# Comcast Internet users - You may want to limit your TiVoCast and YouTube usage



## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

In case you aren't aware starting October 1st Comcast will be capping bandwidth to 250 GB a month. This is the total bandwidth used and includes downloads as well as uploads.

Amazon Unbox downloads are about 1 GB for 1 hour. I'm not sure the exact sizes for TiVoCast downloads but I believe they are a bit less.

250 GB/month is a pretty big cap and TiVoCast downloads alone probably won't get you close to hiting it (unless you download all TiVoCasts to numerous TiVo boxes), but I figured I'd post a warning anyway since people also use their connections for other bandwidth intensive things as well and people here probably use more bandwidth than regular users.

If you have Comcast and do a lot of uploading and downloads and subscribe to a number of TiVoCasts you might want to keep track of your uploads and downloads. Third party router firmware such as Tomato and DD-WRT can do this for you.


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## BrianAZ (Aug 13, 2007)

250GB?!?!?! WOW. Last I checked, if you go over 60GB in a month on Cox (Phoenix), you're considered outside of normal usage and subject to them revoking your account or something.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

I'm glad they've finally imposed a cap; I'm tired of subsidizing the over-use by some. It is better for the average consumer to allow folks to pay for what they use.


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## dylanemcgregor (Jan 31, 2003)

bicker said:


> I'm glad they've finally imposed a cap; I'm tired of subsidizing the over-use by some. It is better for the average consumer to allow folks to pay for what they use.


I'm sure that your rates will go down now that you're no longer subsidizing the high users.


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

At least they finally put a value on the cap. When I first signed up with Comcast I went crazy and started downloading everything in sight just to see what kind of speeds I'd get. Sometime later I received a letter from Comcast telling me that I was exceeding what they considerd normal liomits for bandwidth use. When I asked what these limits were they couldn't tell me. I checked their policies and basically the limits were anything they wanted them to be at any given time. It only took them about ten years to finally come up with a number so their customers would know what they are paying for. 

The one thing they did change was their policy of "unlimited use", which is what they stated when I first signed up. You can imagine that I was more than a bit peeved when they said there were limits on my "unlimited" service. In any case, that's all in the past for me because I finally dumped their sorry service and switched to FIOS and I've never been a more satisfied customer. What's ironic is that they offer all of these On Demand services that require lots of bandwidth but then tell you you can't use it beyond a certain amount. Comcast can go pi$$ up a rope for all I care.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

dylanemcgregor said:


> I'm sure that your rates will go down now that you're no longer subsidizing the high users.


Or rather, will not go up as quickly as supplier can now capitalize on heavy users as a new, additional revenue stream.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

dylanemcgregor said:


> I'm sure that your rates will go down now that you're no longer subsidizing the high users.


my latency may well go down and throughput may well go up if heavy users (we are talking about 250 Gig a month here) are made to rethink the load they put on the backend.

PS - normal TiVoCast use would take you no where near 250 gig a month.


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## dylanemcgregor (Jan 31, 2003)

250GB is a pretty reasonable limit, and as others have said it is nice to have the limit explicit now, so you know if you are going over. A lot of others have it worse, Frontier and Time Warner have both implemented 5GB caps, and in at least one market in New England they are the only two games in town for high speed internet.


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## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

After the 250gb/month cap, you are capped for a year, from what I heard on the news on this.


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## MikeMar (Jan 7, 2005)

The question is, will they give you a place on their website or somewhere to view where you are for a month??


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## Sherminator (Nov 24, 2004)

morac said:


> ...Amazon Unbox downloads are about 1 GB for 1 hour...


So that's ~8 hours of Amazon Unbox a day.


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## jacques (Jun 2, 2000)

Even with my Rhapsody and Pandora usage, plus podcasts I don't think I'll near 260GB.

Frontier in the Rochester NY area has a new terms of service that defines a "reasonable amount of usage". 

Want to know what that is? 
"A reasonable amount of usage is defined as 5GB combined upload and download consumption during the course of a 30-day billing period."

Yeah, 250GB, I'm not going to complain.

5?!? I'm going to hit that in a couple DAYS!


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## BrianAZ (Aug 13, 2007)

*FIVE* GB? I type that out to make sure it's not a typo for "50GB". That's ridiculous. Do you have the top tier service?


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

ThAbtO said:


> After the 250gb/month cap, you are capped for a year, from what I heard on the news on this.


If you exceed the 250 GB/month cap twice in a 6 month period then Comcast will terminate your account and you will be banned from their service for a year.



Sherminator said:


> So that's ~8 hours of Amazon Unbox a day.


If that's all you use your Internet connection for then yes, but most people also use their Internet connections for other things as well. Also remember the cap includes uploads as well as downloads. It's still very high, but it's not impossible to exceed. For the record I've never exceeded more than about 40 GB a month, since I've started measuring, but I don't do a lot of downloading (mostly PS3 demos and videos, TiVoCasts, etc).



BrianAZ said:


> *FIVE* GB? I type that out to make sure it's not a typo for "50GB". That's ridiculous. Do you have the top tier service?


Actually Time Warner is experimenting with 5 GB caps for their $30/month service. The $55/month service would be capped at 40 GB. Though now that Comcast has picked 250 GB as their cap, that might become the industry standard.


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## Brainiac 5 (Aug 25, 2003)

bicker said:


> Or rather, will not go up as quickly as supplier can now capitalize on heavy users as a new, additional revenue stream.


Do you mean by collecting additional fees from heavy users? They're not doing that, according to their announcement. If you go over the cap twice, no service for you for a year, period. They're not offering any way to pay to use more.


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## jacques (Jun 2, 2000)

BrianAZ said:


> *FIVE* GB? I type that out to make sure it's not a typo for "50GB". That's ridiculous. Do you have the top tier service?


Not missing any zeroes, F*I*V*E*. That's for all of their High Speed Internet Access (phone company here, so it's DSL service). I actually don't have them, I have RoadRunner who have also been talking about a cap, but I hope it's closer to Comcast's rather than their in-town competitors it they decide to implement.


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## BrianAZ (Aug 13, 2007)

jacques said:


> Not missing any zeroes, F*I*V*E*. That's for all of their High Speed Internet Access (phone company here, so it's DSL service). I actually don't have them, I have RoadRunner who have also been talking about a cap, but I hope it's closer to Comcast's rather than their in-town competitors it they decide to implement.


I'd drop that in a heartbeat. They two things that are important in this market are speed and volume. If they're only competing on speed, they'll lose business to their competitors and be forced to make changes. Is it offered at some sort of discount rate?


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Brainiac 5 said:


> Do you mean by collecting additional fees from heavy users? They're not doing that, according to their announcement. If you go over the cap twice, no service for you for a year, period. They're not offering any way to pay to use more.


Business accounts.


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## jjberger2134 (Nov 20, 2002)

morac said:


> For the record I've never exceeded more than about 40 GB a month, *since I've started measuring*, but I don't do a lot of downloading (mostly PS3 demos and videos, TiVoCasts, etc).


How exactly do you measure? I am a Comcast user, and while I am almost certain I am nowhere near the 250GB, I would like to know how much I am consuming. Is there an easy way to measure how much activity I am sending/receiving over the Comcast lines?


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

It would be useful. I do a lot of RDP stuff... sometimes 8-10 hours a day.


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## ruinah (Dec 31, 2007)

I see a lot of problems with Comcast't theory on this. They over-subscribe their lines and now they have to do something drastic to keep the network alive. It is their problem to begin with. A few things they need to consider:

1. Give the user a way to measure their througput and compile those statistics hourly/daily.

2. How will they deal with SYN attacks or other malicious attacks against your network? All of those attacks (they happen every minute on my router) take valuable bandwidth even though the traffic doesn't pass to the inside of your network.

3. DHCP. We all get DHCP from Comcast and most people get a new IP every few days. Take what I said above and apply that to someone who just renewed their DHCP lease and it was with another network that was getting flooded. Attacks will target particular IP addresses sometimes and it may take a few days for them to stop pounding your IP. Again, this will increase your download traffic even though the traffic never really passes into your network.

4. Instead of cancelling accounts, do what Verizon does and start charging overages based on MB download/upload. If you go over 5GB over the 250GB, charge the user a nominal $5 fee or something. Verizon is fairly harsh these days with their EVDO cards and are charging $0.25 per MB over. Again, to do this successfully Comcast needs to give the user a way to track their usage. Strictly cancelling someone's account without giving them the tools to track is grounds for a heavy lawsuit IMHO. I know some routers can do this as posted above but think about Joe Schmoe home user. They don't know how to load Tomato to a Linksys router. It's the same concept as checking your minutes on your cell phone. We are all tied to certain minutes for the most part and you can get a free text with the info or see it in your online account.

5. something simple here but worthwhile - send me an email when I go over 200GB, 225GB, 245GB, and then a Final Warning at 250GB. It's an easy thing to setup. Take the monitoring they are doing, when X reaches 150, sendmail to [email protected] with message.

The problem is this stuff is easy for Comcast to put in place but they will go the way of morons they always do and wait for a lawsuit before they need to act (p2p anyone?).

I use Sling all the time from work, pretty much have it on most of the day. I still am not sure I would reach 250GB in a month. I don't download MP3's or Movies but I do get an occasional Unbox here and there.

As more devices are created for streaming audio/video from your home network, all of them need updating/patching from time to time including Tivo. How big is the download of the 9.4 update? My bet is fairly large, maybe 50MB? I don't think I am opposed to the cap but be fair about people who go over legitimately. Downloading pirated movies is not legitimate IMHO and that's where a lot of the complaining from the public will come from. But legal downloads like Unbox or streaming internet radio from Sirius/XM, etc should not violate their bandwidth agreements or caps because they are paid services and legitimate. Unfortunately, Comcast's network does not take this into consideration nor can it differentiate between a torrnet or streaming audio. They'd need filters to be able to do that and we already have a big argument about that one in the courts.

/rant somewhat over I guess.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

jjberger2134 said:


> How exactly do you measure? I am a Comcast user, and while I am almost certain I am nowhere near the 250GB, I would like to know how much I am consuming. Is there an easy way to measure how much activity I am sending/receiving over the Comcast lines?


