A curious layman wondering about the possibility of a netflix-like sharing system for ISP subscriptions

[Modinstaller]

Today when I checked for ISP prices in my region, a thought occured...

 

Most subscribers will definitely use a ridiculously low amount of bandwidth. That's what the ISPs are counting on, right? They sell you a 100MBps bandwidth knowing too well that most people will barely use 1MBps at most a few hours a day. If everyone suddenly decided to use their maximum bandwidth all at once, the system would break.

 

And you'd think ISPs would design plans to accommodate all kinds of users. But here at least, they don't. Everyone basically pays the same, whether they are a huge p2p user maxing out their bandwidth, or a grandma using kilobytes a day. Which in my opinion is too much - way too much money for the use some people get out of it. I think it's a bad, unfair system.

 

I was thinking... is there a way to take this into our own hands? Is there a way to pirate this system? Why not share a subscription like we already do with Netflix?

 

But how do you share your connection with a random person who has nothing but a computer? I don't think that would be possible without the right equipment? Now I'm a complete layman at this, so my understanding is extremely basic, but my assumption is that one would need at least a router? And possibly someone to come over and connect the house's network cables to the outside?

 

Couldn't this be an entire business? The Pirate Provider, with technicians on hand all around the world, a custom (very small and inexpensive) router with custom software on there, easily configurable by the user to input a specific login to route data through the seller's router, or handle the routing on the seller's side. And a web service to handle the sharing, to generate logins and buy/sell them so that everyone can share their bandwidth effortlessly. Maybe even an ability to set caps. Could this work cross-country, even? If someone was unconcerned by their ping? Would this even be illegal?

 

But... I'm just speculating here, and I know I'm missing crucial pieces to really think realistically about such a system.

 

So do you guys think this could even be possible? Am I far off the mark?

[thevictor390]

You're just building a new ISP.

[Eigenvektor]

22 minutes ago, Modinstaller said:

Couldn't this be an entire business?

Sure. You're essentially an ISP at this point. How do you think smaller ISPs connects to the internet? Using some other, larger, ISP. The thing is, at some point you want to regulate your connection, to be fair for all users so one user can't abuse the system in a way that makes it unusable for others.

 

You also don't want to be legally responsible if someone uses your internet connection to do illegal stuff. Who do you think will be the first person in line to get a nicely worded letter from an attorney (or policy banging down the front door) if they notice your connection is downloading warez or worse certain illegal material? Do you want that responsibility?

 

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Would this even be illegal?

It would most likely be against your ISPs TOS to create your own ISP using their service. So while it might not technically be against the law, your ISP would still have the right to immediately terminate your contract if they notice you doing something like that.

 

Aside from that, a lot of "unlimited" contracts aren't actually unlimited. If you start to use too much data, they might kick you off for abusing the system. If you're sharing your connection with a ton of other people, that is highly likely to happen sooner or later.

 

22 minutes ago, Modinstaller said:

Could this work cross-country, even? If someone was unconcerned by their ping? Would this even be illegal?

Sure… that's exactly how the internet works. But you'll need to build infrastructure for that. Get permits to run cables. Run cables. Have people maintain these cables. Unless you have the money to build your own, you'll need to rent someone else's infrastructure. Which is what a lot of ISPs do.

[Modinstaller]

13 minutes ago, thevictor390 said:

You're just building a new ISP.

As I envision it, the idea is to hack ISPs by allowing their subscribers to share their internet connection. To force a dialogue between consumers and providers so that we can live in a fairer, more equitable world. To empower the poorest people who might not have the means to buy an internet subscription. Following in the footsteps of thepiratebay, not to make a profit, not to join the greedy corporate assholes but to help build a better world.

 

Do you think that would be possible? What'd be a good way to do it?

 

Edit: the part about "couldn't this be an entire business" was more about needing hardware, software, technicians... the better word was "an entire organization". A non-profit one.

[Needfuldoer]

Problem is, the local telecom companies own the last-mile delivery infrastructure. Why would they subscribe to your service when they'd need an Internet connection from Comcast/AT&T/Verizon/CenturyLink/MediaOne/etc to access it anyway?

 

Building out your own last-mile would be ludicrously expensive. You would also have to convince whoever owns the poles to let you use the space, and make a deal with every municipality you intend on operating within to allow you to do so. There's a reason Google Fiber and Verizon FiOS expanded at a snail's pace.

 

Local ISPs were a thing back in the dial-up days, when every house had a phone line and all you needed was a couple T1s and a modem pool, but you're about 30 years too late for that bandwagon.

 

32 minutes ago, Modinstaller said:

Why not share a subscription like we already do with Netflix?

