Broadband Providers' Hidden Bandwidth Limits

An anonymous reader sends us to the Boston Globe for a story that will come as a surprise to few here: broadband suppliers will cut you off if you download too many bits. It tells the stories of several Comcast users who were warned — without specifics — that they were using "too much" bandwidth, then had their accounts summarily cancelled. Looking into the future: "...even if only a tiny fraction of customers are downloading enough to trigger the policy, that will probably change as more entertainment moves to the Internet."

Comments

BellSouth/ATT

[thisNameNotTaken]

What changes? Its all about your money with no use that is acceptable. All want "grand ma's" who only use the service on Sundays.

BellSouth: They change renew your DHCP address 5 - 10 time a minute to drop you from you connection. Follow your logs. Accept, on my system they just slow thing down. Anyway, no wonder we a "last" in the world in high speed connections. It's a Republican thing!

Re:"Those Cox-uckers!"

[MaxwellSmarty]

Here you guys are, in the flesh the Cox Nastygrams. I've had about 65 over the course of two months, even after upgrading my service. compare with their PR page and slogan, " It's the Internet without limits!!!" "Dear Cox High Speed Internet Customer: In order to provide all Cox High Speed Internet customers with an optimal online experience, Cox must effectively manage network resources for our users. As part of our network management activities, we proactively identify accounts that may be utilizing excessive network bandwidth. Our records indicate that your account may be exceeding our bandwidth usage policy. Please note that if the situation is not corrected, your Cox High Speed Internet account may be suspended. Privacy note: Cox does NOT track Internet sites that you visit or files you download - it only measures total bandwidth used for purposes of network management. Below are frequently asked questions regarding excessive bandwidth usage. - What Are the Current Cox High Speed Internet Residential Bandwidth Limitations? The Limitations vary based on your level of service. The complete list is available at http://www.cox.com/policy/limitations.asp. Preferred Package - 40 gigabytes downstream; 10 gigabytes upstream Premier Package - 60 gigabytes downstream; 15 gigabytes upstream Value Package - 4 gigabytes downstream; 1 gigabyte upstream - What Might Cause My Account To Use Excessive Bandwidth? 1. Often a peer-to-peer file sharing application such as KaZaa, Morpheus or Gnutella may be the problem. These programs operate as file servers by default and offer files from your hard drive to other Internet users, possibly causing your account to use excessive bandwidth without your knowledge. 2. If you have a wireless home network, there is a possibility that other people are using your wireless network without your knowledge and greatly increasing your network usage. Please refer to the documentation provided with your networking equipment to secure your connection with a password. 3. Your computer may be affected by a computer virus. A virus will often send out mass emails from your computer without your knowledge. Installing antivirus software on your computer and scanning for possible infections may resolve this issue. 4. In some cases, excessive usage indicates the presence of a commercial Internet server. Customers using servers and/or bandwidth above normal amounts may be best served by a commercial account available from Cox Business Services (www.coxbusiness.com). - Does Using A File Sharing Application Violate the Cox Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)? No, using a peer-to-peer file sharing program to download files does not in itself violate the AUP. If your software is already configured not to share files to other users, you should not have a problem. Please visit support.cox.net for more information and instructions for securing most common file sharing programs. - Does Having A Wireless Home Network Violate the Cox Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)? No, however Cox does not provide support for your home network and you must take precautions to secure any wireless home network. - What Will Happen If My Account Continues To Use Excessive Bandwidth? If the excessive usage is not corrected, your account may be suspended per the Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). - Where Can I View The Acceptable Use Policy (AUP)? The AUP is available online at http://www.cox.com/policy/#Acceptable_Use_Policy. If you have further questions regarding this policy or feel you have received this notice in error, please visit http://support.cox.com/sdccommon/asp/contentredire ct.asp?sprt_cid=ad888fb1-7447-4a80-bcb5-47131d31e3 07 or send an email to support@cox.net. Thank you for your cooperation, The Cox High Speed Internet Team"

So Why Can't You Sue Them?

[tom's a-cold]

It's false advertising.

Oh, yeah, Republican administration. Never mind.

Re:Instead of focusing on speed

[Anonymous Coward]

(and thats not easy to do)

yeah, i expect it actually is pretty easy to do. slashdot is fun, but someone should probably point out that you are acting like knee jerk "didn't read the article" no knowledge of the industry loud mouthed fool here, so pipe down already.

besides the fact that 60% usage of a typical dsl circuit is probably around 30% of the throughput we are discussing here, you can be sure that there is either abuse monitoring by your provider or you have one suck-ass provider. it is essential to perform proactive abuse monitoring at the ISP level to stomp out zombies, end of story.

also, you didn't specify if you have some sort of static IP class of service where they expect and provision for a server or paltry consumer service. these have vastly different terms of service. I'm glad you asked your carrier if they "didn't mind your using every last Byte" of your service, as you mentioned in another comment, but it's pretty clear you haven't even bothered to glance at your ToS for the purposes of this thread (which shores up my earlier point re: you -> fool)

Crazed slashbots are bound to foam at the mouth that this is conspiracy to shore up some argument about net neutrality, but really, abuse monitoring can kick in for all sorts of reasons. for example. a few thousand connections over port 25 in a couple of days or so will get you an ISP level block on port 25, for the typical consumer grade service. is this some sort of conspiracy to, i dunno, mess with the email system? no. do people get steamed when it happens? you bet. but they will run their crapp-assed machine jammed up with spam zombie magic no matter what you tell them, so the only thing to do is pull the plug or slam the door shut on a particular port.

I am shamed to even be reading some of this drivel. if the ISPs are proactive about stomping out spam and bot armies, slashdot will complain. If they did nothing, slashdot would complain. you are all a bunch of narrow-minded thick wits eager to bitch about any and every thing. yech.