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LAN Party Forums => FITES News => Started by: Dwg115 on June 06, 2008, 01:37:51 PM
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Some Comcast customers who actively download software and video files may soon find one set of unexplained delays replaced with a different sort of equally cryptic slowdowns. Comcast is starting to test new approaches to protecting its network from what it describes as congestion caused by a handful of customers who use far far more bandwidth than everyone else.
Read more: http://tinyurl.com/5nhps2
source: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com
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Maybe thats what the hell was happening Wednesday when we had 3 people playing WoW at once and I had my work laptop on with outlook up and our internet kept flashing...
That Crap pissed me OFF.
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I don't believe that comcast is the only company doing this either! It's a pain in the rear yes, but it's also a necessity or people like F3ar0n who dloads like 50gigs a week will make it bad for all of us. hopfully the ISPs will broaden their broadband and this will soon become a thing of the past! No offense Dave(f3ar0n) I needed a good example of a heavy dloader!
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Hell, my torrents go so damn slow anyway from people not seeding. So i use about 7 gigs total per month (just in torrents).
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NP Dave...I am a big DL'r but I do it in large chunks...Like I'll decide I want CSI Miami so I'll just take a week and download every season of CSI so I have it. This is just one more reason for me to upgrade to FIOS or something else. Even though I'm downloading a lot...it's a consistent 300-400KBS, just i have to leave my comp on 24/7 to get what I want finished.
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Yeah, I found that TV shows and series' are the most shared and the fastest torrents.
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Oh, speaking of torrents, Dave Grove - did you want to stop by this evening and get GRID?
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I would love to if i can find the time. Im wioped out at the moment just got done working outside on the pool.....:( maybe in a while i was drinking too so i have to let that wear off
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I just finished GRID DL... How is it?
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I haven't installed it. From the xbox360 demo, it was ok. Nice looking! Damage modeling was pretty realistic.
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So, I have played it a bit and it's REALLY pretty. lol
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I think this: http://consumerist.com/tag/ponderables/?i=5014613&t=is-metered-broadband-designed-to-keep-you-from-ditching-cable-tv
Might have more to do with limiting bandwidth use than p2p.
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What did I tell you about long URLs!??!?!?!
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What did I tell you about long URLs!??!?!?!
You didn't tell me anything! Shenanigans!
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What did I tell you about long URLs!??!?!?!
You didn't tell me anything! Shenanigans!
Not you DWG! hehe. Messing up the front page with your long urls in the first post. lol
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What did I tell you about long URLs!??!?!?!
You didn't tell me anything! Shenanigans!
Not you DWG! hehe. Messing up the front page with your long urls in the first post. lol
Oooh I'll have to keep that in mind. :hehemean: :hehemean:
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You can't make a New Topic in this forum! ;)
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Shut down by the man yet again. :'(
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Comcast: 250 GB Cap Coming October 1st?
http://consumerist.com/5043167/comcast-250-gb-cap-coming-october-1st
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http://www.comcast.net/terms/network/amendment/
Class Action?
This isn't what I signed up for.
Damn, wish I didn't just update my pfsense... I had graphs going way back, but here. Two weeks of data. Steam and WoW updates, remote desktop sessions, ISOs from my MSDN subscription... But $15 per 10 gigs is freaking steep.
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Here's my totals for August. It's really not even close to the 250GB.
They don't say they are going to charge $15 for 10 gigs; that was apparently brought up as a possibility, but was not committed to.
From my rough calculations, to get to 250GB in a 30 day period, you would have to average 96.45 KB/s every second of every minute of every day of that period. (250,000,000,000 bytes / 30 days / 24 hours / 60 mins / 60 secs = 96,450 bytes/sec). From the Consumerist article, uploads do not count so it's only downloads they are looking at.
This is also not changing anything that isn't already being done, they are just defining where the cap exists.
