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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."
It has very nice titling on it: 'Notice of Acceptable Use Policy Violations'
Look through their AUP and see if what you are doing is indeed a violation. I had a warning via email several months back from my (cable) ISP which claimed I was using "above average" amounts of bandwidth even though they advertised "unlimited" when I signed up years back. I replied to the supplied human-read address saying basically "An average is made of of highs and lows, right?" to which I never had a reply or a warning since. That may just be coincidence but I do generate a fair amount of traffic...
Trolling is a art,
if you have unlimited bandwidth in your contract, you should fax them a copy and stick it to them.
you got a contract when you signed up for service.. if it fails to specify a bandwidth limitation, this is a scare tactic and nothing more..
Get a torrent client that lets you limit the speed and users, then you can still help but regulate it.
They think you're a spammer? That's ridiculous of them. I would think it wouldn't be too hard to see if you're sending mail or actual packets. As far as usage, I personally am all for setting throttles. If they can't afford to have you downloading constantly at the maximum speed you're paying for, then they need to scale back. Some people (like myself) are using their broadband as their media connection; as in I watch a lot of streaming broadcasts. Don't set a limit on how many GB of data transfer you can have per month (like I noticed Comcast doing recently). Just do the math and set the throttle. It's that simple.
Damon,
http://actionPlant.com
You could ask them how much it would cost to get
service with no cap. If you can't afford the service with no cap, then comply with the agreement that you have made with your provider.
I know it's unpopular with the SlashdotGroupThink, but read the agreements you make and DON'T make them if they're bad. If you do make agreements that are leagally binding, then prepare to have your service cut.
It's nice you are sharing legal software with others. Kudos to you. But don't expect them to beleive this is nothing illegal, and don't expect them to allow you to pay $49.95 or whatever for 100 times the average. I'm sure if you were 2 or 3 probably even 10 times the average, you'd be ok, because, after all it's an average. But when one or two people are sending that much traffic over their network, it's raising their cost, and eating into everyone's pocket, because the only way to recover would be to raise all subscribers prices.
If you have another choice for a provider, check their AUP. If not, either accept the terms of the AUP and not leave Bittorrent open for the whole month, or go back to dailup.
Remember, you don't have a right to broadband, so use it wisely.
"This amp is special, see all the knobs go up to 11, that means it is one louder than other amps"
If they're laying this on you without any prior warning or detail in the AUP, then it's time to tell them to kindly fuck themselves with the nearest sharpened object. A lot of ISPs are basically saying one thing in their promotional material, and then offering something different once you're on board.
If they're saying "1.5/384" and not mentioning caps, then they owe you "1.5/384" and if they don't deliver that, then they owe you a refund. If they hold out with the demand and claim to be holding you to a service contract, you can probably drag them over the coals for breach of said contract.
(Yes, I read the docs for tc, and I'd love to have an HTB shaper instead of the standard qdisc one I use, but I'm too busy to spend that much time for the small advantages a truly custom firewall box would offer.)
Possible, but keeping a Fedora Core bittorrent open since it came out is quite sufficient to explain the warning.
I have a question for people who get these messages: What services are you using all of the bandwidth for? I know that I usually pass the two and three gigabyte limits many providers are enforcing with my cable modem, but mine is spread around all over the place-in other words, I'm not using P2P apps or downloading a whole lot of iso images via FTP. For those of you who are getting letters, what are you doing with the bandwidth, and how much of it are you using to download movies/software/music without paying for it?
This kinda makes sense until you look at the numbers more.
If you cut off the top 1% of your users and sample the remaining it will still look like you should cut off another 1% since they are now the top talkers.
For every porn maniac downloading gigs of porn you have a bunch of other users at the bottom 1% who check mail once a day and thats it.
You will always have a top 1% and a bottom 1% of users. This is just the same as dial-up and all you can eat buffets. If its advertised as unlimited it should be priced with this in mind.
If he told us the ISP then we could look up the ISP's AUP. More than likely it has a clause restricting usage and he doesn't want us to see that.
In other words, RTFAUP!
I used to run a FTP server on my home machine so that I'd be able to put my personal and work stuff on it, so I'd have a handy way of shuttling files back and forth between my home and work computers.
:P
Well, one day I found in my InBox a nice little email from Shaw (main ISP for cable modems in western Canada) complaining that I was currently using more bandwidth their business users, and "to keep things fair" please consider either switching over to a business payment plan, or to turn off all P2P programs (assuming I was warezing mp3's, no doubt). They said that I'd been downloading about 37GB and uploaded about 20GB.
