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Comcast Targets Internet "Abusers"
An anonymous reader writes "Here's a great Associated Press story on Comcast's invisible caps. The company has been threatening and then cutting off customers who 'abuse' their so-called 'unlimited' service by downloading too much. But Comcast won't reveal what the limits are. DSL Reports has been tracking this for a while, and it's good to see the mainstream press catch on."
Not sure how widely known this is, but Comcast is a Microsoft company. So, if you're wondering why they engage in senseless, draconian authoritarianism...now ya know why!
DSL has been berry berry goot to me. SO, if you have a choice do yourself a favor! Personally I use Earthlink DSL and they pretty much leave you to your own. I've been running websited, ftp, news. The only hurdle I haven't taken on is as of yet is getting sendmail working. The only port they block is 25. I send linux isos from work to my home ftp server and other large files on a frequent basis. My friends also download said those same iso's and in over a year and a half not a PEEP out of them about bandwidth hogging!
Quod scripsi, scripsi.
DSL is still not available in my area, but Qwest's prices are already $27 per month for a full blown DSL hookup.
if( $provider_caps_unlimited_service )
{
while( $providers_without_caps.length > 1 )
{
switch_providers($providers_without_caps[0]);
}
}
I run a small ISP, and I can put an end to all this speculation regarding the use of the word "unlimited" -- assuming anybody actually cares.
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.
It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well. - Rene Descartes (1637)
100 gigabytes a month? I get that from just reloading the /. homepage regularly, dammit!
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
When they come to you and say "you have been abusing your 'unlimited' download quota"? Do you ask them to define what 'unlimited' means? Or do you simply pack up and get another ISP?
I have that issue with my (dialup) isp, that the isp itself has an unlimited policy, but they forwarded me a nastygram that *they* recieved from their upstream provider during a month where I was downloading iso's heavily.
So, having other things higher on my to-do list, I let it go; but I'd like slashdots' opinion on how you handle it when "unlimited" means "unlimited up to a certain point"?
...would there be some way of starting up a coordinated project to find out these arbitrary limits? Would this be impractical? (It's possible that this would be trying to track a moving target.) Maybe it's not that important; it seems that Comcast is only going on rampages on P2P users whenever they're not making quite enough cash.
FloodMT: crapflood Movab
What's with the quotes around abusers? Are they all automatically the innocent good guys? Maybe those who are contacted about the caps should stop trading porn and warez all day long.
oh, thats easy its '|-----------------|' much.
They should do something about all those spammers using their service. Seems like about 20% of the spams I run through SpamCop resolve back to Comcast as the email source.
We accept there is no service-level agreement, we accept that we're lower on the food-chain than companies who pay a lot more for their bandwidth, but when a company makes a secret, arbitrary decision to cap you, it gets a bit hard to accept.
If it were advertised that you get 512/128, xx GB/month, with a charge of $Y for every 10GB over that, everyone would know where they were. This unfortunately will not happen while there is no regulation of how companies advertise their service. If company A says the above, and company B *does* the same, but doesn't say they do, then B will get more customers - all of whom will be pissed off when B caps them...
Regulation is the way to go.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
We have talked about this numerous times on Slashdot before (at least twice). I have posted that what really sucks about it is:
a) they took over from AT&T, raised prices, forced you to get CATV or pay even higher rates (42.95/45.95 with CATV or 60.95 or 63.95 without)
b) have little to no competition in the broadband market, especially at the speeds they offer (now 3mbs in most, if not all, areas)
c) now are able to control their userbase with "invisible" DOWNLOAD caps (not speed caps as some people are confused with) based on a "local average" whatever that is...
So, they get a bunch of customers becomming one of the largest ISPs and probably *the* largest broadband ISP. They don't like the fact that some users are actually USING their bandwith so they decide to make up near-random numbers so that they can cut you off when they want... Best of all, they can cut you off at any time because you don't have a "contract" with them that you can retaliate against. They can disconnect your service at any time for any reason leaving you with little options for broadband (nevermind reasonably priced connections).
I, for one, haven't had any problems with comcast. In fact, yesterday they upgraded (doubled) my transfer speeds. Now, for the same price, I can download files at 412kb/s instead of 212kb/s ;)
I've been using Comcast access for a little over a year now without a problem, but I have been worried about this lately. They claim to have "unlimited access", but when I called them recently asking what the cap is, the response was, "It's not a hard cap, but what we deem acceptable." Yikes.
It's interesting to look around at all the different internet services and how they're handling their own inflation. Simply stated, bandwidth used to be an abundant commodity and now it is not. When broadband internet services first started to take shape, many of them started advertising unlimited bandwidth at amazing speeds. The definition of just what unlimited means to these services in question seems to be diminishing as more and more people start taking full advantage of the unlimited nature of their service.
Originally, many internet services operated on a business model of overselling their internet service. Frequently, your local cable company advertises 250kps bandwidth for each of its customers. But they never originally expected a large percentage (if anyone at all) to saturate their entire allocation 90% to 100% of the time, which is becoming a growing trend among service users.
To put this in perspective, this would be like your local water utilities company advertising that they had more water than they actually did, assuming that their customers would only use a fraction of their allocation, then being run dry due to usage statistics higher than their estimates.
Unlike water, bandwidth is truly infinite. However, it costs money to generate. The companies which have oversold their service are beginning to realize that the customers who are simply using what they've been given is beginning to become dramatically less profitable. Internet services charge a flat rate for bandwidth whether it's used or not. When it goes unused, they profit ridiculously. When it goes used, they lose ridiculous amounts of money under the "oversell" business model.
To combat the profit loss yet still maintain the oversell business model, recently some ISPs have begun fining their customers insane amounts of money for consuming bandwidth beyond a certain point per month. The service remains normal until, for example, 10 gigabytes have been transferred, then extremely unfair additional charges are added to make up for the ISP's loss of profit due to the user's "excessive" use. This is clearly legally in violation of the original contract, but ISPs have had no trouble maintaining legality, due to the wonderful vagueness of most ISP terms of service documents which essentially state that they have the right to do whatever they want with their service regardless of how unfair it is to the customer. I could at length discuss the moral and legal implications of such contracts and why they should be made illegal, but that is for another time.
This kind of treatment to the customers who use bandwidth "excessively" is causing an outrage. Some ISPs even go so far as to accuse their customers using "excessive" bandwidth as being criminals because they could potentially be using all that bandwidth to distribute software, music, movies, etc illegally, which they think justifies their decision to invoke these limits, regardless of the fact that they have no proof to support such an accusation. As a result of these unfounded accusations and unfair limits on monthly throughput, many ISPs have received bad publicity.
The only internet services that are throwing fits over bandwidth like this are the ones that are using the oversell business model. Some ISPs, notably slower ones, are committed to the real definition of unlimited. Meaning 100% bandwidth saturation is acceptable because the ISP has enough money to pay for it. The oversell business model has the potential to become far more profitable, but at the risk of all of the above-described problems.
If I were running an ISP, I would likely never use such a business model. In contrast, the "sell-what-you-have" business model is profitable in exactly the same way, except you have to advertise a slower service. While your service may be capped at a lower speed, you can also advertise that you really do provide unlimited service even when your users are running at 100% saturation.
It seems that honesty will inevitably become the best po
I already ditched cable... late last year. With all the viruses Adelphia began dropping ping packets. That was the last straw. They also had a policy against VPNs and hosting services of any kind, and enforced the service block by not allowing inbound port 80 packets.
I pay more for DSL but I can do whatever I want with it. Speakeasy just rocks.
They used to be AT&T until mid 2003. I've never had any issues with them, and I've been downloading lots of files, all of the time.
I work from home, and download large (several gigs apiece) drawings and presentations on a daily basis. One of my jobs is to proof them, and then send them on to the appropriate folks. So I would upload the same amount of data, just about.
I'm not sure how I would know that Comcast has issues with me, other than getting a letter. My service is extremely reliable, and I've never had a download or upload fail...
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Nothing to do with obscure ISP bandwidth usage, but HOW is Joe Bloggs winders user know what their bandwidth usage is? In all honesty, 90% of people haven't a clue what that means - that's why they still execute attachments in outlook without a second thought. Nick
In the dslreports forums this has been a hot topic for a couple of months. If you want and interesting read, along with a lot of rants, check out this thread. I don't think I've seen such a long one before and it's the second one on the subject.
Tech News, Reviews and Tutorials
Can they DO that?
...they're policing their bandwidth by harassing legitmate customers with arbitrary, secret limits-- but they're doing practically nothing to stem the flow of spam from the machines of their moron customers who can't secure their Windows boxes.
"have little to no competition in the broadband"
I'll continue being happy with 10000/1000... thanks to Optimum Online.
I can understand why Comcast and other cable providers won't tell you what their caps are, though I don't necessarily agree with them. By not telling you, they're hoping the bandwidth hogs will voluntarily drastically curtail their usage. I kind of sympathize with the cable co's because they're essentially giving you the downstream of a T1+ for $30-$50 a month. Their whole business plan started to fall apart with the explosion of p2p. Before then, they had always just assumed that people would use their connections like good little 56k customers. Oh well.
That's why I really like DSL. If you've got a draconian cable provider, and are looking to switch, take a look at DSL. I have almost no downtime, and no flak for using as much bandwidth as I like. Even better, since unlike cable, you have your own link to the ISP, so they give you a pretty decent usenet account and don't care if you leech 10 GB/s a day from it. Check it out, cable crowd.
http://cltracker.net -- powerful craigslist multi-city search
In Comcast's view, people downloading more than 30 gigs/month are most likely downloading warez/illegal movies, etc.
Maybe this is their indirect way of dealing with this?
So you sign up for cable under the guise of an unlimited usage highband with connection and then your threatened for abusing that unlimited service. I think comcast has to break out the old dictionary. I'm pretty sure they don't know what the word abuse means.
Rogers Cable is doing the same thing as well, tech support gives us different soft cap numbers but no meaningful information other then we'll find out if we've passed it, no they can't tell us how much we've used, no they can't give us a guideline.
They claimed unlimited internet, now they claim that it was the always-on connection, not the number of bits. OK, now is that really so hard for them to state in the first place? They should be clear about the number of bits per day / week / month they'll haul on an account too and give users tools to keep track of that.
I wait for Comcast's letter?
Anyone in Colorado have this problem?
When travelling, it's ok if the airlines lose your emotional baggage.
I don't know how "random" the numbers are. The article says that some people transfer nearly one terabyte per month. If I transfered one terabyte in a month, I'd be shocked if I wasn't sent a letter. I hardly think the numbers are random.
more than a terabyte of data each month -- equal to about 1,000 gigabytes, or 1,000 copies of the Encyclopedia Britannica
I am confused. How many libraries of congress is that? Did britannica pay them for that plug?
The article says that some of the abusers who are getting these warnings/disconnections are moving upwards of 1 terrabyte of data/month. Thats more than "downloading a lot" and it seems to me that if someone is moving that much data they should probably look into something other than basic broadband service. 1 terrabyte/mo is about 414 kilobyte/sec which is a pretty insane rate to be downloading stuff. Clearly these guys are running servers and whatnot which is not what the residential accounts are for - I have zero sympathy for someone who uses more than 400k/sec of data and then gets disconected from a residential account.
1) If you have two ISPs, and yours just capped, there's only one uncapped left. So it should be >= 1, not > 1.
;)
2) The while should be replaced with an if. Otherwise you'll be stuck in that while loop.
Good points for geeky humor, but well... leave the implementation to the code monkeys
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
they are based on a local average... So if you live in a college-kid infested town you are likely to be in an area w/a higher average. If you live in an area of middle-aged to older-aged individuals who use the service for fast checks to yahoo and comcast.net then the average will be much lower.
The fact that they can't a) tell you how much you have downloaded, b) refuse to tell you what their # is, and c) don't think that they need to tell you is what makes it unfair.
If you are going to shut people off you need to give them a tool that tracks it, allow them to call up and ask a CSR for the current bandwith usage, and also know what the cap is.
I got Comcast cable and specifically asked the cable guy hooking it up what the bandwidth limit for each month was (being educated from a previous slashdot article :) He kinda blew it off with some answer to a question I didn't ask. I asked him a little later after he hooked it up and he told me that the only people that have ever given him a straight answer on that were the people at Avaya.
Sooooo, I'm not sure if that applies nation-wide or if that's just local -- but either way -- find out who ACTUALLY provides the bandwidth to Comcast and then ask THEM what the limit is...
Hope this helps.
Cablevision (OPTONLINE) Does the same thing. While OOL has great speed... They have the same "secret" cap policy, even though they advertise UNLIMITED access. Its lame. Cable in any form is over priced.
C'mon, 60 bucks for an internet-only subscription?! You're out of your mind.
