Home ISP throttled my speed after going over data cap

[Raswan]

Greetings,

Feel free to tell me that I have absolutely no basis for complaint here. I have Suddenlink as an ISP, no contract, pay for 15 down and 1.5 up for around 50$ per month. Here is the situation:

1. I recently started using Crashplan to offsite backup my important documents with a couple of friends, so my internet usage has gone from an average of 80GB/month to 550GB this month.

2. I got an email from Suddenlink telling me I was over my 250GB limit, get three warnings, and this is one.

3. Until I saw that warning and inputted a valid method of contacting me to tell me about my usage (an email address), I was getting redirected from websites that I use occasionally, but not a lot (certainly not top 5), but that I imagine that suddenlink would identify as common websites to do this with. Happened with FB and youtube. May be unrelated, but thought I would mention it, since as soon as I acknowledged the fact that suddenlink was having a shitfit about my usage (by inputting an email addy) the problem went away.

4. This is the biggie. Speedtest.net shows my ping at 85 (close, but higher than normal), my dl speed at 7.3, and my ul speed at 1.3. Up looks normal, but down is half of what suddenlink's "speed tester" claims it is and about 60% of normal as far as I am concerned. HOWEVER, my pings playing BF3 have shot from a normal in the 30s to more ~300 whilst playing. Happens on multiple servers, after restarts, and shutting down all background network activity. I am not currently running crashplan.

So:

1. Is it possible they are trying to send me a message, or am I a paranoid idiot?
2. Is this legal for them to do, or does it wholly depend on user agreements?
3. If it is not, or is a gray area, do I have any reasonable way of letting them know that I know what they are doing (and proving it?) and am willing to change my ISP if they don't quit this nonsense? After all, I get three warnings, worst case scenario. So for three months they should just be able to send me scarily worded emails. Crashplan just needs one big dirty backup and then, like dropbox, syncs modified files.

I know ISPs all over have been coming up with ways to squeeze consumers who watch a lot of netflix by throttling us in the hopes of getting us to upgrade, or to modify our usage habits. Don't know if anyone has had success fighting back. But this really pisses me off, if this is in fact what they are doing. Thanks.

 

[Raswan]

FYI: This is the only section of the user agreement that I can see applying to this situation. Be happy to provide additional information if needed.

50. Bandwidth, Data Storage and Other Limitations.
Customer agrees to comply with Suddenlink’s bandwidth, data storage and
other limitations of the High Speed Internet Service as established and modified
by Suddenlink from time to time. Customer agrees that its bandwidth usage
activity will not improperly restrict, inhibit or degrade any other user’s use of the
High Speed Internet Service, nor represent (in Suddenlink’s sole judgment) an
unusually large burden on the network. Customer also agrees that its activity will
not restrict, inhibit, disrupt, degrade or impede Suddenlink’s ability to deliver and
track its High Speed Internet Service, backbone, network nodes and/or other
network services

 

[Raswan]

Update: Ran glasnost this morning, and the results claim that there is not shaping of
my internet traffic:

All BitTorrent and control flow transfers using port 6881

Transfer Direction Bandwidth BitTorrent flow Bandwidth control flow

Download #1 8941 Kbps 8526 Kbps
Download #2 5769 Kbps 5420 Kbps
Download #3 8486 Kbps 8415 Kbps

Upload #1 1240 Kbps 791 Kbps
Upload #2 973 Kbps 815 Kbps
Upload #3 913 Kbps 960 Kbps


All BitTorrent and control flow transfers using port 51843

Transfer Direction Bandwidth BitTorrent flow Bandwidth control flow

Download #1 7167 Kbps 9356 Kbps
Download #2 5005 Kbps 6894 Kbps
Download #3 6258 Kbps 7004 Kbps

Upload #1 999 Kbps 763 Kbps
Upload #2 774 Kbps 931 Kbps
Upload #3 1140 Kbps 1108 Kbps


BitTorrent transfers using port 6881 and port 51843

Transfer Direction Bandwidth Port 6881 Bandwidth Port 51843

Download #1 8941 Kbps 7167 Kbps
Download #2 5769 Kbps 5005 Kbps
Download #3 8486 Kbps 6258 Kbps

Upload #1 1240 Kbps 999 Kbps
Upload #2 973 Kbps 774 Kbps
Upload #3 913 Kbps 1140 Kbps


Control flow transfers using port 6881 and port 51843

Transfer Direction Bandwidth Port 6881 Bandwidth Port 51843

Download #1 8526 Kbps 9356 Kbps
Download #2 5420 Kbps 6894 Kbps
Download #3 8415 Kbps 7004 Kbps

Upload #1 791 Kbps 763 Kbps
Upload #2 815 Kbps 931 Kbps
Upload #3 960 Kbps 1108 Kbps


Anyone else use this program before?

