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FiOS User Finds Limit of 'Unlimited' Data Plan: 77 TB/Month
An anonymous reader writes "A California user of Verizon's FiOS fiber-optic internet service put his unlimited data plan to the test. Over the month of March, he totaled over 77 terabytes of internet traffic, which finally prompted a call from a Verizon employee to see what he was doing. The user had switched to a 300Mbps/65Mbps plan in January, and averaged 50 terabytes of traffic per month afterward. 'An IT professional who manages a test lab for an Internet storage company, [the user] has been providing friends and family a personal VPN, video streaming, and peer-to-peer file service—running a rack of seven servers with 209TB of raw storage in his house.' The Verizon employee who contacted him said he was violating the service agreement. "Basically he said that my bandwidth usage was excessive (like 30,000 percent higher than their average customer)," [the user] said. '[He] wanted to know WTF I was doing. I told him I have a full rack and run servers, and then he said, "Well, that's against our ToS." And he said I would need to switch to the business service or I would be disconnected in July. It wasn't a super long call.'"
'nuf said.
FiOS user finds how to violate TOS
So switch to the business plan. Jeeze, still a super deal. I have Comcast business and its worth the extra $50/mo for static IPs and much higher bandwidth.
Arrr, tis no man but a remorseless downloading machine.
netflix.
I think "WTF are you doing consuming 77 terabits a month" is a legitimate question. I read TFA yesterday and I realized that Verizon probably can't afford to have a whole lot of users chewing up that kind of bandwidth. Asking him to switch to business service does not out of line to me, considering that he's running these servers for business use.
Note, also, they handled this with a short phone call rather than a nasty-gram or just cutting off his service without warning. That's more courtesy than I'd expect from a big ISP, given some of the horror stories I've heard.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
I'm stuck with Bell Canada who has me capped at 66GB a month. (I know I know - tekksaavy etc. I'll be switching later this summer...) 77TB is almost a fuckton of data. (At least metric, where 10TB is a shitload, and 10 shitloads = fuckton) It might be different in the states, I dunno. I need some coffee...
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Why are ISP's allowed to sell an 'unlimited' plan that has limits?
Who said it wasn't "unlimited"? The issue is business use vs home use as related to the plan he signed up for.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Why are ISP's allowed to sell an 'unlimited' plan that has limits? Isn't that against false advertising laws? "Unlimited" has a well known and very specific meaning, and that meaning does not include limits, not even "30,000 percent higher than everyone else".
The limit isn't on the data here; it's on the form of use. They asked what he was doing, and it turned out that what he was doing qualifies as business, rather than residential use. And at that point they told him that he'd need to change account types.
Look at it this way: what if someone got an account like this, and set themselves up as a small ISP for their neighborhood? Would that be acceptable, simply because it's an unlimited account? Of course not...and the ToS that the customer would have agreed to says as much. Since when is it acceptable to simply ignore the contracts we sign? Oh, wait...that was your point, wasn't it? Well, it goes both ways.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
It's not an unlimited plan.
It's an unlimited* plan.
*limited
Why these companies insist on calling their plans unlimited?
Folks, the issue here has nothing to do with the reality of an "unlimited" plan (yet).
It has to do with running a BUSINESS on a plan designed for HOME USE.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
It's because of people like you that we can't have nice things (service).
Nice to see your business is going so well, though.
We are the 198 proof..
"77 terabytes last month. WTF are you doing?"
"I run a small web site that was quoted and slashdotted."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
"All you can eat" dosn't include carryout for the whole family at the single user rate.
Humm,
Verizon FIOS: yeah ok, I have 20/5 d/u
DAAP Music streaming
p2p bit torrent
VPN
UPnP movie server
web page
TOR
SSH tunneling
File server
Still haven't hit anything near that transfer rate in over 5 years total, I need more friends...
"(I) have this unfortunate condition that causes me not to believe a single thing any politician says when a mic's on.
I'd like for someone to point to marketing or promo material from Verizon calling this plan an 'unlimited' plan. While it's possible the marketing guys screwed it up, it's more likely that this plan was never labeled an 'unlimited' plan at all. For some reason when ISPs crack down on excessive use, there are always hordes of people who claimed they purchased an 'unlimited' plan when the evidence says otherwise.
Companies like AOL got in trouble because they went from only having time-metered dialup plans to having so-called unlimited plans where you could stay dialed in as long as you'd like. A lot of people took them up on this and left themselves dialed in for weeks at a time. AOL took it upon themselves to make exceptions to this (as it impacted service for other users - no free lines for customers to dial in to!) but never put in any fine print in. AOL got sued and lost over this, and subsequently they started changing the wording of their marketing materials and putting in fine print.
