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ISPs Experiment With Broadband Download Capping
W33dz writes "News.com has an article detailing how some ISPs are now capping bandwidth usage by some of their high end users. Comcast claims this is an attempt to create better speeds for their average users, but you can't help but wonder how much of this is in response to the RIAA's subpoenas. Interestingly enough, there is no set limit, but just a subjective limit of 'more than the average user.' The World Tech Tribune has an article on the same topic."
Lose the tinfoil hat, Sparky. Home broadband is dirt cheap for what you get. It's subsidized by business accounts much like telephone service. When cable and DSL first came out no one heard of Napster let alone Kazaa or eMule. Those apps use up a huge amount of available bandwidth which we get damn cheap.
Personally I'd rather them use bandwidth throttling for P2P apps rather than dictating a certain amount of usage over the course of a month. Most P2P users leave the thing running all day anyhow (I do and check in to home via VNC through an SSH tunnel) so why not throttle it back? A few K less incoming for P2P isn't much, but when you're waiting for a website to load.. well that's where you want the real speed.
Trolling is a art,
Here in Wichita, prior to the Cox Communications buyout, we had 10Mbps down/up.
Now (since 2001) its been 3Mbps down/256Kbps up. Sucks.
First of all, this is WAY old news. Comcast had been sending out bandwith notices quite a while ago.
.02
Second, this has nothing to do with RIAA pressure. It has to do with tricky marketing, bait-and-switch, and money. Comcast likes to claim they are an unlimited service yet they want to give you an UNKNOWN limit of bandwith you can use (subjective to those users in your immediate area it seems - so if you are in Podunk and 5 people have cable and you are using X amount of bandwith above the average of the other 4, you are busted and lose your service).
Third, Comcast has a monopoly and almost 25 million subscribers. Like *I* have a choice of another provider for broadband (no DSL, wireless is cost prohibitive). I loved the note on my door on Friday: "Please note that we will be inspecting your cable outlets on Monday with your landlords permission, please move all furniture out of the way." How about no. Glad that the landlord changed my locks when I moved in and forgot to keep a key for themselves. I don't appreciate Comcast coming in in the first place, nevermind when I am not at home.
Comcast is real cute. Takeover a monopolized market, raise prices even higher if you don't have CATV, create bandwith caps if you go over some mysterious number, etc.
See here and here for more info.
Just my worthless
This may be implemented very simple:
#1: determine the top 10% of the users
#2: cap their bandwidth so that they're no longer in that group
#3: if (bandwidth_used > 0) goto #1
#4: sell off your backbone
#5: profit!
mats
One man's ceiling is another man's floor.
Give more bandwidth to the people who don't download anything and less to the people who do...
Why on earth if someone changes a policy that somehow will affect mass P2P traders, etc., it's some underhanded effort behind the scenes of one of the hated groups, SCO, MS, RIAA, MPAA, etc.?
Could it just be that bandwidth costs money, and some people just use way too much of it? That perhaps this usage could hinder others in the area or across the whole network?
Nah, usual paranoia sets in, it must be the RIAA strongarming them to change their policy so people have to take an extra thirty seconds to download that song off Kazaa . . .
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
...but the good news is, you pay the same low price for involuntarily downgraded service! Thanks for using Comcast! Have a nice day!
When I pay my monthly internet bill, I'm not paying for an average download speed, I'm paying for a MAXIMUM download speed. Is it legal for them to change the contract for the amount of bandwidth I can use at any time?
Why don't they just shape the traffic to their needs? I'm sure there has got to be some way to do this at an application level. Couldn't they just assign lower priorities to p2p traffic? It's not like bandwidth is some tangible asset that we are USING up every day. Just have us capped to under their bandwidth needs.
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
Here in Edmonton, Alberta we have a choice of two high speed ISPs: Telus (DSL) and Shaw (Cable). Telus does not impose any download caps, while Shaw does.
I switched away from Shaw. My brother-in-law switched away. Several co-workers switched away. My neighbors switched away.
I don't know if you'd consider that annecdotal evidence only, but I see that as a pretty clear sign that people want unmetered downloads and are willing to switch to an alternative if one's available. I guess if you are using so much bandwidth that the ISP is losing money on you they might have an argument for capping, but otherwise it just seems suicidal.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
Broadband ISPs have been including this clause in their ToS agreements for quite a few years. I worked in the department responsible for bandwidth consumption two years ago trying to deal with the onslaught of file-sharing and they were pushing hard on the arbitrary 'more than most users' limit. It was miserable to enforce. In our case, it was later changed to 'more than our lowest-end business broadband package.'
In the end though, most ISPs aren't out to cause problems for the average user or even the average file-sharing individual. Most will publish limits of around 2gb up, 6gb down, but within the industry you're not usually contacted until you break 10gb up, 40gb down in a month. That's a lot of traffic to be honest.
In the end, the biggest problem we ever saw was careless use of file-sharing software. Whole drives left on unlimited share 24/7 creating 300gb a month upload tallies. I know it doesn't sound like a lot but if enough people do it, traffic like that will grind a broadband network down.
It's also important to note that the primary concern on cable and certain ADSL networks is the upstream traffic. Cable in particular normally allocates 1/10th of their bandwidth to upstream and 90% to downstream. Too much going out and everyone loses.
"Be proud to be a fighter" - Martial Arts Adage
1. sell service
2. don't deliver.
3. profit!
-
i would be ok with this if the thing they were selling it as capped from the day 0 they give it to the user and had spesific rules, so that YOU KNOW WHAT YOU BUY(around here, consumer protection makes a necessity anyways).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
...for residential users. Business users basically already subsidize the home market. The telcos and cable companies probably didn't forsee the impact of P2P when they promised "unlimited" bandwidth, assuming web browsers, email, and the occasional Quake server connected at home. P2P takes off and suddenly they need to back off on their promises a bit, but don't expect them to drop the price lower as they are already losing money on home broadband.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
I believe it was Telstra which gave users a 'download meter' which recorded how much you had downloaded in the month. Only problem was that it was never accurate, and you could well be paying through the nose for being above your cap, while your little meter said everything was just fine and dandy.
In other news, thinking this is in response to the RIAA sounds a little paranoid to me. Cable companies everywhere are looking to make everybody happy without have to spend a cent on infrastructure upgrades. At the end of the day, the very specific audience here at Slashdot means we're probably not getting a good cross-section of the discussion on this topic....
In my area I have access to both DSL and Cable. Both were uncapped, both got capped, and now, guess what? They are starting to uncap!
Ma Bell found out people would switch over to them if they actually offered uncapped service. Most people won't even download near the cap they had set up anyway. Users who actually do bust the cap are usually a little more at ease with computers... Which means that when their low-tech friends ask which service to subscribe to, they'll suggest the uncapped one *they* are using.
Anyway, I think the capping will eventually go away if there is competition. Pray you have competition in your area!
Here's what Comcast Notice looks like.
If they have the capacity, then using that capacity doesn't cost the ISP an extra nickel. If they don't have the capacity, then they are selling you something they do not have. We call this fraud.
As broadband gets adopted, the entry to provide service for it becomes lower in term of hardware. However, the wiring de-regulation efforts here in the US (telco and cable) are still a bit crazy. Sadly, those fights come in small waves.
If deregulation ever *does* open the door, I predict we're going to have another round of ISP start-ups, this time with broadband. Then, all kinds of tweaks are going to appear. This kind of competition is good for everyone, IMO. Customers have to be arena of what works and what doesn't. Ok, so I'm not saying anything new. Caps, Rates up and down, etc, should be on those menu.
For now, try getting most (DSL) ISPs to solve a line problem (they need to use the telco, who denies anything is wrong). Cable agreements are little better, but splitting the carrier and provider can be a headache anywhere.
But if the public knew the cost of broadband at the higher levels, they may not complain at 3.0Mbs for $50/month (my current Comcast agreement). Trying upping your agreement to a "business" service. What a whopper.
You cant be serious?
What you call "broadband" I call a poor quality, overpriced, asymmetric leecher link. The telecom monopolies have been trying to prevent broadband adoption inasmuch as they are averse to change of any kind.
Fiber to the curb should be here, and it should be cheap. I dont know why so many are happy to be bent over a barrel for a pittance in bandwidth. The network grows in value for each user online, and not the other way around.
Here's the deal. From my experience working for an ISP and the IT dep't at a college, the top 1% are not just using a little more bandwidth than the majority. At my college, the top 1% were using over half the school's total bandwidth. At the ISP, I didn't see the numbers myself, but was told by the admin that it was pretty much the same situation there. I strongly suspect that it's the same deal going on here.
Comcast here is actually going for a very friendly solution. They aren't imposing hard caps, which is a good thing. This means that the ISP can judge the network conditions and adapt their caps to accomodate them. So if their average user starts using 20% less bandwidth, then their power users can use a little more. On the other hand, if their average user starts using more, then they can clamp their power users a little more. This is also far more flexible than traffic shaping software, which will probably be their next step.
... and I have not received any such letter.
So i've got to wonder, if the ~8gb/mo of traffic that i've been going through is ok - how much are these guys using that they're getting capped?
I mean, sure, it isn't right for comcast to cap without publicizing a formal cap - but these guys aren't saying what their usage is either.
Perhaps because we know what the price of bandwidth is, and would feel a little differently if we knew just how far on the fringe their usage was.
(i grab data regularly from for backup to my home network, as well as having a video game demo and mod habit. while i have a considerable quantity of music on my harddrive, it is all ogg rips done myself from CDs I own.
so snuff your flames and stay on-topic.)
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
I had an apartment where the landlord used to come in all the time, without notice, and with dubious cause.
The last time it happened this way I had taken a day off and had just gotten back from the gun range. I heard a soft knock and a key enter the lock. When the door swung open, I was standing there with a gun in my hand asking who the guy was and what he wanted.
He mumbled something about an upgrade to the door buzzer system. I stood about 6 feet from him, gun in hand, the 5 minutes he spent in my apartment taking apart the 1920-era intercom and fishing wire from below. He said he'd be back in 10 minutes, which he was, and he installed the new unit.
After that, I never had an unannounced entry into my apartment again.
Canada's largest ISP implemented bandwidth caps while the competitors didn't. Several months later the caps were removed because customers fled to the competitor.
Any ISP would need everyone in their competing market to agree to introduce bandwidth caps or it will fail. That's good for the consumer but bad for the ISPs.
... my Comcast bandwidth was capped at zero, starting Thursday evening, and hasn't been above that since.
I think I'm going to ask for a credit on this month's cable bill. My neighborhood didn't lose power (for more than a few seconds at a time) or phone service, but the cable and internet have been solidly down since the storm.
Grumble...
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Since day one about 6 years ago when I subscribed to the local cable Internet connection in Montreal, Canada, I've been subject to download caps. It started off with 6 gigs of download and 1 gig of upload a month. Downloads were 300k/sec max and uploads were capped at 15k/sec. Over the years, the service has IMPROVED (well, competition helped a lot for that to happen) and now I have 450k/sec in download and 50k/sec in upload, plus I get 15 gigs in download and 5 gigs in upload. Now, I wonder what legal uses people are making of 15 gigs a month.
Personnally, the only times I was able to download over 3 gigs in a month is when I decided to download all the Alias episodes so I could start watching the show on ABC this season. I did the same in the past with 24, Smallville and That 70's Show.
Otherwise, I mostly watch trailers on Apple.com and video trailers off Gamespot or Xbox.com, read the news and do instant messenging. That typically sums up to about 2 gigs of usage in download. And I use the Internet often. So, what can you people legally do with 13 others gigs of download? Yeah, I know, Linux distributions are 2 gigs now and VNC is pretty bandwidth intensive, but I bet more than 99% of broadband users don't give a flying squirrel about VNC or Linux and thus have no LEGAL use of 15 gigs a month. With only maybe the exception of multiplayer games, are there really any reasons to have 15 gigs a month in download?
Of course, if you're into heavy music, movie and software piracy, I'm sure that 15 gigs a month is not enough for you. Especially since the only people I hear complaining about download and upload caps are the ones who are using their connection for illegal activities. Me, I complain only when I have to wait another month to download the last 3 Alias episodes. But it's over now, and I'm back to my normal Internet usage.
So, is capping really THAT bad?
I help administer a mid-size linux cluster, and we use PBS Pro to handle job scheduling. In many ways, allocating cluster resources is similar to bandwith:
The scheduling algorithm we use on the cluster is called "fair share". I think it would also work to share bandwith, and it works like this:
Usage is tracked with an exponential half-life of 24 hours. For example, someone who used 20 cpu-hours today and 20 hours two days ago would have a total usage 20 * 2**0 + 20*2**-2 = 25 hours. A user's priority in the queue is based on their past usage, and optionally their number of shares (users can be given an unequal number of shares, if desired).
To apply this to bandwith, you could track the bandwith usage the same way. During peak usage times, when the lines are congested, a traffic-shaping router would give a lower priority to packets from the "bandwidth hogs".
It seems to me that customers and ISPs would both benefit from a scheme like this. I'm not exactly a networking guru, so I'd be interested in what other people think about it. Is there hardware out there that has this capability? Could it be done with Linux's iptables?
I work for a cable ISP, and I set up an Allot NetEnforcer to do some packet-shaping. The P2P apps just KILL us, and really any other broadband provider. I throttled that shit down to 16 kilobytes/sec down/8 kb/sec up (per user), and watched in amazement as network utilization by 40% during peak hours. And so far, no one has complained. Keep in mind that I throttled ONLY P2P stuff. It's not that we want to screw you, but the truth is that P2P apps use up more than their share. E-mail and web pages and even games are a higher priority. It's all kind of a moot point anyway. I expect that within the next year or so, most ISPs will simply block all the P2P stuff to avoid the legal hassles.
I've been on the "net" for over 11 years, I started with a 2400 baud Hayes modem and AOL, quickly replaced within the first year with a 14.4 modem and an ISP, in those 10-11 years where has it progressed to? A 700k modem and I still can barely send anything more than keystrokes and a few postage stamp sized images to another person across the Ether. We all sit here like monkeys with a coconuts hammering away at keyboards and cellphone keypads.
It's the 21st century and they're talking about rolling back the bandwidth?
Where are the Gigabit Ethernet lines over glass, or better, to every single household? Where are the video conferencing screens in every living room? Why can't I call my friends and see them on my flat plasma screen via voice command? Where are my HD Dolby Digital movies on demand? Are we going forward or backwards?
To affect real change here I think it can only be done on a federal level by throttling the telecommunications industry by the neck away from it's profit model and back into a citizens utility so it can truly serve the citizens like it was intended to do 40 years ago and earlier!
All of these wonderful dreams of the future of technology and the internet are being strangled through the 300k broadband bottle necks that half the populous can't even get and those that can are paying double what they were before for no real improvement.
Comcast shouldn't be figuring out caps, they should be figuring out ways to offer 10 times the throughput to everyone in their service region and expanding that service region beyond what it is now.
The pipes need to be bigger or we're just spinning our wheels on this information superhighway.
Even people who never come close to the cap will be outraged, but it should translate into lower prices for them in the long run. If ISP's charged by the byte for low bandwith users access would be so cheap that everyone would sign up. Really, /. users generally use lots of bandwidth, and most folks just check their email a couple of times a day and do some casual surfing.
We should have been paying more all along, be thankful you were in early enough to enjoy the golden age.
I'm not a troll, just an bandwidth hog with an MBA, which many of you will consider even worse...
> I don't understand where the bandwidth costs are coming from for an ISP. The
/month for our connectivity to three different ISPs. This gave us three links of 1.54mbit/sec, which no single TCP connection would be able to exceed, but multiple TCP connections, or UDP/ICMP packets will take whichever route is best at the time, so may appear to be 4.5mbit/sec.
/month. THen you are given a contract that states how much bandwidth you are garenteed, and if the ISP fails that, they credit your account.
:P
> cables have been laid down right? How does it cost the ISP more to run them at
> max?
I used to run an ISP (dialup, but still) so can provide some authoritive numbers for you.
To get a carrier class T1 line (carrier class meaning you can push traffic 24/7 at the lines max, as well as do things such as BGP which are needed to be more than just a leaf on the internet) you get 1.54mbit/sec up and down for anywhere between $1200 and $3000 per month.
Also, you need at LEAST two T1's for redundancy alone.
So, we had 3 T1's at one point and total were paying around $6000
So we pay $6000/mo.
Dialup accounts are $15/mo.
This requires 400 dialup accounts just to pay for the bandwidth (let alone any other costs such as servers, staff, electricity, rent, etc.)
Now with dialup, you know all 400 wont be on at once, and if they tried alot will end up with busy signals.
Cable and DSL work a touch different, as they are 'always on'.
With a dialup who cant possibly exceed the hardware limits of a 56k modem, 400 modem users transfering data will only be about half of your total bandwidth, so your all OK.
But with broadband, you generally get more than 56k down, its usually closer to 1000k/sec or more.
So lets do some happy fun math with madeup numbers to see if this can be a little more clear.
Broadband user pays, oh lets say, $40/month (Ive seen $35 and $50, $40 seems a happy medium to me)
I dont have prices on T3's handy, so will stick with T1's, even though I can assure you a cable/dsl company would not do this if they had a customer base over one digit.
3 T1's cost $6000/mo and provide (for the most part) 4.5mbit/sec in both directions.
At $40/mo to the end user, you would need 150 customers just to pay for bandwidth.
150 cable customers at 1mbit each is 150mbit/sec.
So there is a huge problem here.
Either you charge $40/mo and all those users cant have full bandwidth because it simply isnt there, OR they raise the price to $1500/month to the end customer.
At $1500/mo to you, they only need 4 customers to pay back the $6000/mo, and 4 customers can share the 4.5mbit (assuming 1mbit each customer) and have not step on eachothers toes.
So really you can take your pick.
You can have cheap service at $40/mo and share it with a TON of other people and mostly not get your 'fair' share, or you can get garenteed service but pay $1500/mo.
BTW, an end usage T1 (IE for a home or business) will be at or under $1000
My T1 at home is a touch over $400/month total.
I get a Class-C of IPs (253 usable for machines) and can get more IPs by requesting, I can do anything with it that isnt illegal, and I am garenteed 1.54mbit/sec both ways.
Yes its 10 times what broadband users pay, but I get what I pay for and can enjoy it, instead of getting what you pay for and realize its almost nothing and then bitch about it on slashdot
Oh yea, and about your "The cables have been laid down right?" comment...
The ISPs dont own the cables that have been laid down, so no they can not do anything at all with them without 'renting' them from the phone co.
That part is called the loop, and is usually the cheapest part of the line.
I can get a T1 loop for around $200 (Price is based on distance from the CO in miles, added to a base fee.) Its the port charge (ISP charge at the other end) that is generally $1000 or more.
I wouldn't mind seeing bandwidth capping on my line if they did 3 things to make it fair.
1) Use the "toilet tank" method of capping people, instead of completely cutting them off entirely. This method has been deployed in several places, and people of course don't like it, but it is the fairest system that has been devised so far. Unlimited downloading (or uploading) is allowed, up to a point. When that point is reached, downloading will continue, but at a dramatically lower speed. The download will not be interrupted, but it will be capped to that lower speed. If the customer stops downloading for a period of time, they will re-earn the right to download at a higher speed, as their toilet tank slowly refills over time. This system also doesn't require strict time intervals (such as 24 hours, 1 month, etc.), because it is both triggered and released by the user's behaviour. If the user voluntarily downloads at a speed slower than the top speed, they can stretch out the length of time during which they can enjoy a noncapped connection. This is a good system because it has its intended effect (keeping high-volume users from abusing the service for everybody else) while not punishing people by cutting them off entirely or charging them a huge bill (important for cases in which the user isn't to blame for the high bandwidth usage, such as a virus or a Slashdotting). Also note that uploads and downloads are treated separately and independently, with a different toilet tank for each.
2) Make it clear what the cap level is, for both upload and download, including both the capped speed and the "toilet tank" size. Include this both in customer contracts and advertisements to non-customers. Advertising a connection as "unlimited" is false, when it could be capped! An example of an acceptable service description that could be advertised would be "1.5mbps download (capped 1GB/64kbps) and 256kbps upload (capped 128KB/64kbps)". This refers to a system that would have a toilet tank size of 1GB for downloads, after which the download speed would be reduced to a mere 64kbps. At this speed, it would take roughly 36 hours to refill the toilet tank once drained, but the user could still use their connection during this time (they just wouldn't be able to download another full 1GB without hitting the cap again). There's another similar toilet tank for uploads.
3) Provide tools for the user to monitor their current bandwidth usage, and how it applies against the cap. At the minimum, this should include both a live program that can be installed on the user's computer, and a webpage that can be visited occasionally should the user not wish to keep an extra program running. I would set that webpage as my homepage! The program would display the user's current usage and the threshholds at which capping would occur, and the current fill level of the "toilet tank". It should be made absolutely clear to the user what is going on, and how their current behaviour affects their cap, so there will be no guessing or finger-pointing.
I currently use DSL, not cable, because my connections are largely two-way. I do just as much uploading as downloading (no P2P, just old fashioned stuff like web servers), and cable companies are hostile towards uploaders and servers. The reason I use DSL is because so far my ISP (SBC) has not instituted any unfair caps! If they were to cap the line in an unfair way, I would be screwed, because I can't switch to cable. A friend of mine eats the cost of having a full T1 to his house. Maybe I'd have to do the same?