Comcast doesn't actually tell you how much you use and there are no tools on their web site to do so. This is probably going to end up biting them since if you get a letter telling you exceeded 250 GB, there's no way for you to know whether or not what they tell you is correct or not.

Comcast's FAQ recommends installing "bandwidth meter" software on all your PCs, but this doesn't work well, since it doesn't include other devices that use your Internet connection like the TiVo.

The only sure fire way to tell how much you've used is to have a "bandwidth meter" on your router. My router is a WRT54GL and I've installed the Tomato third-party firmware which contains a bandwidth monitor. Tomato only works with Linksys routers though. There are other firmwares that support more routers, like DD-WRT, but I don't know much about them.

See this article about how to measure your broadband usage.


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## aadam101 (Jul 15, 2002)

How long do you really think this will last? Next month Verizon FIOS will announce a cap of 300GB per month. Comcast will have to increase to 350GB and so on and so on.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

ruinah said:


> I see a lot of problems with Comcast't theory on this. They over-subscribe their lines


Their lines aren't over-subscribed. They're appropriate for the number of subscribers, given that the subscribers would use a typical amount of usage. That's really the issue: We typical subscribers shouldn't have to have to subsidize heavier users. Make _them_ get business accounts, or fractional T1s, or whatever. This isn't a socialist country; people should pay for their own usage. It _isn't_ the same price to support X bandwidth versus X times 2 bandwidth.



ruinah said:


> and now they have to do something drastic to keep the network alive.


Given that other suppliers have much lower thresholds, Comcast's cap is anything *but* drastic. It is a very reasonable and moderate measure.



ruinah said:


> I use Sling all the time from work, pretty much have it on most of the day.


I don't and don't want to subsidize your heavy use. No offense.



ruinah said:


> Unfortunately, Comcast's network does not take this into consideration nor can it differentiate


You can thank the "net-neutrality" yahoos for that.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

ruinah said:


> 1. Give the user a way to measure their througput and compile those statistics hourly/daily.


I agree this is needed, but Comcast is reluctant to do it for the same reason it was reluctant to specify what the magic cap number was for the past 5 years. Comcast was always afraid that if it gave a hard number cap, that people would stop right at that cap (249 GB out of 250 GB for example) instead of using the connection normally. Comcast doesn't want to give people tools to measure their usage since, in Comcast's mind, it makes it easier for the customer to skirt the cap.



ruinah said:


> 2. How will they deal with SYN attacks or other malicious attacks against your network? All of those attacks (they happen every minute on my router) take valuable bandwidth even though the traffic doesn't pass to the inside of your network.


I think this is somewhat of a non-issue. If you are getting over 200 GB/month worth of SYN attacks against your network, you have a bigger problems. SYN attacks in themselves use little bandwidth and could be carried out over dial-up connections. The reason they work is that exploit a weakness in the receivers TCP/IP stack. The exception to this would be if you are hit by a massively coordinated attack with lots of people initiating it, but that seems unlikely.

Comcast does have a FAQ entry about hackers and viruses using bandwidth. It says Comcast will work with the customer to help secure their computers.



ruinah said:


> 3. DHCP. We all get DHCP from Comcast and most people get a new IP every few days. Take what I said above and apply that to someone who just renewed their DHCP lease and it was with another network that was getting flooded. Attacks will target particular IP addresses sometimes and it may take a few days for them to stop pounding your IP. Again, this will increase your download traffic even though the traffic never really passes into your network.


See above.



ruinah said:


> 4. Instead of cancelling accounts, do what Verizon does and start charging overages based on MB download/upload.


This is probably a good idea, except that Comcast doesn't want people using that much bandwidth in the first place since their network can't handle it. If your neighbors are maxing out their connections, it will negatively affect your connection.



ruinah said:


> 5. something simple here but worthwhile - send me an email when I go over 200GB, 225GB, 245GB, and then a Final Warning at 250GB. It's an easy thing to setup. Take the monitoring they are doing, when X reaches 150, sendmail to [email protected] with message.


See #1

From what's I've read Slingbox's bandwidth usage can be changed. The lowest setting uses 32.85 MB/hour (23.87 GB/month if run 24/7). The 256kbps setting results in 115.2 MB/hour (83.7 GB/month).

According to Comcast, the average user uses about 2 to 3 GB a month. I don't know if this is true or not, but it could be. Really there are only two things that could push you over 250 GB:
1. Online hard drive back-up services (non-incremental)
2. HD Video downloads

HD Video is the one that's bound to hurt most people. According to Apple, HD downloads are about 5 to 6 Mbps for 720p and 7 to 8 Mbps for 1080p. Using 8 Mbps, that's about 3600 MB/hour. So it would take about 71 hours of 1080p HD video downloads a month to hit the cap (lower if you do other stuff). I will note that most HD video on the net is much lower than 8 Mbps


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## dylanemcgregor (Jan 31, 2003)

morac said:


> My router is a WRT54GL and I've installed the Tomato third-party firmware which contains a bandwidth monitor. Tomato only works with Linksys routers though. There are other firmwares that support more routers, like DD-WRT, but I don't know much about them.
> 
> See this article about how to measure your broadband usage.


FYI...Tomato works on some Buffalo routers as well, I have it installed on mine (not that it matters anymore, since the DSL modem Verizon provided me with is also a router, and only allows me to use my Buffalo in Bridge mode).

Also, you can't install Tomato on just any Linksys router either, I belive the newer version of your router doesn't support third party firmware.


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## Brainiac 5 (Aug 25, 2003)

bicker said:


> Business accounts.


I haven't tried this myself, so I can't vouch for the truth of it, but on another forum a poster said that he'd tried to change his home account o business class, but was told that it "wasn't available in his area."

In any case, I've read several articles about the cap, and when reporters have asked Comcast if there' some way for heavy users to pay and get more bandwidth, the answer has always been simply "no" - I've never seen them mention a business account as an alternative.


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## MonkeyBoy668 (Mar 18, 2005)

The scary thing about Comcast's 250GB cap is not that it meters up+down usage without any warning of when you're near the cap.

The scary thing is that if you opt to give them an extra $50/month for their top tier of service, the cap remains the same, but due to the extra bandwidth you can reach it in a matter of days.

Which begs the question... why give Comcast an extra $50/month?


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## [email protected] (Dec 1, 2007)

I don't see 250GB as an unreasonable limit - I doubt if I'll get above 50GB on an average month, even with a Roku box (streaming video from Netflix). But I'd like to have some way of seeing how much bandwidth I'm using.

According to Comcast's figures the 250GB cutoff won't affect over 99&#37; of customers, which certainy sounds plausible to me. But I'm sure that will change over time - that's not enough bandwidth to download one HD movie a day.

I assume this is Comcast's latest attempt to throttle the bittorrent users - their previous technique was ruled to be illegal, so they are now trying a bandwidth cap.


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## [email protected] (Dec 1, 2007)

Brainiac 5 said:


> I've read several articles about the cap, and when reporters have asked Comcast if there' some way for heavy users to pay and get more bandwidth, the answer has always been simply "no" - I've never seen them mention a business account as an alternative.


I suppose you could always buy a second account ...


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## Adam1115 (Dec 15, 2003)

Hmm... I don't download a ton, but I am VPN'd in to work practically all day....


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## kb7oeb (Jan 18, 2005)

I won't subscribe to an ISP that has overage charges. I like the Directway model the best, if you use too much they reduce your speed and offer unrestricted use during off peak hours.

I think the recent rush to cap and charge overages is to stem off competition to cable video services, give users pause and think about if they are going to hit overage charges. If it was all about congestion they wouldn't meter at night. This thread is evidence that it is working as intended.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

[email protected] said:


> I suppose you could always buy a second account ...


Not from Comcast you can't, since their account information is tied to your address (i.e. 1 account per address). I suppose you could also get a DSL or other type of account, but then why keep Comcast in the first place?


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Brainiac 5 said:


> I haven't tried this myself, so I can't vouch for the truth of it, but on another forum a poster said that he'd tried to change his home account o business class, but was told that it "wasn't available in his area."


That's not unusual. Folks in some parts of the country can't get cell phone service yet either. Regardless, folks who really need/want business-level service, as such a high priority, can move to where it is offered.


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## Brainiac 5 (Aug 25, 2003)

bicker said:


> That's not unusual. Folks in some parts of the country can't get cell phone service yet either. Regardless, folks who really need/want business-level service, as such a high priority, can move to where it is offered.


So now Comcast will essentially run you out of town for using too much bandwidth? 

But seriously, I don't think moving to get more bandwidth is a realistic option for most people. My point was, Comcast is not trying to charge more for people who use more bandwidth - for whatever reason, they just don't want you use that much bandwidth, and that's it.


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## Brainiac 5 (Aug 25, 2003)

[email protected] said:


> I don't see 250GB as an unreasonable limit - I doubt if I'll get above 50GB on an average month, even with a Roku box (streaming video from Netflix). But I'd like to have some way of seeing how much bandwidth I'm using.


I agree. I doubt I would ever get remotely close to 250GB, but if there's a limit then I'd like to actually know, not just guess, how close I get to it. Especially if the "penalty" is no service for a year!



> According to Comcast's figures the 250GB cutoff won't affect over 99% of customers, which certainy sounds plausible to me. But I'm sure that will change over time - that's not enough bandwidth to download one HD movie a day.


I think that's a big concern - I could imagine a day when every TV show is available in HD on something like Amazon Unbox, and people start dumping cable TV in favor of just buying individual shows over the internet. Unfortunately, Comcast will have a severe conflict of interest if that happens; there'll be a strong temptation for them to ensure that a bandwidth cap or other measures make that impossible.


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## will592 (Jan 4, 2007)

bicker said:


> Their lines aren't over-subscribed. They're appropriate for the number of subscribers, given that the subscribers would use a typical amount of usage. That's really the issue: We typical subscribers shouldn't have to have to subsidize heavier users. Make _them_ get business accounts, or fractional T1s, or whatever. This isn't a socialist country; people should pay for their own usage. It _isn't_ the same price to support X bandwidth versus X times 2 bandwidth.
> 
> Given that other suppliers have much lower thresholds, Comcast's cap is anything *but* drastic. It is a very reasonable and moderate measure.
> 
> ...


