arstechnica.com — One analyst has had it with Internet data caps. Bandwidth hogs are a myth, he says, and caps simply penalize heavy users who cause no problems for others. Now, he's throwing down the gauntlet and challenging ISPs to turn over some data for analysis.
Dec 4, 2009 View in Crawl 4
digitalistDec 4, 2009
The super shiesty part of this whole dilemma though, is the fact that the packet shaping techniques that they use knock YouTube traffic down to 10kbps, but you can do a bandwidth speed test simultaneously and get a reading of 10mbps - sneaky mofo's those telco bastids...
magzineDec 5, 2009
Also: Serious ISPs won't rent space, they'll own the space. It's not logical to rent a large location like an ISP.And they're not reoutfitting the joint every month. In fact, the equipment they'll buy will scale for sometime, making upgrading even cheaper.
Closed AccountDec 5, 2009
I am glad that you clearly answered my questions. I guess since you don't know the answers to my questions (yet can tell me that at some point, US taxes apparently paid for the US telcos to roll out some broadband, somewhere, at some time, but not what actually happened) you try to attack my age instead. Well done.
magamiakoDec 6, 2009
Often times they are doing things in the background when they ask you to turn the modem on and off--and despite what you may think, turning it on and off solves a lot of problems.#1. If you have internet problems, try turning it on and off. If the modem came out of sync for whatever reason, or lost its connection, this should rebuild it.#2. If you're sure it's the modem and not your router (and the only way to be sure of this is to plug directly into the modem), THEN you call them.A lot of people will call the ISP for problems that can and should be solved locally.
adifferentusernDec 7, 2009
Yeah, Sarangati sortof gets what I'm saying. Except with the addition that if some people eat more of the pizza then some people eat less of the pizza by dispersion. The high end of users (the higher eater) eat more exponentially so there's no point to making people who eat more pay more because if they ate less there'd be left over pizza. I swear this analogy works. I mean, it works right? C'mon, I'm trying here.
Closed AccountDec 7, 2009
Bad analogy. I agree with you in principle, but really the ISPs are trying to get cars OFF the roads during peak times- not just slow them down.
mandrekoDec 7, 2009
I can tell you that when Comcast started their 250GB/month limit, I was called by their "abuse" technicians who left a voicemail. Because I didn't respond within a day, my service was shut off. I called to find out what was going on before I realized I had voicemails. They explained that I used 264GB in September. I explained that I stream videos using Orb to my iPhone, watch all my tv via Hulu, download lots of ISOs from MSDN, etc. However, this is now considered abuse. I don't have any issue with them saying I can only use 250GB/month for X price. However I asked if I could pay additional money, or upgrade to some sort of business account, and they said no. Additionally, if I went over their limit again within the next 6 months, I would get a 1 year ban of all Comcast services.When asked how to monitor my bandwidth, they said I could install bandwidth monitoring tools (which they could not recommend any). However, this does not work for my Xbox, PS3, Wii, iPhone, and various other devices that don't run Windows. Unfortunately my router doesn't support monitoring via SNMP, or I'd set up Cacti or MRTG. I asked if they had a page I could visit to see my current bandwidth for the month, and they said, "That'll be out later". So now I'm just trying to not stream videos all day in the background, instead bringing them on USB with me.Having worked for a small ISP, I understand where they're coming from, however if you're going to sell an "Unlimited" service, and then provide limits on it, I think it's misleading. While I know I'm a power user, I would not consider myself an abuser of their service. However Comcast and I disagree on this point. Only time will tell as to if I keep their service.
gtkarberDec 16, 2009
Or if it's needed for the War on Terror. Then they'll hand it over no problem, because everybody knows they'll never be held accountable.