 

[Dstoop]

1. Is it possible they are trying to send me a message, or am I a paranoid idiot?
It's entirely possible they are trying to send you a message via throttling your connection. Comcast is well known for throttling extreme users. I would consider 550GB in a month when your limit is 250GB to be an "extreme" use case that probably raised some red flags.

2. Is this legal for them to do, or does it wholly depend on user agreements?
It's completely legal for them to throttle your service. You entered into a service agreement for 250GB of data a month. Legally, they could flat out cut you off for the rest of the month the second you hit 250GB of data, but most ISPs dont do that because its bad business. Read the terms of the paperwork you signed when you purchased service from them.

3. If it is not, or is a gray area, do I have any reasonable way of letting them know that I know what they are doing (and proving it?) and am willing to change my ISP if they don't quit this nonsense? After all, I get three warnings, worst case scenario. So for three months they should just be able to send me scarily worded emails. Crashplan just needs one big dirty backup and then, like dropbox, syncs modified files.
You can always call and complain, but if they're the only ISP in town then you're sort of out of luck. But be aware, it's not "nonsense." You're only paying for 250GB a month and want them to give you over twice that, just because you want it. Data caps and throttling suck, but you agreed to them in the service agreement, if you didn't want to abide by them you should have looked for another company or another data plan that meets your needs.

As for the throttling, from the data rates you mentioned (15/1.5), it sounds like it's a cable connection or a DSL connection, not fiber optic. Both cable and DSL will give you *up to* the advertised speeds depending on how busy the network is, the physical network topology in your location, etc. It's totally normal for your connection speeds on a 15/1.5 cable plan to dip down to 7, or even stay around 7 frequently. My old cable connection was a 15/5 before I upgraded to the next tier, and it would frequently dip as low as 2/2 during the evening, it's just how the technology works.

 

[Cabletek]

Its pretty standard practice theses days for ISP to limit usage, Comcast was the big one who got a lot of press over sandvine throttling, etc.. But i was pretty sure the FCC rules throttling was not cool in the heart of net neutrality, so if your in the states, its more likley they are going to plan a cut you off 100% or overage charges system after so much used. Access to none is net neutral so is paying no matter what it was.

while not impossible, it is not plausible that you are offsite backing up 490 GB of documents/month however. If you keep seeing that size usage Id double check my file sizes and scan for worms and what not using my system to send data around. I am not sure what you mean by with a couple of friends, you should be the only one using your account if you want it to be a secure backup. Sounds more3 like you are using it to exchange things with some friends.

As far as legal ground they have the right to manage their network as they see fit was the ruling of the FCC so long as they do not violate standing rules such as net neutrality to do it. Or at least that was the last ruling I heard comcast had dealings with, slap on the hand and let loose to terrorize the cable users of the world.

Shaperprobe seemed to be the preferred method for detecting throttling and abnormal packet shaping last I knew, never used either, don't really care, not stealing large movies and what not at my house, its just a place to lay my head when I need rest.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=FCC+rules+against+comcast+throtteling

 

[Raswan]

Its pretty standard practice theses days for ISP to limit usage, Comcast was the big one who got a lot of press over sandvine throttling, etc.. But i was pretty sure the FCC rules throttling was not cool in the heart of net neutrality, so if your in the states, its more likley they are going to plan a cut you off 100% or overage charges system after so much used. Access to none is net neutral so is paying no matter what it was.

while not impossible, it is not plausible that you are offsite backing up 490 GB of documents/month however. If you keep seeing that size usage Id double check my file sizes and scan for worms and what not using my system to send data around. I am not sure what you mean by with a couple of friends, you should be the only one using your account if you want it to be a secure backup. Sounds more3 like you are using it to exchange things with some friends.

As far as legal ground they have the right to manage their network as they see fit was the ruling of the FCC so long as they do not violate standing rules such as net neutrality to do it. Or at least that was the last ruling I heard comcast had dealings with, slap on the hand and let loose to terrorize the cable users of the world.

