[sllug-members]: ISP bandwidth allocation (Was: Read my blog...)

[Chad]

[SNIP]

> The charge is not levied on the customer by UTOPIA, it is levied on the
> ISP by UTOPIA, who has at its discretion to charge the user or to eat the
> extra cost by building the average overage fees into the base service
> cost. I for one don't blame an ISP who passes on the charges that they
> have to pay to the person who caused them to get charged, rather than
> passing them to all of us.

[/SNIP]

Taken out of context for a second, I am somewhat confused, and don't
understand completely.  If an ISP is allocated (for example) 100GB per
month, and has 10 customers.  Then, evenly divided, these 10 customers
should be allocated 10GB by the ISP.  So far, so good?  So, let's
pretend that customer A is using 4GB per month, and customer B is
using 16GB per month.  And the remaining customers are using 10GB or
less per month.  Passing the "charges" that customer B has supposedly
incurred aren't 'passing on the cost to the perpetrator' but instead
is making additional money for, well, nothing additional.

I don't disagree with quotas, I really don't understand them well
enough to take a stance either way.  But, assuming ISPs that impose
quotas have a somewhat dynamic customer base, then it's extremely
unlikely that they have such a low bandwidth allotment that when
customer B uses an extra 6GB that it's actually adding additional
charges to the ISP.  Instead, it's more likely than customers C
through J are using far less than their 10GB allocation, and the
overall 100GB allocation isn't even getting close to being touched.
Realistically, those numbers are probably significantly larger, just
used easy small numbers for scale ;)

So, what's wrong with that thought process?

Also, can anyone enlighten me on what the issue is with bandwidth
costs?  My (again extremely narrow and 'n00b') understanding is that
the hardware that 'powers the internet' isn't having any more problems
being used 24/7 than if it were just sitting there (but powered on and
'running' but not doing any packet sending).  Meaning, that a
flat-fee-per-month for unlimited bandwidth totally makes sense.
Limiting the amount of bandwidth only makes sense if you don't have
enough switches (or nodes?) in a given area such that too much
saturation is taking place and network congestion results.  In that
case, it sounds like you have enough customers to warrant throwing in
a few more 'nodes'...

Hopefully this doesn't sound like a jab at any ISP, or anyone.  I
really don't know, and I'm trying to explain what I think I
understand; and am really asking for some enlightenment to how it
really works, and why.

Thanks!

-Chad