[erol]

I just tried a rather long reply and got the following

"The following errors occured when this post was submitted:
You have included too many images in your signature or in your previous post. Please go back and correct the problem and then continue again.

Images include use of smilies, the vB code [img] tag and HTML <img> tags. The use of these is all subject to them being enabled by the administrator.
"

So I am gonna try chopping it into more than one post. Mods if you can rejoin them later (and remove the stuff above) please do so.

Originally Posted by JustAnotherN00b

My apologies, the network stats must be lying.

Can I see these stats, that show that the 60% usage overnight is being caused by 5% of users and not by 20%, or 30% or even 60% ?

Originally Posted by JustAnotherN00b

The same can be said of the telephone network.

It is not just said of the telephone network it is the case with the telephone network, acording to OFTEL. In their calculations the monthly line rental does not cover the fixed costs of of the line (and BT has had over 100 years to 'pay down' the capital cost of thier network!). As such BT are allowed an 'uplift' on the per minute cost of calls to 'recoup' this subsidy. If OFTELs figures are to be believed then heavy phone users subsidise low usage users.

Originally Posted by JustAnotherN00b

I guess that low user tariff must be nonsense.

It's not nonsense. It is a 'social inclusion' requirment forced on BT by OFTEL (does NTL offer such a low user telephony service?) that recognises that certain groups (namely the very poor) would be unable to have a phone, even for incomming calls only, if the line rental were to be priced according to cost. Low usage phone users, even without the low users tarrif, are already being susbsidised by heavy users. With it the heavy users are paying even more susbsidy every time they make a call.

Costs may be equal, but why shouldn't those that use the available facilities more pay more?

Sure you _could_ price internet access and telephony on a 'what the market will bear' basis. However in a market as fundamentaly vital as these to the UK's future, and one where the term 'natural monopoly / duolpoly' could have been invented for it, it would be madness to do so. I want to see as much internet usage in the UK as possible. If the costs are fixed then I want the price to be fixed.

Transit bandwidth is the main incremental cost.

Absoloutely right. Totaly right. And the cost of transit bandwidth is miniscule in the over all cost base of provision and it is falling at a rate faster than moores law in relation to processors. What is more something like 90% of the transit fibre has not even been lit yet. It is also worth noting that NTL's congestion problems have _nothing_ to do with transit costs, as they have stated themselves. Sure if you live in Australia that has a relatively small population and is geographicaly about as remote as you can get, so there are limit undersea fiber links, then the cost of tranist can start to rise to levels that it represents a 'significant' proportion of the toal cost of provision. Transit bandwith in somewhere like Oz can be anywhere from 10-100 times more exensive than in the UK. Even then, with the cost of transit falling faster than the demand for it, due to technologies like DWDM, this is a temporary situation.

That of course and upgrades forced through people raping their connections which wouldn't normally be required.

Just what is it that you think has driven the 'core' network of the internet to increase it's capacity by many orders of magnitude of the last 10-20 years? It is 'usage' that has driven that. Without usage there would be no need to increase capacity and we would all be using our BB conections to send emails and nothing else. Usage is good. Usage is the driver for progress.

There are a few problems here Erol. First one is that allowing a network to reach 100% utilisation at any point is a very bad idea.

No one is saying that. What I am saying is that anytime usage is under 100% then resource that has been paid for already is being effectively 'wasted'. Sure you can not avoid this situation in a real world network but it is true non the less. Anyone that uses the network when utilisation is under 100% is affecting _non one_ and thats has to be a fact.

You constantly go on about congestion and utilisation. Would you be happy with using your connection for a couple of hours in the evening and getting a nice slow service due to people constantly soaking up bandwidth?

Why would I blame 'other people' and not myself? My usage affects them as much as thiers affects me (when utilisation is over 100% of capacity) ? I might blame the service provider, if it was very bad, for not scaling their network properly but I would not blame 'other people'. I am as much an 'other person' to them as they are to me.

As I showed you on graphs from Plusnet difference in load isn't that great between peak time load and offpeak load.

Plusnet specificaly provide this info so that people can help them to 'level out' their (plusnets) usage. Judging by the graphs I saw it's pretty effective and all in all a great idea. The closer plusnets users combined usage can get to 'constant' over a 24hr period the better it is for plusnet (and by extension their customers). For NTL to do this however it would have to be usage at the UBR, for that is where the problems occur.