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Originally Posted by DVS
I agree and disagree 
Whilst I agree 1 user cannot create > 1 users worth of congestion a light user will most likely not create a full 1 users worth of congestion.
Heavy user will likely be maxxed out on bandwidth.
Light user is most likely web browsing or checking email etc which uses bandwidth in a very 'peaky' manner. They aren't maxxed out during their net usage. |
It is true that I was treating a user as either being online or not during peak periods, and if they are tonline hey are dling whilst online. I did this to simplfy the issue.
If we go into this 'extra' detail of kinds of usage during peak periods then some points come to mind.
First off during peak times it's not possible to 'max out' your connection. As it becomes more congested then your dl speed reduces and the amount of congestion you can cause reduces, as your connection speed does.
Also I would take some issue with the idea that 'light users' do not max out their connection in those periods when they do use the internet (generally peak periods).
Imagine a houshold that only downloads 500MB a day but all in peak periods. There might be little johny playing online games from 7pm till 9pm. Sister Clare likes to get home from school, have dinner do her homework and then retire upstairs to talk online to her friends, using her webcam. She also runs a small website, heavy on large uncompressed graphics files and intersperces he online chatting with intense uploads, all from 7pm till 11pm when she has to be in bed. Dad likes to catch up on the news and uses several video based news sites. Mum meanwhile is wondering why the 5 emails from cousin Jenny in Australia, each containing an uncompressed 1.5MB didgtal photo of cousin Jenny's sick cat, are taking so long to download. She wonders if it is being caused by all these 'heavy users' and wishes NTL would just kick them off.
In the senario above the total congestion caused by such a household, entierly in peak periods, is likely to be as significant as the lazy heavy downloader that has not turned off their P2P app in peak periods. It will be much greater than the non lazy heavy downloader that _does_ restrict their usage in peak periods. However it is hard to villfy this fictional family, compared with the ease with which the non lazy heavy user is villifed.
Also if you are going to look at the detail of usage during peak periods, then with a CM based system upstream usage causes more congestion per byte than dling does per byte. In some ways the real 'bandwidth hogs' are those that upload intensively during peak periods. Apps that are symetrical in their bandwidth usages (voip, gaming and others) cause more congestion than those that are asymetrical, with more dl than up (classic dling, getting email, P2P). Apps that are asymetrical with more upload than down (uploading files to webspace, sending emails, video serving) are even worse from a congestion point of view.
My main point is however that the idea that 5% of users cause 60%+ of congestion is just plain rubbish. It is unfortunately widely believed to be true. It is this misconception that I feel the most need to counter.
(PS there is nothing 'peaky' about downloading your mail from an NTL server (if they are working that is). It's likely to saturate your connection a lot more than your typical P2P app is.)