What you can do in the fight against pedophiles and child molesters

 
Originally posted on CanadianISP.ca

You're just an average Jane or Joe, right ? You're not in law enforcement, so you're thinking this article does not apply to you ?

You could not be more wrong.
 
Each and every hour of every day, children are exploited, harmed and molested by truly evil people and they are helped, unwittingly, by thousands of people who would be mortified if they knew just how big a role they're playing in the spread of child pornography and advocacy of pedophilia. 

So how can you make a difference ?

Secure your networks.

 

For one: Secure your wireless devices – Iphones, wireless routers, laptops and so on: Your networking setup should absolutely be using some form of encryption or network protection. Many, many pedophiles take advantage of unsecured wireless networks by simply driving around a town with a laptop, looking for unsecured networks. Once they find one (Many home-use wireless routers have more than enough range to reach clear through a house and across a street), they pull over and start sending and receiving child pornography images – or worse – engage in the solicitation or grooming of children for their “needs”. What is worse second only to the child abuse itself is that if and when law enforcement traces this heinous activity back to its source, they will find YOUR network as the source of the illegal activity.

Scan for viruses

 

Second: Run regular virus scanners. In addition to computer viruses that can harm your computer by deleting information, much more common are the viruses that turn your machine into a “zombie”, or a computer that sends out hundreds of thousands of spam messages. However – and more crucially – not all those spams are ads for penis pills or stock frauds: Many of these zombie machines are used to spread child pornography images in order to keep their pedophile authors and true distributors safe from discovery. Once again, however, if and when it is traced back to its source, the phrase “world of hurt” will not even begin to describe the scenario you will face in trying to prove your innocence through ignorance. Better to avoid it all in the first place.

Change your passwords regularly

 

Thirdly: Many, if not most, regular home users not only use the same password for years on end, not only do they use the same password for multiple online resources (Perhaps the worst example would be using your Facebook password as your online banking password) but people also use disgustingly easy passwords to guess (or rather: Brute force attack by a computer running your account through a dictionary): At the very least, your password should not be:

1. found in a dictionary
2. found in a baby names book
3. be a date of birth, phone number or address of anyone you know.

Those are the top three easy to guess/easy to find pieces information to get your password. In addition to cracked passwords potentially causing you to lose money from online banking accounts, your online game accounts or cause embarrassing posts supposedly made by you, your cracked account can then also be used to send and receive child pornography images by the very pedophiles you would rather see in jail, rather than helping them out.
It is not just the complaints about inappropriate postings allegedly made by you, or the complaints you will have to make to your banks and other online accounts you need to worry about, but the possible legal ramifications, the damage to your reputation and, most importantly, the fact that you've made it easier for pedophiles and child molesters to do what they do.
Avoid it all by following the common-sense advice above.

Copyright © - 2011 Internalysis.com / Marc Bissonnette, Beachburg, Ontario - All rights reserved -

Hockey: Bloodsport or National Icon ?

or
“No, Virginia, violence isn't the answer, unless it's hockey, in which case, beat the @*#^! out of him!”

Originally posted on Beachburg.com

 In this day and age of easy access to all forms of media at all times of the day, be it through your television, PVR, the Internet, movies or what have you, parents are expected to teach their kids right from wrong, real from fake, entertainment versus reality and so on. In reality, many parents these days never even have the conversations with their kids about what is “right and wrong”, other than “don't hit your sister” or “clean that up, so help me!” - So, the powers that be have little reminders to nag at the conscience of parents, to remind them that some content may not be suitable for kids under a certain age or, at the very least, a reminder to the parents to tell their kids that what they're about to see is not real, potentially scary/upsetting and wouldn't really happen (“No, Virginia, aliens don't burst from your stomach. Now, pass the popcorn”)

So, where are the warnings before NHL games ? I never see a pre-screen that says “Warning, may contain content not suitable for children under the age of 14” or “May contain gratuitous violence and coarse language”. What seems to be worse is that without these warnings, some parents sit right beside their kids and scream at the television screen for one guy to “kill him” or “beat the crap outta him!” or “Smash that @#$&^er into the boards, you idiot!”

What is even worse than that is these same parents take that same attitude to the little league rinks and scream the same brilliant “advice” ... to a bunch of ten year olds.

So the kids see their “heroes” doing it on TV, they see their parents worshipping those same “heroes” for doing it on TV and then those same parents again encourage the kids to emulate this behaviour in a game that is supposed to be “in the spirit of fun, team work and physical fitness”

Why is it that if you send a hockey kid to the second grade and the teacher advocates other kids to beat each other up for the privilege of getting out for recess first, that parents would be screaming bloody blue murder and it would be a race between the lynch mob to string her up at the gallows and the police to take her away for child abuse, yet when little league coaches (and the wannabe “coaches” in the stands) advocate it, it's cheered on ?

