Holding on to a dynamic IP address

Sorry, but common practice is to load something like 20 times the number of users who could, theoretically, use their bandwidth at the same time on a node. If one uses all of his, consistently, there is little problem. If several do this, the others will be impacted beyond what is reasonable. Your rationalization for improper use is invalid under the business model, and the AUP. It is a common thing these days for everyone to say "I'm gonna get mine, to hell with anyone else." Sad.

I'm not dumb - I understand sharing a resource, but we're talking 256Kb here not 3000Mb. A little software could adjust the up and down non-symetric speeds to allow for such situations. The ISPs choose to keep up as 1/12th of down - they could do otherwise (and possibly even dynamically).

And what are the chances that will ever happen ? And if they could adjust the bandwidth to increase the up and lower the down when needed, it would resolve the issue in many instances (of course that would mean your down could suffer a little when up load was high, but the total of 3.25Mb would still be there - just with a different ratio).

Before cable broadband came along, many phone companies were faced with the problem of too many phone lines being tied-up for hours at a time each night by dial-up Internet users. This was a real problem in some mostly residential exchanges that were built for normal residential peaks each evening. So Ron's example is not only possible. It is based in reality.

These days theres still a lot of dial-up users, but they're generally not the folks who tie-up their lines for hours at a time. Those folks have gone to cable, or DSL (which went down in price when cable came along.) People with wireless phones also took away some of the stress. Had these things not happened, many of us could have been facing rules pertaining to how long our phone calls could be, and/or acceptable uses of our phone.

Most people never knew how big of a problem this had been. Some who did were surprised that there wasn't enough capacity in the phone system for everyone to make a local call at the same time. They would have argued against the rational of any restrictions in the use of their phones for the Internet. After all, it's just the same as someone making a phone call.

As VOIP becomes more popular, and more people e-mail and upload large files, the cable companies have had to make more channels available for upstream traffic. But it's still a limited amount. It doesn't matter if my server really doesn't make as much use of the upstream as the VOIP user next door does. What matters is that if everyone who wanted a server had one, it would strain the resources. Even with bandwidth caps, choices need to be made as to what is allowed.

Of course we could go back to the days when 128k was the typical restriction on uploads. It would make it more difficult for some people, but there would be enough bandwidth available for everyone running a server.

I'm talking about load adjusting the up and down bandwidth to accomodate having servers that take up more up bandwidth. The total of 3.25Mb could be done with other ratios than 12:1 and possibly even dynamically. You would lose some down to accomodate more up when the need arises. So having a few servers running at 256Kb could be easily handled by changing the ratio to 10:1 or 8:1 on occasion to accomodate them. The

12:1 is arbitrary.

Sorry, but you don't understand the reality of the business model. Imagine what would happen if every telephone subscriber in your city tried to make a call at the same time... Imagine what would happen if everyone in your town tried to go to the grocery stores at the same time. Businesses aren't set up to handle such situations. They are set up to handle AVERAGE loads, not peak loads. Peak loads always cause problems. It is not economically feasible to set up a business to handle peak loads all the time, and usually not EVER. Haven't you ever tried to make a cell phone call and been unable to get through? Too many others in your cell were already using bandwidth. It is the same for cable internet. The normal average, and a bit of 'head room' is the design parameter, and you wouldn't want to pay for the alternative. Last time I checked, a T1 Line from my local phone company (1.5mbps/1.5mbps) was about $1500 a month. So, I get cable 3mbps/256kbps service for $40 a month, and I SHARE the bandwidth.

Cable internet is a shared resource, which like other shared resources, such as the phone system is oversubscribed, in that not everyone can use their full bandwidth at all times. Imagine a 10 Mb ethernet network, using a hub or coax. You decide that each user is allowed a maximum of 1 Mb/s and have

50 users. Normally, only a fraction of the users will be on at any given time, allowing a user the maximum bandwidth. Now, if one is on their all the time, the remaining bandwidth pool, for the rest of the users is smaller. In the days of dial up internet access, a similar problem arose, in that some people figured that "unlimited" access meant they were entitled to tie up one of the modem ports 24/7, regardless if they were doing anything or not. They then denied others the abilitiy to use that particular port, which increased loading on the others.

That 256 Kb that your ISP gives you, is not dedicated to you alone. It is part of the bandwidth that must be shared by all users on your segment. You'll likely find that if you multiply that 256 Kb, by the number of subscribers on your segment, you'll significantly exceed the total bandwidth available.

If that's what you want, then pay for it. There are reasons why business accounts cost more than residential. This is one of them.

If the ISP dedicated that bandwidth for your exclusive use, it would cost a lot more.

Saturating the uplink for an area will affect the downloads for everyone in the area as they ack packets wouldn't get back to the sending servers for the folks surfing.

Network designs that would give everyone their limit all the way to the backbone would cost you $1000s per month. The aggregate numbers add up very quickly to bandwidth needs that have way too many zeros to be practical.

James Knott wrote: ....

"Likely?" Have you not done the calculation then? I have heard that the upsteam data is in part a time division multiplex operation. The bandwidth is only shared as it nears the top limit, otherwise you're limited by the modem's settings.

Unfortunately, the upstream bandwidth is limited by the choices of hardware when the system was installed/upgraded, and this is a bit difficult, and expensive, to change.

Which is exactly why so many cable companies (and DSL providers) went to

128kbps upstream speed. If they rigorously enforce the 'no servers' rule, then more of us will be able to enjoy 'normal' use of higher bandwidths on the upstream side. This is more 'fair' than having a few hog bandwidth to the detriment of the many.

Nice idea, but, as I understand it, the hardware in place doesn't allow for this scheme. I would LOVE to have a 'reversable' bandwidth setup that would allow me to upstream at 3 mbps when I am not doing any downloading, and download at 3 mbps when I am not uploading. Unfortunately this isn't in the hardware.

One DOCSIS channel runs (IIRC) at 30 Mb/s. On the upload side, contention issues reduce the bandwidth available. If each user is assigned a dedicated 1 Mb bandwidth (download), then there could only be a maximum of

30 users. According to what I've read, there will typically be 100 - 200 subscribers sharing that channel, not 30.

There's hardly 30 houses in my section of town !-)

Yes, but it isn't as flexible as you seem to think. You don't seem to realize that the underlying technology is also asymmetric. Cable systems were designed to broadcast signals from the head end to the subscribers, they were not designed to broadcast signals from the subscribers to the head end (at least not in any significant volume). The DOCSIS standards allows a maximum of 30 or 38 mbps downstream (depending on which modulation scheme the cable company chooses to use

-- the higher speed has less noise immunity) but only 5 mbps upstream for DOCSIS 1.0 and 10 mbps for DOCSIS 1.1. It's not until DOCSIS 2.0 (which I don't think anyone has actually deployed yet) that the maximum upstream gets close to the maximum downstream (30 mbps). As has been pointed out elsewhere, congestion on the upstream can significantly impact the performance of the downstream, which is why cable companies are much more careful about oversubscribing the upstream than the downstream.

-Larry Jones

Why is it you always rip your pants on the day everyone has to demonstrate a math problem at the chalkboard? -- Calvin

Exactly, saturating the uplink on an asymmetrical network can slow the downlink down to the same speed as the uplink