FiOS User Finds Limit of 'Unlimited' Data Plan: 77 TB/Month 573
An anonymous reader writes "A California user of Verizon's FiOS fiber-optic internet service put his unlimited data plan to the test. Over the month of March, he totaled over 77 terabytes of internet traffic, which finally prompted a call from a Verizon employee to see what he was doing. The user had switched to a 300Mbps/65Mbps plan in January, and averaged 50 terabytes of traffic per month afterward. 'An IT professional who manages a test lab for an Internet storage company, [the user] has been providing friends and family a personal VPN, video streaming, and peer-to-peer file service—running a rack of seven servers with 209TB of raw storage in his house.' The Verizon employee who contacted him said he was violating the service agreement. "Basically he said that my bandwidth usage was excessive (like 30,000 percent higher than their average customer)," [the user] said. '[He] wanted to know WTF I was doing. I told him I have a full rack and run servers, and then he said, "Well, that's against our ToS." And he said I would need to switch to the business service or I would be disconnected in July. It wasn't a super long call.'"
Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
'nuf said.
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:5, Informative)
Yep. Running servers is against Verizon's residential ToS. Regardless of how much BW the guy is using, he's breaking the rules.
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep. Running servers is against Verizon's residential ToS. Regardless of how much BW the guy is using, he's breaking the rules.
BINGO!
Another misleading Slashdot title. This is fairly run of the mill for residential ISP service. I bet it was a short conversation! They called him to try to find out if he was doing anything against their ToS, because of his bandwidth usage, and he flat out admitted it.
If he had answered "Netflix" (and that was believable), would the conversation have gone differently? Hard to say, because that conversation didn't even happen.
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:5, Funny)
Yep. Running servers is against Verizon's residential ToS. Regardless of how much BW the guy is using, he's breaking the rules.
BINGO!
Another misleading Slashdot title. This is fairly run of the mill for residential ISP service. I bet it was a short conversation! They called him to try to find out if he was doing anything against their ToS, because of his bandwidth usage, and he flat out admitted it.
If he had answered "Netflix" (and that was believable), would the conversation have gone differently? Hard to say, because that conversation didn't even happen.
I can see that conversation turning out fine:
"Sir, records show you moved 77 terabytes, with a T, as in 77 thousand gigabytes"
"Yeah, I don't know how to explain it, I have been watching a lot of netflix lately"
"Sir this amount of traffic is equivalent to watching netflix on 90 screens at a time, 24 hours a day, every day of the month"
"Yeah, you obviously haven't gotten addicted to Breaking Bad yet"
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:5, Funny)
So, if his answer would have been, "Porn. 77TB of porn" Verizon would have had no recourse?
The whole 'server' restriction is more about pushing business to Verizon's partners then limiting bandwidth. I have a couple of home servers for e-mail and my video security system. Nobody gets into them but me, so I don't pop up on anyone's usage radar*. If Verizon doesn't like the bandwidth, then have them address that in the ToS (specifically with an upload restriction). But they can't say they don't like competition by users who roll their own because of antitrust issues.
*I don't have Verizon service.
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
They're not pushing people to their partners. If you have high bandwidth demands they want you on a business plan, which this guy had, then he switched to a consumer plan to save money, and violated their ToS.
Verizon isn't going to stop people who are hosting a personal site (although they block port 80). They aren't going after people hosting a few friends on a game server. But their ToS do permit them to cancel your service if you are hosting a server, and they use this for people abusing the service, like this guy. Their ToS also prevents you from hosting your own ISP on their consumer line or anything like that.
And look at what this guy did, 50TB for multiple months, then he hit 77TB, and that's when they finally called him on it. If their "unlimited" plan (not that they market it as such) goes up into the 10's of TB, is that really a problem?
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:4, Insightful)
So, if his answer would have been, "Porn. 77TB of porn" Verizon would have had no recourse?
Sure they would. "We choose not to serve you as a customer."
Problem solved.
Uhm, here's my problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
Define "server." Software? Hardware? I think that clause of the ToS is bullshit, and here's why.
If running a "server" is a violation of a ToS, then every single person that has file-sharing enabled on their Windows computer at home is liable to be disconnected. In fact, anybody that has an xbox or a media center PC is likely in violation of this clause, too. I think that the amount of bandwidth he was using was massively unreasonable, but seriously, if you're going to terminate someone, AT LEAST CALL IT WHAT IT IS. Just put a clause into the residential ToS that states that anything beyond 25-50TB in a month is unreasonable and grounds for termination. Ugh.
Bandwidth is reasonable, server policing is not (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep. Running servers is against Verizon's residential ToS. Regardless of how much BW the guy is using, he's breaking the rules.
"running a server" at one point was taken to mean, by Comcast, to have something listening on port 25, and would result in your connection being shut off. It's one thing to say someone is using too much bandwidth. It's another to say they're not allowed to do certain completely normal things with it.
