Observations of an Internet Middleman (Level3)

[mike at mtcc.com (Michael Thomas)]

Scott Helms wrote:
> Michael,
> 
> No, its not too much to ask and any end user who has that kind of 
> requirement can order a business service to get symmetrical service but 
> the reality is that symmetrical service costs more and the vast majority 
> of customers don't use the upstream capacity they have today.  I have 
> personal insight into about half a million devices and the percentage of 
> people who bump up against their upstream rate is less than 0.2%.  I 
> have the ability to get data on another 10 million and the last time I 
> checked their rates were similar.

I've just been on the losing end of yet another piece of why crappy upstream
bandwidth sucks: Mavericks seems to have decided that my other half's imovie
library really, really ought to be uploaded to iCloud (without asking, ftw).

I can and should be pissed at Apple for doing such a wrongheaded thing, but
the fact is that my upstream bandwidth was saturated for hours and days and it
was extremely difficult to figure out why. I doubt I'm alone.

Better upstream bandwidth would have at least made the pain period shorter.

Mike