Why is it if a kid breaks another kids' arm (or neck) on the playground, in the classroom or on the streets, a police investigation and a lawsuit are highly likely, but if that same kid ends up in the paraplegic ward at the hospital, “it's just part of the game, eh ?”

People make the low-brow argument that hockey is a fast paced sport where contact is inevitable and fighting is “part of the game”. Well, basketball is a fast paced sport and contact is inevitable – but: Contact is called a “foul” and these things called “penalties” are given out and ejection from the game is given if too many fouls occur. If a basketball player were so colossally stupid as to actually raise a fist against an opposing team member, he'd be ejected not only from the game, but from the building so fast his head would spin.

Funny thing is: Same thing with soccer. And football. And cricket. All of those sports are just as high energy, just as high adrenaline, just as “testosterone-laden” as hockey, yet if you raised a hand against a fellow player: Out you go. Even in football, where part of the whole game is about tackles and ramming into each other, you do not see players throwing gloves to the turf and beating the living daylights out of each other, while crowds of moms and dads with their kids beside them scream “KILL HIM! KILL THE @#*^&ER!!!!”

So why hockey ?

And especially: Why a sport that is supposed to be our national sport, to which tends of thousands of kids aspire to ?

Many of the (again) low-brows claim that fighting and aggressive checking is “part of the sport”, “makes it what it is” and so on: Yet each Olympic hockey, fighting, violence and aggressive contact is severelydecades after some Olympic games. curtailed, at the risk of ejection from the game, yet tens of millions of people speak of games in hushed tones of awe for years and

Furthermore, finally and, perhaps most importantly: Thousands and thousands of doctors, nurses, health care practitioners, child health experts and sports safety experts are calling the advocacy of violence in youth hockey no different than child abuse. Because that is exactly what it is: When you advocate for a child to actively and consciously go out and harm another child: That is abuse.

Funny thing is, in anything but hockey, not only is that an arrestable offense, but it's one that will get you put into a segregation cell in prison, because even murderers and rapists won't have anything to do with child abusers.

Marc Bissonnette is the proprietor of CanadianISP, Canadas' largest Internet Service Provider search and comparison site.

InternAlysis - Customized, specialized, dedicated eMarketing specialist
CanadianISP - Canadas' largest Internet Service Provider (ISP) list and comparison web site

How "last mile" providers, telcos and cablecos, could improve the entire industry

(And how they could do better for the public, the ISPs and their share holders )

Originally posted on CanadianISP.ca


There has been a lot of controversy in the past few years over how last mile providers are operating with regards to consumers in general and wholesale ISPs in specific. 


Charges of monopolism, restriction of trade, unfair trade practices are rife, to name but a few. 


Just to be clear, a "last mile" provider is someone to whom a consumer pust pay, directly or indirectly, to get from their home or business, out to the rest of the world; This is through the physical copper (or fibre) connection from their home or business, out to the poles or conduits, to a switching station, then to the rest of the Internet.


Obviously, you cannot have multiple last mile providers for each home; No one would want to see a solid wall of telephone poles lining streets or having their roads dug up once every three months when someone new enters the market to provide service.


Someone has to provide this service. Nine times out of ten, this is your local telephone or cable company. This has been accomplished over the past century and more by grants of right-of-way by local, provincial/state and federal governments to ensure communications were available to all.

The problem

A monopoly made a lot of sense thirty years ago and more: As mentioned above, you don't want five poles in front of each house and frankly, POTS was such a simple service that having one (or very few) carriers simply made it easier for all to ensure thorough communications reach to citizens.


In todays world, however, communications is a lot more - a VERY large amount more - than simply converting a voice to electrical impulses and re-converting them on the other end to create a conversation circuit; We have email, web, VoIP, video conferencing, VPNs, and many, many more forms of multiple-way (note: A LOT more than simple "two way") communication.


To state the obvious, some companies do things better than others. Some companies are so specialized that ALL they do is one form of the myriad of communications options we have today. It would be the very height of hubris to state, or even vaguely suggest, that one company can do all of this better than all the rest. This includes the last mile providers.

The harm

So why is it that governments in North America, specifically in Canada and the United States, are allowing a BACKWARDS slide in this competitive world ? One does not need to be radical, left-wing, ultra liberal or a conspiracy theorist to know - and cite many examples of - the fact that monopolies, duopolies (any form of genuinely limited competition) in critical infrastructure in a capitalist society does not work. In fact, they cause harm to large segments of society, ALWAYS.


