Iria

Source: IHT
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Amanda Lee of Cambridge, Massachusetts, received a call from Comcast in December ordering her to curtail her Web use or lose her high-speed Internet connection for a year.

Lee, who said she had been using the same broadband connection for years without a problem, was taken aback. But when she asked what the download limit was, she was told there was no limit, that she was just downloading too much.

Then in mid-February, her Internet service was cut off without further warning.

Prince_Link

.......i reckon this is in the "can take legal action" territory...

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Dark Lord

if you dont set clear guidlines and then threaten your customers that theyre downloading too much, ya, id say it has legal ground here.

what makes it even worse is that comcast even denies that theres a limit put in place, yet they warn several people of it and dont even tell them how much to cut back by.

i can definatly see a class action suit comeing out of this one.

i wish i knew how much the limit was too. this month so far ive been a bandwidth hog. ive got 48gigs downloaded, and i stream audio off pandora for about 10hrs a day, every day. i have no idea how much bandwidth pandora sucks up, but im sure its quite a good chunk.

*edit

damn, pandora sucks down 128k/s.

*edit 2

if my math is correct, pandora sucks down 17gigs per month.

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Iria

You might think so, but it hasn't happened so far. In fact, I recall that one person who was a mirror for an Open Source program got his broadband taken away, even after explaining it.

Really, if they advertise unlimited access, that's what I should get. If not, let me know the limits.

One of the advantages of DSL, since you have your own line, there's none of this limit stuff.

gadabout

Well, I know from being a cox user, I haven't had anybody calling or threatening to take away my net connection. Just recently I reached an all time high of 130GB in a single month. But I think I average about 40GB a month. No one has of yet (yet being the key word) said anything about it.

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BlueMak

Unless you live in the UK. Most ISPs (99%?) have limits.
Worst of them all is PlusNet. Disgusting.

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

DudeBoyz

What a lame deal, man. I just don't get it.

I am SOOO glad I have DSL.

GutterPunk

thats pretty crappy. Although the users supposedly are only .01% of the 14+ million users... leave em alone!

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Rayder

I would ask them, "What part of "unlimited access" do I not understand? Maybe I should have a lawyer explain it to me."

Iria

Whoa, I didn't know that!

Calinerti

I have Cox as well, advertised as "umlimited". But I do recall hearing something about "bandwidth abusers" and I think once I was cautioned (years ago) about bandwidth abuse. I suppose none if th ISPs want to advertise "LIMITED ACCESS".

niceguyrichy

yeah , here in the UK they have something called "reasonable use" or something like that, so even if you're on an unlimited package but the ISP feels you're using more than your fair share, they can pull the plug

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Matth

Unless they are prepared to stomach the odd user trying the "unlimitedness", then they should not be allowed to advertise an "unlimited" service.

Progressive throttle, is another way of dealing with it.

Anyway, most people would consider that using a home service at 100%, 24/7 would be unfair, though where people would expect the line to be drawn varies... 50%, 25%, 10% ? If "unlimited" is taken as "limited by contention only", then a fair solution is to bandwidth shape the highest 1% of (ab)users so they do not deplete the bandwith of more reasonable users.

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BlueMak

I remember plusnet, I went with them for their cheap price, unlimited use and good name (at the time). 2Mbit connection ADSL.
All was fine for the first 6 months. I was using between 15 and 30 GB a month in total.
Now, they dates I am going to use are not very accurate, I wasn't keeping a log on this.
Say December 2005 my speed was down to 256. That is 8 times less. I received an email a few days later (didn't do anything to contact them) that I had exceeded my fair use limit.... What fair use limit? After a day or two of emails they told me that I now have a limit of 15GBs per month, if I go over it then they throttle my speed. They couldn't tell me that before they throttle it in the first place?
After two (2) weeks my speed went down to below 56K connection. I received another email telling me that I had exceeded my fair use quota of 5GB!!! per month. Does this make much sense to you?
After a few days I received an email in a very threatening tone that I should stop abusing their system by downloading/uploading much more per month. Of course I was still with the dial up speed...
So, I paid them the remainder of the connection, told them a big fuck you, and left for another ISP.
I don't know how it is now, but at the time their forums was a great place to be. Hundrends of people complaining about what plusnet was doing, and mods there deleting posts, banning forum users and even banning people from using them as ISP!!!
I am shocked that the company is still alive.
What a bunch of.....

I am in Greece now and when I was shopping for ISP I was shocked that a)there were more than 1 ISP, in fact several, b)when I asked about limits all of them was like "What are you talking about? there are no limits!"

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

Vampyromaniac

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BlueMak

Is that 1TB?

__________________

The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

DudeBoyz

I can hardly believe I'm saying this, but I have Verizon DSL and I'm starting to really feel glad that I do.

I download huge Linux distro's every time they are updated. Suse Linux 10.2? Like 8 gig. When new kernel updates come out, new packaged updates and major releases, I grab a bunch of distros to see what has changed, etc. Between 3 and 8 gig is common, and I also download a bunch of those LIVE CD versions that you can't seem to find as a large distro with a separate install.

I download TV Shows all the time too. 365 meg each. I pay for cable and of course get over the air shows that are free to all US citizens, but I can only fit so much on one VCR and one DVD-Recorder at a time. Sometimes there are things on 4 channels at once that I want to watch. Most cable companies offer On-Demand for free, but I don't have a digital cable box. So all this to say, I usually download a bunch of TV shows from the stations that I do pay for and get in my cable package. Lately, networks are starting to stream the shows for you online and you can watch them there. I like that option too and am starting to use it often, but it still means tons of bandwidth. I watched the Steve Jobs Keynote speech, I listen to free net-radio all the time too - OLD TIME RADIO shows and such. I watch CNN videos and stuff like that too. The BBC is even making their show library available for streaming and downloading at no cost. It's becoming a totally media-heavy world and the convenience of being able to open a web page and get all this content when my schedule allows is awesome.

So, because I have DSL, I don't have to share any bandwidth. I'm not impacting anybody else. I can only get 1.5m/384k in my area, but that's fine for just about everything I do. I'm happy with it. It hardly ever goes down. It almost always works fast and efficiently. If I do get slowdowns, I just release and renew so I can get a new dynamic IP address, and that can sometimes fix the problem it if was path related. Sometimes certain sites get hammered at certain times - like the American Idol site or CNN.COM or MTV.COM or what not. But generally, I have a clear, fast pipeline that doesn't goof up any other users in my area.

To date Verizon has not said word one about using "too much bandwidth" or download tv shows. I don't usually download like full movies or anything - I watch trailers at Quicktime.com a lot and if I like 'em, reserve 'em at the library or rent them. I don't like watching actual movies on a PC.

So I read about all these issues folks are having, and I feel really lucky not to be having them. I don't know if DSL is less trouble than Cable, or if the company policies are what makes the most difference. But at least up to this point, Verizon DSL really has been a great setup for me. I could not imagine going to a Cable setup or switching my DSL provider. I would not want to risk losing anything.

GutterPunk

So now they are renting movies by downloads, or even selling movies by downloads. If you rent or buy 10-20 movies a month (very realistic) your pushing high bandwidth usage. It just seems tough to limit the bandwidth of what people use, for what is available right now. Hell people live on the internet now...

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Vampyromaniac

Exactly.

Yes.

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DudeBoyz

Something odd happened in the last few days. I haven't really been paying attention to download and uploads, since I've been working on moving the hardware from one case to another, so I don't really know when it did happen.

Anyway, I noticed that my download speed seemed to be faster than normal. I tried downloading a few large things via my browser like the Apple OS X 10.4.9 update image, Google Earth's latest update, etc. Turns out the speed was going well past the 170-180-190k range I have had for quite some time.

I open up my FTP app and send a large file to a hosted site. I'm getting speeds much higher than the rate I have had before.

After some more testing with Bit Torrent and some speed tests from DSL Reports.com, and sure enough, it seems that my download and upload speeds have doubled.

I seem to have went from 1.5m/384k to 3m/768k.

I didn't do anything except renew my Verizon DSL annual deal ($29.99 a month with a 1 year commitment) last month.

Maybe they replaced the local phone wiring so it could handle the speed or something. Maybe put in some sort of range booster or something. I didn't get any sort of notice, email, etc., so I don't know what up.

Maybe I'm having a "Good Karma" day. I hope it doesn't drop back down again, as it if was some sort of mistake.

I mean, 1.5m/384k has been great for me, especially with Bit Torrent stuff, and I would be totally happy with that speed for the cost, but man, give me double the speed for free? I'm not gonna say no.

I think I'll try this expanded pipeline out and see how much it really does help.

BlueMak

They do this double speed for free here for few years now.
My connection was 1mbit till last August when they upgraded it to 2 for no cost. In fact most ISPs did the same. But, it was advertised, a lot.

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

DudeBoyz

I started out at 768k/128k like 7 years ago with a FUJI modem. I paid around $45.99 a month, I think. Then they switched me to a Westell (gave it to me for free) and then I got 1.5m/384k and it went down to $34.99 a month I believe. Then they said it would go up to $37.99 a month or $29.99 a month if I paid for a 1 year committment. Been at $29.99 going on a second year, I think. Now 3m/768k at no additional cost.

Faster and cheaper. Very nice.

The_Neon_Cowboy

I got warnings on msn dial up, (before popular broad band back in the Early 90's)
that I was in the top 3% and I should "change my password" but i've never been
told to curtail my usage ever!

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Judas

i'm still limited to 5gb combined bandwidth per month per connection (double the connection for 10gb)....

course 14Mb/s down and up (x2 due to having 2 connections) is pretty damn sweet...

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DudeBoyz

I kinda wish they would just shut up about bandwidth and stop charging folks more for higher levels of data transfer.

You pay your $30-$50 a month you should be allowed to actually USE the darn thing, you know?

calidan

I have TimeWarner and I know have d/l well over 100 GB. I'm not sure if that's alot compared to other people but I've never seen any notice from my ISP.

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>GSXR<mrbusa

I have the Comcast gamer package at 8mb/768kb.
My downloads reach at least 100gigs+ a month and I have had multiple months in a row with over 300gigs. I have recieved one email from Comcast and it wasn't for high bandwidth comsumption, if ya know what I mean.
Stupid me forgot to enable HTTP blocking one time. They are watching us with a vengence.
I do not worry to much though, there is not a whole lot they can do to someone who just don't give a F@@K!

BlueMak

What's that?

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

Zelig

Peerguardian, if you're in the US or UK.

If I really wanted to push my connection, I could do well over 2000 GB per month, I don't have much to do with that size of content though. Practically, I think I've topped out at around 250GB for a single week.

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DudeBoyz

Are there any downsides to using this app? Is it a no-brainer "Must Have" type of thing?