This is the same system we have in place today. The only difference is that we will now provide a limit by which a customer may be contacted. As part of our pre-existing policy, we will continue to contact the top users of our high-speed Internet service and ask them to curb their usage. If a customer uses more than 250 GB and is one of the top users of our service, he or she may be contacted by Comcast to notify them of excessive use. At that time, we'll tell them exactly how much data per month they had used. We know from experience the vast majority of customers we ask to curb usage do so voluntarily.
Overall, I don't think this will be anything any of us have to worry about. There was one commenter on the Consumerist page that said he used 4TB a month (!) but he's obviously an outlier.
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Looks like it's bye bye comcast. I should be able to get out of my contract because it says:
"Unless this Agreement or applicable law specifies otherwise, we will give you thirty (30) days prior Notice of any significant change to this Agreement. If you find the change unacceptable, you have the right to cancel your Service(s). However, if you continue to receive Service(s) after the end of the notice period (the "Effective Date") of the change, we will consider that you have accepted the changes."
So it's been a nice ride, but as soon as I get things in order it's later fools!
I just got my notice that FiOS is available as of today!
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I'm with ya Shadow...think it's gonna be bye bye comcast with the recent changes
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Like I told Mark.... I find this change rather strange. Why would Comcast do this unless they knew for sure Verizon would reciprocate the move? Bogus.
I checked google news for Verizon internet news from the past month.. nada.
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Yeah, this is going to be my extended weekend project. I need to research this. I am worried about the state of things.
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So... if you actually do use more than 250gb in 30 days... "If a customer surpasses 250 GB and is one of the top users of the service for a second time within a six-month timeframe, his or her service will be subject to termination for one year. After the one year period expires, the customer may resume service by subscribing to a service plan appropriate to his or her needs."
Also, this limit is across the board. "Do you offer usage tiers based on bandwidth consumption?
No. Comcast currently offers varying speed plans for its residential service as well as several business level services to support customers' individual needs. "
I'm going to wait a few days for a response from Verizon. It could be soooo easy for them to have a press release saying that they don't have such caps as a nice knife in the back tactic.
You know though, you gotta wonder. Now that we know of a specific cap... I can only see human nature cause people to start downloading more stuff. Previously, I'm sure people were afraid of a 50gb cap or a 100gb cap. Now that we know it's 250gb, i could see a certain percentage of the users start downloading *more*. Guess we'll see.
I think it's funny that comcast will provide no facility for you to track your usage. They suggest you google "bandwidth meter" and do it yourself. I can't see that flying for long.
Anyway, i agree about the class action lawsuit. It will happen and I'm looking forward to getting a 1 "buy one, get one free on-demand movie" from it in 6 years while the lawyers get $40 million.
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Too bad Fios is not available (still) to my area. Bastards. Well, looks like I will have to track my usage then. I average about a GB a day (based on the past month alone and I wasmn't DL'ing much of anything). So hopefully I won't ever hit the cap. But that could all change when there are alot of 360 releases in a month.
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So..I called comcast this morning to ask about this news...
and my customer service rep knew nothing about this. I had to inform HER about all this capping business. Anywho..she transferred me to another department to answer my question which was, simply.. With comcast imposing a cap on services, will they be offering a tool for us to monitor our monthly usage?
They won't. In fact, the dude I ended up talking to just assured me that I'm not within the 1/10th of 1% of people this will deal with.
"How do you know I'm not in there?"
"Uh..well... You're probably an average user"
"..can you check the last 6 months of my usage and tell me how much I've used?"
"uh...no... we don't do that here. Its a back end thing with engineers who stare at screens all day"
and it went on like that for a bit. I told him its like having a credit card but not being able to check the balance. Meh
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and it went on like that for a bit. I told him its like having a credit card but not being able to check the balance. Meh
That's the perfect analogy too! Although it is pretty simple for us geeks to determine and track our usage, the 'average' user does not know how to do this. This is horseCrap on Comcast's part. If they impose a cap, they really should show a balance, like any average phone/wireless company.