A look at the real estate bubble and it's root cause: The banking and financial corruption that caused not only millions of people to lose their homes, but the massive impact to the global economy that we are still feeling, today. A look at the rare earths market and Chinas' decision to cut back 30% of exports and the sudden panic on the effect this will have if Canadian and US mines don't start up because so much of the worlds' supply came from one place. WalMart, though a huge success for stockholders and consumers looking for the lowest price, has created entire 'business ghost towns' where there is literally nothing but a WalMart and residences - nothing else.


Without reasonable competition in an industry, the desire for greater and greater profits causes greater and greater harm to those around them; Choices are removed from not only consumers, but from businesses that provide jobs and contribute to the GDP and tax base, as well as the diversity of a community, be that on a local or provincial/state wide basis to weather downturns in a particular sector or unforeseen force majeures.


Obviously, calling for the end to all telcos and cablecos would be utterly foolish: They provide an infrastructure that both businesses and the consumers need to access the rest of the world at large. Where I think they are falling afoul of the "desire for greater and greater profits and causing greater and greater harm to those around them" is that they are looking towards the fact that entertainment content is moving entirely over to the Internet and they want a solely captive audience with zero competition. By entertainment content, I refer to television and movie content moving at an increasingly rapid pace to being delivered over IP, rather than over the air (By broadcast or satellite).


In my view, they see the profits in this not only from subscription-based content, but in bandwidth used for such content. At present, the global average for content usage is 11 gb/month ( "Cisco Visual Networking Index Study Finds Today's Average Global Broadband Connection Generates 11.4 Gigabytes of Internet Traffic per Month" newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2009/prod_102109.html ) - This is up from only a year ago where the average content used was between five and six gigabytes per month. This number is, obviously, going up and an exponential rate, year over year and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

A solution

So, what is the solution ? The average price for DSL in Canada, for example, is $47.55 per month (Source: CanadianISP.ca pricing data) - This works out to roughly 43 cents per megabyte, per month, on average. What I believe the telcos and cablecos SHOULD be doing is encouraging MORE isps to get MORE customers to engage in MORE transfer. In other words: The telcos and cablecos could not only be the "White Knights" of the ISP industry by encouraging competition, they can PROFIT from it, as well as the ISPs. How do they do that ?


Right now, the average ISP pays a wholesale cost between $16 - $20 / month / loop to the telco for a DSL line. Given the average, bare bones DSL contact tends to hover around $24 / month for the consumer, that does not leave a lot of room at all for the ISP to profit not only to pay its bills, but to expand, invest or innovate. Telco and Cablecos could encourage - and profit - from this with the following model:


Change the loop access price to $5.00 / loop / month


Bill $0.0012 per megabyte, starting at meg 0 - With an average of 11 gigs / month used, the telco will see $13.20 / month plus the $5.00 access fee plus any overages. This not only encourages ISPs to aggressively recruit new clients, but for the public to consume more in terms of bandwidth, for which both the ISP and the local loop provider will profit from. It also encourages new entrants to the ISP market, with all of the related benefits of job creation, equipment purchases, taxes collected and so on.


Edit - January, 2011: After speaking with many people using the 'net more and more for TV, movies and other, high volume content, a better UBB model presents itself:

Speeds up to 6 Megabits / sec: ~0.0020 / megabyte (Assumes roughly ~10 GB/mo)

Speeds from 6-20 Megabits / sec: ~0.0005 / megabyte (Assumes rought ~120 GB/mo)

 (Plus monthly connection fee of $5 / month for <10 Mb/Sec, $10 / month for >= 10 Mb/sec)


At the rate this is going, the current model will not hold out; There will be a consumer backlash to the point where the current system will be overhauled. The worse case scenario is that foreign competition would enter the scene with even more money that the Canadian telco and cablecos, throwing a lot of the industry out on its tail, not to mention the massive fallout in stocks and bonds. The least worst (and it's still bad) is they'll be legislated into a scenario described above, but that will not rectify the intervening years of massive profit gouging, harm to the market and the dismal 36th place Canada currently sits at, in terms of broadband speed and availability.

-Marc Bissonnette, Beachburg, Ontario
CanadianISP.ca
October 29, 2010

Life in a small town and the knowledge economy

 Originally posted on CanadianISP.ca

By now, if you've looked over more than two pages on CanadianISP, you will probably have deduced that I live in Beachburg, Ontario. Many, if not most of you have asked where the heck is Beachburg ? That's okay if you did: A common joke around here is that you have to turn the map of Ontario over to find our little farming village of nine hundred people.

