Wednesday, July 1. 2009Is There Any Place For Throttling In 2009?John Linton I have been mildly interested in the beat up of alleged problems with Telstra's usage measuring systems that were referenced in this recent article by David Frith (not noted for hysteria or even exaggeration from what I have read over the years): http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,25708608-5013038,00.html I wasn't particularly interested in the references to the possible usage measurement but more in his comments on how he and his colleagues, in their professional capacities I am assuming, actually use a Telstra ADSL service and one that has throttling or shaping or whatever. Now my internet demands are not onerous - some browsing, constant VPN access to our databases and internal systems, a lot of email and not much else (certainly no games playing nor any movie downloading) but I do clearly remember dial up and there is no way known that I could begin to contemplate using a dial up speed connection to do anything - even email.......how David Frith could contemplate such a scenario as an IT journalist is impossible for me to understand....it can't be money. I have always wondered why the throttling/shaping options were offered to anyone (residential or professional) with ADSL1 and it is beyond my comprehension why they are offered on ADSL2. The internet for even my modest needs is useless at 64 kbps so goodness knows how totally useless it would be for a gamer/downloader. Why do these options even exist today when the cost to a small ISP (such as Exetel) of delivering a gigabyte of data to an end user is less than $A0.80 and for a large ISP it would be far less. It seems to me that any ADSL plan now an be offered with enough included download to eliminate the problem of having to throttle/shape customers who so badly misjudge their usage that they exceed the included download they selected - offering a low cost per gb 'emergency buy' would handle that rare situation far more effectively. I can understand, just, that when the majority of ADSL users were on 256/64 links and IP transit was 5 or 6 times more expensive than it is today it might have seemed sensible to 'protect' the end customer from large excess bills (such as the ones referenced in the cited article) but those days ended in 2003 when IP costs fell below $A400.00 per gbps and have continued to fall by 20% or more each year since. As there is no sensible reason for offering throttled/shaped plans - unless you count the current explosion of the use of the lying claims by some ISPs of "unlimited usage" when they mean when you reach your miniscule included download all usage for the rest of every month is at an unusable 64 kbps. So why is throttlng/shaping still so widely prevalent when it is effectively totally useless? For the innumerate few who download so indiscriminately they can't work out how to 'budget' for their daily needs? But what use is a 64 kbps service to such users anyway? I can only assume that if they 'over spent' by a few dollars in a month it would pose such a financial burden on their scant financial resources they would suffer some forms of hardship...but at 64 kbps VoIP is unusable and VoIP is a very common application now used by a rapidly increasing number of users. My best guess at why this silly practice persists is because of the continuing use of honey trap plans by so many unscrupulous ISPs - the plans where the 'included download allowance is so small that the majority of customers go over the limit and then get slugged by these unethical ISPs for charges like $A150.00 per gb - a sure fire way of gouging the unsuspecting user for huge excess fees. With IP transit plus the cost of customer interconnection now costing so little per gb and the ability to allow an end user to add a few gbs to obviate having their service slowed to an unusable speed it is obvious that the only reason to retain throttling/shaping is to continueto mislead customers. When Exetel, very reluctantly and for reasons I can't remember now, introduced an option for throttling/shaping we tried to help those customers who selected it to avoid suffering from using a useless service. We did this in two ways. Firstly we sent the customer a warning by an immediately releasable 'block page' that they had only 1 gb, 500 mb and then 250 mb of their included download allowance remaining. After they reached their limit we blocked the access until they acknowledged they would be throttled/shaped after they had used a bonus 2 gb of downloads that we added to their plan at no charge. We thought this would be of great assistance to people who had miscalculated their usage for any month who would then stop indiscriminate downloading until the new month. Silly us. For some people all this meant was they continued on massive downloads until they very quickly ran through the free 2 gb (a huge amount of downloads for non-large file download usage) and then they complained they were being charged at a penalty download rate of double the normal excess charge. All it proved was that some percentage of users are just incapable of managing even this simple aspect of their internet usage irrespective of what you put in place for them. After the first one or two times these, relatively small percentage of customers, exceeded their usage allowances they stopped or changed providers so it isn't a problem any more....but it serves to illustrate the point. In the new plans Exetel has introduced the excess usage charge is $A1.25 which should eliminate the selection of throttling/shaping by anyone....if we ever offer it on those plans which is unlikely as it is a pointless option - making a service unusable while pretending it is still a broadband service. I must look for a sensible way of removing the shaping option for the 'old' plans without causing a furore from the few customers who think it's somehow useful. Perhaps just leaving the 2 gb 'safety bonus' in place will do that? It will be interesting to see whether throttling/shaping options persist much longer by other ISPs. Trackbacks
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Most customers are very wary about pay-per-use services, because of the massive excess usage charges many other companies impose.
