Ohio University Tries to Block Netflix as "Internet pipeline is overflowing'"

        
An interesting experience in traffic management was carried by Ohio University and is summarized by Sean O'Malley, IT Communications Manager by:

"With finals week in full swing, the university’s Internet pipeline is overflowing with media downloads, with the lion’s share coming from services like Netflix.  As a result, many students and faculty have at times had difficulty accessing essential academic services like Blackboard". See background - "Does the Education Market need Bandwidth Management?" - here. 

"To improve access to academic online services, the university has increased the amount of bandwidth dedicated to its data center and instituted a 5 Mbps per user limit on residence hall download traffic. According to OIT network staff, this limit should be noticeable only to the small percentage of users who are consuming large quantities of Internet capacity. Many individuals actually will see a speed increase.  At 6:00 pm on Monday, March 14 and again at 11:00 pm, network technicians attempted to restrict just Netflix traffic; however, both those attempts resulted in Internet outages".

See "Flood Watch: OHIO's Internet connection overflows"  - here.

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AT&T to Charge DSL Subscriber for Over-use

   

Charging fixed service subscribers by usage is back again. AT&T announced that it will charge DSL customers consuming more than 150 GB per month (2% of its residential customer base) starting on May 2.

See "AT&T caps monthly traffic for DSL subscribers" - here.

"For U-Verse, a faster version of DSL available in some areas, the monthly cap will be 250 gigabytes. Beyond the limits, AT&T will charge $10 per 50 gigabytes. It said it will warn subscribers repeatedly as they approach their monthly limits".

This is not the first time AT&T tries to meter DSL. See "AT&T - Yes for Metered Wireless, No for Metered DSL" - here.