There is nothing socialist about any of this. This is the cable companies' fault. Imagine if the power company sold your connection as $50/month for 250 amp service. This would probably work out well as long as most people continued to use a moderate amount of power. But if even a fraction of people realized they were paying for 250 amps of service and were only using 100 amps during the day, they would crank down their A/C and enjoy their seemingly limitless electricity. Same thing for water, charge $50 dollars a month for water and we'll all just leave our toilets running so we have 'fresh water'. The biggest difference is that water and electricity are scarce resources so you couldn't possibly imagine this being the case. Bandwidth is limitless and in fact we have so much capacity the government has already paid the telecom companies to install (in the form of subsidies) that we shouldn't even be having to think about paying for it. You can argue till you're blue in the face that this is unreasonable but there are dozens of countries around the world that have essentially free broadband with bandwidth that should shame every one of us. As online delivery of HD becomes more prevalant any cap is going to become ridiculous. How many of us already use our broadband connections for telephone service? You can complain about subsidizing 'heavy users', but if it wasn't for the 'heavy users' that subsidized broadband as early adopters 10 years ago you wouldn't have a broadband connection today.

The solution is simple. Don't sell people more bandwidth than you can handle using your best models for appropriate use. The telecoms are not keeping up with normal usage patterns are sticking to models that worked 5 -10 years ago when no one did anything but browse a static web and send email. The only model that makes sense in the long term is to charge a flat rate based on total usage - but they are not going to do this because they don't want people like my parents (and probably yours) to get $5 network bills. They will happily charge them $45 per month to send 20 emails and then complain that I am using vonage for my phone service.

Sorry if this is long winded, but I just had to put out my $.02.

Chris


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## Ilovetorecord2 (Mar 21, 2000)

I don't know what my loads were but I do know that my email or internet access was screwed up often. Now that I stopped for a while I have had no problem with the service.

I got verizon for my labtop with the idea of dropping comcast (if I called customer service, the problem did not get resolved and I was told if a rep came out I would be charged $50), and using it for both desktop and laptop.

Comcast is a joke. Getting help in solving problems doesn't work most of the time. Last time a rep came out (comcast charges you for tv and internet even if you don't use the tv basic service) and uplugged my tv service saying splitting the line was the problem but that is how they set it up and then tried to charge me $50.

To each his own on opinions.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

aadam101 said:


> How long do you really think this will last? Next month Verizon FIOS will announce a cap of 300GB per month. Comcast will have to increase to 350GB and so on and so on.


I doubt Verizon will implement caps, at least not in the near future. The main reason for the caps is that Comcast uses coax cable to deliver broadband. Coax cable can carry a large amount of data, but no where near as much as fiber (which Verizon uses). Verizon has more bandwidth than they know what to do with.

Internet over coax (DOCSIS) is a shared service. This means that around 200 subscribers (400 in some places) are sharing a 38 Mbps downstream connection. This means that if all 200 users try to download all at once, download speeds would drop to about 190 Kbps or possibly drop out completely do to network overload. The cap is a way to prevent this from occurring.

The other reason probably has something to do with Comcast's costs to provide Internet service to their customers, but Comcast is making a lot of money. If cost really were an issue, then Comcast would just charge more for going over the limit. Instead they drop people who exceed the limit, which basically means they don't want those people as customers.


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## samo (Oct 7, 1999)

bicker said:


> Their lines aren't over-subscribed. They're appropriate for the number of subscribers, given that the subscribers would use a typical amount of usage. That's really the issue: We typical subscribers shouldn't have to have to subsidize heavier users. Make _them_ get business accounts, or fractional T1s, or whatever. This isn't a socialist country; people should pay for their own usage. It _isn't_ the same price to support X bandwidth versus X times 2 bandwidth.
> 
> Given that other suppliers have much lower thresholds, Comcast's cap is anything *but* drastic. It is a very reasonable and moderate measure.
> 
> I don't and don't want to subsidize your heavy use. No offense.


I'm 100% with bicker on this one. If you do have legit reason to exceed 250 GB a month, you should get T1. Grandma who only uses Internet to see pictures of her grandchildren should not be subsidizing cheap skates who run torrents all the time. Business web sites that have that much traffic or users who legitimately need more than 250 GB should and do pay hundreds or thousands dollars a month for T1. 
If you are downloading HD movies or using other high traffic applications you should pay for it. It is that simple.


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## will592 (Jan 4, 2007)

samo said:


> I'm 100% with bicker on this one. If you do have legit reason to exceed 250 GB a month, you should get T1. Grandma who only uses Internet to see pictures of her grandchildren should not be subsidizing cheap skates who run torrents all the time. Business web sites that have that much traffic or users who legitimately need more than 250 GB should and do pay hundreds or thousands dollars a month for T1.
> If you are downloading HD movies or using other high traffic applications you should pay for it. It is that simple.


But...we are paying for it. I pay $60/month to get 15 Mbit/s download and 1 Mbit/s upload. They said it was 'unlimited' and made no mention of there being a cap. What reason in the world is there for me or anyone else on the network to avoid saturating that connection? Should I not use everything I'm paying for just because it isn't fair to other people that are not using what they pay for? I don't expect anything from anyone without paying for it. Perhaps people who don't use their access as heavily should be demanding lower bills instead of asking the network providers to crack down on the people who are using what they pay for?

Chris


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## tootal2 (Oct 14, 2005)

Is it only cable companys that are putting theses caps on? some cable companys want a 5 gig limit. If i download 2 movies from unbox i will go over the limit. 

i have dsl so i hope i dont get a download limit


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## jacques (Jun 2, 2000)

tootal2 said:


> Is it only cable companys that are putting theses caps on? some cable companys want a 5 gig limit. If i download 2 movies from unbox i will go over the limit.
> 
> i have dsl so i hope i dont get a download limit


Nope, not just cable companies. In our area it is Frontier (DSL) that has a 5GB limit.


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## DocNo (Oct 10, 2001)

Brainiac 5 said:


> My point was, Comcast is not trying to charge more for people who use more bandwidth - for whatever reason, they just don't want you use that much bandwidth, and that's it.


Yup - they are scared of Internet based TV and Movie downloads replacing the need for traditional cable television services.

They should be 

Can't wait for Verizon to hurry up and get over here....


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## aadam101 (Jul 15, 2002)

morac said:


> I doubt Verizon will implement caps, at least not in the near future. The main reason for the caps is that Comcast uses coax cable to deliver broadband. Coax cable can carry a large amount of data, but no where near as much as fiber (which Verizon uses). Verizon has more bandwidth than they know what to do with.
> 
> Internet over coax (DOCSIS) is a shared service. This means that around 200 subscribers (400 in some places) are sharing a 38 Mbps downstream connection. This means that if all 200 users try to download all at once, download speeds would drop to about 190 Kbps or possibly drop out completely do to network overload. The cap is a way to prevent this from occurring.
> 
> The other reason probably has something to do with Comcast's costs to provide Internet service to their customers, but Comcast is making a lot of money. If cost really were an issue, then Comcast would just charge more for going over the limit. Instead they drop people who exceed the limit, which basically means they don't want those people as customers.


Even if Verizon doesn't the same problem will still exist. Verizon will start running ads comparing their "unlimited" service with Comcast's 250GB service. At some point in the future 250GB won't be enough for more and more people and they will simply move to FIOS. Comcast will have no choice but to lift the cap.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Brainiac 5 said:


> But seriously, I don't think moving to get more bandwidth is a realistic option for most people.


If it is important to you, then move where the resources you want are available to you. If it is not that important to you,then live with what is available to you where you decide to live.

Many people choose where they live based on a nearby church, or where Meals on Wheels is available to them, etc.



Brainiac 5 said:


> My point was, Comcast is not trying to charge more for people who use more bandwidth - for whatever reason, they just don't want you use that much bandwidth, and that's it.


On the travel websites, often folks point to Southwest Airlines as their favorite in terms of on-time performance and lack of schedule changes, but they have no response when folks point out that Southwest doesn't offer, and has no intention of offering, service from many of the nation's cities. Southwest is smart: They offer as much service as is profitable for them to offer, and despite the fact that there are many cities that are only served by one airline, and many cities not served by any airline, Southwest won't expand to fill those needs, because it isn't good for the airline.



will592 said:


> They said it was 'unlimited'


First, they never said "unlimited" to me. Second, they're not saying "unlimited" now. So even if you feel they told you "unlimited", you cannot even try to assert that they said "unlimited forever".


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

I find this issue somewhat amusing, and will equate it to electricity. 

Here in NYS the Government is forcing the electricity industry to move from a government price regulated industry to an "open market" driven industry by forcing the local electric companies to separate transmission and delivery of electricity (which will remain regulated) from the purchase of electricity so that the end users can choose to purchase their electricity from any number of providers which will supposedly allow the market to take care of the cost of electricity. The reason they are doing this is because everyone knows it doesn't make sense to have multiple electric lines from different companies going to everyone's house. 

Basically the same is true for telephone. 

So why haven't we figured this out when it comes to high speed Internet and "cable" TV? If people really want choice we will have to use the hammer of Government to force the separation of delivery lines and service providers. The delivery portion of the equation would then need to be a regulated monopoly subject to government over site with all providers having equal access to the delivery system.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

atmuscarella said:


> So why haven't we figured this out when it comes to high speed Internet and "cable" TV?


I suppose it is because those things are simply not important, like electricity.



atmuscarella said:


> If people really want choice we will have to use the hammer of Government to force the separation of delivery lines and service providers.


True. However, such regulation flies in the face of most American's political perspective. Remember, even many Democrats, these days, are pro-business (i.e., the Clintons and the rest of the DLC faction).



atmuscarella said:


> The delivery portion of the equation would then need to be a regulated monopoly subject to government over site with all providers having equal access to the delivery system.


And the regulated monopoly compensated on a *cost-plus* basis. That tends to lead to excessively inefficient operations. I remember the culture that AT&T had, even for a good amount of time after "divestiture" -- the cost-plus mind-set was actually quite difficult to get rid of, yet I bet it is pretty easy to fall *into*.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

> True. However, such regulation flies in the face of most American's political perspective. Remember, even many Democrats, these days, are pro-business (i.e., the Clintons and the rest of the DLC faction).


Why is splitting delivery from service anti-business? It may not be beneficial so some existing businesses but would be pro to new/different types of business models and could potentially reduce the regulatory burden on the service provider side.

