At 09:38 AM 7/11/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>On Thu, 11 Jul 2002, Dean E. <dean at ripperd2.dhs.org> wrote:
>
> > That's BS.  I PAY for my bandwidth, so i can do what I please with the
> > bandwidth I bought.
>
>Well, isn't this the fundamental difference between cable and DSL?  With
>DSL you are paying a fixed cost for a fixed amount of bandwidth, so I
>suspect they don't care.  My understanding with cable is that you're
>paying a fixed cost for bandwidth that can burst far above what the
>provider could support, if everyone was doing it at once; thus their
>different TOS.  I think the cable companies are worried about free hot
>spots blowing their business model.

Yes and no.  All consumer broadband is oversold, cable, DSL, etc.  So they 
*do* care some, as some users are power users, and some users practically 
only browse the web and check email.  But this is all accounted for in 
their pricing.  There is a set average that you can be oversold by that you 
don't run into problems with.  Although if consumers as a whole, use more 
of their avaible bandwidth, price is going to go up.  That works the same 
for ANY unmetered service, water, electricity, internet access, etc.  Some 
people pay for more than what they use, some people pay less.  This is also 
why some providors put a few GB a month cap.  Personally, my HTTP server 
alone transfers about a GB per month, and it's just a personal site.

A true fractional T-1 at 640kbits would run hundreds a month.  my DSL line 
at 640kbits is only ~$45.

This is starting to get a little off-topic tho.

-Dean

Dean
dean at ripperd2.dhs.org
http://ripperd2.dhs.org/
Experience is something you don't get until just after you needed it.