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Unlimited vs. Dedicated Service

'Campers' and 'line hogs' can eat into your profits, and they have ways of defeating automated procedures for keeping them in line. What's an ISP do do?

[May 26, 1999]

In a thread on ISP-Tech, Wed., May 12 1999, JB writes:

   "As a growing ISP, we have come across an interesting problem. We provide unlimited service, but there seems to be a price we have to pay. We find users constantly 'hogging' lines. We're looking at setting up a permanent policy to disconnect users after a certain time, but that doesn't help with the auto-dialers, which we are seeing when we disconnect these line-hogs.
   My question is: How do you express to your users the difference between unlimited and dedicated service?

Respondents's answers generally addressed two related solutions.

• Define limits
  
• Offer multiple service levels

Solution 1: Define limits

Many respondents pointed out the need for defining the term "unlimited service," and stipulating specific limits:

[AS wrote] "Include a clause in your Terms & Conditions (that every new subscriber must sign) stating that the number of hours is unlimited, but when not in active use, the connection must be terminated. Then when you see that someone's been inactive for 30 or 40 hours, then just boot them off. If they complain, point them to the Terms & Conditions they signed."

[JS wrote] "We too offer 'unlimited' accounts, however, we define this in the TOS as 'up to an average of 12hrs/day. We also have a 15min idle time out in effect, and I have a tech go through the active ports several times a day and disconnect the ones that have been online for hours and only passed 90K of data. When we get people who are continually, actively using an account 16+ hrs a day, we ask them to upgrade to a dedicated dial-up account, since they are most likely running an FTP server."

[DS wrote] "Our TOS has the unlimited live interactive clause, too. It also says that running servers without our knowledge or camping gets them charged the $99 a month dedicated rate."

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