters of my criticism then proceed to show how the altered argument is unreasonable.
All utilities work by oversubscription: electric, natural gas, water and sewer. When the sewer authority fouls up their oversubscription model and your pee ends up in my basement, guess who pays for the cleanup? They do.
I have some unfortunate first-hand experience with this.
Anyone who doesn't understand [oversubscription] will be unable to engage in reasonable discussion about ISP practices.
You said it, not me.
Regards, Bill Herrin
-- William Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com bill@herrin.us Owner, Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/>