It wasn't about bandwidth. Cloud backup software uses far more bandwidth than my piddly little web server ever did, but guess which one threw Comcast into a tizzy?
This is about controlling who produces versus who consumes, and Comcast wants you to consume.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:4, Informative)
It sounds like the objection was that he ran servers, the bandwidth thing was merely the trigger to ask.
I'm baffled ISPs still think "servers" are something that needs banning. Reminds me of when so many clueless ISPs banned NAT (or rather connection sharing between multiple PCs in general.)
Not many providers think they need "banning" but they are a pretty easy trigger to get out of selling someone a residential service when they are clearly using it for business purposes. If you don't abuse the bandwidth, you can serve anything you want.
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
You're right.
Week 1: 0 , Week 2: 0 , Week 3: 77TB , Week 4: 0
Week 1: 19TB , Week 2: 20TB , Week 3: 19TB , Week 4: 19TB
The continuously-using user is easier to plan and handle than the sporadic user, less disruptive to other customers. You're right that there's a difference.
I thought this user was alleged to be a continuous user. So it raises questions as to why Verizon called him. Maybe
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's why advertising service as 'Unlimited' when they are not is grounds to be sued.
Seriously, how many times do the telecoms have to be dragged into court for blatantly lying to people about what they are and are not offering, before they realize that the courts are never going to suddenly say "Oh yeah, I can see that with normal usage, that's totally what you meant. Hell, I don't even know why people bother with contracts, since they obviously know what each party wants / means with regards to every minor detail." This is, I don't know, a repeat of the past several court cases that involved telecoms and hidden limits? Do the courts need to raise the size of the fines or something? Because they seem to keep forgetting the lesson they just learned not even a year or so ago.
Having said as much, the data from the article is incredibly limited.
From the article: "That's just on premises. Houkouonchi also owns a 2U server running in a colocation facility with 12TB of disk on dual gigabit connections, "which I push quite a bit from as well. It runs game-servers and hosts what used to be the only LA SpeedTest.net server and a bunch of other stuff.""
What I'm seeing is people bugging out at the idea of someone having a rack at home, and crying "Fie' prematurely on this one. It is not rare for a tech to have a server, or several, at home, nor for them to use more bandwidth than others. What more, the 'server' definition Verizon is using in their terms is somewhat loosey-goosy...I say this, as even a regular computer, on a 56K modem, acts as a server with regards to certain services. I believe Verizon's intent is more towards people operating an actual business on a consumer line, as opposed to someone transiting data to and from their business on a consumer line (ala checking your email, but on steroids). Mind you, Verizon's engineers were probably looking with the mind towards illegal or illicit activities, couldn't find any, and ended up calling him (under the premise that illegal activities are responsible for the majority of massive usages). They were, perhaps, hoping this was the case, as it would make terminating his account easier, for the simple reason not that what he was doing was illegal, but because he was less profitable than they had hoped. Again, 77TB is a lot in terms of traffic for the US...but spread across the hundreds / thousands of accounts that Verizon has in that area, it's a drop in the pool of the supposed ocean of bandwidth that Verizon is on the hook for.
That is, unless Verizon has been overselling its capacity. Something which ISPs have a nasty tendency to do. At which point, it becomes a business decision of keeping one tech soaking up 77TB of data, or dropping him and acquiring 77 new customers all using 1 TB of data each; more profitable, the latter, while the former requires putting in a request for more bandwidth, which costs more money.
Still, I think it's odd that Verizon, who is considered a regional Tier-1 provider, would engage in this. They are not, supposedly, lacking in bandwidth. And since techs in general have been responsible for a lot of FiOS's good word of mouth, I find it interesting that Verizon would appear to be engaging in a silly change in policy.
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
If I understood correctly the problem was not necessarily that he used too much bandwidth. The high bandwidth usage just made them interested in knowing what he was doing. Try leaving your taps open and soon the utility company will call you and ask you what you're doing. In this case it sounded like the ToS specified that you were not allowed to run racks with servers, and that the business plan should be used for such usage.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think the ToS is against servers, it's simply against using that connection for business purposes. So if this particular dude wasn't making money off these servers (not as in bitcoin mining, as in selling server time/space & bandwidth), which he wasn't, there should be nothing against him running home servers to communicate with friends & family.
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:4, Informative)
The ToS of any residential service I've ever heard of expressly prohibits "servers".
Then you haven't heard of them all. Qwest (now Century Link, but I think the old Qwest territory is still under slightly different terms) allows servers according to their agreement [centurylink.com] (and my conversation with customer service in which I had to get a port unblocked--they're my ISP): "Service may be used to host a server, personal or commercial, as lon gas such server is used pursuant to the terms and conditions of this Agreement applicalbe to Service and not for any malicious purposes...".
