Have You Fought Your ISP Over Bandwidth Limits? 1076
serutan asks: "Recently, a DC++-related mailing list I subscribe to has been buzzing with posts about letters from various ISPs in the U.S., UK, Australia and NZ, warning customers to curtail their download bandwidth usage to an 'acceptable' limit (generally 200 hours/month for three straight months). These are people who thought they signed up for unlimited access. Some of the letters hint that high bandwidth usage may imply illicit activity. All are vague on possible consequences, and nobody has mentioned actually being cut off by an ISP. One guy received an apology after talking to a supervisor about the meaning of the word 'unlimited.' Is this a growing trend? Have you received similar threats from an ISP? What was the outcome?" Of course, would it be so difficult for ISPs to stop advertising "unlimited" access, and instead include in the small (or not-so small) print exactly what the "acceptable" bandwidth usage is? If you did sign up for "unlimited" services and find yourself in this predicament, what have you done to get your bandwidth issues resolved?
Problems with Speakeasy.net (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Problems with Speakeasy.net (Score:5, Interesting)
Its probably to get you hooked on the high speed so you're more willing to pay for the higher bandwidth when they knock you down again to your paid rate.
Re:Problems with Speakeasy.net (Score:3, Interesting)
My Comcast service in Northern VA was recently uncapped or changed to roughly 3mbit down (upload stayed at 256kbit). I don't normally wear the tinfoil hat but I see one of two things driving this.
Tiered pricing/byte limites are on the horizon or we are experiencing the benefits of competition between broadband providers. Maybe a little of both. Seems odd for a broadband provider and more so for a cable company to give something for nothing.
Re:Problems with Speakeasy.net (Score:3, Interesting)
read something besides slashdot. (Score:4, Informative)
Cnet, yahoo news, and others- have had stories spelling out the increase and the reasoning behind it.. dsl competetion.. where verizon is trying to entice folks with lower rates for DSL, comcast is competeing by raising the d/l limit.. not reducing prices..
if I could get dsl I would, it's the 256k upload cap that is my biggest problem.
Re:Problems with Speakeasy.net (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Problems with Speakeasy.net (Score:4, Funny)
The original post was a joke about how good SpeakEasy's service is. What is the point to your comment?
That AOL's service is a joke?
Re:Problems with Speakeasy.net (Score:5, Insightful)
unlimited - adj 1: lacking any controls 2: BOUNDLESS, INFINTE 3: not bounded by exceptions.
Hmmm... I'm looking at a recent ad copy for high speed access from Comcast that says "unlimited" and provides no alternative defintion.
Guess we cleared that up pretty easily. If they say unlimited, they better damn well mean that I have infinite, boundless bandwidth. They better mean that if I want to 5000 copies of the latest Red Hat distro queued and let it download for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year I can do that.
If they want to cap downloads to prevent obnoxious abuse like that, that's fine. However, when they're still advertising "unlimited" access knowing full well they have no intention of providing that service there's a problem. It's not really that complicated of a concept, the whole truthful advertising thing.
Comcast "unlimited" (Score:4, Interesting)
One guy thinks maybe buried in the Comcast legalese it says "unlimited access" means access at any time, but not for an unlimited length of time.
I've never received any complaints myself, but as an avid DC++ [sourceforge.net] user I am waiting for it to happen and wondering what the highest odds outcome is if I ignore the warning.
Re:Read the fine print (Score:4, Insightful)
But, then again, I'm also aware of "false advertising," "deceptive trade practices," "fraud" and a few other terms that broadband ISPs don't want to talk about.
As an earlier poster said, "If they say 'unlimited' they damn well better MEAN "infinite, limitless bandwidth" unless they want to run afoul of some VERY nasty consumer protection laws.
Just my $0.02 ( & BTW, IAAL)
Re:Read the fine print (Score:4, Insightful)
It is reasonable for them to assume that there words will be taken in a reasonable manner.
Yea, that's why when I see "unlimited" I think it means "unlimited" not "unlimited unless it becomes inconvenient for us". If they don't mean unlimited, they need to say something like "150 hours a month for $49.95" or whatever the actual service is. 150 hours or some mysterious, unknown limit is NOT unlimited, plain and simple.
But let's not take "Unlimited" to mean something unreasonable.
I REALLY don't understand where you're coming from or why you think anyone is going to buy this argument. You're arguing this point on quicksand and you're already in up to your neck. Look, whether you're going to admit it or not, unlimited has a clearly defined meaning. It's not ambiguous. They're not saying "lots of access" or "a whole bunch of access", they're saying "unlimited access". Unlimited is a very clearly defined, well understood term. How could I apply an unreasonable meaning to it? Unlimited is unlimited. No limit. None. Zip, nada, zilch. NO LIMIT TO ACCESS.
Would you assume 'unlimited internet access' means I have unlimited access to whitehouse.gov and could change it to fit my needs?
Completely pointless and offtopic. You're arguing the meaning of access, not unlimited. Access to the Internet does not automatically grant write privilege to a small portion of the WWW which is only part of the Internet. When they say "access", it's generally understood that they're talking about the ability to connect to their server in order to use the Internet in some capacity. How you use the Internet is not guaranteed by them in any way.
Re:Read the fine print (Score:5, Insightful)
You ever hear of buyer beware? You didn't read the AUP did you?
IRRELEVANT.
Comcast is, in this current, valid offering which I am currently holding in my left hand saying - quite explicitly, mind you - that I can get "Unlimited Internet Access" by signing up for their cable service. The TOS/AUP/POS/whatever is NOT printed OR referenced ANYWHERE on this advertisement. NO alternative definition for "unlimited" is provided that says they mean anything other than the dictionary term.
The advertisement is, quite obviously, advertising a service THEY DO NOT SELL.
