[Bloat] Usage Based Billing - It's All About Perceived Congestion

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh]

On Mon, 28 Feb 2011 13:56 -0800, "richard" <richard at pacdat.net> wrote:
> As some have remarked, UBB, especially here and now in Canada, is one
> response to what we're dealing with in bufferbloat.

It is not always bufferbloat that is the driving cause for UBB.

In Brazil, UBB is often used to help heavily oversubscribed networks
(usually by the DOCSIS networks and 3G networks) escape consumer wrath.

UBB is not the only "bandwidth usage deterrent" employed here by the
large broadband ISPs.  Cutting down service to as low as 100kbit/s
downstream and 30kbit/s upstream when the consumer goes over a monthly
quota, limiting concurrent tcp sessions, and extremely severe shaping of
P2P traffic are used as alternatives to UBB.

Without UBB or other "bandwidth usage deterrents", the users will notice
more readily that they are allotted far less than the bandwidth required
to get 100% of the nominal throughput they paid for, as there just isn't
enough bandwidth in the access, backhaul and even backbone networks, let
alone peering and transit links.  The broadband service contracts _do_
often make it clear you only are guaranteed 10% (yes, that's right, ten
percent) of the maximum throughput, and also about TCP concurrent flow
limits and UBB, but people will only take notice of that if they're
subject to such ridiculous service levels constantly.

And I very much doubt UBB is strongly related to oversubscribing just in
Brazil.  We need to be careful to not make bufferbloat the network
bogeyman, doing so can only backfire in the long run.

-- 
  "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
  them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
  where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
  Henrique Holschuh