Needless to say, I was quite flabbergasted. I quickly checked my FTP logs, and sure enough, there was a whole bunch of mysterious IP addresses who connected to my FTP server, and had been using it as a Warez Joint over the past couple of days. I quickly shut down the FTP server and moved over to an encryption-based system instead.
So that was one example where a bitch-fest from the ISP actually help me quickly shut down a problem
"download wisely" my ass. If they have some mysterious "limit" that they can choose at their whim without even telling you then I would tell them to go to hell.
Check this out:
1. My long distance carrier says I have to pay by the minute and I monitor my usage very carefully.
2. My local carrier says I can have unlimited time on the phone for a flat rate so I don't monitor the usage.
Your broadband carrier essentially promised you number 2 but is treating you like you've got number 1 and you're saying you're more than happy to LIMIT YOURSELF while they continue to imply to new customers that there's no limit.
You're a fool. Insist they give you a posted limit or use as much as you want. Don't limit yourself for their benefit unless they're willing to be straight with you about exactly what you're paying for.
TW
I am pretty confident in speculating that your service agreement (and that of most of the other folks complaining here) specifically prohibits running a server. If you're keeping BitTorrent going most all the time, you are basically running a server. Also, I would guess that a number of you are running honest-to-goodness servers of other sorts.
If I'm on the mark here, all the talk about your provider violating their terms of service is rather disingenuous.
#DeleteChrome
2. My local carrier says I can have unlimited time on the phone for a flat rate so I don't monitor the usage. Your broadband carrier essentially promised you number 2 but is treating you like you've got number 1 and you're saying you're more than happy to LIMIT YOURSELF while they continue to imply to new customers that there's no limit.
Not quite. Hook your modem up to #2. How much data can you transfer? A max of 56kbps. You get unlimited connection time, but the amount of data is capped at 56kbps. The same logic applies to "unlimited broadband". You have unlimited connect time, but the amount of data you can send is capped, although this time not by the technical limitations of the line (although you may be capped there as well) but an arbitrary limit set by the ISP to ensure the *average* user has enough bandwidth but still make boatloads of cash.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
When you buy bandwidth, its like you have at your disposal that whole bandwidth for the period you paid for. If you cant use that bandwidth, then you DONT have that bandwidth at your disposal.
An ISP buys a 100-mbit usage permanent connection with some backbone and resells it. They sell 1-mbit DSL connections to 300 customers (considering on the average, a customer uses his Internet for 8 hours a day). But the ISP realizes theres no shortage of people who will only use the connection for 1 hour a day but will pay for the full connection, so they figure, scare away the heavy users and keep the 1-hour users, and you can have 2400 customers. Now THATS profit.
The major problem is even those customers wont buy the service if you advertise 1 hour Internet per day, you HAVE to advertise unlimited high speed.
So what are they left with? Threaten the ones with P2P software and servers, block port 25 and 80, and use QoS to slow down the gamers. Tell them its all for security. Another possibility is to reset their connections after several hours and give them a new IP... the DHCP leases expire rediculously fast.
And of course, implement bandwidth caps, after sending out one email warnings. Then charge them up the wazoo. That sure beats getting more customers... just overcharge the current ones.
The Internet was cheaper mbit for mbit 4 years ago in Toronto. Rogers and Sympatico have paired up to royally screw the populations, and whats troubling, all those smaller ISPs have to buy their bandwidth from Bell, owner of Sympatico.
So my friends, as soon as this monopoly is broken, in any city or country, you can imagine the bandwidth costs just plummeting. Over time just like moores law, we get more cables laid, better cisco and Juniper routers installed, more chinese satellites launched, and more bandwidth available, so theres all the reason for the costs to come down in a smooth curve. Seeing Internet prices jacked up for 4 years straight means someones getting filthy rich, and as soon as that monopoly goes, competition will make it all that much cheap.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
As I have mentioned before... (Score:4, Interesting)
;))
by teamhasnoi (554944) on Thursday January 08, @02:19PM (#7918259)
due to some missed upgrade of my DSL modem, my download and upload speeds have been reversed. I u/l at 760 and d/l at 128.
Most people would be "HEY! THIS SUCKS! FIX IT!" to their ISP. I have decided to hold off for a bit.
I am often bittorrenting and VNC home from work - this speed has been only a boon for that stuff. Bittorrent never gave me the speeds I get now, and everyone on the other side is my new best friend. At work, I often have to upload giant inDesign files and hundreds of megs of photos. From work (with the normal speeds in place) such a task was estimated at 10+ hours. From home, it took an hour. Nice - less babysitting from me, and I get to go home early.
That said, I wonder why I *haven't* gotten a letter since my upload speed is beyond even the top level service they offer, and is often maxed out.
The nice thing is that this is their fault and not me 'hacking' it.
I wish this was a 'feature' that I could choose on a web interface: "Choose 760dl/128up or 128dl/760up".
This is little more than effectively giving you 760/760, but making it inconvenient to enable. It's also not practical from the ISP's standpoint because its easy to abuse, especially with some simple scripts.
What would make more practical sense is to have this as an option per account, which would make the ISPs happy and the customer happy. I can buy an account which my intent is to only host something, so I'll buy 760 ul but 128 dl. That way I can run a machine where I know I'm pushing more info than I'm pulling, like a webserver (or your local warez/pr0n site
What would truly make a customer happy would be 3.0 up and downstream for only 19.95 a month, but I'm working within the parameters that the ISP has limited people to.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
If you cut off the top 1% of your users and sample the remaining it will still look like you should cut off another 1% since they are now the top talkers.
I think the original poster is saying the ISP is correct to trim the unprofitable customers, not that you should constantly be trimming your top 1%. If you're running a software company and one of your clients is constantly tying up the free tech support line, you might think twice about continuing their contract...
It's a little funny because this turns normal marketing tactics on its head. The 80/20 rule of marketing is that 20% of your customers will require 80% of your volume. This is probably roughly accurate with cable modem service. Normally, companies kill to acquire these 20% (high value customers). However, when you're operating in a fixed fee structure, these are your worst customers and (if they cost more than their incremental revenue) they should be moved out of your franchise.
The problem with providing the carte blanche of true unlimited service is kind of infamous: Proper pricing creates a death spiral. If you raise prices to compensate for increased usage, the only folks left will be the bandwidth hogs. You'll then need to raise your prices even more, but then only the worst offenders will be left. Health Insurance works the exact same way. If prices are very high, only the sickest (most expensive customers) will remain on a plan because the price is still advantageous for them. This in turn makes cost of coverage higher. and so on...
Purchase a business-grade account.
That's what I did. They start at just over $100/month from most carriers.
Really, if you're sucking up 300kb/s upstream and downstream every single second of the day, you're transferring a terabit per month. If you think that's only worth $49.95, methinks thou doth protest too much. I mean, really, a 155Mbps OC-3 costs, what, $30k/month? That would support roughly 500 people with a sustained suck of 300kbps. That's about $60 each, meaning your ISP would lose about $5,000 for every 500 users who think they should only pay $0.03/Gb/month. Come on. THREE CENTS Gigabit? Regardless of if they say "unlimited," try to be real here.
You can get a 384kbps synchronous line with a service level agreement from Covad for like $160/month. That's 2Tb/month for $160 or roughly 12Gb/$1 or EIGHT CENTS per gigabit. Oh, the pain, the pain.
Think of how many WinMX/Gnutella/Kazaa users are out there before you think "but I'm an ubergeek, I'm the exception not the rule." Everytime you're using a WiFi hotspot and feel like you're on a 300bps analog modem because there are fifteen !#^%!ing Kazaa idiots sucking up the entire outbound line, just multiply that over your ISP. When you're done, write the stinking $160 check and get over it.
Unlimited does not mean 'Unlimited Bandwidth', it means your account is not metered by time.
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.
Uh, I think the term "unlimited" existed elsewhere before ISPs dreamt up flat rate tarriffs. It's just that, in many cases, their definition of "unlimited" is actually the opposite of the one that you'll find in a dictionary.
My personal experiences with "unlimited" tarriffs has been mixed. British Telecom decided that unlimited didn't mean unlimited at all and cut me (and thousands of others like me) off without so much as a thank you, despite being happy to profit from me when I paid through the teeth for metered bandwidth (and by the teeth, I mean a phone bill that had in excess of 150 pounds, ~$250, of ISP related-calls every two months). However, when I switched to Freeserve, I had no such problems.
BT's definition of "unlimited" has changed at least twice while I was a subscriber, and no doubt it has changed even more since (always to the detriment of the paying customer). Freeserve's hasn't.
Currently, I don't use either company's services, because I'm a cable subscriber, but if I'm ever asked for an ISP recommendation I tell people to go to Freeserve (which is also one of the less expensive ISPs) and avoid BT like the plague. If they ask me why, I tell them why.
But I digress. "Unlimited" means "unlimited". If ISPs want to say "any time" they should use "any time", rather than trying to co-opt "unlimited" into meaning "any time". At best, this practice is misleading. At worst, it's decitful and fraudulent.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Common carrier status is one of the most powerful legal protections available to ISPs but it's a fragile thing -- if it turns out that they're making service decisions about whose traffic to carry based on their assessment of lawful (but possibly distasteful) content they can lose that protection entirely.
They don't have to respect your freedom of speech, just like a mall who's owner refuses to allow protesters inside. You don't like it, you're free to find an ISP that does provide an acceptable-to-you AUP...but there's nothing in the Constitution that says your ISP has to let you do whatever you want.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
I used to run an ISP, and while it was dialup, we had a similar issue with customers staying online all the time. In this case the resource was the phone line and modem. We solved this by contacting those users and offering them a "dedicated" dialup at effectively our cost for the resources (came to something like $49 a month including the phone line, amortized equipment cost, etc). In exchange, we would also provide them with a dedicated IP and DNS name so that they could use the connection as they pleased. Most of the users had no problems with this, and they got something out of it themselves.
In a similar light, the cable ISP's could offer an alternative plan where they would cap the bandwidth used during peak times for "heavy" customers. Most bandwidth charges to such companies is based on the 95th percentile for bandwidth, so as long as you arn't helping push the bandwidth charge up for them, it's effectively free.
The real trick to this is that from a business perspective, they shouldn't care if you use lots of bandwidth during low use times, only if you cause additional expenses for them.
I know the rules for one ISP that provides "free traffic as long as it doesn't conflict with other terms". This very unprecise definition of "free traffic" should be understood like this:
- They allow some customers to use extreme amounts of traffic compared to how much they pay. The turnover for some customers is as low as $1 per 1000 GByte bandwidth (!).
- A lot of the bandwidth is free, because they are peering with other ISPs, so the customers can actually use enormous amounts of bandwidth and it doesn't cost them anything.
- They don't want to kick customers because of bandwidth usage, because it gives a bad reputation.
- Only those customers that use big amounts of bandwidth that costs them money will get warnings and eventually kicked.
- It differs a lot from market to market (country to country), how many customers an ISP can kick without getting a bad reputation. It also differs, how much bandwidth costs - for instance, bandwidth is much more expensive in Germany than in Sweden and Denmark.
I believe that many other ISPs think the same way. This means that:
- Things like BitTorrent might be more acceptable to ISPs, if more bandwidth stays within the same ISP or to geographically close ISPs which have a higher probability of peering with the user's ISP.
- Since users don't know who their ISPs do free peering with, it can be very difficult to determine, what amount of bandwidth that the ISP doesn't like.
The reason they're very uneasy about telling people where the "cap point" is set is because if they relased that number or formula, people would set their systems to use slightly less than the limit, and the ISP would still get swamped and have to lower the limit.
It may suck if you're one of the 50 or 100 people, but if you look at it abstractly, there's nothing else [than kicking out a few high-bandwidth users] an ISP can possibl[y] do.
That is absolutely not true.
They can configure their equipment so that, during usage peaks, the heavy user's connection is throttled down to a "fair share" of the currnet bandwidth usage.
(Note that I'm talking about an instintaneous throttling, not a daemon that reconfigures his modem on an hourly basis.)
If the uplink can handle, say, 45 mbps and 45 users are all transferring flat-out, he should get 1 mbps throughput - as should the other 44.
And it is the ISP's job - not the customer's - to configure their equipment so that this happens - and beat on their vendor (or find another) if the equipment can't do it.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I understand your concerns as an ISP, but hear my argument as a customer. As a customer, I don't want to cause you to go out of business but I also want to be able to use a fair share of bandwidth. You're right that most customers want fast speed and low usage. But as a "high bandwidth user" myself, I find throughput capping and extra charges for overuse offensive.
However, I think a compromise is in order. I think that 10gb per month is WAY too low. That averages out to about 3 or 4 kilobytes per second at 100% connection saturation, which, by the way, I almost always have 100% saturation on my connection.
50gb per month is a more acceptable throughput limit. But even still, at maximum speeds on a cable connection I can transfer hundreds of gigs a month at 100% saturation.
The compromise I speak of is an opt-in speed capping for users who think they're going to use 50gb per month. At 50gb per month, your connection could be capped at 20kps and you will exactly reach 50gb per month at 100% saturation, give or take a gig.