Because that breaks the terms of service for the vast majority of home Internet connection plans. You'd have to have a commercial subscription with the ISP, and that would probably cost more than getting everyone their own residential plan.

 

10 minutes ago, Modinstaller said:

As I envision it, the idea is to hack ISPs by allowing their subscribers to share their internet connection. To force a dialogue between consumers and providers so that we can live in a fairer, more equitable world. To empower the poorest people who might not have the means to buy an internet subscription. Following in the footsteps of thepiratebay, not to make a profit, not to join the greedy corporate assholes but to help build a better world.

Sweet summer child...

[thevictor390]

There's just no real proposal here. How do you actually get the bandwidth between users? Best I can think of is a peer 2 peer wi-fi that would only work in very densely populated areas. But it doesn't matter, because the "source" ISP will just ban the user who is sharing.

[YoungBlade]

4 minutes ago, Modinstaller said:

As I envision it, the idea is to hack ISPs by allowing their subscribers to share their internet connection. To force a dialogue between consumers and providers so that we can live in a fairer, more equitable world. To empower the poorest people who might not have the means to buy an internet subscription. Following in the footsteps of thepiratebay, not to make a profit, not to join the greedy corporate assholes but to help build a better world.

 

Do you think that would be possible? What'd be a good way to do it?

 

Edit: the part about "couldn't this be an entire business" was more about needing hardware, software, technicians... the better word was "an entire organization". A non-profit one.

This has actually happened in some places around the world. Techquickie did a video about this sort of system being set up in Cuba.

Depending on your country, such a thing could be illegal. It would almost definitely be against the ToS of your ISP.

 

What you're proposing pretty much boils down to letting random strangers use your WiFi but with more coordination - having a website that lists where people can get Internet. So basically, having a digital sign in the figurative window that says what your WiFi password is to anyone in the network.

[Eigenvektor]

17 minutes ago, Modinstaller said:

As I envision it, the idea is to hack ISPs by allowing their subscribers to share their internet connection.

You don't need to "hack" anything to do that. Put a router/switch/hub behind your ISP's modem (or use the ports on their router) and you can already connect more than one PC. It doesn't have to be a PC in your household.

 

The problem is: Wi-Fi only reaches so far and if you boost your signal strength you'll land in legal trouble very quickly. Most countries have laws against wireless stuff exceeding certain signal strength.

 

And running a cable to your neighbor without attracting unwanted legal attention isn't that simple either, depending on the surrounding area. That might work in the countryside where your yard connects to the neighbors yard, but can you imagine running your own cable across the street in a big city?

 

And, as I already said above, if you "own" the connection, you'll be the first person the police will contact if any illegal downloads take place. Now explain how it wasn't you, but whoops you have no logs to prove it otherwise…

[mMontana]

16 minutes ago, Modinstaller said:

Do you think that would be possible?

no.

[manikyath]

24 minutes ago, Modinstaller said:

As I envision it, the idea is to hack ISPs by allowing their subscribers to share their internet connection. To force a dialogue between consumers and providers so that we can live in a fairer, more equitable world.

what you're describing is already what ISP's do. they dont lease 100Mbps for every one of their subscribers from their upstream provider / peering with other providers. they assume that everyone will "on average" be some much lower bandwidth usage, so that they can split the outrageous cost of nation-wide infrastructure among many more subscribers.

 

this breakaway from "the big boy providers" is something you often see called "municipal broadband".. and if you envision doing something like this - that is the direction to go. but you'll find that in the end the best cost structure is surprisingly close to what bigger ISP's are doing. their actual pricing doesnt necessarily make sense, but the theoretical cost structure is that way because that is what works.

 

oh - and if you wonder what leasing a 10G line costs... you better hope half the neighborhood will be subscribing to that municipal broadband to keep costs bearable.

[Alex Atkin UK]

24 minutes ago, manikyath said:

what you're describing is already what ISP's do. they dont lease 100Mbps for every one of their subscribers from their upstream provider / peering with other providers. they assume that everyone will "on average" be some much lower bandwidth usage, so that they can split the outrageous cost of nation-wide infrastructure among many more subscribers.

Precisely.  If you share your connection with enough people, even if they are all light users, you run into the problem where your connection is hammered constantly during peak hours, which would almost certainly be seen as abnormal usage for a residential customer.

 

Even a heavy user (me) have huge lulls in activity so I wouldn't use the connection nearly as heavily as lots of light users on the same connection might.

 

The whole premise of how ISPs work is that the light users subsidise the heavy users.  That might seem unfair, but would basically pricing heavy users out of existence really be fairer?  Had ISPs adopted that model years ago (one could argue US ISPs kinda did which thankfully the rest of the world are not so greedy), YouTube would never have existed as nobody would have been able to afford the connection to handle it.

