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I mean, seriously, why did they think customers wanted 5Mb/s? So they could download movie previews from the QT website?

Ummm, yes? Most high speed users are burst high-speed users, who get on their PC and browse around YouTube and other high bandwidth sites, and then "log off" and go about their life. They don't sit sucking 100% of the capacity around the clock, but when they do the high bandwidth is very beneficial.

The reality is that it is grossly economically unsustainable for someone to max out their connection perpetually, which is why many high speed providers have had max throughputs per time period since their inception (cue someone complaining about some provider that never did, yet a lot did. Up here in Canada, the major cable providers that operated under the @Home banner always listed a max throughput, beyond which they can assess additional charges, or disconnect you, or force you to upgrade to a much more expensive service if you want to continue).

My car might have 255HP, and while that helps me pass trucks and merge onto highways better, it doesn't mean that I drive around the clock with the pedal pushed to the floor.

Unless it's spelled out in the contract, artificial restrictions should not be allowed.

Just curious, have you ever read the service contract with your ISP? I know I haven't. My guess would be that they include a paragraph to the tune of, "If the user is doing something we don't like, we can do whatever we want about it."

ISPs can do whatever they want, but I will vote with my wallet. If they do anything to limit my bandwidth or IPs, I will simply switch ISPs.

Believe it or not, this is what many service providers would like you to do. If you're the kind of person who wants to eat $200 of steak all week long at the $5.95 buffet, we'd gladly help you go patronize someone else.

I'm the senior network engineer for a regional broadband operator. We were first to activate service in our region and had many heavy-use customers sign up along with the rest. Because we rate-limit P2P (as clearly explained in the service agreement and website FAQ), we saw about 8% to 10% of our customer base leave when the incumbant local exchange provider (ILEC) finally activated DSL.

I always found it amusing to see the ILEC do their dog and pony show when they had zero customers on the local DSL network. They'd feed the community with either a fractional T1 or at best, two T1's bonded. The speeds in their little demo trailer were impressive at first.

Then the P2P abusers would switch. Three months later, you'd see peak hour speeds of around 60 to 110 kbps - instant ISDN! Then we'd start getting calls from the abusers telling us we could have their business back ($35-$40 a month), but ONLY if we opened up P2P. The reality was our rate-limited P2P was ultimately faster than the unpoliced nasty DSL network that died when a handful of P2P servers lit up and consumed most of the bandwidth.

I've seen some pretty hilarious emails passed on from customer service, from the threats to file a class action lawsuit because we wouldn't permit unrestricted P2P (from people that had left us to go to a DSL network that was a disaster), to explanations that a customer's request should never be ignored if we are a good company. We'll even get the occasional Better Business Bureau complaint because we rate-limit. I've even seen explanations that we should charge everyone more money to subsidize the few abusers - apparently nobody wants to use their own money to pay for their P2P habit.

The funny thing is that we have a standard response that provides these customers with a connection that doesn't have the rate-limiting for about $200 per Mbps, with a guaranteed SLA. When you're delivering this to rural communities, $200/Mbps is pretty incredible and it's darn near our cost to get it there. Yet we never have takers on it - P2P hogs expect to dine for close to free.

Ultimately you have a choice: you can please 85% of your customers with well engineered traffic, and send the 10% abusers and 5% financial deadbeats to the competition, or you can please the losers and send away the good customers. If you want to stay in business, you know what the right decision is.

For a detailed analysis of exactly how, see Should Internet Service Providers Fear Peer-Assisted Content Distribution? [nyud.net] (PDF [nyud.net] Related papers can be found at http://del.icio.us/tag/locality+p2p [del.icio.us]

To the best of my knowledge Azureus doesn't yet, but intends to. You can read about their Vivaldi system [aelitis.com] on their wiki. (Version as of the time I posted [aelitis.com].) It's designed to compute nodes that are close to each other so that Azureus can pick closer peers.

However, they don't actually use it yet, according to that page. But there is work towards it.

But surely if a resteraunt offers me all I can eat, and (assuming I was American) happen to be able to eat a wheel barrows ammount of food. Wouldn't I be entitled to?

I mean that would be the most blatant case of fraudulent advertising since my suit against the film, ``The Never-Ending Story''.

Ever heard of false advertising?

"All you can eat" does not mean "all you can take home". "Unlimited use high-speed connection" DOES mean "unlimited use".

First of all, you're thinking like a mindless ISP employee, but secondly, you're right! This is the whole problem. The whole state of ISP business plans is set up wrong. People are accustomed to a low monthly fee, and ISPs like it because they get a guaranteed income from the majority low-bandwidth users.

I myself am I high usage person. But I know this, and I'm okay with it. If an ISP doesn't like me using so much bandwidth they call me up and complain and I respond with "Sure no problem, I've got more money, take some of it, because I want to use more bandwidth." Traditionally in the past they've told me "UUUhhh we can't do that, you have to use less bandwidth!"

WHAT?!

Fortunately things are starting to change. I'm not paying my service provider extra fees for extra bandwidth and we're both happy.

I personally see the future going with zero restrictions, but people paying for the usage. This is the only way it will go, with companies that have attitudes like yours going bankrupt.

You're forgetting that people actually WANT to use these services. It's not your companies right to refuse them. It IS however your companies duty to its shareholders to come up with a way to satisfy market demands... and unthrottled P2P is one of them!

Quit thinking like a mindless zombie and get with the times!