When it comes to broadband internet access, you can have speed or large volumes of data transfer. You can’t have both. One certainty in the broadband world is that for those of us with cable or DSL modems connecting us to the internet, there is still a finite amount of bandwidth available. When a user consumes a disproportionate and significant amount of bandwidth, it can and will slow down everyone. I hate that.
If the choice is between your being able to download more movies or other video and my getting the best possible speed from my internet connection, I’m thrilled when you get kicked off. It can’t happen soon enough. Speed is what I need. Take all your P2P downloads and get the hell off my internet.
I have no sympathy for bandwidth hogs. You all are productivity killers for the rest of us. People who are working, people who are trying to play games, people who are in virtual worlds, people who are networking, people who are just trying to watch a Youtube video or their favorite TV show, you all are the reason why we get incredibly annoyed by slowdowns and buffering.
Leave and take your bit torrent client with you.
Its been amusing to read all the blog posts with the math telling all of us just how many standard def or high def movies tiered subscribers will be limited to. You can have 2 or 3 of your favorite SD TV shows per day, or X number of HD movies per month. Say what ?
I have news for all of you that want to dedicate their internet connections to downloading movies. There is a new and exciting development. Its called an Application Specific Integrated Video Service (ASIVS) . What is an ASIVS ? Its a computer dedicated specifically to downloading and playing both standard definition and high definition video. You connect it to a network that is dedicated to delivering GIGABITS PER SECOND of high quality video with ZERO buffering. Its amazing, it always works and connects right to your standard def or High Definition TV, easily. Most of the systems I have seen have a pretty good programming guide and scheduling system and they will let you download AS MUCH VIDEO AS YOU WANT , limited only by the size of its hard drive!!
If you haven’t heard of the ASIVS, its because most people call it a DVR.
If downloading TV shows is so important to you, add a DVR to your cable or satellite service for 5 bucks a month and download all you want. If you want to watch those shows on your laptop, connect the composite video out in your DVR to the composite in on your laptop. Same with movies.
Cant download movies illegally, tough.
The internet is a great resource for unlimited quantities of video. Downloading video is an internet given right. Using he internet to fill up your PC turned DVR at the expense of the performance of every user around you is not.
Im a heavy internet user. I’m online hours per day. To me, the promise of the internet comes not from how many bits I can download, its in finding new ways to leverage the utility and stability of the internet as a platform for new applications. The performance of the net is key to new applications working and gathering users. Internet consumers avoid new applications that are slow. Even when they don’t realize that the application is slow because the latency on their net segment has skyrocketed because of bandwidth hogs disproportionate consumption of bits.
Now some of you might think that the reasonable solution for all of this is for your provider to create as much last mile bandwidth as is necessary to make everyone happy, with no limits on use and at a low price. In a lot of respects, I would agree with you. It would be nice if every network were upgraded so that the amount of bandwidth available to us would be bottomless. Nice, but not here and now.
Until that day comes, the only real option is to push the bandwidth hogs to slow usage periods and create packages that allow for increased consumption of bandwidth during off hours, or to push them off typical ISP network. If tiered broadband offerings enable that. I say thank you.
Speed is what I need. If that means that those 5 pct of users that consume 65pct of bandwidth are kicked off or charged per bit to reduce their consumption…. so be it.
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I agree whole-heartedly with most of your comments above Mark!
I think it is a telling sign that despite being able to spend a few bucks (well, they are cheap these days) on a DVR, interner downloaders still insist on using torrent files etc. I think what you said re: “Cant download movies illegally, tough.” – This is the real reason…
Anothe rthing that gets me on a rant, personally, is the amount of people trying to connect through open wifi nets these days (in the UK anyhoo, you have the same issues?) – I have overheard people saying that it’s the WiFi router owners fault for not bothering to secure their network, but I think that is akin to saying it’s okay to steal from someones house if they leave their door unlocked! – stealing others WiFi bandwidth to download copyright protected stuff via P2P software isn’t clever, it’s a pain in the butt, especially if you put someone over thier bandwidth allowance!
Anyway, sorry to rant (I did say it got me going)!
Comment by cheapest -
I only use the internet for email, message boards, chat rooms, instant messaging, and web searches, so I’m not a “bandwidth hog” by any means. I don’t use any sort of P2P applications, other than the ones I mentioned, and I only use chat rooms & instant messaging for exchanging text messages, not for transferring any sort of files. The only videos I “download” are the news clips that I watch on various sites that provide such services, and I don’t save any videos that I watch on my hard drive or any other storage medium, so unless something that I’m doing on the net is saving itself in my temporary files somewhere, I’m not one of those people who spends all their time searching for more music and videos to fill all their free space. I never do any of my gaming online, and I get highly annoyed when whatever I’m trying to do is slowed to a crawl by net traffic too. But I must say that your attitude is worse than anyone who does any or all of the things that you detest so much. I fail to see what it is you do on the net that you think is so important that it should give you all the speed you demand, while everyone else waits for you to finish it, so they can go about their own business without fear of inconveniencing you by denying you your speed. You seem to have ruled out every legitimate use for the net there is as being a detriment to whatever it is you do with it. So I think the best solution would be for you to get the hell off of everyone else’s internet! It’s people like you who ruin it for everyone else, not the other way around. I bet you’re one of those people who drives on the freeway with their emergency flashers on, honking their horn for everyone else to get out of their way, because it’s so important that you get wherever you’re gong as quickly as possible that no one else on the road should have any right to impede your progress. I guess your blog and your blogging on it are supposed to be more important than anything that anyone else could possibly be doing on the net, including reading your blog. I hope my posting a comment here didn’t slow you down. I’m sure you’ll be complaining the entire time that it takes you to delete what I have to say to you, so no one else can read about what an ass I think you are. Which is just as well, because your own words said it for me better than I could ever say it myself!
Comment by Hound Dog -
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Why do we keep saying how higher bandwidth users should pay more, pay more, pay more…? Can we start phrasing it in such a way that does not make the ISP\’s mouth\’s drool? How\’s about the lower bandwidth users should not have to pay as much…
I guess considering the nature of my business (I.T.) I am a high bandwidth user. I do pay somewhere around $60/month for my internet connection and feel that is plenty enough to download all day/night if I want to.
For all you low bandwidth crybabies out there, Get DSL and stop sharing your network segment with your whole neighborhood! And stop making justification for ISP\’s to charge us more!!!
Comment by Ethan Chabert -