I did manage to get the info about what constitutes a breakage of the caps policy when I called their tech support line...
After a quick call to their tech support line, the guy said that the following would flag you as excessive for a residential downloader. 8 gbytes downloads over 20 hours and/or downloading enough to cause problems for other people in the service area. He also said that it shouldn't raise a flag if it's something like 3 gbytes/day for a month. Also, they mostly instituted these policies as a way to make sure that no one person was hogging enough of the pipe to make other cable users connections slow.
"For years, I struggled with reality... but I'm happy to say I finally won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
forced you to get CATV or pay even higher rates (42.95/45.95 with CATV or 60.95 or 63.95 without)
I really don't see how this gets passed antitrust laws. I guess since they are a natural monopoly, that somehow makes them exampt??
Even as a Libertarian, I think local governments should own infrastructure and rent it out on a non-descriminatory basis. That way there can be a real free market for services, which is a very Libertarian thing.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Our ISP here had a charging metered cap on 2mbit, 8 and 10 mbit adsl, 2 weeks ago they removed it because they said "Our customers did not appreciate it". No more caps for metering. UNLIMITED, I did protest at theyre caps by dropping down to 512 kbps. It seems I was not alone in doing so.
:D So I and probably others downloaded like a whore (And I told them I was going to do so).
Vote, drop down and let them know why. the 512 was UNLIMIED
Holy shit, I made a lot of grammar, diction, and spelling mistakes in that message!
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
use your turn signal! you people act like it's divulging information to the enemy
I know from experience that potential clients will (almost) always go for the most optimistic quote not the most realistic quote.
Far too often, sales people *have* to lie to get contracts; because its the salesman that lies the best that wins the deal.
Human stupidity is such that they always seem to believe the most rosy-colored fantasies; "the cheque is in the mail", "big is beatiful" and "I won't cum in your mouth" to name but a few.
"unlimited bandwidth" is just a modern variation.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Snip! Emphasis mine. Sounds like Comcasts legal team broke into the nitrous oxide again.
Quack, quack.
A lot of dialup providers have always sold 'unlimited' dialup with the footnote that unlimited equates to a maximum of 12 hours a day and maximum connection time of 2-4 hours in a session.
I suggest charging a minimum fee for the connection itself and start charging more for the service used.
The phone companies (as much as we love/hate them) have a pretty good system worked out for $20/mo you get a local phone line that includes emergency access and whatnot.
ISP's could probably swing a connection for $20/mo with (oh I don't know) 50-75 gb of transfer. Best to make it symetrical traffic too. Then, when someones goes over it, charge them per gb of traffic.
This addresses a few problems:
* People complaining highspeed is too expensive
* ISP's taking a hit because not many people sign up
* People/ISP's happy with a balance of traffic vs billing
- Dan
That was the worst "no carrier" joke ever.
I would think that somehting like this would be covered in the signed agreement, ie there would be some sort of qualifier, either a numeric cap or the word unlimited. I could be wrong, but this seems like just another case of large consumer companies writing agreements that the customers have to follow but that they can blow off any time they want.
Reminds me of the time I had to read the policy to a car insurance person once because they were attempting to go completely against the policy to charge me a higher percentage of repair costs...
Whee signature.
from NYC to LA for $.37.
People who send first class mail from NYC to LA are not "abusing the system."
The system takes such matters into account when it sets the postage price.
The phone company acts in similar ways when it sets its price for unlimited local calling. Some people talk more, some never seem to stop talking.
One can send certain kinds of mail at lower than first class rates if one wishes. Just as one can obtain limited calling at additional fees per call. You may assess your own usage and determine which might be the better deal for you, thus those whose usage is expected to be high naturally pay a premium for the premium service and such service can be expected to attract such users.
The populace understands this system and when they see "unlimited" assume this is the sort of averaged pricing structure they are dealing with, and they have every right to do so.
The ISPs know full well what the public thinks they are getting when they advertise their service as "unlimited," thus, if that is not actually what they intend to deliver they are, in the technical language that applies to such legal matters, "Lying Bastards" and should be treated as such.
KFG
... if you use your account for business. Not just if it's a line dedicated to a business, but if you read your email from work at home.
When we signed up for my wife's telecommuting, we got a good deal. Nobody asked us what we'd use it for. Nor did anybody say anything about limits or restrictions. And statements on a web site don't mean a darn thing when you call and sign up strictly by voice, which you'd have to do if you'd just moved in.
On our first service call (bad line outside, nobody's fault and quickly fixed) I made the mistake of mentioning having a router and firewall. Luckily when they asked me if we were using it for business, they didn't wait for the answer before telling me they charge more for business users. I asked whether that applied to someone using it at home who just happens to check their email from work, and they said yes.
If my wife weren't telecommuting full time, with the companmy paying the broadband portion of the cable bill, I'd be going back to DSL and getting "the dish".
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Keep in mind what you're seeing is most likely hijacked PCs or open proxies.
Computer hijackers have learned that 24/8, 12/8, and other cable-modem IP ranges are primed for abuse, so they forward spam through them like there's no tomorrow.
Whem a spam is send through an open proxy, the proxy, not the originator's IP is shown. This is different than using an open relay to send spam, which does leave a trail.
This is why providers to the unwashed masses of consumers who just want their pr0n and cheese should enforce some kind of interception of outgoing traffic destined for 25/tcp, at least to track stats, since there are very easy thresholds to set to raise flags (messages per minute for example) and have staffers check them out.
Please send all UCE to scally@devolution.com so I can f
wouldn't that be 424...damn that new math!
Jisho - A Japanese English German Russian French Dictionary for the rest of us.
Laws are NOT a cure all. There already IS something in place. It's called "contract law" and "fraud". They've been around for hundreds of years.
Here's the thing. Comcast is offering a service and the only remedy for a breach of contract by either party is simply to terminate the service. So, if you go over your cap, and you get harassed by comcast you go somewhere else. They are happy because you aren't sucking up their resources, and you'll be happy because you'll find somebody that provides the service you need.
Having said that, the one exception I make to this is areas where Comcast is available and DSL isn't. If it's the only viable possibility for Internet service then I think local regulators need to step in and regulate how Comcast handles these cases. It would not surprise me if Comcast was sending out these letters to people that weren't really using up that much bandwidth in the hopes that they could push them into getting upgraded service. Regulators need to be aware of this possibility and prevent it.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
the article is from 1997, or so it says right on top.... almost 7 years ago...
.Net account.
also, i would assume some of M$'s motivation was to battle the AOL/TimeWarner beast.....
these days i would think you would be more upset at the ties between Verizon and Microsoft... Verizon DSL comes with MSN "for free". I guess this jumps MSN user numbers a lot higher than they were last year. Verizon cell phones are tied into Microsoft now too, for example to use wireless web it seems you now have to have a
I'm part of a member-owned cooperative, and we used to get unlimited bandwidth on DSL for $49.95/month. Then they doubled the speed to 512K, and set a fee over the first 11GB/month (and rounds down to the nearest GB.). But they told us all of this well in advance, and we all had the opportunity to weigh in on the issue. That's why I switched from a corporate offering to a member-owned cooperative.
Now, I live in a rural area of Alaska, and am damn glad to even have DSL.
Alaska Bugs Sweat Gold Nuggets
This is the exact complaint for Rogers Hi-Speed up here in around Ontario in Canada. Unlike Comcast however, they have refused to give an exact amount of "overuse" or "abuse". This is because the minute they do, they throw all their "Unlimited" marketing out the door. It is clearly a case of misleading advertising, but in Canada, the CRTC, (I think it stands for Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commision) has absolutely no authority on the issue and they can't do anything. There are literally no laws to protect users in these kind of services except for those common to all monetary transactions. Obviously the service providers will always fall back on the TOU, but damn it, these things are so restrictive. The Rogers TOU/EUA literally has a clause which says they can provide whatever level of service they deem appropriate and you agree to pay for such a service. It means they can give you NO service at all and still charge you for it, with such blanket TOU/EUA, you think the law would finally
step in and do something about it, but alas, I am dreaming again.
Dude, I am soooo sorry. Tell me, how long does it take to download an entire ISO over a modem. That's gotta be painful.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
That's why most Internet users call them "Spamcast" and don't accept any email from their IPs. But it's good to see that Spamcast *has* an anti-abuse policy, it just doesn't get enforced to combat spam originating from their netblocks.
Maybe some mass-downloads of pr0n, w4r3z and m0v|3z through open proxies would finally make Spamcast shut them down. A year ago mass-downloads of premium-rate dialers (frequently spamvertised by German spam gangs) through open proxies within Latin American netblocks (200/7) helped to have most of them closed.
My ISP doesn't say "unlimited", save for the fact that there are no limits to how long you can be connected, which may be where the term comes from.
Anyway, my ISP sets up its acounts with X down/Y up and Z GB a month plus $$ for every Gig over your limit. And they make the "how much have I used this month" page very easy to find on their page.
This is the way all ISPs should run.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Regulation is the way to go.
..."unlimited"
I seem to recall a time when a cell phone company was offering "Unlimited Minutes". Within a couple of months, there were advertisements for a different cell phone company, saying "our unlimited > their 'unlimited'". I don't understand why this hasn't happened to ISP's yet. You would think that by and by they would expose each other and "regulation" would be taken care of.
But aside from that, the fact of the matter is that they provide more bandwidth than the vast majority of people could ever use - they have to, else they'd get a bad name - but just little enough to kick somebody who's sharing 56000 mpegs on Kazaa 24-7 in the bean bag.
Frankly, I think I'm against anything that increases the amount of regulation of pretty much anything internet-related, including ISPs.
p.s.: And I could just see this phone conversation:
customer: "How much bandwith do I get!"
representative: "you get 512/128, xx GB/month"
customre: "What is that in Kbps?"
representative: "groan, not again"
customer: "what was that?"
rep "nothing"
cust "so what was that bandwith"
rep "1000 Kbps"
cust "and how much stuff can I download?"
rep "you get 512/128, xx GB/month"
cust "so...how much is that?"
rep
cust "oh, why didn't you just say so?"
I had a dream that I was dreaming about recursion.
When I play online games, the bandwidth is just plain insane. I did an estimate once with some network monitoring tool and it came to some 1 to 3 gigs worth of transfer over a 12 hr period.
If comcast said I can't play games, I am better off discontinuing the service. Why else would I need that much bandwidth.
I'm glad. Comcast charges me $60 a month for a cable modem, and a substantial chunk of that money is me subsidizing people who use a lot more than I do.
Comcast has a HUGE problem right now with hundreds (if not more) of virus-compromised systems, run by the clue-deprived who have not the slightest inkling about the most basic Internet security.
These machines have long since been compromised, and turned into spammer 'zombies.' The problem has gotten bad enough that I've blocked access to our mail systems from ANY system with a domain name ending in 'client.comcast.net,' not to mention huge swaths of Comcast-controlled IP space.
If this 'crackdown' that Comcast is doing helps to get rid of a bunch of these spammer 'zombies,' great! It'll be that much less to worry about.
Granted, if Comcast's so-called "Abuse Desk" even gave a crap about the massive amounts of bit pollution their network is pouring out, they wouldn't have any problems with "abusers" to begin with.
Keep the peace(es).
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
I have had TimeWarner Road Runner for over 4yrs and have never received any sort of letter from them. I download well over 500GB/mth @ 3Mbps(they just increased to compete w/ Comcast). Has anybody experienced anything similar w/ RR?
You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone. - Al Capone (1899-1947)
i have to say i am 100% happy with earthlinkDSL (haveing also had DirecTV(RIP) and Verizon DSL)..... offhand the only cap i remember reading on their site was on newsgroups. if you download more than a certain amount of stuff from newsgroups in a week or month they switch you to a slower download rate for a month or something. i don't remember the details and am not finding it right now on their site, but when i was trying to figure out what that meant it seemed to me that it would require a MASSIVE download campaign from usenet. something along the lines of a lot of warez and/or movies i guess. i kind of remember thinking there would be no way to hit the cap downloading text posts or even still pictures at any normal resolutions.
anyway, it was a huge limit and seemed to be only for the news servers, but it does exist. i guess it was nice they let you know if advance... assuming you bother to read the user agreements.
...in Rochester, MI; it's a suburb of Detroit.
For years, Comcast was the only cable company around. Their rates were pretty high, but I never thought anything of it until I moved away to Kalamazoo for college and realized I could get 1.54/786 internet AND digital cable with all the preium statiosn for only $10/month more than my parents had paid for Comcast's basic cable alone, back home.