If it's that easy, can I start selling shale through the mail as gold and claim in my convoluted, small print TOS that "gold" really means a "a brittle, grayish-brown stone"? Does my TOS vindicate my false advertising? I think not. That's exactly what Comcast is trying to do here.
They want to cap people? Fine. Then stop advertising something completely different that you're not selling and never have. That's all I ask. Advertise your product or service, don't try to hide your deceptive ads (which are actually flat-out lies) behind convoluted terms and pretend that that justifies your fairy tale advertising.
Re:Problems with Speakeasy.net (Score:3, Insightful)
If you sell me unlimited access, then I can use AS MUCH AS I WANT, WHENEVER I WANT, FOR AS LONG AS I WANT. If you can't make a profit off that, then you have a problem, but don't start telling me my "unlimited" access is really only x hours, or z gigabytes because you are not making as much profit as you wanted to.
UNLIMITED is just that - without a limit; no limit on hours, gigabytes, time on line, etc. Once y
Re:Speakeasy.net plays that game too (Score:5, Funny)
My mental image was of some admin on their end looking at my pair of 14.4 connections saying "let the poor bastard stay connected, he deserves it."
Re:Speakeasy.net plays that game too (Score:3, Informative)
That was a nice nice time period.
Unlimited = ?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Unlimited = ?? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Unlimited = ?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not in the UK you don't (Score:3, Informative)
Take a look at the UK dial-up ISP market.
BT Internet (as they were before numerous name changes) are one of the big players. They advertised their dial-up (56k modem) service using the name "Anytime", and it was billed as unlimited access. What they didn't tell you was that your modem would be cut off after 2 hours (so great for games and big downloads, then), that if you were on-line for more than 12 hours out of 24 you'd immediately have your service terminated (according to large numbers of people on U
Re:Unlimited = ?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Problem solved right?
Re:Unlimited = ?? (Score:3, Funny)
the marketing droids see "unlimited" as a convenient, useful buzzword
Hmm, if Ford or Chevy picked up on this I wonder if we would see the ALL NEW SUV with unlimited range (300mi), unlimited mileage (10mi/gal), unlimited capacity (6ppl if you squeeze them in). Just imagine the unlimited marketing potential!!
Re:Unlimited = ?? (Score:5, Insightful)
I work for an ISP and we had to change our "unlimited" dial-up option to "unmetered" to stop people from being online 24x7 all month.
We don't bandwidth limit our DSL customers, but with the cost of bandwidth being what it is it may be something we have to look at. Currently less than 1% of our customers use 75% of our bandwidth.
It's NOT in our best interest for "Mr. Bandwidth Hog" to pay the same amount as "Grandma Smith" who only checks her email once a day.
Look, I respect your right to run your business as you please, and I feel your pain w/r/t internet fees, but damnit there are some of us who DO expect to be able to have our computers connected to the net 24/7 and we DO want to download mass quantities of software/pr0n/whatever. When an ISP offers broadband specifically advertising these as the benefits that is what we expect. IT is bullshit to sell a service and then get mad when people actually use it!
That said, perhaps we should make a geek ISP that fixes these problems, perhaps by charging more and then letting people do what they actually want to do with the access. Oh wait.. can't be a broadband ISP unless you are part of the trust. Oh wait, the ISPs already claim to offer this and proudly charge you more then start threatening you when you try and use the service. Grrrrr....
Unlimited != Unlimited (Score:5, Interesting)
Guess what happened next... Salad bar sales dropped by about 2/3rds and then he got his ass chewed about the drop in sales. The main thing companies seem to want is for people to pay for 'unlimited' services/food/etc... and then not use them. Unlimited makes for good marketing strategy because the marketers don't have to deal with the realities of a greedy consumer.
I ran into this with my first ISP in 1995. Each account had a shell account and ftp space with that shell account. I would download large files from non-resumable ftp servers *cough*microsoft*cough* of the day into the ftp space and then download them locally. One day I found the file I had transferring was no longer in my ftp space and an email about my 'suspicious' activity. I called and finally got hold of the person that sent the email, their security/compliance officer.
I'm stunned by this and he starts grilling me about what I was downloading that was 50megs. I inform him that it was the linux trial version of Wordperfect and could he please restore the file so downloading could resume. He declines and says that I'm using too much space. I asked just how much space is allowed. I was told that they had no set limit, but that I was using too much. The closest thing he would give to an answer was that the number would float according to overall usage. When he still refused to give any number, I asked why they even had the ftp space and he said it was one of the services they provided.
Their policy was that I could use ftp space, but not too much or too often, with no amount or time given. I asked him how much sense that made to him and he wouldn't answer except to say that was their policy.
I was so pissed that the next week I signed up for AOL just to dump the bastards.
Re:Unlimited = ?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, it is.
You see, when "Grandma Smith" realizes that AOL is a crappy service, she will call her nephew, a.k.a. "Mr. Bandwidth Hog", and ask him who the best ISP to use is. He will reccomend the ISP which treats him best, and she will pass that reccomendation on to her entire bridge club.
A mom & pop that loses the geek mindshare goes out of business in under a year. Every time.
Re:Unlimited = ?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Unlimited = ?? (Score:4, Insightful)
However they advertise it as unlimited don't they?
Well unlimited is just that. If they go around calling their service unlimited, and I siugn up for it, it damned well better be unlimited or else no matter what their clauses say... thats false advertising. Plain and simple.
They can try all they want to tell you otherwise, but if they told you unlimited before you sgned up, and havn't sent you a notice saying the unlimited plan has been cancelled and you are being moved to some other plan, then I don't think they have a leg to stand on.
Of course when an ISP tried to pull this shit on me about 8 years ago, I just voted with my dollars. I said goodbye Ziplink, not so nice knowing you, and found a better ISP.
