A little notification does seem like the best idea to me. Obviously it would need to be zero-effort, way unobtrusive, and nice and reassuring. "Hey- on unmetered connections, this page may balance network load with your unused bandwidth. You shouldn't notice any difference in speed! [Learn More][Edgemesh CDN]" Maybe even the slightly more aggressive "Your unused bandwidth is helping to speed up other people's connections!" Pop a neat little box in the lower right hand corner on the first visit, and have it minimize/disappear after a couple seconds.

I think it's a little skeevy to have it be completely silent. That doesn't mean it has to be super loud though.

I think it should be a browser-level feature, just like allowing notifications or location access.

Browsers should have an option to follow one of four behaviors: a) allow all P2P connections, b) always ask, c) allow a low-volume (say, <32kbps) P2P traffic, but throttle and ask if the rate tries to go beyond the safe threshold and d) deny all P2P connections. With b) or c) being a sane default, and a JS API to check permissions programmatically.

While this doesn't solve the problem right now (and would probably take a long while to happen), as a long-term solution, I think that would be the best way for everyone, providers and consumers.

I just think if you'll raise an issue with the mainstream vendors (Mozilla, Google, Opera, Vivaldi) you (as a company) this idea may have slightly better chances to be heard than just some random end-user suggestions.

If this idea fits your vision, of course.

---

As a short term, I guess maybe you can implement some proprietary API and suggest your users (webmasters) to show a confirmation panel that fits their site look-and-feel. With some readily-available sample implementation that they can just use if they don't want to spend time at all (besides adding a line of code).

I like the idea of a browser level feature for opt in to WebRTC (on a per Origin basis) - and it was proposed circa 2011 web WebRTC was coming of age. It's probably worth revisiting that discussion.

Also with regards to detecting metering client side you're 100% correct - you can't reliably do it in any way on the client side (although for mobile there are some APIs to detect cellular vs. wifi [1]). What we do it we have a mapping of ASNs that are flagged as metered. When your client comes online we take the IP, map to the ASN and determine if it is able to upload. We buy this data today and you can always drop an email to meter_notice@edgemesh.com with your IP and we will add it in.

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/c...

how can you even know if a connection is metered from within a browser?!

thats crazy talk rigth there. there are so many variations that all happen completely outside of the browser domain and/or the connection destination.