How Much Broadband Usage is Too Much? 1143
Semprini2k asks: "I just came home from work to find a letter waiting in the old snail mail box from my Broadband ISP. It has very nice titling on it: 'Notice of Acceptable Use Policy Violations' and also has an 'Abuse Ticket Number' associated with it. Has anyone else received these from their Broadband ISPs lately? Are they being overly cautious or are they working towards throwing off any users who might possible tax their network? I am trying not to be paranoid about this, but what are other people seeing and/or doing in this situation?" The "proper" bandwidth is liable to vary by region, but it would be interesting to note usage patters of people who are getting these letters versus those who aren't.
"'Oh, no!' I think to myself, 'They think I'm a spammer!!!' But further reading sheds more light on the subject:
"I freely admit to using a lot of bandwidth. From the day Fedora Core was released via BitTorrent I have kept an active BitTorrent session going to help others get it too. So I find this a bit of a concern.According to our aggregate bandwidth usage records, during December 2003 your [...ISP...] account exceeded [ISP's] bandwidth usage limitations. The activity associated with your account was more than 100 times the national median. This level of activity violates [ISP's] AUP.
I called their toll-free number to inquire whether I could get access to their data. No, I cannot. All I can do is try to use less bandwidth and hope I do not see any more of these letters. 2 more and my service will be terminated."
Read their AUP (Score:5, Insightful)
It has very nice titling on it: 'Notice of Acceptable Use Policy Violations'
Look through their AUP and see if what you are doing is indeed a violation. I had a warning via email several months back from my (cable) ISP which claimed I was using "above average" amounts of bandwidth even though they advertised "unlimited" when I signed up years back. I replied to the supplied human-read address saying basically "An average is made of of highs and lows, right?" to which I never had a reply or a warning since. That may just be coincidence but I do generate a fair amount of traffic...
Re:Read their AUP (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Read their AUP (Score:5, Insightful)
Those things are no more than a glorified bait & switch put to paper.
When broadband was rolling out everyone was advertising as 'always on' and 'unlimited'. Well, they signed up millions of people after which they decide to change the rules. A lot of these ISPs keep their customers by means of inertia and little else.
Re:Read their AUP (Score:5, Insightful)
That and being hog tied to thier email addresses. That is the one reason that I hear the most.
Re:Read their AUP (Score:5, Interesting)
If they advertise "X-Mbps" and I don't get it 95%, 99%, (what's an appropriate SLA for the computer industry) of the time, it's broken!
With the web site the company I'm at is hosting hosting, between WorldCom and Akamai, we're buying 50Mbps (95th percentile). If they tell us "oops you used 50Mbps for too many seconds", that's just wrong.
If a ISP wants to charge per Gigabyte, I'm all for it. But if their advertising Mbps, they should deliver.
Personally, I'd be all for some companies offering charge-per-Gigabyte plans, because I think there's a lot of time that I don't use that many gigabytes.
Re:Read their AUP (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Read their AUP (Score:5, Insightful)
Now...about your bill. That 768/128 line is going to cost, oh...$300/month.
Oh, yes...and I really do work for a small ISP, and our cost for our outbound bandwidth really is $500/mbps.
Not overselling bandwidth would be the stupidest thing any ISP ever did. It would make it absolutely impossible to profit. This thing only works because at any given moment only 5% of our customers are downloading.
Re:Read their AUP (Score:4, Interesting)
Bandwidth limitations should only apply to backbone use, not local server use.
But Dog only knows, that is to complicated for TW...
Re:Read their AUP (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Read their AUP (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you throttle it? (Score:5, Interesting)
The question is, are you (the ISP) being charged by the GB used or a flat rate per Mb/s?
If it is by the GB, then this cost is easily passed on to the customer. In fact, that cost SHOULD be in the customer's contract.
If it is a flat rate, then can you throttle their bandwidth as their usage climbs? Just break the bandwidth down into 5 or 10 segments.
1 = people who download/upload less than 1 MB per month. These people get 1 Mb/s to themselves and they should NEVER see any delays because they aren't moving that much to begin with.
2 = over 1 MB but less than 5 MB. These people get 1 Mb/s to themselves. The might see more slowdowns than group 1, but not much.
And so on and so forth until you get to group #10 and they are downloading/uploading 50GB or whatever a month. These people get 1 Mb/s and they have to share it with all the other hogs.
Now, when the lower groups are not utilizing their bandwidth (late at night?), the higher groups can share that. But when someone in a lower group comes on, they get the bandwidth allocated to them.
Sure, the numbers would have to be worked out a bit, but the logic sounds good.
You provide service for the largest portion of your customers while allowing the higher bandwidth hogs to use the leftovers when they are available.
New customers get put in the lowest group and, as their usage grows, they move up the groups.
Is that possible?
Re:Read their AUP (Score:5, Insightful)
Several years ago I worked for a large (who I will leave nameless) ISP who liked to advertise their "Awesome ADSL speeds! Over a 1.5Meg a second down! Guaranteed to our router!"
Why guaranteed only as far as their router? The router in question was a RedBack 1500 with 8000 users provisioned on it, all fed by a pair of OC3's running 145M/Sec.
You do the math. 8000 users expecting 1.5M/sec from 290M/sec worth of pipe?
As you so well point out, the ISP's oversell bandwidth to survive. They know that most users will only use a tiny fraction of their alocation, so most of the time they never realize how bad the situation is.
Also, as other people point out, the ISP's have an interesting way of defining "Unlimited" to mean what they want it to mean - usually something like "Full speed for 5% of the time." Worse, for us users anyway, their business model doesn't WANT users who are savvy. They want Lemmings who'll knock off some emails, do a little surfing, and not use more than a fraction of the advertised bandwidth they're sold.
It's the way the business works.
You want 1.53M/sec bi-directional 24x7 that you can actually USE? Get a T1. Want a decent pipe, at a price per month less than the lease on a BMW M3? Get cable or DSL and be willing to deal with some ISP bullshit from people who don't really want your business unless you're like the other Lemmings...
Re:Read their AUP (Score:5, Informative)
Our bandwidth also costs us about a third of what it did 5 years ago. But, since we are in a relatively sparsely-populated area in the midwest, bandwidth does cost a *lot* more here than it does in big metro areas, or on the east or west coast.