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
And furthermore, he blames the client, since if he never made a claim, this would not be a problem.
Why does this remind me of the skit? Because the broadband providers are saying you can't use all the bandwidth they're selling. If you sell me a pipe to the internet, and call it unlimited, then unlimited means, goddammit, unlimited. Don't blame me if I start using it for all the stuff that broadband is good for. After all, that's why I'm paying you guys $50-60/month.
Don't sell us broadband expecting us to use it like dial-up. We won't.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Heh, My landlord did the same thing, till one day he found out that, since I live alone, I tend to walk around in various states of undress. I happened to be getting out of the shower and walking to the living room to turn on the TV while I got dressed and he walked in with someone to show the apartment to. I just looked at them and said, "Dunno what you want, but unless you get the fuck out now, you're gonna see a fat, nekkid man** kick the shit out of you." I've gotten phone calls ever since anytime the landlord is even coming to the building. :)
-Ab
** I'm 6'4", 285#, a part-time bouncer at a sports bar and an ex-minor league hockey player.
Nothing fails quite like prayer.
I am moving and I was looking on Comcasts's website to determine availability in new area. I saw updated website where they are offering the *new* "Comcast High-Speed Internet Pro" service (with download speeds at up to 3.5Mbps and uploads as fast as 384Kbps).
The price is -
"Standard monthly rate of $95/month applies, with no additional charge for modem rental. Installation fees may apply. "
You can read about the new service offering here - Comcast High-Speed Internet Pro at $95/month
They refused to do anything since she hadn't seen the thrower.
Ha Ha! You can bet your sweet ass if someone threw a knife at a cop they'd be busting the fucking door down, right now, and putting a cap in anyone's ass who didn't get on the floor, right now. None of this shit about "I didn't see who it was, so I'll let them go."
I guess its true that we get the governement we deserve in this country. Too bad we deserve to be assreamed.
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
Are you an absolute idiot? You admit that their terms of service give you unlimited downloads. Unlimited means without any limits. Nobody is a "freaky weirdo" because they actualy use their "unlimited" service as much as possible.
I think the above statement depends LARGELY on how you define "what you get".
I find it interesting that the cable companies have no problem feeding you nearly 100 channels of television, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (remember, that's bandwidth too - voice and full screen video), for, say, $50 a month -- yet when it's *Internet* bandwidth people want, suddenly we're supposed to respect all these artifically set limits/caps, and understand what a "great value" we're getting for that additional $49.95 per month.
True, home users' Internet broadband is currently subsidized by businesses - but that's only because they've got the current rates jacked up so high for T1 and T3 connections. There's no real, concrete reason I can see why a T1 should cost a business many hundreds of dollars per month. They've simply created artifical "costs" for connections, and tried to justify them by claiming they "help offset" expenses giving home users service.
DSL runs over existing copper, and shouldn't really present a telco with any additional overhead - other than maintaining the routers and the customer support/billing aspects of it.
Shaw does cap, but it is not a hard one.
If you download 5-10GB/month, you will be well under their radar. Now, hit 50-60-100GB/month and you will get warned, warned again, then shut down (At least temporarily)
Internet infrastructure in Canada is actually pretty damn good, and readily available. Hell... I pay 29.00/month (Canadian) and can get 700+ KB/sec (NOT Kb) down. Sure, my upstream is lucky to pass 70 KB, but that still ain't too bad.
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
I read this entire thread and now have a question. :
... would you go for it? Your P2P stuff would go twice as fast, and your web pages would load twice as fast (and your gamer pings would halve, in theory, for this quesiton.)
Here is a serious question to all the nay-sayers
Assuming that the top 1% of users is using 50% of the bandwidth, and by eliminating that top 1% of users from the customer base the other 99% would get their bandwidth doubled and their pings halved - would you agree when Comcast's business solution?
If you were part of the 1% that kept the cablemodem pegged wide open 24x7, moving more than 300 Gigabytes per month (that is 10 Gigs each and every day without letting up) then you get sliced off the network, but anybody short of that gets their pipe doubled
Just curious.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Actually I was thinking he'd be best leaving the pot, along with a nice note:
"Well, since you're dealing pot from my building, I have a sneaking suspicion your rent has gone up 500%"
Sincerely,
the guy with photos of your apartment full of pot.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!