FAP
Unlike other Internet providers, Dustyfoot offers service plans that may be governed by a Fair Access Policy, or FAP, or permit unlimited throughput.
Customers who know exactly how much throughput they need, and almost never exceed that amount, often choose plans governed by FAP. Many times FAP customers are soho (small office / home office) users, but often customers with many sites and who have specific data needs and never exceed them, choose FAP because it’s easy to predict.
When a FAP customer exceeds their allotted throughput, the NOC suspends the customer’s committed information rate, and throttles or reduces the customers’ maximum information rate a certain amount determined by the percentage by which the customer exceeded their allotted throughput, as follows:
| Percent Overage | Throttle Percent |
| under 5% | 0% |
| 5-10% | 5% |
| 10-20% | 10% |
| 20-30% | 20% |
| 30-40% | 30% |
| 40-50% | 40% |
| 50-60% | 50% |
| 60-80% | 60% |
| 80-100% | 70% |
| 100-150% | 80% |
| 150-200% | 90% |
| Over 200% | 95% |
Unlimited Throughput
Other customers may need higher throughput than our FAP service plans permit. Our unlimited throughput service, or metered billing, allows these customers to use excessive amounts of data when they need to. They may be reselling Internet access to resort guests, streaming video for a sports event, or sending X-Rays and other medical data from a disaster site to a medical center for expert consultation. Or they may run their own ISP renting satellite Internet equipment and service to exploration companies that send geological data back to their headquarters and receive instructions either to the people or directly to the devices.
Customers like these budget for unlimited throughput, because it’s not inexpensive. That’s why it’s called metered billing. You pay by the megabyte, and the meter may say you’ve used many gigabytes.
FAP is for planning your data use, and unlimited throughput plans are for unpredictable business needs.
