Belgian ISP Claims One Customer Downloads 2.7TB

An anonymous reader writes with this envy-spawning excerpt: "While for most people the data limit is never reached, with media-rich websites becoming every more prevalent, and more media services going online (we're looking at you streaming video services), it won't be long before the average user is surpassing even the highest caps commonly imposed today. But how much data is it possible to download every month? And do the so-called data-hogs really burn through that much more data than everyone else? According to Belgian ISP Telenet, the answers are 'a lot' and 'yes, they can.'"

Comments

Who cares?

[McTickles]

It is the ISPs problem if they can't deliver the bandwidth they promise their customers. Their business is data transferings so if they should rejoices peoples use their pipes to transfer datas.

Re:Who cares?

[MoonBuggy]

Overselling is a necessity if we want sensible prices - I won't reiterate the whole argument here, but Dreamhost explained it pretty well.

What should be banned is the rampant false advertising that we see now. If my household is using the 50Mbps connection to download around 200GB/month then we want an oversold connection - no point in paying for the tens of terabytes more that we're not using. The ISPs, however, should be required to state clearly what the limitations of the connections are - if they're selling 'unlimited' then I sure as hell want unlimited, however impractical that may be on the prices they're charging.

Beyond that, sensible limits (two standard deviations from the mean, perhaps?), reasonable per GB charges or voluntary throttling or cutoff over the monthly limit, and a rolling three month average to calculate whether or not you've gone past your allocation would all be beneficial for both the customers and for the ISPs reputation.

Ah well. We can dream. Or try to get investment to set up our own ISP, with blackjack and hookers.

Re:Who cares?

[Dan541]

It's ok to oversell services but customers who want to use 100% must be able to do so. Otherwise the ISP is failing to provide.

Re:Who cares?

[mwvdlee]

In theory, they'd be working on infrastructure to supplement the need, but in reality, well, buying hookers and yachts for lobbyists and politicians aren't cheap, you know.

I don't know how much a hooker currently goes for, but surely it's cheaper than a server-grade router.
So if they were smart they'd just buy each of those 25 top users a hooker. That'll keep those nerds occupied bragging about how they "made love" to a "woman" on forums, which uses a lot less bandwidth.
It's much cheaper than upgrading hardware.

Re:Who cares?

[foniksonik]

Set it up like the cell carriers with rollover GB. You get 500 GB/mo and roll over. It's a limit for heavy users and practically unlimited for everyone else.

Windows Update

[Anonymous Coward]

Poor guy just left Windows Update set to automatic.

Re:Windows Update

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I think he was trying to get a video driver that would work with Linux.

Re:Its possible

[dk90406]

You'll only need 8 Mb/sec to get that 2.7 TB over a 30 day period. If I fully utilized my (Danish connection) I could get more than double of that. Koreans and Japanese would get 20 times. I suspect both UL and DL are included.

Download caps?

[loufoque]

What are these? Is that a relic from the past?

Well...

[Raxxon]

In theory:

28 Day "Month" (4 weeks), 24h/day, 60 min/h, 60 sec/min, 2.5Mb/sec..

I see a possible 6Tb in total transfer (and that's assuming you're not also transmitting!), and that wouldn't be saturating my internet link. However I do find it quite difficult to (1) Maintain 2.5Mb/sec constant (speaking of Torrents/other P2P in general) and (2) Having things to constantly download at that rate.

What is the actual cost to the ISP?

[thue]

Based on what we are paying for Internet traffic, 2TB of traffic would very roughly cost about $50.

So since this is their one biggest user, and even he is probably paying more than $50 for his internet connection, I don't see the problem with bandwidth hogs.

Re:What is the actual cost to the ISP?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

So since this is their one biggest user, and even he is probably paying more than $50 for his internet connection, I don't see the problem with bandwidth hogs.

That's actually the reason the ISP posted the information - they want to convince their customers (and potential customers) on cheaper slower plans that not only is the ISP capable of handling massive bandwidth consumption, but that they encourage other people to upgrade/switch to the same unlimited plans and really take advantage of the available capacity.

Its totally the reverse of what we are used to in the USA with places like comcast bitching and moaning about hogs - apparently this ISP understands that bandwidth hogs are a business opportunity to be cultivated not capped.

Re:What is the actual cost to the ISP?

[CharlyFoxtrot]

That's actually the reason the ISP posted the information - they want to convince their customers (and potential customers) on cheaper slower plans that not only is the ISP capable of handling massive bandwidth consumption, but that they encourage other people to upgrade/switch to the same unlimited plans and really take advantage of the available capacity.

Its totally the reverse of what we are used to in the USA with places like comcast bitching and moaning about hogs - apparently this ISP understands that bandwidth hogs are a business opportunity to be cultivated not capped.