-Steve
Re:Unlimited = ?? (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember when it first came out. It was silly. Ziplink (one of my first real ISPs) offered me unlimited. Then a few months later called me and said that I was averaging 8 hours a day online and thats well above normal usage blah blah policy of excessive usage blah blah keep it up and we will bump you to a buisness account
Needless to say I dropped them like a hot potato. I mean if you say unlimited, thats unlimited. YOu can't redefine "unlimited" (tho your definition is completely reasonable... in fact theres no reason you would need ot allow simultaneous connections like that at all).
Of course when everyone was on dialup alot of ISPs got killed by unlimited plans. As im sure you know (maybe others don't) the problem was the rule of thumb was around 7 accounts per modem or so. So if one person stayed on for 24 hours straight, they tied up a phone line and modem for the entire24 hours and completely throw off your numbers.... in fact it ends up costing more in equipment and telephone fees to keep that user than you make from them.
Basically the entire service made money in the float, the ability to overbook services yet still be available just because everyone wasn't using it at the same time. A few "power users" could really fuck the whole thing up.
But thats the problem with unlimited access... for many it just turne dout to not be profitable. Was it moving power users to broadband that saved the unlimited dialup? I figured it would have gone the way of the dodo by now.
-Steve
Re:Unlimited = ?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:guilty until proven innocent? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:guilty until proven innocent? (Score:5, Insightful)
Totally correct. It is their legal right.
However, it's not a great strategy for them. Good businesses protect their customers, and assume the best. Take safety deposit boxes, rented storage space, and many other examples. They can be used for illicit activities, but such businesses do not go around snooping on their customers. They prefer to keep them.
Hopefully, technology companies will figure this out one day.
-t
Re:guilty until proven innocent? (Score:3, Insightful)
However, the ISP needs to have listed what it will take to have your acount cut.
Re:guilty until proven innocent? (Score:5, Interesting)
This ensures that one person does not destroy the bandwidth of another. It is a hell of a lot better then making users worry about how much they download.
One such implementation is the Weighted Round Robin qdisc in Linux:
http://wipl-wrr.dkik.dk/wrr/
There are other implementations that scale better.
I say this every time someone brings up the "scarce bandwidth" issue, but no one ever listens and ISP continue to use draconian way to solve their bandwidth issues that could *easily* be solved with a little algorithm.
Re:guilty until proven innocent? (Score:5, Interesting)
Your kidding right? Haha, you must be. Let me explain how it really works out there.
For those of you lucky enough to have freedom of ISPs you better be thanking your lucky fucking stars. There are people (like me) that have had multiple types of Internet over the years (dialup, 640/160 DSL, 768/128 DSL, 3000/384 Cable, 1500/128 Cable, 1500/256 Cable, 1800/256 Cable and soon to be 3000/256 Cable). I have had a handful of providers and a wide range of acceptable connections, speed, and tech support.
I currently live in a suburb of Minneapolis. We have two choices currently (where I live)... Comcast cable (which raised the rates on those that don't want their CATV to over $50 if you have your own modem) and Wireless (which has a $500 setup fee and slow speeds (640/640 IIRC)).
Comcast comes in and takes over an area, raises prices because there are no other options for HSD, and then sets these invisible caps...
Do you really fucking think that Comcast gives a flying rats ass if I go over my invisible limit and they dump me (mind you, they refuse to tell you what the cap is, how they determine it, how you should determine it, how you should protect yourself from it, etc)? They don't for one simple reason... MORE MONEY. If I go over that limit I am hogging bandwith money from others that only check email and a few webpages a day...
With 25 million subscribers, moving to a 3mbit speed cap, and needing more money, they are doing exactly the best thing to save their bandwith costs, dumping those users that use the service the way it should be.
Sadly we have no recourse. 90% of their users aren't going to start pegging their bandwith usage and they are going to keep dropping off the high-end users until they are satisfied they are raking in enough dough.
Sad but true... Just my worthless
Re:guilty until proven innocent? (Score:3, Informative)
Speed caps for home use, not a big deal. Transfer caps, that's another story.
"Nothing we can do about it" (Score:3, Informative)
Re:guilty until proven innocent? (Score:3, Insightful)
download/upload
(x*4)/x
i.e. 3000/256. As I work for a webhosting company, I know that bandwidth can only be bought symetrically (you can't buy an incomming DS3 with an outboung T-1). So, why do they cap your upload speeds so low?
Alternatively, I'd love to partner with an ISP. They seem to have all the outbound bandwidth in the world, and I have plenty of inbound to spare!
~Wx
Re:guilty until proven innocent? (Score:5, Funny)
I had that problem. They thought I was downloading movies. I fixed that thought. Told them the truth. I was downloading porn. Solved that prolem right away and haven't heard a peep out of them.
Re:guilty until proven innocent? (Score:5, Funny)
Now the techies know exactly which user's bandwith they should mirror.
Re:guilty until proven innocent? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not saying that everybody who has high download bandwidth usage and low upload usage is innocent; there are a lot of leechers who do just that. However, there's so many file sharers that with my low upload usage I dropped off the list of people my provider was after.
Re:I guess we know who to blame for deforestation (Score:3, Insightful)
Eh, yes you can. I do it all the time. And then give it to others.
Re:guilty until proven innocent? (Score:4, Insightful)
The single most obvious answer is videophone. Someone streaming the high-res output of a firewire camera can generate gigabytes of new data every hour, copyrighted only to him.
Another possible answer: He may be downloading music and movie files, and he could've paid for them. Or (more likely, today) he could be collecting hundreds of huge, public-domain movies [archive.org]
While it's currently true that no major legit service offers decent digital movie downloads, the ISP industry shouldn't assume it has to stay this way. If they advertise unlimited, they should try to provide it, or change the ads.
It's quite reasonable to suspect that if 40GB of data was taking place of the port Kazaa uses, that he's not transfering a family photo album or business documents from his office network.
