Quote:
Originally Posted by photon
It is finite, but it's finite in width.
At every point where connections are consolidated, there will be a limit to the amount of bandwidth that can be handled. Since it can be saturated it's finite.
And that limit is usually smaller than the combined theoretical maximum of all the incoming connections, because no one uses their maximum 100% of the time (just like cell phone towers couldn't handle it if every subscriber in their radius made a call all at the same time).
So there's different ways to respond to this.
One would be to do nothing and let the throughput degrade for everyone as usage goes up.
Another is to discourage constant use and put a cap on how much you can use.. not because the resource is finite, but to limit people from using the maximum constantly.
Another way would be to have network infrastructure all along the way to handle the theoretical maximum, but consumers obviously wouldn't pay for that level of service (go to a data center and look at the price difference between x GB of data and an unmetered connection).
Another would be to charge by amount used (ideally setting it low enough to actually be reasonable).
There are other ways to.. throttle connections once they get past a certain transfer limit. Have different rates for different times of day so off-peak times, etc..
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I like Roger's approach: their modems give you a "speed boost" when they "detect the network has unused capacity". Basically, throttling peak hour bitrates, but they've framed it as a positive. And let's face it, my 7.5 Mbps connection is basically throttled all the time (to 7.5 Mbps - but the modem and everything have the capacity to go faster - and they do when PowerBoost is active), so Roger's offer would be an improvement.