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Although it is pretty simple for us geeks to determine and track our usage
While I consider myself a geek in the truest form, I'm not certain how to accurately do this. I assume I could get the data from our cruddy belkin router..or are some of you may be using a linux box as a dedicated router and use IPCop (http://www.ipcop.org) or something.
I use TorrenFlux (http://tf-b4rt.berlios.de) (b4rt version) for my torrent downloading pleasure. Here are the stats from that. I haven't downloaded anything today so I think the daily totals are busted or something. The monthly stats below are just from two days of downloading.
(http://www.czaralex.com/images/tfluxstats.jpg)
As far as I know, these stats include uploading too and if I recall, the comcast stuff won't include uploading restrictions. Now.. I know I'm not close to the limit now.. but with little effort, I could set some torrent that would throw me over..maybe.
I suppose the jist of this message is, how do you folks recommend monitoring your usage?
*Update*
I hope it doesn't include upload stats.. because according to this, May of this year, my combined upload/download usage almost exceeded the limit.
(http://www.czaralex.com/images/tfluxstats2.jpg)
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I'm not surprised they don't know anything about the bandwidth caps. Nothing's been posted on our main intranet site about it yet. Not sure about the one the CAE's use for product info though. But he's right about the "engineers" comment. This stuff is most likely being handled at a national level and the regional people (including the folks who staff the call centers) are not involved in any bandwidth monitoring.
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From my rough calculations, to get to 250GB in a 30 day period, you would have to average 96.45 KB/s every second of every minute of every day of that period. (250,000,000,000 bytes / 30 days / 24 hours / 60 mins / 60 secs = 96,450 bytes/sec).
I was just thinking about this today, and how easy it actually is to be able to cap that. I downloaded a bandwidth monitor about 4 hours ago and already it has totaled in about 5 gb through youtubing, listening to music via playlist.com, watching vids on Hulu, and DL'ing torrents (daily routine). To reach the 250gb cap, you'd have to DL a little over 8gb a day. On a 20/20 line, this would be very easily accomplished. If, by some way your downloads/uploads capped out, within an hour you could transfer 9gb worth of data. But even if you weren't getting max speed, it would not take much longer.
250gb is not exactly a high ceiling. Yes, to the average user it is, but eh. I doubt any of us are average users.
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But you aren't on the net 24/7. You have to sleep and poop and some point ;)
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But you aren't on the net 24/7. You have to sleep and poop and some point ;)
True. But my Linux server can download 24/7 without pooping. And that usage graph I posted is just from torrents.
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But you aren't on the net 24/7. You have to sleep and poop and some point ;)
True. But my Linux server can download 24/7 without pooping. And that usage graph I posted is just from torrents.
I think we are that top .001% that Comcast is trying to dissuade from downloading all the time.
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lovely..still wish I had a way to check my overall usage as seen by comcast. If uploads aren't included..and all that.
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lovely..still wish I had a way to check my overall usage as seen by comcast. If uploads aren't included..and all that.
I'll see what I can find out for you guys, or if there isn't currently a way to do so, see if I can run a suggestion up the ladder and maybe get something implemented. I can see this is truly a sensitive subject for many of you. We all just need to remember to not blow anything out of proportion here and just wait and see what happens. Chances are if you've not received notice of this in the past, you won't in the future.
I know many of you have a bad impression of Comcast and that they don't care about the customer and before I worked there I had that same impression. But I can honestly say that every single person who works for Comcast really does care about the customer and every decision that gets made is challenged with "How does this affect the customer?". Also remember that unlike many other large companies, tech support is not outsourced to India or Pakistan. When you call 1-800-Comcast, you will talk to someone locally. In Central PA, all calls go to either Lebanon, PA or York, PA, not Beirut, Lebanon or even York, UK. So let's just take things in stride, see what plays out at the end of October (1 month after the policy takes effect) and in the meantime I'll see what I can find out for you guys.
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I still think the cap is 'not good' but I doubt I will ever hit the cap. Just as long as they don't just 'flip the kill switch' when you go over and at the very least give you a warning when you are about to reach a threshold before you hit the cap to avoid charges.
