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Ask Slashdot: AT&T's Data Usage Definition Proprietary?
stox writes "As many of you know, AT&T has implemented caps on DSL usage. When this was implemented, I started getting emails letting me know my usage as likely to exceed the cap. After consulting their Internet Usage web page, I felt the numbers just weren't right. With the help of Tomato on my router, I started measuring my usage, and ended up with numbers substantially below what AT&T was reporting on a day-to-day basis. Typically around 20-30% less. By the way, this usage is the sum of inbound and outbound. At this point, I decided to contact AT&T support to determine what exactly they were defining as usage, as their web pages never really define it. Boy, did I get a surprise. After several calls, they finally told me they consider the methodology by which they calculate bandwidth usage to be proprietary. Yes, you read that right; it's a secret. They left me with the option to contact their executive offices via snail mail. Email was not an option. So, I bring my questions to you, all-knowing Slashdotters: are there any laws that require AT&T to divulge how they are calculating data usage? Should I contact my state's commerce commission or the FCC to attempt to get an answer to this?"
Welcome to AT&T. Let me see if I can help you get to the right place.
Just say what you are looking for.
Terms of Service
Did you say Enforce Archaic Rules? I thought so. Now tell me how I can help.
Privacy
I'm not sure if I heard that right, did you say Please Let the Government Have Access to All My Data?
Bandwidth Usage
I'm sorry, you are over the limit. Goodbye!
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
You are looking at 2.5-5% overhead depending on TCP, UDP, frame size, etc. Not 20-30%. If you're feeling pungent, save up your bills for a year and file a small claims court action. Might cost you a few bucks and a couple hours. In exchange, ATT is 99% likely not so show up (therefore you win by default), or to call and offer you credit for cancellation. Should be worth a few hundred bucks to you.
DSL is based on ATM technology.
And ATM uses 53 Byte cells to transfer data. 48 Byte for the actual data and 5 Byte overhead to indicate things such as the destination.
Now when you want to transfer 50 Bytes of data, you need two atm-cells (vs 1 ethernet packet). This takes 106 Bytes of data on-the-wire.
When one end is measuring the Ethernet side (50 Bytes + ethernet overhead) and the other is measuring the ATM side you will end up with very different numbers.
A web user once found himself in a fix;
His ISP cried "too many bits!"
For while a yottabyte has a septillion,
An ATTbyte, only six.
Government inspectors ensure that gas pumps are properly calibrated. A gallon is a gallon.
The grocer's scale has to meet government standards. A pound is a pound.
A byte should be a byte.
AT&T saying their standard is proprietary is like the butcher arguing that he should be able to put his thumb on the scale when he is weighing your hamburger.
I am no laywer and I am assuming the cap is part of your contract with them, I cannot see how they can keep their definition of bandwidth usage a secret. They are now basically claiming that you are restricted in your usage upto the cap but they refuse to tell you what the cap actually *means*. Without clear understanding of how usage is measured, the number of the cap is meaningless.
So you are subject to provions in a contract that you are not allowed to know. It would surprise me very much if they could hold that up in court...
I can't see how one can reasonably include overhead that's suffered only on the first hop into the "traffic" measurement.
It's easier to see if you're getting paid more for it.
Yep. And they do.
That's why I go elsewhere.
That being said, my mom used AT&T. They never got her bill right (always overcharged), and we had to call and they would correct it, but having to do that every month or two sucked. I told that to an AT&T solicitor at my door once, as to why I wasn't interested. Rather than defending his client and get a sale, he responded, with a dismayed and somewhat depressed, "wow... I heard about the same thing from someone just down the street," and moved to the next door. My mom doesn't know anyone on my street other than me, so it seems to me, overcharing is not an uncommon issue with them, and they are just trying to find more clever ways to hide it.
The author of TFS should verify that he's collecting headers, if so, he may have a case.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
perhaps they've used AT&T's method for counting?
Pay half the bill and tell them you have a proprietary methodology by which you count money.
Unless someone is sending an awful lot of really small packets, the 40+ bytes of TCP/IP headers per packet are not going to add 20-30% to the data that is being sent. For example, the "Simple IMIX" as defined on WIkipedia has 58% of packets being 40 bytes long (they are common because they represent data acknowledgments with no data going in the other direction), probably significantly underweights the number of 1500-byte MTUs, and still only has ~12% TCP/IP overhead. It would be grossly inappropriate for AT&T to include any packet overhead beyond TCP/IP because any lower level overhead is an artifact of AT&T's network design that is outside the control of, and opaque to, the end user.
The availability of competing providers varies by market. There are parts of the US with NO broadband available at all, and others where there is only one carrier. Also, the whole issue here seems to be that the "terms" he accepted withheld relevant information - and that IS grounds for legal appeal.
That's not accurate. They are selling you a service by a standard measure, and that should be an absolute measurement. When you buy gasoline, you are buying a fairly exact amount, and the pumps are regularly measured to ensure they're providing the stated amount. If the petrol station started using their own "proprietary" measurements? GTFOOT.