Now days nobody expects broadband to have the same types of limits so the ISPs simply just don't bother with the 'unlimited' verbage. They prefer to use terms like 'always on' and such, which means something entirely different.
The Service is a consumer grade service and is not designed for or intended to be used for any commercial purpose. You may not resell, re-provision or rent the Service, (either for a fee or without charge) or allow third parties to use the Service via wired, wireless or other means. For example, you may not provide Internet access to third parties through a wired or wireless connection or use the Service to facilitate public Internet access (such as through a Wi-Fi hotspot), use it for high volume purposes, or engage in similar activities that constitute such use (commercial or non-commercial). If you subscribe to a Broadband Service, you may connect multiple computers/devices within a single home to your modem and/or router to access the Service, but only through a single Verizon-issued IP address. You also may not exceed the bandwidth usage limitations that Verizon may establish from time to time for the Service, or use the Service to host any type of server. Violation of this section may result in bandwidth restrictions on your Service or suspension or termination of your Service.
http://www.verizon.net/policies/vzcom/tos_popup.asp
Well here's how they can artificially cap your unlimited plan. 'may not exceed the bandwidth usage limitations that Verizon may establish from time to time' or 'use the Service to host any type of server'.
Plus the AUP allows them to nab you from anything from off-topic posts (Attactment A.2.e) to hitting IP's in embargo'd countries (cuba, sudan, etc) Attactment A.2.l. And unless this somehow excludes personal server, my guess is tons of users are violating some part of the ToS.
No, violating the ToS isn't newsworthy in itself, but the way in which he did it certainly is. I find it incredible that someone was actually able to consume 77TB of bandwidth in a month on a residential connection. That would have been inconceivable even a short while ago. Maybe in a couple of years this sort of thing will become mundane, but at the moment it's quite impressive regardless of how it was done, and certainly deserves to be mentioned on a site that supposedly caters to nerds.
Maybe you just aren't nerdy enough to appreciate this and should hand in your nerd card.
I suppose it's also possible that you are some sort of super-nerd that does this kind of thing regularly and has become so jaded that you won't be impressed until someone streams petabytes of data to their smart watch in less than 10 minutes. If true, prove it, then I'll hand you my nerd card...
Define "server." Software? Hardware? I think that clause of the ToS is bullshit, and here's why.
If running a "server" is a violation of a ToS, then every single person that has file-sharing enabled on their Windows computer at home is liable to be disconnected. In fact, anybody that has an xbox or a media center PC is likely in violation of this clause, too. I think that the amount of bandwidth he was using was massively unreasonable, but seriously, if you're going to terminate someone, AT LEAST CALL IT WHAT IT IS. Just put a clause into the residential ToS that states that anything beyond 25-50TB in a month is unreasonable and grounds for termination. Ugh.
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, do these sound like the actions of a man whose had ALL he could eat?
-- Phil Hartman, RiP
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The only person claiming this plan is unlimited is the author of the story.
While sometimes the marketing people fuck up, Verizon does not label their plans as being unlimited that I can tell: http://www22.verizon.com/home/fios-fastest-internet/fastest-internet-plans/
..I don't see any limit either, just speeds advertised. or anywhere. there's no transfer limits on their marketing.. the only tos that could be found via searching said nothing of it either.
and factually, there is no limit. there's couple of phrases here and there though, like your use must not harm other users of the service.
and then there's this ". You also may not exceed the bandwidth usage limitations that Verizon may establish from time to time for the Service, or use the Service to host any type of server. Violation of this section may result in bandwidth restrictions on your Service or suspension or termination of your Service."
the guy fucked up by simply saying that he has couple of rack mounted servers. should have just hung up on the rep, really. or said that he's streaming his personal video from his other house where he keeps cute cats running around. because, if he had so many machines, I doubt he wanted verizon to cut his service.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Yep. Running servers is against Verizon's residential ToS. Regardless of how much BW the guy is using, he's breaking the rules.
"running a server" at one point was taken to mean, by Comcast, to have something listening on port 25, and would result in your connection being shut off. It's one thing to say someone is using too much bandwidth. It's another to say they're not allowed to do certain completely normal things with it.
It wasn't about bandwidth. Cloud backup software uses far more bandwidth than my piddly little web server ever did, but guess which one threw Comcast into a tizzy?
This is about controlling who produces versus who consumes, and Comcast wants you to consume.
Please help metamoderate.
Dude, it's assholes like this that make telecom companies see the need for data caps in the first place. If you're doing that kind of data transfer, you need to be on a business plan. If you know enough to create that kind of set up, you know enough to know what kind of plan you need to be on. Stop fucking up the home networks people. You're dealing with companies that have lost their minds! The last thing you want to do is feed their delusions.
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