Hank Nussbacher wrote:
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/magazine/17-10/ts_burningquestion
It's an interesting theory, that temperature affects overall throughput. Their assumptions on other conditions that affect bandwidth consumption are off IMHO. Our own data directly refutes what Wired reported in this article. Summertime is our most heavily utilized months on our network on average. For SPs heavily laden with residential subs I think this is probably the norm. Then school starts and you have a pronounced drop in traffic (that includes a major dip when college begins and again when primary school begins). The rates slowly increase back to their summer time highs until the holiday season begins where they either remain steady or taper off slightly. The theory here is that the high-bandwidth users are too busy with holiday affairs to play games, download music/porn, etc. That is until after X-mas when consumption suddenly spikes in a very pronounced way (new computers for X-mas). This also corresponds to our biggest month for new service turnups and speed increases in our bundles. Late winter varies from fairly constant to slight growth. Our single biggest days are the ones proceeding a major winter storm, or if the storm doesn't cut power to large swaths of our service area then the days in the middle of the winter storms come out on top. Spring growth depends on the weather. Good weather means less consumption for us. Bad weather means more consumption. Our least busy month is May when the kids are the most busy. June and July again show a major turn around.
Bandwidth consumption is directly tied to your user demographics. If your SP is primarily business circuit then your traffic patterns will vary wildly from that of a SP with primarily residential circuits. Every SP is a little bit different. That's why some SPs set personal records for bandwidth consumption when Michael Jackson's memorial service was broadcast (including SPs less than an hour away from me) and other SPs (mine for example) didn't have a single user stream the broadcast and otherwise had a normal bandwidth day. Other than Wired making an assumption that all SPs have nearly identical traffic patterns, the article is otherwise ok.
Justin