Shaperprobe seemed to be the preferred method for detecting throttling and abnormal packet shaping last I knew, never used either, don't really care, not stealing large movies and what not at my house, its just a place to lay my head when I need rest.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=FCC+rules+against+comcast+throtteling

Fair enough. I'll continue checking out the boundaries of their service, and determine if I am happy with it or not. And I'm not "exchanging" anything. Crashplan is a legit backup service, and I'm backing up my data/pictures/install files hdd. They are doing the same. So data is going out via two avenues, and coming in via two. This isn't 1999 anymore. If I wanted to get ahold of a bunch of content illegally, I would just mail them a 50$ hdd, or bring my computer next time I was heading home.

 

[dawks]

550gigs on a home connection is huge, especially if its pretty much all upload.

When I started using Crashplan, I set it to only backup over night even for the first big upload. I feel its just the friendly thing to do, since it wont affect others nearly as much (especially on cable).
My ISP has a soft cap of 250gigs for my tier, but they only seem to enforce it if others on the same node start to complain about poor performance. My buddies ISP also has a policy of not counting bandwidth used overnight towards the monthly cap, which encourages users to delay high usage traffic to overnight time periods.

Your best bet is to tone down your usage, and wait for the month to end and see what happens in Dec.

 

[Raswan]

1. Is it possible they are trying to send me a message, or am I a paranoid idiot?
It's entirely possible they are trying to send you a message via throttling your connection. Comcast is well known for throttling extreme users. I would consider 550GB in a month when your limit is 250GB to be an "extreme" use case that probably raised some red flags.

2. Is this legal for them to do, or does it wholly depend on user agreements?
It's completely legal for them to throttle your service. You entered into a service agreement for 250GB of data a month. Legally, they could flat out cut you off for the rest of the month the second you hit 250GB of data, but most ISPs dont do that because its bad business. Read the terms of the paperwork you signed when you purchased service from them.

3. If it is not, or is a gray area, do I have any reasonable way of letting them know that I know what they are doing (and proving it?) and am willing to change my ISP if they don't quit this nonsense? After all, I get three warnings, worst case scenario. So for three months they should just be able to send me scarily worded emails. Crashplan just needs one big dirty backup and then, like dropbox, syncs modified files.
You can always call and complain, but if they're the only ISP in town then you're sort of out of luck. But be aware, it's not "nonsense." You're only paying for 250GB a month and want them to give you over twice that, just because you want it. Data caps and throttling suck, but you agreed to them in the service agreement, if you didn't want to abide by them you should have looked for another company or another data plan that meets your needs.

As for the throttling, from the data rates you mentioned (15/1.5), it sounds like it's a cable connection or a DSL connection, not fiber optic. Both cable and DSL will give you *up to* the advertised speeds depending on how busy the network is, the physical network topology in your location, etc. It's totally normal for your connection speeds on a 15/1.5 cable plan to dip down to 7, or even stay around 7 frequently. My old cable connection was a 15/5 before I upgraded to the next tier, and it would frequently dip as low as 2/2 during the evening, it's just how the technology works.

I figured the slower ups and downs was just a function of the time of day, so thanks for the confirmation. At the same time, while I understand your point about the data cap, I also know that it's a completely arbitrary point that the ISP has settled on. And I have no intention of giving them the benefit of the doubt--if they give me three warnings before charging for the extra data, I will make use of all three should I need it. 500GB isn't a ridiculous amount of data to use in a month, and if the ISP isn't going to look at my average usage (60-80GB/month) and give me the benefit of the doubt here when I am not trying to dl the entire interweb but rather performing legit backup, I see no reason to do so for them.

However, the takeaway I'm getting here suggests that I should see if they are willing to accommodate, or if they are going to stick to the letter of the agreement, and decide if that is acceptable.

 

[Raswan]

550gigs on a home connection is huge, especially if its pretty much all upload.

When I started using Crashplan, I set it to only backup over night even for the first big upload. I feel its just the friendly thing to do, since it wont affect others nearly as much (especially on cable).
My ISP has a soft cap of 250gigs for my tier, but they only seem to enforce it if others on the same node start to complain about poor performance. My buddies ISP also has a policy of not counting bandwidth used overnight towards the monthly cap, which encourages users to delay high usage traffic to overnight time periods.

Your best bet is to tone down your usage, and wait for the month to end and see what happens in Dec.

