Shutting down big downloaders

[saxwork]

Interesting article has been posted over at MSNBC about Comcast shutting down people who download too much internet content.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20633771/

Can you imagine if Bill Gates has his way what it will be like on a Friday night when every Joe Blow has no choice but to download their movies for the weekend. The ISPs will be shutting down your accounts. The amount of traffic will clog systems so much the weekend will be over by the time your download is completed.

This is why packaged HD media is the only winner for the forseeable future. I just cannot see with the exisitng technology currently in place how the general public on a mass scale can support downloadable services as the primary source for home entertainment.

Thoughts?

[Blu-dock Saint]

My thought is I'm glad I dropped comcast and went with charter, this is one of the dumbest idea's I've seen lately.....shame on you comcast. I mean we talked about how paramount turned their backs on us, this is kind of like that only worse in my opinion.

[glenn22]

I think that's retarded... I'd be shut down on day 1.

[Blu-dock Saint]

Originally Posted by glenn22

I think that's retarded... I'd be shut down on day 1.

Same here, theres got to be something against this but probably not.

[krispydude]

this mostly stems for torrents and the such. it would be extremely hard im sure to get cut off for browsing the internet and viewing youtube and such.

[BluFox]

Well, the internet is FULL of LEGAL videos and music. Gaming is also a part of our life. Never heard of such a dumb idea!!

[Neo65]

This can be solved by paying another $20 per month. I know about a year ago, Rogers (our cablemodem ISP in Toronto area), gave out a warning that people who download more than a certain amount will get their connection throttled to lower bitrates or disconnected.

I don't know if they carried out that threat, but I noticed that my nighttime and weekend times for transferring large files between home and work through VPN is faster today than a year ago.

If you pay for the premium service, you do get unlimited up/downloads, and I believe that's about $20/month more. Haven't checked recently.

[The Guardian]

Yes, Rogers was throttling people who exceeded their limits (typically 80-100 GB/Month depending on the plan!) down to the 64k up / 128k down plan until the month was over. I believe that is being replaced as of this or next month where they will not throttle, but instead will charge overage fees...

I have their second highest plan (800k/8000k) and it's never tested at anything other than max speed...

[DrinkMore]

Sorry, but that is truly ****ed up. I have comcast and let me tell you what - Verizon FIOS is gearing up to go live in our area sometime soon. The cable is being laid/installed and I am eagerly awaiting Fiber!

Comcast will and should be sued for throttling their customers. We pay for a certain amount of bandwidth. Nowhere does it specify I am limited to only 10gig a month or something else that is absurd. If I am limited to 10mb down and 2mb up, I am going to use it as I need it. If I want to download 1000 songs a day, I will do it. I pay a PREMIUM for high speed internet, don't tell me I can't use it.

This all stems from the fact that cable companies who used to be monopolies, thought they could get away with over charging their customers and providing shitty service. Now, people have choices and cable companies are cracking down to provide better service - when they should be fixing their infrastructure!

Cables days are numbered.

[docjan_uk]

Between 1998 and July 2001, I was on a 33.6K modem.
Between July 2001 and May 2006, I went to 24 Mbps and to an effectively unlimited cap. I've had a few months of hundreds of gigs down and up and never had a problem.
That is a factor of a thousand in the space of under five years... obviously in a handful of big leaps.
I see no reason why I wont be on a 1 or 2 gigabit connection by 2011 with download limits in the low terabyte range.
Hell, at worst I'll probably be on a half gig connection by then.

[MrBogey]

I see no reason why I wont be on a 1 or 2 gigabit connection by 2011 with download limits in the low terabyte range.

I doubt it honestly.

We saw a big jump in a small timeframe due to the sudden influx of new technology allowing a new service to go in. As size increases on a network the ability to maintain it gets almost exponentially harder. You getting 24Mb/s isn't much of a problem because the backbones are generally 10Gb/s or so. You getting 1Gb/s requires an overhaul to the backbone which is so much harder.