Given I grew up in Ottawa and spent a good part of my sales, marketing and Internet career in both Montreal and Toronto, many ask - Why a village of 900, more than an hour and a half from Ottawa and four and half hour drive from Toronto ?

There were two reasons, initially, though after nearly nine years, now, that list of reasons has grown a lot. Initially, however, it was: Cost of living and family. We moved here after our third child was born because Toronto was insanely expensive to live in and the thought of our children playing outside, unsupervised, without armed guards and an attack helicopter hovering overhead gave us the willies.

When looking for a new home, we hadn't even heard of Beachburg: Our methodology was to take a piece of string that represented 200km and trace a two hour circle around Ottawa. (We still hadn't heard of Beachburg at that point) - When looking at homes in Renfrew, Arnprior, Carleton Place, Almonte, Calebogie (all places we both knew about and had spent time in), the real estate agent said "I'd like to show you a couple of places in Pembroke and Beachburg".
Pembroke ? I'd seen the city name on the sign for the westbound 417, but that was about it. Beach - what ?!? A long drive later, we found a house and property we fell in love with. The price was right, the neighbourhood was amazing, school literally steps away and - best of all - 6 megabit DSL with a switching station (Heck, the actual telco itself) about 800 meters from the house.

SOLD

Some may think that two hours from Ottawa is too far to live from major shopping (Though Pembroke, a town of 14,000, is less than 20 minutes from here), but really, how long do you spend in rush hour in Toronto or Ottawa ? (Two hours in rush hour in Toronto ? That's an *amazing* time! Ottawa is certainly creeping up there, but is still no where close to T.O.)

With broadband to the home, a business like mine (InternAlysis, a virtual marketing director is my 'real' company) in the knowledge economy is a no brainer in a setting like this. As the global economy becomes more, well, global, cost of living is becoming an important factor for an awful lot of people. Before I started CanadianISP, the bulk of my work was in perl CGI scripting, MySQL application design and emarketing consulting. I charged $100 / hour and had *no* problem filling my billable hours. (In fact, I was middle-of-the-road in terms of rates. I knew - and learned from - some absolutely *brilliant* coders in T.O. who charged $350/hour with an eight hour minimum and they still had to turn clients away for lack of time)

Nowadays, however, you can get some extremely talented coders from Russia, Pakistan and India for as little as US $10/hour for their work. Why compete in what was once a unique and specialized area that had become commoditized ? This is especially true if living in a city like Toronto: Supporting a family of five on ten dollars an hour simply is not possible.

So, from my home in our little community of Beachburg, where, compared to my parents' place in Ottawa, I literally have ten times the property size, twice the square footage in the house, I pay less than a fifth of their property taxes, water rates and insurance costs. Yes, meeting up with the family or old friends takes a little more planning (Especially when one child with Angelman Syndrome is in a wheelchair), but overall, it is massively worth it.

If you run your own business and it does not rely on a lot of face-to-face on a regular basis with your clients, you may want to ask yourself if you really need to be living in the high priced urban areas.
Before we moved here, financially, we were making it happen, but things got tight from time to time. After the second month here in Beachburg, after the bills had a chance to come in, there was a ton of money left over in the bank account. Suddenly, luxuries we hadn't thought of were possible. We took our first trip to the Carribean. Our children have gone to Nova Scotia and Florida, amongst other places. Our kids can play outside and not have to worry about muggers, drug dealers, rapists or pedophiles.

Small town living ? Oh heck yeah!

Organic marketing versus, well, everything else on the Internet

 Originally posted on CanadianISP.ca

Organic, Pay Per Click, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Socila Media Advertising, Link Farming, print/paper/radio/television advertising, direct mail marketing, email marketing – The list of methods for getting your company's brand and message out there actually goes on even further.
So which is “best” ? Depending who you ask, this is where the blood gets ankle deep and children are turned into orphans. This commentary, however, will be on my observations of thirty years on Internet use, twenty of them professionally in all three of technical development, sales and marketing (All three of which, I still do today)
The quick answer, for me, would be “Organic marketing is the way to go, period.”

Why is organic marketing better ?

Why ? It takes longer to see results, the feedback loop is no where near as immediate, so evolving your strategy can often be a matter of months, rather than hours, and, in general, organic marketing is time and labour intensive.
Why ? Because it works. Not only does it work to bring people your message, thus bringing the people to you, but it's because it gives them the answers to the solutions they are actually seeking. Pay per click, push media like television and newspaper, mail or email marketing, most of those are typically a scatter gun approach, or “Throw enough mud at the barn wall and some of it has got to stick”. They rely on the sheer volume of people seeing the message and the hope that that message is good enough that that magical four percent conversion ratio, or view-to-click ratio, will be achieved.

