jaminus
join:2004-10-14
Arlington, VA
| Re: A supporting commentary to McDowells I, for one, would gladly download terabytes a month if my ISP allowed it. Do I need all that stuff? Not really. But if the bandwidth's there, I'll certainly use it. And so would many others as well.
Yes, capacity has got to increase, and that's why companies are investing in things like laying fiber, pair-bonding POTS lines, hybrid fiber-coax, DOCSIS 3.0, VDSL2, and the like.
Ultimately, though, there will ALWAYS be finite bandwidth and infinite demand for bandwidth. If you build it, they will come. That's why it's so important to manage a scarce resource in a manner that suits those who use the resource.
Is Sandvine the best way to manage a network? Probably not. But it's not entirely clear that "peak metering" is the best way, either -- after all, only 6% of Comcast's users were P2P users, and it's possible that far more users will be affected by the new metering system Comcast will soon implement.
Politicians should not be the ones who decide how ISPs deal with congestion. Competition among providers to give consumers the best possible service will benefit all of us in the long run. The fact that sometimes, some companies will make mistakes (i.e. Sandvine) is not a valid reason for abandoning the principles of freedom and private network ownership. |