Of course, elsewhere in the agreement, it says that you need business service if you're using it for commercial purposes--but there's nothing stopping me from running small Web and mail services on my residential account for my personal use. Of course, I wouldn't really want to do much else on a typical, constrained upload-bandwidth residential ADSL account, either...
Re: Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny how all their advertising says "great for games" and such. - which essentially means servers. The routers come with preset firewall/port forwarding rules for lots of specific games and servers - including HTTP and FTP.
It amounts to misleading advertising, especially where bandwidth useage is concerned.
I'd love to know what Google Fiber's policy on this type of thing is.
Advertising is basically the art of lying just enough to trick people into handing you their money instead of someone else, but not so much that law gets in the way.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's not lying if he broke the ToS.
And, no, 'great for games' does not mean hosting a bunch of servers.
Re: Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
"great for games" and such. - which essentially means servers.
Huh? how does that follow? You're talking like hosting game servers? "Great for games" doesn't mean hosted MMPG's or whatever, I don't even see how that's implied. Still, I'm on the consumer's side on this. I don't particularly feel love for Verizon when they advertise "unlimited" yet cut you off regardless. I've about had my fill of false advertisers and other liars.
Re: Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:4, Informative)
Unless you're playing some old Warcraft 2 or Duke Nukem game, the games today don't require you to start-up and host the server side anymore. The only recent game I can think of that did this was Terraria [terraria.org] which isn't even developed for anymore.
Re: Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
I am really ok with what they did here.
77TB in a month gives me geek giggles.
But, if he wants to run racks of servers and video streaming VPNs for everyone he knows then we can ask that he get a business plan.
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:5, Informative)
...actually, the ToS [verizon.com] specifically says in section 4.3:
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Bandwidth is a rate, not an amount. They cancelled him because of the 'amount' of data he was transferring. They physically block you from exceeding your bandwidth..
They didn't cancel him. They just told him that in order to provide the services he was providing, he needs business service instead of residential. I probably consume more than average bandwidth on my FiOS service too, but I do not run servers and thus am operating within the constraints of the ToS.
Re: (Score:3)
Well that's still somewhat BS, what's wrong with running a web or game server on such line? What about personal VPN, SSHD, ... That's all "server software". Hell, even if you start Skype conversation your PC becomes a "server".
Nothing really. Unless you start running 10s of terrabytes a month through it. Then you have to admit your being a bit abusive of a "Residential" plan.
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you start running 10s of terrabytes a month through it. Then you have to admit your being a bit abusive of a "Residential" plan.
For a 300/65 plan, "10s of terabytes a month" isn't actually unreasonable usage, as it would only take averaging 65Mbps to hit 20TB in a month. Since that's only about 20% of the max, I wouldn't call it abusive.
What this guy did was different in that being over 80% utilization got their attention, and then he admitted to violating the TOS in about a half-dozen ways to get to that utilization. I would be surprised if he could use more than about 40% without violating the TOS, even running some semi-servers (like torrents, or some games that require NAT configuration to work correctly. I pay for a seedbox with 80/80 speed and have a hard time sustaining more than about 50Mbps over the long term simply because there aren't enough leechers who want that much speed.
Re: (Score:3)
Well that's still somewhat BS, what's wrong with running a web or game server on such line? What about personal VPN, SSHD, ... That's all "server software". Hell, even if you start Skype conversation your PC becomes a "server".
Nothing really. Unless you start running 10s of terrabytes a month through it. Then you have to admit your being a bit abusive of a "Residential" plan.
Boy will you be laughing at yourself in a couple of years when you look back on how you thought a few dozen TB of data a month was like, some big deal.
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:5, Informative)
Here is the Verizon TOS: http://my.verizon.com/central/vzc.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=vzc_help_policies&id=TOS [verizon.com] Below are sections where, judging by TFS, he may have been in violation. In my layman's opinion, they had him dead to rights.
"Restrictions on Use. The Service is a consumer grade service and is not designed for or intended to be used for any commercial purpose. You may not resell, re-provision or rent the Service, (either for a fee or without charge) or allow third parties to use the Service via wired, wireless or other means. For example, you may not .... use it for high volume purposes, or engage in similar activities that constitute such use (commercial or non-commercial). ....You also may not exceed the bandwidth usage limitations that Verizon may establish from time to time for the Service, or use the Service to host any type of server. Violation of this section may result in bandwidth restrictions on your Service or suspension or termination of your Service.
"You represent that when you transmit, upload, download, post or submit any content, images or data using the Service you have the legal right to do so and that your use of such content, images or data does not violate the copyright or trademark laws or any other third party rights."
ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY
"General Policy: Verizon reserves the sole discretion to deny or restrict your Service, or immediately to suspend or terminate your Service, if the use of your Service by you or anyone using it, in our sole discretion, violates the Agreement or other Verizon policies, is objectionable or unlawful, interferes with the functioning or use of the Internet or the Verizon network by Verizon or other users, or violates the terms of this Acceptable Use Policy ("AUP")."
"Specific Examples of AUP Violations. The following are examples of conduct which may lead to termination of your Service. Without limiting the general policy in Section 1, it is a violation of the Agreement and this AUP to: ... (g) violate Verizon's or any third party's copyright, trademark, proprietary or other intellectual property rights; (h) engage in any conduct harmful to the Verizon network, the Internet generally or other Internet users; (i) generate excessive amounts of email or other Internet traffic; (j) use the Service to violate any rule, policy or guideline of Verizon; ....
"Copyright Infringement/Repeat Infringer Policy. Verizon respects the intellectual property rights of third parties. Accordingly, you may not store any material or use Verizon's systems or servers in any manner that constitutes an infringement of third party intellectual property rights, including under US copyright law. .... it is the policy of Verizon to suspend or terminate, in appropriate circumstances, the Service provided to any subscriber or account holder who is deemed to infringe third party intellectual property rights, including repeat infringers of copyrights. In addition, Verizon expressly reserves the right to suspend, terminate or take other interim action regarding the Service of any Subscriber or account holder if Verizon, in its sole judgment, believes that circumstances relating to an infringement of third party intellectual property rights warrant such action."
Re: (Score:3)
a water company would not notice it in a while btw.
If we have a leaking hot water tap the water company notices after a full month after it started and calls us as our hotwater usage spikes and our bill is way up.
put in some 10 TB limit then
How many users know the difference between 10TB and 10MB? Legal fine print is there for a reason, for those of us who actually do know the difference. For everyone else confusing the issue is unlikely to be helpful.
Re: (Score:3)
How does that work?
The hot water heater is monitored/owned by the local utility, and they monitor your water usage (total) as well. Ontario canada, several cities, and it was the same in New Brunswick when I was living there briefly, this procedure has worked in. Also, when the liner of my mothers hot water heater disintegrated and there were liner bits spewing out of the taps she just called the local utility and they just came over and replaced the heater later that day. No (added) cost.
We have the same for electricity
Re: (Score:3)
Warrants are for the police. Verizon could just say okay and disconnect your service.
Re: (Score:3)
Every computer is a 'server' by some definition. And, hey, you know I want to VPN into my home machine from a remote location. That means I need a 'server' by which to connect. It listens for and responds to external accesses..
Or streaming my own music to myself as I am out and about. Again, that's a 'server'.
Legalese is ridiculous. Check your mortgage, you are prohibited from storing anything flammable on your premises. Sure hope you don't have a gas car or la
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:5, Funny)
So your water company (Mother Nature, LLC) would cut off your service without prior notice. :-)
Thank you.
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:4, Insightful)
A few servers scattered around the house and in the attic is OK but once you start putting them in racks you're looking for trouble?
No.
You can run 30 servers if you want. If you stay within a reasonable amount of data every month they wont even question you.
If on the other hand you start using 10, 20, or 30,000 times as much data as the average guy they will call you up and ask questions.
When you tell them you have racks of servers, VPNs for all your friends and are running a streaming service for everyone you like then they pull out the TOS and tell you how much more that type of service will cost.
Sounds reasonable to me.
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:5, Informative)
Why offer that much throughput then complain when people actually make good use of it.
If you want people to buy business lines, make it competitive with your home accounts.
perhaps you didn't read the summary. He has a 300Mbps/65Mbps plan (300 megabit/65megabit = 37.5 megabyte/8 megabyte). He used 77 terabytes in a month. Most people only has 1 to 4 terabyte hard drives in their home computers. He used 77 terabytes. That would fill the entire hard drive of the average home computer about 50 times, and he did that in a month. Excessive much? Yes.
According to Math, 37.5 megabytes a second is 3.2 terabytes a day, so he had to be running full bandwidth for 24 days straight. Pretty sure all of our ISPs would be calling us if they noticed we were downloading at full speed for 24 days straight.
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:4, Insightful)
Excessive much? Yes.
what part of 'unlimited' don't you understand ?
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:5, Informative)
The only person claiming this plan is unlimited is the author of the story.
While sometimes the marketing people fuck up, Verizon does not label their plans as being unlimited that I can tell: http://www22.verizon.com/home/fios-fastest-internet/fastest-internet-plans/ [verizon.com]
THERE IS NO LIMIT (Score:5, Informative)
The only person claiming this plan is unlimited is the author of the story.