So what is "organic" marketing ?

Organic, or “natural” marketing, is the process of getting other people, web sites, blogs, social media, word of mouth and private emails to not only link to your business, but recommend and endorse it because it is relevant to them and to those they think will benefit from it. Organic marketing automatically contains the subconscious recommendation-from-a-satisfied-friend benefit, because the chances are when you are reading a site that you already follow faithfully, you do so because you value and/or trust that sites' content: When that trusted source recommends another source, you automatically give that second source a higher chance of earning your business, rather than a random Joe along the street who happens to see the same thing.
Of course, organic marketing, when successful, also gives the same benefits as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, in that you're placed at the top of the search engine results. To be fair, this is not only harder to do, but also harder to maintain, but this is pretty standard: You can spend your entire weekend fixing your own car, getting dirty, cuts and scrapes, lost time that you'd rather spend on the boat, or you can pay someone else to do it in an afternoon in their shop.
Like fixing your own car, the satisfaction of having done it yourself is tremendous. Unlike fixing your car, however, organic marketing success also brings you financial benefits in the form of increased business. If you're doing things right, this is not only an increase in short term sales, but in the long term retention of loyal and repeat customers.

A little advice for successful organic marketing methods

The purpose of this commentary isn't really to get into the how-to's of organic marketing (I might put up something like that at a later date if there is enough interest), but I will make a few suggestions:

1. Content, content, content! Just like having a repeat customer come back to your store for new and interesting products, repeat visitors to your site are looking for new and interesting content. Never forget that most people do not make a purchase on their first visit to a site: Give them reasons to come back.
2. Don't insult your customers by telling them to buy your products on your say-so alone. This is related to #1, above: If your website is nothing but a catalogue of your products, along with their prices and a bunch of checkout buttons, you are insulting your customers by telling them “Buy our stuff because we tell you to”. When selling widgets or services online, you need to show, via your site, how to use your widgets, why people use your widgets, creative use of same, feedback from your customers on your widgets good and bad – that shows you listen to your customers.
3. The Internet is much more than just your website: You, your company and your staff should be all over the place. There are literally millions of forums, websites, blogs, social media sites and so on where your company's presence should be felt. HOWEVER: Be aware that sometimes, “presence” and “spam” can have a very fine, sometimes invisible, dividing line between them. If you're not sure about putting content about your firm on someone elses' site, try asking the site owner. At the very least, if you can't see other examples of companies doing the same on the site you'd like to expose yourself on, try asking the users. A message like “Hi everyone, I represent a company that is very much related to this forum and I think we've got a lot of insights and advice that would be of interest, but do not wish to have the appearance of spamming – Can anyone point me in the right direction for what is and isn't acceptable here in terms of company participation in the discussions and community ?” - That will give you a lot warmer reception than blatantly jumping in, head first, with an all-out ad for your latest product, no matter how closely related to the site's interests you are.
4. Email marketing and confirmed opt-in. This is critical to email marketing and communications: You should never, ever be sending email to any member of the public without whom you do not already have a business relationship, are answering a direct query or have a record of the confirmation of their permission for your to send them bulk email. Keep in mind that the first two, direct business relationship (i.e. They just bought something from you) and query response (They just asked if your products also come in pink) does not constitute permission to send other, bulk, email. Bulk email includes newsletters, site update notifications, sales or promotions mails, solicitations for new business and so on. Failure to adhere to confirmed opt-in for email marketing will very quickly find your company listed with Spamhaus or AHBL, which means your internet will quickly turn into an intranet – meaning you won't be able to email anyone but yourself.
5. Given the perception that email marketing is cheap, quick and 'has the potential to reach millions', read #4 again.
6. Cross-linking; The ideal goal is to have as many possible sites linking to yours as possible, in order to raise your profile both to the general public, as well as to the search engines. However: The concept of “pay it forward” or “Do unto thy neighbour” also applies, here: Don't be afraid to make your own recommendations for complimentary (but non-competing) businesses of your own. In fact, doing such is a great opener for getting in touch with the company you'd like to recommend with a note along the lines of “You know, we're really impressed with your product and would like to let you know that we are recommending your company on our site, here (URL here) – We would like to know if you would be interested in reciprocating the link because, as you know, the greater the cross links sites have across the net, the better we each appear in search engine results”. Of course, it is even better if you can actually pick up the phone and ask this of someone you have a business relationship with, rather than an “out of the blue” email.