Now, I'm living at home in Rochester again. I initially had my broadband through Speakeasy, but had a terrible problem dealing with Speakeasy, Covad, and SBC, which resulted in Speakeasy/Covad repeatedly trying to charge me $300 to reconnect my DSL circuit. Speakeasy was almost $100/month plus the cost of a phone line through SBC. It wasn't exactly what you'd call competetive, even though the service and support were top notch.
So, I decided to switch to cable internet; Wide Open West and Charter have both recently moved into town. However, there's some stipulation in my contract with my landlord that states that I can only get Comcast cable. So, I'm stuck with it.
My experiences so far have been mediocre. I don't exactly leach DVD rips all day, but it's not unusual for me to pull down a gig or two in a day. I've never been heckled by Comcast about it, either. And, also, the price is a bit more competetive, now. It's $70/month for 3mbps cable (with wretchedly slow upstream) and digital cable plus, which is essentially everything but HBO and Skinemax and the like.
That being said, my cable routinely goes out... usually at least once a week, and not during their scheduled maintainance times. I have mediocre ping times in most games, and, like I said, the upstream is terrible.
Overall, it's not a terrible service, though. Thankfully I've never had to deal with the customer service, though; I hear it's some of the worst around.
I just wanted to tell everyone that today I bought a really comfortable pair of pants.
In order to do this, the customer would have to max out a 3Mb/s connection, 24/7, for the entire month. Since the cable companies are only now 'doubling their top download speeds to 3 megabits, how is this possible?
Now my connection is ADSL, 512/256. I run BitTorrent downloads 24/7 on an old headless box. Theoretically, I could pull down 165GB/mo. I know I don't because i haven't started buying shares in Maxtor, Hitachi or Western Digital yet.
...this penny-arcade comic.
If we just change it to go something like this:
Comcast: To conclude, we here at Comcast know where the line is, so don't cross it, or your house might accidentally catch on fire. I'll take a couple of questions - you there, in the "Got DSL" shirt.
Customer: If you're the only ones that know where the line is, how will we know if we...
Comcast: That was it.
(Break to scene of Customer's house on fire).
I moderate "-1, Fool"
Slashdot counting : one, two, many
According to my ISP (Cox), my account is unlimited also. But when I went and looked at the fine print it said that by unlimited they really mean 'always connected' and that they do, in fact, have bandwidth limitations. The limits, were not in the same reading though. I eventually managed to find the limitations on their website cox.net but only after 5 or 10 minutes of digging for it. If I remember correctly the download limit was 7 gigs a day, but no more then 30 gigs a month, and upload was 2 gigs a day, but no more than 7 gigs a month. Although these may be wrong since I can't totally remember, and when I went to look it up, I was, of course, not able to find it.
Buckethead
Even as a Libertarian, I think local governments should own infrastructure and rent it out on a non-descriminatory basis. That way there can be a real free market for services, which is a very Libertarian thing.
:p
Wow.
That's the first time I've ever knowingly seen a Libertarian make a statement with which I agree 100%.
Of course, since I'm a socialist, you may not appreciate that very much.
This story sounds exactly like what rogers is / has been doing over the last 2 months! (aprox.) Rogers is Canada's largest ISP, providing high speed cable internet access.
I searched the site, I was unable to find anything related to maximum downloads, etc... its gotta be a breach of contract, and I am aware they can "change the contract at any time" but they have to tell us the changes or at a minimum make them available at request / on the web site.
What can a user do????
No, this is
I just looked at the Comcast site, and no where do I even see the word "unlimited". I do however see "always connected" type phrases. Where does Comcast promise unlimited downloads (Not to be confused with "unlimited connect time")?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Yeah, I catch my grandma reading this site all the time :)
"Insightful"?
Gimme a break! This guy has either trolled rather effectively, or just begs for a conviction for outright fraud.
Of course, in my late teens, many of my friends worked for small local ISPs, and I have to admit he may well tell the truth. Small ISPs make a great front for a mob money-laundering operation (I say this from personal knowledge, though I never had any involvement whatsoever with such dealings) - And even the ones really running a more-or-less legit business make used car salesmen look like saints.
The rest either server a very niche market, or cease to exist within a few months.
from:
http://news.earthlink.net/
I've been with them for just about two years. I left Comcast because I got sick of their problems and restrictions-- there were multi-hour outages often enough to drive me crazy. Their mailservers were down just about as much as they were up, and I of course was prohibited from running my own reliable mailserver on their network.
Speakeasy, by contrast, has been great. They let me run my own servers, and they set up rDNS for free when I asked. They give me a free, limited dialup account to use as a backup or when traveling. The few times I've needed to call, their support people were wonderful. I get advance notice of scheduled maintenance downtime, and there have only been two unscheduled outages, only one of which was long enough for me to get withdrawal symptoms.
To top it all off-- a week ago, due to infrastructure upgrades, they gave me a permanent upgrade from 1.5/384 to 1.5/768 without hiking my monthly fee.
Sure, it costs more than cable for all this, but my current employer pays $50/month of my broadband bill, so I'm effectively paying what I paid for cable internet.
I'll go back to dialup before I go back to a Comcast cable modem.
A 56k connection that downloads continuously for a month will use 18GB of transfer. That's roughly $36 - $90 worth of upstream bandwidth.
Unless he lives in Sweden that's a bad idea. All the links go to Swedish Animal Sex sites. He just might get a visit from his local police if he tries to do that sort of thing.
I recently switched over from Bellsouth Fast Access DSL to Time Warner's Road Runner service. So far, I am very please of the performance and the quality of both the service and their customer support team. From my unlimited 1.5Mbit/256Kbit DSL line to an "unlimited: for now" 3.0Mbit/512Kbit Cable line. Both services so far are still with unlimited access. I pull over 400GB a month downloads easily on my DSL and over 150GB a month for uploads, Bellsouth did not have a problem with it. I have yet to venture this with Time Warner, but I am assuming (for the most part), its the same. Lets just hope after the first month (after what can now be 600GB down and 300GB up), that I won't get charged for "using too much of my 'unlimited' service" deal. (I've asked them about this before I signed up too. "There shouldn't be a cap on bandwidth" the rep said.
-Kids in the back seat causes accidents.- -Accidents in the back seat causes kids.-
Yeah it kinda bites when you have to tell someone that you are making the joke.
news flash: you're not a libertarian. hands off.
I would have modded you insightful if I didn't want to respond so badly.
The problem that ISPs are now dealing with is that their calculations which made the "unlimited" label economically feasible in the late 90's are now way off. P2P has exploded; so has the net's general usefulness and the net-savviness of the average user; so has Internet publishing of every kind. That "unlimited" word started appearing before google became a verb, before blogging became popular, before people needed the term "file sharing".
The middle of the bandwidth bellcurve has moved up dramatically in those few years, and the company has to take into account the new median bandwidth usage, but they haven't. Ethical ways to do this would be:
1) Put pressure on upstream bandwidth infrastructure to lower their prices
2) Raise prices to consumers taking into account the new usage rates
3) Stop advertising unlimited service and charge the same rates
They of course chose (4), continue to do business the way we always have, and bill unsuspecting customers.
They'll get their comeuppance for this.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
When the Ernie Ball guitar string company got upset with MS over an overpublicized BSA audit, CEO Sterling Ball decided to switch to somebody (anybody!) else. And according to this article/interview, "We looked at all the alternatives. We looked at Apple, but that's owned in part by Microsoft." So they ended up running Linux.
While it may be true that MS doesn't actually own or control Apple or Comcast, someone like Sterling Ball who is making it a point of honor not to give MS any more money may still consider MS's investments in Apple or Comcast to be relevent information.
there's no limit to how much you can download.. its how much you can d/l in one month. So you have unlimited downloads, as long as u subscribe for long enough ;)
Wouldnt you like to be a pepper too?
Hmmm...where did they get THAT idea??
What?
What the word "unlimited" applies to is what is in question. What the average consumer thinks it means has nothing to do with what the ISP thinks it means, or assigns its meaning to.
You people (on average) care too much about your ability and 'right' to download as much porn, illegal software, illegally distributed music, and sometimes benign legal stuff. It's like burning a CD with MP3s you downloaded through file-sharing and then getting mad when someone scratches it and you can't use it anymore. Like it matters, you stole it in the first place (from someone else that stole it, from someone else that bought it). Which is not to say that I don't engage in the same thing, but I don't think I have some right to it because I misread 'unlimited' and assign it to what I'd like it to mean just because the advertiser was ambiguous.
Seems strange that google cannot find the word 'unlimited' anyplace on comcast.net.
It also seems like we've been having this 'unlimited' conversation for about 10 years now. 'Unlimited', if the term was used, does not mean unlimited transfer, just like in dialup day it didn't mean you could monopolize a phone line 24/7. ISPs and Telcos have services that will meed your needs if you require that type of 'dedicated' connection. All of these people are just NNTP users who collect junk and warez off Usenet.
I have an idea, find the place in your AUP that says its your god given right to be a member of Comcast.net, show them that, and I'm sure they will leave you alone!
"It depends on what your definition of 'unlimited' is"
i have comcast cable internet. (previously AT&T broadband). the only thing that changed from at&t was they discontinued unlimited usenet transfers, and outsourced to giganews. on my comcast connection, i transfer all sorts of files, both uploading and downloading. many many gigabytes per month. running web, ftp, email, kdx, and other servers. downloading all sorts of audio and video, linux and other ISOs. maybe 25-50 GB total up and down? they've never complained to me about it...
in the article, it says they wouldnt tell this person how much they had downloadloaded, and how much was acceptable. so, based on that, how can they expect him to comply?
... if it's available in your area. I have two DSL providers, DCAnet and, of course, Speakeasy. I love them both - they're always great to work with and are very responsive to my needs. I have two lines, a Covad and a Verizon, through DCA and one Covad line through Speakeasy. I've never once had a problem with either, and I've had these lines for a combined total of 5 line-years.
I routinely exceed what comcast calls a "reasonable" limit (30GB/month down and 7.5GB/month up, wasn't it?). Not only do I exceed that, I blow it away - never heard a peep out of either of them...
I have a theory about why Comcast is trying to choke off their Internet users. They recently had to double the downrate to compete with DSL, thinking that offering twice the downstream would make the extra expense worth it... However, they're also trying to ramp up their On-Demand movie service, which is far more profitable to them. So, it makes sense to try to reserve as much of their shared bandwidth as possible for movies rather than for Internet users. I would not be surprised in the least if they lowered those caps at some point, as there is a finite amount of information a single shared cable can carry...
Just a thought..
Just thought I'd point out two things...
I have had Comcast Cable Internet for more than a year and have never been forced to have CATV. I don't want it. I get mailers now and then, but I just throw them away. My service is not 3mb/s. It's about 1.7mb/s.This user account is inactive account replaced by the PDA
They're not doing false advertising, they're just not correcting misconceptions about it.
I've been trying for several years to get Speakeasy. Every time I've gone to their site, it has been unavailable. My only DSL option is SBC/Yahoo. No thanks, if I can help it. Until then, I'm stuck with Comcast. They haven't hassled me, but I can't bank on it.
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
FYI, the "unlimited" they refer to is the ability to connect, not the bandwidth. As shown here. Their packages (which incidentally, don't apply to my area) are listed here. I average 250-300 gigs/month and haven't received anything.
MOD PARENT UP
The article should point out that not all cable providers are as bad as Comcast.
Cablevision's Optimum Online service, which I use in NJ, is outstanding. They do NOT cap their service (8Mb down, 1Mb up). While I consider myself to be a heavy user, I have NEVER had a problem with my usage (unchanged over the last 4 years).
One way that cable providers can make customers happy, and reduce their costs, is to make newsgroups available (and educate their customers about them). This is an alternative, safer way for customers to get the media files they would otherwise go to P2P applications for. Since the news server is "on net" the ISP does not have to pay anyone else for the bandwidth.
Comcast's actions aren't just customer hostile, they show a lack of business acumen and technical skill. If I were in their area, I'd opt for any other provider (even multiple dialip lines if it came to that).
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
(Whoops, I originally posted this info in response to another article. This is the one I meant to respond to.)
When Sterling Ball, CEO of the Ernie Ball Co., decided to sever business ties with MS, he rejected Apple as an alternative vendor specifically because of that $150 million investment! Details here.
How come no one ever does something like this to me? It would give my lawyers something to do for a few weeks!
Cox cable does. Look here.
Tiscali tried this in Denmark two weeks ago. They added a "fair use" clause to the ToS saying that they could kick users using "disproportionate" amounts of bandwidth. After protests from the Consumer Council (among others) they withdrew it within a couple of days. AFAIK they were the first danish provider to try, so this topic will hopefully stay silent for a good long while.
Bandwidth caps are fine with me, but I want to know where they are. If consumers can't know what they're paying for the free market is worthless.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
Comcast is, however, full of shit. They claim that they only send people abuse letters when someone in their neighborhood complains. First of all, each DOCSIS cable modem gets its own set of frequencies to download on. Your downstream bandwidth is not shared. Let me say that again; downstream bandwidth is not shared. So downloading cannot degrade anyone's performance unless they are oversubscribing. Upstream bandwidth is shared, there is only a total of 11Mbps upstream for everyone on your segment. However, I know from experience (working in a DOCSIS Cable Modem QA/Dev lab for Cisco in Santa Cruz) that there are line cards which increase the number of upstream channels. For example, Cisco's MC16 line card has one downstream interface (which goes into an up converter to be converted into the proper frequencies) and six upstream; the frequencies for upstream can be split off in six groups and fed into those six interfaces.
I have never had a time when I could not pull down a solid 1.8Mbps (my current cap) over my link. If somehow my downloading was degrading service for others, then my performance would suffer as well. This is not happening, and has never happened. Therefore, I conclude that someone called in with a problem that Comcast either couldn't figure out how to resolve, or doesn't want to pay to resolve (bad coax between the user and the little green box on the corner, say) and Comcast just used it as more ammunition for their witch hunt against those who use the most bandwidth. The truth, I suspect, is that they simply don't want to pay for that bandwidth. I respect that, but I don't like being lied to, which is clearly what's going on here.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Its not that they don't want people to use the service, its just not right for the top 5% of people to be using 99% of the available bandwidth on a node, even if they are not home!
These people setup Newsbin to download pron, anime, etc 24/7 hours a day. Gigs upon gigs per day. Meanwhile, it hurts the service for EVERYONE ELSE. I say screw the leechers. Any normal person or even a family of 10 normal net users is not going to run into the invisible barrier. We're talking about people doing a terabyte of transfer a month, not simple using a consumer level connection for what is was designed for.then he was lying to you. They are trained to inform you that they are not able to access how much you have used, what their cap is, and anything else other than to contact another dept. if you have been notified.
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.
Actually, I think the problem here really is that you are not BRUTUALLY honest. If you are serious about wanting to run an honest business, why don't you go all out? In your advertisements you should point out the blatant lies of your competitors. Point out that there is no such thing as 'unlimited' internet access right in your ads! Then go further and suggest that if your competitors don't respect the intelligence of the average joe before they get the money, how could you possibly trust them to respect the customer AFTER they already have the money?
You're in an uncomfortable position right now: you're in the half-way point. In tennis it is called "no man's land" -- the area between the baseline and the net. You haven't committed to one course of action or another and end up getting stranded in a position worse than either option. You need to decide whether you are going to be brutally honest or a deceiver like everyone else. Don't try to play a happy medium. You're not going to be very happy if you do that for very long.
Just make damn sure that everything you say in your ads is the truth otherwise their lawyers are going to come down on you like a ton of bricks. Be truthful and what are they going to do: sue you for telling the truth? If they take you to court you can countersue and make some dough.
GMD
watch this
I pay more for Speakeasy because they don't suck. Their tech support department actually treats me like I'm a paying customer and those guys know their stuff too -- it's not just a bunch of trained monkeys in there! It's so nice doing business with a company that actually knows what it's doing... gonna have to do it more often (All the other companies out there are probably going to beat them up for blowing the curve now...)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I routinely get 4+ Mbps dowload and 768K up. I don't do Kaaza or Pr0n fishing, but I occasionally download quite a lot of data, such as a Red Hat ISO set, so 2GB/day (mentioned in the article as the stated limit Cox imposes,) would crimp my style. I've never had a complaint from RCN. Their service isn't bad, which is to say, it's very good compared to the competition.
The downsides are these: they are only in a few urban areas, and they spent so much building out fiber to within 600 feet of every customer in the 90's that they will probably go bankrupt soon. In the meantime, I sing their praises and enjoy the service.
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers
I've said it before and I'll say it again -- if you're going to limit my bitrate usage, fine, just tell me what the limit is and give me way of monitoring my usage.
Apart from meeting this requirement, as far as I'm concerned, if they're selling me 3.5Mb/s downstream bandwidth, then I have every right to use every last bit of it 24/7/365, if I want to. Granted, I don't, because I don't need or want to. But, "unlimited" aside, if you sell me a service with certain specifications, I expect you to meet those specifications and not penalize me for using your service up to the limits.
Comcast (who happens to be my ISP as well), is being sleazy and overly secretive in this matter. They need to fess up to the fact that their networks are oversubscribed and underprovisioned and that, while you and your neighbors can probably get XMb/s burst rates, they can't really sell each of you that much sustained bitrate.
Frankly, I wish they'd scrap some of the crappy cable channels and use the excess bandwidth for better internet service.
Or, they could surcharge you for net transfers over a certain threshold -- as long as they specify the threshold and give you an accurate way to monitor your usage.
Um, 2 dvds from alt.binaries.dvdr per day, x 30 days is about 300 GB/month. Good thing I'm not with Cox!
I've been known to download video files from time to time but 2 DVDs per day is way, way too much. Unless you are also watching 2 of those DVDs each day, you must be building up one hell of a stockpile to films to watch.
30 GB/month is pretty generous for a home account. Anything more than that and you really should be on a business account.
2 DVDs a day is abuse. Did you even stop to think about what downloading like that must do for the other poor saps who have to share a local connection with you? I, for one, am glad that Cox puts limits on how much people download. I don't want my cable connection to turn to shit just because some jackass wants to download 2 DVDs a day!
GMD
watch this
We run into problem customers on occasion running stuff that chews incredible amounts of bandwidth like bit torrent. We hand them a copy of the terms of service which forbids the running of servers. If we see them do it again their connection is terminated immediately. A 20 or 30 dollar connection fee just isn't worth our time, why cap connections when you can just terminate the offenders.
Got Code?
When I first started using the internet, AOL used to sell so many hours per month...and then they upped it...and again they upped it.
Do the ISPs offering "unlimited" service offer unlimited bandwidth, or unlimited time usage? This is a VERY important distinction, and one that many people may not know, or even care about. If the ISP says they offer 'unlimited' service, they may word it in legalese to mean time, in which case cutting off customers for using too much bandwidth is, in fact, legal and legitimate...
Right now I'm paying quite a bit of cash for my internet service and cable TV; I've got most of the trimmings. This isn't because I watch cable a lot (well, I watch it SOME, and used to watch more), but because I like the uplink they give me. If Roadrunner decides to cap my service, I won't only be switching to another provider for net access, but I'll also be dropping them for a satellite dish. I suspect they know this, because I tend to abuse my connection pretty badly. ;-)
http://spews.org/html/S2963.html
God knows when they'll take notice...
How does one become a Peer1 level ISP?
[blue] - The Ministry of Information approved this message...
"downstream bandwidth is not shared"
.bomb.
Well, actually, it IS shared. If you think of it in terms of the total available spectrum of the coax distribution system. There are only so many channels that fit within the confines of the frequency response of the cable. So, cable is indeed finite, and it would not surprise me if they oversold their cables... especially since they have Digital Cable and On-Demand on top of it all...
I was working on a DOCSIS to MMDS transciever at one place, and I know that at that time, the total bandwidth was not that much, something like 40MHz, but you would probably know that better than I since it has been about 3 years since the company I was working for folded in the
40MHz ain't a lot to share between a thousand people on a cable... The numbers 21-62MHz are stuck in my mind for some reason...
No they should just terminate your access if you are abusing the service. Ask me to define it and I will tell you that now you have connection that is set to 0kb per sec. In most cases your 20 dollar a month connection is not worth even messing with you. Now that was spoken from the point of view of a ISP.
Got Code?
But, there are both tangible and intangible cost to changing providers. This is why "false advertising" is, or was, or is but isn't anymore, a crime.
The sorryful state of Corporate ethics will not improve until we reestablish a playing field that requires them.
Uhm okay, I don't know who the fuck thinks it's funny to plaigiarize my writing, but I am the original author of this essay. I wrote it on January 8th of this year, the original text can be found here.
;)
Hmm. I don't know whether or not to say "mod parent down!" After all, it got a freakin' +5. In a way, now I almost wish I thought of copy/pasting my rant to Slashdot first. A pity. Could have done wonders for my karma
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
What are you people complaining about ?! Your service provider GIVES you T1+ rates with lets say 30GB/mo tranfer and you complain? Sure it's not nice, but let's trade places.. Let's see if you like this: Rates for private use: abonament: 30-40$ bandwidth: = 128kbit traffic: 5-10GB Rates for businesses (CATV): abonament: starting from 100$ bandwidth: 8kbit world-wide, 8Mbit MAN * traffic: unlimited ** * if your lucky. real-world scenario: 8kbit+1Mbit ** if you cross that imaginary line your bandwidth gets decreased. Rates for businesses (DSL): abonament: starting from 120$ bandwidth: 32kbit world-wide, 2Mbit MAN * traffic: unlimited * due to lack of CISCO DSLAM & modems you get disconnected quite alot. So what the f*** are you complaining about?
I telecommute and I often need to download uncompiled products to work with and it can easily run me more than 2gb of back and forth in a day, before counting in any web browsing, streaming audio, streaming video or anything else.
Also, I have a server in a colo and I frequently need to upload or download very large files to it. Files that I own. Sometimes I'm archiving (remotely) my log files or sql databases which can be excessively large. These are all legit and frequent uses which would exceed their cap.
Perhaps you should consider buying one of their business accounts if you're going to be using your internet connection for business.
Using a home internet account to 'frequently' upload and download very large files to your 'server in colo' does not qualify as a 'legit' use of your non-business ISP account.
A hundred gigabytes of usage a month may not strain the system but some abusers, he said, consume more than a terabyte of data each month -- equal to about 1,000 gigabytes,
A terabyte is 34GB/day:
34B/86400 sec=393KB/sec
So, he's going to get me to believe that someone is pumping 400KB/sec 24/7. I can sometimes reach the theoretical maximum (which is a little above 500KB/sec around here), but this is preposterous. Even 100GB in a month would be hard to achieve.
People who received Comcast's bandwidth abuse letters and were willing to discuss their usage patterns publicly were shocked at the "Twilight Zone" experiences they had with customer support.
They've apparently never had problems with their service and had to call...
Do you have ESP?
False advertising does indeed under the Statute of Frauds.
The elements of fraudulent misrepresentation are as follows:
> 1. a false representation is made;
Clearly "unlimited" does not mean "limited". In any dictionary, in any language, anywere in the this, or their fictional universe.
> 2. which is material to the transaction;
Others have said it, "because it sells more accounts than those that aren't."
> 3. which is made with knowledge of its falsity or reckless disregard as to whether it was true or false;
Obvious, Comcast is both publishing claims of "unlimited" at the same time they are paying people to analyse and cap usage.
> 4. with the intention by the person making the representation that the recipient will be induced to act or refrain from acting;
Again, obvious. If the word had no power, they wouldn't use it.
> 5. which representation is justifiably relied upon by the recipient; and
See 2.
> 6. which reliance proximately causes the recipient to suffer damages.
Getting your account closed causes on to suffer damages. You lose tha ability to post for work, you must notify any number of user of new e-mail addresses, etc. You also lose the ability to participate in potentially lucrative funds transfer deals with Nigerian nationals.
FRAUD. Open and Shut.
I'd bet he's running a game server (e.g. Call of Duty, MoHAA, other FPS). The newer games are probably less sleek then the older stuff because they make the assumption that a person will have a broadband line if they're going to do server-duty. Probably the only programming constraint they follow is trying to fit it into a 33.6 kbps pipe for each individual player.
So figure 16 gamers connected up, all sending/receiving enough to fill a 32 kilobit/sec connection is roughly 168 megabytes/hour or 4 gigabytes per day. Even if you assume only 8 players and 14 kilobits/sec, that adds up to 40 megabytes/hour or just under 1 gigabyte/day. IIRC, Call of Duty allows 32 or 64 players per server, which is a good chunk of bandwidth.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
In New Zealand, our best offering for people who download over 3GB or so per month is:
10GB/month at 128K (Yes 16k/s)!! This is DSL.
If you are lucky enough to live in 2 *special* cities here you can get cable at 10GB and 256K.
We do have fast internet, like 5mbit DSL etc, but the usage is capped at about 1GB for a *reasonable* amount of money (US$50). If you want to download 10GB at your uncapped DSL speed then it will cost you thousands in US or NZ dollars.
I long for the day when I do my OE and can download what I want at a decent speed.
http://www.xbox-skins.net
but another cable provider... My limit is 15 gigs/month...
.... Think I'll enjoy it while it lasts, either way it'll coming to an abrupt halt sooner or later.
