From Slashdot: Comcast goes after NAT users

[JD Runyan]

----- Forwarded message from Bradley Miller <bradmiller at dslonramp.com> -----

From: Bradley Miller <bradmiller at dslonramp.com>
X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.3 (32)
To: JD Runyan <Jason.Runyan at NITCKC.USDA.Gov>
Subject: Re: From Slashdot: Comcast goes after NAT users

At 12:40 PM 1/25/02 -0600, you wrote:
>>>I will reiterate, THE USE OF BANDWIDTH DOES NOT CONSUME THE RESOURCE. 
>>Filling your pool uses water that will not be returned the same as it
>>was before it was used.  You LEASE bandwidth not buy it.  Once you 
>>stop paying for it, it is no longer your to use.
>
>
>Electricity is consumed -- water will go back eventually through
>evaporation somewhere or somehow.  I pay sewer tax for water in my pool
>that drain down and never sees the sewer.   
>
Water is consumed, it must be processed to return to the state it was 
delivered in.  I am quite aware that water has one of the shorter
recovery cycles.
>You are thinking of capacity.  A cable connection has capacity to carry
>whatever is pumped through it for speed, but the bits passing through it
>can be considered a resource.   Let a T1 reach saturation and tell me that
>it's not a resource that is expendable.   The capacity is what you think
>you are paying for now, but it's the bits flowing through it that we're
>concerned with.  If someone wants to get 10gig of transfer a month, who
>should care if it goes to 10 PC's?   But if 10 PC's use 10gig EACH of
>transfer per month, there is a problem.  It's still the bits in use.
Who owns the bits.  The culmination of bits that compose a file, may have
a copyright attached to it, but the cable company certainly does not own the
bits.  I never implied that the network can not become saturated.  That is
another issue.  Once traffic is lessened, then the T1 is no longer saturated,
thus it is in no way consumed.
>The problem with all this is how you look at it.  From customer/end user
>standpoint vs. the guy trying to deal with the loads on the other end.  If
>you have T1 capabilities for every Tom/Dick/Harry in the neighborhood . . .
>and they all attempt to use it then you can't support them with an OC3 . .
>. or even bigger.  On the customer end we want as much as we want, but on
>the supplier end you can't cope with that from a business model.  
The guy who handles the loads, makes a change that lasts along as the equipment
is in place.  Yes the cable company must purchase thier internet connection.
Having run an ISP, I am aware of the fact there are 2 ways of purchasin frame 
relay service from the big providers.  You can by burstable service, that gives 
you a standard amount of bandwidth that can be increased at peak time, and there
is flat service that is persistently a certain bandwidth.  Either way you are 
paying for capacity, and not the load you actually place on the service.  For 
a company to charge you in this manner is only to increase profits at the customers
expense.  If Comcast is unable to deliver service at the current rates, then 
they need to evaluate thier infrastructure, and business process. If they 
cannot trim enough there they may need to raise rates.  The idea of charging
for network utilization is archaic.

>-- Bradley Miller
>
>----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
JD Runyan
		"You can't milk a point."
			David M. Kuehn, Ph.D.