Bandwidth Caps?
Some cable modem providers are starting to impose bandwidth caps on heavy users. There is a much better technological solution.
I won't deny that the problem is real. Heavy Internet use creates a burden on the network, and slows it down for everyone. And, if the usage patterns for cable modem subscribers are similar to other areas, a very small number of heavy users accounts for a large percentage of the total traffic. Getting 1% of the users to cut back could free up 10%, 20%, maybe even 50% of the network for everyone else.
The problem is that broadband ISP's market themselves as having "unlimited" usage, and they generally don't publish any particular amount of network use which is excessive.
So naturally people get angry when their ISP calls and tells them that they're using the network too much.
The fundamental problem, though, isn't that the heavy users are sending too many bits through the network. There's still a lot of idle capacity at odd hours. The problem is that everyone wants to use the network at the same time, and the heavy users are slowing it down for everyone else.
Fortunately, the technology provides the solution.
Rather than cut people off if they use the network too much, simply program the ISP's router to give lower priority to traffic to or from heavier users. Such a scheme might work like this:
The 90% of users who use the least bandwidth get the highest priority.
The next 9% of users get second-highest priority.
The heaviest 1% of users get the lowest priority.
When a router gets overloaded, it will queue, or even discard, data. If it is true that 1% of the users are using a big chunk of the network (and it almost certainly is), then when the network gets overloaded, that 1% will see their connections slow first. Not only will that free up capacity for everyone else, it will discourage those heavy users from doing things which take a lot of bandwidth (sharing movies, or streaming video, for example) during busy times.
On the other hand, it leaves the heavy users free to use the network when it isn't busy. Copy a big file at 3 AM instead of 6 PM, for example. At those times, the extra network capacity would simply go unused.
This solution would be both transparent to the user, and could be implemented in a completely automated way by the ISP. It would also save broadband ISPs from having to back down from their "unlimited" usage claims.