For the last 8 months I've exceeded that limit by 160-180 gigs each month.. Nothing said yet
DOCSIS does allow downstream shared medium access. However, instead of like in Ethernet, the communication is divided into time slots, and cable modems "bid" for a slot to receive or transmit in. Assuming that the scheduler at the head end is fair, as soon as there is a lot of demand for downstream bandwidth the share per modem is going to go down...
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
"Consumers demand to be lied to." ? WTF? If you advertise "unlimited" bandwidth, why would someone assume you don't really mean it? You can't be that moronic.
Maybe your complete lack of business sense and integrity is why you are running a small ISP. Go out of business, you stupid twit.
The reason for this is that, as the party drawing the contract, they can word it in the best possible way for themselves. That they did not, when they had the chance, is, as we used to say as kids, "tough nookies".
This is why you have your lawyer draw contracts that you propose.
You could've hired me.
We would like to advise you that there has been excessive usage on your Rogers Hi-Speed Internet account which is in violation of our end user agreement with you and in particular, your agreement not to use the service in a way that creates an unusually large burden on our network.
Rogers has a responsibility to ensure that all of its customers experience a high quality of service and performance when using Rogers Hi-Speed Internet. Your usage consumes a disproportionate share of our network's resources which has a negative impact on network performance. In fact, you fall within the category of less than 1% of our residential customers whose usage exceeds that of the average customer by well over 2000%.
Please be advised that it is important that your account's usage returns to reasonable levels. Unfortunately, unless your usage pattern significantly changes starting in the next two days, we will have no choice but to suspend your Internet account for a period of seven days.
According to my logs, I was moving about 2.5 GB, on average, combined up & down. I was surprised that they considered this above average. (If that's 2000% of the average user's use, the average user uses about 150 megs per day. They should be lucky the average user only uses that much.)
A friend of mine & networking insider told me that according to Rogers higher-ups, they do not go after servers (even though they tell you not to run them) -- but "you better not show up on their Top X bandwidth hogs list."
It sucks that I have to guess at what unlimited access really means. Then again, if these companies had true unlimited service, I probably couldn't get a cable modem for $40 Canadian monthly.
BUT, remove the block upon request. Basically, if a user is smart enough to ask for it lifted, they likely have a legit reason to want it lifted and have the skills to keep it secure. Not always true, but that way you block the SPAM, but allow those with legit uses to get through.
If they cap a user's bandwidth to 3Mbps, then they would not possibly use more than 1 terabyte of download bandwidth!
equation: 3*60*60*24*31 = 3*60*60*24*31
the MegaBITS they can use in one month
(3*60*60*24*31)/8 = 1004400
the Megabytes per month
1004400/1024 = 980GB per month.
Last I checked it takes 1024 GB to make 1 TB
Now if they meant Terrabits that'd work.
I'm Confused. How much is that in "Libraries of Congress"?
\/\/oobie
sucks to be you, i average 170-190 gigs/mth on cogeco and they never say anything. $44/mth canadian. It'll end one day, even if wholesale prices for bw keep going lower for these companies.
This exact same scenario happened in Australia. When Broadband Cable first came out here, it was Essentially Unlimited. Then the providors put the Excessive Usage limits, where users that exceeded an arbitrary usage (often things like 10x the telco defined average usage), they were given a warning and then blocked,banned,sin-binned etc. Next the teleco's put hard limits down, basically around 3Gb. So people that had bought in on an unlimited contract were suddenly limited to three gigs. On a good cable, this is an absolute joke. Many pissed off customers. Now the limits have started to go back up, mainly due to good competition from ADSL providers.
In Soviet Russia the insensitive clod is YOU!
WideOpenWest (avaliable in some ComCast areas) is a GREAT cable ISP.
Cable video, Cable internet---- They out do ComCast in both regards.
There is no bandwidth cap (though if you go over something like 100-150 gigs a month they threaten to throttle your throughput at some point in the future), and their speeds are faster to boot (4 Mbps tops, and 512 kbps upload). Did I say they also give you three IPs? And they don't bother you about running servers unless you use more than 30 gigs/s upload a month? And their IPs rarely, if ever, change?
They also roll out new technology much faster than other providers. We saw them go from 1.5 mbps, to 2 mbps, to 3 mbps, to 4 mbps, in a course of maybe 2 years? (I might be wrong on that, they didn't advertise the upper tiers for quite some time).
Plus, their customer services is shockingly good and fast. Short hold times, and they get technicians out FAST (2-3 days, tops).
I love them. They rock. They are a fantastic alternative to comcast, and quiet a bit faster than DSL---
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Class Action Lawsuit
As people and businesses become more dependent on their data connections for daily life, you'll start to see class-action lawsuits when providers start monkeying around.
Power companies, and standard tel-cos have stringent government standards they must meet for service disclosure and mandatory minimum repair response times. Look for those laws to apply to broadband ISPs in the future.
-ted
Instead of strong-arming their customers, why don't these companies put some QoS mechanisms in place? How hard is it to put traffic shaping on the top quartile users so their traffic is lower priority than everyone else's?
From the article:
"Many run Web servers or offer copyright music or videos."
I am disturbed about the innuendo that morally equates distributing copyrighted materials (that, presumably, you do not have permission to distribute) with running a Web server. The undeniably greatest benefit that the Internet brings to us is the ability to be our own publishers, without having to try to push through an oligopoly of radio broadcast stations or television networks. We can offer any views on any subject; we can be our own content distributors. The Internet provides us with a way of making information available to others via any distribution methodology we see fit (web server, IRC, P2P, or anonymizing programs like Freenet, mixmaster, etc.). The freedom to distribute content from our own machines using any program is a freedom that we need not make excuses for exercising; in fact, we should expect and demand it!
An unjust law is no law at all. - St. Augustine
It matters that they should be explicitly stated. If a company really wants to offer unlimited service, they need to keep their price such that they can afford to do so. If they are capping it, it needs to be explicitly stated, not a "whatever we feel like" amount.
I have DSL service that is truly unlimited. They don't care (and state they don't care) how much I use. What they have done is determined, on average, what they need to charge to make that work. In this case, about $110 for 1.5m/768k with static IPs. That is how things should be.
I get sick of ISPs whining about how they want to sound unlimited (since consumers like it) but then refuse to put up when someone wants to use that.
(DISCLAIMER: IANAL)
Comcast has potentially shot itself in the foot legally by not quantifying what "acceptable use" means to the particular users it targets. In contract law, there is a doctrine which states that any ambiguity in a contract works against the party that drafted the contract. In this case, since Comcast is the drafter, the individual that it shuts down could turn around and seek civil redress against Comcast for not clearly specifying what the term "acceptable use" is in terms of amount of data, rate of data, or time data is transferred.
In short, if you don't fight back you should take your lumps and not complain. Maybe if a few people fight back at least some benchmark will be revealed if by no other means than Comcast being subpoenaed for the information. I don't see them getting much money in the way of actual damages since business use is prohibited and you can't be making money with it, but it would be interesting to see punitive damage awards wake them up.
The limiting factor for Comcast is their link to the intarweb. Its like having an Ultra320 scsi harddrive (your computer) and using an Ultra40 cable (comcast) to write to it. You can go faster, but Comcast can't afford to provide you with the bandwidth neccessary to.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
A dialup ISP that I once used in the past had a very good word they used to describe their service:
Unmetered
Their service was billed as unmetered, not unlimited!
This gave customers the correct impression that they wouldn't need to watch the clock, without leading them to believe that they could abuse the connection by leaving it connected 24/7. In fine print, they said something like this: "Unmetered does not mean unlimited. We expect you to hang up when you are not actively using your computer."
This was for dialup service, so keeping a phone line open still cost the ISP money even when no data is flowing. One of the most expensive things for a dialup ISP was the sheer number of phone lines required, and every customer that sat on a line blocked another customer from using that line.
With broadband, there is no per-customer line cost like this, but the total bandwidth consumed becomes substantial. Customer abuse becomes that of overconsuming bandwidth, not of staying on 24/7.
Perhaps the description of unmetered could still apply? Internet providers would then not be falsely advertising their services as "unlimited".
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
is make the the alterations to the TOS to be clear on what the limits are, send the tos out to all customers, and give them a grace period of 60 days to terminate their contracts without penalty. That would be the right thing to do, not that they'll do it.
If they want to offer tiered level of services, they should introduce a second data class on their line, requiring different hardware and operating at a symmetrical speed, like 1.5Mb up / 1.5Mb down, or even 3u/3d, and unlimited xfers. They should be wary of overpricing such an offering, but who am I kidding, they overprice everything.
The only reason I'm with comcast is because they were offering $20/mo for 6 months, and they only reason I stay is the new 3Mb down. If they send me a letter and disconnect me, I'll just get DSL and wait for the class action suit that will inevitably follow all this.
I wonder if the problem is more with having enough nodes in a given area, and the cost of adding nodes, or if the real problem is with the amount of upstream bandwidth that they have to buy.
If the problem is not enough nodes, it's their problem. They are responsible for maintaining the network and providing adequate room for growth, and for current users.
If the problem lies in purchasing upstream bandwidth, it's still their problem, but they just exposed themselves to potentially %100 more swing in their needs by doubling their speed limits.
I think they failed to plan for this 3Mb change and are ill prepared to deal with it. If they have to scale back to deal with it then I guess that's what they have to do.
Doesn't saying "unlimited" when it's actually not smack of false advertising?
I could see the company's argument if, like, General Electric signed up and decided to use a single account for all their global operations (shut up, geeks--of which I am one--I know this doesn't make any sense), but it seems that there's a significant proportion (I consider it significant if the business had to develop a process for discouraging the accounts that exceed the "unlimit") of people hitting this arbitrary and secretly-determined-and-monitored cap.
I see advertisements all the time that say You too can be a millionaire using this program* (footnote: provided you started with $1M plus $1 more than the fees associated with this purchasing this program), Lose 10 pounds per day!* (footnote: with diet, exercise, liposuction, surgical removal of excess skin, and successful completion of Boston Marathon), and Learn to read 100 pages per minute!* (footnote: really big print, really tiny pages).
So I don't buy this marketing argument that they'd take a huge hit in subscriptions. I propose they say the following:
or how about:Saying it's unlimited when it simply isn't, and they have a business process they apply to customers on a regular basis proving this is so, is simply unnecessary and at the very least arguably wrong (and I think illegal, no?), so why do it?
sevAs usual, I had to step in and give the right answer on this topic, for once and for all.
--me
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
Reminds me of what some senator said not so long ago with respect to the state of health care in the U.S. -- everyone (including the poorest of the poor) has access to health care in the same way that everyone has access to the new Cadillac sitting in a showroom.
If it's all about access, then I'm sure when I go out for the evening tommorrow I'll be accessing hundreds of available women.
My father-in-law complains daily (hourly?) about fraudulent charges on his power bill. My response to him fits here too: find a lawyer who'll work pro-bono, and file a class-action suit. You could make pots of money.
can someone list the current pros and cons from a provider level regarding the different network topologies of cable and DSL?
each DOCSIS cable modem gets its own set of frequencies to download on
Upstream bandwidth is shared, there is only a total of 11Mbps upstream for everyone on your segment.
Why don't they put everyone's upstream on separate frequencies just like the downstream?
Agreed, this guy seems to be downloading a lot, but he should know what his limits are, so he can adjust his downloading accordingly.
It's similar to the old e-Music which claimed unlimited legal MP3 downloads. In reality, they had a case-by-case limit that was about 5,000 mp3s a month. That limit was actually an educated guess by users based on stories on the messageboards. There was no e-Music stated policy. This made people angry. Then they came up with a stated limit of 2,000 mp3s a month. The limit was lower, but people seemed to appreciate the fact that while there was a limit it was published. Of course, this is all moot as the service has moved to only 40 or 60 Dl's a month. Boo. I kind of miss it.
Anyway, point is, I think average users understand that limits are needed but they MUST be published and known to users.
Well, this reminds me of the Lessig case that the Supremes shot down. In that case, the constitutional "limited times" just means that there exists a finite limit. In a similar vein, "unlimited" could just mean that they won't have a published limit. They just whack the outliers.
I would figure that it has something to do with piracy. Big companies and media outlets have alot of money invested in 'pushing' you info on crap you are targeted to buy. So they figure that you should be able to download this content at a fairly high speed, especially since its usually going to be choc full of fancy smanchy shit like flash animations and other web bloat (useful bloat, but bloat nonetheless).
Uploading on a large scale by the user OTOH usually signifies the transfer of large files such as MP3's. Now, some people would have valid reason for having a large upload pipe (experimental research with a huge amount of data being exchanged for example..crap like that..) but those people would be few and far between..and most of the time they'd also have someone else (an organization such as a school or business) floating the bill. I would also speculate that if that was indeed the case, the business or institution in question would purchase a special package from the provider.
I have had Comcast Cable Internet for more than a year and have never been forced to have CATV.
"forced you to get CATV OR pay even higher rates"
Do you ever wonder what would happen if they pulled the plug on a geeky lawyer who paid for something that was "unlimited"? That would really make it hit the fan.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
All internet accounts are limited:
Dial UP 28K up 53.6K down 295Meg/day up 564meg/day down
DSL 128K up 384K down 1.3Gig/day up 4Gig/day down
Cable 256K up 3M down 2.7Gig/day up 31gig/day down
So using the Cox numbers (Cox is who I have and I want to compliment them on giving out honest numbers), this is:
Upload: 67 hours of max uploads/month or 9% duty cycle
Download: 39 hours of max downloads/month or 5% duty cycle
So they are working against about a 5 to 10% duty cycle. If you are using the service for "interactive" usage and not "automated" usage, then the limits are "way out there". If you want to run bittorent or kazaa, then you are hosed, but these are not "interactive" usage.
For non-server usage this is a lot. Lets say you listen to internet radio at 48K/sec. Even at 24 hours/day, this is only 14Gig or less than 50% of the usage limit.
They also say in the contracts that they do not guarantee the speed or that your service will be uninterrupted. In effect, they have free reign to just cut you off or slow down your connection via whatever QoS system they feel like. Sign a business-grade contract with a service level agreement and all of this petty bullshit goes away.
Look, the figures they're talking about are >300Kb/s permanently sustained. That's a TON of bandwidth. This homebody portrayal of the wife, kids and golden retriever is a ruse. I have two workstations, two servers and a WAP on my home line and have never run that much of a sustained suck. I was geting 50,000 hits a day on my webserver in one month and my bandwidth averaged about 50Kb/s--that's 500MB per day. This guy is talking about transfers on the order of 3.7GB per day. 113 gigabytes per month? My wife and kids my ass. OC-48 will transfer about 14TB/month at a cost of a little more than $10,000. That would allow 124 customers like this guy. AT COST that's $81 per month and people bitch about $45.
The advertisments are FULL of disclaimers and the contracts explicitly state that you are not guaranteed any speed at all, only that you will have the potential for certain bursted rates.
Fraud my ass. Read your contract. If you don't like it, pay for a SLA. It costs twice to three times as much, but you are guaranteed uninterrupted service and full use of the stated bandwidth. Even at $120/month, at full usage the profit margin is razor thin--a single support call wipes it out.
Do the math. You're getting what you're paying for... by a long shot.
here it is. I say almost because I've removed any personal information pertaining to me. But yeah.
Notice of Acceptable Use Policy Violation
Personal and Confidential
Abuse Ticket Number: NA000000000000000000000000
Incident Type: Network, Bandwidth, Data Storage, and Other Limitations
Comcast High-Speed Internet Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) Violation - Bandwidth Usage Limitations
LASTNAME, FIRSTNAME
ADDRESS
ADDRESS PART 2
Dear LASTNAME,
As a subscriber to Comcast High-Speed Internet service, you have agreed to use the service according to Comcast's Subscriber Agreement (http://www.comcast.net/terms/subscriber.jsp), Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) (http://www.comcast.net/terms/use.jsp), and other terms of service and policies. According to our aggregate bandwidth usage records, during your Comcast High-Speed Internet account exceeded Comcast's bandwidth usage limitations. The activity associated with your account was more than 100 times the national median. This level of usage activity violates Comcast's AUP. Comcast values the business of all of our customers, and this policy was created and is enforced so that Comcast may continue providing a superior high-speed Internet experience for all of our customers and to maintain the integrity of our network.
If your account continues to exceed our bandwidth usage limitations for your service, this activity could result in the suspension and ultimately termination of your Comcast High-Speed Internet account.
Excessive bandwidth usage may be the result of many different activities. Activities that could contribute to exceeding bandwidth limitations may include, but are not limited to:
* commercial or business applications,
* peer-to-peer networking,
* newsgroup downloading,
* file sharing,
* streaming music/videos and
* voice and/or video services
If you are unaware of any activities such as those listed above on your Comcast account, we suggest that you speak with any other person who may have had access to your Comcast High-Speed Internet service. As the service account holder, you are responsible for any misuse of the service or violation of the AUP even if a friend, family member, or guest committed the misuse or violation by accessing your Comcast High-Speed Internet service.
To avoid future violations of the AUP for exceeding bandwidth limitations, we recommend that you immediately review and change your current Internet usage activities. Additionally, you may also want to update your anti-virus program or obtain one if you don't already have anti-virus software. Comcast also recommends that you install a firewall if you don't already have one to help control unauthorized access to, and use of, your service.
We hope that you take note of our recommendations and make Internet usage adjustments so that we may continue to provide you the very best high-speed Internet service available.
If you have any questions about this Notice, or would like to speak with a representative about subscribing to a Comcast commercial Internet service to support business use of the Internet, we encourage you to contact us at 877-557-5817.
Sincerely,
The Comcast IP Network Abuse and Fraud Management Team
This isn't the second time this has been covered, its about the tenth in the last two years.
.16 = $160/mo divide that by half - $80/mo cost for my outflow bandwidth
... the silence is deafening ...
I'm not going to repeat my explanation of IP bandwidth costs *AGAIN* - just go read my journal - it is one of the first posts.
The attitude on here just amazes me - I pay $85/mo for two public IPs, 256k of upstream that I can use like a wholesale pipe (ie 24x7 101% utilized) and I have 3 meg of downstream. If I were younger and more flexible I'd be turning backflips in celebration of this.
When you buy a T1 worth of IP in a the form of a T1 you spend $200+ just for the local loop and the bandwidth itself costs $800 from a quality carrier all the way down to $400 from a third tier. Lets break down my 'expensive' broadband connection.
Half the cost is inflow, half is outflow.
256k/1.544 = 1.6 - $1000 *
3meg/1.5meg = 2 - $1000 * 2 = $2,000/mo divide that by half - $1,000 mo cost for my inflow bandwidth.
Now, can anyone tell me how Cox Cable makes money selling me $1,160 worth of service for $85? Its simple - they have a whole lot of business class customers like me who use the network in a bursty fashion. The technical term here is aggregation.
The typical slashdot responder who coyly dodges specifying that he has a god given right to steal music and video owned (right or wrong) by someone else, and jumps into arguments about false advertising, facist ISPs, and the like.
I think given the horrible way all of you are being treated that the solution should be obvious - pool your funds, pick the most vocal opponent of these policies, and let him spend your hard earned money on building a 'proper' broadband ISP.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
and you can tell I'm pissed when I make a post that contains a sentence fragment.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
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.
"That depends on what your definition of 'is' is." - Bill Clinton
I've done some work for Comcast, and have seen first hand how the company operates. It's absolutely mind blowing that they manage to make money at all, considering the pack of morons that run the the place, at least at the IT level.
For example, until a ~18 months ago, their entire network was publically exposed. I mean, their ENTIRE CORPORATE NETWORK. Servers, desktops, printers, etc., everything, on the internet, publically accessable. When I suggested that this was bad, I was given a look like just pissed on someone's face.
They brought in Accenture to do their broadband network, after the AtHome collapse (amusing in itself) which may account for it's not being entirely fucked up.
Oh, a little tip to get reductions in the price of your cable bill: call and complain. Just call, bitch at someone, and they'll usually give you a $25 credit to placate you. I personally know someone who does this EVERY MONTH. They can't track who's called, or when, or how many times they've given credits to people (software problems). That and, if you just get cable internet, you get free cable TV to boot - they can't block the TV and still provide the broadband.
I'm a (small) stockholder in this company (had ATT stock before the merger), but I encourage people to take as much money from these schmucks as you can. They deserve it, and maybe it'll prompt the massive firings of staff they need to fix the company.
Of course, they still say:
The limitations set forth herein are approximations and may vary from time to time.
So it's not hard and fast.
Comcast is a billion dollar company with too many financial tentacles reaching far too deeply into the monetary bowels of the US telecommunications industry. It has an excessive number of executives, spends more on mergers and advertising
than it does on R&D, and has an alarming number of friends in congress.
If the Internet is just a bunch of wires and switches, and assuming the rate for pulling cable is about $15/hr, and holding that internet hosting is coming more to the desktop everyday via P2P &c.,why is there a bandwidth problem?
Comcast could provide everyone in the US with truly unlimited internet access if it spent less than even half its total assets on such a project.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm not an average /. reader but I didn't notice any mistakes. Not till I saw your reply and tried re-scanning it.
:) . And on top of that, hitting that darn "preview button." You know, my behavior ashames me, now.
But you know what? I routinely post and waste about 3 times more time (sic) proofreading and placing syntactically good html code and links... and then editing --can't edit here, but check out the journals! whew, what a time killer
Returning to my first point, I tend to skim over words and not notice mistakes --because of my bad eyesight / reading in the dark with green letters on black stylesheet.
"Wireless : LAN
They don't have to sell to you if they don't want to.
After your contract term is up (at the end of the month or something) they can just tell you to go away. They can do this for almost any reason they like, including because you were a heavy bandwidth user.
Words fail to describe how little I care about Comcast's cash flow. The point of the article is they are advertising unlimited use, when there are clearly limits. If they intend to cap users at a certain amount of data transfer per month, then they should do two things: stop calling the service unlimited, and tell the users what those limits are. It's that simple. To do anything else is dishonest at best, and false advertising at worst. Everyone understands that bandwidth costs money, and we don't really expect (or even want) Comcast to let a few people use it all, we just want them to come clean about the fact that there is a cap, and publicly tell us what that cap is.
0 1 - just my two bits
It's quite another to claim service is unlimited and then sever it because some unspecified limit was reached. Severing service is not the same as throttling it, and thottling it unreasonably (say, to 1 b/s) is effectively severing it, if you think you can be a smartass with semantics.
A reasonable response, when there is no guarantee of service, would be forced throttling to average customer base limits within short order of detecting "excessive" traffic for a prolonged period, lightening up on burstiness over time.
No customer can be reasonably expected to keep their use "in check" when they do not know what the limits are. This is not a criminal issue where the police are not required to advertise how fast beyond the speed limit you can drive before they stop looking the other way. This is a contractual dispute, and when there is doubt as to the meaning, they tend to settle against the drawer of the contract.
Of course, if Comcast was smart and clearly disclaimed what they meant by "unlimited", I'd side with you. But, I get the impression that their marketting department got ahead of their technical and legal departments on this one.
If that's the case, and their customer contracts permit them to unilaterally change TOS (permitting cancellation without penalty), then that's what they should do: redefine TOS to eliminate vague references to unlimited service. Even if they were in the right, legally, acting heavyhanded toward your customers is not a good way to keep them.
You could've hired me.
until the provider has a cap.
So, you see, the algorithm works just as it is.
Dont assume so much!
emt 377 emt 4
For instance, I can recall at least one grocery store chain (Kohl's, I think) that was open 24 hours a day. The fine print showed that 24 hours a day just didn't cover the midnight shift on weekends.
> That cable line coming into your home carries a crapload (x "a lot more" if you get digital cable)
> of uncompressed high quality video
Comcast digital cable has horrible, horrible compression artifacts. It looks like a 400MB DivX, if that (i.e. a multi-GB DVD mpeg-2 stream compressed to HALF a CD-R). Based on what I have seen, I would never get it. VHS is honestly better, no jpeg-looking blocks.
I know from personal experience that a shared internet connection can be a real pain in the butt. I live in a privately managed, off-campus college apartment complex with a few hundred other college students. A large percentage of the residents here use KaZaA on their computers. The network connection is quite fast (multiple T-1, according to the management company) but during most peak times, you're lucky if you can get enough bandwidth to do DNS lookups. The point is, you really do affect the people around you with what you do.
I can't fault the tech department for the management company - as far as I know, KaZaA is almost impossible to block at the router. If anyone knows differently, I'd love to know about it.
One more suggestion: if you find yourself in a similar situation (a clogged residential network), I've found that having a DNS server on my computer work as my primary DNS speeds up your web surfing.
Again, just be good neighbors and try to hold yourself back from hogging the entire residential pipe that you SHARE with your neighbors.
This is a bald-faced scam. No matter what the absolute capacity of their network, they can reduce usage by constantly sending out these letters to the top 1% of their customers, based upon traffic measurements.
Each week, or month, they pick the top 1% and send out these letters. Bandwidth usage goes down, response times go up, and the need to upgrade capacity and infrastructure goes away.
There will always be a top 1%, and there will always be a significant difference between the bandwidth requirements of power users versus mom & pop emailing the kids.