And that's not the only thing that makes this market such a bitch for us...our LEC charges us $37.50/month for line provisioning on each 768/128 circuit. So...after we charge $54.99/month (yeah, go ahead and gasp at the outrageous expense) we get a whopping $17.49/month. Of this, we liberally figure we make an average of $1 profit.
Maybe this market is making ISP's rich someplace, but it sure as hell ain't here.
Re:Read their AUP (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Read their AUP (Score:5, Informative)
It's worse than you think. I'm a Cox customer, and according to their revised AUP (not that I had to sign anywhere to accept the new rules) the customers aren't even allowed to use on average 56k6 modem speed over a month! If you calculate, you'll find that you have to throttle your connection to around 3kB/s to not exceed their limits for what's "abuse". Oh, and they don't have any CIR or guaranteed minimum speed. They sell the service on the *peak* speed, which you can't use a fraction of for any length of time.
They also block various ports, sometimes even both ways (which means they'll randomly block ports needed for legitimate return traffic).
This is sold as "High Speed Internet", and costs you $50 per month ($40 if you also purchase other services from them).
It's not high speed, and it's not Internet. Some legislation is needed, because this is slipping out of control. The cable companies clearly abuse the near monopoly they have in many market areas.
--
*Art
Re:Read their AUP (Score:4, Insightful)
I just wanted to sound off on what a horribly lame policy port blocking is. Both Cox and Earthlink block outbound port 25 (Earthlink blocks for both dialup and broadband customers). While I can understand the reason for bocking these ports (preventing mail abuse) -- I find the practice both deceptive and ineffective.
It's ineffective because spammers can just run mail servers on different ports (although it may help with abuse of open relays, but many spammers are far beyond this). I have to run an instance of qmail on a weird port so my Earthlink users can connect to my mail server (long story).
I consider the practice deceptive because they advertise and sell their service as an Internet Service Provider. This suggests that they sell service to the entire Internet. I had no way of telling that the ports were blocked until after my users signed up for service. The short of it -- I'll call ISP's before telling employees that the service is supported. Maybe they should start advertising these port-blocking ISP's as pISP's, or Partial Internet Service Providers...or something.
Re:Read their AUP (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to get into the middle of this flamey exchange -- but I'm not sure that I agree with your argument here. It really sounds like a case of shitty financial/price modeling and a market which no mom & pop ISP should touch with a 10 foot pole. It's not your end user's fault for using the service to it's capacity. It's your company's for improper planning
Think about it this way: When these larger companies developed their pricing models, they developed them with an assumption of a certain amount of data transferred per month. All of the big players advertised and sold unlimited use. Now, if the calculations were all based upon limited use (and their cashflow depends on limited use) -- it's the ISP's fault for not being able to provide the service they advertised.
Sounds like either the big players fucked their calculations up, or the market is evolving. I'm guessing that the latter is probably the case. My best guess is that outliers who use more bandwidth than average were initially calculated into the total cost of bandwidth. With the evolution of the Internet, more users are using more bandwidth. The outliers are now using more bandwidth than they had initially calculated, as well as the average use increasing.
Well -- instead of negotiating better bandwidth rates with their upstream providers (bandwidth's cheap these days), these Tier 3 ISP's (broadband operators) went into panic mode and are now fucking their users over to make ends meet. Not OK. I don't care who you are -- if you alienate your customers, you will lose them, especially with pretty thick competition (and ISP's going under left and right).
Fortunately (for me) TWC has not done this to me yet. I'm a relatively high-bandwidth user (mainly downstream) -- I use BitTorrent, as well as other services that may not be "average", and I do not consider my usage of these services/protocols a violation of my AUP (they don't violate anything I ever signed). The day they try to pull warning letter shit on me -- I'll take 'em to small claims court and slap an injunction on their cancellation of my account. Short of that (if I am clearly violating the AUP that they just changed under me, or if/when they start closing ports), I have no problem with explaining to them why I'm dropping their service like a bad habit. I'll also explain to them that I'll ensure that they lose other business for these practices (naming some publications that I write editorials for as well as popular blogs that I post to). Then, I'll take my dollar and pay a little more for way better service (maybe not as much speed, but definitely a company who won't fuck their customers over).
Anyway, I can't say that I don't sympathize with you. It's a tough business. But then again, why should I get screwed over because your market is shitty. Eventually, someone is going to figure out how to turn a buck and not alienate their customer base (with a reasonable price). As soon as I find that company, I'll sign up right away.
Re:Read their AUP (Score:4, Informative)
1 byte = 8 bits
Therefore:
1 megabyte = 8 megabits
See the pattern?
A 1 Mbps connection (note, the small "b" indicates bits, not bytes) is a transfer of 1/8th megabyte per second, or 128 kilobytes per second (1024 / 8 = 128)
Extrapolation for additional speeds will be left as an exercise to the reader/previous poster.
Re:Read their AUP (Score:3, Interesting)
By definition, half of all their customers are using "above average" bandwidth. Is their goal to drive all their customers to pay for zero bandwith usage?
Re:Read their AUP (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Read their AUP (Score:5, Insightful)
The fallacy of course lies in the implicit idea that if you get rid of all of the "above average" customers, you won't still have "above average" customers.
Still, eliminating or significantly reducing the bandwidth used by as few as 50 or 100 people can significantly improve the performance of the system for many, many thousands of others. (Without going into details I will claim without evidence that I've seen the numbers in a real life example to back this up.) If those thousands of others are experiencing difficulties and complaining (and subsequently terminating service), guess who's gonna get it?
It may suck if you're one of the 50 or 100 people, but if you look at it abstractly, there's nothing else an ISP can possible do. Not even increase the bandwidth, since things like Gnutella and Bittorrent can grow their bandwidth use to match the expansion. Sooner or later, the top folks need to curb their use, and for better or for worse, the ISP folks will have to be the heavies.
FWIW, they don't necessarily enjoy it, it's just the way life is.
That's absolutely not true. (Score:4, Insightful)
That is absolutely not true.
They can configure their equipment so that, during usage peaks, the heavy user's connection is throttled down to a "fair share" of the currnet bandwidth usage.
(Note that I'm talking about an instintaneous throttling, not a daemon that reconfigures his modem on an hourly basis.)
