I just read an article in Information Week from June this year: "Meter Is Starting To Tick On Internet Access Pricing", and, knowing that the open source development depends greatly on files' exchange over the Internet, I am a bit concerned about it.
Do you guys think it might threaten the open source development? I mean it looks like with the download limits, there might be another thing to consider: what Internet limits can you afford?

As for a generic user, let's say for example that I would like to try out the latest linux distributions. With the Internet limits, I might have to reconsider, or postpone a portion of it, but for a company it might have some more serious implications like giving up on an Internet backup service, or something else.

What do you think?

To understand this issue, you need to become knowledgeable about the network neutrality fight.

Short version is that most major telcos and backbone providers want to be able to control what you are able to send through the internet, rather than just being the providers of the pipes. Mostly, in my not at all humble opinion, this is due to a combination of greed and a desire for control.

They are being opposed by a very broad coalition, who wants them to be providers of pipes and nothing more.

Again, in my not at all humble opinion, society is best served if the backbone providers can only provide pipes and have no control at all over content.

However, that said, the pipe providers and the independent ISPs who have to pay for bandwidth do have a very good point, which must be addressed. Basically, the growth of peer to peer services such as bittorrent have private households functioning as internet servers, shifting the bandwidth load off of the originating servers and scattering it around. Endpoint providers (ISPs) have a pricing model with the backbone providers that is based upon the bandwidth that they use on the backbone. The peer to peer services are greatly increasing the bandwidth that the endpoint providers are using, driving up their costs at a time when competitive pressures are making it difficult or impossible for them to pass the costs on.

As a specific example, let us assume you download an mp3 from a site on the internet using ftp. In this case, if the mp3 is a 6 meg file, your ISP has to pay for 6 megs of bandwidth to bring that file in for you, and the website that hosts the file has to pay for 6 megs of bandwidth to send it to you. If 100 people download that mp3 ,each of them has 6 megs on their end, and the originating server has 600 megs. So the originating server bears the bulk of the cost of sending you the file.

With bittorrent, you may download that file from 10 different sites simultaneously, each site giving you a piece of the file. The originating site may not participate. So you burn 6 megs of bandwidth bringing it in, the originating site contributes nothing, and 10 other locations each kick in an average of 600K for you to do this download. You then leave that file available as an upload, and over the next 10 days let us say, other computers connect to your computer and upload pieces of that file for a total of let us say 200 Megs.

So, this 6 meg file costs your ISP 206 megs of bandwidth; the 6 megs it cost you to get it plus the 200 megs it takes for others to get it from you. And it costs the originator of the mp3 nothing in bandwidth, because you need never connect with that site to get the mp3.

The ISPs are complaining about this, claiming it is costing them money. And they are right, it is.

So, someplace along the way, there is going to be a change in the pricing model. Either end users (you and me) are going to be forced to pay for bandwidth rather than paying for a connection OR the backbone providers are going to be forced into providing some other pricing mechanism to their downstream clients (the ISPs).

Now, I think the smartest thing to do is to change the backbone pricing model in some fashion that allows the backbone provider to participate in their clients' customer bases, but the more likely scenario is that you and I are going to get stuck paying for bandwidth. I would certainly expect this to have a chilling effect on the growth and use of the internet. How big an effect? I don't know. Stay tuned.

I think it's a load of crap being pushed by greedy moron managers. We're already paying for internet access - the idiots should shut up and go to hell.

The part that I can't understand, is how would bandwidth-dependent rates earn the ISPs more money than the flat rates for broadband connections?

Assuming that a month has 30 days (just for the sample calculation), and a 4Gb high speed Internet connection:
A 30-days-long month equals:
30 days x 24 hours x 60 minutes x 60 seconds = 2,592,000 seconds

With a 4Gb / s connection, which equals 4000,000,000 bits / s, I should be able to download 4,000,000,000 x 2,592,000 = 10,368,000,000,000,000 bits of data, which is equal to that amount divided by 8 to express it in bytes, which gives us:
1,296,000,000,000,000 bytes during that theoretical month.
That number, divided by 1024 gives us: 1,265,625,000,000 kilobytes,
divided again by 1024, that equals 1,235,961,914.0625 megabytes,
and divided once more by 1024, gives us: 1,206,994 gigabytes in a 30-day-long month at a constant maximum downloading speed on a 4 Gb/s connection.

So, given that my calculations are correct , I'm not even getting close to that number, which means that I'm basically paying for much more of the bandwidth than I'm using. So what is the problem here? The piracy over p2p networks?

You are paying for a connection. The ISP assumes that your usage will follow certain common patterns (and if you look at your TOS it will probably state that you are not allowed to run a server from your home...bittorrent clients violate those TOS because they ARE serving).

The common pattern has you working online not more than X hours per day and during that time you are downloading at some average rate Y. Therefore your total expected bandwidth usage in a month is Z. And this is what you actually are paying for...a connection with those general expectations.

Torrent clients particularly are upsetting those expectations. While your ISP bills you for a connection, the ISP's upstream provider(s) bill them by bandwidth used. The ISPs are therefore getting squeezed in the middle.

Are you saying, that the ISPs are charging their Internet users less that they should given the money they (ISPs) are paying for the bandwidth usage, and that they (ISPs) are doing it because most of the time their Internet users will use a small portion of their (the users') bandwidth?
If that's the case, than why don't the ISPs either charge us the real amount, or set the speed limits lower, so that we don't exceed their (ISPs) bandwidth "expectations"?

I dont think they will ever resort to the type of action of bandwidth limitation. I know it seems weird to say that, but really i dont think its possible. The way our economy works, is not the best ground for that type of action. They might try it for a little while, but i dont think it would last for very long.