Considering that their AUP and EUA agreements do not spell out specific limits on usage, they are using the argument "you are different, so you are bad" in place of a proper contract for service. Offering unlimited bandwidth then playing this game is nothing short of fraud, and I intend to stand up against it.
When Home Depot comes into a community with its deep pockets, undersells the local-owned hardware stores until they are forced to close, then jacks up their prices, I call it obscene. When ISP's like Rogers do the same thing then change their terms of service unilaterally, I call it criminal.
I am sure that they would like nothing better than for me to go away and get DSL, but I shall not offer them the satisfaction. I'll fight these bastards until I'm dead. I have already served notice that they will face legal action if they cut off my connection.
What the fuck are you talking about? There's no good unlimited internet connections for consumers in Cuba, so why would they want to move there?. Start making some sense, you whore.
The actual argument (I am paraphrasing not advocating here... 8-) that was advanced to kill the "false advertising" claims was that the access was "unlimited with respect to where and what the user could access" not with respect to "how fast" because clearly the access could not be made available at an infinite rate. No matter what the equipment there is a limit with respect to speed and there is a natural assumtion that fairness of use could be set and enforced just like speed limits on a road (etc).
It is further argued (ibid) that full disclosure was provided since the claims were made in conjunction with statements related to being on the "real internet" as opposed to limited or local services (like Prodigy or Compuserve or the older AOL "mostly on my site" services).
Accordingly (ibid) the meaning was clear when the standard of understanding was set. Removing the word now is impractical and everybody "should understand" this context for unlimited because it was the only one that was ever used in this market.
Yes, I know, "bull" but business stole my internet and made it cheap TV... I foresee a return to much of the BBS culture in the comming years.
[ASIDE]
I mean consider it, how long until the Warz sites stop offering the "full image" of products and start offering an encrypted image fragment. That fragment would be 99.9% of the actual image but to get the last 0.1% you have to make the private BBS call over the more private and protected direct "voice" POTS. Without that last little chunk the image is just so much digital noise and to get the chunk the "content owners" would have to get off the internet and take tracable real-world actions in a much more well-defined legal scope.
Think of it as a "stolen product activation".
Or as a infrastructurally validatable automated authentication system.
Anyway, IMHO, as "the net" gets clogged with "Cable TV" the phone lines will make a comeback as a unifying agency.
[End ASIDE]
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Okay okay, I'll admit that it's true SOME users may be using too much bandwidth and that it may possibly be justified to limit their use. However, despite the persuasive arguments presented here by people who have had experience running ISP's, it's also important for us not to lose sight of the other side of the argument, namely, that by having the right to arbitrarily pick out certain users as "abusers", ISP's may themselves abuse their power in order to fatten up their wallets at the same time as reducing quality of service.
ISP's are targetting users who are significantly above the average. Of course, however, the average is made up of highs and lows. ISP's are now trying to cut away the highs. If they succeed, then the middle becomes the new high, just waiting for the next onslaught. From the perspective of money-grubbing, backwards-looking ISP's the problem is the power user who wants too much bandwidth. In the big picture, however, the REAL problem is the low bandwidth user, who refuses to use their fair share and encourages ISP's to pursue these regressive policies.
Just try to picture what would happen if everyone became so paranoid and timid that they drastically reduced their bandwidth usage: the AVERAGE goes down, and then people who were previously average end up above average. The ISP's wallet gets fattened by the cost reductions, but their appetite just goes up. The executives feel the need to continue their "growth" to satisfy the owners. The next round of victims gets targetted by the ISP. Revenue growth ends up being sought through the ultimately destructive strategy of a gradual reduction of "costs" which are in fact hardware investments, without which the next generation of bandwidth and applications could never arrive.
Therefore, if AT ALL possible, always try to use AT LEAST as much bandwidth as the average user, if not slightly more. They can't terminate 50% of users, or even 40% of users. In fact, you could probably be in the top 10% without getting complaints. Let's be conservative though, and choose to use only enough bandwidth to be in the 75% (i.e. top 25%) Imagine if everyone did this. If everyone tried to do this, the average bandwidth usage would gradually increase, making it harder for the ISP to extort and terrorize power users. If the upward drift happens gradually, technology would hopefully keep up, and we would gradually get faster and faster bandwidth. Isn't that what progress should be?
If, instead, people reacted by cutting down on bandwidth and uploads, then the average might DECREASE. Then, the ISP could boot off the biggest users, reduce their infrastructure investment, hoping instead to make money off of the low-power users. After the pool of clueless low-power users is fully tapped, and with no infrastructure investment, the only further avenue for squeezing out more profits would be to reduce expenses even further by setting off another round of kicking off intensive users. With each successive wave of account terminations, the average usage would decrease, thereby decreasing the expense per revenue stream. There is a clear financial incentive for this scenario, which would ultimately lead to stagnation.
So, IF YOU ARE USING LESS THAN THE AVERAGE BANDWIDTH, then THIS IS YOUR FAULT.
It may sound like I'm joking, but I'm dead serious.
If you are using less than the average bandwidth, you are actually doing everyone a huge disfavour. Instead, you should be everyone a huge favour (including the industry, and hardware makers) by using MORE bandwidth. Share some torrents. Seed some even. Let it run for a few days a month. Try to be at least in the 60% percentile in terms bandwidth use.
In the long run, everyone will benefit.
Encourage technological progress! Use more bandwidth! (That is, you're not already in the top 5%. If you are already in the top 5%, then maybe cut down a bit, or just be careful and hold steady. Some day, if everyone else is as altruistic as you are (i.e. download and upload as much stuff)
see again, you're confused. They just nearly doubled their speeds from 1800 to 3000. If they were having such big issues on the network they would NOT have done that.
... whatever. I don't see how people can complain when we can get speeds that are a couple of orders of magnitude faster than what we had 8 years ago for only two or three times the price.
aoeu
"The fact that they are lying is really not a relevant point"
... For some reason or another the person or persons that have fed such a lie think it's quite relevant. Especially when the proclaimer of such a lie just brasingly tells it's victims that they must have misunderstood, and will not even be really challenged about it (why ? Read on ...)
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Hmm
"Consumers don't think that hard about the issue."
They do (at least, I do). But they allso know that a company can actually turn back on it's promises, and that effectivily all you can do is look for another one.
That is, if that company has not bound you to it's services for an extended time
Funnily enough, a company can change it's side of the contract whenever it wants to (which gives you, *lucky* you, a *law-enforced* way to terminate the contract), but you, as a customer can be held to any sort of contract, as long as the above does not apply.
And for the people that actually have the guts to take on such a conniving company ? Well, it mostly takes many, *many* months, if not years, to get any result at all (which means a lot of energy & stress), an that's apart from the money-pit that "advocates" are.
Yes, I *really* think that the victims --- Sorry, I ofcourse ment *customers* of such ISP's (or companies in general) should consider themselves lucky
Yeah, right
"Comcast and several other cable firms are doubling their top download speeds to 3 megabits per second"
From google: (1 terabyte) / (3 (megabits per second)) = 1.0632985 months
Therefore, before they raised their caps, it would take you over two months to download one terabyte. Afterwards, it would *still* take you more than a month.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
These contracts are written for the bottom of the barrel "Joe Blow" and guarantee NOTHING. If you're not such a person, buy the product that is actually being marketed for your purposes and has the guarantees you desire. EVERY major telco provider offers them and they're not much more expensive. FYI, here is the relevant portion of the Comcast agreement:
http://www.comcast.net/terms/subscriber.jsp
# Limited Warranty: THE COMCAST EQUIPMENT AND THE SERVICE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. NEITHER COMCAST NOR ITS AFFILIATES OR AGENTS WARRANT THAT ANY CONNECTION TO, TRANSMISSION OVER, OR RESULTS OF THE COMCAST EQUIPMENT OR THE SERVICE WILL MEET CUSTOMER'S REQUIREMENTS
OR WILL PROVIDE UNINTERRUPTED USE OR WILL OPERATE AS REQUIRED, UNINTERUPTED, AT ANY MINIMUM SPEED, OR ERROR FREE.YOUR SOLE REMEDY FOR SERVICE INTERRUPTION SHALL BE LIMITED TO A PRORATED CREDIT UPON REQUEST ONLY IN THE EVENT OF COMPLETE FAILURE OF THE SERVICE DUE TO A TECHNICAL MALFUNCTION FOR TWENTY-FOUR (24) CONSECUTIVE HOURS OR MORE. TO QUALIFY FOR SUCH CREDIT, YOU MUST REQUEST THE CREDIT FROM COMCAST WITHIN THIRTY (30) DAYS OF THE FAILURE. CREDITS SHALL BE APPLIED ONLY AGAINST CURRENT AND FUTURE FEES PAYABLE BY YOU FOR THE SERVICE AND ANY CREDITS PROVIDED BY COMCAST ARE AT OUR SOLE DISCRETION AND IN NO EVENT SHALL CONSTITUTE OR BE CONSTRUED AS A COURSE OF CONDUCT BY COMCAST. NEITHER COMCAST NOR ITS AFFILIATES OR AGENTS WARRANT THAT ANY DATA OR FILES SENT BY OR TO YOU WILL BE TRANSMITTED IN UNCORRUPTED FORM OR WITHIN A REASONABLE PERIOD OF TIME. ALL REPRESENTATIONS AND WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY WARRANTIES OF PERFORMANCE, NONINFRINGEMENT, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR MERCHANTABILITY, ARE HEREBY EXCLUDED.
See, that is what did it. You gamed their averages from the very beginning, so now they just assume it is in fact normal...
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
I'm a ComCrap customer in S.W. Michigan. I was told that I *had* to have basic cable TV service or they would *not* let me have a broadband cable connection. I understand why, the only thing I'd have to do is put in a $1.29 splitter and have free basic cable. However, I had a chat with the install tech that came out (I'm a retired electronics tech) and he told me that under *no* circumstances to let anyone at ComCrap know I was using Linux, as they unofficially view anyone running Linux as a potential problem, and a reason would be found to terminate their service as soon as possible. I thought maybe this person was just blowing smoke, but I've had opportunity to talk with some other ComCrap employees off-the-record, and got pretty much the same answer. I just wonder what OS these people who're getting these "nastygrams" are using, and if their ISPs are aware of it. It might explain a lot.
I'm thinking of a way to make bandwidth to cost more during peak times to even out the load. It could be as simple as having different prices for different hours. (Hopefully it would be possible to do this less confusingly than celluar carriers do.) Do any ISPs do anything like that?
You are confusing an ethical issue with a legal one.
I wouldn't want some guy using up my bandwidth either, but what everybody is upset about is that if he WANTS to DL 2 dvds a day, he should be able to, according to what their advertising (well, legally 'unlimited' doesn't mean that, but thats another issue).
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
It's not difficult. Use AFS. Work across the network. Compile, test, and recompile software. You'll max out your connection pretty fast, and keep it maxed while you work...
Particularly if your cache is too small...
Comcast is not a good company, it does false advertizing.
I used to have ATT @home, and the service was great, static IP, no need to pay for video, static IP, 1.5 Mbits/s down, and 256 Kbits/s up, and for the first 6 months is was $20 per month, then after the promotion it was $38 per month.
When Comcast took over they told me nothing would change, and it was clearly false, they stopped giving out static IP, I got to keep mine since I already had it, and the started to require to pay for video, and the regular price went up from $38 to $58 that is a 50% increase, and they told me there were no changes in the service.
Now they say unlimited bandwidth according to this article but it is clearly not unlimited.
The point I try to make is that you can not trust a company that lies to you for whatever reason, you lose your trust on them.
I dropped comcast a few months after they took over from ATT.
1) Press Caps Lock key
2) Profit
Uhh, the downstream most certainly *is* shared. Read the DOCSIS spec at the SCTE web sight (http://scte.org/documents/pdf/SCTE2312002DSS0209. pdf). Typical deployment these days is one 6Mhz RF channel per 2000-3000 homes passed serving area, with 27Mbps downstream in the channel. The MC16 card has one downstream and 6 upstreams. The upstreams typically serve a 500 Home passed section of the larger serving area.
These are typical numbers but any particular location may be significantly difffernt. If an area gets too busy it's pretty easy to deploy more bandwidth by using more 6Mhz RF channels or sharing the downstream over a smaller area.
I still say they have it way too good in the USA. Sure, things are getting a little more restrictve, but nonetheless.
/MB over the limit, or shape the account down to around 56k (varies from provider to provider).
Let me tell you how it is in Australia! When Telstra, our telecommunication overlord and monopoly release ADSL for all us little punters, you could get it at a tremendous cost, and they gave you a whole 300MB quota. Then they charged you a significant rate per MB after that. It's taken about 2 years to creep up to 1GB for the basic Telstra plan.
