A related observation – years ago we gave cable modem bootfiles to a group of customers that had no rate shaping according to their subscription and compared that to existing customers (with an academic researcher). The experiment group did not know of the change, so it could not influence their behavior. We observed that peak demand generally hit a plateau that was well below available capacity & this was driven by existing applications & associated user behavior. There’s obviously a chicken-or-egg problem with capacity & apps to use that capacity, but most ISPs raise end user speeds at least annually and try to stay ahead of increases in peak demand.

JL

From: NANOG <nanog-bounces+jason_livingood=cable.comcast.com@nanog.org> on behalf of Jim Troutman <jamesltroutman@gmail.com>
Date: Monday, June 6, 2022 at 19:29
To: Tony Wicks <tony@wicks.co.nz>
Cc: "nanog@nanog.org" <nanog@nanog.org>
Subject: Re: FCC proposes higher speed goals (100/20 Mbps) for USF providers

Some usage data:

On a rural FTTX XGS-PON network with primarily 1Gig symmetric customers, I see about 1.5mbit/customer average inbound across 7 days, peaks at about 10mbit/customer, with 1 minute polling.  Zero congestion in middle mile, transit or peering.