Slashdot Mirror
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.
AT&T made its users aware that there would be a cap at 1.5MB -- there's a FAQ on their Website that says as much and (much more disturbing) they've made clear they plan to charge for speed in the future. How that's affected by the merger, who knows...
This is a non-issue, people on AT&T @Home are already aware of it if they've paid attention. It might suck, but it's not unreasonable.
I'm in Richmond, VA, and my cable access provider is Comcast@Home. Our network has not been purchased by AT&T, however my speed has dropped (only slightly) since @Home went down. Comcast has been rolling commercials like nothing happened around here: deals if you subscribe to digital cable and cable modem access together.
I must hand it to Comcast. They've kept the network up with no outages that I'm aware of. They're not as fast as other cable access companies (my avg. speed is ~400kbps), but they have had killer uptimes while I've been on.
I wouldn't get to worried about AT&T limiting your bandwidth anyway. You have to expect something in a time of adjustment. If this becomes prolonged practice, then I might start bitchin', but sometimes you just need to let the industry figure itself out.
I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.
what about someone like me who usually doesnt pass much traffic other then web surfing, but on the rare occasion DOES download a few gigs with of linux iso's from linuxberg.com ? should i be punished for doing something completely legitiment? What about my brother who converts dv from his cam corder into divx files so my parents can see birthday /xmas video files of their grand kids 1100 miles away ? Should he be punished for uploaded a few hundred megs to me for something thats not a "business" use? And its not "warez" either.....yet under those rules you mentioned, we get punished. I think the cable/dsl co's need to find a fair balance between allowing users enough network traffic and keeping the full time warez bandits from abusing the system. (fyi: i have nothing against warez in general, but as a network admin, i do see the problem with every 18 year old running a ftp/irc leech service that just sucks the system dry)
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
I consider myself a responsible DSL user, and I can easily chew through over 150 mbytes a day. I think many other broadband users will agree with me on this fact as well.
And another thing: try and make your trolling just a *tad* less obvious.
I really feel for them.
AT&T limiting to 1.5 Mbit incoming should be plenty for a home user. If you need a T3 or higher of incoming bandwidth, you have a more serious porn addiction and should seek help.
As for outbound, 256K, I'd wager. I was just about to put MRTG on my firewall machine and toss some files out to Exodus to see how I perform outbound.
I'm an AT&T customer, formerly MediaOne in NH, for the record, and off of fast sites, MS Downloads, or our servers at Exodus, I can push 1.8/2.0 Mbit coming down, but I wouldn't complain about only getting 1.5.
I see one maggot, it all gets thrown away -- My Fiancee
I worked at an ISP this summer and talked a lot with a guy who used to work at the local cable ISP. He said that through experimentation, the cable company found that an upstream cap of 64kbps/128kbps limits the user to a downstream of 512kbps/1Mbps, because the user's system cannot send ACKs fast enough to keep the stream coming any faster. So even if you don't have an explicit downstream cap, an upstream cap approximately caps downstream at eight times that.
The software is supposed to be a VNC-Type program that helps Service Reps service computers. Basically I see this as a way for them to not only monitor, but have their way with your system. Along with this software also comes a real annoying Internet Explorer with Charter MSN crap everywhere, diabling network shares, and reformating TCP/IP to their network. Basically everything you can do yourself, but they won't tell you because they want you to install their software.
The whole thing stinks and the company is hiding behind lawyers and PR reps to try and get the whole situation worked out. Basically they released a new service, and the MadLUG guys were on them in 2 days when they noticed weird activity.
Moral of the story ... don't screw with geeks ... we'll find you ... we know who you are :-)
SuperDuG
Haven't noticed a huge speed difference though
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Let me get this straight, you pay $40 or so a month for your cable access, right? Boo freaking hoo, poor you, only T-1 speeds. How'd you like to pay for that T-1 to the tune of over $1000/mo?
The unsig!
And their names are:
Name: vnsc-pri.sys.gtei.net
Address: 4.2.2.1
and:
Name: vnsc-bak.sys.gtei.net
Address: 4.2.2.2
I think Verizon is trying to tell us something with their neighbor:
Name: i-will-not-steal-service.gtei.net
Address: 4.2.2.4
Enigma
When I explain to people who ask that my DSL connection costs me about $200/month, they
look at me funny. (That's $109 to the ISP,
80-something to the telco, a voice line is included in that of course, with a pretty good
voice mail system).
Now, every time I hear about how cable users
are being screwed, I look at my 1.5 rate (both
directions), my static netblock, my own primary
dns server, and my http box, and I just laugh.
Of course, I'm typing this on the 49k modem line at my family's farmhouse since I'm on holiday,
trying to be grateful that we even have a PHONE out here, and that it isn't a PARTY LINE. It wasn't very long ago at all that you couldn't get
a private line, much less a data line.
Heck, I'm grateful that I don't have to haul water from a well. That wasn't very long ago either!
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
The can't really provide a T1's worth of downloads to each customer for $50/month.
let's check that out.
Ok assuming a graphics intensive web page of 100kbytes.
8x100kbytes = 800kbits
lines speed of t-1 1.544kbits/sec
or 2 (rounded) downloads of this page per second.
Now if we assume that people work 24x7 on the net and download a page every minute then the maximum number of people on a single t-1 is reached in 60 seconds.
if d = downloads
t = time (in seconds)
n = number of people getting full speed
f = monthly fee
R = total revinue
d x t = n and n x f = R
so 2 x 60 = 120 120 x 50 = 6000 or 6 times the cost of the line.
now if we then assume that the figures of the average person spending 2hrs per day on the net round up for error correction to 4 you can, instead of assuming 24x7 usage move to 4 x 7 per cusomer.
24 / 4 = 6 which means 6 times as many customers can go on a t-1 (if they are spread out evenly) as in the previous model. So we then have 6 x 6000 or 36000 dollars per line, per month in revenue.
Now as we all know they aren't spread out evenly over the 24 hr spectrum and instead tend to glob together at peak times (6pm-10pm is the worst) so you then have periods of uneven speeds or degraded usage. You must remember that always on doesn't mean always transmitting or recieving. Estimates range from 80 to 90% idle time (downloading idle time)even on the most active connection (Seti at home anyone). This is why so many modems (dial-up style) have a keep alive signal built in to maintain the connection. Nothing worse than getting cut off because you are a slow reader.
Finally what worries me the most is the effect it will have on the WinXP users. How are they going to keep up with the security patches if they are limited to 10mbits per day?
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
I have att in Chicago here, and I had been judging my speed based on what I considered a local fast debian mirror. Someone recommended bandwidthplace to get a better measurement. I've tried this at different times of the day, and the best I ever get is 1.2Mbps
There are a couple other sites I've found that do a test like this, and they give similar results.
here's a site that links to a whole bunch:
http://home.cfl.rr.com/eaa/Bandwidth.htm