Re: Client ID?

Howard Cheng (hcheng@cs.ualberta.ca)
Thu, 8 May 1997 20:39:45 -0600 (MDT)

Dean Mills wrote:
>
> You'd think so wouldn't you. But, he seems to think my web server would
> generate too much "inner" traffic on his little WAN if I put up a page
> that generated, oh say, 1000 hits a day. He still hasn't said how that
> page on my web server generating hits is different from if I let his
> machine host it, but, he's the ISP, and for 50K/second FTP sessions,
> and the 24/7 flat rate, it can't be beat, not right now anyway. Same
> goes for mailing lists, I tried setting one up, he killed my E-Mail and
> said that's an extra $25.00/month. But, as soon as my hub gets here
> next week, 6 more machines I pulled out of the closet start crunching
> DESChall clients, and he's none the wiser (15.00/month per extra
> machine).

My cable modem ISP also have similar limitations. Their reason is
this: the cable modem that we use (Motorola CyberSURFR) is asymmetric
in terms of transfer speed. Uploading is much slower than
downloading, so the web server cannot serve requests as quickly.
Furthermore, while each user gets his/her own download "channel" (or
whatever that is they use), everyone shares the same upload channel
from the user to the cable company's office. That's why my ISP only
allows us to set up servers for "personal use". On the other hand,
a web server is set up at their office which is connected to the rest
of the world with fibre, so the limitation of the cable modem does not
apply.

I have no idea whether this is the same reason your ISP have these
restrictions, but it sounds similar to my situation.

Howard

-- 
Howard Cheng                     e-mail: hcheng@cs.ualberta.ca
University of Alberta                    hcheng@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca
MSc Computing Science            URL   : http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~hcheng/


Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.
                                          - Galilei Galileo