If criminal activity is suspected, they should contact the police.
Legitimate use for multiple gigs in a short time (Score:4, Informative)
We set it up in a weekend on our personal DSL server, assuming that we could transfer it later if it got popular.
Well, it got popular FAST, because over 150 people from the for-profit board wanted an alternative, and they flocked to our board. In a two week period, we had more than 5gb of traffic. We were flabbergasted at the sheer volume.
Needless to say, we've moved the board to a hosting provider that allocates us a specific (and very high) amount of bandwidth.
It should be noted that our ISP, DSLExtreme [dslextreme.com], was exceptionally supportive and patient with us during this time. The for-profit board attempted to get us shut down, and the legal folks at DSLExtreme would have none of it. They also allowed us to rack up that temporary 5gb traffic burst with no warnings, no stoppage and no extra charge (I only know how much we used from my own logs.) I can't thank them enough.
Re:guilty until proven innocent? (Score:5, Insightful)
Your line of arguing might extend to the pleding the fifth. "If he has nothing to hide, why doesn't he say anything?"
No, innocent until proven guilty means exactly that.
I don't see anyone arguing against bandwidth limits, rather that they need to be spelled out.
Examples of legitimate use might be playing online games, streaming online video, doing X over the network, etc.
Until you know *exactly* what is being done, you can't argue whether or not its legitimate (especially since you never define legitimate).
- Serge
Re:guilty until proven innocent? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:guilty until proven innocent? (Score:4, Insightful)
Streaming audio, streaming video, OS patches, umpteen programming applications, remote backups, distributed computing, perfectly legal P2P applications...this is the short list.
Oh, yeah, and another thing: who the hell are you to define what's legitimate? Whether I'm downloading pornography, telecommuting, or watching reruns of 'What's Happening Now?' from a server in New Guinea, it doesn't matter. If I'm not violating my TOS, and I'm simply using my 'unlimited' connection, then I'm not doing anything wrong.
I'll call a spade a spade: certain broadband providers are screwing a subset of their customers, because they can, and relying on 'common sense' from non-techies to justify their actions. I understand their business justifications (hey, I'm a businessman), but their tactics suck, and it will bite them square in the ass someday.
cox (Score:5, Interesting)
-always available, no dialing
-no hourly usage limits
-no tying up the phone line
-no content restrictions
looks like only one of these really applies to "unlimited"
Re:cox (Score:5, Informative)
the max per month is 30GB downloads, 7.5GB uploads.
Rogers! (Score:5, Informative)
The facts:
1) The service is advertised as 'unlimited'
2) They are unwilling to tell customers how much they've transferred
3) They are unwilling to tell customers what would constitute an acceptable amount of bandwidth
Judging by postings here [rbua.org], they seem to be going after some areas and no others. Here is an interesting thread [rbua.org].
Re:Rogers! (Score:5, Informative)
I've been using it for a couple of years and it works flawlessly.
Bandwidth limits? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Bandwidth limits? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think this is a good thing. The Internet relies as much on give as take, and pushing a download-only network is a horrible concept and would hurt everybody involved in the long run.
Re:Bandwidth limits? (Score:5, Interesting)
That is why uploads with a cable modem aremore limited than downloads.
Re:Bandwidth limits? (Score:4, Informative)
No, I'm sorry, this is just silly. Bandwidth is not related to power. A one milliwatt signal can carry just as much data as a one megawatt signal. This is not why uploads are slower. And the only FCC licensing required for cable-based RF systems are the type certifications that measure radiated signals. You can run an unlicensed megawatt signal into a cable -- as long as you keep it in the cable.
The real reason is the TDMA -- time division multiple access -- used on the upstream. It's not an issue of the collision of weak signals, the signals would collide no matter how powerfull they were.
Reality check (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's not get any delusions of grandeur here. Eventually, this is going to be the Standard Operating Procedure for all ISPs. Then what are you going to do-- "vote with your wallet" by going to another ISP who'll be just as bad?
Sorry to be so pessimistic, but this is the way things are, as far as I can see.
And if you think I'm being unrealistic: Well, I can remember a time when you'd call up an ISP and actually be able to talk to a knowledgeable techie... that's obviously in the past now. And don't tell me about your wonderful local ISP. You know damned well how rare those are now.
Re:Reality check (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Reality check (Score:5, Funny)
OK, so where can I get a warp drive, transporter, replicator, and holodeck?
NTL cable in the UK (Score:3, Insightful)
IIRC, the amount of data allocated would have been exceeded by downloading (for example) the Redhat CD's as ISO's...
Simon
Oh Come ON (Score:3, Insightful)
Like it or not, 90% of those people who have high bandwidth usage are using it for illicit activities.
Re:Oh Come ON (Score:4, Insightful)
Game demos, movie previews, trailers, free songs, linux distributions and similar free software, drivers, video and audio conferencing software, internet radio clients, multiplayer games, chatting software, swf animations, etc etc etc.
Nowadays "suspicious" means "guilty" to a lot of people, doesn't it?
Diego Rey
Re:Oh Come ON (Score:3, Funny)
"Aw, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent.
Forfty percent of all people know that."
An update to this story (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,8737754~
"My experience with Comcast bandwidth suspension"
Unlimited frequently is not. (Score:5, Funny)
Reminds me of the old Dennis the Menace episode where Dennis sets up a lemonade stand with the sign "All you can drink, 5 cents". A thirsty customer gets a small paper cup, empties it promptly, and asks for more. Smart-ass Dennis replies: "That's all you can drink, for 5 cents!"
Bandwidth caps... (Score:3, Funny)
That's why I switched (Score:3, Informative)
The funny thing is that they do advertise a cap, but just don't enforce it.