Thanks


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

atmuscarella said:


> Why is splitting delivery from service anti-business?


Anything that forces a company to utilize its assets in a manner other than what they determine is best for their shareholders is anti-business.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

> Anything that forces a company to utilize its assets in a manner other than what they determine is best for their shareholders is anti-business.


That seems a little broad to me - it potentially makes any and every law/regulation/requirement any government has anti-business. That seems a little foolish, given that business as we know it (not to mention a civilized society) couldn't exist without the enforcement of these same government laws/regulations/requirements.

Thanks,


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

atmuscarella said:


> That seems a little broad to me - it potentially makes any and every law/regulation/requirement any government has anti-business.


Yes. It is a categorization, therefore it is categorical.



atmuscarella said:


> That seems a little foolish, given that business as we know it (not to mention a civilized society) couldn't exist without the enforcement of these same government laws/regulations/requirements.


You're assuming that everything anti-business is necessarily bad, in the ultimate grand scheme of things. That ignores necessary balance. Also, note that what we were talking about was what would be anti-business with respect to legacy MSOs. What's bad for legacy MSOs, though, could be good for *other* businesses. That doesn't mean that the imposition, itself, is not anti-business -- it still is even though other businesses benefit from it.


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## qz3fwd (Jul 6, 2007)

I have exceeded this cap last year when I was on comcast. They called and told me to not use as much bandwidth but would not tell me what the limits is. Kinda like a police officer pulling you over and giving you a speeding ticket, but nowhere is the speed limit posted and the officer wont tell you what it is.....

So I moved to AT&T DSL which is 80% as fast, 30% cheaper, 100% more reliable and consistent in line speed and best of all both the lady I signed up with on the telephone and also a technical support engineer told me that I could download 24/7 at full line speed without any caps and they had no problem with me doing this. I have been a happy camper since switching to DSL. No more rude phone calls.

I suspect that competition will eventually either force Comcast to up the limits over time or make the service truly "unlimited" again. But they need a very clear AUP.


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## jkalnin (Jan 8, 2003)

I bet nobody here gets over 250GB of data per month. I download a ton of stuff and watch a bunch of videos online, and I know I am not even close. That news doesn't bother me one bit... until Netflix enables HD streaming, then we'll have problems.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

qz3fwd said:


> Kinda like a police officer pulling you over and giving you a speeding ticket, but nowhere is the speed limit posted and the officer wont tell you what it is.....


And that's actually the way things really are, in a way. Police officers can and do issue tickets for "unsafe operation" which is, without a doubt, a judgment call. However, the reason why HSI providers don't provide definitive limits was mentioned earlier: People would seek to fully use what they would then consider their "allotment".

The real solution is to go fully metered: Have a base monthly account fee, and then pay for every byte above that, from byte 1.


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## Adam1115 (Dec 15, 2003)

jkalnin said:


> I bet nobody here gets over 250GB of data per month. I download a ton of stuff and watch a bunch of videos online, and I know I am not even close. That news doesn't bother me one bit... until Netflix enables HD streaming, then we'll have problems.


Again, some people work from home and are pulling files back and forth all day via their VPN...


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

> Originally Posted by *bicker*
> You're assuming that everything anti-business is necessarily bad,


Actually I think we just have a different view on what the term Anti-business means. Its one of those terms that means different things to different people because we all have a different view of what is negative/positive.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

atmuscarella said:


> Here in NYS the Government is forcing the electricity industry to move from a government price regulated industry to an "open market" driven industry by forcing the local electric companies to separate transmission and delivery of electricity (which will remain regulated) from the purchase of electricity so that the end users can choose to purchase their electricity from any number of providers which will supposedly allow the market to take care of the cost of electricity. The reason they are doing this is because everyone knows it doesn't make sense to have multiple electric lines from different companies going to everyone's house.


This is somewhat off-topic, but NJ deregulated the electricity industry nearly 10 years ago. It was supposed to result in "open market" competition which would lower prices. The result was that the opposite occurred.

In the beginning a bunch of electricity providers popped up and there was some competition. Within a year most of them promptly went out of business so now in nearly all areas in NJ, the only delivery provider is also the one that does the transmitting. In areas where there are multiple providers, the transmitter is usually cheaper than other providers because of the costs associated funneling the electricity from one provider to the other.

So with no regulation and little to no competition, prices actually have sky-rocketed since the deregulation. If this sounds familiar the same thing happened when cable TV was deregulated in 1996.

Deregulating service monopolies and artificially introducing competition rarely works unless that monopoly is also broken up (example: old AT&T).



atmuscarella said:


> So why haven't we figured this out when it comes to high speed Internet and "cable" TV? If people really want choice we will have to use the hammer of Government to force the separation of delivery lines and service providers. The delivery portion of the equation would then need to be a regulated monopoly subject to government over site with all providers having equal access to the delivery system.


As for breaking up Internet service into transmission and service. What you are paying for today is solely for transmission. So you pay Comcast for the transmission (bytes transmitted/received) and you pay others (Amazon, TiVo, Netflix, Vonage, etc) for the service (data). Comcast does overlap in that they provide services as well and they do bundle some of those with their Internet "service", but mainly Comcast is a transmission provider, not a service provider.


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## davezatz (Apr 18, 2002)

While it's true the cap is coming, the headline of this thread is a bit alarmist given the data quantities we're talking about with TiVoCast and YouTube. 

I'm pissed that Comcast can't be bothered to provide a meter though. How can you institute a cap without a method for us to self-regulate?


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

davezatz said:


> While it's true the cap is coming, the headline of this thread is a bit alarmist given the data quantities we're talking about with TiVoCast and YouTube.


True it's a bit alarmist, but a head line is supposed to be. If the title was "Comcast institutes cap that won't affect you at all" no one would have read the post. 



davezatz said:


> How can you institute a cap without a method for us to self-regulate?


See my earlier post in the thread.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

morac said:


> See my earlier post in the thread.


I'm actually specifically interested in Dave's perspective on how suppliers could provide a meter without having to worry about some customers using the meter in a manner so as to, as morac suggested, drive costs (and therefore prices) higher.


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## davezatz (Apr 18, 2002)

bicker said:


> I'm actually specifically interested in Dave's perspective on how suppliers could provide a meter without having to worry about some customers using the meter in a manner so as to, as morac suggested, drive costs (and therefore prices) higher.


A contact at the NCTA pointed me to two other US vendors with caps hosting some sort of web meter. Morac may be right, but the amount of people using a meter for abuse would probably be very small. And I honestly don't believe that's why Comcast is holding back - I believe they're attempting to be economical and efficient, without realizing how absurd it is to enforce a speed limit without providing a speedometer. If they don't provide a meter on their own, I'm willing to bet they will be compelled to do so. I expect if the cap implementation date holds, we'll see a meter by the end of the year. I also expect to multiple commercial routers (as opposed to replacement firmware) offer some sort of utility. [Comcast' suggestion to stick software on each PC and add it up is ridiculous when the biggest data offenders outside of BitTorrent clients are probably CE devices (competitors?) like Vudu and Xbox downloading HD feature-length films at 5GB/pop.]


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

I believe most other providers that have caps, cap at a much lower value than Comcast's 250 GB cap. If the cap was say 5 or 10 GB a month I would say that a meter would be a necessity, but at 250 GB very few people will even come close to the cap.

Comcast stated that about 1% of its 14.4 million subscribers will be affected by the cap. If that is accurate then that's 144,000 subscribers nation-wide that would require a meter. Comcast might not think it's worth the effort to develop something that's used by so few.

Personally I would like to see a meter and I think Comcast will eventually have to provide one, but I don't think it will be by the end of the year.

I still think Comcast is at least partially wary of providing the meter for the reason I mentioned. After all, people tend to want to get what they pay for and if they think they are paying for 250 GB a month, they'll probably use more bandwidth to feel they are getting their money's worth. It's just human nature.

You can use a cell phone as an example. If someone pays for 800 minutes a month and only used 100 minutes, that person probably feels like they "lost" 700 minutes that month. So they'll try and leave as few minutes remaining as possible. That's probably one of the reasons why AT&T's offers "rollover minutes" since it negates the feeling of "losing minutes" each month which is good for customers (they get extra minutes when they need it) and AT&T (customers don't burn unused minutes at the end of the month).


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## MickeS (Dec 26, 2002)

morac said:


> Comcast stated that about 1% of its 14.4 million subscribers will be affected by the cap. If that is accurate then that's 144,000 subscribers nation-wide that would require a meter. Comcast might not think it's worth the effort to develop something that's used by so few.


Yeah, and I'm pretty sure that the top 1% of bandwidth users are savvy enough to figure out how to use their own monitor software.


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## ThAbtO (Apr 6, 2000)

http://cbs5.com/technology/comcast.bandwidth.cap.2.806527.html


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

ZeoTiVo said:


> my latency may well go down and throughput may well go up if heavy users (we are talking about 250 Gig a month here) are made to rethink the load they put on the backend.


'Not really. 250G a month is only an average of 800 kilobits per second per 250G customer - it's trifling. Your latency won't be impacted significantly, no matter what. Latency is the time it takes for a packet to reach its destination and return back to the point of origin. Although there can be small variations due to jitter (caused mostly by store and forward policies in switches and routers), the overall latency is a matter of distance, number of hops, and link speed - mostly distance. Of course one can encounter packet loss due to link congestion, but TCP handles link congestion with multiple connections very well.

If you just happen to be on an already congested link at the same time a bandwidth hog is downloading, you might notice a downturn in your throughput, but unless that hog is downloading something like a couple of Terrabytes a month and there are a fairly large number of them, you'll never really notice it. Assuming a download hog is gulping 1T a month and is getting a steady 5Mbps download rate (most CATV companies are advertising *MUCH* more available bandwidth), then he is downloading a total of 19 days out of the month, or about 2/3 of the time, but no matter how much content he gets, it's still only 5 Mbps, and it takes 20 of them simultaneously downloading (or on average 30 of them) just to fill up a 100M pipe. It takes 200 of them simultaneously or an average of 300 of them long term to fill up a 1G pipe. If you live in a major metropolitan market, your local CATV company is raking in something in excess of $25,000 a *DAY* just in revenue from broadband internet customers. They can easily afford several 10G pipes into the internet.

