They are approaching the problem from the wrong end.
ISPs have oversold their networks. They are trying to handle more traffic than they were built for. They should be limiting people on how fast they can go, not how many miles they drive (to continue the autobahn analogy).
If I got together with a couple of other people on my local network segment we could totally screw over everyone else on said network segment. Simply by trying to shove a lot of data through the pipes at the same time, and we could do this while we stayed well below the 250GB cap imposed. I (and my 2 housemates) could also pull down over 500GB a month and not cause the ISP any problems if we intelligently throttle our connections based on time of day.
What should happen is that when the network gets congested, everyone is forced to slow down. Surprise, Surprise, this is already a basic feature of best-effort TCP routing. But the ISPs want to maintain a good user experience for the masses who simply are surfing web pages, and slow down the heavy users (mainly bittorrent and related apps that can tolerate delays[1]). Comcast attempted to do this in the US by issuing resetting for bittorrent connections it saw (also known as the wrong way to do things), and it is still getting dragged over the coals about it. They should have just dropped the packets of the heaviest users (ideally on a protocol aware basis) until the problem solves itself.
The problem with this approach is that when a company that offers ip-telephony starts to drop packets in skype calls regulators take a very close look at what is going on.
They would also need to change their eulas to state that this is the kind of service they offer.
As a bit of math, 250GB per month works out to be 101KB/sec.
[1]: Any program that downloads files over a period of time greater than 'the next five minutes' qualifies here. We are not dealing with instantaneous gratification. If the bittorrents I'm pulling down take 16 hours instead of 12 hours I really don't care.
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy
ISPs have oversold their networks. They are trying to handle more traffic than they were built for. They should be limiting people on how fast they can go, not how many miles they drive (to continue the autobahn analogy).
If I got together with a couple of other people on my local network segment we could totally screw over everyone else on said network segment. Simply by trying to shove a lot of data through the pipes at the same time, and we could do this while we stayed well below the 250GB cap imposed. I (and my 2 housemates) could also pull down over 500GB a month and not cause the ISP any problems if we intelligently throttle our connections based on time of day.
What should happen is that when the network gets congested, everyone is forced to slow down. Surprise, Surprise, this is already a basic feature of best-effort TCP routing. But the ISPs want to maintain a good user experience for the masses who simply are surfing web pages, and slow down the heavy users (mainly bittorrent and related apps that can tolerate delays[1]). Comcast attempted to do this in the US by issuing resetting for bittorrent connections it saw (also known as the wrong way to do things), and it is still getting dragged over the coals about it. They should have just dropped the packets of the heaviest users (ideally on a protocol aware basis) until the problem solves itself.
The problem with this approach is that when a company that offers ip-telephony starts to drop packets in skype calls regulators take a very close look at what is going on.
They would also need to change their eulas to state that this is the kind of service they offer.
As a bit of math, 250GB per month works out to be 101KB/sec.
[1]: Any program that downloads files over a period of time greater than 'the next five minutes' qualifies here. We are not dealing with instantaneous gratification. If the bittorrents I'm pulling down take 16 hours instead of 12 hours I really don't care.
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy