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AT&T Caps Bandwidth On Former @Home Users
graznar writes: "It seems that AT&T users have been limited to 1.5 megabits of bandwidth. According to AT&T (after calling and waiting for 30 minutes), the service my friend was originally on went bankrupt (@home maybe?) so they were transferred to an alternate network. AT&T claims they will be getting this back up to speed soon. What I would like to know is if this is a nation wide problem, or if this is just in California where he lives?" More generally, I wonder what type of experiences -- good or bad -- the people who've just gone through a forcible @home weaning are experiencing.
this is OLD news. AT&T has been capping their bandwidth for a month now.
AT&T has been providing quality service for all your needs
As a @home customer (comcast if you must know) that was REALLY watching out for new developments during the showdown, I used the DSLREPORTS forums for new developments. They even tossed ATT out of the @home forums and created their own cable forum for att users seperate from @home (so they can bish in piece it seems).
Linked here
From the look of it, the ATT users are none to pleased about the goings on... even talking about something worse than SPEED caps -- a download limit.
The forum goers seem ALL OVER THIS... for real information its a good bet to get it directly from them, so to speak.
I've been noticing for weeks now an ability to shut your whole connection off [only briefly enough] if they don't want you doing something.
:(]
I've only had this happen to me doing these things:
* Kazaa [one port, easy to detect]
* Gnutella [any client, only using 6346 port!]
* WinMX [anytime I connect to an opennap server]
* USENET [not all groups, but a general 'backup' of anything in the alt.binaries.* tree. No more playboy pics for me
* Uploading [When uploading to a private FTP... expect to get booted]
I thought this was a windows issue since I have just moved and as a consequence started a new account with new hardware. Since the move, I've gotten my boxen up and they get disconnected using even SCP! [if it takes more than one hour]
So I can't SSH to my boxen because what? There is no excuse for this. I can see the blocking of P2P systems since TimeWarner DOES own all the content people are trying to share.
The problem is they don't actually watch what you do. They figure, port 1214... Kazaa, shut him down. But when is the line drawn for LEGITIMATE USE?
I can't connect to my own PC for private toying around? I can't download a distro? I guess I can't even install over FTP?
Just when I was loving 'Broadband' and it's perks. You know, constant updates to anything. Even if it is for your slash.applett....
Get your Unix fortune now!
I'm in Seattle. I'm capped at 1.5 mbps also. Have been since the switch. Complained to CS for the record, but obviously they could do nothing for me.
More annoying is the change in the way they handle DHCP. @Home used to assign each user a unique name that would be associated with a DNS entry for the IP address given to the machine by the DHCP. The result is that I could always find my machine through name resolution, regardless of my changing DHCP lease (they also gave static IPs if you wanted, but it wasn't necessary if you could resolve your name to an IP address). Now the Powers That Be at ATT have had the utter lack of foresight to assign dynamic names to the DHCP clients, which are in fact simply the TCP/IP address with slashes. For example if your IP address is
192.54.75.213
Then your name resolves to
192-54-75-213.client.attbi.com
I suggested to a tech to tell anyone who would listen that they should be using MAC IDs, but once again he had the obligatory complete lack of power that goes hand in hand with phone tech support, so he did nothing.
I think the key will be to not pay them for services, since they are not giving me the service I expect. They have avenues for diminished payment due to support failure. As far as I'm concerned, my service has been down since the switch.
-Rothfuss
Well, as my warez kiddie neighbor's son found out last week, they are capping uploads to 10MB/day and downloads to 150MB/day. After that point, their filters drop about 25% of your packets and the connection is pretty much useless until midnight.
Since I am a responsible internet user who does not try to download gigabytes of stuff that I don't want to be 1337, I am getting more than my money's worth (especially that 20Mbps burst rate). And Time Warner is making a special effort to punish the jerks who just leech all day and waste bandwidth. The result? The network has been extremely responsive, and reliable to boot.
I will be sticking with TW for the forseeable future because this is one company that has finally figured out how to provide excellent cable modem service.
Bill
Yes, it's true, and it's national. I don't like it, but I'm no longer complaining. Yes, I used to be able to get ~400,000 bytes/sec.. but I can see how selling a $3000/mo connection for $45/mo might be a cause for bankrupcy.
Same thing has happined with the local telco/isp (a rural telco co-op) in my hometown. Because the rather small city has two switchhouses, almost everyone within city limits could get a flavor of 2.1 Mbps SDSL. For $39 per month, no less. The telco tried hard to keep up with the bandwidth usage, but after their second T3 plus an OC3, they gave up and capped thruput to 1 Mbps for everyone on the $39 rate. Static IPs are now an additional $5 per IP and multiple computers per DSL "modem" are no longer supported (but they do continue to work). Still, $44 per month for 1Mbps SDSL with a static IP is a hell of a deal. Yet, folks continue to moan that they're no longer getting the world for $39.
The upload limit has been 12,800 bytes/s for the last year. (I'm using bytes, because nobody seems to understand the diff between KB, Kb, Mbps, MB, etc).
I hear you. Folks around town confuse them as well, and some will even toss MHz into the mix. Yikes!
Which brings me to my second point... bandwidth doesn't come cheap, y'know. Exactly what were you expecting for $35-$40 a month??!? In my area anyhow, the cable ISP I work for is EASILY the cheapest per meg per month on the download side. The alternatives are DSL, which usually only offers up to 1Mb download, and that's if you're damn close to their equipment, and it's around $120-$130 a month for that download speed, once you include your ISP fees. There's always a T1, but is anyone really up for $700 a month for the same download speed as a single cable modem? Cable modems are THE best "value" (much as I hate that word) for heavy downloaders available, but we still have to make money, too. You're not charged by the meg for your downloads, but WE ARE. If everyone ran uncapped, all the time, we'd probably pull an @Home too, and go bankrupt.
If you want something to bitch about, bitch about the ACL's that don't allow personal web servers, or the lack of the option for a static IP. Now there, you've got my sympathy. But as for the speed? Think of the uncapped speeds you got for years as a gift, not an expectation.
The Free desktop that Just Works
Next, they send a CD with all kinds of ominous warnings about how if I didn't run it by a certain date to install their new software, my access would be interrupted. I wasn't sure what software was necessary, since I currently use no special software, but I decided to go ahead anyway. Big mistake. It tried to update my email account to my new aol-luser account name and update the mail servers. But, I have both Outlook and outlook express (No comments that I should just use linux, I use multiple OSes, including windows thanks). So it didn't bother to ask, added the account to outlook express, even though I use outlook for mail.
Next, it completely fucked my browser over. It added a ton of bookmarks, it added a ton of links, and it changed my homepage to comcast's website. That was easy enough to reverse, but then it pulled an X10 on me: The little spinny icon that is animated when a page is loading was changed to comcast's logo. And they added "provided by comcast" to the name of the program that goes on the titlebar. I am dreading having to figure out which registry keys I will need to edit to change that back. At least it didn't change the icons for any file types like X10 does.
But overall I'm pissed. I can handle having my email address change, and having to change service. But did they really think that those email addresses were acceptable? A lot of people are going to want them changed (which is probably why their phone has been busy for 3 solid days). The rest will deal with it, but be pissed nonetheless. And I most certainely did not ask for them to fuck with my programs and settings. There is nothing more enraging than to have a program change your customized settings on things without so much as asking.
And did I mention the new support tool they isntalled? When I complained about my email address I discovered that it was sending all kinds of info to them about my system. Now this makes sense to help diagnose problems, but it was sending configurations, what programs were running, system info, and about a half dozen other categories of stuff. This is extremely intrusive and it is only vaguely alluded to.
When I got my cable modem, all they did was get my ethernet card's MAC address, plug in the cable modem, and active that MAC address at their headquarters. Now they think they have free access to my computer. I'm not pleased, but as usual there is no alternative for me to comcast.