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I just want a warning before I start getting charged. I may find my testes violently removed by my spouse.
And thanks, Sully, for offering to help out.
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Here is what was posted on our intranet. Basically the same info already posted. If you read the section called "Proactively Notifying Customers About Excessive Usage", you can see that they are simply spelling out policies that are already in place, but instead of an arbitrary trigger point, it is spelled out to be 250GB/month. The "punishment" is to contact the customer and ask them to curb their usage voluntarily. There is nothing stated about charging for overages, or cutting off your service if you go over the 250GB.
So again, I re-iterate. Let's take it in stride and not overreact until we have something to react to.
Comcast To Amend Acceptable Use Policy
Friday, August 29, 2008
Today we will announce we are making some changes to our “Acceptable Use Policy." We have this policy in place so that we can maintain a consistently good high-speed Internet experience for our customers. The policy contains rules on everything from spam to security and data usage.
We’ve taken several steps to clarify our Acceptable Use Policy for our customers. In January, we added new frequently asked questions about what we consider acceptable use of our service to the “Help” section of Comcast.net, www.comcast.net/help and the Security Channel pages on Comcast.net www.comcast.net/security.
Since that time, we’ve also listened to feedback from some of our customers who asked that we amend our policy on the limits we have in place for data usage – otherwise known as “excessive use.” Excessive use means bandwidth or data usage that is significantly higher than typical residential usage. Excessive use is very atypical – less than 1% of our customers today use an excessive amount of data. They use so much data that the usage could negatively impact the online service for other customers.
Beginning on October 1, 2008, we will amend our Acceptable Use Policy by establishing a specific monthly data usage threshold of 250 GB/month per account for all residential customers. A preview of that policy is available in PDF format at www.comcast.net/networkmanagement.
What Does 250 GB/Month Look Like?
250 GB per month is a large amount of bandwidth or data use, much more than a typical residential customer uses. Currently, our residential customers use approximately 2 to 3 GB a month. To put 250 GB of use in perspective, a customer would have to do any one of the following in a given month:
* Send 50 million emails (at 0.05 KB/email)
* Download 62,500 songs (at 4 MB/song)
* Download 125 standard-definition movies (at 2 GB/movie)
* Upload 25,000 hi-resolution digital photos (at 10 MB/photo)
Proactively Notifying Customers About Excessive Usage
As part of our pre-existing policy, we will continue to contact the heaviest users of our high-speed Internet service and ask them to curb their usage. This is the same system we have in place today. The only difference is that we will now provide a limit. If a customer uses more than 250 GB in a given month and is one of the top users of our service, he or she may be contacted by Comcast to notify them of excessive use. At that time, we’ll tell them exactly how much data they had used in the previous month and ask them to curb their usage. We know from experience the vast majority of customers we ask to curb usage do so voluntarily.
Communicating The Policy To Customers
We are taking a number of steps to notify our customers about this change. We have posted a preview of the amended AUP on our Network Management page as well as provided an overview and a link to some FAQs. We are also running banners on our Comcast.net portal as well as on our Security Channel Web page directing customers to the Network Management Web page. In addition, we will be sending customers a bill stuffer notification that the amended AUP will officially go into effect on October 1st.
If you have any questions regarding this policy please refer to our FAQs, or speak with your manager.
Thank you in advance for your help in educating customers on this policy and listening and answering their questions.
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Does data usage include uploading?
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I read that only the downstream will count.
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So again, I re-iterate. Let's take it in stride and not overreact until we have something to react to.
OMG! My HEAD A'SPLODE!
:bomb:
After reading the notice, I am actually glad Comcast is taking that 'personal' type stance. Basicaly, you have to really abuse the network in order to have serious action taken.
And I guess upstream will count.
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http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbzone02.swf
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:lol:
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Thanks Sully!
I wonder how much bandwidth having 3 people playing WoW, and someone watching youtube videos/on myspace/facebook/etc during the day at a time for 4-6 hours, then overnight multiple downloads of Japanese TV shows takes...