Comcast announces 250GB/mo cap

[kd6nig]

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Indu ... lans-97322 (http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Industry-Reacts-To-Comcast-Cap-Plans-97322)

Me personally, unaffected. I'm lucky to probably use 50gb a month, personally.

But to some people, its the end of the world as we know it! Paranoia reigns!

It could always be worse. My Mom's DSL provider, Frontier, has proposed a FIVE GIGABYTE per month limit. You might as well go back to dialup with that kinda cap.....

[N3ATS]

I have Frontier DSL and have heard nothing about a cap. I will look into that.

[kd6nig]

I have Frontier DSL and have heard nothing about a cap. I will look into that.

Let me help you:

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/96963

There are older articles also but thats the latest.

My mom only uses it for surfing and email mainly, but heck, even doing that can easily consume 5GB.

[kd6nig]

Installed "DU METER" on all of my systems tonight. We'll see what kind of consumption I'm seeing the next few days. So far on this computer, been on since 2pm, I'm almost to a gig over 6 hours. But I was downloading....DU METER and a few others to try them out earlier also :)

I don't think I'm consuming much on here.

[N3ATS]

Dude, that's weird. I installed the exact same program last night. I wonder if we got it from the same place? :whistle

[kd6nig]

I actually started a thread over on DSLR with suggestions. Course, the easiest way is to change the firmware on the router and get those kind of stats that way, but I decided against it, though many suggested that. I looked over a few of the solutions others gave and that one looked to be the easiest. I tried another, http://www.bwmonitor.com but it wouldn't detect my NIC for some odd reason. So, the other one worked and its running at home on all my systems now. Just have to put it on the laptops the next time I fire them up.

I don't think I'm getting even remotely close, but I figure I better do it just in case I get the call for some reason. I'd rather have my own data backing it up. Course, it won't be totally accurate because inter-lan traffic that doesn't go across the modem is counted too, but if, including that, I'm at or below 250, then I know I'm beyond safe.

There are some people on there that are advocating running the connection full-bore till Oct 1. Everyone likes to rock the boat :)

[n6hcm]

I'm pretty sure I don't come anywhere near that number, but I haven't actually measured to find out. Since I am a Comcast customer I should find out and make sure.

I do use AT&T's wireless broadband on my Mac Book Pro, and the unspoken limit there is 5GB/month ... I have gone over that more than once with no measurable effect on my bill (I do know the numbers here because the client I use measures bandwidth used over time). Similarly, two years ago, I used to tether to my phone for similar service (when the plan I had didn't allow tethering), and there was no noticeable change on my bill (I am sure that this has changed, however).

[kd6nig]

I personally don't think I even come close myself. And from what I have measured so far, I think worst case I might, MIGHT, hit a gig per day total for all machines told (mine, the wifes, and the computer on 24-7 sending weather data).

I know the always on computer consumes 1.3GB a day LAN but thats data from my webcams to the hard disk (taking pics every 30 seconds) which doesn't exit the local network. DUMeter doesn't differentiate local and across the internet, but the FTP program that I have on there which the webcams send to does, so I can subtract the data it logs from that total. I also do move files between computers on occasion, but I'm sure even if I left all of that in, I'm probably well under 200GB anyway.

But, seeing as Comcast isn't providing figures "on the fly" for us, I figure a low-overhead monitor probably isn't a bad idea. On the thread I created on DSLR a lot of people are talking about changing firmware on the router. Though I'm sure it works, I don't know if I want to get THAT drastic yet :)

I hope AT&T's current outlook on you exceeding 5GB a month is how Frontier would treat my Mom. I'm sure she maybe uses, at the most, 500k a day, which would translate into 15GB a month, and I'm really being generous there. I'm sure its probably half that, but I'd have to stick the software on there to be sure. Only one computer on her LAN too. I have 3 pretty active, with the potential for 2 laptops on occasion. When my wife's cousin visits I setup a laptop for her, and since shes normally on dialup, she does put a few gigs of use in when shes here, but thats maybe once every 3 months. But even with that I should be ok :)

I'm just hoping Comcast will be a bit lenient. I don't mean giving people 500GB, but maybe allow 25-50GB over that before you start jumping on people hard. From what I've read about it, most of the "overusers" haven't been tagged (before this announcement) till about 450-500 or more, so a "silent" allowance of actually 300GB before getting strict is what I'm hoping for. Not that I will hit it, but I'm sure that a household with a few teenagers in it may see 200ish usage (barring P2P of course). Its going to be interesting to see how much I actually use. I'm not heavy on YouTube either, but that does take some bandwidth also.

Many people probably don't think about it, but I guess its going to have to be something to think about now.

One thing I'm noticing maybe about DuMeter though is that on my 24/7 computer the memory consumption has climbed. Normally I reboot it about once every 2 weeks, but in one day its sent memory usage from 27% to 37%. I usually reboot before 60% or the weather program tends to lock it up. I hope its just a fluke-and not a problem with the program. If not I guess I'll be rebooting more often. I'll be keeping an eye on it, though reporting outages are just an annoyance...I don't like downtime if its something I can prevent :)

[n2ize]

Well it mainly affects people who have several machines on one connection with multiple simultaneous users who do things like watch online videos, tv shows and movies, use VOIP, and other heavy use.. 500 Gb may be a problem for some. a 5 Gb cap is ABSURD. I pity anyone stuck on such a network who plans on using the Internet as a serious utility. These companies havent been building out their networks to accomodate the rapid growth. Now they're punishing their customers.

Fortunately over here we have Verizon FiOS. So far I haven't heard of any caps on their network. If companies like Comcast enforce their caps in areas like this Verizon may get lots of new signups.

[kd6nig]

Well it mainly affects people who have several machines on one connection with multiple simultaneous users who do things like watch online videos, tv shows and movies, use VOIP, and other heavy use.. 500 Gb may be a problem for some. a 5 Gb cap is ABSURD. I pity anyone stuck on such a network who plans on using the Internet as a serious utility. These companies havent been building out their networks to accomodate the rapid growth. Now they're punishing their customers.

Fortunately over here we have Verizon FiOS. So far I haven't heard of any caps on their network. If companies like Comcast enforce their caps in areas like this Verizon may get lots of new signups.

Thats what everyone is predicting-people will bail on Comcast. Hopefully Verizon has built their network properly though-or that influx of new 'power users' may just cause them to have to do the same.

The company thats rumored to be doing the 5GB cap is Frontier Communications, which bought out a lot of rural telcos like where my mom lives (used to be "Citizens Utilities"). Shes had DSL for a little over a year now. Its slower than most DSL offered in the major cities (128/764, roughly) but to reduce it to 5GB allowed she might as well go back to dialup. Except she can't-when Frontier enabled DSL, they convienently eliminated the only dialup number in the county.....

They are getting some pretty bad publicity about it though on sites like DSLR though so hopefully they will reconsider a higher allowance. 25GB would more than cover my mom's usage, but 5GB is totally nuts.

[n2ize]

As time goes on we will all probably wind up paying a lot more for the same bandwidth we get today. For the prices we currently pay we will probably see more and more companies putting caps of 5 or 1-0 GB per month on our usage. The idea will be that for $30--60 per month you will get enough bandwidth to read your mail, visit a couple websites, maybe download an occaisional small file.

For $100 - $200 / month you will probably get bandwidth desifgned for power users. caps of 100-200 gb / month for those who use streaming video, multimedia, perform large software downloads, etc.

For $500+ per month you'll get the business package for heavy business users, VOIP, etc.

Of course this is hypothetical but, I strongly feel that in the future if we want the same access that many of us enjoy today we will have to start paying for it.

[kd6nig]

I hope not.

But I'm hoping that perhaps most will go with the Linode model-I've had one for years. When I started, it had a 50 gb/mo limit, then it went to 100, then to 250. Without increased cost, may I add.

I'm hoping what happens is that now that limits are being set and the abusers using a residential account to download and upload the heck out of stuff are going to be either charged or ran off, is that maybe more people will consider getting broadband now. In doing so, they will build out their network, and slowly move the caps up as the network allows, a-la cell phone companies charging an arm and a leg till all the towers were up, and now maintaining them is cheaper and thus you get more minutes per month for the same price.

I honestly hope that this is just the setting of the bar. The average person won't even see 250. I now know I'm not even coming close, in the first week of running a meter, I've only used 10GB across 3 computers. So unless I go nuts, I won't even hit 50GB, which is much less than I estimated. I figured with the weather station firing out packets every 5 minutes and some youtube usage, and not knowing how much streaming video the wife may be using, that I would be closer to 100GB a month, really.

Oh, and after a day of DuMeter, I switched to NetLimiter 2-it seperates out LAN and Internet usage. With my webcams at home, I'm seeing roughly 3GB/day LAN usage. DuMeter was lumping all of that in, so had I kept using that one, it probably would have been close to 100GB like I predicted. Now I have a really good idea of consumption, though.

I'm hoping we're setting the bar so that the power users either go away or go to an appropriate account. After that, usage should be down enough that more money can be invested in more speed, and then the average can slowly be ramped up. If the internet keeps going the way it is, I'd figure 10% increase a year will probably be the norm and shouldn't be a problem with proper investment.

Course, some stuff on the 'net is now going to be limited. Downloading movies off some site that provides them that way now means you have to think about it. That may be the only thing that will throw a wrench in this-if I ran a site like that where you could download movies for viewing via the internet and they were 5gb apiece, I'd be considering going after the ISPs for them limiting your business, but I doubt it will happen. Its the responsibility of the user of the connection to stick to the AUP.

I just hope Frontier gets their head out of their butt. Some of the 5GB/mo language has been removed, but its still in the AUP. Add a 0 to it-make it 50, and I won't worry about my Mom anymore.

[n2ize]

I hope not.

But I'm hoping that perhaps most will go with the Linode model-I've had one for years. When I started, it had a 50 gb/mo limit, then it went to 100, then to 250. Without increased cost, may I add.

I'm hoping what happens is that now that limits are being set and the abusers using a residential account to download and upload the heck out of stuff are going to be either charged or ran off,.

The problem I have is what constitutes "abuse" ? Origionally we were offered unlimited access. So, we started watching movies and tv shows, we started using VOIP, we started downloading and uploading "free and legal" software includsing entire free operating systems etc. Essentially our usage grew and evolved over time. Suddenly the cable companies started screaming bloody murder and calling us "abusers" of their networks. The problem is we are not abusers, we are users that merely expected that the networks would evolve along with us. Unfortunately they haven't and now we are being called abusers and we are being capped and told to take our usage elsewhere and/or pay more. The assumpotiopn is that if we use large amounts of bandwidth we must be doing something illegal so why not kick us off anyway.

Perhaps this is the way things will be and perhaps we'll wind up paying double, triple or more for the same bandwidth we enjoy today. I only hope this is a failure of the part of the cable companies. Thus far companies such as Verizon haven't announced any caps... matter of fact they are offering to keep my 20 Mbps unlimited connection and for an additional fee supply me with HDTV as well. Hopefully they have evolved to meet the chal;lenges of today and tomorrow as opposed to the cabkle companies who seem to be only able to meet the challenges of yesterday and prefer to blame their customers for their shortcomings and failure. Perhaps the cable companies will go the ways of the dinosaurs.

[n6hcm]

The problem I have is what constitutes "abuse" ? Origionally we were offered unlimited access.

and, in fact, most ISPs who sell to the residential market continue to offer "unlimited access" without making it clear that their idea of "unlimited access" doesn't match what the consumer expects.

anywhere else this sort of misrepresentation would be actionable ... but here it's business as usual.

[n2ize]

The problem I have is what constitutes "abuse" ? Origionally we were offered unlimited access.

and, in fact, most ISPs who sell to the residential market continue to offer "unlimited access" without making it clear that their idea of "unlimited access" doesn't match what the consumer expects.

anywhere else this sort of misrepresentation would be actionable ... but here it's business as usual.