There are so many other hints, tips and suggestions on true, successful organic marketing that it would literally take a book – a large one – to cover them all. Some of it is through trial and error (and yes, I have the benefit of twenty years of such for my own efforts), but the above is a good starter. You can also search for “Organic marketing tips” and similar terms in your preferred search engine and get a lot of healthy tips and ideas.
At the end of the day, Organic marketing success should be your ultimate goal, whether you've just started a new business or are a long term player in your industry. I guarantee you sales and profit from organic marketing are a lot higher in the long run than the quick injections from PPC or similar.
How do I know ? Well, running Canada's number one Internet Service Provider ( ISP ) list and comparison site, CanadianISP, from Beachburg, Ontario, a farming village of 900, should be an indication of just how well it works :)

Traffic Shaping: We did it to ourselves.

Originally posted on CanadianISP.ca

Okay, so this piece isn't going to make too many people overly happy with me, but I think many of you will at least see the logic of it. 

So the trend lately is traffic shaping: That is, when an ISP throttles down the speed of a connection depending on the type of traffic being sent. Most commonly, this is done on P2P connections - So, for example, if you are downloading the latest Fedora ISO over bit torrent, your 400 Kb/Sec connection suddenly drops to 5.3 Kb/Sec. Betcha expected me to use the example of downloading music or a movie, didn't you ? Of course, THAT is one of the reasons traffic shaping was intrododuced, though maybe not for the reasons some might think. I used the example of a perfectly legal large-scale P2P transfer to demostrate that there are perfectly legal and legitimate uses that are getting nailed by this trend, as well as the music and movie downloaders.

It's not about the ethics or the legality - It is simply supply and demand. There is a lot of "demand" for media files - Music and movies. However, there is only so much "supply" of bandwidth.

For example, my ISP has a 100 megabit pipe between Beachburg and Pembroke. From Pembroke, they hook up to Bell and then the rest of the world. This 100 megabit pipe is serving approximately 400 households, about 300 of which have 5 Mb/Sec connections (approimately 75 others use dial-up and the other 25 still haven't heard about the Internet, yet ) If all 300 households were to start downloading a 1 gigabyte file at once, the pipe would be saturated - that is to say, we'd all suffer a speed reduction as the switches try to even out the demand from all the users. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, because my math sucks, but that looks like we'd all drop to about 60Kb/sec.

Fortunately, the chances of all 300 households doing that are next to none: As a matter of fact, many ISPs *depend* on that and thus the term "acceptable over-subscription" - That means that at any given time, you know that only about X percentage of your users are going to be using the service and even at that, only a fraction thereof. In my ISP's case, peak usage of the 100Mb/sec pipe is 28 Mb/sec - More than acceptable (Indeed, I'm quite happy with NRTCO - Not that I have a choice in broadband providers, but it's nice that they *are* a good provider )

So where's the topic I started with ? How did we do it to ourselves ? The above is simply background to help understand: By consumers demanding more and more "unlimited" connections, we have placed more burdens upon the ISPs to keep providing more service without any additional compensation. Before you start screaming that I've "gone over to "The Man"", consider this: If you get paid eighty bucks to work an eight hour day and your boss suddenly tells you that your work day is now twelve hours, but your paycheque is still eighty bucks - you wouldn't be too happy, now would you ?

Now, I *know* some of the complaints to this are going to be like this: " But I *PAID* for *UNLIMITED* service and I *WANT* unlimited service, dammit!". To those people, I have the following statement to make to you:

Grow up.

Seriously: Grow up. If you're a lawyer and going to complain to me about how it's false advertising and the law says this and that about it, I say this to you AND the judge AND the lawmaker: Grow up.

When I was younger, living in Dorval, there was an all-you-can-eat chinese buffet about five blocks from my house. My room mate and I and our next door neighbour started going there. Now, Mike (my room mate) and I could pack back a respectable meal. My neighbour, Chuck, was a dump truck with two legs: He could eat *SIX* heaping plates of food and STILL be hungry. Eventually, we were banned from going there, because the owner said we were making him lose money. Being young snots, we made those same selfish complaints "But you SAID unlimited and I DESERVE unlimited". Of course, none of us DESERVE anything: It's not in the Charter or the Constitution, so we're just shooting hot air. Of course, now that I'm older, I understand that "unlimited" is aimed at "the common man/woman" - I.e. if I can normally eat a plate at $6.95, then unlimited means I can eat two and maybe even three plates once every now and then. But we'd bring friends and new business and it'd all even out. Mike and Chuck and I went there *every* day, though: We really were eating the poor man out of business (Well, Chuck was, Mike and I just added salt to the wounds )

So how does my Chinese buffet story compare to unlimited Internet ? Look, if you want to download the occasional ISO of Ubuntu or whatever other large-size media file (without breaking and copyrights, of course...), go for it - that's what the service is there for. It's when that small percentage of you start downloading EVERYTHING you can get your hands on, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, that you start saturating that bandwidth that all the other customers are supposed to use, as well.