While sometimes the marketing people fuck up, Verizon does not label their plans as being unlimited that I can tell: http://www22.verizon.com/home/fios-fastest-internet/fastest-internet-plans/ [verizon.com]
..I don't see any limit either, just speeds advertised. or anywhere. there's no transfer limits on their marketing.. the only tos that could be found via searching said nothing of it either.
and factually, there is no limit. there's couple of phrases here and there though, like your use must not harm other users of the service.
and then there's this ". You also may not exceed the bandwidth usage limitations that Verizon may establish from time to time for the Service, or use the Service to host any type of server. Violation of this section may result in bandwidth restrictions on your Service or suspension or termination of your Service."
the guy fucked up by simply saying that he has couple of rack mounted servers. should have just hung up on the rep, really. or said that he's streaming his personal video from his other house where he keeps cute cats running around. because, if he had so many machines, I doubt he wanted verizon to cut his service.
Re: (Score:3)
There is no way that Verizon can say that baby monitors are against TOS :)
Technically, the baby monitor is a server, so is against the TOS.
Well, maybe. Depends on the monitor. Some of the internet enabled monitors use a service provided by the vendor. This is similar to "print from anywhere" services offered by HP (and others) for their printers.
Practically, ISPs would get a huge amount of flak if they did not allow these monitors - including the ones that do not rely on an external service provider.
Re: (Score:3)
...Daily News the following morning: Verizon Prohibits Baby Monitors. Working Moms Outraged
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
what part of 'unlimited' don't you understand ?
The customer is always right. But sometimes companies decide that they don't want you as a customer. As in this case.
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
The customer is always right. But sometimes companies decide that they don't want you as a customer. As in this case.
Yeah, seriously. People forget that (most) businesses aren't required to take everyone's business. If you were a customer of a service I was running, but you started costing me more than 30000% more than I had expected, then I would cancel your service also (at least, insofar as our contract stipulates is acceptable). Everyone always wants to rail against the big bad telcos, but in this instance, I'd say Verizon had the right idea. (Unless they violated their contract. I can't say for sure, as I haven't read it, but they likely leave an opening in there for just such occasions.)
This'd be a different story if they cancelled this guy's account just because he was running servers, even if he wasn't costing them excessive bandwidth. I'm a strong believer in net neutrality. That is, they should not be allowed to discriminate service based on the content of his data, but they sure as hell can discriminate service based on the amount of data.
Zoloft, scourge of society (Score:5, Funny)
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, do these sound like the actions of a man whose had ALL he could eat?
-- Phil Hartman, RiP
Re: (Score:3)
That particular episode was written by Conan O'Brien. Phil, while brilliant in his own right, just read the line. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0701189/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ov_wr#writers [imdb.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Excessive much? Yes.
what part of 'unlimited' don't you understand ?
What part of "terms of service" don't you understand? Or perhaps you fail to understand that "unlimited" is not a magic word that makes all the other rules that the customer agreed to suddenly non-binding. Magic words like that are for the exclusive use of the vendor, at their whim.
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:4, Informative)
Excessive much? Yes.
what part of 'unlimited' don't you understand ?
I'd say the lack of understanding is yours; understanding of basic physics that is. Nobody's bandwidth is unlimited. [insert your favourite ISP here] has an upstream pipe with finite capacity. If one user saturates that pipe, then all the other customers suffer. That's why business plans are more expensive than residential plans; you are effectively funding the ISP to provide you with guaranteed capacity.
Re: (Score:3)
That's why business plans are more expensive than residential plans; you are effectively funding the ISP to provide you with guaranteed capacity.
Having worked for several ISPs you'll be surprised how often "business" internet service has no real guarantees, either. Generally the only difference between it and the residential service are...
1) some ports are not longer blocked,
2) you're no longer prohibited from running a server, and
3) you're not consider in violation of the TOS for "reselling" the connection if you let your business patrons use it.
And it's more expensive than residential service too, of course. But speed and uptime are still "best ef
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:4, Funny)
In other news, I bet the guy's pr0n collection is stupendous!
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:4, Insightful)
Consumers don't generally pay for dedicated bandwidth. Even most small business plans don't cover guaranteed dedicated bandwidth. You are paying for "on demand" bandwidth instead of "always on, always using at full speed" bandwidth.
If you DID pay for the guaranteed bandwidth, the cost would be higher because you would essentially be paying for the cost of running one very long patch cable to your provider's backbone. What you're really paying for is shared bandwidth with other customers. Small business customers usually pay higher which means that their traffic will typically get higher priority in the event of network congestion and they get first attention during outages.
The only way a provider can make money is to oversell their bandwidth. Unless you are Google and you are making money in other ways with the provided connection. Even in the case of bundled services (i.e. IPTV, VOIP, etc.) the margins most likely aren't enough to provide full speed CIR to each residential customer.
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are a rock climber, do you buy a rope that is rated for your body weight, or do you get one rated for multiple times your body weight?
