From: Marc Horowitz (marc@mit.edu)
Date: Sat Mar 04 2000 - 23:45:10 PST
David Honig <honig@sprynet.com> writes:
>> But, geez, let people use their pipe any way they want, within the
>> limits of what they paid for. Maybe that's the problem. The
>> marketeers won't let the engineers point out that certain values
>> are peak, that everyone can't flush the toilet at the same time.
I don't have a pipe. I share a stream. What makes you think anybody
is paying for anything more than best-effort connectivity? The
flexibility in the agreement is *precisely* so they can "harass"
people who screw up their bandwidth plan. I've been ssh'ing to my
machine for the two years I've had cable modem service, and nobody's
ever complained. I've run an ftp server, over which I've done
occasional OS installs, and nobody's stopped me. For $40/month, I
don't expect to be able to saturate my 300kbps uplink 24x7. If I want
that, I expect I'm going to have to pay extra for a dedicated pipe.
If the cable company starts harassing people based on content, I
suspect they'll end up with lawsuits on their hands regardless of what
the agreement says. Further, the cable franchise in most cities is
controlled by the city, and local governments tend to listen more to
taxpayers than to cable companies. My city voted not to let AT&T buy
Mediaone unless it agreed to share the wires; good for them.
Marc
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