So, maybe I missed it, but I’m sure Time Warner will be supplying people with some sort of meter so they can see if they’re about to be bumped into the “getting raped by Time Warner” bracket, right?
-Joe
It has killed quite a few companies who expanded beyond their ability to serve their customer base. Unlimited expansion isn’t a good thing; controlled expansion is.
Pretty common in networking stuff.
Downloads don’t just happen. You’ll get things like acknowledgements going back up stream to tell the sender that, yes, you did get this chunk of packets.
Now, with your upstream saturated, your ack packets are getting dropped. So, the sender sends something you’ve already got. Oooh…can’t get your reply through on that one either? Better resend.
-Joe
In more cable-related news, L.A. to sue Time-Warner Cable over poor service:
That’s fairly minor. Even FPS games only require 5-15 KB/s sent each way, and they require a whole lot more data about positioning, where you’re firing, except. MMOs probably only require a tiny tiny fraction of the average bittorrent movie transfer for example.
In regards to the upload choking the download thing - it only happens at saturation and it is rather extreme. Others explained why it happens - the download waits until the other server hears back from you that you received the last series of packets - and if that acknowledgement is delayed because your upload bandwidth is saturated, then there’s a delay between each burst of download packets, slowing the whole thing down.
If you can cap your upload at 90% of capacity, you shouldn’t experience significant slowdown.
I’m kind of torn on this whole issue. On one hand, it economically makes sense to charge people more for using more. On the other hand, unmetered, content-neutral access to the internet is a big part of what makes it great. Others are right when they say this won’t be a rebalancing of fees charging the heavy users more and the light users left - if the light users already accept what they’re paying now, they’ll continue to be charged the same amount. So it’s a net price increase.
I wouldn’t have a problem with it really in a healthy competitive environment, but the near-monopoly status that utilities enjoy restricts the freedom of the consumer. If Time Warner is the only game in town, and they screw you, what alternative do you have? If they enjoy laws and subsidies that help them corner the market in a given area, they owe something back to the general public - at least in the form of not screwing them.
No, not every company. But companies that create turnover by charging too little go bust all the time, yes.
“We lose a penny on every sale, but we make it up in volume.”
I thought this was going to be about the cable division, specifically how HBO seems to have turned into the American Movie Channel, which sends us with disheartening frequency to the PPV channel.
It may be worse than that. These people
http://ipower.ning.com/netneutrality
claim to have testimony that many major ISPs are contemplating a cable-like price schedule where they offer a bundle of websites you can visit, and any that aren’t on the list cost extra. It’s a video about ten minutes long, 4 Euro-hipsters in a backyard. The cute one’s cleavage was a convincing argument, all by itself.
Wow. That’s pretty scary. Except for the cleavage, I mean. That’s quite comforting (and rather impressive).
I liked that there was a random gratuitous cleavage shot at 3:25… just in case our attention was wavering.
Net neutrality is a very serious and scary issue. Something like what they propose could be destroying one of the most amazing things humanity has ever done.
I don’t see how logistically that cold work. With proxy servers, independent service providers that won’t use this model, and other work-arounds, it will not work. It’s not like TV where even with the different packages, there’s still only so many channels you can eventually have. The internet is practically unlimited, and people won’t stand for this.
It would depend on how draconian they wanted to be about it. Once the traffic hits their network they can do anything they want with it - read the contents to determine what the traffic is, whether it’s meant for a proxy, etc. They can route the traffic where they want and drop what traffic they want.
The very technically savvy might find workarounds, but it’s within their power to practically cripple the internet.
What about dialup modems? They can tie up a phoneline the whole time with local calls.
What about teenagers? 
I dare you to find me one teenager who talks on their parents house phone and not their own cell. 
Honestly, though, even if the cable companies are planning on doing this (and I doubt they really are), people will not stand for it. It seems to me it would be the equivalent of selling someone a computer, and then telling them they can only use software from certain companies.
“Oh, you just bought a Windows PC? Well, you can only run programs made by Microsoft and Adobe. If you want to install that freeware image program, or that sweet new game, you’ll have to pay extra.”
Hell, I’m wondering if it would even be legal to limit the internet in such a fashion. It seems it would violate some kind of anti-trust law, especially if the “allowed” sites are all subsidiaries/partners with the service provider.
And here I thought they were talking about Medicare.
yeah, our government does an EXCELLENT job of protecting ordinary citizens from the interests of corporations like Time Warner. :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: