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UK ISP Imposes Download Limits
Richard_at_work writes "The BBC news site is reporting that NTL have announced it will be imposing 1GB download limits per day for its users. As you can guess, reactions have not been mild :) One thing to note, NTL has said that they will only be persuing persistent offenders, so i guess they understand you cant track your usage to the byte! Also with NTL, they appear to ban the usage of VPNs, citing that their service is for resedential use only. Does this mean I can't email work now?"
1 GB of traffic a day is far more than a normal high-speed Internet user needs, those who are using this much are very likely engaged in the distribution of material that would get the RIAA's underwear in a bunch, or doing something else that is against some law. Bandwidth isn't free, its past time the USENET/warez/mp3 leeches clued in to this fact.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
I pay about £30 a month (~45$) for a 512/256 unlimited connection. From that I'm able to run about half a dozen websites, apt-get from debian unstable regularly, usual downloading/browsing & the wife playing TSO almost 24/7 and I still only use up about 15GB/month. Heck, I'd happily pay more if it meant better service.
Even at 50:1 contention (theoretical, the actual is closer to 15:1 apparently), I rarely get less than 100% of the required bandwidth when I need it, and when I don't I don't care much - that's what contended means.
Unfortunately there are too many warez monkeys around that think maxing out a 1mb connection 24/7 is their right and think contention shouldn't apply to them (you should here the screams of indignation when *gasp* they only get 95% of their potential bandwidth! 'but I paid £30 a month for this service!' (um, no, you paid £30 for a contended service and should be damned grateful you ever get anything like the speeds you have at the moment).
The sooner the ISPs start banding their prices (eg. £20/mo for the casual browser, £30/mo for about 10gb/mo, £35 for 20gb/mo, £40 for 30gb/mo etc.) then the sooner people will start realizing that bandwidth costs money.
While like I can not account or everything bit by bit I know I do a lot of web browsing and I am subscribed to many email lists also.
As well I download quite a lot of open source software.
Many linux distros go through my system as I like to try before I buy so to speak. Except I am not buying, but I am still putting effort into what I use before I can settle on things.
Other software too, but no porn
They shouldn't! You didn't ask for
that and you are paying for the service...
Did you hear the joke about toilet paper in the Soviet Union? No? that's because there was none. All anyone ever needed was 640k of RAM, I just don't understand this gigabyte talk. YOu should all be happy with 300 baud modema under Ma Bell. Get over it, yeah!
Sarcasim asside, there are many other legitimate uses of that kind of bandwith that have nothing to do with Warez, crap music and all that other jazz. A reasonably active free software package can easily suck up this kind of bandwith. No, that's not a business. You might also want to share uncompressed music with your friends. Hey, you might even want to share movies with your family. Oh, my goodness, "always on high speed internet" is looking like a lie.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.