Hopefully some action will be taken to require these ISP's to clarify their semantics

[kd6nig]

Well, technically Comcast was, by the FCC, ordered to "clarify" but of course the punishment was like you'd get in an old fashioned school-hold out your hand to get whacked by the ruler.

Course, the funny thing about Linode is that I maybe, maybe use 5GB a month, and thats all told-website and all the pics I post around on sites are on there too so there is no "too many hits" removal stuff. So I never came close at the first incarnation. I'm not sure if people do, if so, overage is a buck a gig, I think. Honestly I'd have to look.

But of course they didn't care about heavy usage because back then they had the capacity. The problem is they have been collecting the fees for a few years now and not doing much about the capacity issue. Now they are suddenly saturated and....ok, cut out the top 1% and we can go back to doing that again.

The next thing I see coming though is a pretty good price increase, in the $5 range, for "system improvements" that should have been made long ago.

Happy with DD-WRT so far, now that I got all of my stuff readded into it. All the port fowarding and stuff got deleted. But I think I'm going to continue to rely on the meters on the computers which save data. DDWRT's data is lost if the router loses power, allegedly.

It looks like a good place for other companies who did have the capacity to make a buck though. The caps might go up mighty quick if they lose enough customers, in an effort to retain them.

[n2ize]

I haven't measured total bandwidth usage here but, at opresent , its a non issue. Thus far Verizon FiOS hasn't announced any limits or caps.

I have 2 subnets here at home. One subnet runs all the general purpose desktop machines via a wired ethernet + a wireless access point. At present it includes includes 5 machines 3 of which get regular usage. The other subnet handles VOIP and any additional subnets are for experimental usage.

The typical day to day routine includes using the telephone via VIOP, downloading and uploading legal (open source) software, watching legal movies and tv shows (i.e. hulu.com, veoh.com, cbs.com, etc.) , watching streaming video, streaming audio, visiting websites, email, ftp, and several other things.

I have no idea how much bandwidth I consume per month at this point but its probably significant (maybe 50-100 gigs / month).. All I do know is that if they were ever to impose a 5 Gb cap it would serve me to eliminate my internet connection altogether and simply use the computers at the local public library or free open wireless.. At 5Gb/month the internet would be useless to me and would not be feasible to pay for.,

[kd6nig]

I was actually surprised at how little a lot of sites like YouTube and news sites use, but with YouTube starting to have "HD" programming (I shouldn't call it that, more like "higher quality") the consumption will steadily increase, I'm sure.

I think the last major download I did was 650 MB for the addon for the Submarine game I have from UbiSoft. And I paid $10 for the upgrade. Rest assured it got copied to multiple media. Other than that, cept for XP updates, I don't use a lot.

Now I have been looking at the 'triple play' and getting phone, but it would be Comcast phone so it would be excluded from the cap, of course. Another advantage to the Cable company. I don't know what kind of BW those kind of things use though. I'm guessing its a bit better than streams because any major usage at the same time can cause dropouts. That could be a latency issue not a amount of water in the pipe issue, though.

But I'm sure some people will be reviewing their usage. Anyone with more than 2 kids with computers going will probably have to explore alternatives, if the entire family is 'online'. I'm not a power user by any means, but I know plenty of people download, and its not illegal stuff either, and it adds up fairly quickly. Heck, I just put a 1TB drive in my computer recently, to hold backups of all the computers in the house. I know there are other people who would probably laugh at me-it took me this long? Especially if you go online and pay for content. I know when my wife got an ipod we made dang well sure anything she bought on itunes was backed up. Most of the content on it is ripped CD's, but she did buy a few songs-was cheaper than buying a CD for a song or 2 apiece.

Course, then there is the other, irreplaceable stuff. The DVD camcorder movies must be stored and backed up lest those vanish, as well as the digital camera photos. You can back up to CD provided you keep them in a nice stable place, or you can keep them on multiple hard disks which seems to last longer (even if they are slaved). But, as a Comcast customer now, doing a backup online or to a remote machine via the internet, nope. I'd hit the cap trying to save everything.

I suppose that will help sales of external storage and hard drives, though.....