this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2023
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We are likely going to see more of this kind of thing.
Services like Twitch, Netflix, etc have had a long time of using the pipes for low or no cost, and contributing nothing to the network except congestion.
No one expects the roads to be maintained for free, and for businesses that use the roads, they gotta pay.
EDIT: I retract my statement, barsoap gave a pretty detailed explanation of what's going on here.
This is a bad take, and the antithesis of net neutrality.
If the customer pays for a connection, the ISP should be able to provide that. Why does it matter if it’s Twitch or Netflix traffic vs anything else?
Video streaming is a MUCH heavier load than text based sites and even image based sites. Anecdotal, but I am aware of at least four of the street side boxes that failed early in the pandemic because the constant teleconferencing and streaming was literally orders of magnitude more concurrent traffic than at any time in the past. That has a cost. Theoretically, it is a "one time" cost but it is also a significant one.
My personal feeling is that this is the ISP's, optimally the local government's, problem. But I don't know enough about how Korean ISPs and infrastructure are handled to have a proper opinion on this. But I can definitely see a push to throttle certain sites that make up a significant majority of the overall load. It is not net neutrality but... is one site accounting for 40 or 50% of the traffic net neutrality either?
It’s as simple as this:
If my ISP charges me for X connection speed, I should be able to use what I paid for. Bandwidth caps make no sense, “internet” is not a resource that has to be generated.
What happened in the pandemic was the first real test displaying very clearly that ISPs are overselling/overprovisioning their network, and hoping we don’t notice that they haven’t actually used the money to upgrade or improve their network.
It’s easy to point the finger at the big bandwidth sources and ask for more money, but it’s wrong and it’s double-dipping. They’re using Twitch and Netflix as the scapegoat for their lack of reinvestment.
Data caps are reasonable as long as they're clearly disclosed; double-dipping isn't.
Data caps are similar to usage-based billing in other utilities like water and electricity. They're reasonable because even a typical heavy residential user does not come anywhere near saturating their link 24/7, which is reflected in the ISP's provisioning and pricing. If you want residential internet service that can handle every user saturating their link constantly, you can have much higher prices or much slower speeds. Do you want that?
Two things.
Firstly, would it make sense to have a “water-cap” and if you hit it your house can’t get water for the rest of the month?
Secondly, everyone’s cap resets at the same time. Meaning that everyone has full access and aren’t at their cap. How does that prevent saturation up to the point that
[speed]*[time]=[cap]for the heavy users? Because it will be days until a reasonable cap is reached.The way I've seen it implemented, it's a cap after which speed is reduced or there are additional charges. Are you aware of ISPs with hard caps?
Grandparent is defending the all-you-can-eat buffet owner whining about customers eating 3 plates of food 😂
"Beat me harder, daddy"