If the uplink can handle, say, 45 mbps and 45 users are all transferring flat-out, he should get 1 mbps throughput - as should the other 44.
And it is the ISP's job - not the customer's - to configure their equipment so that this happens - and beat on their vendor (or find another) if the equipment can't do it.
Re:Read their AUP (Score:4, Informative)
The term was created when ISPs started to charge flat rate monthly prices instead of the traditional 'by the minute' model that the three big players, AOL, Compuserve, and Prodidy were using at the time.
I think hey could have chose a better term but they didn't.
Re:Read their AUP (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Read their AUP (Score:5, Interesting)
TIME - you can connect for x minutes per day. Broadband advertises that they are "always on" and thus not capped in this way. Dialups don't cap you in this way, either, but may well charge you for minutes above and beyond a certain amount, though most allow unlimited time connectivity per billing period for a flat rate.
BANDWIDTH - Bandwidth really means "range of frequencies" that you're allowed to transmit/receive on, which is either dictated by the FCC or the RFC for the technology you're using, or both. But I'll ignore that, for now, and talk about "bandwidth" as it is commonly used, which is to define the speed of the connection in bits per unit of time. You have physical limits inherent to the hardware, here, and also many broadband providers cap the hardware at a certain limit. Cable modems can pull down something like 33 Mb/s but are normally capped around 3Mb/s.
THROUGHPUT - Many ISPs ToS agreements include a clause stating how many bytes you can move up or down per month. Typically, with such agreements, this limit is much lower than the amount of data that you could theoretically push over your connection if you saturated it 24/7.
Note well that if you calculate the throughput cap as a speed and compare it with the "bandwidth" cap, the "bandwidth" cap will always be higher. They're saying, in effect, that you can drive 80mph but that you have to rest 10 hrs. out of every 24.
I'll guarantee that the limit that the ISP is complaining about in this case is the "throughput" type. If you saturate your connection, it costs the ISP more because they pay *their* connectivity bills according to throughput. It also throws a lot of suspicion that you are violating copyright, or spamming, or launching DoS attacks, or reselling your connection against their ToS, even if this is not necessarily true. A high level of activity = "you're up to something".
The argument about whether the usage level for a particular user is "above average" or not is not really the issue if the ToS includes a specific amount of throughput per month provided. "Above average" is a spurious argument, as many have already pointed out. The real issue is what does the ToS say, and are you abiding by that.
Most ISPs won't terminate you for exceeding this, but will bill you for bytes moving over your connection above and beyond this limit. And you'll pay through the nose for exceeding your limit, too. Step up to the next level and buy a business-grade service if you need that much throughput.
The reason for having a "bandwidth" (read: speed) cap that's higher than the "throughput" cap is to enable you to move a high amount of data quickly.
Say your ToS says you can pull 40GB/month down according to your agreement. But you don't want to wait an ENTIRE MONTH to pull that 40GB down. Your cable modem is capped at 3Mb/s, so you don't have to. Maybe you want to pull 30GB worth of ISOs in a few days time, and spend the rest of the month pulling the remaining 10GB allocated to you for email, gaming, browsing, or whatever.
The ToS agreement is desgined to allow you to do this, but if you go over 40GB that month, you're going to be paying extra or find yourself shut off.
If, on the other hand, the ToS doesn't have a clause about throughput caps, then the ISP has no leg to stand on, and if they say "unlimited usage" then they have to abide by it, and will probably go out of business doing so.
Where the marketing claim of "unlimited" and the fine print agreement to limits contradict each other, you can litigate with a false advertisement claim if you want, but you're still not going to get unlimited service. At best you'll get them to retract or modify the marketing claim, which itself would be something of a victory. But not the one you want.
We NEED more power users. We must RAISE the avg... (Score:4, Interesting)
Just try to picture what would happen if everyone became so paranoid and timid that they drastically reduced their bandwidth usage: the AVERAGE goes down, and then people who were previously average end up above average. The ISP's wallet gets fattened by the cost reductions, but their appetite just goes up. The executives feel the need to continue their "growth" to satisfy the owners. The next round of victims gets targetted by the ISP. Revenue growth ends up being sought through the ultimately destructive strategy of a gradual reduction of "costs" which are in fact hardware investments, without which the next generation of bandwidth and applications could never arrive.
Therefore, if AT ALL possible, always try to use AT LEAST as much bandwidth as the average user, if not slightly more. They can't terminate 50% of users, or even 40% of users. In fact, you could probably be in the top 10% without getting complaints. Let's be conservative though, and choose to use only enough bandwidth to be in the 75% (i.e. top 25%) Imagine if everyone did this. If everyone tried to do this, the average bandwidth usage would gradually increase, making it harder for the ISP to extort and terrorize power users. If the upward drift happens gradually, technology would hopefully keep up, and we would gradually get faster and faster bandwidth. Isn't that what progress should be?
If, instead, people reacted by cutting down on bandwidth and uploads, then the average might DECREASE. Then, the ISP could boot off the biggest users, reduce their infrastructure investment, hoping instead to make money off of the low-power users. After the pool of clueless low-power users is fully tapped, and with no infrastructure investment, the only further avenue for squeezing out more profits would be to reduce expenses even further by setting off another round of kicking off intensive users. With each successive wave of account terminations, the average usage would decrease, thereby decreasing the expense per revenue stream. There is a clear financial incentive for this scenario, which would ultimately lead to stagnation.
So, IF YOU ARE USING LESS THAN THE AVERAGE BANDWIDTH, then THIS IS YOUR FAULT.
It may sound like I'm joking, but I'm dead serious.
If you are using less than the average bandwidth, you are actually doing everyone a huge disfavour. Instead, you should be everyone a huge favour (including the industry, and hardware makers) by using MORE bandwidth. Share some torrents. Seed some even. Let it run for a few days a month. Try to be at least in the 60% percentile in terms bandwidth use.
In the long run, everyone will benefit.
Encourage technological progress! Use more bandwidth! (That is, you're not already in the top 5%. If you are already in the top 5%, then maybe cut down a bit, or just be careful and hold steady. Some day, if everyone else is as altruistic as you are (i.e. download and upload as much stuff) the average will move up, and you will no longer be the top 5%, at which point you could increase your usage accordingly.
