[couradical]

I think the issue is more that the ISPs are demanding payment at both ends of the tunnel. They charge you and I for transit (best-effort though it may be) and then when a bulk of their customers traffic turns to a popular network, attempt to charge that network to upgrade their port speed. (something which is customarily handled for free between peered carriers since both are charging their customers) Think of it this way - it's as if I pay UPS to send packages and then they request fees from the cities they deliver to, or they only deliver 100 packages a day to the municipality. That would be insane, and laughed out of court, but that's what Comcast/Verizon are doing.

Also, intentionally physically underprovisioning the connection is throttling, plain and simple. You are limiting the amount of traffic that can traverse that network boundary to 10G/40G/Whatever your port speed is. What difference does it make if I do it in software or simply refuse to bind more ports to the team?