[stephengillie]

I also struggle with metaphors.

- A company who owns roads, and charges you to drive on them, wants to charge more for highly-used routes.

- A bus company is raising fees on routes with the most riders.

- Cable companies charge more for high-demand "premium" channels.

- Stores charge more for items that are higher in demand.

- Electric utilities charge surge prices during high demand times. So do some ride share taxis.

- Network companies charge more for high-demand connections? Preposterous!

It's rare that businesses will "commute" a fee, like happened for"commuters" in the last century.

[nxsynonym]

I think the high-demand "premium" channel is the best - simply because there is no limited supply.

I used the bridge metaphor for a while, but unlike bridges there is no maintenance required from increased usage or traffic jam generated from high traffic to netflix or google.

[icebraining]

Of course there is. Bandwidth isn't infinite, there's certainly congestion and maintenance required to upkeep and upgrade routers and cables.

[nxsynonym]

yes but that is from general use, not tied to specific websites.

If total traffic increases those costs go up, not if a higher percentage of users access specific sites.

That would be like charging trucks more to cross a certain bridge because there are more cars on the freeway two towns over.