It's 33% upload and 66% download, since each of them is sending 600GB my way and I am sending ~300GB each of their respective ways. Doesn't seem that ridiculous to me, but I'll give the nighttime backup starting next month a try and see if that helps. And in the future I'll make sure the ISP I go with doesn't have caps, or pay for the extra.

 

[JackMDS]

Yeah, the other day I gave the Gas satiation attendant $20 and he let me pump only 5.5 Gallon. Wtf is going on they are crazy or what, why can't I pump as much as I need for my $20? 😕 - 😛 - - 😳 - 🙄.



😎

 

[Raswan]

Great analogy Jackwad** Because the data being transferred is owned by Suddenlink** Oh wait, I'm just renting their infrastructure, and we all know that electrons take up a shitton of space in the cables they have already laid down**

WTF is going on I wanted to have like a real conversation with like nonidiots or something, why do trolls have to burn the few spare braincells they have crapping on a legitimate thread lol wut frowny face perplexed face me punching you in the face

 

[dawks]

It's 33% upload and 66% download, since each of them is sending 600GB my way and I am sending ~300GB each of their respective ways** Doesn't seem that ridiculous to me, but I'll give the nighttime backup starting next month a try and see if that helps** And in the future I'll make sure the ISP I go with doesn't have caps, or pay for the extra**

In one sense its not really ridiculous at all** The problem ***es from the fact that ISP's oversell their capacity** They might have 500 users on a node that can in fact only support 50 users going full out** So if you have a few users maxing out their connections, it negatively impacts other users**

Uploading is a big deal on these networks since they aren't typically designed for high upload usage** Is your connection DSL or cable? (the impact of high usage is higher on cable since its a shared infrastructure)**

2 years ago my ISP (a large cable provider) tried to pull some usage based billing BS (just around the time Netflix announced their streaming service in Canada)** They announced they were dropping caps (from 125gigs to 60 - or something ridiculous like that), and would start charging $0**05/meg over** People went crazy, ***plained all over**** and the ISP decided to hold off, and instead have meetings with users to take suggestions** They ended up creating Teirs**** I now have a 250gig cap at the same tier (25/2**5)** I could pay $15/mo more and get 50/3 with a 40gig cap** Another $10 on top ($25 more than my plan) would get me 100/5 with 500gig cap** Or for $110/mo I could get 100/5 with unlimited data****** decent**

 

[Pulsar]

Great analogy Jackwad** Because the data being transferred is owned by Suddenlink** Oh wait, I'm just renting their infrastructure, and we all know that electrons take up a shitton of space in the cables they have already laid down**

WTF is going on I wanted to have like a real conversation with like nonidiots or something, why do trolls have to burn the few spare braincells they have crapping on a legitimate thread lol wut frowny face perplexed face me punching you in the face

You're talking to a supermod, and possibly one of the most helpful people in the networking forum**

Granted, he was posting as a user, but his analogy was quite accurate** You need to grow up**

 

[Raswan]

You're talking to a supermod, and possibly one of the most helpful people in the networking forum**

Granted, he was posting as a user, but his analogy was quite accurate** You need to grow up**

Welp, he was being the opposite of helpful, and clearly just trolling** I don't care if he's the president of the universe** And how, exactly, is paying for gasoline the same as internet usage? Am I buying ***pletely fungible data from someone at a fixed rate per unit, and trying to get free product? Or am I transferring my own data using a ***pany's infrastructure, and pointing out that the limit they have (and only in recent years when it became apparent that they had to find creative ways of generating revenue by making almost ***pletely false claims of network load management) arbitrarily imposed upon this transport system is dumb as a box of rocks?

It's like if I bought a yearly turnpike pass from the state of dumbfuckistan, and then a shitpot of other people did too, and the state suddenly realized that we were all driving our ***pact cars (which have little impact on the causeway once it is in place) much more often because free strip clubs were popping up all over and that's where we wanted to be, so they added on top of the yearly membership a made-up cap based on how many times per month they think I should be visiting the strip club**

Not a perfect analogy, but way better than some bs about gasoline** So don't be an idiot Pulsar, and we won't have to point it out in front of everyone else**

 

[Fardringle]

He wasn't being "the opposite of helpful" at all, Raswan** Sarcastic, maybe, but perfectly helpful**

When you go to the gas station, you pay for a certain amount of gas with a certain amount of money** You can't get more gas than you pay for without penalties (i**e** a ticket/jail time)**

