In reality we don't disagree on this:
 
On Wednesday, May 21, 2014 11:19am, "Dave Taht" <dave.taht@gmail.com> said:
> 

> Well, I disagree somewhat. The downstream shaper we use works quite
> well, until we run out of cpu at 50mbits. Testing on the ubnt edgerouter
> has had the inbound shaper work up a little past 100mbits. So there is
> no need (theoretically) to upgrade the big fat head ends if your cpe is
> powerful enough to do the job. It would be better if the head ends did it,
> of course....
>
 
There is an advantage for the head-ends doing it, to the extent that each edge device has no clarity about what is happening with all the other cpe that are sharing that head-end. When there is bloat in the head-end even if all cpe's sharing an upward path are shaping themselves to the "up to" speed the provider sells, they can go into serious congestion if the head-end queues can grow to 1 second or more of sustained queueing delay.  My understanding is that head-end queues have more than that.  They certainly do in LTE access networks.