I don't buy the thing about P2P networks - maybe it's just the sort of people I hang out with, but most only spend a few hours per day using the internet and most don't habitually share files (neither free software nor non-free music). I've only known two exceptions who hogged the network and would habitually download >16GB per month if they weren't throttled - and they were both college students. I think that's fine - if they act that way they'll flunk out, have to flip burgers for a clown, and won't be able to afford an internet connection. I already pay for my measly 5GB per month allowance; if rates were going to go higher, I'd just stop using the internet at home. Work can provide me with an internet connection if they require me to use it.

P2P,youtube,starting streaming high-def content - you name it.

Fact is that ISP's grossly oversold their bandwidth when they suckered people in with cheap unlimited contracts and now change the game since everybody is used to ADSL lines.

15 or 30 gig's might sound much today but if high-def content becomes really available it's one movie or so...

If your friends have an always-on connection (as any broadband connection is), and they leave their torrent client running when they are not around, then it doesn't matter; they ARE serving files to the world.

I think that charging end-users for bandwidth is a horrible idea. Any such move would throttle the growth and expansion of the internet.

But, the backbone providers are driven by quarterly profits, and the ISPs are being squeezed. You do the math. The backbone providers should just keep adding capacity, but it is easier to squeeze more $$$ out of existing infrastructure.

You should also take a look in the future and not only stare at the network use of today; already some places are exchanging not only data but machine power, and that model is -- or so it's hoped -- to be developed into "grid" one day. The basic concept is that where the internet is today used to share data, grid would in addition be used to share machine time, bought from it's users. The hoped advantage is that for example a calculation that would take several days from a normal big/supercomputer could be done in a moment if it was possible to share the work between numerous computers all around the world (sort of like multiprocessing). Then single participants of the grid would not only make use of the concept (compared to only downloading from the net), but also aid others when possible (i.e. when they don't have other load; compared to uploading to the net, sort of like p2p of today). Because that would cost (electricity, ...) money, the participants would also somehow "get paid" for it, so the grid should be able to keep track of how much work each participant does and pay for it (not necessarily money). There's a lot that is still not solved in the idea, but basically it would make use of (for example) computing power that would normally not be used. The big problem in this is that networks of today can't generally transfer as much data as would be needed as fast as would be needed; probably that can be solved in the future, but it brings the whole idea of networking computers into a new light, including the pricing: you wouldn't just pay and get, but also give and be paid. Ideally, at least -- in my own opinion human race is too good in inventing ways to hinder development and/or misuse it

Personally I wouldn't accept "internet limits" in the sense the thread starter means. Limiting bandwith because somebody "loses money" is affecting the result, not the reason, just like people typically do. If somebody gets shot, guns are made illegal but the illness that caused the shooting in the first place isn't treated, or if it is, then only on the surface. Making guns illegal of course makes it harder to get them, but in the end the guy who wants to kill will do it one way or the other; finding out the reasons behind it and treating them has better probability of preventing further damage.

I don't find internet so important that I couldn't live without it, and basically I'm using it only because it's free of charge as of now, or very cheap. If ISPs and/or the backbone staff started doing greedy decisions now, they'd simply shorten their income in the future, because the need for bandwith grows anyway. If it doesn't, it slows down development, new services and therefore the base of the "western wealth", which is like a cancer in some ways.

All the above nonsense could have been squeezed down to this: service providers need to be more inventive, that's all. Saying that we're approaching a limit of some kind is just bull-something

Normal user will drop after uploading 12 megabytes at most. Uploading original file 50 times from one machine might be problematic (depends on the tracker and number of users) - you'll normally manage to upload it 10 times at best (and that's with 24mbps). After that there will be too many "seeds", so information from your machine will be rarely needed.

Solution for the whole problem is simple - limit connection speed (that's how my ISP works) while keeping downloaded amount unlimited. This provides perfect control over how much bandwidth you'll be able to waste.
For example it won't be possible to download with 128 kbps more that 30 Gigabytes per month (12..20 at best). So if you will want faster downloads - pay more. Don't see a huge problem here. And IMO 100..250 gigabytes per month should be pretty enough for normal p2p user (well, unless he is some kind of download addict), but I'm not taking high-definition streaming video into account, and I think it'll take much more bandwidth than p2p.

In this case this is ISP fault, because he is using incorrect calculations and isn't aware of what people are using Internet for.
Also, I think that ISP probably isn't billed for traffic within their own IP ranges, because this one uses their own machines. And, by the way, why can't "backbone providers" simply change pricing scheme? This could solve most problems.

Do not quibble over an example provided for illustration.


That is how DSL works here now, and these kinds of limits/tiered pricing schemes are part of what the debate is about.


No. Problem is that the internet is changing and what people use it for is changing. Fast moving target.

And if you finish the post that you quoted from, you see that changing the pricing scheme is one of the things I said would have to happen.

It's a little off topic, but just to get clear on how the ISPs are selling their connections speeds:

Example:
We offer a 4 Gb/s, and a 6 Gb/s speed! Which option would you like to sign up for? Oh, and by the way, the 6 Mb/s option is only USD $10 more expensive than the 4 Gb/s one!

but at the same time, they're not telling you, that your maximum monthly usage should be equal or lower than 2 GB, which you can easily exceed with either one of those speeds, and that they might throttle down, or suspend your service if you exceed it. Is that how it works most of the time?

I'm afraid that's the way it goes - even in the bad old days of the acoustic modem. I remember the old 300bps modems - and even today I still use GPRS (~56k), Iridium (~4.8k), and GlobalStar (~9.6k) (and people complain their 512kbps line is too slow).

So ISPs have always been trying to sucker in new victims. A few months ago I was helping a friend pick a new ISP; it took us an entire afternoon to make sense of all the different 'plans' and to be able to compare ISP-A to ISP-B.