Broadband Providers' Hidden Bandwidth Limits 443
An anonymous reader sends us to the Boston Globe for a story that will come as a surprise to few here: broadband suppliers will cut you off if you download too many bits. It tells the stories of several Comcast users who were warned — without specifics — that they were using "too much" bandwidth, then had their accounts summarily cancelled. Looking into the future: "...even if only a tiny fraction of customers are downloading enough to trigger the policy, that will probably change as more entertainment moves to the Internet."
Instead of focusing on speed (Score:5, Interesting)
Optimum Online in NY caps uploads (Score:3, Interesting)
I've had this happen with them before, and it seems like there is no way out except to call, and you only get 3 strikes before you're out I've heard.
It's very frustrating, I pay for a fast internet connection and should be allowed to use it within reason. I purposefully capped my torrent uploads at 40KBytes, that's not too much, I shouldn't be capped.
How many? (Score:5, Interesting)
ONLY 1,150 customers are at risk of being cut off?
Comcast has an interesting definition of "common carrier". I wonder if the courts will agree with it...
Re:Optimum Online in NY caps uploads (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A /. dupe, what else is new (Score:5, Interesting)
They disconnect you for unspeakable limits. That is called FRAUD. No ifs ands or buts.
If they cant maintain profitability on selling those lines for whatever they do, too bad. Not my problem. if they can only sell 512Kbps sync and keep it truthful and honest, all the better.
If the telcos DSL circuits can do it, why not the "Pig"?
No cap for iTunes I'll bet (Score:4, Interesting)
If you're downloading gigabytes of movies and music from a service that the RIAA or MPAA approves of then suddenly bandwidth caps will cease to be an issue.
I doubt that anyone will ever get a takedown notice from their ISP for excessive iTunes usage.
sucks to be on Comcast (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:over-bandwidth notices (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't feel TOO sorry for these peple (Score:2, Interesting)
On a 6 Mbps/s connections, if you did nothing but download all the time, you'd be downloading a little less than 2 Tb a month, roughly 4 for 5 hard drives worth (at today's hard drive sizes). That a over 200 double-layer (9G) DVD, 450 regular DVD's, 3,000 audio CD, hundred for thousands of DVD's. You could download every Linux distribution ever made with room to spare.
The people getting these notices and having their connections shut off have been approaching a MINIMUM of 1/3 this capacity (given a casual survey of those who got letter on DSL Reports and other forums), and note that these people got a at least 1 warning informing them of this.
This is truly staggering, even for the heavy downloaders here - even the warezers - you monthly download is probably WELL under that. (Even if you have no life at all you still need to time watch/play your downloads).
Even if the ISP said there were an "all-you-can-eat", there people are well beyond that. Even the big downloads might bring an elephant to the buffer and still not get thrown out (suspended), but these people are brining herds of elephants in, and then when their elephants are full, having them throw up over the buffet and repeating.
Re:Linux ISO's... (Score:3, Interesting)
From the ISP's POV, not at all the same as a lot of movies. Not all content moves across the 'net in a similar manner.
Those ISOs are relatively light-weight in terms of xfer overhead. You can pull them down all day and not get any attention, but if you start anything that even barely reeks of streaming or multi-media, you'll trigger a flag that puts you in line for being throttled back.
Try it and see
Bandwidth tariffs to explain ambiguity? (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing is, I do 90% of this downloading between 11pm and 7am, using timed download managers and just starting P2P software before I go to bed. It seems logical (to me at least) that the ISP is internally using come kind of tariff system to downplay the effect of my broadband usage at off-peak times when I'm basically not affecting contention ratios or anything else. If such a system were being used in this case it could also explain why the ISP is unable/unwilling to provide a hard limit on bandwidth. There must be dozens of people on
Welcome to the rest of the world (Score:4, Interesting)
Here in Australia, all broadband is limited by a quota. The same is true of much of the rest of the world, outside the US.