As a home user, having the throughput is useful for the occasional splurge. Say backup your PC to a friends PC, while watching movies. However that is different then a constant load of data on the network.
The pricing of your internet connection is based on the idea you will not use it all. So you can share with others. If you just go nuts on it you will get a call because you are just being greedy.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
If you bought a rope with an "unlimited" weight rating, and it snapped at 160lbs., I'm sure you would be a little perturbed... for a brief few moments.
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
Any sane individual realises "all you can eat" means "all you can eat within reason".
Same principal with unlimited data. (Unlimited within reason).
IMHO, the ISP acted well above and beyond the call of duty here, giving hum until July to find an alternative rather than simply saying "We don't want your business - as a customer you cost us more than we could possibly make from you in profit."
PS: I am loath to praise any ISP given that I hate mine with the fire of a thousand suns, but have no other choice. I am really surprised he got 72 terabytes out of them - I mean compared to mine they look like saints...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Every all-you-can-eat buffet has fine print at the door that limits how much time you have to eat.
Likewise, Verizon's TOS says, "No servers on a residential account."
When Comcast bills me extra because I watched too much Netflix, that's an entirely different story.
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why offer an all you can eat buffet and then complain when somebody tries to stay at a table for days on end?
The guy was using his connection to provide internet connections to a bunch of friends and family. That would be like bringing twenty people with you to an all you can eat buffet, paying for one person and having that one person bring twenty plates of food back to distribute to everyone. There's no way that's going to be allowed.
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:4, Funny)
Why offer an all you can eat sushi buffet and then complain when someone brings his pet walrus in to gorge? I thought it was unlimited!
Re:Sounds reasonable to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
OTOH, if Verizon advertised it as unlimited, they (barring any fine print) do have to shut up and provide it
The fine print isn't about the bandwidth amount - its what he's doing to generate it. He openly admitted he was running servers on it. That doesn't work with the residential terms of service.
Now, that's something that they probably wouldn't nitpick on if the bandwidth usage wasn't so extreme, but you have to expect when you get that specific on the letter of the contract ("This is my bandwidth and I'm gonna use it!") then they're going to in turn do the same. Running servers means he's out.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
From the conversation, they were looking for a reason to shut his service down, but until he said he was running a server, they didn't have reason. This is one of those times when shutting up would have been better.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to mention he wasn't sucking it down. He was pushing it out. If you go to the original article look at the graph. 86mbps outbound average and barely anything inbound. Frankly he must think their admins are idiots if he thought he could get away with it.
Re: (Score:3)
The contract said, no servers. He put a server up. So he violated the contract. It's that easy.
If instead he had downloaded 77 terabytes of movies, he would not have violated his contract (unless it was illegal downloads, I guess), and then FiOS would have been wrong to demand him to switch to business service.
I think the thing that stood out is that even by torrenting standards, he managed to use a metric fuckload of data. They probably can pretty easily profile torrenting users (anyone who has a consistent stream of upload going on during every big download) and he just had constant upload/download all the time, every day, nonstop. He makes torrent users look reasonable.
Misleading Title (Score:4, Informative)
FiOS user finds how to violate TOS
Re:Misleading Title (Score:5, Informative)
Sweet (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Exactly, I get 100 mbps, unlimited, and static IP for $122/month (that's a good price in my area.)
Re:Sweet (Score:5, Interesting)
If only it was always that easy. Comcrap put me on 6 months of "probation" a couple years ago. "You're moving too much data. If you don't stay below 250 gigs per month, we're shutting off your service and blacklisting you for a year." This was their first contact so I figured no biggie. Let's just switch me to a business account. What's the monthly limit on those. "I don't have information on business plans but you can't switch because you're on probation. Call back in six months."
That's when I realized ISPs don't want you to pay for the data you move. They want you to pay for data you don't move. They want a bunch of octogenarians who fire up the computer once a week to check their email for pics of the grandkids.
They quietly stopped enforcing the 250 gig cap around the time my probation was up so I'm back to my old patterns on the normal residential account. If they'd been smart enough to let me switch to business class service instead of spanking me like a child, they would have been collecting more money all this time.
but the sign says all you can eat (Score:3, Funny)
Arrr, tis no man but a remorseless downloading machine.
should of just told him... (Score:4, Funny)
On the other hand... (Score:3)
User violates ToS and gets called on it. This is news?
Now, if he had NOT been running all those services for friends, if he himself just liked to stream 200 different movies on his 30 TVs, and download copious quantities of non-copyright infringing torrents for his "library", maybe that would be a different story.
Re:On the other hand... (Score:4, Insightful)
No, violating the ToS isn't newsworthy in itself, but the way in which he did it certainly is. I find it incredible that someone was actually able to consume 77TB of bandwidth in a month on a residential connection. That would have been inconceivable even a short while ago. Maybe in a couple of years this sort of thing will become mundane, but at the moment it's quite impressive regardless of how it was done, and certainly deserves to be mentioned on a site that supposedly caters to nerds.
