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How Much Broadband Usage is Too Much?
Semprini2k asks: "I just came home from work to find a letter waiting in the old snail mail box from my Broadband ISP. It has very nice titling on it: 'Notice of Acceptable Use Policy Violations' and also has an 'Abuse Ticket Number' associated with it. Has anyone else received these from their Broadband ISPs lately? Are they being overly cautious or are they working towards throwing off any users who might possible tax their network? I am trying not to be paranoid about this, but what are other people seeing and/or doing in this situation?" The "proper" bandwidth is liable to vary by region, but it would be interesting to note usage patters of people who are getting these letters versus those who aren't.
I called their toll-free number to inquire whether I could get access to their data. No, I cannot. All I can do is try to use less bandwidth and hope I do not see any more of these letters. 2 more and my service will be terminated."
"'Oh, no!' I think to myself, 'They think I'm a spammer!!!' But further reading sheds more light on the subject:
According to our aggregate bandwidth usage records, during December 2003 your [...ISP...] account exceeded [ISP's] bandwidth usage limitations. The activity associated with your account was more than 100 times the national median. This level of activity violates [ISP's] AUP."I freely admit to using a lot of bandwidth. From the day Fedora Core was released via BitTorrent I have kept an active BitTorrent session going to help others get it too. So I find this a bit of a concern.
I called their toll-free number to inquire whether I could get access to their data. No, I cannot. All I can do is try to use less bandwidth and hope I do not see any more of these letters. 2 more and my service will be terminated."
and the hacker is using a lot of bandwidth to relay spam or something
"Traffic Consumption Allowances: Adelphia has the right to
This means they can say at anytime you are downloading too much, without even telling you how much is too much. They don't need to give you any download cap.monitor, measure and report bandwidth consumption by You. Adelphia
reserves the right to establish, modify and/or enforce consumption
allowances at any time now or in the future, with or without notice, and
apply a surcharge for excess usage."
I haven't received a letter yet but I have friends who did... people might want to start thinking about limiting their download, especially with the very popular dvdr newsgroups. It does take 5 GIGs of download per movie. You can easily let newsbin download at 300k/s 24/7.
Download wisely...
It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well. - Rene Descartes (1637)
When you signed up there should have been a terms of service agreement. If there's nothing stated about the bandwidth limit then you have nothing to worry about. I live in BC and had the same thing from my ISP. I asked them to show me the document that stated what the limits were. They said they didn't have anything in print so I told them they didn't have a leg to stand on. Cut me off and I'll take you to court.
The GEEK shall inherit the earth...
How about
btdownloadcurses --max_upload_rate ($something more reasonable)?
It has happened a couple of times now where my cable modem has just stopped working, when I give TW a call they say it is because I have downloaded an excessive amount of data and should stop, because I was most likely downloading music, which I wasn't I was downloading massive waveforms from work. I asked what acceptable was, they responding with Road Runner is inteneded to give people constant access to email and regular webpages. streaming media and mp3's should not be downloaded with roadrunner. Go figure, broadband is for the stuff a modem can get in seconds.
Here are some tidbits from their stuff:
Yes comcast is doing this all over, I can download at 350K/sec now up from about 250.
Comcast still sends these warnings out. They are trying to get more customers, they just want customers that dont use it much. From what I understand the policy and warnings seem to happen more in certain areas though.
Here are some snippets from Comcast's AUP. Say farewell to free speech:
(ii) post, store, send, transmit, or disseminate any information or material which a reasonable person could deem to be objectionable, offensive, indecent, pornographic, harassing, threatening, embarrassing, distressing, vulgar, hateful, racially or ethnically offensive, or otherwise inappropriate, regardless of whether this material or its dissemination is unlawful;
>>If we don't like you or your opinions, we can pull the plug.
You must ensure that your activity (including, but not limited to, use made by you or others of any Personal Web Features) does not improperly restrict, inhibit, or degrade any other user's use of the Service, nor represent (in the sole judgment of Comcast) an unusually large burden on the network.
>>BitTorrent? You're one of those hackerz aren't you? *Snip*
Full link is here:
http://www.comcast.net/terms/use.jsp
Why not just tell Bittorrent to stop using as much bandwidth? There are many torrent clients out there that let you controll the amount of upload and download traffic you allow. I use BT++ myself and have had no issues at all.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Ok, here is the deal. Comcast has been sending these out over the last few months. There are several HUGE discussions ongoing right now at dslrating.com in these forums. (sorry, I don't have the time to find and link to them). Basically the jist has been that the people they are sending these out to are ones that do not have an alternative source for broadband (or at least a "competitive source"). This is the only real trend that people have been able to discover. The other trend is that unless you SEVERLY DECREASE your downloads (i.e. basically pull out the plug from your connection for the next 3 weeks for 24 hours a day), you will most likely be terminated and/or forced to pay an additional fee and deal with their support people (well not really the support people but their violations people). The main complaint is that they are advertizing as unlimited downloads, when in fact they mean "read your email and browse to cnn.com, and/or msnbc.com, but if you do anything else with your bandwidth you will be violating the TOS". But like I said, it seems to be targeted at areas that do not have alternatives like DSL or other cable modem broadband services (because they would definitly lose their customers in those areas).
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
well... i think what's most interesting about it is that they use the "median"... now guys, remember your statistics... there are 3 kinds of an "average" value; the mean, the mode, and the median... the mean is essentially what is commonly understood as an average, which is the sum of values in a distribution divided by the number of values, then there comes the mode, which is the value that occurs the most in a distribution, and then there's the median, which is simply the middle value in a distribution... the median is the least useful expression of an average and is rarely used except in certain situation because, say out of a 100 values you have 98 * 5, 1 * 3 and 1 * 1, this will leave you with a median of 3!... now that'd leave you with a distribution in which 98% of values are above average!!! (average as defined by the median)...
After that, you can go further and use the raw snmp tools to write perl scripts which do pretty graphing or logging or whatever. In my case, with a InsightBB cable modem, these two commands display the total number of bytes in and out:
snmpget 149.112.50.65 ihkstk88 interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifOutOctets.4
(where "ihkstk88" is insightbb's community string, 149.112.50.65 is the hard-coded internal IP that my cable modem responds to)
The term was created when ISPs started to charge flat rate monthly prices instead of the traditional 'by the minute' model that the three big players, AOL, Compuserve, and Prodidy were using at the time.
I think hey could have chose a better term but they didn't.
- Virus, worm, or trojan (malware).
- File sharing software set up with default configuration (thereby becoming a server to the world, usually without knowing it).
- Genuine heavy usage.
When we realize someone is using a ton of bandwidth, we give them a call and see if they know it. About 60% of the time, it has been an infected computer. We get them to run the Symantec cleanup tools, and suddenly their usage drops to invisibility like most other normal customers. Another ~40% have set up a music-swapping program and don't realize they are sending out files all the time. ONE customer turned out to be downloading music all the time. When he saw his usage stats, he upgraded his account to commercial level and everybody was happy.Among normal users, even gamers and teenage kids whose usage is intermittently high don't reach the limit. Gamers run the graph up briefly, and a download of an ISO runs it up. These people know more or less what they're doing, and are not a problem. It's the clueless being used by outsiders that are the problem, in our experience.
Speakeasy doesn't say 'unlimited', they sell you bandwidth, and you can do whatever you want with it. Run servers, do VPN, run Bittorrent 24/7 -- it's all good. It's your bandwidth, you paid for it. As long as it's legal and isn't disruptive to other users, Speakeasy is happy to have you as a customer. (ie, you can't DOS people, spam, or scan/attack networks you don't own/manage, but pretty much anything else goes.)
They're linux-friendly, can do either DHCP or static IPs, have good latency, essentially zero packet loss, and they're happy to HELP YOU share your network connection with your neighbors.
As far as I'm concerned, Speakeasy should be considered the Gold Standard in ISPs. Obviously, they can't reach everyplace cable does, but if you can get Speakeasy and aren't, you may be doing yourself a disservice. Yes, they're probably a little more expensive than your current provider, and you probably won't be able to download as fast as you sometimes can on cable, but you will always get the bandwidth you were promised, you'll get low latency, good support (although the web-based support is pretty slow about responding.... call them if you're in a hurry), and best of all, you'll never get The Letter.
Some local providers can be great, too. Sonic.net in Northern California was excellent when I was there five years ago, and my brother says they're still great now. But national providers, by and large, suck rocks.
BTW, my relationship with Speakeasy is strictly 'I send you money, you give me bandwidth.' Other than that, I'm not affiliated with them. I'm just a very happy customer.
Actually, the median in your example would be 5.
m l
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/StatisticalMedian.ht
Most broadband isp's sell their home service packages as a "best effort" service, where they will try to meet that speed, but they won't guarentee it. If you want guarentees you're going to have pay alot more money, just like they do. SLA's aren't for $30 a month plans.
"I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it." -Voltaire
It's worse than you think. I'm a Cox customer, and according to their revised AUP (not that I had to sign anywhere to accept the new rules) the customers aren't even allowed to use on average 56k6 modem speed over a month! If you calculate, you'll find that you have to throttle your connection to around 3kB/s to not exceed their limits for what's "abuse". Oh, and they don't have any CIR or guaranteed minimum speed. They sell the service on the *peak* speed, which you can't use a fraction of for any length of time.
They also block various ports, sometimes even both ways (which means they'll randomly block ports needed for legitimate return traffic).
This is sold as "High Speed Internet", and costs you $50 per month ($40 if you also purchase other services from them).
It's not high speed, and it's not Internet. Some legislation is needed, because this is slipping out of control. The cable companies clearly abuse the near monopoly they have in many market areas.
--
*Art
I don't think that the cable companies care as much about how much bandwidth we are useing, as they do about how other users are being effected by the bandwidth we use. We have to remember that cable (unlike DSL) is a shared resoure, and our useage effects others around us.
I have Cox high speed internet. In my neighborhood, I am one of only 6 people on the cable ring with high speed cable internet (most of my neighbors with broadband either have DSL or use the other cable provider in town, who until last week offered twice the speed as Cox. I live in apt where the other cable co does not service, and DSL is 44.5 feet away...) However, because there are so few other internet users on my ring, I can use as much bandwith as I want without my use really effect any one else on the local ring. For the last 3 months I used well over 40GB of traffic, no letters of complaint, no calls, nothing.
I have a few friends who live on the other side of town that get letters for using over 20GB/month. One of them is a comercial account that specifies they don't have a limit, but they get letters anyways. Their local ring is fairly saturated, and we know neighbors on the ring are complaining of slow speeds. It seems that after every batch of complaints that they take action. YMMV.
Thanks to all the other posters who corrected what he said about the median. Frankly, the median is one of the most useful measures of 'average' in that it disregards extreme cases on either end. If you take Joe Typical broadband customer and find out what he uses, the median is probably it. Where it isn't as useful is if you don't have a roughly normal distribution, but instead have bimodal or something. For instance if there were a bunch of high end users and a bunch of low end ones, as in:
50*100, 200*95, 50*90, 1*30, 100*15, 100*10, 100*5
In the above case, the median is 30, but that really doesn't tell you much. However, in a normalish distribution you would find the median to be close to a mean calculated without outliers. Let's face it though, without knowing what the distribution looks like, the median isn't very useful, neither is the mode or mean. If we had all three, we might be in better shape, but still fairly in the dark.
I have to imagine that broadband usage is distributed fairly normally and that the median is a quite reasonable measure. It'd be much lower than most slashdotters use, but I'd guess most slashdotters wouldn't use more than a factor of 10 more.
I tend to agree with the ISP though, that if you're using enough bandwidth to satisfy 100 of their average customers, something needs to change. You should either be on a differant plan and pay more, the other customers should pay less, or you need to bring down the usage. Now, if they write bad contracts, feel free to exploit them. Otherwise, they should let you know how much is appropriate usage and ask you to stick to that more often than not. I also feel that if you have to part ways with them, you shouldn't have to pay any "get out of the contract" fees as by leaving you are already doing them a favor.
This is a national effort by Comcast to raise their rated speed from 1.5 Mbps to 3 Mbps downstreams. In communicating with my own dedicated server at a fast hosting company, I've actually had sustained transfers at 3.75 Mbps. They are really rolling out a good upgraded network.
First off - the internet content is clearly dropping because the telecomunications uindustry has found a way to sit on the golden egg and squash it.
Second - it is quite clear that the telecommunications carrier technology is about as computerized as any other aspect of the tech revolution and hense they enjoy the same cost reductions as everyone else. The exception is that these cost reductions are generally not passed on to the customers.
If you look here: Interconnection, Peering, and Settlements You can read a very good analysis of one aspect of the industry.
The problem is that peering arrangements are "negotiated" and the flip side of this is that the organisation with the most power is able to generally impose ineterconnection fees on smaller organisations. This means that your ISP has to pay for bandwidth you use with no regard whatsoever to the cost of providing the capacity or for that matter Who is providing a service to whom
Quoting from the paper: This assertion of role reversal is perhaps most significant when the generic interconnection environment is one of a zero sum financial settlement, in which the successful assertion by a client of a change from client to peer status results in the dropping of client service revenue without any net change in the cost base of the provider's operation. The party making the successful assertion of peer interconnection sees the opposite, with an immediate drop in the cost of the ISP operation with no net revenue change. "
This means that small fish always pay big fish. It was pointed out in an Australia study that when the client of a small ISP sends an email to the client of a large ISP, that the small ISP pays the large ISP for the data transfer. When the client of the large ISP reply to the email then the small ISP pays again for the delivery. At the time this was used to evaluate a review of Australian Perring arrangments. I have not heard the results.
Now - as it applies to you - it means that even though a fiber optic line for instance can easily carry say 100 mb/sec with the use of two allied telesyn ethernet to fiber line drives which cost under $1000 bux and will drive for over 75 km... and even though the cost of 6 pair overhead fibre cable for instance is only about 25% more than copper - and costs less than $1.50 per foot - that the telecomunications company who installs it feels they should be able to charge upwards of $50,000 bux per month for the rent of each "circuit". This is what your ISP faces. Wholesale usary charges.
I calculated a while back that 100baseT is about 2/3 of a T3 (155mb/sec) and on a short haul dedicated circuit to connect our servers for instance to the local backbone - the local telco would recover their total capital outlay in less than a month. Of course - once the data from our servers is in their backbone they can ship it to their customers about as easily as if they had obtained that data from the POP's that connect into the US backbone.
The simple matter is that if we for instance choose to co-locate in the US that our local telcos will be viewed as "customers" of the larger USA carries and be expected to pay very heafty fees to connect via the POP's (Point of Presence - IE a router). On the other hand any content their customer base obtains locally from our servers results in us paying them instead of them paying the USA. So they really try to put the screws on and their "bandwidth charges" would make you choke.
What you are looking at is the consequence of a system that is totally broken and not in anyone's interests... not even the biggest carriers. The reason it is not in the biggest carriers interest is that in order to be the biggest carrier they have to overbuild and take on massive debt that they cannot in many cases handle. This is why PSINET for instance didn't make it.
So we have stupid risks to be the biggest shark and everyo
I had a similar problem in a hotel with High Speed Internet. I had left my machine downloading Red Hat ISO's and when I returned my connection no longer worked. Called tech support and was told that I had been disconnected due to violation of their AUP. It took a lot of pushing to find out that my violation was excessive bandwith usage. I this point a had them fax me their AUP and highlight the portion which I violated. The AUP I received had no mention of excessive bandwith usage. The highlighted section was something along the lines of "anything that results in decreased quality of service for other users".
You're confusing your units. What they're advertizing is actually 3Mbps - that's 3 megabits per second. (I live in TWC territory, too, and I happen to know one of the RR head-end techs. It's 3Mbps for residential service) Translated into megabytes, that's about 384 kilobits per second. Most programs that show you download speeds (like IE's download window) will give you a reading in bytes, whether that's kilo- mega- or giga-. It's a simple formula, really:
1 byte = 8 bits
Therefore:
1 megabyte = 8 megabits
See the pattern?
A 1 Mbps connection (note, the small "b" indicates bits, not bytes) is a transfer of 1/8th megabyte per second, or 128 kilobytes per second (1024 / 8 = 128)
Extrapolation for additional speeds will be left as an exercise to the reader/previous poster.
My sources are unreliable, but their information is fascinating. -- Ashleigh Brilliant
No...our contract is fine, and better than anyone else is offering us.
Our bandwidth also costs us about a third of what it did 5 years ago. But, since we are in a relatively sparsely-populated area in the midwest, bandwidth does cost a *lot* more here than it does in big metro areas, or on the east or west coast.
And that's not the only thing that makes this market such a bitch for us...our LEC charges us $37.50/month for line provisioning on each 768/128 circuit. So...after we charge $54.99/month (yeah, go ahead and gasp at the outrageous expense) we get a whopping $17.49/month. Of this, we liberally figure we make an average of $1 profit.
Maybe this market is making ISP's rich someplace, but it sure as hell ain't here.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
These clauses may not be enforceable for a couple of reasons. First, there is no consideration to the modification of the contract on your part. Without consideration of both parties, it is not a legally enforceable promise (save a few exceptions). Second, if it fundamentally alters the contract, it can be considered a "fundamental breach", and is equally unenforceable, and you may have a case for their breach. However the remedies for these breaches may be as simple and useless as simply breaking your contract. However, they may be very complex and involve years of compensation, such as how people are now suing Canada Post for the $9.95 internet for life, expecting $23 per month in compensation for lost service.