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Comment by 10000truths | Hacker News Reader

That’s an argument for bandwidth caps, not data caps.

No, it's not. A 1Gbps comcast connection would then need roughly a 5-10Mbps bandwidth cap if you wanted to ensure everybody could hammer the connection at the same time. A total data cap allows most people to use the connection at full 1Gbps speed whenever they want (because most people are only going to be hammering it on average no more than the data cap)

...while those who know they'll hammer it more than average have a specific idea of how much they can get away with.

It is an argument for de-prioritization. If you have blown past your 1T limit bu the rest of Comcast's network isn't too busy then it doesn't matter, but if the other people on your circuit want to use the data they get priority over your traffic.

It isn't. If you use a lot of traffic when the network is idle, there should be no penalty for this, because the capacity otherwise goes to waste.

If you use traffic when the network is congested, so is everyone else who is active when the network is congested, so you should all get an equal share if you're paying the same monthly fee, and a share proportional to your max connection speed if you're not. Nothing to do with how much you used when the network was idle.

Really, they're the same thing, given that your data cap resets every month.

For instance, if you maxed out a 100mpbs home connection 24/7 for a month, you could transfer no more than ~32tb.

But that means that bandwidth is still utilized, while a bandwidth cap at, say, 10Mbps would mean that 10 users are make up what one user at 100Mbps make up. In theory, a neighborhood or block might have the cable infrastructure to support 10Gbps simultaneously. There is no real benefit for the ISP to ensure that bandwidth is 100% utilized, so they have no incentive give a user more bandwidth than they paid for. Thus, capped bandwidth.

I’d suspect data caps are useful for over sold areas, but are great for lining the pockets of greedy ISPs.

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