Just to cut off the other whiners: The response of "Well, they should increase their backhaul, then, after all, they SAID unlimited" - Guess what, buddy ? That backhaul costs $$money$$ - Who do you think pays for it ?

So now the ISP is faced with a darned-if-you-do and darned-if-you-don't choice: Raise the price for *everyone* to cover the saturators, stop advertising unlimited access or take up traffic shaping.

Why darned if you choose any of them ?

Raise the price for everyone: No one likes paying more. There is a certain segment of every customer base who just will not accept raised prices and will use price as the lowest common denominator between services: Ergo, loss of business.

Stop advertising unlimited access: Well, you lose a bunch of customers who just want the *choice* of unlimited - You also put yourself at a competitive disadvantage to the ISPs who are advertising unlimited. Ergo, loss of business.

Traffic shaping: Now you're dealing with people who expect the full spectrum of speed, but suddenly aren't getting it, depending on the application. Well, you're still going to get people who complain - Legitimately. You will still lose some business - also legitimately. But: It's the least of the three evils: Your price stays the same, you can still say "unlimited", but your speed might drop a bit for the P2P users duting peak times (or all the time, however it's been set up)

Do I *agree* with traffic shaping ? Have I sold my geek soul to the big, corporate interests, once and for all, guaranteeing that I'll get to play nothing but "Pong" in the afterlife ? No, I don't: I, too, believe that if I've paid for 5 megabits per second, then by Ghu, I should be getting that no matter what I'm doing. That being said, though: I also run a business: I have seen and suffered first-hand when a customer takes advantage of either generosity or vague wording, no matter the intent.

So, no one likes a whiner about a problem unless you're offering a solution to the problem and I do indeed have a solution, but I don't think it's going to be super popular:

Pay by the byte.

The irony of this position is that CanadianISP was *founded* specifically so customers would not only have a choice in ISPs, but because there was a misconception that the "only" ISP out there now had caps - I knew that wasn't the case so the site was built and now, literally, a couple of thousand people a day use the site to see what those choices are. BUT: The 'net and media in general are growing at phenominal rates: Websites are getting bigger; Movies are getting bigger; Games are getting bigger: This means a *critical* need for more bandwidth is here, now and will be getting more urgent as time goes on. However, for an ISP to stay competitive, it means that they *cannot* let a minority of their users suck up their resources at the expence of the majority of their customer base. If I'm paying $40.00 a month for my five megs a second, but downloading three terrabytes each month, I am an actual *liability* to my ISP.

Don't forget that, people - This is why I don't have a lot of pity for the whiners who cry that "unlimited is supposed to be unlimited" - Remember: As a *customer* you are supposed to be a *source of profit* to the ISP. I'm not revealing any state secrets by saying this, folks: It's common sense: Your ISP isn't connecting you to the Internet out of the goodness of their hearts: They're doing it to pay their bills, set aside for their retirement, buy their kids some nice toys and build a nest egg. Don't get me wrong: A *smart* ISP will get all this by giving you the service you pay for, prompt and polite service over the phone, etc, but they're doing it for the *profit* you represent each month (Which, by the way, is usually less than five bucks). When you become a *COST* to the ISP - Just how far do you think they're going to bend over backwards for you ? If instead of *making* the ISP a measly five bucks per month, you are *costing* them fifteen bucks in upstream bandwidth - Why on Earth should they be giving you *even more* when do so so means it costs them *even more* ?

So, in a nutshell, my suggestion to get rid of traffic shaping is the following: 

Offer your connectivity at whatever your price is per month - Include the lowest average of monthly gigabytes in transfer - Nowadays, that's probably around 15 gigs for the average user.

After than fifteen gigs, charge a *reasonable* fee per gigabyte over that. By *reasonable*, I mean actually sit down with the calculator, figure out what your cost per gig is, add a respectable profit (I mean 20-40% - not 3000 - 9000 percent <*cough*Sympatico*cough*> and charge for the overage. Make it so that a user will pay an overage use, but they're not going to be getting monthly bills in the hundreds of dollars.

Now, of course, this means educating the public, first: It means that "unlimited" is *not* a good thing because there will *always* be a minority of people who *consistantly* abuse this, making it an untenable service offering.

The first step would be for an ISP to offer something like this:

"5 megabits/sec, 20 gigs per month, $39.95, $0.10 per gig over 20" - or something like that.

Remember *most* users don't go over 15 gigs a month.

Okay, I'm done. I've been meaning to get this off my chest since December. 