A big reason for this (as it was explained to me) is that apparently the US (or US networks) charges other countries for data transmitted from the US (though that didn't stop local AU providers from charging us equally for Australian content, or even content cached locally by the ISP). I'd be interested to hear someone confirm or deny this theory.
As for limiting a cable user's volume, remember that unlike other transmission methods, their bandwidth is shared with other cable users on the local loop, so they *can't* all get full line capacity. If one user tries to max out the cable continually, it's hardly fair on his neighbours.
I certainly agree that the cable bastards could be much more upfront about these implied limits in their contracts however.
Re:Optimum Online in NY caps uploads (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand, Outside his dumass attack by admiting to it in public, he said he was using a torrent and if it did go past the here is you letter stage, He could fight it on that. I remeber a case a while back were the MPAA didn't have any proof outside you were conected to a server that has access to content being distributed. I'm sure a well crafted explaination of, "I followed this link some body in a chat room posted but nothing happened then this screen popped up but it keep on saying file abort error" would likely get it tossed out of any court. Oh yea, and the torrent program? A linux fan friend installed it to download a few RMP packages while he was over.
There you go, No fault of your own and with some luck, you might be able to point it on MPAA for tricking you to goto the torrent link.
Re:A /. dupe, what else is new (Score:5, Interesting)
I then replied that I didn't install the software because I don't want your stuff on my computer. And the other time, I simply reply, your installer loaded the software and clicked on everything. Did he agree to something On your behalf?
both times, the issues were taken care of with the asumption that I knew better now. But you sound a lot like the guy who asumed I clicked on something.
Now verizon, they specificly told me one thing to take their service out and then told me another afterwards. I specificly asked them on the service's uptime because I was going to run a server on it. I specificly asked them if there was a problem with that and they said no and asured me they had good uptime. I also have this on recording. Now when I got my pachage to install the service, there was a letter with my DSL contract in it. It says in the contract that I'm not allowed to run any server of any kind on the conection. I called and asked about it, They said it was the standard agreement and wouldn't do anything about the server because we had spoken directly about it. Of course i recorded this too.
So, I am waiting for someone to say something this time and I will just take them to taks for it. Although, My service with verizon has been better then with Time Warner and the uptime has been better (for my area). No complsints so far (from me or them).
Re:Everyone is missing a huge critical point. (Score:4, Interesting)
Never been hit for any extra charges, probablly do a couple hundred Gigs of data transfer a month on average up and down.
No torrents here.. way to slow.
Way back when suprnova was up, I grabbed a torrent of some new game to try out. I left it running overnight for the download only to find that, after I got home from work the next day, I had transfered over 1Tb in the space of about 10 hours. (I have to order all my games via amazon so for me, testing before waiting a week or so to receive something I might not ever play again is worth the risk).
Anyways, bandwidth isn't a problem here in Japan...
Re:over-bandwidth notices (Score:3, Interesting)
After which your DSL provider's technical support people informed you that your Linux box is not supported.
Reading some of these anecdotes reminds of my dial-up days. I live in a small resort-ish community where, prior to SBC and Adelphia/Comcast's arrival, there was a single locally-owned mom and pop ISP. During my years with them, I never experienced a rate increase from the $18 per month I was paying, or a single busy number, delay in connecting, authentication, drop or any other sort of problem. I was able to download/upload All I Could Eat from usenet (the Supernews usenet feed was provided for free) and regularly did so.
Now I'm subscribed to SBC DSL with whom I regularly encounter problems of all sorts. The first year or so, my connection ran at about 90% of advertised. Then it dropped to 60%. Their NNTP feed as next to useless (even for text-based groups), so I incurred the additional cost of ten bucks per month for a premimum usenet service, which soon got throttled on my end. I eventually upgraded to an Uber-Premium DSL account with fixed IPs and and double the bandwidth (for twice the price, of course), and then watched the process repeat itself.