Set up a torrent seed on your grandma's computer, sharing a distro or something. Limit her upload to 5k. Let it run. She'll be doing her part to help make the world a better place.
It's easy to be an altruist. Get kazaa. Or edonkey. Or go to suprnova. Share some linux distros. It's fun, and it will make you feel warm fuzzies inside knowing you're helping the internet grow.
Maybe your machine's been hacked (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Maybe your machine's been hacked (Score:5, Insightful)
FTP servers (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, one day I found in my InBox a nice little email from Shaw (main ISP for cable modems in western Canada) complaining that I was currently using more bandwidth their business users, and "to keep things fair" please consider either switching over to a business payment plan, or to turn off all P2P programs (assuming I was warezing mp3's, no doubt). They said that I'd been downloading about 37GB and uploaded about 20GB.
Needless to say, I was quite flabbergasted. I quickly checked my FTP logs, and sure enough, there was a whole bunch of mysterious IP addresses who connected to my FTP server, and had been using it as a Warez Joint over the past couple of days. I quickly shut down the FTP server and moved over to an encryption-based system instead.
So that was one example where a bitch-fest from the ISP actually help me quickly shut down a problem
Re:FTP servers (Score:5, Funny)
The same thing happend to me.
I just created a new ftp folder "upload_pr0n_here_please" and deleted the rest.
Adelphia Bandwidth Caps and Newsgroups (Score:5, Informative)
"Traffic Consumption Allowances: Adelphia has the right to
This means they can say at anytime you are downloading too much, without even telling you how much is too much. They don't need to give you any download cap.monitor, measure and report bandwidth consumption by You. Adelphia
reserves the right to establish, modify and/or enforce consumption
allowances at any time now or in the future, with or without notice, and
apply a surcharge for excess usage."
I haven't received a letter yet but I have friends who did... people might want to start thinking about limiting their download, especially with the very popular dvdr newsgroups. It does take 5 GIGs of download per movie. You can easily let newsbin download at 300k/s 24/7.
Download wisely...
Cox Cable (Score:5, Informative)
Here are some tidbits from their stuff:
Re:Adelphia Bandwidth Caps and Newsgroups (Score:5, Insightful)
Check this out:
1. My long distance carrier says I have to pay by the minute and I monitor my usage very carefully.
2. My local carrier says I can have unlimited time on the phone for a flat rate so I don't monitor the usage.
Your broadband carrier essentially promised you number 2 but is treating you like you've got number 1 and you're saying you're more than happy to LIMIT YOURSELF while they continue to imply to new customers that there's no limit.
You're a fool. Insist they give you a posted limit or use as much as you want. Don't limit yourself for their benefit unless they're willing to be straight with you about exactly what you're paying for.
TW
Re:Adelphia Bandwidth Caps and Newsgroups (Score:4, Insightful)
Not quite. Hook your modem up to #2. How much data can you transfer? A max of 56kbps. You get unlimited connection time, but the amount of data is capped at 56kbps. The same logic applies to "unlimited broadband". You have unlimited connect time, but the amount of data you can send is capped, although this time not by the technical limitations of the line (although you may be capped there as well) but an arbitrary limit set by the ISP to ensure the *average* user has enough bandwidth but still make boatloads of cash.
"unlimited bandwidth" (Score:3, Insightful)
SAVE THOSE CONTRACTS! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:SAVE THOSE CONTRACTS! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:SAVE THOSE CONTRACTS! (Score:4, Insightful)
ISPs are companies. They have the right to refuse you service AT ANY TIME. That means that if you go over their bullshit, invisible, meaningless number of a download limit then they can shut you off.
No if, ands, or buts about it.
You can scratch this, scratch that, write this, write that, sue, complain, whine to the worthless BBB, whatever. IT DOES NOT MATTER.
They are monopolies giving us no choice but to use them and then they are allowed to refuse us service because we violated some randomly generated number.
Re:SAVE THOSE CONTRACTS! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:SAVE THOSE CONTRACTS! (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know about "scare tactics". If they want to terminate hi service, they can. If you want to travel down a road of costly litigation, then maybe you could have your service re-instated. But why bother, as most people do have access to several providers these days. Just go with another one.
I'm sure that eventually there will be a regulation on this sort of thing, as more and more people slowly start to use more bandwidth on a regular basis (Us geeks will always be in the forefront, though). Right now it's not a major issue for most people. There is a mean about of usage, and ISPs go by those figures. As the about of bandwidth required rises, so will that mean.
torrent client (Score:4, Insightful)
The isps are trying to cut costs. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The isps are trying to cut costs. (Score:3, Insightful)
If you cut off the top 1% of your users and sample the remaining it will still look like you should cut off another 1% since they are now the top talkers.
For every porn maniac downloading gigs of porn you have a bunch of other users at the bottom 1% who check mail once a day and thats it.
You will always have a top 1% and a bottom 1% of users. This is just the same as dial-up and all you can eat buffets. If its advertised as unlimited it should b
Re:The isps are trying to cut costs. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the original poster is saying the ISP is correct to trim the unprofitable customers, not that you should constantly be trimming your top 1%. If you're running a software company and one of your clients is constantly tying up the free tech support line, you might think twice about continuing their contract...
It's a little funny because this turns normal marketing tactics on its head. The 80/20 rule of marketing is that 20% of your customers will require 80% of your volume. This is probably roughly accurate with cable modem service. Normally, companies kill to acquire these 20% (high value customers). However, when you're operating in a fixed fee structure, these are your worst customers and (if they cost more than their incremental revenue) they should be moved out of your franchise.
The problem with providing the carte blanche of true unlimited service is kind of infamous: Proper pricing creates a death spiral. If you raise prices to compensate for increased usage, the only folks left will be the bandwidth hogs. You'll then need to raise your prices even more, but then only the worst offenders will be left. Health Insurance works the exact same way. If prices are very high, only the sickest (most expensive customers) will remain on a plan because the price is still advantageous for them. This in turn makes cost of coverage higher. and so on...
Village Media Cable (Score:3, Informative)
Comcast (Score:4, Funny)
Has anyone else gotten one of these? Maybe its just my area got an upgrade, but it seems you and I have far different ISPs.