Maybe you just aren't nerdy enough to appreciate this and should hand in your nerd card.
I suppose it's also possible that you are some sort of super-nerd that does this kind of thing regularly and has become so jaded that you won't be impressed until someone streams petabytes of data to their smart watch in less than 10 minutes. If true, prove it, then I'll hand you my nerd card...
Think of Verizon's position (Score:5, Interesting)
I think "WTF are you doing consuming 77 terabits a month" is a legitimate question. I read TFA yesterday and I realized that Verizon probably can't afford to have a whole lot of users chewing up that kind of bandwidth. Asking him to switch to business service does not out of line to me, considering that he's running these servers for business use.
Note, also, they handled this with a short phone call rather than a nasty-gram or just cutting off his service without warning. That's more courtesy than I'd expect from a big ISP, given some of the horror stories I've heard.
Re:Think of Verizon's position (Score:5, Informative)
The ToS for residential service forbids running of servers. He was violating the ToS. Sure, he got noticed because he was using a lot of data. But that isn't why they are terminating service.
Re: (Score:3)
They didn't say they don't allow that kind of usage. They said they don't allow servers (it's right in the TOS).
Re:Think of Verizon's position (Score:5, Informative)
Verizon doesn't call their plans unlimited.
http://www22.verizon.com/home/fios-fastest-internet/fastest-internet-plans/ [verizon.com]
No mention of any unlimited plans.
Re:Think of Verizon's position (Score:5, Informative)
No, they don't.
http://www22.verizon.com/home/fios-fastest-internet/fastest-internet-plans/ [verizon.com]
Go find the word 'unlimited' on that page.
In the ToS, they specifically mention that excessive use is a reason to boot you off.
http://my.verizon.com/central/vzc.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=vzc_help_policies&id=TOS [verizon.com]
Re: (Score:3)
no, its perfectly clear
home internet use is sold to access services hosted by someone else
this guy was hosting his own services
the unlimited data is unlimited data accessing hosted services. if you want to host your own services buy the business class service
77TB? Sigh. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:77TB? Sigh. (Score:5, Funny)
We use the English system, where there are 3 shits to a crap, 1760 craps to a holycrap, ...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
We use the English system, where there are 3 shits to a crap, 1760 craps to a holycrap, ...
Did the math... It appears he was taking nearly 44 Billion Holycraps on the system that month. That's enough to make even GOD notice.
Re: (Score:3)
Fucktonne is the metric unit. You said fuckton so it's ok in the US too.
While I hate someone advertising "Unlimited" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
He wasn't limited to 77 TB.
It was sometime at or around this watermark that a Verizon engineer finally got to his flagged account, and tried to figure out what was going on.
After all, maybe he was infected, and his home machines were being used to stream MMA fights to Pakistan. Or maybe he was subleasing his bandwidth and servers to a CDN network.
Re:While I hate someone advertising "Unlimited" (Score:5, Insightful)
"All you can eat" dosn't include carryout for the whole family at the single user rate.
Hey California Verizon user... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's because of people like you that we can't have nice things (service).
Nice to see your business is going so well, though.
Brazen (Score:3)
"77 terabytes last month. WTF are you doing?"
"I run a small web site that was quoted and slashdotted."
realization (Score:4, Funny)
Humm,
Verizon FIOS: yeah ok, I have 20/5 d/u
DAAP Music streaming
p2p bit torrent
VPN
UPnP movie server
web page
TOR
SSH tunneling
File server
Still haven't hit anything near that transfer rate in over 5 years total, I need more friends...
Was never an 'unlimited' plan to begin with (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd like for someone to point to marketing or promo material from Verizon calling this plan an 'unlimited' plan. While it's possible the marketing guys screwed it up, it's more likely that this plan was never labeled an 'unlimited' plan at all. For some reason when ISPs crack down on excessive use, there are always hordes of people who claimed they purchased an 'unlimited' plan when the evidence says otherwise.
Companies like AOL got in trouble because they went from only having time-metered dialup plans to having so-called unlimited plans where you could stay dialed in as long as you'd like. A lot of people took them up on this and left themselves dialed in for weeks at a time. AOL took it upon themselves to make exceptions to this (as it impacted service for other users - no free lines for customers to dial in to!) but never put in any fine print in. AOL got sued and lost over this, and subsequently they started changing the wording of their marketing materials and putting in fine print.
Now days nobody expects broadband to have the same types of limits so the ISPs simply just don't bother with the 'unlimited' verbage. They prefer to use terms like 'always on' and such, which means something entirely different.
It's tough to keep it simple (Score:3)
If everyone behaved the same as this guy, I'm sure that Verizon would not be able to offer the service at the consumer price.