Wonderful Shaw :) (Score:3, Informative)
Comcast (Score:5, Interesting)
See, the whole "it's always on" thing doesn't apply. It's NOT unlimitted. We don't know what the limit is. We aren't told. We aren't allowed to know. Customers are not allowed to know what this 'limit' is unless they go over it. Do you know why? Let me tell you why.
Because this limit only applies to those who are in an area where there are a lot of people. If you are on a headend with very few people, you can download to your heart's content, because it just won't affect that many customers. If you try to do the same amount of activity on a node that already has too many users - UH OH! You're being excessive!
So, by not naming a limit, they can impose one as they see fit - not by your actual usage, but by how you work as a unit within your geographic area.
Working for Comcast (though not for much longer) gave me some interesting insights into ISP mentality.
Re:Comcast (Score:5, Informative)
Now, whether or not a group of customers is willing to start a class action suit against ComCast based on the DirecPC ruling is another thing altogether.
Re:Comcast (Score:5, Insightful)
Um right. Too bad that isn't what people are 'whine whine bitch bitch bitch cry crying' about. They're complaining (rightfully) about being promised one thing and being delivered something else. Simply put, they used the word 'unlimited' too freely.
It's about having the right expectations set, it's not about abuse of service.
Re:Comcast (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course you won't be profitable, if you're buying your bandwidth 1.5mbit at a time you're going to get charged an assload. Now try buying 3gbits(about what they have in austin.rr.com) and compare the price per mbit. Yeah. Its a lot easier this way.
If they don't want us using it, tell us BEFORE we exceed it. Not that I've ever had a problem with roadrunner, the fact that its owned by the same people that might one day be streaming video (as AOL is wanting to do n
Can you blame them? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just a little plug... (Score:5, Informative)
The really cool unlimited part is this:
* I can use as much of that bandwidth as I want.
* There are no content restrictions.
And this is the big one...
* I CAN RUN SERVERS. Yes, I realize that a lot of broadband providers don't stop you at their routers or anything, but most of them have it in their AUP that you can't run your own servers. Speakeasy just asks that you don't make money.
Oh, and I get free nationwide dialup. It's not bad.
Oh, and one other cool thing: They even explicitly say that you can set up a WAP and share your access with anyone you want, so long as you don't charge money for it.
Re:Just a little plug... (Score:3, Insightful)
-Carolyn
Direcway FAP (Score:5, Informative)
Its a very common trend (Score:3, Informative)
Whats funny they quitely implemented bandwidth limits that are pretty rediculous, and Sympatico has even blocked port 25. In another incident when I was trying to explain network problems to a customerservice rep at Sympatico, I kept switching between win98 and linux to exhaust all their over-the-phone tests so they know the problem is on their side. Well, when he heard "Linux" he went bonkers and told me there was no way he is helping me with any further issues and I shouldnt waste his time.
So now we're paying an average of $65 per month for our usage, which does not support Linux, let alone the openvmx, solaris and openbsd that I have at home.
Bandwith Nazis (Score:4, Informative)
Kleedrac
Welcome to months gone by in Canada... (Score:5, Informative)
Unlimited Access can be construed to refer to time, not bandwidth. Thus, ISP's claiming unlimited access aren't offering no download caps.
Think of it this way
Access buys you the key to a car, which is parked in your driveway. You can get into the car through any door, and for as long as you want. You have unlimited access to the car. You are not, however, allowed to drive it anywhere, you do not have unlimited usage.
Rogers Cable (Ontario, Canada) is trying to implement this type of soft cap, and it's not working too well for them. The major issue is they won't define the caps, and people are being cutoff for completely arbitrary amounts of usage. The other huge problem is that they specifically advertise 'Unlimited Usage' (consumers having wised up to the 'access' wording) and this is quite contrary to it.
They have suspended people, only to reconnect them when asked. This lead to a good exodus of people, and recently Rogers have been calling people saying 'all is forgiven' and asking them to return, saying the caps are completely gone.
Whether this proves true or not is yet to be seen.
Re:Welcome to months gone by in Canada... (Score:3, Insightful)
I have been cutoff (Score:5, Informative)
I had absolutely no warning, no phone calls.
The only reason I know I had been cut off was because I figured that my excessive downloading for the last 3 days had probably triggered it.
I called the cable company and they said that I had been turned off for grossly exceeding standard usage amounts. It took me 2 days and about 4 calls, but I finally got the service turned back on with a verbal agreement not to download more than 3 gigs a week.
So, I had to skimp, but i survived!
I cant imagine someone only allowing 2 gigs a month though, i have downloaded more than that just off of demos and things from gametab.
Buzz OUT
How to fight them... (Score:3, Interesting)
An ideal guinea pig would be someone who downloaded a bunch of ISOs (say for 3 or 4 different linux distributions) and then got hit with one of these letters. However, I don't see that happening. I also don't see people who get hit with these letters mentioning exactly what they were using the bandwidth for. Surely if they're not at fault, they should say what they were doing so that the EFF or other groups could help them fight the cable companies. I'm also betting they care more about outbound traffic than inbound traffic.
Read your AUP / TOS (Score:4, Informative)
There's normally some sort of clause in there, about how they have the right to refluse you service. It's true in almost every industry out there. [I think medical, and insurance have some issues, where they're not allowed to reject you outright, but I'm not in either of those industries, so I'm bound to be wrong].
ISPs are not in the business to lose money. If they have someone filling their pipe 24x7, it's costing them more money than what they're bringing in. It doesn't make sense from a commercial standpoint to provide service to these people, and it's entirely possible that those people are detrimentally impacting the service for the rest of the customers.
I used to work for an ISP, but before the days of DSL, and I know our main issue was people staying dialed up all the time (a phone line was costing us $70/month, we were charging $20/month). Our AUP had stated specifically 'unlimited personal interactive use'. Now, we didn't go after those people who were sharing with their family, or stuff like that, but if you were up 24x7, we took issue -- you had to sleep sometime, and that was not part of the 'unlimited' plan.