The OP could probably contact the Bureau of Weights and Measures, this is the sort of thing that they exist for. Namely to assure customers that if they buy X pounds of Y that they aren't getting (X-1) pounds z ounces of Y where Z isn't equal to 16.
This isn't like that BS suit against the HDD manufacturers for using the SI unit for their HDD capacities, this is potentially a legitimate complaint.
Yeah but if someone gives you a bag containing 1000 pounds of (minced) beef, then you empty the beef out and some of the beef is stuck to the insides of the bag, and you throw the bag away you can't claim that you didn't originally receive 1000 pounds of beef.
I think you've got that wrong. If they're measuring DSL overhead, error correction, etc then the proper analogy would be:
Somebody sells you a crate of apples they claim is 1000 pounds. What they neglected to tell you was that the crate itself weight 200 pounds, and they included that in their calculation. You only got 800lbs of actual apples.
GStreamer - The only way to stream!
Exactly, but charging you whatever the market will bear, and not telling you what your actually paying for are two completely different things. He's being charged for a service, and he reasonably (SHOULD) have a right to understand how he may be over or under committing his connection to the service level he's selected and being provided. If they're dangling the bait of "you may go over and we'll charge you more money than you ever wanted to spend, or we're going to downgrade your service because we want more money" then it could just be the provider padding the numbers, now I'm assuming he's in the US and is not subject to taking what the grand master has allocated him he should have some kind of recourse.
That being said, TCP/IP overhead accounting for 20-30%? If you utilize your connection regularly I'd be shocked, but it really depends on a lot of factors, there's no numbers on his actual throughput, so was sitting idle all month with just a windows PC checking for updates to Java, flash and windows every 5 minutes and whatever mallware he inevitably has, sure. Maybe he's on an ADSL that has a bunch of ATM overhead that goes on even if he's not transmitting, so there are legitimate reasons, but one would reasonably suspect you have a right to know that your actually being charged for that!
Good leaders run toward problems, bad leaders hide from them.
You're missing the point. Network data is digital - you can measure EXACTLY how many bits are being sent to the modem, which I'd consider the point of demarcation since the consumer loses all control at that point. If their count doesn't match up, then what's to stop your electric company from saying that they use a proprietary definition of "kilowatt"?
The answer of course is the bureau of weights and measures, and the solution for ISPs who want to play games is to introduce them to a level of bureaucracy such that they'll be wondering how they ever let it happen.
They shouldn't. You should get a 1.5mb connection and pay less. It will serve your needs well. I should get a 30MB connection and pay for it. It will serve my needs well. We should BOTH get the bandwidth we paid for, even if we cap it out. The problem isn't the customers, the problem is ISPs selling 30MB connections for $20/month and then setting a cap so low I could hit it in under an hour. They're doing this to attract customers with high speeds at low prices, but once they have the customers they're refusing to let them use the product they rightfully purchased because they only charged the customer enough to support 1/10th the speed they promised. This problem will not be solved by the ISPs... they are locked into a price war. The FCC needs to step in a setup rules for speed/caps, etc... They need to test ISPs and make sure they are delivering what they are offering. This "up to 20Mb!" and then getting less than 1Mb nonsense needs to end.
Lets face it, once they have the infrastructure in place, they dont need to charge extra for it. Sure bandwidth costs may increase as usage increases, but so what.. they are charging for it.
That's the obnoxious thing. See, they sell you a connection; let's use an LTE-Wifi puck as an example. They say "speeds up to 25 Megabits per second," then they turn right around and give you a completely different number but disguise or attempt to justify it as a different metric altogether, such as "5 Gigabytes per month."
Those are both measurements of bandwidth. All they did was move the scale. So let's even out the units:
However:
When you attempt to solve a problem with bandwidth by restricting transfer, all you do is alter the actual bandwidth that someone is paying for, while simultaneously shoving into the customer's hands an extremely effective method for automatically increasing their bill. This creates massive incentive to never use the service at all, which increases the quality of service for those that do use it, and generates significantly more profit than increasing capacity to compensate for actual usage. As a bonus, since the service is faster, it's easier for the less conscious to run up their own bills. Win-fucking-win-fucking-win. For everyone except the customer.
It's just fucking wrong. Transfer caps are an artificial construct that do not actually address the problem. While they can work in theory, the fact that networks slow down in spite of the fact that they exist goes to show that they're a titanic pile of bullshit. They comically generate the money needed to address the actual problem with the service but they will stay around forever. Because fuck the customer.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
I can do you one better there. When I moved into one apartment I plugged my tv into the wall expecting to be hooked up to the building antenna. Instead, I found I had Comcast. So I didn't say anything and just enjoyed the service expecting it to go away when a tech realized it was hooked up. About three months went by and a Comcast tech showed up at my door asking if I'd like to have their service, I said no thanks. Sure enough a little while later my tv was no longer receiving Comcast and I was on the building antenna. Another three months goes by and another Comcast tech showed up at my door and claimed I was receiving Comcast illegally. I told him no I wasn't I only go the over the air channels, he looked rather confused. Less than an hour later my tv suddenly was receiving Comcast again. Mislabeled wires? Techs that don't know what they're doing? I'm not sure, but it was entertaining.