[ NNSquad ] Re: [IP] Re: a wise word from a long time network person -- Merccurynews report on Stanford hearing

[Vint Cerf <vint@google.com>]

Seems to me that the real issue here is the process by which demand  
is moderated. In oversold conditions, there is high potential for  
saturation so you need a way to moderate the load. The RST method  
strikes me as quite blunt and clumsy. Either the protocols need to  
get clues about congestion and respond reasonably or the provider  
needs to have the ability to shape the traffic of any one subscriber  
that exceeds the then fairly supportable capacity.

In oversold conditions, the upper bound per subscriber appears to  
have to be variable if some form of "fairness" is to be achieved.  
Moreover, one might have to consider different upper bounds per  
subscriber, depending on the capacity offered to the subscriber. One  
can imaging differential pricing for higher (theoretical) capacity  
upper bounds.

vint


On Apr 23, 2008, at 4:05 AM, Brett Glass wrote:

> At 10:21 PM 4/22/2008, Edward Almasy wrote:
>
> > I don't understand why we should accept the premise that an ISP can't
> > survive unless they oversell their bandwidth,
>
> Because it's true; that's why.
>
> Let me give you an example. We had a business customer who wanted  
> higher
> speeds and to use BitTorrent -- that is, to saturate a high bandwidth
> link. We wanted to keep them, so we offered them 100%, non-oversold  
> backbone
> bandwidth at 5% over our cost: $105 per Mbps. Basically zero profit  
> for us.
> The cable company offered them 8 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up of (obviously  
> pooled)
> bandwidth at $150. Guess which one they took? And are claiming to  
> us that
> they are saturating 24x7?
>
> This customer decided that it would rather hog an oversold  
> bandwidth pool
> (which we can't let them do for obvious reasons) than pay for the  
> bandwidth
> it fully intended to use. Many other customers try to do the same. But
> we can't sell guaranteed bandwidth below cost. Want to saturate your
> link? If so, you have to pay for saturating it.
>
> Likewise, if we gave residential customers 1 Mbps links and  
> alloweed them
> to saturate them, we'd need to charge them $100 per month. Guess  
> how many
> takers we'd get.
>
> --Brett Glass