70 Terabytes would certainly be the equivalent of "unlimited" to me. This isn't to defend Verizon, as I do agree that they could find a way to make the limits of their plan more clear.
I Suppose Verizon COULD, instead of using the term "unlimited" call the plan: the 50 Terabytes / month plan.
But, for typical consumers, this *IS* unlimited and those numbers just might make choosing an Internet provider more complicated. In fact, if my parents were asking for advice on an Internet service, I would indeed say: "oh, don't worry about those numbers, that pretty much means unlimited for you guys".
By adding these numbers to the plan, competitors could simply up the numbers, while adding no real value for the user. Even Verizon could even offer a 100 Terabyte plan for "only $20 more a month". The average consumer would see this as value, while in reality they would just be paying more.
For once the ISP has a point (Score:3, Interesting)
This case really IS excessive; it goes well beyond what an individual user would reasonably use on their own.
Most of the OTHER cases (esp. cable companies) involve mysterious limits that individuals can break by watching (or downloading) too much online video. Of course, if you buy the cable company's overpriced TV services, you can watch as many shows as you like, on however many set top boxes you have, drawing down an unlimited volume of video-over-IP traffic to do it. Just don't watch video that competes with the cable provider, and it's all good.
ToS: can't host any type of server (Score:3, Informative)
The Service is a consumer grade service and is not designed for or intended to be used for any commercial purpose. You may not resell, re-provision or rent the Service, (either for a fee or without charge) or allow third parties to use the Service via wired, wireless or other means. For example, you may not provide Internet access to third parties through a wired or wireless connection or use the Service to facilitate public Internet access (such as through a Wi-Fi hotspot), use it for high volume purposes, or engage in similar activities that constitute such use (commercial or non-commercial). If you subscribe to a Broadband Service, you may connect multiple computers/devices within a single home to your modem and/or router to access the Service, but only through a single Verizon-issued IP address. You also may not exceed the bandwidth usage limitations that Verizon may establish from time to time for the Service, or use the Service to host any type of server. Violation of this section may result in bandwidth restrictions on your Service or suspension or termination of your Service.
http://www.verizon.net/policies/vzcom/tos_popup.asp [verizon.net]
Well here's how they can artificially cap your unlimited plan. 'may not exceed the bandwidth usage limitations that Verizon may establish from time to time' or 'use the Service to host any type of server'.
Plus the AUP allows them to nab you from anything from off-topic posts (Attactment A.2.e) to hitting IP's in embargo'd countries (cuba, sudan, etc) Attactment A.2.l. And unless this somehow excludes personal server, my guess is tons of users are violating some part of the ToS.
Centuary Link killed my account without warning (Score:3)
I was told I used too much bandwidth on a 6mbps DSL line. No warning, just turned it off. Got them to turn it back on, which a week later they shut it down and told me to go elsewhere. So I did. While I didn't do 77TB of data in a month, apparently I hit 1.5TB on my highest month. Which I don't find to be that much, not for someone who spends 16 hours a day on his computer at home.
Anyways, now i have a much faster internet and supposed to have a cap of 450gb a month.
What the fuck man? (Score:5, Interesting)
Dude, it's assholes like this that make telecom companies see the need for data caps in the first place. If you're doing that kind of data transfer, you need to be on a business plan. If you know enough to create that kind of set up, you know enough to know what kind of plan you need to be on. Stop fucking up the home networks people. You're dealing with companies that have lost their minds! The last thing you want to do is feed their delusions.
Re:Truth in advertising? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why are ISP's allowed to sell an 'unlimited' plan that has limits?
Who said it wasn't "unlimited"? The issue is business use vs home use as related to the plan he signed up for.
Re:Truth in advertising? (Score:5, Informative)
Why are ISP's allowed to sell an 'unlimited' plan that has limits? Isn't that against false advertising laws? "Unlimited" has a well known and very specific meaning, and that meaning does not include limits, not even "30,000 percent higher than everyone else".
The limit isn't on the data here; it's on the form of use. They asked what he was doing, and it turned out that what he was doing qualifies as business, rather than residential use. And at that point they told him that he'd need to change account types.
Look at it this way: what if someone got an account like this, and set themselves up as a small ISP for their neighborhood? Would that be acceptable, simply because it's an unlimited account? Of course not...and the ToS that the customer would have agreed to says as much. Since when is it acceptable to simply ignore the contracts we sign? Oh, wait...that was your point, wasn't it? Well, it goes both ways.
Re:Truth in advertising? (Score:4, Funny)
It's not an unlimited plan.
It's an unlimited* plan.
*limited
Re:Truth in labeling. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why these companies insist on calling their plans unlimited?
Folks, the issue here has nothing to do with the reality of an "unlimited" plan (yet).
It has to do with running a BUSINESS on a plan designed for HOME USE.