Although according to their website if you go over the double the average usage for people with a FUP subscription your connection is slowed. These guys are getting a free ride now because Telenet need the publicity. A couple of ISP's have switched from capped downloads to a FUP recently and I guess they are feeling the competition. Let's see how they treat these guys in a couple of months.

Re:Human nature

[SimonTheSoundMan]

BT Broadband claimed I used 170GB per month on average over a 12 month period using my 2.5Mb connection.

Meanwhile, 2.7TB is nothing if you have a leased line. Just had a two week film shoot, used 6TiB. We have had to transfer all the daily rushes via the Internet.

Re:Its possible

[TheRaven64]

I have a 10Mb/s connection, but it gets throttled if I go over certain thresholds (3000MB in the morning, 1500MB in the evening) at 'peak' times, with 14 hours in the day when there is no throttling. The throttling lasts for 6 hours, so maximum total throughput is achieved by staying under that limit. That means that the maximum that I can download in a day is (a href="http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=14%20hours%20*%2010Mb%2Fs%20%2B%204500MB">14 hours at 10Mb/s plus 4500MB, or 67.5GB. That gives just under 2TB/month, so I'd be unable to download 2.7TB with my connection.

Mind you, I have one of the cheapest connections that my ISP provides. If I bought their 20Mb/s package, I could download just over 4TB/month. With their 50Mb/s package, it would be over 16TB. This is in the UK.

Even so, 2.7TB seems excessive. In a typical month, I download well under 100GB. The only time I've ever hit my ISP's throttling caps was when I was uploading the source material for a DVD to my publisher. Even with an Internet radio stream left running most of the time and fairly regular downloads from iPlayer, I don't come close to 1TB.

Consumption

[Mr_Silver]

And do the so-called data-hogs really burn through that much more data than everyone else? According to Belgian ISP Telenet, the answers are 'a lot' and 'yes, they can

I'd be interested to know how people can consume that much data! Assuming 1080p rips at 11GB a pop lasting 3 hours, you're looking at 251 movies or 754 hours worth of entertainment.

Assuming you don't work and you don't sleep then there are only 744 hours in the longest month! Assuming you're unemployed and you do sleep, then this puts this down to a "mere" 496 hours and you'd have to be watching them from the moment you wake up to the moment you fall asleep.

Even in a house of 4 people, that's still each person downloading 54 HD movies a month - how on earth can you watch that much in a month? Or find that many movies worth watching for that matter?

Re:math?

[chichilalescu]

are you seriously going to start the 2.6 = 2.7 debate when they're still fighting about Kb, KB and KiB?
the numbers are more like guidelines...

Hogs?

[Dan541]

How are such people data-hogs? They are using what they have paid for.

Re:Hogs?

[wagnerrp]

No. All of the connections that company offers are 'always on'. They offer some cheaper subscriptions with bandwidth caps, and other more expensive ones with no stated cap, hence 'unlimited'.

Re:Hogs?

[wagnerrp]

For what its worth, the ISP was not bitching about those users. They were using it as an advertisement to people on their cheaper, capped subscriptions, "Look just how much you can download if you upgrade to our more expensive, uncapped subscriptions!"

Re:Hogs?

[vux984]

Electricity has to be generated, by consuming raw materials that produce an equivalent amount of electricity. Electricity is a finite scarce, consumable resource, generating it is expensive.

Where I live electricity is generated by water falling out of the sky, collecting in a river, and eventually turning a turbine. Where other people live its generated by wind / solar. Where other people live its geothermal. Where other people live its by incinerating garbage.

And then yes, where some people live its gas, coal, nuclear. But in the former cases in particular, and even in the final case to a large degree the cost of electricity is primarily the cost of maintaining the infrastructure. The small army of people fixing power lines, replacing transformers, laying cable, replacing it, troubleshooting it, monitoring the system, customer service, billing, advertising, ... the cost of the actual 'fuel' ranges from zero to a small percentage of total operations. Running a nuclear plant costs far more in maintenance than in actual fuel.

The analagy is more apt than you think.

For example, if 10 million people want to watch a live video feed that starts at exactly 6:00 PM EST.

That causes a hell of a lot more network congestion, than if 20 million people want to download a Linux ISO over BitTorrent over a 5 day period.

Ironically this situation is also reflected in the electricity situation. The electrical system has a maximum load it can deliver as well. There is a huge spike in the morning as millions of people wake up and turn on the lights, the coffee maker, the electric razer, take a shower (triggering the hot water heater to step up), etc.

In less developed countries (and California during energy crises) they don't have the capacity to actually satisfy peak levels of demand, and we get rolling brown outs when too many people hit it at once.

In most cities, the city can actually deliver all the electricity anyone demands when they demand it. But this isn't a characteristic of electricity. This is the result of slower growth in demand, and metered pricing which has led to the development of such things as "energy star", and 'green' drives to consume less.