Re:Comcast (Score:3, Informative)
Comcast still sends these warnings out. They are trying to get more customers, they just want customers that dont use it much. From what I understand the policy and warnings seem to happen more in certain areas though.
Re:Comcast (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Comcast (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Comcast (Score:4, Informative)
Check the fine print (Score:4, Informative)
Well, I haven't got a letter (Score:3, Interesting)
I use Comcast in the Sacramento area. They are supposedly bumping us to 3Mbps/384kbps. I can't wait :)
Has anyone with a DSL account gotten these emails? (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyone with a nice fast DSL connection ever gotten one of these things?
Re:Has anyone with a DSL account gotten these emai (Score:5, Interesting)
Everybody won. Their customers get to keep their free Usenet access. The ISP gets to provide an additional service at no cost to themselves. I get a connection that's rock solid, responsive tech support, and no bandwidth hassles.
Re:Has anyone with a DSL account gotten these emai (Score:5, Informative)
Speakeasy doesn't say 'unlimited', they sell you bandwidth, and you can do whatever you want with it. Run servers, do VPN, run Bittorrent 24/7 -- it's all good. It's your bandwidth, you paid for it. As long as it's legal and isn't disruptive to other users, Speakeasy is happy to have you as a customer. (ie, you can't DOS people, spam, or scan/attack networks you don't own/manage, but pretty much anything else goes.)
They're linux-friendly, can do either DHCP or static IPs, have good latency, essentially zero packet loss, and they're happy to HELP YOU share your network connection with your neighbors.
As far as I'm concerned, Speakeasy should be considered the Gold Standard in ISPs. Obviously, they can't reach everyplace cable does, but if you can get Speakeasy and aren't, you may be doing yourself a disservice. Yes, they're probably a little more expensive than your current provider, and you probably won't be able to download as fast as you sometimes can on cable, but you will always get the bandwidth you were promised, you'll get low latency, good support (although the web-based support is pretty slow about responding.... call them if you're in a hurry), and best of all, you'll never get The Letter.
Some local providers can be great, too. Sonic.net in Northern California was excellent when I was there five years ago, and my brother says they're still great now. But national providers, by and large, suck rocks.
BTW, my relationship with Speakeasy is strictly 'I send you money, you give me bandwidth.' Other than that, I'm not affiliated with them. I'm just a very happy customer.
Re:Has anyone with a DSL account gotten these emai (Score:5, Interesting)
Source, please - where do you get your information?
I cannot speak for "most", but neither my DSL nor that of the three other people I know personally who have DSL have any cap on their transfers save the cap set by the number of B channels assigned to their connection.
Cap your BT upload? (Score:5, Informative)
btdownloadcurses --max_upload_rate ($something more reasonable)?
Challenge them. (Score:5, Interesting)
Then verify the on-line copy, since they will claim that is the controlling version.
Assuming you cannot find a statement that says "You agree to use not more than X bandwidth per Y period of time", then challenge them. Inform them that unless they can show a contract, with your signature, that binds you to that agreement, you will consider any termination a breach of contract and will pursue it as such.
Make them tell you exactly what the limits are, and what you usage is.
This is classic modern business - "Try to screw them, since they don't know their rights. If they bitch, back off."
BUT MAKE SURE THEY DON'T HAVE A LIMIT IN THE AUP FIRST!
Re:Challenge them. (Score:3, Interesting)
Which does not mean that clause has any validity in court - I could put a clause in a contract requiring you to wear a rubber duck on your head when you sleep. However, should you challenge it in court, it would most likely be held to be unenforcable.
Once again, this is a standard modern day business tactic - "See if we can get away with it. If th
Re:Challenge them. (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but since most people can't afford the monetary risk of going to court, they'll just wear the duck and curse under their breath.
Bittorrent (Score:4, Insightful)
If you have another choice for a provider, check their AUP. If not, either accept the terms of the AUP and not leave Bittorrent open for the whole month, or go back to dailup.
Remember, you don't have a right to broadband, so use it wisely.
Re:Bittorrent (Score:3, Interesting)
Your Provider (Score:3, Interesting)
"You must comply with the then current bandwidth, data throughput, file storage and other limitations on the Services. Users must ensure their activity does not improperly restrict, inhibit, or degrade any other user's use of the Services, nor represent (in the sole judgment of Cable One, Inc.) an unusually large burden on the network itself. The Cable One network is designed for typical usage by a computer user seated at his or her keyboard. Computer activity resulting in excessive or sustained bandwidth consumption such as from unattended computer activity may burden the network and such usage may be restricted. Cable One may, without notice, modify the speed, interrupt, or prohibit such data traffic. In addition, users must ensure that their activity does not improperly restrict, inhibit, disrupt, degrade or impede Cable One, Inc.'s ability to deliver the Services and monitor the Services, backbone, network nodes, and/or other network services."
As I am an extremely active user - I too host things on bittorrent alot. When I got my account with them I spoke with one of the people in charge and explained out in advance - they aggreed to amend my account. I think it is a matter of communication - you have to let them know that you are an above average user in advance. Most broadband ISP's - that suddenly experience huge changes in bandwith from one user would get interested given the amount of machines that are highjacked to send spam.
Anyhow - I would consider switching providers if they will not tell you what the limit is (something I hate about my provider - they are very vague - does anyone know of a company which is specific?).
Time to get smart about your bandwidth... (Score:5, Insightful)
(Yes, I read the docs for tc, and I'd love to have an HTB shaper instead of the standard qdisc one I use, but I'm too busy to spend that much time for the small advantages a truly custom firewall box would offer.)
Re:Time to get smart about your bandwidth... (Score:5, Informative)
My ISP (Score:3, Interesting)
Then they called my house to "figure it out". I told them it was a hacker got in my computer. They bought it. But long story short, don't run an FTP server on Shaw Cable [www.shaw.ca] networks (even if it is on a non standard port).
Same Problem (Score:3, Interesting)
However, I think that one of the biggest problems is the lack of information on exactly how much they say you are using - without telling information it is hard for them to define what excessive usage is and give you a baseline to modifiy what you have running. In short I think that the contract needs to define what excessive usage is in terms of bandwidth; and the ISP should provide you with some means of seeing how much you are using.