When you use the Internet, you pay for a certain amount of bandwidth with a certain amount of money, and you signed a contract agreeing to that condition** You can't use more bandwidth without penalties (throttling, extra fees, or cut off ***pletely)**

 

[Raswan]

Not even close** But whatever** This thread, as I pointed out when dbag mcgee up there first went off-topic, has be***e derailed** Thanks for the help dstoop and cabletek** The rest of you are perfect examples of why I hesitate increasingly to ***e here for help**

 

[Fardringle]

It's a perfectly good analogy, but here's another one since you didn't like that Jack's:

You pay for a cell phone plan with a set number of minutes you can use per month** If you go over that set number of minutes, you pay extra** You aren't paying for the words you say on your calls, but the minutes that you use to say/hear those words**

You pay for an Internet service with a set amount of bandwidth you can use per month** If you go over that bandwidth limit, you pay extra, or get throttled or disconnected** You aren't paying for the data that you send over the connection (since that seems to be something you are stuck on), you are paying for the amount of bandwidth that you use to send that data**


I'm sorry that you feel that actual answers to your question aren't helpful, but if by the only "helpful" answer you want is that the ISP is wrong and you're entirely right to use as much bandwidth as you like, then you aren't going to get a helpful answer** You CAN call and ***plain to the ISP, but they'll probably just tell you that you went over the limit that you agreed to and there's nothing they can do about it**

 

[dawks]

The gas analogy is a fatally flawed. Its not the same. I've seen ISP's try to use the analogy of water or electricity too. These are not the same. There is a variable cost to consume the gas, water, or electricity as each are a finite resource. On the other hand, moving packets costs the same no matter the amount. There is a step variable costs when you reach the maximum capacity of a line, and must upgrade it, but within the same sized line, it costs the same to move 1kb, as it does to move 1,000,000kb (peering blah blah blah).

It could be said that traditionally we have been paying for internet service based on the speed of the pipe, not the total amount of data transferred. But ISP's have seen that's a bad way for them to make money, so they are more interested in charging per byte transferred just like telcos like to charge per minute of use, which translates to more money for them. The frustrating part is that it costs the ISP's the same to send 1kb or 1,000kb's. The same for telcos... it costs the same for 1min of voice calling vs 100min.

 

[serpretetsky]

The frustrating part is that it costs the ISP's the same to send 1kb or 1,000kb's. The same for telcos... it costs the same for 1min of voice calling vs 100min.

I'm not sure i'm following.

Does it also cost the same for the ISP to send 1kilobyte of data vs 1 petabyte of data in one month?


edit:

There is a step variable costs when you reach the maximum capacity of a line, and must upgrade it, but within the same sized line, it costs the same to move 1kb, as it does to move 1,000,000kb (peering blah blah blah).

ahh, gotcha, so it does cost more. ok, nvm.

edit2: i can see what you're getting at however. I'm not sure if it should really change things. Maybe shipping companies is a better analogy? Fedex, UPS, DHL, etc? They ship packages between parties the same way that ISP's ship data packets between companies. And similarly, a single shipping truck might not always be completely full, so it would cost almost nothing for them to put in a few extra packages in there.

 

[dawks]

That's a bit better, but you could imagine someone might argue you would need extra gas to move the extra weight.

Think of a very simple example. If you have two computers, and buy a $50 switch, how much does it cost you to send data between the two computers? Not including the electricity for the computers, the switch might use 1watt of electricity itself. So to put 1kb of data on the network, how much does it cost? Whatever that 1watt of electricity cost (and you could include the one time cost of the switch). Now, transfer 1petabyte of data between the two computers, what does it cost? The 1watt to power the switch (plus the one time cost of the switch itself). It doesn't cost more to transfer the 1pb versus the 1kb. Now you could argue the switch might use a few extra milliwatts to move the packets, but that's so minuscule.

The step variable cost comes when the switch can only move 1pb a month, and you need to move 2pb's/mo. Then you have to go and buy the new faster model switch.

Now pump 1 gallon of gas, what does it cost? The cost of 1 gallon. Pump 5 gallons, what does it cost? 5 gallons.. You have to clean, and pump water and water is a finite resource, you'll run out of it eventually (without expensive efficient filtering), just like gas, so both have a price to limit their consumption, and fund their cleaning/refining.

 

[Fardringle]

You aren't just paying for the initial installation of the cables and switches (which is a HUGE cost, by the way, ISPs can't just use a $50 router and long distance cables are very expensive), but also for the support, maintenance, replacement, and upgrade of that equipment, as well as the wages of the support personnel and the many other costs of running a business.