[that's not to say that someone downloading a software update overnight, they weren't, unless they were doing it every night (we had a user who had less than 1 hour offline, over a 3 week period, and we had a plan for dedicated line, and it was more than $20/months).
So, let's look at this from the ISP's side -- they let you get away with it. They let your friends get away with it. They lose money. They go out of business. You have to find a new ISP, that might be even less forgiving.
So, my message to you -- get over it. There is no such thing as a free ride, and you shouldn't ever expect to get one. Talk to your ISP. Talk to a supervisor or manager, explain what your usage pattern is, and why you're doing it. Ask them if they can work with you. Odds are, they will, if you make some concessions. They might tell you what their off-peak times are, and so, if you run all of your massive downloads at that time, it won't impact them as much. Maybe you can agree to traffic shaping at the really bad times.
[we had users that we agreed to leave on, even with them online for 16+hrs/day, with the understanding that should the modem banks fill up, they'd be knocked offline to make room for other users]
I don't at all feel sorry for ISPs (Score:5, Insightful)
I do with my ISP. I expect that my connection be on 24x7 barring problems. I expect to be able to use all the bandwidth they choose to give me as often as I like adn not hear about it. I put a heavy load on that line too, what with three servers, two roomates and lots of personal use. They don't complain, their pricing is such that they can sustain that.
It is the ISPs that need to get over it, with it being the concept taht you have the right to advertise something and not give it. ISPs want the allure of being "unlimited" but not the associated costs. Too bad. Either be unlimited, and don't whine about it (my dialup ISP never bothered me if I left the modem on for a week straight, which I did) or don't advertise as such. Isntead of unlimited say no time restrictions and no preset limits.
Notice that American Express does NOT claim they give you an unlimited spending amount. They say they have "no pre-set spending limit". That means that, unlike other cards where you have a hard cap as to what you can charge, they have no default cap in place. Doesn't mean they'll let you charge anything you want. They couldn't do that or someone would get one, charge $50 million in shit and skip the country. However, it would be dishonest to claim otherwise.
Finally, I would not that DirectPC got sued over this and lost.
Bandwidth throttling and traffic shaping is best (Score:5, Insightful)
A more reasonable solution, that some ISPs are looking at is to throttle P2P traffic so that it never takes up more than say 30% of their bandwidth. They use layer 7 packet inspection from guys like P-Cube [p-cube.com] and Ellacoya [ellacoya.com].
The rationale? always-on users want to use their P2P stuff, but are not sensitive about the speeds that they get it - they'll just queue up a load of files and come back next morning.
It seems to me like the least worst approach, and is certainly better than hard caps. One benefit for the customer is Web traffic will usually still fly, even though P2P is crawling. I believe Telenor in Sweden is using this stuff.
Re:Bandwidth throttling and traffic shaping is bes (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Who has time to *use* all that downloaded stuff? (Score:3, Insightful)
Who in hell has time to *use* all that downloaded material? How many movies can you watch in a month? How much music can you listen to? How much software do you need, or can you even use? How much porn?
With this kind of gluttony, one might wonder what this stuff is really being used for -- redistribution, perhaps?
inside perspective (Score:4, Informative)
the problem was not really the bandwidth, because if you're not surfing or doing somoething then you're not really using any bandwidth. the problem was that idle connections left open consume a modem in the isp's modem bank, so other people cannot connect at all when ther's no modems left.
at the time they were changing their contract from essentially: '24 hours a day any time you like for as long as you like' to something more like 'x number of hours a month, then it runs out'.
people were always furious because they hadn't read the conditions and had used their connection for more than 12 hours in a 24 hour period and been barred.
in ireland there was uproar two years ago when a major isp changed the terms of their 'unlimited' connection to restrict useage because they claimed they couldn't keep up. anyone who kicked up enough of a fuss was allowed to keep their connection because it was in their contract that it was unlimited. anyone who didn't complain lost their 'unlimited' contract. i believe some people still have these contracts, because it was not a condition of the contract that further restrictions could be added later.
funny story: in the job i mentioned, anyone who breached the 12 hour rule was 'upgraded' to use another telephone number. they would call up conplaining 'i can't connect' and we would check their file and see that they'd been flagged as abnormally high users. we would tell them that, because they were heavy users of the service they had been changed to our 'high useage' dialup number, and help them change their settings to dial the new number, and they were so happy that they had been recognised and helped.
of course, now they were neatly switched to another modem bank along with all their selfish idle connection loving kindred, and could barely connect anymore. we were instructed that, if anyone called complaining that their new high useage dialup number wasn't good, or they couldn't connect, we were to get rid of them quickly. this is a reputable firm, but they couldn't have people tying up a modem, when they were sleeping, or out of the house, or otherwise not using it.
Re:inside perspective (Score:4, Interesting)
The product was BT Anytime, clearly advertised as 24 hours a day internet access.
To keep within the law, the TOS had to change before pulling any dirty tricks. First they went for the reasonable 16 hours a day, then 12, then 150 a month.
The switch to a new number for heavy users was heavily featured in the BBC consumer rights program "Watchdog", because offering a secretly crippled service for some customers breaks British trading standards rules.
It was a shameful underhand way of dealing with customers BT didn't want anymore, and guaranteed that thousands who slowly migrated to ADSL would never consider BT when deciding on a broadband ISP.
I object to the description of the housebound who were left without net connections while BT screwed with the dial up numbers, as being "selfish idle connection loving kindred". The main reason for choosing the expensive Anytime package rather than the far cheaper 6pm-8am service was for heavy use. BT knew, or should have known that, and should have had TOS and advertising that dealt with "problem" users in the first place.