Broadband (Score:4, Interesting)
Enter Cox. Hostile takeover. Changes contract, 3mbps down/256kbps up, 2GB/day max usage and/or 30GB/month.
I won't even get into their reliability.
However, I have not received any such complaints, and I tend to take down somewhere around 30-35GB/month (best guess, I have a convoluted network setup). I have yet to see policy enforcement. I hope I don't see policy enforcement, and I try not to push it beyond 35GB/month.
Re:Broadband (Score:3, Interesting)
REALLY nice surprise one day when their software screwed up and reported that i had downloaded over 12 gigs one month, the bill was in the hundreds... i calle
Outside of the US?? (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't eastern (Japan, Sough Korea, etc) countries have faster connections and move even more data then US users do??
What services are you using? (Score:4, Insightful)
Broadband generation (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd be happy if they set reasonable limits and just charged per gb over that if their charges were similar to those from most hosting companies around here.
They don't seem to though, perhaps they only have a small % of heavy users and its not profitable for them to setup the traffic billing system and easier to just tell those users to f~ off.
Time Warner's Road Runner Limits (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Time Warner's Road Runner Limits (Score:3)
Capping sucks (Score:4, Interesting)
Missing critical information: (Score:3, Informative)
So if that letter came from Speakeasy, I'd like to know.
As I have mentioned before... (Score:5, Interesting)
Most people would be "HEY! THIS SUCKS! FIX IT!" to their ISP. I have decided to hold off for a bit.
I am often bittorrenting and VNC home from work - this speed has been only a boon for that stuff. Bittorrent never gave me the speeds I get now, and everyone on the other side is my new best friend. At work, I often have to upload giant inDesign files and hundreds of megs of photos. From work (with the normal speeds in place) such a task was estimated at 10+ hours. From home, it took an hour. Nice - less babysitting from me, and I get to go home early.
That said, I wonder why I *haven't* gotten a letter since my upload speed is beyond even the top level service they offer, and is often maxed out.
The nice thing is that this is their fault and not me 'hacking' it.
I wish this was a 'feature' that I could choose on a web interface: "Choose 760dl/128up or 128dl/760up".
That would be great for the times when I want to dl the newest trailer from Apple, then switch over when I am uploading files to my websites, or running an Unreal server for pals.
Kinda silly feature don't you think? (Score:3, Insightful)
by teamhasnoi (554944) on Thursday January 08, @02:19PM (#7918259)
due to some missed upgrade of my DSL modem, my download and upload speeds have been reversed. I u/l at 760 and d/l at 128.
Most people would be "HEY! THIS SUCKS! FIX IT!" to their ISP. I have decided to hold off for a bit.
I am often bittorrenting and VNC home from work - this speed has been only a boon for that stuff. Bittorrent never gave me the speeds I get now, and everyone on the other
Your PC (Score:5, Funny)
FYI- I've been using your PC to relay spam for about a year now. Just let me know what the acceptable use limits are and I'll cap my uploads accordingly. Thanks.
Cablevision (Score:3, Informative)
Sympatico Canada (Score:3, Interesting)
I had to look through the fine print at the back of the manual they sent me to find what the limits were, and also found a URL that tracked my usage for me (useful, I admit).
Gotta look at it from the perspective of the ISP. They can't possibly support all the activity of the torrent/warez kidz, and if they don't impose limits it's going to fall on the backs of the regular users. Isn't 10 Gb enough? If everyone was actually using the net for legal purposes, I'd imagine only a very small minority would be finding that limit constricting.
I say this is all fair, though it should be made much more clear to the consumer what they're paying for at the time of sign-up.
Comcast's AUP (Score:4, Informative)
(ii) post, store, send, transmit, or disseminate any information or material which a reasonable person could deem to be objectionable, offensive, indecent, pornographic, harassing, threatening, embarrassing, distressing, vulgar, hateful, racially or ethnically offensive, or otherwise inappropriate, regardless of whether this material or its dissemination is unlawful;
>>If we don't like you or your opinions, we can pull the plug.
You must ensure that your activity (including, but not limited to, use made by you or others of any Personal Web Features) does not improperly restrict, inhibit, or degrade any other user's use of the Service, nor represent (in the sole judgment of Comcast) an unusually large burden on the network.
>>BitTorrent? You're one of those hackerz aren't you? *Snip*
Full link is here:
http://www.comcast.net/terms/use.jsp
Let me guess real hard here... Comcast Right? (Score:5, Informative)
Why is everyone ignoring the obvious? (Score:3, Insightful)
If I'm on the mark here, all the talk about your provider violating their terms of service is rather disingenuous.
Cable Modem bandwidth reporting (Score:5, Informative)
After that, you can go further and use the raw snmp tools to write perl scripts which do pretty graphing or logging or whatever. In my case, with a InsightBB cable modem, these two commands display the total number of bytes in and out:
snmpget 149.112.50.65 ihkstk88 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifOutOctets.4
(where "ihkstk88" is insightbb's community string, 149.112.50.65 is the hard-coded internal IP that my cable modem responds to)
I've had problems with DSL (Score:3, Interesting)
when you file a complaint like that, you should get someone from the office of the president of that company. It should put them right in their place.
http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/complaints.html
Surely only terrorists (Score:3, Funny)
Normal usage at a broadband WISP (Score:4, Informative)
- Virus, worm, or trojan (malware).
- File sharing software set up with default configuration (thereby becoming a server to the world, usually without knowing it).
- Genuine heavy usage.
When we realize someone is using a ton of bandwidth, we give them a call and see if they know it. About 60% of the time, it has been an infected computer. We get them to run the Symantec cleanup tools, and suddenly their usage drops to invisibility like most other normal customers. Another ~40% have set up a music-swapping program and don't realize they are sending out files all the time. ONE customer turned out to be downloading music all the time. When he saw his usage stats, he upgraded his account to commercial level and everybody was happy.Among normal users, even gamers and teenage kids whose usage is intermittently high don't reach the limit. Gamers run the graph up briefly, and a download of an ISO runs it up. These people know more or less what they're doing, and are not a problem. It's the clueless being used by outsiders that are the problem, in our experience.