They've got real balls crowing about a service which can deliver upwards of 10Mbps, and is available 24 hours a day, but then want to charge you if you use it more than 8% of the time, or more than 2 hours out of that 24 hour day. They've also got a lot of chutzpah complaining about bandwidth limitations when they locally pull in enough to purchase an amount of bandwidth equal to more than 45,000 of the 1T per month hogs. In short, the revenue they rake in could pretty much cover the bandwidth required if every single customer pulled down 1T a month, and that is after considering overhead, capital expenditures, etc.



ZeoTiVo said:


> PS - normal TiVoCast use would take you no where near 250 gig a month.


No, but downloading HD content from an unlimited movie rental service could.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

Adam1115 said:


> Hmm... I don't download a ton, but I am VPN'd in to work practically all day....


Me, too. At 1920 x 1200 x 32, the screen paints add up. I doubt it's 250G, though, and I don't currently download movies.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

Brainiac 5 said:


> My point was, Comcast is not trying to charge more for people who use more bandwidth - for whatever reason, they just don't want you use that much bandwidth, and that's it.


Then they should not claim to deliver 5 or 10 Mbps, and they should not claim to be superior to DSL. They can have their cake, or eat it, but not both.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

will592 said:


> Sorry if this is long winded, but I just had to put out my $.02.


No, you're perfectly correct. In this instance, it is a matter of the CATV companies wanting to be able to charge - and exhorbitantly at that - their customers without having to take on the costs of delivering the service. Many people believe CATV companies over-charge for their TV service, and that their profit margins are huge. In fact, they are not, and while they definitely are making a profit on selling standard CATV service - their margins aren't exactly "slender" - they have a very large debt to service and their overhead is in fact quite large. Broadband service is another matter, however. Especially when one considers most of the capital costs for delivering broadband service are already amortized under the cost for delivering CATV service (it costs very little more to deliver CATV + broadband than to deliver just CATV), their overhead for delivering the service is also partially covered under CATV plant overhead, and their cost per user to purchase internet access is a tiny fraction of the revenue generated by delivering the service, their whining about the cost of providing higher bandwidth is absurd. Unlike TV services, their broadband product is all but pure profit.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

lrhorer said:


> If you just happen to be on an already congested link at the same time a bandwidth hog is downloading, you might notice a downturn in your throughput, but unless that hog is downloading something like a couple of Terrabytes a month and there are a fairly large number of them, you'll never really notice it.


I want to add a caveat to what you said. It's true that bandwidth hogs *downloading* on your local node will rarely cause a noticeable problem, but *uploading* is a different story, especially since Comcast recently raised the upload speeds to 1 Mbps (plus a little extra for overhead). Someone could upload continuously for several weeks without hitting the cap, barring any downloads.

Since most Comcast areas still use DOCSIS 1.x, it would only take a handful of people seeding torrents on your node to eat up enough bandwidth to interfere with your download speeds and ping times because their uploads would delay your TCP ACKS from going out. Basically like a locally initiated denial of service attack.

BTW, that's one of the reasons Comcast just sued the FCC to overturn the p2p throttling ban.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

davezatz said:


> A contact at the NCTA pointed me to two other US vendors with caps hosting some sort of web meter. Morac may be right, but the amount of people using a meter for abuse would probably be very small.


It's not abuse if they re paying for it, is it? No matter what else, if the company says a customer is entitled to 250G a month without sanction, then that person is not abusing anything if they take steps to insure they actually make use of their allotted amount.


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## lrhorer (Aug 31, 2003)

morac said:


> I want to add a caveat to what you said. It's true that bandwidth hogs *downloading* on your local node will rarely cause a noticeable problem


Well, yes, although I wasn't speaking of just a single node. The odds of a single node having more than one or two "hogs" at this point in time is very small, and it's not really what the CATV companies are complaining about. Note the number of people downloading large amount is soon going to increase rapidly as more and more HD content becomes available for download.



ZeoTiVo said:


> but *uploading* is a different story...
> 
> Since most Comcast areas still use DOCSIS 1.x, it would only take a handful of people seeding torrents on your node...
> 
> ...


Quite true, but I believe most companies are talking about download caps, not upload or total byte-count caps. I could be wrong, however.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

lrhorer said:


> Quite true, but I believe most companies are talking about download caps, not upload or total byte-count caps. I could be wrong, however.


I'm pretty sure it is a total byte-count cap. Comcast's Network Manangement page describes the cap as a "monthly data usage threshold." The word "download" isn't mentioned any where on the page except in the examples of how to exceed 250 GB's of "monthy data usage" which also includes the example of "upload[ing] 25,000 hi-resolution digital photos (at 10 MB/photo)".


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## Stormspace (Apr 13, 2004)

This whole thing stinks to me. Whether I use 250GB or 10GB I don't like the idea of being metered only on non ISP content. Metering VOIP that isn't your ISP's is anti-competitive and as others have said this is a move by Comcast to kill IPTV, or to eventually promote their own services since they won't be metered.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Stormspace said:


> Metering VOIP that isn't your ISP's is anti-competitive


Not really. It doesn't stop the voice service provider from building their own network, and ensures that cheap-o competitors cannot foist the vast majority of their cost onto legacy providers.

What is really needed, to avoid these troubles, is completely metered service: every bit of audio, video, telephone, and data metered. However, consumers don't like such models, so we're stuck with this patchwork we have.


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## Stormspace (Apr 13, 2004)

bicker said:


> Not really. It doesn't stop the voice service provider from building their own network, and ensures that cheap-o competitors cannot foist the vast majority of their cost onto legacy providers.
> 
> What is really needed, to avoid these troubles, is completely metered service: every bit of audio, video, telephone, and data metered. However, consumers don't like such models, so we're stuck with this patchwork we have.


Ok, So what we are looking at is for every VOIP service on the net we've got to have a separate cable into the house? Kinda defeats the point of using VOIP and exactly anticompetitive. Metering is also anti-competitive as it has a chilling effect on competing services like IPTV, the aforementioned VOIP, Search, DVR's, or any number of items that might be provided by the ISP that competes with a third party provider. And while 250GB might be just peachy today, what about the future? Personally I'd rather they crank the speeds down and advertise that as the real through put you get with their service.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Stormspace said:


> Ok, So what we are looking at is for every VOIP service on the net we've got to have a separate cable into the house?


That would be the fairest approach. Again, why should Company X bear the overwhelming cost of building the network, when Company Y can just co-opt it, get the applicable revenue from customers, without paying Company X a dime.



Stormspace said:


> Kinda defeats the point of using VOIP


Uh, no. VOIP is a protocol. You're ascribing things to it that simply aren't the case.



Stormspace said:


> and exactly anticompetitive.


Not at all. It doesn't stop the voice service provider from building their own network, and ensures that cheap-o competitors cannot foist the vast majority of their cost onto legacy providers.



Stormspace said:


> Metering is also anti-competitive as it has a chilling effect on competing services like IPTV, the aforementioned VOIP, Search, DVR's, or any number of items that might be provided by the ISP that competes with a third party provider.


You're simply wrong. It is not anti-competitive. It is fair.

I think you're confusing "good for consumers" with "competitive".


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

net nuetrality - there I said it 


if this becomes like cable TV where I am not allowed to use my preferred protocols then this is a step back from what could be.


That said I am all for reasonable, publicized caps with a meter for customers to know, and the providers services should be part of the cap to greatly simplify such questions and remain fair. The cap should be all about keeping the system stable and performing to spec - nothing else.

The bandwidth provider is just that and should charge for providing the bandwidth or else take the gamble on selling enough services to cover infrastructure costs while still competing with other services I want to access via the ineternet.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

ZeoTiVo said:


> net nuetrality - there I said it


Indeed. I think the confusion could also be a confusion of _competitive _with _neutral_.



ZeoTiVo said:


> if this becomes like cable TV where I am not allowed to use my preferred protocols then this is a step back from what could be.


Step back _for consumers_.



ZeoTiVo said:


> The cap should be all about keeping the system stable and performing to spec - nothing else.


I disagree. The cap should also be about ensuring that there is an adequate profit motive to provide incentive for suppliers to _offer_ the service we want, in the first place.



ZeoTiVo said:


> The bandwidth provider is just that


Why not just have the government provide the pipe, just like they provide water and sewer service? That way, you're not expecting a business to act like a charity.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

bicker said:


> That would be the fairest approach. Again, why should Company X bear the overwhelming cost of building the network, when Company Y can just co-opt it, get the applicable revenue from customers, without paying Company X a dime.


It's also the most unrealistic approach. If you have 100 VOIP providers it makes no sense from an infrastructure or maintenance standpoint to lay down 100 lines to a house when only 1 of them would be in use at any one time. I'm not even going to get into the reasons this makes little sense since they are fairly obvious.

A much better approach, for both companies and customers, would be for the 100 companies to partner up and lay down one line and split the maintenance costs. Of course that will never happen. You can't even get two companies to agree to do that.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

morac said:


> It's also the most unrealistic approach. If you have 100 VOIP providers it makes no sense from an infrastructure or maintenance standpoint to lay down 100 lines to a house when only 1 of them would be in use at any one time. I'm not even going to get into the reasons this makes little sense since they are fairly obvious.


So you're advocating the municipal approach, like the water service. I can agree with that.



morac said:


> A much better approach, for both companies and customers, would be for the 100 companies to partner up and lay down one line and split the maintenance costs. Of course that will never happen. You can't even get two companies to agree to do that.


The law preclude collusion between businesses. This type of collective action in the public interest *is *a function of government, perhaps the best function of government.

The problem is that taxpayers are too cheap to spend their money on something like this.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

bicker said:


> So you're advocating the municipal approach, like the water service. I can agree with that..


That's not exactly what I had in mind when I posted, but now that you mention it I think it would work. Then again, something like FIOS would never have come about if such a scenario existed (not that Verizon ever plans to wire my area).



bicker said:


> The problem is that taxpayers are too cheap to spend their money on something like this.


It's not that the taxpayers are too cheap, rather that there isn't a lobbying group for this. The taxpayers (as a whole) haven't had a say on where their money goes for a long time. If they did, we wouldn't see billions of dollars sent to other countries that surpluses, taxpayer dollars being earmarked for bridges that go nowhere or Government bailing out money lenders.