As for the "idle connection" claim, it's quite easy to appear idle if you are blind and your screen reader takes 10 minutes to read a page, or you're sitting chatting occasionally on ICQ.
BT never allowed you to connect for more than 2 hours - disconnecting remotely after 1 hour 59 minutes.They clearly barred the use of auto reconnection in the TOS, so they could easily have banned those that were online all day and were reconnecting every 2 hours within 5 seconds, but instead they behaved like idiots playing silly beggars with the phone numbers, upset and angered thousands, and were featured heavily on prime time TV as a big bad nasty mean company. A total PR disaster.
I'm glad you're so proud of what they did, I figured someone on an island of 60 million had to be on their side...
There's always a cap.. (Score:4, Interesting)
In the case of FUP what it boils down to is that they don't really care whether you go over a certain threshold, but rather, how much bandwidth there is available in your area. In DSL bandwidth is shared among all the subscribers to one telephone "switch" (CO). For residential use, they typically oversubscribe this to the tune of 1:25 - so a "T1" for every 25 people on a 1024Mbps DSL line.
If they find out that one CO is using vastly more bandwidth than planned, and there aren't that many new (and elderly) users lined up to get connected - so they can't afford to just lay down more fiber, they reserve the right to crack down on people who use more bandwidth than average. Of course they don't want to be dicks about this, so they usually target people using more than ten times the average, or the 10% "top talkers". Going after top talkers first makes a lot of sense, since the number 1 top talker probably uses half of the bandwidth of the entire neigborhood
The actual reason that most plans do NOT come with a cap is that cracking down on top talkers takes a lot of effort. Ever metering the bandwidth can take a lot money and equipment. In one of the earliest incarnations of ADSL service you could check the traffic you used online - they removed this, because all the overhead slowed down connections to the point it was costing them more in terms of bandwidth than just ignoring overages.
In fact, some of the budget plans that pretend to have a cap don't have one. It's a "special offer" for "6 months only", but in reality they don't have the infrastructure and the people to meter all bandwidth all the time and to go after people with nastygrams...
Of course, if your connection really is uncapped in the administrative sense, that doesn't mean they won't bandwidth-limit on your ass without you even knowing...
The most elegant scheme I've seen sofar is used by Bredbandbolaget (IIRC), who sell 10Mbps fiber internet access; if you go over your cap, which is specifically stated to be X GB per month, your speed simply drops to 128Kbps for the rest of the month.. Still usuable for the bare necessities (web, chat, e-mail and some windows updates), just no downloading movies until the next month/billing cycle starts. AND it's fully automated which makes it a lot cheaper than nastygrams. Winners all around.
From a small ISP's point of view (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason ISP's use the word "unlimited" in their advertisements is because it sells more accounts than if they don't.
The fact that they are lying is really not a relevant point. Consumers will flock to the guy that says "unlimited" in his advertisements regardless if it's the truth or not. Consumers don't think that hard about the issue.
It should be obvious that you can't provide a dedicated "unlimited" 56K connection profitably at the $10-$15/mo market rate, but you will sell a lot more accounts if you say "unlimited".
This is also true in the web hosting business. I see advertisements for "Unlimited Bandwitdh" web hosting all the time. But we all know that this is neither physically possible nor economically possible. Still people sign up for these lies.
Guys like me that run businesses that want to be honest about things are punished for our truthfullness. Consumers demand to be lied to. So ISP's are forced to choose between significantly lower sales and being dishonest.
Now, I'm not saying that there aren't ISPs that try to be honest in their offerings. I could give you a list of honest ones that don't use the word unlimited unless they mean it. All I'm saying is that dialup consumers do not typicaly choose these honest guys when they see an "unlimited" offer for the same price.
Should be a law (Score:4, Interesting)
IANEFAMCC (Score:5, Informative)
Cost Analysis (Score:3, Interesting)
Among other job duties, I am the company's cost analyst. I studied the heavy usage issue. The results would surprise only a fool.
What drives the cost of a dialin? Well, its usage during the daily peak time, of course. As an ISP, you generally pay based on the 95% peak consumption of bandwidth plus you have to have incoming lines and backhaul lines sufficient to handle the daily peak.
This means that any account which is online at every daily peak consumes the same cost of resources as an account which is on 24 hours a day.
So, do the monthly hour consumption and the daily peak usage correlate? They do. Starting somewhere between 180 and 240 hours, 95% of the accounts are online at more than 95% of the weekday peaks (our weekend peaks are lower, and thus excluded from the equation).
That means that for all practical purposes we have to have an entire network port and bandwidth just for that one customer.
Now, how much does your home phone line cost? And your dialup internet account? The dialup is less, right? Well, guess what: all told your ISP is paying more like what your home phone line costs to deliver that account. They're in business to make money, not lose it.
ISP has specific limits (3 GB/week) and I use it (Score:4, Interesting)
Their policy is simple -- You can use up to the bandwith your account type allows. [xmission.com] The basic $19/month package has 3 GB/week, add 1 GB/week (4 GB/month) for $10. They give static IP address and no arbitrary server restrictions.
In their newsgroup discussions, they explain that because there are so many people who pay for big chunks of bandwidth and don't use it, they can provide the whole enchalada without problems. If more people started using all their bandwidth, then they'd have to lower the limits, but with all the homes and businesses and colo connections that consume only a tiny bit of the bandwidth they pay for, they don't anticipate it as a problem. Their stats [xmission.com] show an aggregate of about 3 empty 45Mb/DS3 lines even at the peak use.
xmission is great.