The irony is that my habits have long since changed and I have little need or interest in downloading anything other than an occasional ISO over HTTP. For that I'm paying what I consider an exorbitant sum. The commercials on TV make me wonder whether I'm missing out on some great fun, but the reality is that from a consumer perspective, we all hate our providers and we resent the added costs and decreasing level of service. Even more, I think we resent their resentment of us.
Re:Welcome to the rest of the world NOT (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:But you're lucky (Score:3, Interesting)
Isn't that statement a little dishonest? GDP is a measurement of good&services produced by a country.
Although that would generally be accepted as a correct definition, it is important to note that the GDP implies slightly more. It is a very good measure of the size of an economy. GDP = consumption + investment + (government spending) + (exports - imports) (thanks, wikipedia). You did acknowledge that I was talking about this ratio being "X% of the economy put towards defense", but the math does still jive because, like all other aspects of the economy, military spending gets re-used. Nearly the entire military budget ends up being spent in stores, real estate, health care, R&D, and even being re-taxed by the government.
A better comparison would be percentage of federal budget spent on defense compare to previous empires' percentage of budget spent on defense.
If you could do that accurately, you would be a better man than me, but I don't think it is possible to make that comparison in an accurate way because of the vast differences between our economy and that of say, Rome. Most nations today have central governments that provide goods and services that would not have been expected from the Roman government: health care, organizational dues, foreign aid, tuition assistance and education, and transportation safety and security agencies just to name a few. Most of these did not exist in previous empires, but most of the ones that did were generally paid for by wealthy people, philanthropists, rulers, etc. so military spending should have been a larger proportion of the budget simply because there were less items alongside it in the budgets. As we both know, this isn't the only significant change we've seen lately.
Before the industrial revolution, the wealth of a nation was generally determined by sufficient food and valuable trading items, such as gold or spices. As the world industrialized, pure production capability become the real standard. Currency no longer needed to be backed by precious metals because the economy would continue producing valuable goods from its raw resources. Of course, as we've globalized and begun to move into a new era, it matters less whether the resources are yours to begin with or where the products are produced, as long as the wealth created by the production trickles back down into your society. This has changed not only the way economies function, but our motives and end-state when it comes to international hostilities.
Rome conquered lands to plunder resources, capture slaves, and expand their borders. They did have some astonishing advancements, but they primarily maintained their empire with force. America, on the other hand, does not directly acquire conquered lands or plunder resources/people. Instead, it attempts to establish governments that will not only be more favorable to America, but also become trading partners. History has taught us that the best way to seal peace between countries is to ensure the improvement of the economy and standard of living of your opponent after a victory. Because of this, most of America's former adversaries are now allies, trading partners, and economic competitors. One could probably argue that the benefits of trading with Germany and Japan made WWII a profitable venture.
Since a military can, and is, used to expand, improve, or shape the global economy in a manner favorable to the nation investing in it, I would say that comparing military expenses to the GDP is fair. Not to mention the fact that a strong military prevents or deters the thing that has destroyed countless economies throughout history: [losing] war.
Of course none of this is meant in a political way. Wars can be just or unjust, just like anything else. I'm just trying to say that America's economy obviously is not struggling because of its military budget and it gets re
Re:Optimum Online in NY caps uploads (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes they do, Comcast will gladly give away the customer names and information to anyone that asks. They are some of the biggest contributors to the MPAA, RIAA, and BSA fight against piracy (They are "partners" with microsoft and several media companies) and actually pride themselves in turning in their own customers. I sat there with my mouth open in disbelief during that teleconference.
Why do you think the media companies and software giants are "partnering" with lots of the connectivity companies and buying their stock in large enough blocks to get voting rights? it bypasses all the hard stuff and gives them the info they need without delay and effort.
Re:DSL is shared too in a way (Score:3, Interesting)
ADSL is not shared at all. The network upstream might be oversubscribed (and by might, I mean that everyone does it). That is not a shared medium. That is an oversubscribed upsream connection. From the central point of connection to the user, cable is shared and DSL is not shared. What happens above that is a business decision, not the technical constraints of the delivery method.