Granted this system will not solve all problems, but I could easily live with 20kps cap if I was allowed to use it at 100% saturation with no questions asked. If it were applied to an adaptave bandwidth allocating program, perhaps my connection could start out at 20kps but as time goes on, if I do not use the bandwidth, my speed is gradually increased so that can always match 50gb per month each month. (Or perhaps never match it if the connection goes majorly unused.)
Under this compromise, power users get their bandwidth at acceptable levels without nazi-like fines for exceeding limits, and ISP still profits due to the fact that most users will never approach this limit.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Dropping those who use more than 100x the median usage will not result in losing either a fixed number or percentage. It will eventually truncate the curve, however.
And when you truncate the curve, you lower the median. The median is the middle value in a distribution, above and below which lie an equal number of values. Take some of the values away at the top side and the median shifts down.
I suspect typical residential bandwidth usage patterns follow a Poisson distribution shaped curve-- and that's probably what the ISP is expecting.
I would not expect that at all. There are sizeable groups of people at each end of the curve. There are many customers who only use their broadband to check e-mail every other day. What's that use? Maybe a meg per month? At the other end, you will have lots of users who do filesharing, ISO downloads, Bittorrent, etc. I think that you would find that the usage curve would have significant up-ticks at each end.
Of course, as available bandwidth increases, more applications will arise, and more people will want high bandwidth-- which is good for those who sell it. On the other hand, the more applications, the more throughput the individual people using the bandwidth will want-- which is bad.
Right. Broadband companies want to entice people with streaming video and "unlimited" Internet access then punish those who do anything more than moderate surfing.
This story is pointing out something that I've been saying for months: BitTorrent is going to break the usage models at many ISPs, who structure everything for a much higher download than upload rate. Look at what's happening in the gaming industry. You don't download 50MB patches and demos from the game companies' servers. You download them from various subscription and ad-supported servers. What happens when those companies start using BitTorrent links? What happens when the movie studios go to a BitTorrent style of P2P downloading of movie trailers? Broadband companies are not going to be able to keep customers if they tell them that they can't download the movie trailer that they want, can't get the patch for their game, because of something as obscure as what protocol is used for the download.
Not overselling bandwidth would be the stupidest thing any ISP ever did.
About as stupid as building a 200-lane freeway between my 200-house subdivision and the mall.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
How does shit like this get modded up to +5? This completely misses the point.
- Every ISP contract on the face of the earth has a provision that the ISP can refuse service to anyone at any time for any reason. If you try to challenge them on their policy they will cancel your account, and that will be the end of that. There is zero way that you can compel them to give you service.
- Every ISP contract on the face of the earth has language that refers to behavior that is disruptive to the system. Using hundreds of times more than the average is definitely disruptive, in that it either results in slower speeds for everyone when the uplink is saturated, or it results in the purchase of more uplink bandwidth. Either of those could easily be categorized as "disruptive."
- Every ISP contract on the face of the earth has language that allows them to continually update the terms as they see fit. In fact just about every utility does this: your power company, cable TV company, telephone company, etc. No utility with half a brain would lock themselves into having to provide service the terms of which they cannot control.
Yes, it might suck that they advertise their connection as "unlimited." But that refers to the fact that it's always on, not that you can do whatever you want. I'm sorry if you didn't realize that when you signed up, but you do now, so deal with it. And if you neglected to read your contract that's hardly their fault. And, here's the important thing: even if they don't mention a cap at all, they can still refuse service to you.
So lets just put to rest this notion that somehow an ISP contract gives you jack shit in terms of rights, or that you would be able to "fight them" in any meaningful way. It's just not possible. If you're so naive that you think "unlimited" means you can do something that's completely disruptive to everyone else, then you should really start reading the fine print next time.
If you really want to leech like mad, why don't you go price a T1? Hey, you can saturate that puppy 24x7 and no one will nag you about bandwidth. Oh, wait, that costs four or six times as much as you're paying now? Oooohhh, well I'm so sorry, but that's how the world works. Either you put up with shitty bandwidth caps and pay $40 a month, or step up to the plate and pay what that bandwidth ACTUALLY COSTS if you insist on using as if it were a free, unlimited resource.
After all, I pay for 256/256, and if they do not want to deliver, there are plenty other providers which will be happy to make that sale to me.
If they make a deal and regret it, fair enough, there is plenty of competition. But "unacceptable use"? If they only meant to sell me 128/128 they should have said so from the beginning.
Ditch them and get someone else.
Am I the only one who thinks that if the isp can't produce numbers to back up that kind of claim, it makes the claim invalid? How can you know you're above the national median if:
1) you don't know what the median is?
2) you don't have an accurate picture of your usage?