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.

"'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."

Comments

Read their AUP

[grub]

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...

Re:Read their AUP

[Exitthree]

By definition, half of their customers are using above median bandwidth. In a case with an average, one user using 10 GBs of bandwidth and nine users using 1 GB of bandwidth, the average is 1.9 GB/user. One user is above average, and the rest are below.

Re:Read their AUP

[grub]

...we could get a court ruling that invalidated those obnoxious "we can change any facet of this agreement at any time" clauses...

Those things are no more than a glorified bait & switch put to paper.

When broadband was rolling out everyone was advertising as 'always on' and 'unlimited'. Well, they signed up millions of people after which they decide to change the rules. A lot of these ISPs keep their customers by means of inertia and little else.

Re:Read their AUP

[jusdisgi]

Ok...no problem. We won't oversell our ADSL bandwidth at all.

Now...about your bill. That 768/128 line is going to cost, oh...$300/month.

Oh, yes...and I really do work for a small ISP, and our cost for our outbound bandwidth really is $500/mbps.

Not overselling bandwidth would be the stupidest thing any ISP ever did. It would make it absolutely impossible to profit. This thing only works because at any given moment only 5% of our customers are downloading.

Re:Read their AUP

[Jerf]

In fact, a typical distribution is indeed exponential, so in real life many fewer then half their customers will be above average. The cited example is very close to reality.

The fallacy of course lies in the implicit idea that if you get rid of all of the "above average" customers, you won't still have "above average" customers. ;-)

Still, eliminating or significantly reducing the bandwidth used by as few as 50 or 100 people can significantly improve the performance of the system for many, many thousands of others. (Without going into details I will claim without evidence that I've seen the numbers in a real life example to back this up.) If those thousands of others are experiencing difficulties and complaining (and subsequently terminating service), guess who's gonna get it?

It may suck if you're one of the 50 or 100 people, but if you look at it abstractly, there's nothing else an ISP can possible do. Not even increase the bandwidth, since things like Gnutella and Bittorrent can grow their bandwidth use to match the expansion. Sooner or later, the top folks need to curb their use, and for better or for worse, the ISP folks will have to be the heavies.

FWIW, they don't necessarily enjoy it, it's just the way life is.

Re:Read their AUP

[override11]

The whole complaint isnt overselling, its the false advertising involved. If you have a bandwidth cap, or a transfer limit, speak up when I sign up so I know!

Time to get smart about your bandwidth...

[synth7]

... and set up a shaper on your ISP link that slows down your outbound BitTorrent traffic. Me, I use a SmoothWall box with a regular old Wondershaper script. Keeps my DMZ traffic in line (so it doesn't choke my isp link) and works well enough for a system that you don't have to twiddle the knobs on too much.

(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.)

Re:Maybe your machine's been hacked

[ihummel]

Possible, but keeping a Fedora Core bittorrent open since it came out is quite sufficient to explain the warning.

FTP servers

[Black Pete]

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.

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 :P

Re:Adelphia Bandwidth Caps and Newsgroups

[Total_Wimp]

"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