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Have You Fought Your ISP Over Bandwidth Limits?
serutan asks: "Recently, a DC++-related mailing list I subscribe to has been buzzing with posts about letters from various ISPs in the U.S., UK, Australia and NZ, warning customers to curtail their download bandwidth usage to an 'acceptable' limit (generally 200 hours/month for three straight months). These are people who thought they signed up for unlimited access. Some of the letters hint that high bandwidth usage may imply illicit activity. All are vague on possible consequences, and nobody has mentioned actually being cut off by an ISP. One guy received an apology after talking to a supervisor about the meaning of the word 'unlimited.' Is this a growing trend? Have you received similar threats from an ISP? What was the outcome?" Of course, would it be so difficult for ISPs to stop advertising "unlimited" access, and instead include in the small (or not-so small) print exactly what the "acceptable" bandwidth usage is? If you did sign up for "unlimited" services and find yourself in this predicament, what have you done to get your bandwidth issues resolved?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
We are 'little people'. They are big corporations. They could redefine 'unlimited' as 'up to 1GB of traffic per month', and frankly, none of us on here have a snowflake's chance in Hell of seriously combating it.
Let's not get any delusions of grandeur here. Eventually, this is going to be the Standard Operating Procedure for all ISPs. Then what are you going to do-- "vote with your wallet" by going to another ISP who'll be just as bad?
Sorry to be so pessimistic, but this is the way things are, as far as I can see.
And if you think I'm being unrealistic: Well, I can remember a time when you'd call up an ISP and actually be able to talk to a knowledgeable techie... that's obviously in the past now. And don't tell me about your wonderful local ISP. You know damned well how rare those are now.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
proposed a bandwidth cap on "abusers" of their system, but the subsequent outcry made them reconsider...
IIRC, the amount of data allocated would have been exceeded by downloading (for example) the Redhat CD's as ISO's...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Some of the letters hint that high bandwidth usage may imply illicit activity.
Like it or not, 90% of those people who have high bandwidth usage are using it for illicit activities.
at one time, I signed up for AOL's unlimited access plan and I was only able to get a signal through once every 1-2 hours for about 15 minutes before being kicked off.
"Unlimited" is almost always defined by the ISP. If there is no explicit definition (read the fine print--there might be one), you may want to get it in writing.
Of course, anyone who is over their limits by an amount high enough for their ISP to notice is probably running some sort of public service off their machine (FTP, Web, etc). Many ISPs disallow this, so check your contract.
All it takes is a few greedy P2P users to hose the business model for home broadband. The reason you pay a lot less at home than a business user for the same circuit is expected usage rates. You can argue that this is false advertising "UNLIMITED" but unlimited really means that you are not cut off after X MB download in 30 days. (or charged at $.Y per MB over X)
Due process only applies to government actions (when it's not overlooked altogether). I'm not saying it's moral, but your ISP has every right to terminate your service for any reason they want. It's in the contract, and as long as they pro-rate your monthly fee, there isn't much you can do about it.
What legitimate need does a single person have when downloading 40 gigs of data over a short period of time?
I would suspect that the ISP may also know what port all the traffic was taking place on. It's quite reasonable to suspect that if 40GB of data was taking place of the port Kazaa uses, that he's not transfering a family photo album or business documents from his office network.
Regardless of due process, common sense still exists and it is Ok to call a spade a spade. While you may unfortunately have to defend it in court, you can still say what you want without a 500 page report and permission from a judge and jury.
I chose my ISP specifically because I knew they don't care. Velocitus (formerly RMCI) doesn't do bandwidth monitoring or any other blatant tracking. They are the laziest ISP in my area. Frequently, I peek out at speeds faster than I'm paying for.
I think the trick to finding an ISP is to find the most apathetic company out there. The only problem with this is that I'm down about 4 days a year. I find it a reasonable trade off, and it is increadibly better than AOL, MSN, or Qwest.
There are plenty of legitimate needs for downloading/uploading large amounts of data. If I pay my monthly fee for "unlimited" access, I should be able to stream high resolution live video 24 hours if I so choose.
I don't think this is a good thing. The Internet relies as much on give as take, and pushing a download-only network is a horrible concept and would hurt everybody involved in the long run.
I never vote for anyone. I always vote against.
-- W.C. Fields
but your ISP has every right to terminate your service for any reason they want.
Totally correct. It is their legal right.
However, it's not a great strategy for them. Good businesses protect their customers, and assume the best. Take safety deposit boxes, rented storage space, and many other examples. They can be used for illicit activities, but such businesses do not go around snooping on their customers. They prefer to keep them.
Hopefully, technology companies will figure this out one day.
-t
http://unmoldable.com W:"No one of consequence" I:"I must know" W:"Get used to disappointment"
However, the ISP needs to have listed what it will take to have your acount cut.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
What legitimate need does a single person have when downloading 40 gigs of data over a short period of time?
The single most obvious answer is videophone. Someone streaming the high-res output of a firewire camera can generate gigabytes of new data every hour, copyrighted only to him.
Another possible answer: He may be downloading music and movie files, and he could've paid for them. Or (more likely, today) he could be collecting hundreds of huge, public-domain movies
While it's currently true that no major legit service offers decent digital movie downloads, the ISP industry shouldn't assume it has to stay this way. If they advertise unlimited, they should try to provide it, or change the ads.
It's quite reasonable to suspect that if 40GB of data was taking place of the port Kazaa uses, that he's not transfering a family photo album or business documents from his office network.
If criminal activity is suspected, they should contact the police.
You have unlimited access at most ISPs. What you don't have is unlimited bandwidth.
This is a completely bass akward way of looking at it, which was the original poster's point.
Your line of arguing might extend to the pleding the fifth. "If he has nothing to hide, why doesn't he say anything?"
No, innocent until proven guilty means exactly that.
I don't see anyone arguing against bandwidth limits, rather that they need to be spelled out.
Examples of legitimate use might be playing online games, streaming online video, doing X over the network, etc.
Until you know *exactly* what is being done, you can't argue whether or not its legitimate (especially since you never define legitimate).
- Serge
"Get a T1 and try being an ISP yourself. You'll understand why they can't make any money if everybody is pulling a full T1 worth of bandwidth for a fraction of a T1 price very quickly."
Um right. Too bad that isn't what people are 'whine whine bitch bitch bitch cry crying' about. They're complaining (rightfully) about being promised one thing and being delivered something else. Simply put, they used the word 'unlimited' too freely.
It's about having the right expectations set, it's not about abuse of service.
"Derp de derp."
I don't personally care how they measure my bandwidth, because "unlimited" doesn't depend on units.
If you did sign up for "unlimited" services and find yourself in this predicament, what have you done to get your bandwidth issues resolved?
You can use the built-in traffic control capabilities in the Linux kernel. It's call 'tc' for traffic control.
A more reasonable solution, that some ISPs are looking at is to throttle P2P traffic so that it never takes up more than say 30% of their bandwidth. They use layer 7 packet inspection from guys like P-Cube and Ellacoya .
The rationale? always-on users want to use their P2P stuff, but are not sensitive about the speeds that they get it - they'll just queue up a load of files and come back next morning.
It seems to me like the least worst approach, and is certainly better than hard caps. One benefit for the customer is Web traffic will usually still fly, even though P2P is crawling. I believe Telenor in Sweden is using this stuff.
But if I have unlimited time, what are you saying I have time with? I'm not seeing the difference here. They give me download and upload speeds at X and Y. If I have unlimited time [and obviously no control over the speed I am getting], then my bandwidth for the month would be, at worst, 30 * 24 * 60 * 60 * speed per second. So isn't it their fault for setting the speed at a level where they can't provide me with that unlimited time that you are alluding to?
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
I agree that if the contract says "unlimited," the meaning of that is pretty clear, but...
Who in hell has time to *use* all that downloaded material? How many movies can you watch in a month? How much music can you listen to? How much software do you need, or can you even use? How much porn?
With this kind of gluttony, one might wonder what this stuff is really being used for -- redistribution, perhaps?
Perhaps the ISP's are concerned about their own liability for their customers' (potentially illegal) activities. The question of whether an ISP is liable or not appears to still be up in the air in some countries. It makes sense that they would take actions to reduce their liability. Which do you think is likely to cost them more, a lawsuit from a record company or a few lost customers?
I really like Speakeasy, but it can be a pain getting the local telco to allow them to hook up your service. Verizon jerked me around for almost a month before I got my Speakeasy DSL when I was in college. Some companies won't let Speakeasy use their lines at all, like SBC in my area. Common carriers hate being edged out by contract carriers.
-Carolyn
Like Daddy always said: if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.
Problem solved right?
You can't really annotate, underline or highlight text easily on the screen. Paper is much easier to handle and distribute to others when I need to.
Eh, yes you can. I do it all the time. And then give it to others.
funny munging
Moderators be flogged for feeding this troll!
Anyone who doesn't think they can chew up at least 20gb a month legitimately is an idiot or a luddite.
Now maybe you're the only one who uses your connection and all you do is surf Slashdot all day, but there are those of us who listen to streaming music (legit), mp3 downloads from sites like mp3.com, magnatunes.com, and others (legit), download Linux ISOs and updates (legit), Windows updates (legit), game demos (legit), PLAY games online (legit), and send high-res digital images to family members (legit).
I've done all three of those this month. Now factor in my two geek roommates and we go through upwards of 5gbytes in a 4-day period. I've seen my usage spike as high as 72gbytes in a 30-day period.
All that without servers, work files, porn, or copyright infringement. Good thing you don't work at my ISP.
I haven't gotten a warning from Comcast yet but I've recently (read in two days) downloaded more than 10 ISOs from major linux distros. Am I to be lumped into the "movie stealer" catagory for simply checking out my free OS choices?
All I know is that work pays for my ISP, and Comcast is on month to month...there are at least 2 other options in my area...who wants some free money?
Apple free since 1990!
The reason ISP's use the word "unlimited" in their advertisements is because it sells more accounts than if they don't.
The fact that they are lying is really not a relevant point. Consumers will flock to the guy that says "unlimited" in his advertisements regardless if it's the truth or not. Consumers don't think that hard about the issue.
It should be obvious that you can't provide a dedicated "unlimited" 56K connection profitably at the $10-$15/mo market rate, but you will sell a lot more accounts if you say "unlimited".
This is also true in the web hosting business. I see advertisements for "Unlimited Bandwitdh" web hosting all the time. But we all know that this is neither physically possible nor economically possible. Still people sign up for these lies.
Guys like me that run businesses that want to be honest about things are punished for our truthfullness. Consumers demand to be lied to. So ISP's are forced to choose between significantly lower sales and being dishonest.
Now, I'm not saying that there aren't ISPs that try to be honest in their offerings. I could give you a list of honest ones that don't use the word unlimited unless they mean it. All I'm saying is that dialup consumers do not typicaly choose these honest guys when they see an "unlimited" offer for the same price.
Hmmm... I can think of another obvious way. The various MMORPG like Camelot, Evercrack, and even various LAN shooters, can devour bandwidth. Nothing illegal or contrary to TOS there.
I think the problem is that ISP's oversell their networks, and then try to blame / charge the end-user when resources are spread too thin.
Raoul Mitgong: Unhelpful.
Uh, do the stores kick you out if you keep buying the product with the least margin?
that's like 6 hours a day for 25 days
or about 20.5% of the "unlimited" access you are paying for.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I work for an ISP and we had to change our "unlimited" dial-up option to "unmetered" to stop people from being online 24x7 all month.
We don't bandwidth limit our DSL customers, but with the cost of bandwidth being what it is it may be something we have to look at. Currently less than 1% of our customers use 75% of our bandwidth.
It's NOT in our best interest for "Mr. Bandwidth Hog" to pay the same amount as "Grandma Smith" who only checks her email once a day.
Look, I respect your right to run your business as you please, and I feel your pain w/r/t internet fees, but damnit there are some of us who DO expect to be able to have our computers connected to the net 24/7 and we DO want to download mass quantities of software/pr0n/whatever. When an ISP offers broadband specifically advertising these as the benefits that is what we expect. IT is bullshit to sell a service and then get mad when people actually use it!
That said, perhaps we should make a geek ISP that fixes these problems, perhaps by charging more and then letting people do what they actually want to do with the access. Oh wait.. can't be a broadband ISP unless you are part of the trust. Oh wait, the ISPs already claim to offer this and proudly charge you more then start threatening you when you try and use the service. Grrrrr....
Many people here keep going off on tangents like "You can't expect them (ISPs) to lose money".
n s.asp), and I find them more than reasonable for the price I'm paying. They also don't advertise the service as "unlimited" ... which makes sense - it's not. It has limits.
And I don't. What I expect is to know up front what I'm signing up for, and don't tell me it's "Unlimited" when it's not. It's like the old joke where a guy sits down at an "all you can eat" resturaunt and they bring him a plate of food saying "That's all you can eat".
Tell me up front what the limits are, and I'll vote with my wallet. I currently have Cox cable and they are very specific on what the limits are (http://www.cox.com/INETIncludes/policy/limitatio
Advertising "Unlimited" service then having an unknown moving-target bandwidth limit that is applied only to certain people in certain areas is not acceptable.
- Brian Roach
They just need to get off their arses and install a router with the needed QoS component.
/ftp downloads to 40kb/s They need to ensure that the people with IP telephony and games don't drop packets.
Linux has a whole bunch of options for that...
You can cap someones bandwidth, allow certain types of communications to go through at higher priority... you can do certain ports...
The ISP should be making sure that 100% of their bandwidth is being used, and everyone is getting service.
so what if they cap edonkey
Please use [ informative / summarizing ] SUBJECT LINES
Flame me here
Except unlimited access is not a feature. That only means they do not censor the Internet for you. That is the natural state of Internet access. No one advertises "We give you all of the Internet!" They advertise broadband based on bandwidth and bandwidth alone. So any use of the word unlimited that does not apply to bandwidth is a deliberate mischaracterization. That qualifies as a lie.
Aha!
However they advertise it as unlimited don't they?
Well unlimited is just that. If they go around calling their service unlimited, and I siugn up for it, it damned well better be unlimited or else no matter what their clauses say... thats false advertising. Plain and simple.
They can try all they want to tell you otherwise, but if they told you unlimited before you sgned up, and havn't sent you a notice saying the unlimited plan has been cancelled and you are being moved to some other plan, then I don't think they have a leg to stand on.
Of course when an ISP tried to pull this shit on me about 8 years ago, I just voted with my dollars. I said goodbye Ziplink, not so nice knowing you, and found a better ISP.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I think we'll be seeing more bandwidth limits imposed. Maybe even some sort of telephone rate system where you pay per byte. Everyone understands that a local 2Mb loop is way cheaper that a 2Mb link across the country. When people are using their links for"normal" residential/business use (ie, email, browsing, some up/downloading, etc), you can "serve" many 2Mb customers with a single 2Mb line, hence you can share out the cost amongst your customers.
However, if the customers have f.e. file sharing programs running on their computers 24/24, then each customer is going to need and require from the ISP a dedicated 2Mb link, so the economies of "sharing" are no longer there. Why do you think that so many universities/colleges are filtering things like kazaa? Not so much for legal reasons, but actually to avoid having their bandwidth swamped. Enough bandwidth to support way more than normal useage, but no way near enough to support a bunch of file-swapping stations.
Exactly the same type of predicament that the ISP is in, except it can't filter traffic, so the only recourse is to try and chop the heads off from that 1% of users that is using 95% of the bandwidth. Having been in the ISP business, I can understand it completely.
Your analogy is seriously flawed. The ISPs advertise their unlimited broadband. Then they remove those people who actually use it as advertised, keeping those who only use a fraction of the potential. They're cherry-picking the cheap customers and screwing the rest.
Cable modem providers use statistical multiplexing to provide their "unlimited" bandwidth by buying less upstream bandwidth than they need. Instead they buy enough to service the peak demand, because they assume not everyone will be using their bandwidth at the same time. Sometimes they don't buy enough, and people's connections slow down as the upstream pipe saturates. The correct solution to this is not to cut off the people using the bandwidth; that is the asshole solution that results in class-action lawsuits. The correct solution is to realize that the upstream pipe is insufficient and buy a bigger pipe!
You apologists piss me off.
Yes, those are called limits and I believe an unlimited connection doesn't have them.
Karma: Meh (Mostly from meh.)
Being online 24/7 is NOT a bandwith problem. It's a limited IP address pool problem. If someone's machine is online, but only sending and receiving minimal little 'keep alive' packets and not much more, then it's not taking up any relevant amount of bandwith. If I want to 'ping' my home machine, or leave it running so I can ftp a few megs from work to home before driving home, that is NOT an appreciable bandwith hogging. But it *does* eat up an IP address for a while, and if that's a problem, then that means there are less IP addresses than customer, and so it's not really an unlimited access service.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
unlimited - adj 1: lacking any controls 2: BOUNDLESS, INFINTE 3: not bounded by exceptions.
Hmmm... I'm looking at a recent ad copy for high speed access from Comcast that says "unlimited" and provides no alternative defintion.
Guess we cleared that up pretty easily. If they say unlimited, they better damn well mean that I have infinite, boundless bandwidth. They better mean that if I want to 5000 copies of the latest Red Hat distro queued and let it download for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year I can do that.
If they want to cap downloads to prevent obnoxious abuse like that, that's fine. However, when they're still advertising "unlimited" access knowing full well they have no intention of providing that service there's a problem. It's not really that complicated of a concept, the whole truthful advertising thing.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
If you are not offering and providing "UNLIMITED" access, DON'T TELL ME I HAVE UNLIMITED ACCESS!
If you sell me unlimited access, then I can use AS MUCH AS I WANT, WHENEVER I WANT, FOR AS LONG AS I WANT. If you can't make a profit off that, then you have a problem, but don't start telling me my "unlimited" access is really only x hours, or z gigabytes because you are not making as much profit as you wanted to.
UNLIMITED is just that - without a limit; no limit on hours, gigabytes, time on line, etc. Once you (the ISP) starts putting a limit on access IT ISN'T UNLIMITED anymore.
Sure the market 'droids want to keep the "UnLimited!" in there as it pulls in wanabe geeks and people who only use it to check their email once a day - but if you sell it as 'unlimited access' then you have to be prepared to provide UNLIMITED access to everyone who signs up for the plan. The fact that some of them DON'T use 24/7 access is no reason to limit the others - you are supposedly making a profit off them by selling them more than they are using!
It sounds like the ISPs are selling something based on one set of assumptions (no one will really use 'unlimited' bandwidth) then crying when their assumptions are wrong and they don't make the money they thought they would.
Well boohoo.
Acts of massive stupidity are almost never covered by warranty. --me.
Actually, nowadays it's quite simple to rack up massive bandwidth charges doing very benign things.
My digital camera has two 1 gb cards for photos. Each photo can exceed 12 mb. To upload 100 thumbs, 800x600s and originals of a roll of wedding shots takes 1.2 gig.
Listening to a 128 kbit radio station for 8 hours is 450 meg.
I often make connections to my work VPN, or to customers via PCAnywhere, for encrypted desktop sessions. The transfer rate to update the 1024x768 screen is usually 10 KB/s+...over 8 hours, that's 288 meg per session.
The latest OSX patches usually weighs in over 20 gig. Windows service packs are pushing 150 meg. Game demos can be 200 meg+. A Homestar Runner short cartoon is > 3 meg and I'll do 10 or 20 in a sitting. Downloading all the skins and maps and mods for your favorite game at 1 meg, 2 meg, 100 meg a pop adds up pretty fast, in addition to the gamedata (a steady 8 kB/s).
And spam email averages 60 KB. 300 messages is 18 meg. Hope my ISP isn't still selling my email address the way RR did in '97...
Hey freaks: now you're ju
What I want to know is why Cable and DSL are always set up like:
download/upload
(x*4)/x
i.e. 3000/256. As I work for a webhosting company, I know that bandwidth can only be bought symetrically (you can't buy an incomming DS3 with an outboung T-1). So, why do they cap your upload speeds so low?
Alternatively, I'd love to partner with an ISP. They seem to have all the outbound bandwidth in the world, and I have plenty of inbound to spare!
~Wx
sig?
One thing. read the EULA and other documents, all providers say they can and will limit bandwidth at any time, with or without your consent, reguardless of advertisements.
The web hosting business went through this a few years ago. It used to be that all hosting providers offered unlimited data transfer, and this didn't used to be a problem; there usually were special exceptions for "download sites" and such, but for the most part it was unlimited.
As time went on, though, the average web site isn't just a few static HTML pages with a couple of optimized GIFs any more. As broadband access becomes more popular, web sites become more huge, more dynamic, and less optimized.
Most hosting providers did one of three things:
1) Offer a specific amount of monthly or daily data transfer. Usually this amount varies by the plan you have.
2) Redefine "Unlimited" deep in the TOS or AUP.
3) One big provider actually states that transfer is unlimited as long as you keep within the 17 GB/month limit. So, "unlimited as long as you stay within the limits".
Obviously #1 is preferred, but to many hosts, changing "unlimited" to any kind of limit puts them at a marketing disadvantage, since most customers don't really understand the limits or the fact that there's no such thing as "unlimited".
I'm sure ISPs will deal with the issue in similar ways, though one advantage is that most users understand the concept of "hours per month" more easily than they do "GB/month transfer", so a high-ish limit will appeal just as easily as "unlimited".
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
For God's sake - why are supposed Internet Nerds using the word "bandwidth" when the term required is "Data Traffic"???
It's pretty simple: You can't, under ANY circumstances use more bandwidth than your ISP permits you. C'est l'impossible!
It's Data Traffic that NZ ISPs are stingey as all fuck over. My account is 256/256 DSL and it rocks - except for two things:
1) First hop ping time of 55ms - INCLUDING 48ms of DSL Interleaving. AAARGH.
2) 2GB of monthly DATA TRAFFIC.
This from a company which owns a 120Gb/s pipe to the USA and it's running at 20% capacity.
Insanity.
Rationing a resource that is NOT scarce. *sigh*
What happens when people ICMP someone? A user could be asleep or not home and their ports could be pegged to the max with packets. Is the average user responsible for packets sent to their computer when they (the average user) cannot accept/decline said packets?
Also, what about trojans which send packets to other machines? And, as bandwidth becomes limited, how is it legal for you to pop up an ad and steal the limited amount of bandwidth I have without asking?
Yes, as a matter of fact, I am *QUITE* familiar with 'caveat emptor' ...
But, then again, I'm also aware of "false advertising," "deceptive trade practices," "fraud" and a few other terms that broadband ISPs don't want to talk about.
As an earlier poster said, "If they say 'unlimited' they damn well better MEAN "infinite, limitless bandwidth" unless they want to run afoul of some VERY nasty consumer protection laws.
Just my $0.02 ( & BTW, IAAL)
utter rubbish
You ever hear of buyer beware? You didn't read the AUP did you?
IRRELEVANT.
Comcast is, in this current, valid offering which I am currently holding in my left hand saying - quite explicitly, mind you - that I can get "Unlimited Internet Access" by signing up for their cable service. The TOS/AUP/POS/whatever is NOT printed OR referenced ANYWHERE on this advertisement. NO alternative definition for "unlimited" is provided that says they mean anything other than the dictionary term.
The advertisement is, quite obviously, advertising a service THEY DO NOT SELL.
If it's that easy, can I start selling shale through the mail as gold and claim in my convoluted, small print TOS that "gold" really means a "a brittle, grayish-brown stone"? Does my TOS vindicate my false advertising? I think not. That's exactly what Comcast is trying to do here.
They want to cap people? Fine. Then stop advertising something completely different that you're not selling and never have. That's all I ask. Advertise your product or service, don't try to hide your deceptive ads (which are actually flat-out lies) behind convoluted terms and pretend that that justifies your fairy tale advertising.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
We don't bandwidth limit our DSL customers, but with the cost of bandwidth being what it is it may be something we have to look at. Currently less than 1% of our customers use 75% of our bandwidth.
It's NOT in our best interest for "Mr. Bandwidth Hog" to pay the same amount as "Grandma Smith" who only checks her email once a day.
Then don't charge the same. No one would complain if ISPs offered "Broadband access up to x gigs per month".
But if you advertise "unlimited" access, don't be surprised when people take you literally.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
Streaming audio, streaming video, OS patches, umpteen programming applications, remote backups, distributed computing, perfectly legal P2P applications...this is the short list.
Oh, yeah, and another thing: who the hell are you to define what's legitimate? Whether I'm downloading pornography, telecommuting, or watching reruns of 'What's Happening Now?' from a server in New Guinea, it doesn't matter. If I'm not violating my TOS, and I'm simply using my 'unlimited' connection, then I'm not doing anything wrong.
I'll call a spade a spade: certain broadband providers are screwing a subset of their customers, because they can, and relying on 'common sense' from non-techies to justify their actions. I understand their business justifications (hey, I'm a businessman), but their tactics suck, and it will bite them square in the ass someday.
No, I didn't.
Why should I?
If someone sells me "unlimited access" that's what I bought. If someone thinks that "unlimited" means "sometimes when we like it", that's their problem. If they don't deliver unlimited access having sold it, it's fraud. It's very simple.
And if that someone can't get their business plan right, why should this be MY problem? I didn't write it. I don't even work there.
Again, I paid for unlimited, they owe me unlimited. Like in "having no limits".
The moon is not fully subjugated. I demand a second assault wave preceded by a massive nuclear bombardment.
If you are willing to claim unlimited, be prepared to put your money where your mouth is. If not, don't make the claim. Unlimited means just that, no limits, no qualifications. You can't afford to offer that at your price range? Then don't offer it. You can make other claims such as no preset limit or so on. However if you want to say there is no limit, be prepared for people to use that.
I do with my ISP. I expect that my connection be on 24x7 barring problems. I expect to be able to use all the bandwidth they choose to give me as often as I like adn not hear about it. I put a heavy load on that line too, what with three servers, two roomates and lots of personal use. They don't complain, their pricing is such that they can sustain that.
It is the ISPs that need to get over it, with it being the concept taht you have the right to advertise something and not give it. ISPs want the allure of being "unlimited" but not the associated costs. Too bad. Either be unlimited, and don't whine about it (my dialup ISP never bothered me if I left the modem on for a week straight, which I did) or don't advertise as such. Isntead of unlimited say no time restrictions and no preset limits.
Notice that American Express does NOT claim they give you an unlimited spending amount. They say they have "no pre-set spending limit". That means that, unlike other cards where you have a hard cap as to what you can charge, they have no default cap in place. Doesn't mean they'll let you charge anything you want. They couldn't do that or someone would get one, charge $50 million in shit and skip the country. However, it would be dishonest to claim otherwise.
Finally, I would not that DirectPC got sued over this and lost.
While your post was informative, you failed to address the issue of 'don't offer unlimited if you can't deliver'. What the vast majority of slashdotters are upset about is the fact that this is false advertising. Personally, we could give two flying fucks whether or not the ISP can handle the constant usage. Our beef is with the fact that we are paying for a service that is not giving us what was advertised.
"As an ISP, I'd prefer to be able to use my discretion in this situation rather than hear the "told you so" of users crying about "lax enforcement of rule".
As an ISP's customer, I'd prefer to be able to know EXACTLY what my limits were, so that I can use the service to its full potential. I do not want my ISP deciding that since Johnny is doing work for a school project, he can use more bandwidth, but since I'm looking at pr0n I can't.
I do not want my ISP deciding whether or not what I use the internet for is 'acceptable' or not. If I am paying the same amount as Johnny who is doing a school project, I DEMAND equal service. Now, whether I choose to use that service or not is my decision, as it is Johnny's as well, but I do NOT want to be treated differently if I use the service to its fully advertised potential.
Got a problem with that? Perhaps the ISP should then do some legal research into the Truth in Advertising laws. I have no pity for any company who's falty business plan revolves around 'expectations of usage' of its customers. Not my fault your business plan can't make you money, and I will not suffer because of it.
Now, I apologize if this post seemed like a bit of a rant. It was a rant though. While I can sympathize with you in your position, realize that customers should not be feeling sorry for companies. That is the way business works.
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This is a marketing and technical issue and financial issue for both dialup and DSL customers. I own a small ISP so I can see the problems from both sides.
Many potential customers ask for umlimited service. If the service doesn't say that it is unlimited the customer goes elsewhere.
Since many companies advertise unlimited service (even when it isn't) this forces other companies to advertise unlimited service or be destroyed by competition.
Some companies say they are unlimited, others say "virtually unlimited" but the truth is that the customer doesn't want a limit even though most customers never hit any acceptable limits.
The other side is technical and financial. Each dialup customer uses a dialup line when connected. Do ISPs have a dialup line for each customer? No, the currnt ratio is about 5 to 6 customers per line. Do the math. If everyone has unlimited access and used it, then 80% of the customers dialing would get busy signals and the ISP would die.
For DSL it isn't quite the same. All the DSL customers have 1.5/256, but how much bandwidth to the internet does the ISP have? DSL costs between $40 and $60 for most people. All that bandwidth travels across an ATM circuit. A 1.5 ATM circuit costs an ISP like mine about $800 per month. A 1.5 to the internet costs an ISP like mine $1200 to $2000 per month.
Once again, do the math. In order to make money selling DSL an ISP needs to put at least 40 DSL customers with 1.5/256 on the same T1 (the same 1.5 of bandwidth). And 80 is a more common number.
If every one of those customers expects to get 1.5/256 24 hours a day, 7 days a week they are dreaming. They have to share.
But since ISPs have to make customers want their service, they have to advertise unlimited service. The truth is that even if the ISP advertises unlimited service, it simply can't be unless the ISP has only 1 DSL customer per ATM and per T1 to the internet and loses money every month.
And that ISP won't be around for very long.
Howard Shere Altair to OS X so far
There must be limits, if only by the technology itself. The design of a network, which includes scaling based on "normal" bandwidth utilization, should be included in the classification "technological limitation".
You'd never see this much whining from the users back in the good ol' days when the BOFHs were in charge. They'd be happy just to have a functioning connection... complaining about not being able to leech warez to your heart's content was a great way to get an account deleted. Now people are shocked at receiving a warning first ;)
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
While I understand your position, a couple of things:
You are not using the service the same as Johnny. THerefore, you are expecting GREATER service than Johnny, since Johnny is using the service within the standard limits of common sense. Johnny uses it one month at a high level, and you use it for 12. This is NOT the same service.
"Not My fault your business plan can't make you money..."
This is how EVERY ISP works. None of them will ever be able to provide you with unlimited 1.5Mbps access 24-7 without limitations. If you want that, then buy the pipe density yourself. The truth is, you get 1.5Mbps access (sometimes faster), and it is always on. Unlimited ACCESS and Unlimited BANDWIDTH are not the same things. Most internet services provide the former, and having dealt with even the most horrific of ISPs (such as SBC DSL), even provide the latter for all but the most unreasonable of customers. If you download porn 24-7, when do you have time to WATCH all that porn. A lot of people who use these connections like this confuse "can" and "need". They go beyond what they even WANT, and even if it does everything they possibly think of, they go out and find new things to do JUST SO THEY CAN USE THEIR BANDWIDTH.
They're like that guy who eats ALL the free food in the break room. Hey, it was there, right? But he forgets that it's there for everyone, and not just him.
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It is reasonable for them to assume that there words will be taken in a reasonable manner.
Yea, that's why when I see "unlimited" I think it means "unlimited" not "unlimited unless it becomes inconvenient for us". If they don't mean unlimited, they need to say something like "150 hours a month for $49.95" or whatever the actual service is. 150 hours or some mysterious, unknown limit is NOT unlimited, plain and simple.
But let's not take "Unlimited" to mean something unreasonable.
I REALLY don't understand where you're coming from or why you think anyone is going to buy this argument. You're arguing this point on quicksand and you're already in up to your neck. Look, whether you're going to admit it or not, unlimited has a clearly defined meaning. It's not ambiguous. They're not saying "lots of access" or "a whole bunch of access", they're saying "unlimited access". Unlimited is a very clearly defined, well understood term. How could I apply an unreasonable meaning to it? Unlimited is unlimited. No limit. None. Zip, nada, zilch. NO LIMIT TO ACCESS.
Would you assume 'unlimited internet access' means I have unlimited access to whitehouse.gov and could change it to fit my needs?
Completely pointless and offtopic. You're arguing the meaning of access, not unlimited. Access to the Internet does not automatically grant write privilege to a small portion of the WWW which is only part of the Internet. When they say "access", it's generally understood that they're talking about the ability to connect to their server in order to use the Internet in some capacity. How you use the Internet is not guaranteed by them in any way.
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Please read the fine print. In the communications world "Access" means to connect to. Internet Access is a connection to the Internet. Unlimited Internet Access means that your Internet Access (your connection) is not "time" limited. You cannot interpret it to mean "Unlimited Bandwidth" since clearly all bandwidth is limited.
To an ISP, bandwidth is volume - not speed. That is because ISP's are charged by the Internet backbone providers for the maximum volume that their connection to the Internet is capable of handling. That rate varies between $150-300 per month per Megabit/sec. If that sounds like speed to you, just multiply it times the number of seconds in a month. $20 = approximately 21 GigaBytes download.
If you use more bandwidth than you are paying the ISP for at the ISP's cost, expect them to take action because they would save money (increase profits) by kicking your butt out the door.