Lower and lower caps (Score:3, Insightful)
An ISP buys a 100-mbit usage permanent connection with some backbone and resells it. They sell 1-mbit DSL connections to 300 customers (considering on the average, a customer uses his Internet for 8 hours a day). But the ISP realizes theres no shortage of people who will only use the connection for 1 hour a day but will pay for the full connection, so they figure, scare away the heavy users and keep the 1-hour users, and you can have 2400 customers. Now THATS profit.
The major problem is even those customers wont buy the service if you advertise 1 hour Internet per day, you HAVE to advertise unlimited high speed.
So what are they left with? Threaten the ones with P2P software and servers, block port 25 and 80, and use QoS to slow down the gamers. Tell them its all for security. Another possibility is to reset their connections after several hours and give them a new IP... the DHCP leases expire rediculously fast.
And of course, implement bandwidth caps, after sending out one email warnings. Then charge them up the wazoo. That sure beats getting more customers... just overcharge the current ones.
The Internet was cheaper mbit for mbit 4 years ago in Toronto. Rogers and Sympatico have paired up to royally screw the populations, and whats troubling, all those smaller ISPs have to buy their bandwidth from Bell, owner of Sympatico.
So my friends, as soon as this monopoly is broken, in any city or country, you can imagine the bandwidth costs just plummeting. Over time just like moores law, we get more cables laid, better cisco and Juniper routers installed, more chinese satellites launched, and more bandwidth available, so theres all the reason for the costs to come down in a smooth curve. Seeing Internet prices jacked up for 4 years straight means someones getting filthy rich, and as soon as that monopoly goes, competition will make it all that much cheap.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Cable is shared... (Score:5, Informative)
I have Cox high speed internet. In my neighborhood, I am one of only 6 people on the cable ring with high speed cable internet (most of my neighbors with broadband either have DSL or use the other cable provider in town, who until last week offered twice the speed as Cox. I live in apt where the other cable co does not service, and DSL is 44.5 feet away...) However, because there are so few other internet users on my ring, I can use as much bandwith as I want without my use really effect any one else on the local ring. For the last 3 months I used well over 40GB of traffic, no letters of complaint, no calls, nothing.
I have a few friends who live on the other side of town that get letters for using over 20GB/month. One of them is a comercial account that specifies they don't have a limit, but they get letters anyways. Their local ring is fairly saturated, and we know neighbors on the ring are complaining of slow speeds. It seems that after every batch of complaints that they take action. YMMV.
You pay for 1.5Mbit but you can only use 15kbit (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally I think ISPs should advertise not only their peak bandwidth rates, but their maximum amount of transfer per month. If it's a condition of your service, they must state it clearly BEFORE you buy it. It's not always easy to find this information out before you buy either, I've called ISPs and they actually lied to me claiming there is "no limit", but when I get ahold of their acceptable use policy the limit is mentioned (but not always clearly stated).
Perhaps as customers we should demand a clear and easy to understand metric (not this 95th percentile stuff business ISPs use either). But something obvious like "10Gbyte/month combined(in both directions)". And a customer should be allowed to view, at any time, their current usage statistics.
Oh well it's wishful thinking (although some cable modem providers use this kind of metric in their AUP, they don't usually openly advertise it).
Simple Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what I did. They start at just over $100/month from most carriers.
Really, if you're sucking up 300kb/s upstream and downstream every single second of the day, you're transferring a terabit per month. If you think that's only worth $49.95, methinks thou doth protest too much. I mean, really, a 155Mbps OC-3 costs, what, $30k/month? That would support roughly 500 people with a sustained suck of 300kbps. That's about $60 each, meaning your ISP would lose about $5,000 for every 500 users who think they should only pay $0.03/Gb/month. Come on. THREE CENTS Gigabit? Regardless of if they say "unlimited," try to be real here.
You can get a 384kbps synchronous line with a service level agreement from Covad for like $160/month. That's 2Tb/month for $160 or roughly 12Gb/$1 or EIGHT CENTS per gigabit. Oh, the pain, the pain.
Think of how many WinMX/Gnutella/Kazaa users are out there before you think "but I'm an ubergeek, I'm the exception not the rule." Everytime you're using a WiFi hotspot and feel like you're on a 300bps analog modem because there are fifteen !#^%!ing Kazaa idiots sucking up the entire outbound line, just multiply that over your ISP. When you're done, write the stinking $160 check and get over it.
double standards are being called out (Score:5, Informative)
First off - the internet content is clearly dropping because the telecomunications uindustry has found a way to sit on the golden egg and squash it.
Second - it is quite clear that the telecommunications carrier technology is about as computerized as any other aspect of the tech revolution and hense they enjoy the same cost reductions as everyone else. The exception is that these cost reductions are generally not passed on to the customers.
If you look here: Interconnection, Peering, and Settlements [potaroo.net] You can read a very good analysis of one aspect of the industry.
The problem is that peering arrangements are "negotiated" and the flip side of this is that the organisation with the most power is able to generally impose ineterconnection fees on smaller organisations. This means that your ISP has to pay for bandwidth you use with no regard whatsoever to the cost of providing the capacity or for that matter Who is providing a service to whom
Quoting from the paper: This assertion of role reversal is perhaps most significant when the generic interconnection environment is one of a zero sum financial settlement, in which the successful assertion by a client of a change from client to peer status results in the dropping of client service revenue without any net change in the cost base of the provider's operation. The party making the successful assertion of peer interconnection sees the opposite, with an immediate drop in the cost of the ISP operation with no net revenue change. "
This means that small fish always pay big fish. It was pointed out in an Australia study that when the client of a small ISP sends an email to the client of a large ISP, that the small ISP pays the large ISP for the data transfer. When the client of the large ISP reply to the email then the small ISP pays again for the delivery. At the time this was used to evaluate a review of Australian Perring arrangments. I have not heard the results.
Now - as it applies to you - it means that even though a fiber optic line for instance can easily carry say 100 mb/sec with the use of two allied telesyn ethernet to fiber line drives which cost under $1000 bux and will drive for over 75 km... and even though the cost of 6 pair overhead fibre cable for instance is only about 25% more than copper - and costs less than $1.50 per foot - that the telecomunications company who installs it feels they should be able to charge upwards of $50,000 bux per month for the rent of each "circuit". This is what your ISP faces. Wholesale usary charges.