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## CrashHD (Nov 10, 2006)

davezatz said:


> I'm pissed that Comcast can't be bothered to provide a meter though. How can you institute a cap without a method for us to self-regulate?


250GB/month is an insane amount of bandwidth. You can't ACCIDENTALLY go over that. That's like getting stopped for doing 120 on the interstate, and claiming you didn't know you're speeding because of broken speedometer.

Anyone using that quantity of data surely is tech-savvy enough to monitor their own data consumption. Bandwidth monitor pro, and dd-wrt are among the first to come to my mind.


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## CuriousMark (Jan 13, 2005)

morac said:


> A much better approach, for both companies and customers, would be for the 100 companies to partner up and lay down one line and split the maintenance costs. Of course that will never happen. You can't even get two companies to agree to do that.


Another alternative is to allow business to supply it as a regulated local monopoly. Just force the bandwidth provider to be divorced from ALL content providers. They then have a vested interest in providing you with whatever bandwidth you want and no competing interest to keep any content providers out. Rather, they would want to encourage as much content consumption as possible so that you buy a higher bandwidth plan. This concept does not force the last mile to become government run, with all the potential negatives that could come from that.

I doubt current cable providers would like that idea much, for the obvious reasons, but it is a reasonable alternative to turning the internet last mile into a municipal service.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

It wouldn't work because no entity would be willing to pay to build the infrastructure necessary to support it, and the taxpayers would be unwilling to buy the existing infrastructure at a fair price.


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## dylanemcgregor (Jan 31, 2003)

bicker said:


> It wouldn't work because no entity would be willing to pay to build the infrastructure necessary to support it, and the taxpayers would be unwilling to buy the existing infrastructure at a fair price.


I disagree; phone companies, electricity companies, and even cable companies have been run as semi-regulated monopolies for a very long time. This is because they are in industries that are considered natural monopolies because the barriers to entry are so high that it wouldn't make sense from a societal efficiency standpoint to have multiple competitors. There are various approaches to handling a natural monopoly, but they almost invariably involve regulation of some type. A typical response is to allow the natural monopolist profits that are above the normal one could expect from competing in a competitive industry, but are regulated so that price gouging is not allowed.

There are certainly problems with this approach, and their are deadweight losses to society in these cases, but it can't be said that "no entity would be willing to pay to build the infrastructure necessary to support it" since indeed many entities have already done this.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

dylanemcgregor said:


> This is because they are in industries that are considered natural monopolies because the barriers to entry are so high that it wouldn't make sense from a societal efficiency standpoint to have multiple competitors.


Those services effectively started out that way. Legacy carriers having built their own networks based on the current model, it is a violation of the principles of eminent domain to force them to re-purpose their assets as you suggest. There are alternative means of accessing the Internet, hence effective competition, and therefore no monopoly (natural or otherwise), according to all legal definitions. If people want more competition, they should start their own businesses, or get the government to create its own, or invite a company to create, a shared pipeline.


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## dylanemcgregor (Jan 31, 2003)

bicker said:


> There are alternative means of accessing the Internet, hence effective competition, and therefore no monopoly (natural or otherwise), according to all legal definitions.


Natural monopoly is NOT defined as only having a single supplier in an industry...instead it is asserting that having more than one supplier is inefficient due to the high capital costs of entry into the industry. The dominant suppliers of internet service in the U.S. (phone companies and cable companies) have come from regulated industries and have leveraged their existing infrastructure (built under protection as a regulated monopolist) to build out new services.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

dylanemcgregor said:


> The dominant suppliers of internet service in the U.S. (phone companies and cable companies) have come from regulated industries and have leveraged their existing infrastructure (built under protection as a regulated monopolist) to build out new services.


yes, this is what I came to as well in thinking about it. Comcast is dealing with the issue of a minority running internet services that are using vastly more than the average user. They need to do something about it since spending infrastructure money to deal with those few has a fairly negative ROI.

The problem is this leaves the door open for Comcast to block services via caps while not counting in the cap their own services like VOIP.

hat needs to be addresed and regulating the 'last mile' like water and electric is really the only long term way to do so that recognizes business interests and allows them to keep competing without the unequal footing of either paying for the 'last mile' or else not having full access to the 'last mile'


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

dylanemcgregor said:


> Natural monopoly is NOT defined as only having a single supplier in an industry...


AFAIC, the term was simply created to evoke emotion, because the actual definition of "monopoly" precluded a scenario that critics wanted to complain about using the emotionally-laden word "monopoly".



dylanemcgregor said:


> instead it is asserting that having more than one supplier is inefficient due to the high capital costs of entry into the industry. The dominant suppliers...


Which is the *correct* term, but evidently not as sexy.

And there isn't a dominant supplier wherever DSL and cable HSI are both offered. Just because we prefer one service to another, that doesn't mean that they're not comparable services. The reality is that the RBOC is in the most "natural" position to be dominant in this space, and to the extent that they're _not_ it is a tribute to the investment a competitor of theirs made in bringing a superior offering to the marketplace. That's what we need to incentivize, not punish, and make no mistake, forcing a company to use assets it paid-for with its owners' hard-earned money to provide cheap carriage of a competitor's competing offering is punishment.



ZeoTiVo said:


> Comcast is dealing with the issue of a minority running internet services that are using vastly more than the average user. They need to do something about it since spending infrastructure money to deal with those few has a fairly negative ROI.


Precisely. There are solutions that serve the needs of the owners of the company *and *the majority of their customers. Beyond that, there is nothing wrong with structuring offerings so that heavy users pay more. Even a regulated monopoly does that. Here, there is a punitive schedule of rates for heavy use of water from our municipal water resource authority.


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## Stormspace (Apr 13, 2004)

bicker said:


> That would be the fairest approach. Again, why should Company X bear the overwhelming cost of building the network, when Company Y can just co-opt it, get the applicable revenue from customers, without paying Company X a dime.


Well, because that company was allowed a local monopoly to do that in the first place. We aren't talking about dial-up providers here offering limited connectivity over POTS. It also stifles innovation. I didn't see any cable companies being the first to introduce Hulu like services, VOIP, or any other internet based services. Fact is, left to their own devices they probably wouldn't have. And by essentially punishing every internet based company by restricting trade over their cable we will be left with waiting for cable companies to innovate at the same pace as they have in the past so that we won't have to worry about bandwidth caps.

For example, "Get road runner, now with Hulu! Only $10.00 extra per month."

You think Hulu is going to get any of that money?



bicker said:


> Uh, no. VOIP is a protocol. You're ascribing things to it that simply aren't the case.
> 
> Not at all. It doesn't stop the voice service provider from building their own network, and ensures that cheap-o competitors cannot foist the vast majority of their cost onto legacy providers.


Expecting every internet based company to provide their own line is not practical and a bit naive. It's a good thing telephone companies weren't allowed to to the same with telephone service.



bicker said:


> You're simply wrong. It is not anti-competitive. It is fair.


As long as they don't meter their own content and they are a local monopoly it is anticompetitive.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

bicker said:


> Here, there is a punitive schedule of rates for heavy use of water from our municipal water resource authority.


yes, and it is in the form of paying more for the most part. Which is fine by me. of course water supply changes year to year while bandwidth is determined by infrastructure. For electricity - the 'last mile' to the home can stay the same for the most part since households do not tend to pull really large amounts of electricity without doing something illegal anyhow like indoor cultivation or running a business in an area not zoned for it. etc.

On the other hand it could be possible to hit 250 gig even doing legal things like downloading HD content or streaming or working from home etc..
So tiered pricing might work or simple our pipe can only handle this and you are cut off after that, etc..

Key item though is that any kind of useage regulation ahs to be broad and cover any *and all* services. The pipe owner should not get a bye and thus have a tool to limit other serivices - assuming all else is fair and some common use of the pipe that is equitable on the front end has been worked out


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Stormspace said:


> Well, because that company was allowed a local monopoly to do that in the first place.


Again, _not_ a monopoly.



Stormspace said:


> It also stifles innovation.


Indeed, having someone incur all the expense of building a network and then forcing them to carry a competitors competing offering does indeed stifle innovation.



Stormspace said:


> I didn't see any cable companies being the first to introduce Hulu like services, VOIP, or any other internet based services.


You don't remember, I suppose, back in the day, how innovative cable HSI was, to start with. Then, they innovated again, by offering Digital Voice service. It seems to me that your perspective is a bit jaded.



Stormspace said:


> Expecting every internet based company to provide their own line is not practical and a bit naive.


Then come up with an alternative that is fair to the owners of the cable companies. Fair trumps (what you choose to consider) practical.



Stormspace said:


> As long as they don't meter their own content and they are a local monopoly it is anticompetitive.


No they're not, and it isn't. You're wrong about that.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

ZeoTiVo said:


> On the other hand it could be possible to hit 250 gig even doing legal things like downloading HD content or streaming or working from home etc..


Filling a swimming pool is legal.



ZeoTiVo said:


> The pipe owner should not get a bye and thus have a tool to limit other serivices - assuming all else is fair and some common use of the pipe that is equitable on the front end has been worked out


The problem still remains about how to fairly reward the "pipe owner". Short of buying the pipe at market value (or some similar computation based on an amortized evaluation of some limited-term view of anticipated revenues from those services that will use the pipe), no one has proposed anything viable. And that's why there reality is the way it is. No one is willing to put _their_ money where their mouth is. In the United States, it's all fun and games until it is _your_ property being messed with.

Something else to throw into the mix: What guarantee is there that the competing services will continue to use the pipe? Unless a public entity/government buys the pipe for market value, there need to be some guarantees that the anticipate revenues are achieved, so the pipe owner doesn't get shortchanged by an unforeseen change in technology.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

bicker said:


> Filling a swimming pool is legal.
> 
> The problem still remains about how to fairly reward the "pipe owner". Short of buying the pipe at market value (or some similar computation based on an amortized evaluation of some limited-term view of anticipated revenues from those services that will use the pipe), no one has proposed anything viable. And that's why there reality is the way it is. No one is willing to put _their_ money where their mouth is. In the United States, it's all fun and games until it is _your_ property being messed with.


you are right about money being the block here. Congress has proposed this last mile pipe in various ways as good for business and always it gets underfunded and of no practical value. It could well end up like highways as well and be too small even before it is opened since it took way too long to finish.

