By fair queue, I meant equal sharing of bandwidth per user / IP... Likely with MikroTik PCQ.
Even though speeds would not be slower, the two major customer experiences I expect are: 1. Wow, the Internet is extra fast during these off-hours, I'm really happy! 2. Wow, the Internet is slow during these busy hours, everything is the worst! I'd like to do something the user really appreciates, while minimizing experience #2.. I suppose offering a traditional service next to a metered service can allow the disappointed users to switch back to a traditional plan. ------------------------------ On Fri, Jan 15, 2016 at 4:10 PM, Ken Hohhof <af...@kwisp.com> wrote: > Can you clarify regarding “fair queues”? Would the customer with 100 TCP > active TCP connections get a larger share of the available capacity than > the customer with 1 active TCP connection? What about the video stream or > software download that opens 10 TCP connections vs the video stream that > opens 1 TCP connection? > > The other thing that strikes me is customers want predictability. OK, > maybe less so with mobile, but certainly with fixed. So I either can or > cannot stream 4K shows on Netflix, or 2 HD shows simultaneously, or DirecTV > On Demand. I can or cannot Skype with my son in Afghanistan. If I could > do it yesterday, but not today, I am pissed off. If I pay $5 to watch an > on demand movie and the first 10 minutes goes fine but then peak hour comes > and I can’t and it tells me I have to download to my DVR and watch later, I > am pissed off. > > So a best effort approach to speed (and therefore to what applications > will and won’t work) may lead to a poor customer experience. Unless you > have some way of notifying customers, or letting them pay for priority. > > Some applications will degrade gracefully. Netflix is pretty good about > adaptive stream quality. I don’t get many customer complaints about video > quality, but people sure hate it if the video stops to buffer, or displays > an error message that their Internet has slowed. > > The opposite view to this would be why limit someone to a certain speed > tier when the network is not “congested”, leaving capacity unused. > > > *From:* Christopher Gray <cg...@graytechsoftware.com> > *Sent:* Thursday, January 14, 2016 11:41 PM > *To:* af@afmug.com > *Subject:* [AFMUG] Metered Plans / Full Speed To Customer? > > I had a conversation with a network professional who was very interested > in the idea of a "metered" plan. His thought was to open up the customer > connections to full speed and run fair queues instead of throttling > bandwidth. Pricing would be based on usage, but with very low rates > compared to cellular or satellite (e.g., 100 GB for $60). The three main > thoughts were: > > 1) Knowing that speeds would be better in off hours (somehow promoted or > advertised) could get users to operate outside of peak times thus reducing > peak load on the network. > > 2) Customer prices would more accurately represent their load on a system. > > 3) Plan sharing would not be a significant concern, as usage would rise > and cost would rise. > > Now, I can see those benefits, but I have these specific concerns.: > > 1) If everything is opened fully today, network performance can only get > worse over time as subscribers are added. > > 2) Variability in speed over the course of the day may cause customer > concern. > > 3) Many video streaming services seem to suffer with variable bandwidth > availability. > > Any thoughts on this method of providing service? It seems very close to > the cellular plans where speed is almost never mentioned, only data use. > > I have some ideas to make such a service work, but I'd like to know > others' thoughts and experiences. > > Thanks - Chris >