I calculated a while back that 100baseT is about 2/3 of a T3 (155mb/sec) and on a short haul dedicated circuit to connect our servers for instance to the local backbone - the local telco would recover their total capital outlay in less than a month. Of course - once the data from our servers is in their backbone they can ship it to their customers about as easily as if they had obtained that data from the POP's that connect into the US backbone.
The simple matter is that if we for instance choose to co-locate in the US that our local telcos will be viewed as "customers" of the larger USA carries and be expected to pay very heafty fees to connect via the POP's (Point of Presence - IE a router). On the other hand any content their customer base obtains locally from our servers results in us paying them instead of them paying the USA. So they really try to put the screws on and their "bandwidth charges" would make you choke.
What you are looking at is the consequence of a system that is totally broken and not in anyone's interests... not even the biggest carriers. The reason it is not in the biggest carriers interest is that in order to be the biggest carrier they have to overbuild and take on massive debt that they cannot in many cases handle. This is why PSINET for instance didn't make it.
So we have stupid risks to be the biggest shark and everyo
Comment from an ISP... (Score:5, Insightful)
- They allow some customers to use extreme amounts of traffic compared to how much they pay. The turnover for some customers is as low as $1 per 1000 GByte bandwidth (!).
- A lot of the bandwidth is free, because they are peering with other ISPs, so the customers can actually use enormous amounts of bandwidth and it doesn't cost them anything.
- They don't want to kick customers because of bandwidth usage, because it gives a bad reputation.
- Only those customers that use big amounts of bandwidth that costs them money will get warnings and eventually kicked.
- It differs a lot from market to market (country to country), how many customers an ISP can kick without getting a bad reputation. It also differs, how much bandwidth costs - for instance, bandwidth is much more expensive in Germany than in Sweden and Denmark.
I believe that many other ISPs think the same way. This means that:
- Things like BitTorrent might be more acceptable to ISPs, if more bandwidth stays within the same ISP or to geographically close ISPs which have a higher probability of peering with the user's ISP.
- Since users don't know who their ISPs do free peering with, it can be very difficult to determine, what amount of bandwidth that the ISP doesn't like.
Re:Throttle, don't limit. (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, I could've totally missed something.
--
lds
Re:what's the median??? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:what's the median??? (Score:4, Informative)
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/StatisticalMedian.ht
Re:what's the median??? (Score:4, Informative)
50*100, 200*95, 50*90, 1*30, 100*15, 100*10, 100*5
In the above case, the median is 30, but that really doesn't tell you much. However, in a normalish distribution you would find the median to be close to a mean calculated without outliers. Let's face it though, without knowing what the distribution looks like, the median isn't very useful, neither is the mode or mean. If we had all three, we might be in better shape, but still fairly in the dark.
I have to imagine that broadband usage is distributed fairly normally and that the median is a quite reasonable measure. It'd be much lower than most slashdotters use, but I'd guess most slashdotters wouldn't use more than a factor of 10 more.
I tend to agree with the ISP though, that if you're using enough bandwidth to satisfy 100 of their average customers, something needs to change. You should either be on a differant plan and pay more, the other customers should pay less, or you need to bring down the usage. Now, if they write bad contracts, feel free to exploit them. Otherwise, they should let you know how much is appropriate usage and ask you to stick to that more often than not. I also feel that if you have to part ways with them, you shouldn't have to pay any "get out of the contract" fees as by leaving you are already doing them a favor.
Re:Bandwidth. (Score:4, Interesting)
There is a death zone in the design of pots lines (Plain old telephone service). Most well managed telcos run the twisted pairs from the CO out to a demarcation point. They drop a connection from this continous twisted pair to the houses along the route. Conceptually they "TEE IN".
CentralOffice==========T===========DemarcationPo in t
So a short peice of twisted pair pair is just clipped onto the main twisted pair running along the big bundle of perhaps 100's if pairs in the main feed line.
The advantage of this design is that if a subscriber changes the phone service - it is a simple matter to disconnect and reconnect at the TEE. The disadvantage is that sometimes those old connections are disconnected near the house or run into old warehouses and so forth. When this happens you have an opportunity for the xDSL signals to split.
What happens is the happy little electrons get pushed out the back door of your DSL modem and the run up the wire leading to the TEE. When they get there they have no idea which way they should go so 1/2 of them head off to the CO while the other 1/2 head off to the demarkation point.
The ones that reach the demarkation point typically find they went the wrong way. They find this out when they hit the infinite impedance change at the end of the wire. So they bounce off this and head back towards the CO.
Along the way they hit the TEE again - and again don't know which way to go so 1/2 them (1/4 of the original signal) heads towards your modem while the other 1/2 heads towards the CO. This approximately 1/4 of the original signal is in the form of an echo delayed a certain number of microseconds depending on the distance - which you can read and compute from your TDR.
The ones that hit your DSL modem get bled off. This is easily done - via what is called a terminating resistor. A Terminating Resistor can be had for less than a couple cents and you can pick them up at your local Radio Shack - you need about 90-100 ohms and you simply clip it across the ends of the twisted pairs over at the demarkation point. That is one way to improve your lines - and your telephone company probably does not know this. Telus didn't. We had to tell them after we re-engineered their xDSL circuits then paid them $1400 bux for an hour's work... then they asked us for free consulting. No kidding.
Well - there is a much better way to deal with the problem other than a terminating resistor at the CO. You can go up to the TEE at the back of your house and use a pair of snips to chop off the wires that head over to the demarkation point.
This is perfectly safe and reversible - it would take oh about an extra minuet for the telco service tech to reattach if they need to.
By doing this - you stop that split and this means that the signal heading to the CO is actually 2x as strong.
There is a secondary effect - the one that screws you up royally.
The speed of the signal propagation down the twisted pair is about 0.6x the speed of light. From this you can easily see where your splits are on the line - IE - how many feet from your TDR.
Note: in the days of voice communications - the reflection was great. It came back in time shifted - but the amount of shift was so little that the wave forms up to about 3,000 HZ generally overlaid the original waveform. So you have an echo - but it was close by.
With high speed digital communications - that echo is deadly and can come in several bits behind. It really smears the communications channel.
The short of it is that if you are at the very end of the cable - the end of the wire may be close enuf to your xDSL modem so that the e