Bill, In what way is my argument a straw man? I specifically address the assertion you make, that an ISP must deliver X Mbps whenever you demand it, by explaining the real world essential practice of oversubscription.
Let's say you decide to start your own ISP, call it BillsNet. You buy a 1Gbps upstream pipe from Level3 for $6,000/month (a realistic price delivered to your facilities over fiber). You run wireless links to your customers via 100Mbps WiFi and a multi-gigabit redundant WiFi backbone, so that your only last-mile recurring cost is your labor to maintain your WISP network. Suppose, generously, that the going rate for 5x50Mbps broadband is $100/mo in your area (it's likely less). Only 20 customers can operate at full speed on this network (20 x 50Mbps = 1,000Mbps), so following your rule, you have to cap your income at $2,000/mo. You're losing $4,000/mo and you haven't yet spent a dime on salaries, hardware, deployment, or maintenance. I call this the "iron man" argument. ;) -mel On Feb 27, 2015, at 10:54 AM, William Herrin <b...@herrin.us> wrote: > On Fri, Feb 27, 2015 at 1:34 PM, Mel Beckman <m...@beckman.org> wrote: >> On Feb 27, 2015, at 9:56 AM, William Herrin <b...@herrin.us> >> wrote: >>> Deceit is Bad Behavior. If you sell me an X megabit per second >>> Internet access service, you should do everything reasonably within >>> your power to make sure I can access the Internet sites of my choice >>> at X megabits per second. > >> This is not feasible. ISPs work by oversubscription, so it's never possible >> for all (or even 10% of all) customers to simultaneously demand their full >> bandwidth. If ISPs had to reserve the full bandwidth sold to each customer > > Hi Mel, > > Respectfully, that's a straw man argument. You alter the parameters of > my criticism then proceed to show how the altered argument is > unreasonable. > > All utilities work by oversubscription: electric, natural gas, water > and sewer. When the sewer authority fouls up their oversubscription > model and your pee ends up in my basement, guess who pays for the > cleanup? They do. > > I have some unfortunate first-hand experience with this. > > >> Anyone who doesn't understand [oversubscription] >> will be unable to engage in reasonable discussion about ISP practices. > > You said it, not me. > > Regards, > Bill Herrin > > > > -- > William Herrin ................ her...@dirtside.com b...@herrin.us > Owner, Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/>