I would love to hear of a politician bearing tax or other federal incentives for 'last mile' owner to find ways to open more business opps. for everyone and not just the one company.

If instead the internet is different for everyone depending on your pipe owner that will just stifle long term best interets for everyone - consumer and businesses looking for growth oppurtunities alike.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

ZeoTiVo said:


> It could well end up like highways as well and be too small even before it is opened since it took way too long to finish.


Oh gosh, don't get me started about Massachusetts' handling of highways development in the North of Boston area!


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

bicker said:


> Oh gosh, don't get me started about Massachusetts' handling of highways development in the North of Boston area!


I have taken taxis through the big pit. Would not want my data to suffer a similar fate.


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## LoREvanescence (Jun 19, 2007)

bicker said:


> Oh gosh, don't get me started about Massachusetts' handling of highways development in the North of Boston area!


Ah, that's nothing. Your roads are the best in the state. You should see the western half. You play chicken with all the holes, every bridge is down to one lane and has stop lights do to abandoned constriction projects to fix them be cause their budgets got pulled.


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## cditty (Jun 8, 2003)

For those of us that don't trust Comcast to be honest or to give a meter in an acceptible time period, here is a way to monitor you bandwidth from the router itself. I just did mine and it worked like a champ. It did take a few minutes to get the right firmware for my router, but it does work.

Article
Main site


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## RS4 (Sep 2, 2001)

I think this is a real concern. The Tivo (and others) allow us to view shows from the internet and we all know that there will be more shows available for us. I look forward to the day when there is real competition for the video suppliers. However, if Comcast is going to limit us, it will be hard to switch to a concept of OTA and internet only. I think Comcast is trying to nip this in the bud before they have a lot of desertions of their video service.

Hopefully wimax or some other service will be coming along (my area has no hope for FIOS) and that will be the competition we need to get Comcast to rethink things.


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## cditty (Jun 8, 2003)

I think once it is proven that Comcast will only track outside services and not their own, people will fuss and something will get done. Until then, nothing we can do but bend over and grin big.


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## Fassade (Apr 8, 2004)

bicker said:


> So you're advocating the municipal approach, like the water service. I can agree with that.


Oddly enough, as of 2007 there were several states that had/have laws on the books explicitly banning municipal broadband. (Senate bill 1853 would seem to overturn those rules, but that way lies a jurisdictional mess, so I have no idea what the effective laws are now in those states.)



bicker said:


> The law preclude collusion between businesses. This type of collective action in the public interest *is *a function of government, perhaps the best function of government.
> 
> The problem is that taxpayers are too cheap to spend their money on something like this.


Agreed -- most taxpayers are too cheap, but there is at least one court case pending from a town of exceptions in Monticello, Minnesota.

Monticello wanted a high-speed network, so, after being told by the primary local provider that fiber to their small town was not in any plans, the town embarked on a couple years of research, culminating in residents overwhelmingly (74-26) approving a $25 million plan, funded by bond measures, to do it themselves. The provider, TDS, filed suit to prevent the issuing of the bonds. The city is going ahead as planned, and TDS has since announced they would lay fiber as well. I have not seen any more recent statements from TDS, but Monticello's project website  has some more City project updates (Nothing on the lawsuit, however.) No matter what is decided, it should make for an interesting business, if not legal, precedent.


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## disco (Mar 27, 2000)

Just got the letter from my ISP (Frontier) about the FIVE GB per month cap. I sent them a harshly worded email. 

The thing that sucks about Frontier is that they are the only choice (outside of satellite internet) for broadband. They cover many rural areas that don't have cable or other DSL choices...like, my place.  I'd like to speak with my dollars, but I can't -- I need DSL to do my job, and they're the only (viable) game in town.

So, I don't wanna hear from you with a 250 GB cap that it's too low...try working with only 2&#37; of what you have!


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

Comcast has announced that they will provide a usage meter in a few months.

They've also announced a throttling/filter system in addition to the cap.


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## cditty (Jun 8, 2003)

In a few months. Shouldn't they have that in place BEFORE they roll out the caps?


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

I suspect that the customers (and they noisy folks at the EFF) who objected to the original bandwidth management wouldn't have been willing to wait that long, cditty.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

morac said:


> I want to add a caveat to what you said. It's true that bandwidth hogs *downloading* on your local node will rarely cause a noticeable problem, but *uploading* is a different story, especially since Comcast recently raised the upload speeds to 1 Mbps (plus a little extra for overhead). Someone could upload continuously for several weeks without hitting the cap, barring any downloads.
> 
> Since most Comcast areas still use DOCSIS 1.x, it would only take a handful of people seeding torrents on your node to eat up enough bandwidth to interfere with your download speeds and ping times because their uploads would delay your TCP ACKS from going out. Basically like a locally initiated denial of service attack.
> 
> BTW, that's one of the reasons Comcast just sued the FCC to overturn the p2p throttling ban.


their original bit torrent countermeasuers where apparently triggered by exactly that- uploads jamming the node.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

[email protected] said:


> ...
> 
> I assume this is Comcast's latest attempt to throttle the bittorrent users - their previous technique was ruled to be illegal, so they are now trying a bandwidth cap.


DING DING DING

My thoughts-

1)- its MOSTLY THE FCCs fault (not that it's good or bad but the FCC ruling basically pushed comcast to do it this way).

See the ruling against Comcast in the bit torrent proceeding. (by the way the naritive about comcasts crappy behavior must have made Charlier Ergen blush- laughing.). Theres about 20 pages of pissing match between the FCC and Comcast if the FCC has rights to rule or not. After all that the FCC basically said that comcasts method of disrupting bit torrent was against net neutrality goals and so was evil. They said over and over again that they didnt want to create any specific allowable method that its up to each provider and that the FCC wanted to be flexible. But then what did the fcc suggest as a good method- DING DING DING  you have a winner they mentioned numerical caps or throttles.

here's the ruling link:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/files/comcastdecision.pdf

2- Comcast still has wiggle room- read their page not the blogs  it says 250gb AND a releatively big user (I assume by neighborhood). Basically I think they said 250 to keep the FCC happy. I kind of think they might just attack the people who create bottlenecks (but really wouldnt bet either way). I think this might be part of why they dont want to provide a meter. Imagine a meter and one month you go over 300 and they dont shut you down, then the next month 250.1 gets you locked. Wouldnt be the easiest to explain.

http://www.comcast.net/terms/network/amendment/

it wont let me cut and past a quote but I'll paraphrase (please feel free to read yourself)

"if a customer uses 250gb AND is one of the top users of our service we MAY contact them"

3- I really think much of this is becasue of Directv and DISH. Imagine the stones of those two. The DBS people think they are going to run their VOD content on everyone elsess bandwidth without compensating them? I wouldnt stand for it either. Comcast and the rest of the ISP's have to start making the case today so they can shut down the DBS VOD users on their network legally. The FCC above ruled that they had to be net neutral so the only way is some sort of numerical cap and here ya go.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

Also- I&#8217;m not sure the limits are really so HUGE.

sure TODAY they seem big, but who knows where the future is. Didn't someone once say "who would ever need more than 640k in a PC?"....

I&#8217;m really not the expert that many guys here are- but the Comcast page says it&#8217;s good for 125 SD movies (at 2gb each) 

How big is an HD movie download- assuming that unbox or netflix or someone else gets that going wouldn&#8217;t that be a potential problem? All I can find quickly is an old story about xbox live that says 4-5gb for an HD movie. 

That works out to only 25-30 HD movies. That&#8217;s not completely insane. I saw once that there are a good number of people that buy similar amounts of PPV each month. If once of those people went to use amazon or xbox&#8217;s (or not DBS&#8217;s) vod service instead of cable they could get into a spot. 

Just an observation- not really sure it&#8217;s good or bad, just pointing out it&#8217;s not crazy.

Also, if Comcast says 1&#37; will be effected that&#8217;s significant in my mind. It&#8217;s not 1/10th of 1% or some other fraction. It&#8217;s not huge but it&#8217;s nothing to sneeze at by my thinking. Some of those users might not be bit torrent porno pirates but rather legit users. (I just uploaded ~300mb of pictures to my home pc from the office over the past hour or so)

I don&#8217;t understand why they don&#8217;t have the ability to buy more bandwidth like Verizon wireless&#8217; EVDO does. It&#8217;s not the aggregate that&#8217;s the problem really it&#8217;s the throttle- no? Why not throttle down when necessary but allow more total use? If someone wants to backup their office pc to their home at 3am when network traffic is sparse then why not allow it? The most efficient network is one that is kept pretty full all the time. Make it like electricity for business where there are different rates at different times of the day and you get zinged based on your peak usage. I guess maybe that&#8217;s where the market will head over time&#8230;


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

There is the fly in the ointment


I can see the unfairness of DISH using broadband to deliver VOD/PPV

but it does not look that different in unfairness for Xbox to use broadband. The only difference is that Dish also broadcasts a signal and thus competes on that front with cable as well.

and what if the use has DSL? then is that unfair to DSL provider somehow.

it sells more broadband and gives a value to things like peak usage versus overnight and so forth. people might be fine going back to tier pricing if they use a top tier to get a price break on HD or better HD content and so forth.

so caps and tiers seem fine to me as the market should value these things correctly BUT the broadband provider should be compelled to include their own content/services in the cap* and keep the cap all about network functionality and paying for your fair share and not about knocking off just bit torrent today but then Vonage tomorrow.


road runner VOIP versus vonage is a good example. Should Time Warner have cap that included vonage but not road runner and make a heavy user feel compelled to switch to road runner VOIP to save some cap room.


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## 1003 (Jul 14, 2000)

*EvilCast*
has been very sucessful selling the triple-play service. Unfortunately, EvilCast has not done a thing to enhance thier physical plant bandwidth (that I am aware of, only in my case, YMMV) but now has customers who switched from DSL for promised higher speeds, getting slower service because they happen to live near someone who uses thier connection to full advantage. When you open an all-you-can-eat buffet you cannot discriminate against someone who happens to eat in the top 1%. How is it that EvilCast can discriminate against those in the top 1%?

