Re: Time Shifting of Internet Traffic

[Ben Niven-Jenkins <[e-mail]>]

On 14 Sep 2010, at 02:46, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:

> I am not finding the net neutrality debate according to K-Street to be very useful or stimulating.
> 
> At the end of the day we have a limited amount of bandwidth available and we can help matters if people co-operate where it is in their interests. Whether or not we choose to do so does not in any way justify using the fact that I have limited choices in bandwidth provider to ensure that my options for content and/or VOIP telephone service are similarly limited.
> 
> 
> One area that might be fruitful for cooperation is in bulk time shifting of traffic. I am not so much talking about packet level prioritization here. I am thinking more of when I choose to back up my systems over the net.
> 
> The way I look at it, the net is a bit like the power grid in that there is an opportunity to reduce capacity requirements by shifting tasks from peak to off-peak. In particular I have several RAID arrays that I would like to back up with a total of something like 2Tb of data. 
> 

I know of ISPs in the UK that have seen success by building their Broadband packages around an incentive to do exactly that.

Two models I have seen are:
1) Package X has a transfer cap of Y GB/month but only transfers between 08:00 and 24:00 count towards the cap.

2) Package X has traffic shaping applied where different protocols are shaped to different maximum throughputs (per customer) depending on protocol & time of day. One then selects the package that provides the application performance one wants for the applications one uses. See http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guide/download_speeds.shtml for an example.

Ben