After Telstra was forced by various competition enforcement bodies, third parties are allowed to sell internet services over Telstras local loop. However, Telstra charges incredibly high prices for these services and there are terrible delays. These brave smaller ISPs are able to offer reasonably high limits, starting around 3GB and going anywhere up to 16GB (if you want to pay for it). ISP's will either charge
There are a few groups of ISP's with peering agreements, these make the very low limits on Australian broadband tolerable.
Some ISP's do offer unlimited, however there are a couple of provisos.. if you use too much bandwidth, your priority for connections declines and so does your general quality of service.
The primary real reason behind this is that the USA offers, I don't know, something like 1GB of traffic to Australia, and charges like crazy for the rest, generally bringing most countries who wish to communicate with the USA to their knees.
If you want to see how the rest of the world lives, have a look at http://whirlpool.net.au - it might open your eyes up a little.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
In the case of vaguely specified contracts, however, I didnt take into account of your comment regarding "reasonableness", especially if satisfying one person's request will technically interfere with other customers.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
but it's still no excuse to not deliver what is advertised.
Imagine if Ford would deliver all their SUVs and trucks without 4x4 just because noone uses it and it is more expensive. Hey, it's just advertising right ?
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
/shrug.
i dont see a problem with their logic, nor their approach, as using something like "100 times the national median" would definitely put that into the range of a (small) commercial internet account if you ask me. i'd like to see this comcast Acceptable Use Policy they refer to though.. if they're overly sneaky about such regulations they're just asking for shit like this to happen.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
That is simply not possible with a standard cable-connection, of the type Comcast sells as far as I can see from their website. They say they sell "25 times modem connection", and specify that with modem they mean 56K, so, they sell 1400Kbps, upload is capped at 256Kbps.
Thing is, with that speed, even at *full* download around the clock, the entire month, you would end up with around 420 GB in a month. This is very much, but it is not "over a terabyte"
Let's see:
Advertised as unlimited, but really isn't.
No clear guidelines or parameters with arbitrary threats of termination.
Thousands of affected users.
I think we have the makings of a class action law suit here.
Comcast is one of the largest sources of spam in the United States. When are they going to crack down on the spamming activity of their users? They are basically the last large ISP that hasn't put a cap on the proxy relaying crap that's been going on domestically which allows spammers to run wild in their vast IP space.
Here in the land of Oz, it's now been like this for a while. Both ISPs who offer cable have caps on their service, and they do tell you what that cap is.
You want more capacity, you buy more.
Cable services, however, are unlimited speed. This is good - my Optus cable would have to be (by my reckoning) somewhere between 7 and 10 megabits per second.
If you go over your cap (mine is 12GB) some companies will charge you per meg, some will throttle your speed back...
ADSL is a different kettle of fish, and you can get services that are advertised as unlimited downloads - and it is. Other services offer other advantages, like static IP address, or let you do what you want and run servers, but cap your data downloads.
US companies are having a good look at what's happened here in Australia, and are starting to follow suit... It's now been two or three years since the major ISPs have done this, and they seem to be quite happy with their subscriber level - and let's face it, if you want a T1 to use at 100% utilisation, damn well go out and buy one, rather than abuse a RESIDENTIAL service.
- k
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
Here we go again, why are we having an argument about ISP's, we should be talking about how the whole current structure of what we pay for internet service is based upon some out-dated teleco pricing of internet access based upon demand models of 10 years ago!!!! We should be paying less and getting more bandwidth and times goes by... moor's law as applied to computer chip/technology growth should also apply to the cost of sending N number of bits down a given data distribution system...the explosion of growth we are experiencing in speed of computers and the ever lowering of cost of storage and the increased bandwith of the modems we use, imagine the speed in say 10 or 15 years, we probabbly will be using cheap fiber optic modems, will we be paying the same overpriced, outdated pricing structure we pay now? We had better be paying 100,000 times less in that future date or something in the universe is very very wrong...(same thing as Microsoft charging wayy too much for their crappy OS's, Go Linux!!!...(what we need is an equivallent of Cntl-Alt-Del for the teleco/cable/sat industry)
How about closing all non-web & email usage ports by default and put a web tool to open them? ;)
If every ISP did that, we wouldn't have that much spamming relays and worms, and the hassle for the user would be minimum. If you need it, you open it. If you don't know what it is, you at least aren't a menace for the whole internet
Comcast cable customers have no hard limit on their download speed. I was getting over 3 megabits since it was AT&T's network.
The bandwidth a customer gets is proportional to the number of people on the node, and since some people like myself out in the boonies only have one or two other people sharing our nodes, our bandwith is really high.
Anyone who says they are doubling their top download speed to 3 megabits are stepping way out of the wording I have ever heard them use: they have NEVER confirmed ANY bandwidth numbers even when directly asked. This is because they cannot guarantee any particular bandwidth for any particular customer.
Finally, I would note that Comcast upgraded the network this winter, and my bandwith is now...very very high.
Thus, it is quite possible that someone could download a terabyte of data each month.
I have surewest.net. They run fibre optic to your home and have service in a few select areas. The connection is 10Mb/s. It can sometimes burst to 15Mb/s. However, the connection is limited to monthly throughput of 40Gb. Basically, I can use my line that costs $49.95 per month at 56Kbps speed. At 56Kbps speed running 24/7 for one month, I would download approximately 38Gb. They charge $3.50 per Gb over the limit. Sucks, until I can get DSL other than SBC and cable other than Comcast.
a slut did tulsa
I too have sold broadband. When I tell a customer that they get unlimited acess but not bandwidth, they rattle off a list of my competitors that advertise unlimited.. again, i tell them its the access and not the bandwidth that those companies offer.. Basically, the customer will go to one of my competitors and sign up. Wait for it, heres the best part.. as we trade under 2 different names, my colleagues selling a different brand of broadband will get the same customers call in, THEY DONT EVEN ASK FOR CLARIFICATION OF BROADBAND, we pre empt it with "its all you can eat"... ignorance is bliss, for some.. anyway, they basically beg us to tell them what they want to here and ignor everything else.. as long as i keep telling them things they dont want to know, i'll keep pushing them away.. so ive stopped!
serenity now!
Although your post does sound slightly tongue-in-cheek you do raise some very valid points here. Especially seeing that, really,what the companies probably want is to maximise profit from "Middle ground" users. Anyone else they can either recoup from either unused capacity (low-bandwidth users) or these extortionate charges (high-bandwidth users).
But if the "average user" majority starts using more of the capacity, then the companies will have to catch up. But whilst it's only the "Power Users" who use the extra bandwidth, then of course they're going to use them to skim off the extra money.
But unlike some people who'd say "Use more bandwidth by sharing music and movies", which would only validate the claims that "High bandwidth usage is mainly used for illegal filesharing", you're actually suggesting that people share things like Linux distros.
TiggsAnd it's rather harder for the companies to complain about people seeding the latest Linux ISO than to complain about people seeding copies of the Matrix or Eminem's albums.
Tiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
Unlimited access (I.E., stay on as long as you care to) is not the same thing as unlimited bandwidth (I.E., use capacity that costs them 10 times as much to provide as they're charging you for the line.)
Information may want to be free, but fiber optic cable wants to be one million US dollars per mile.
Comcast basically told me that it was because I was higher then the average. Well, that just means everyone else needs to download more. Spread the word, get your grandma to host bittorrent downloads.
I'm provocative but I rarely troll - take time to understand the difference.
Read through the responses to that article and what do you see?
BOO HOOO WHOA IS ME *WHINE* *SNIFFLE* 'FREE' MUSIC 'FREE' VIDEOS (a tiny hint of rational thought) *SOB* HUH? EVIL CORPORATE URCHINS! HOW DARE THEY CHARGE *ME* FOR WHAT I USE? BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH
Here and there you find a lucky few who have a consumer grade high speed internet pipe that they share with a large number of people who use it as expected; they have occasional burst but 98% of the time their link is standing idle.
The rest of the 'typical' slashdot responders have endless energy to whine about how they are being abused by evil corporate powers who work so hard to provide them service.
I've heard the false advertising argument and I suppose its technically correct but everyone who makes it RICHLY DESERVES to have the high speed provider in their area fold. A few *hours* on analog service and they'd have some other leftist/socialist rant about how it is their god given right to an inexpensive consumer type high speed service that they can use like an expensive wholesale circuit WITHOUT paying for that level of service.
More trolling? Perhaps. I prefer to think of it as pointing out a more insidious problem than companies charging for the services they provide - the effects of forty years of fuzzy headed liberal thinking in the US are clearly visible in the poorly worded rants by Gen-Y members about their entitlement to carrier grade internet service for a fraction of the cost of providing it.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
--just unplugged the modem, wait 60 seconds and voila! now my normal connection speed is between 2.7 and 3.0 Mbps all the time and i frequently get a transfer rate of the same amount. i would say on average my transfer rate is around 600 or 700 kbps but like i said i have actually gotten 3.0- mbps download speeds -- of course this all depends on what the site's own cap is. if a site only allows you to get 100 kbps then thats all you are getting. I am also in a college town, so there are HUBS set up everywhere. IT is true -- if you dont want cable with them then you will pay something like $65 - $70 for cable internet, if you want cable then its $42.95 per month..even if you get the $6 cable package which is basically all the local channels. 2 - 13(by luck channel 13 here is ESPN) :)
I hate when people try to justify ISPs that do this. Like people on these boards who claim to work for ISPs.. brown nosing little shits who feel the need to defend asshole companies that do this. It's disgusting. Quit trying to justify it because misleading information (quite frankly, I don't give a fuck about the "fine print", it's what's promised/presented upon acquiring a customer..)
Shut the fuck up already. It's wrong. Not all ISPs do this, and those who do are shitty and are losing customers fast. I download DVDs contantly and have never been asked to stop or have ever been accused of "abuse".
If I did get such a notice, someone over at their offices would get a quick response back saying, "Fuck off. Lower my monthly bill and I *might* consider it. You're lucky to have me as a customer."
The reason this shit happens is because of pussy ass consumers who don't know their rights and don't know how to use the loopholes in the system to their advantage.
have had Comcast Cable Internet for more than a year and have never been forced to have CATV
You are not forced. However, Basic Cable is $9.95, and that save $14.95 on the bill. That a net savings of $5.00. I have Basic Cable even though it's cnot connected.
Have you read my journal today?
It's spelled yare yare, baka!
UNLIMITED IS UN-FUCKING-LIMITED!!! As soon as you place limits, be it range or scope the service is no longer unlimited.
the above is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect that of the little voices in my head
Listen, I know how to keep from getting capped.... When they come for you on your thirteenth birthday, hide in the swampy place, and have the foresight to stay hidden from the TRIPODS! You won't get capped!
*subject to outages and interruptions
The victims are the ones getting spammed and DDoS'd by all those exploited PCs. The blame should be shared between the criminals, and those negligent individuals who do the network equivalent of leaving loaded guns sitting unsecured on their back porch's. The equivalent of a traffic citation would be letting them get off easy. Just the publicity about the threat of getting cited would clean up a ton of home PC's during the time it would take the law to go into effect.
Thinking along these lines, how long before someone sues slashdot for causing a DOS attack on their site (ie. posting a link). For example this website.
Posted anonymously so I don't get sued.
Take bandwidth away from idiots who download copyrighted movies and music 24/7. Give this bandwidth to people who have legitimate uses for it.
Simple, no?
You know, It's absolutely hilarious, how Comcast, and for that matter, SBC Have literal Monopolies in some areas.
I live in detroit. It's Comcast or Nothing for Broadband, unless I was willing to get a T1 Piped in.
My phone lines have noise and will not go above 28.8. SBC Says if I can have a conversation on the line, There is no problem.
I have a friend who lives like 10 miles away. He pays half as much for the same speed Cable Internet as I do. (Through Wide Open West.)
I'm sorry, it should count as a monopoly when the only way to realistically switch providers is
-move- to a different region.
I think you mean..
....
while ($providers_without_caps.length > 0) {
if ($provider_current_caps > 0) switch_providers($providers_without_caps[0]);
sleep(2000);
}
if ($cheap_t1_cost < 100)
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Me: What seems to be the problem officer?
Officer: You were speeding.
Me: Really? What is the speed limit here?
Officer: Can't say.
Me: How fast was I going?
Officer: Can't say.
Me: What's the penalty?
Officer: License Suspension.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
I realize maybe it did sound a bit tongue in cheek. I was being totally serious though. The point is that people equate high bandwidth usage with being a bad "netizen", whereas actually the opposite extreme is just as harmful to internet economics. If the average user were to gradually increase their bandwidth consumption, at a steady and moderate rate, it would provide the necessary impetus for providers to keep improving their technology.