What you're seeing today is from efforts put in a long time ago. So even though it seems like a few years of work to you, most of the heavy lifting to get you broadband started long before you got it. And as such, most providers are slow to overhaul the backbone specifically because they've found that it'll benefit only a small percentage of their users while the overwhelming majority won't need it.

People in America complain about their broadband speeds. But in all honesty, we've got the broadband speeds that we're willing to pay for. Cable put up a lot of money for their network same as the telcos and they don't have the ability (as does any provider) to deliver full bandwidth across to all customers at the same time. So they've got to ration it out. Sorry, but the network isn't limitless

[reiella]

Pretty much all internet providers do this to some extent. And parts of their terms of service include the right for them to do so.

I'm pretty sure if I kept my 10Mbps stream going constant for a week, I'd lose my access.

But then again, you're looking at ~100000 mb/day.

[ Add / Edit ]
And I can say, with very strong certainity, that FiOS also includes provision for abuse of bandwidth.

[jw]

Is there a monthly quota on my newsgroup account and what happens if I exceed this limit?
The monthly limit on newsgroup downloads provided by Comcast is 2 gigabytes.

If you reach your download limit while you have a download in progress, we will allow you to finish your session, rather than interrupting your download. The surplus bytes downloaded are merely charged to the following period.

If you reach or go over the 2 gigabyte monthly limit you will be unable to download additional content until your usage is reset, which happens on the 25th of each month.

Heres what I found in reference that, I dont think it applies to regular cable internet accounts.

[reiella]

Originally Posted by jwbbud

Is there a monthly quota on my newsgroup account and what happens if I exceed this limit?
The monthly limit on newsgroup downloads provided by Comcast is 2 gigabytes.

If you reach your download limit while you have a download in progress, we will allow you to finish your session, rather than interrupting your download. The surplus bytes downloaded are merely charged to the following period.

If you reach or go over the 2 gigabyte monthly limit you will be unable to download additional content until your usage is reset, which happens on the 25th of each month.

Heres what I found in reference that, I dont think it applies to regular cable internet accounts.

Better to read your disclosure of terms . It's usually around the spot where the provider explains that they can not guarantee a specific bandwidth.

[evo_dadi]

not sure how AT&T limits dsl but i have the elite package and there are times that my connection tends to slow down.hell even at night time when traffic is supposed to be lighter i get a slow connection.

[supersix4]

Originally Posted by Blu-dock Saint

My thought is I'm glad I dropped comcast and went with charter, this is one of the dumbest idea's I've seen lately.....shame on you comcast. I mean we talked about how paramount turned their backs on us, this is kind of like that only worse in my opinion.

comcast is a terrible service over charging + they are shit when trying to help you.... hope they lose buisness,and they should get sued for false advertisements UNLIMITED Internet bs

[reiella]

Originally Posted by evo_dadi

not sure how AT&T limits dsl but i have the elite package and there are times that my connection tends to slow down.hell even at night time when traffic is supposed to be lighter i get a slow connection.

You're sharing bandwidth is all. You always share bandwidth with someone, unless it's a direct and isolated connection between two points, just the nature of the net. With the evening comment, I suspect some folks who share you immediate routing queue up larger downloads or leave their fileshare stuff running overnight. But that's just a guess.

[evo_dadi]

ic,i was tempted on switching to comcast before when i went to my bro-in-law's house to check out his set-up but he didnt like it how he got a lot of dropped connections and higher pricing.

[reiella]

Originally Posted by evo_dadi

ic,i was tempted on switching to comcast before when i went to my bro-in-law's house to check out his set-up but he didnt like it how he got a lot of dropped connections and higher pricing.

It's a hard bit, best thing I can suggest if you are considering shifting is look at what other people in your neighborhood get. Or at least the same general area. Lots of things can cause effectiveness tilts that may or may not be worth it for you.

See, for me, the bandwidth is king (No, I don't think I want to be spending 10 hours uploading my 1600x1200 gameplay movie), but we don't have latency problems with our cable provider either.

[evo_dadi]

lol i used to live closer to the city so i can understand the slowness but when i moved to a more rural area where supposedly AT&T is already laying down fiberoptic i started to wonder how it will affect my current service.