Close, but not quite.

An ISP will buy pipes, such as a DS3 that does 45Mbps, for a flat rate
per month. Theoretically the upstream provider doesn't care if 1 bps or
45 Mbps are passing through that pipe; from a billing perspective, they
get the same money. But they have to play the statistical game on how
much upstream pipe that they need to handle all the 45Mbps pipes they
sold to ISPs like you. And eventually you get to the backbone
providers, who have really really big pipes, and very expensive routers.

This "power user" thing is something I've never heard anyone in the
business speak of, so I have no idea why you would get bumped. If you
are not breaking the TOS agreement, ISPs don't care a rat's rear end how
much traffic you generate. You buy a pipe from the ISP and you have
every right to fill it if you can. The only exception to that would be
that you have a maximum number of hours or bytes per month. They won't
kick you if you exceed it, they just charge you an additional amount
that you agreed to in your contract with them. Some ISPs may do it a
bit differently, but that's fairly normal in the industry.

tom
K0TAR

Tyas_MT wrote:

"Reg Edwards" wrote in message
...

Anything which increases traffic volume benefits Internet service

providers.

Uhm no... If a normal customer is using more bandwidth (receiving and
sending more email, committing virus controlled DDoS attacks, etc) Internet
service providers LOSE MONEY. They pay by the byte, you don't. Most
customers pay a flat fee for internet access. This is true of most Cable,
DSL, ISDN, and Dial-up setups... they are priced based on an expectation of
'normal' usage, and the ISP loses money in 'extreme' usage cases. Why I ( a
'power user') get nasty emails from ISP's and have to switch often.... this
one is good about that though.