If other companies decided to have realistic pay-per-use services, it would be a lot easier for customers to compare prices and make an informed decision. God forbid. Comment (1)
'Sensible way' to remonce shaping could be to subsequently reduce the $3 per gb on old plans to the $1.25 per gb rate or allow migration from 'Added value' to 'no frills'.
People on a tight budget require certainty that the internet bill will come in at a consistent price. I would assume these same individuals can not find (or do not have the know-how) to locate affordable/free and sufficient anti-virus/anti-spyware/firewall to prevent malicious and/or unautorised downloads, which in some instances could rack up scores of gigabytes thus a stinging excess fee. Shaping (+cap) provides (or perceived to provide) this 'safety net' and certainty. If 64kbps is useless speed then perhaps it should be increased to 128 kbps or even 256kbps? It is a shame that shaping does get abused by the evil few. Comment (1)
There is no point in making the service usable by increasing the download speed after reaching the limit - the whole point of throttling/shaping is to make it unusable to reduce to a minimum any 'free' downloads.
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If you're going to offer throttling (which I know you're not) then you need to properly throttle everything, not throttle surfing and leave P2P as unthrottled. I know you mentioned a few months ago that you were looking at doing this after an upgrade.
Maybe you could have excess data on a pre-authorised rather than auto-authorised basis - ie you authorise 1Gb at a time and after each Gb you need to re-authorise (via a block page) with a warning at 200Mb. This would use the already-written procedures you have for your NF plans, and unused data would not carry forward. Maybe have an option for "do not warn me again this month" (but warn me next month!) in addition to "warn me after every Gb" so that those who are happy to pay can do so without interruption. Comment (1)
Throttling is an important thing for many people. The non throttled Telstra plans have very high excess data costs.
With many families having tight budgets and young children especially know it all young boys who will just download anything, they need it. Australia is fairly unique in having plans with download quotas. Overseas it is not a problem, download what you like. This makes me think what is the point of the NBN? I have ADSL2 and it is fast enough. With the NBN I will just be able to use up my quota much faster IF I use services which make use the added speed. Unless sites such as ABC's iView become free sites the NBN in Australia will be a joke. All speed no quota. Comment (1)
There's just not enough hours in a day/days in a month for me to use the generous limits imposed by Exetel.
The "Australian" link was very interesting though. For the life of me I have never been able to work out why people choose Bigpond for their broadband. I have a homeline budget with Telstra. But have never come close to contemplating broadband with them. As for the reported useage anomalies. That is a real concern! Comment (1)
I always buy a capped plan as I like to financially budget and not worry about data. For my emergency usage I have an additional 5GBPS Wireless optus Modem that I can turn on/off if the house hold decides to leave youtube running for a day on repeat.
For me fixed budgetting is much more important than generous data allowances or generous excess costs. Accessibility IS important, but fixed pricing moreso. I suggest it is a better idea to give ALL of your customers on ALL of your plans the Option of Reasonable Excess Charges, or Caps. Even a happy medium. "you have exceeded your allocation and are now capped. We can uncap your account for up to an additional 10|20|30GB/m at a rate of $1.50 per GB, at which time you will be capped again. Would you like to extend your quota for the month Yes/No. This gives the best of both worlds, allows emergency usage and I'm pretty sure you could roll out the changes to your routers in 5 mins from when they CHOOSE to exceed their capacity for the month. -Sean. P.S. I won't charge you for this idea. Comment (1)
I find it insulting some people would go through the free throttled 2gb then complain that they're getting charged $6/gb over that. They have no idea what it feels like to be with an ISP like telstra who don't offer such throttling and fight them over a $600 bill for doing the same thing.
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the 64kb limit is handy, it has saved my arse a few times. The block page has failed me every time though, it doesn't work for some configurations.
I think you should just have options for those people who don't like shaping "no shaping, no warning, $??/GB charge after limit reached" and a middle ground option, everyone happy. PS: I hate the offpeak load balancing system. During Offpeak in a congested exchange where your neighbours are torrenting their butts off, each download is capped but you can still open more downloads - that is really silly, cap the total max speed of a user instead of the speed per file! There is no way in the world that I would want to suffer slow speeds because some nerds on 24Mbps like to torrent movies they never watch. Comment (1)
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