Also, it DOES cost the ISP money to move your data because they pay for their bandwidth from the backbone companies (the ones that actually own the big cross-country/international lines). So yes, while technically data bandwidth is not a finite consumable product that you can see and hold like gasoline, it still has a cost, and the more that you use, the more it costs the ISP to support you, and when you use so much that it costs them more than what you are paying for your monthly service, you are going to get cut off.

 

[kevnich2]

Bandwidth is not an infinite resource. Granted, some ISP's do charge a bit more than I think they should but it's by no means an infinite resource. An ISP buys equipment and backbone capacity from another provider for a certain set amount of bandwidth per month. They then resell that to a certain amount of customers and expect the customers to only use a fraction of the total bandwidth. If all of a sudden all of their customer's usage goes up several times over, they now have a very expensive problem.

They can either upgrade their backbone and get beefier equipment...and charge more, or implement bandwidth caps.

If you want a truly unlimited line, they do sell business connections and those are usually expected to have alot more usage, and a lot more cost to them.

OP - you have an agreement for 250gb a month - the ISP is perfectly within it's rights to threaten cancellation if you exceed that agreement. Whether you agree with this or not is your choice but don't come to a networking forum and expect anything less.

 

[dawks]

You aren't just paying for the initial installation of the cables and switches (which is a HUGE cost, by the way, ISPs can't just use a $50 router and long distance cables are very expensive), but also for the support, maintenance, replacement, and upgrade of that equipment, as well as the wages of the support personnel and the many other costs of running a business.

Also, it DOES cost the ISP money to move your data because they pay for their bandwidth from the backbone companies (the ones that actually own the big cross-country/international lines). So yes, while technically data bandwidth is not a finite consumable product that you can see and hold like gasoline, it still has a cost, and the more that you use, the more it costs the ISP to support you, and when you use so much that it costs them more than what you are paying for your monthly service, you are going to get cut off.

Thank you captain obvious. My example was a very simple one to explain that it doesnt cost more to move extra bits. My point still holds. It doesnt cost the ISP more money to move 1,000kb than it does to move 1kb. You dont have to hire an extra support technician so your network can move an extra gig per user. You could actually argue its in the ISP's best interest to move as much data as possible since higher utilization means a lower cost per byte.

I'll admit im not an expert on peering, but I'd expect most ISP's only pay a relatively small FIXED rate, or nothing at all for their bandwidth. Its in a content providers (Google, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Microsoft) best interest to get their products and services to as many users as possible, as cheaply as possible, as quickly as possible, and reliably as possible. Youtube wants users to watch as many videos as they can, not worry that if they charge an ISP too much for bandwidth they'll shut them down. YouTube actually has caching servers on my ISP's network to improve performance.

The original point holds. Caps are in place because ISP's over sell their last mile infrastructure, and need to artificially limit usage to maintain some sort of reasonable network performance. It doesn't cost an ISP more to move 1gig, than it does 1kb.

 

[spidey07]

They oversell their infrastructure because EVERY network is oversubscribed, even huge data center networks. It wouldn't be possible to guarantee line rate performance for every subscriber. Well it would be possible, but it would cost you 10,000 dollars a month.

And it DOES cost more to move more data per unit of time. Higher speed optics and cards are ridiculously expensive. Data use roughly doubles every 18-24 months, it takes a lot of money to keep up with that and there are constant upgrades.

 

[JackMDS]

Think about DVD Drive.

This small device contains inside multi-wonder of Human technology.

Basic electronic, computer logic, circuits, mechanical motor, moving parts, laser beam mechanism, software (firmware) etc.

Yet it cost $20 ($15 on sale).

On the other end go to staples and buy a simple cable in a plastic container (Belkin usually) and you might pay $40 for a few electrical wires and a plastic connector that cost 25 -50 cents to manufacture.

Please do not start to explain to me why, I know why!

The point is that Technology and market changed dramatically since world war II.

Most people in order to win an argument choose one of the Models that can support their claims whether it is relevant or Not.

As an example in countries that the governments is the one that builds and maintains the Internet backbone Internet services work differently since the infra structure is paid by the all tax payers to begin with.

I am Not saying that this is better or worth solution, I just saying that Reality is combination of complex variables, discussions that ignores important general variables are rather silly.


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