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Author Topic: Comcast Tests a New Bandwidth Throttle  (Read 9421 times)

Offline Petch

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Re: Comcast Tests a New Bandwidth Throttle
« Reply #15 on: June 10, 2008, 12:21:04 PM »
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:

Offline The Shoctor

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Re: Comcast Tests a New Bandwidth Throttle
« Reply #16 on: June 10, 2008, 12:23:02 PM »
You can't make a New Topic in this forum! ;)

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Offline Petch

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Re: Comcast Tests a New Bandwidth Throttle
« Reply #17 on: June 10, 2008, 01:06:17 PM »
Shut down by the man yet again.  :'(

Offline The Nstuff

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Re: Comcast Tests a New Bandwidth Throttle
« Reply #18 on: August 28, 2008, 04:30:11 PM »
<avatar made by Agent>

Offline The Shoctor

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Re: Comcast Tests a New Bandwidth Throttle
« Reply #19 on: August 28, 2008, 04:41:53 PM »
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.
« Last Edit: August 28, 2008, 04:49:29 PM by The Doctor »

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Offline sully!

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Re: Comcast Tests a New Bandwidth Throttle
« Reply #20 on: August 28, 2008, 05:31:14 PM »
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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Offline The Shoctor

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Re: Comcast Tests a New Bandwidth Throttle
« Reply #21 on: August 28, 2008, 05:34:48 PM »
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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Offline .:F3ar0n:.

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Re: Comcast Tests a New Bandwidth Throttle
« Reply #22 on: August 28, 2008, 09:13:05 PM »
I'm with ya Shadow...think it's gonna be bye bye comcast with the recent changes

Offline Agent4054

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Re: Comcast Tests a New Bandwidth Throttle
« Reply #23 on: August 28, 2008, 09:43:58 PM »
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.

Offline The Shoctor

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Re: Comcast Tests a New Bandwidth Throttle
« Reply #24 on: August 29, 2008, 01:13:18 AM »
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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Offline The Nstuff

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Re: Comcast Tests a New Bandwidth Throttle
« Reply #25 on: August 29, 2008, 06:43:08 AM »
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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Offline decepticon

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Re: Comcast Tests a New Bandwidth Throttle
« Reply #26 on: August 29, 2008, 07:09:49 AM »
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. 
That's Mr. Deception to you.

Offline Czar

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Re: Comcast Tests a New Bandwidth Throttle
« Reply #27 on: August 29, 2008, 08:26:28 AM »
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

Offline decepticon

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Re: Comcast Tests a New Bandwidth Throttle
« Reply #28 on: August 29, 2008, 09:53:16 AM »
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. 
That's Mr. Deception to you.

Offline Czar

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Re: Comcast Tests a New Bandwidth Throttle
« Reply #29 on: August 29, 2008, 10:49:13 AM »
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 or something.

I use TorrenFlux (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.



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.

« Last Edit: August 29, 2008, 11:02:43 AM by Czar »