Your ISP at Work (Score:5, Interesting)
Your standard ISP pays not for bandwidth, but for pipe density. T1, T3, DS3, OC3, etc. They pay for 1.5Mbps up/down 24-7 if they need it. NOw, obviously, this costs them much more a month than your 1.5Mbps download connection, by an order of magnitude of 20 or so. If you're on a dial-up service, most ISPs don't pay much to maintain infrastructure, unless they are also the phone company. It's some servers, a few banks of digi-cards, and a local dial-in number. In the case of high speed access, they generally also have to pay to maintain lines and equipment along the lines, such as repeaters and routers. A few web servers, a couple of mail servers, and you're an ISP.
Now, here's where the issue comes in. Normally, an ISP expects that some people will use high-speed very sparingly, probably depending on it for a few small critical tasks and the rest is email. And then they know there will be a few gamers and downloader making up some slack. This is expected by your broadband ISPs.
The problem comes in when you have someone who demands to use their connection for 1.5Mbps, all day, every day. The same connection, bursting, might serve six or 7 heavy usage customers, or 40 light usage customers, but now you have one single customer, attempting to consume $500 worth of download bandwidth for $50.
Obviously, there should be some sort of common sense applied here. Capping the top speed lower would be a poor idea, because those who download the occasional large file or movie trailer or whatnot enjoy access to the full speed. Changing the access hours seems silly, since some people play games for hours a day but never come close to consuming full bandwidth. Does it seem right to penalize this MAJORITY of the customers because a very small percentage of customers who seem to be of the opinion that if you have a 1.5Mbps connection, you MUST use all of it. If you gave them more bandwidth, they would simply find something else to do with it, not content unless they are pushing their connection as hard as possible, obviously lacking any idea of the economics behind it all.
Some have said that hard limits should be imposed in the contratct. This makes me sad, because it means that you are telling the company that they cannot trust their users, that they cannot use reasonable judgement, or expect that from you. Sometimes, you might have customers who never go over the limit, but might have a school project one month that pushes their usage up high once. As an ISP, I'd prefer to be able to use my discretion in this situation rather than hear the "told you so" of users crying about "lax enforcement of rule".
DISCLAIMER: I work for a mid-sized ISP.
Re:Your ISP at Work (Score:5, Insightful)
While your post was informative, you failed to address the issue of 'don't offer unlimited if you can't deliver'. What the vast majority of slashdotters are upset about is the fact that this is false advertising. Personally, we could give two flying fucks whether or not the ISP can handle the constant usage. Our beef is with the fact that we are paying for a service that is not giving us what was advertised.
"As an ISP, I'd prefer to be able to use my discretion in this situation rather than hear the "told you so" of users crying about "lax enforcement of rule".
As an ISP's customer, I'd prefer to be able to know EXACTLY what my limits were, so that I can use the service to its full potential. I do not want my ISP deciding that since Johnny is doing work for a school project, he can use more bandwidth, but since I'm looking at pr0n I can't.
I do not want my ISP deciding whether or not what I use the internet for is 'acceptable' or not. If I am paying the same amount as Johnny who is doing a school project, I DEMAND equal service. Now, whether I choose to use that service or not is my decision, as it is Johnny's as well, but I do NOT want to be treated differently if I use the service to its fully advertised potential.
Got a problem with that? Perhaps the ISP should then do some legal research into the Truth in Advertising laws. I have no pity for any company who's falty business plan revolves around 'expectations of usage' of its customers. Not my fault your business plan can't make you money, and I will not suffer because of it.
Now, I apologize if this post seemed like a bit of a rant. It was a rant though. While I can sympathize with you in your position, realize that customers should not be feeling sorry for companies. That is the way business works.
Re:bandwidth (Score:5, Interesting)
Just because they advertise "unlimited" service does not mean that they can refuse us service at any time for any reason.
They want to be as vague as possible (by not setting specific limits) so that they can continue to lower and lower the cap until the only people able to use the service are those that are into checking www.msn.com, www.comcast.net, and their email via Outlook Express to their Comcast mailbox.
It is much more profitable for them to drop the high bandwith users and keep these people that never use their connection.
Comcast states, "if you are using service more than the average". If you are living in a residential area in southern FL you are likely to have a lot of elderly residents checking the status of their pregnant daugther-in-law. If you are in a college town you are likely averaging with the best of the pr0n/warez kids.
YMMV,
Re:The most common tact (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone who doesn't think they can chew up at least 20gb a month legitimately is an idiot or a luddite.
Now maybe you're the only one who uses your connection and all you do is surf Slashdot all day, but there are those of us who listen to streaming music (legit), mp3 downloads from sites like mp3.com, magnatunes.com, and others (legit), download Linux ISOs and updates (legit), Windows updates (legit), game demos (legit), PLAY games online (legit), and send high-
Re:The most common tact (Score:3, Insightful)
My digital camera has two 1 gb cards for photos. Each photo can exceed 12 mb. To upload 100 thumbs, 800x600s and originals of a roll of wedding shots takes 1.2 gig.
Listening to a 128 kbit radio station for 8 hours is 450 meg.
I often make connections to my work VPN, or to customers via PCAnywhere, for encrypted desktop sessions. The transfer rate to update the 1024x768 screen is usually 10 KB/s+...over 8
Re:The most common tact (Score:4, Interesting)
The interesting thing about servers is that if you're not running one, you're probably not a real part of the internet. People without server status are just consuming information, and not really contributing to it.
There are ways to participate in the internet without a server (by email, sourceforge accounts, slashdot accounts, yahoo accounts, wikipedia accounts, etc) but the internet always grew up a peer-to-peer thing. I visit your website and you visit mine. When you read something interesting, chances are it was written by an individual, rather than by a company.
We're starting to see more push for the idea that the internet is just one big television show, where you upload your credit card number, download "content", and go shopping. And the ISP accounts with crappy upload figures, bans on servers, dynamic IP addresses, and bandwith limits, port blocking, and all the rest only encourage this.
What does a vagrant contribute to a city? What does a port-blocked upload-limited dynamic IP address contribute to the internet?