Update: There is a much more detailed by-the-byte proposal on CanadianISP, which aims to be reasonable to the ISPs, the last-mile/backbone providers *and* the public:

How "last mile" providers, telcos and cablecos, could improve the entire industry

Let the flames begin 

(Feb. 2011: And yes, I appreciate the irony of all of this, given the recent UBB debate)

Marc Bissonnette is the proprietor of Internalysis, a competitive intelligence firm from Beachburg, Ontario, Canada and CanadianISP.ca - Canada's largest Internet Service Provider (ISP) search and comparison tool!

Are you really ready for the launch of your new site ?

Originally posted on CanadianISP.ca

There are two big mistakes in launching a public websites that are made by companies big and small

1. Waiting until everything is "just perfect" before launching at all
2. Launching the site on the same day that press releases and radio/print/television/email ads go out, announcing it.

At first glance, those two reasons seem to contradict each other, so let me explain the pitfalls of each:

1. Waiting until everything is "just perfect" before launching at all

Some people absolutely refuse to put anything at all up on their website unless every single bell, whistle, dotted "i" and crossed "t" has been designed, implented and reviewed by fourteen departments.

The problem with this is that the web is a constantly evolving entity. People expect information to grow and change as they come back to your website and by holding off until you've got a year's worth of content to post means your website sits, stale, with nothing new for people to read while you're re-writing the equivalent of the Ilead for your site.

Remember: The key to a successful website, no matter what your industry is, is getting people to come back. If you are putting information up about a new product or service, but are waiting for your technical writers to finish all the chapters and details: Post the précis! There is nothing wrong with adding "The next installment will be available on March 2nd, bookmark this page and come back for more" or "Click here to be notified when the next chapter of information is available" or "If you need additional details right away, click here to email us or call us at 555-555-1234.
Note: Do NOT use this as a permanent tactic: Don't post a teaser and expect that to lead people to call or email you: This tends to annoy people more than anything. For example, a BIOS company lost my business when I submitted a page full of information about my computer in order to determine the proper BIOS update and, instead of being immediately led to the download/purchase page, I received an email saying "Please call us, we have a question about your computer". Cheap sales tactics that work in bricks-and-mortar retail do not necessarily work on the 'net.
People expect to be able to find the information they want on your site: They don't want to be forced to pick up the phone or send you an email. If you don't have all of the information posted right away, give a date when it will be available and offer to notify customers when the information is up (Which further brings traffic to your site when they return).

2. Launching the site on the same day that press releases and radio/print/television/email ads go out, announcing it.

This should be obvious, but some people just don't get it: We do not live in a perfect world. We do not have perfect talents, nor do our employees with whom we entrust to build our web content. This is normal. If you've just spent a whack of time and money to build or rebuild an entire website, do you really think it's a good idea for the general public to first see it during a press conference ?

Your first temptation to answer will be "Um, yeah, that's the idea of a press conference, dummy..." - But what happens when there is a URL over looked ? A Flash component that works on MSIE but not on Opera or Firefox ? What about that one component of the website that everyone though the other guy was going to take care of? What about the domain name itself?

At the very, very least, a new website should be posted to the 'net 24 hours before your press releases go out. If you're smart, that will be 72 hours ahead of time, which is the recommended propagation time for new DNS changes, should that turn out to be your issue. I cannot tell you the number of times a client has registered a domain name with a registrar, built a website or section around it, issued the press release and then called me the same morning to say "Make this domain work now". You've got to point your A record (or, in some cases, your primary and secondary DNS records) from your registrar to the machine hosting your site. The webserver itself needs to recognize the domain being pointed to it and itself point all such requests to the right directories and applications. Even when you do all that work yourself in ten minutes, it can take three days for your new domain and site to be accessible around the world.

There is also simply human error to account for: Before you use the newswire to announce www.foo.com : Have you actually typed in "http://www.foo.com" in your web browser and received what you expect to receive ? If you haven't, you are inviting disaster. What about the email addresses and forms used within the page you are announcing ? Has someone actually sent email to each of the addresses and confirmed that they are deliverable ? What about your forms ? Has anyone filled them out and clicked submit to make sure that they actually work ? How about phone numbers: I don't mean just looking at them to make sure they're there, but actually dialing them to make sure that it connects to the right person and place on the other end?

All of the above can save you a lot of ambarassment on press release day or even worse: At the trade show with five thousand people watching you get the "404: Not found" on the thirty foot screen behind you.

Marc Bissonnette is the proprietor of Internalysis, a database and CGI programmer specializing in content management solutions from Beachburg, Ontario, Canada and CanadianISP.ca - Canada's largest Internet Service Provider (ISP) search and comparison tool!