Mike ponders the quandry facing broadband service providers: customers who use broadband to the max. Like those who play Halo 2 and Warcraft online for hours. “The economics of broadband works when most users leave their connections wasted for most of the time. The problem, though, with that plan is that people tend to have different ideas. If the bandwidth is available, the applications and services needed to fill it will start showing up,” Mike writes. You can hear the service providers going … oh shit!
Sheer hysteria. Online games are probably the most bandwidth-frugal applications you’ll ever see. Most games (including Halo 2) will transfer 4 KB/s, even on a full server.
Surely someone downloading movies and music at full speed for hours is more stressful on a network than the gaming enthusiast.