[manikyath]

1 hour ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

The whole premise of how ISPs work is that the light users subsidise the heavy users.  That might seem unfair, but would basically pricing heavy users out of existence really be fairer?  Had ISPs adopted that model years ago (one could argue US ISPs kinda did which thankfully the rest of the world are not so greedy), YouTube would never have existed as nobody would have been able to afford the connection to handle it.

there's also the consideration that a user's costs arent limited to the bandwidth they consume. just the fact that a line into their house "exists" costs money, and arguably is a large portion of the cost.

[mynameisjuan]

9 hours ago, manikyath said:

there's also the consideration that a user's costs arent limited to the bandwidth they consume.

Bandwidth is actually the lowest cost comparatively to every other cost in running an ISP. Sure, we're paying 6 figures/month on peering/transit for dozens of peers/transit providers, but bandwidth at the edge is a fraction of the cost of what bandwidth you're paying for. It's the access/core infrastructure. But that still does not compare to infrastructure cost.

 

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just the fact that a line into their house "exists" costs money, and arguably is a large portion of the cost.

Last year's audit listed each of our customer's maintenance cost at $32/customer. This cost only includes average MRC of electricity, pole licensing, vendor hardware/software licensing for access platforms, state fees, database fees, etc. AKA, this is the bare minimum cost to keep fiber on the poles and an ONT operational. That's it.

 

It excludes bandwidth (peering/transit), core infrastructure (hardware maintenance/software licensing/upgrades/expansion), operational cost (NOC/support/engineering), OSP infrastructure, installation, maintenance and repair (largest cost) and standard business practices (AKA running a business).

 

So yes, there is indeed a significant cost to just have equipment "exist" and it's far greater than people realize.

 

11 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

YouTube would never have existed as nobody would have been able to afford the connection to handle it.

There was a discussion in the very early 2000s and in the last 1.5 years, this heavily debated discussion is coming back up in the various standards bodies.

 

In the ATM/PSTN world, long distance calls were payed for by the caller. Makes sense, why should the callee pay for answering that call. The same concept is being debated for internet services. In the years following the pandemic as streaming services exploded and throughput is increasing as exponential rates combined with hardware shortages, providers took a step back to say "hey, why are we essentially being required to pay millions into infrastructure while these services are essentially using our infrastructure for free and profiting off it".

 

I am on the edge of either side of that discussion but it has valid points. The consumer is paying for higher bandwidth packages in order to consume a service (which they also pay for). The provider is then essentially required to continuously upgrade infrastructure to handle the additional throughput which that cost is then passed down to the consumer in some fashion. The service pays essentially nothing for transit cost to the consumer.

 

Summary, service profits from consumer, some of those profits are used to pay for their infrastructure/peering cost, all infrastructure cost for the intermediate providers to the consumer are up to the providers to pay for.

 

Its an interesting but hot discussion and would (if providers are kept honest) lead to lower cost consumer bandwidth plans as sites would be paying MRC to transit providers based on bandwidth usage. If YT/Netflix consumer over 50% of all traffic, they are going to have to contribute the cost which is being forced on the providers. And yes, before the argument that the big 5 providers "make too much money", well they are only a small portion of infrastructure in the grand scheme of things.

 

Major valid counter argument is that would of course just shift cost and streaming platforms would drastically increase costs and each service would essentially have a subscription. End of the "free internet". But this would essentially be a direct solution to the OPs problems. Everyone has a minimum base cost, you pay for your services which they charge in addition to their throughput fees.

[Alex Atkin UK]

7 hours ago, mynameisjuan said:

Its an interesting but hot discussion and would (if providers are kept honest) lead to lower cost consumer bandwidth plans as sites would be paying MRC to transit providers based on bandwidth usage. If YT/Netflix consumer over 50% of all traffic, they are going to have to contribute the cost which is being forced on the providers. And yes, before the argument that the big 5 providers "make too much money", well they are only a small portion of infrastructure in the grand scheme of things.

Hotly debated indeed, as that then fall foul of net neutrality and a small startup that might somehow use a lot of bandwidth would be priced out of existing.

 

For example, I have some videos on my web hosting and pay for unlimited traffic but its bandwidth capped.  If I had to pay for bandwidth use it might be cheaper, but on the other hand it would only take one bad actor to attack the server by repeatedly downloading the same video and I'd be absolutely screwed.

[mynameisjuan]

2 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Hotly debated indeed, as that then fall foul of net neutrality and a small startup that might somehow use a lot of bandwidth would be priced out of existing.

Completely agree and the counter argument for that point and it's solutions are scarce. Like I said, there are valid points on both sides. The good news is they are breaking down every scenario imaginable as they know if they are not thorough, they have the potential of wiping 70% of sites off the internet overnight.