The US internet speeds are pathetic compared to other 'developed nations' and will continue to get worse unless we fight the powers that seek to restrain us...

*Comcast will no doubt be giving me the boot by month three based on the rules discussed here. 
Comcastic, not from what I can see...*


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

JJ said:


> *Comcast will no doubt be giving me the boot by month three based on the rules discussed here. *


so what do you do that uses over 250Gig download per month?


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

ZeoTiVo said:


> There is the fly in the ointment
> 
> I can see the unfairness of DISH using broadband to deliver VOD/PPV
> 
> ...


ya know it does get VERY coplex fast when you start workign through all the itterations.

the VOIP example is simple and clear cut.

But you're right about video- what's the difference between xbox video and directv's video? Good point.

I'm not sure how to fix it without as you suggest forcing the providers to include their own traffic in such math. But the FCC's ruling seemed like 20 steps away from getting to such a point. Seems it will be years before this is all sorted out. In the mean throttling or monthly caps look likely.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

JJ said:


> *EvilCast*
> has been very sucessful selling the triple-play service. Unfortunately, EvilCast has not done a thing to enhance thier physical plant bandwidth (that I am aware of, only in my case, YMMV) but now has customers who switched from DSL for promised higher speeds, getting slower service because they happen to live near someone who uses thier connection to full advantage. When you open an all-you-can-eat buffet you cannot discriminate against someone who happens to eat in the top 1%. How is it that EvilCast can discriminate against those in the top 1%?
> 
> The US internet speeds are pathetic compared to other 'developed nations' and will continue to get worse unless we fight the powers that seek to restrain us...
> ...


although i now ignore bicker's posts I'm sure i know what he's been sayign in this thread. Everyone is pro business blah blah blah business should do whatever it wants to help itself blah blah blah.

And I actually agree with him on the later. So who are you going to "fight" to break these restraints? Are you going to have the government mandate that comcast provider faster speeds for less money and have no caps? It's there offering- if people dont like it then find a better choice for you. If there isn't one then such is life.

however what i will say is there SHOULD be TRUTH IN ADVERTISING. Verizon wireless, sprint, now comcast, and all the rest who cap should NOT be permitted to say unlimited- plain and simple if there is a cap they should have to advertise as a 250gb plan or a 5gb plan or whatever. If they plan to throttle then they should have to spell that out too.

discriminating generally has a notation of randomly picking a class that is unrelated to the issue involved. EG- not hiring minorities for a particular job even though they are as qualified as anyone else. If they choose to jettison the greater than 250gb users then they have merely decided not to serve that market- being an unregulated entity they can do that as they please. If one happens to use a crap load of bandwidth and comcast feels it is NOT in there best interest to serve you then so be it. Everyone now a days loves to be PC and talk about being descrimated against. It dilutes the meaning and real effect that it has on those who truly are descriminated against.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

any ideas why comcast doesn't just throttle users who jam a node in real time? They can apparently track volumes, they have equipment that digs into packets and figures out what they are. So one would think they could monitor everyone at any moment and decide if someone in particular is really abusing a particular node.

They have the technology to throttle as you can buy various packages.

So why not just throttle in real time?

Is that a very coplex undertaking to constantly adjust permitted speeds versus when you might call in once in a while to get your speed changed up or down?


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

MichaelK said:


> So why not just throttle in real time?


They actually are going to be doing that. That's step two of their two part plan. Step one is the 250 GB cap, step two is to throttle back people who are causing network saturation.

http://gizmodo.com/5052628/comcast-opens-curtains-on-how-they-filter-your-traffic


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

Comcast made an official response to the FCC.

Looks pretty reasonable.

I need to find the official doc sent to the fcc but these 2 articles:

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6597844.html?q=comcast+network+management

http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSN1944168520080920

describe it that Comcast will

monitor their network
if particular segments are jammed (upload or download) they will analyze the traffic to see what protocols are jamming things up
next they will look to see which users in the jammed area are using the 'bad' protocols and identify who in particular is using too much
those users and only those users will have their traffic assigned lower priority during the congested times
after a set time of no issues the listed users will be removed from the list.

So if you jam their network they will throttle you down.

Doesn't say if the 250gb thing is being tossed out the door or not. I would think that there is no reason for that limit if they do the above.

Also if you read between the lines seems likely that bit torrent probably will be the throttled apps- I guess till such time that HDTV downloads/streams become a bigger chunk of the traffic. But unlike their original methods they will not nuke all users of the offending apps, but only those users that are using "too much" *(as defined by Comcast). And also that they hopefully wont break traffic but will only router it lower priority.

Sounds basically reasonable to me.

(just saw Moracs response- seems the stupid 250gb will still stay. I dont see the point of that if they are goign to throttle....)


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

MichaelK said:


> describe it that Comcast will
> 
> monitor their network
> if particular segments are jammed (upload or download) they will analyze the traffic to see what protocols are jamming things up
> ...


ok - with that approach I can be on board with selective throttling as they are gathering facts on what is bogging down the network and clearing it out of the way... again - as long as they would do the same for their own service if it was the one found to be jamming things up.

after all - we do know the reality is that currently most anyone going over 250 gig a month on a personal plan is 90% likely to be doing bit Torrent. There just is not that much legit HD to pull down yet and that would be a LOT of songs


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## gonzotek (Sep 24, 2004)

ZeoTiVo said:


> after all - we do know the reality is that currently most anyone going over 250 gig a month on a personal plan is 90% likely to be doing bit Torrent. There just is not that much legit HD to pull down yet and that would be a LOT of songs


Tekzilla had a decent discussion of the cap a couple of episodes ago:





At around 15:30 into the program they discuss 250GB being all right, right now. But the video-over-ip market is growing in leaps and bounds and what seems generous right now will seem very limiting very soon.


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

That's probably the best justification FOR the cap.


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## CuriousMark (Jan 13, 2005)

bicker said:


> That's probably the best justification FOR the cap.


Why would that be a justification for a cap?


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Because it would result in even more vast disparities between usage profiles for different customers. Anything that disrupts the "welfare" whereby average customers are subsidizing the heavy use (and video-by-ip WILL be heavy use) by some customers is a Good Thing.


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## CuriousMark (Jan 13, 2005)

bicker said:


> Because it would result in even more vast disparities between usage profiles for different customers. Anything that disrupts the "welfare" whereby average customers are subsidizing the heavy use (and video-by-ip WILL be heavy use) by some customers is a Good Thing.


Ok, that make sense. However, it begs the question of why use caps instead of tiered service? Cheap service with low bandwidth usage limits and more expensive service with higher limits would seem to address that welfare issue quite nicely. Why might the ISPs see caps as a better alternative?

Sorry to keep picking your brain, but this is interesting.


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## 1003 (Jul 14, 2000)

ZeoTiVo said:


> so what do you do that uses over 250Gig download per month?


*Business*
Although I would pay for a 'business' connection if it were available...


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## bicker (Nov 9, 2003)

Metered service above the cap would make loads of sense, assuming that the billing for it already exists. Otherwise, it just becomes just one more IT project.


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

gonzotek said:


> ...
> 
> At around 15:30 into the program they discuss 250GB being all right, right now. But the video-over-ip market is growing in leaps and bounds and what seems generous right now will seem very limiting very soon.


That's my current thought too (without having really given it much thought).

If for example amazon and tivo got unbox to do HD AND they got some better pricing we might use that instead of our current disks by mail.

It's not typical at all but there are sometimes maybe 2 weeks in a row where we watch a rented disk each night (for example trying to catch up on a series from the beginning)- we wouldn't watch 2 hours a night but usually a ~40 minute ep or maybe 2 each night. That could be a significant chunk of my 250 I would think?


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## MichaelK (Jan 10, 2002)

Just to add another data point

T-Mobile is also apparently selling "unlimited data" with a cap. They say 1gb per month then they throttle you down. (dont throw you off, dont charge your more, just slow you down.)

What wireless providers do is hardly apples to apples with wired isp's. But I just find the ubiquitous use of "unlimited" in advertising but not really unlimited to be distasteful and dont understand why the FTC doesn't speak up on the issue in regards to truth in advertising. Why can everyone and their brother advertise with unlimited and not provide unlimited service?

Maybe Ill open a gas station and sell a service for unlimited fuel for 200 bucks a month*

* capped at 10 gallons a month- thereafter you will be limited to 1 gallon per day of fuel. Also any usage of gasoline that we find excessive (as defined by us) will be charged at the rate of $12.95/gallon.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

MichaelK said:


> Maybe Ill open a gas station and sell a service for unlimited fuel for 200 bucks a month*
> 
> * capped at 10 gallons a month- thereafter you will be limited to 1 gallon per day of fuel. Also any usage of gasoline that we find excessive (as defined by us) will be charged at the rate of $12.95/gallon.


well that would be limited to 40 gallons for 31 day month 

but if instead you say after you get 10 gallons then we throttle your car to only go 25mph at most then you would have unlimited gas but not be able to use much.

and I also agree that some day 250Gig a month will not be enough, but not all that soon at 5gig per hour of video that is still 50 hours of video per month. not likely until a lot more HD content is available online. Oh and not until they get the bandwidth more stable by eliminating all those bottleneck users


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

ZeoTiVo said:


> and I also agree that some day 250Gig a month will not be enough, but not all that soon at 5gig per hour of video that is still 50 hours of video per month. not likely until a lot more HD content is available online. Oh and not until they get the bandwidth more stable by eliminating all those bottleneck users


Well according to a Comcast spokesperson the 250 GB/month limit isn't set in stone. Once DOCSIS 3.0 is deployed, the download bandwidth available with increased tenfold (four times for upload). One would think the cap would increase once that happens.

Plus the fact that Verizon has stated they won't cap or throttle FIOS users any time soon, means that Comcast will have an incentive to raise their caps (or remove them completely) in the future as FIOS gains market share.


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## ZeoTiVo (Jan 2, 2004)

morac said:


> Well according to a Comcast spokesperson the 250 GB/month limit isn't set in stone. Once DOCSIS 3.0 is deployed, the download bandwidth available with increased tenfold (four times for upload). One would think the cap would increase once that happens.


or they put that cap in place now while looking ahead to what users will be able to do.

The bottlenecks are not so much about the end user point but where multiple users' data converges on the network


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