Comcast Cap coming?

[LtPage1]

Originally posted by: OdiN
Anyone using over 250GB/month is pirating stuff illegally.

And it's the job of private corporations to regulate and enforce copyright law! I would seriously punch anyone in the face who seriously used this argument in person. If that's the best you can do, it's time to go back to school.

I think it's awful that Comcast is doing this, but the only option I have to protest is switching my service to slow-as-hell DSL. Which I'm not willing to do, so I guess I'll be shutting up.

 

[Eos]

Also, cable has been keeping prices static for years (or even dropping them) while increasing the available speed. Is this 1% problem only been out of its' hole since this year? How long have they known that heavy users supposedly degrade the experience for everyone else?

You'd think that planning ahead for this by not reducing prices or increasing speed would be prudent. And fuck competition. Either you have a good product people want to buy (Lexus, Mercedes for example) and pay a premium for, or you don't. You file bankruptcy or are sold off to some rich bastard from Nevada. It's state income tax free there, ya know. Smart for rich guys to do that. Keeps 'em rich.

One more thing. How do they plan to offer HD service to their customers if the network is so expensive to maintain and move said bandwidth through? How? Either bandwidth is expensive or it's not. Comcast doesn't create content at their servers. It has to get there somehow.

 

[Linflas]

Originally posted by: LumbergTech
i dont like the idea of the cap but if it has to be done why not do it like cell phones and have non-peak hours allow more downloading than on peak hours

You can't queue up cell phone conversations while you sleep the way you can large file downloads would be my first thought.

 

[skace]

This cap doesn't affect me per say but it does annoy me. There is 3 issues here that I find significant.

1 - Nearly every single person in this thread made a judgment call on how much bandwidth they used solely based on how much they think they download. This is such flawed reasoning and yet it is going to be the basis of every person's metric for how much they think they use. When someone thinks "bandwidth" they always immediately go to "that's how much I can download". But this isn't a 1 way street, you use bandwidth to read this forum and you use bandwidth to post your replies. You use bandwidth to download and you use bandwidth to send back your acks, you use bandwidth to send to the peers while you leech from the seeds. Fact is, most don't have a clue what they use because they don't have commercial grade performance monitoring running on their little router.

2 - Any sort of capping when it comes to Computing is retarded. Computing is a very fast moving industry and by the time you can fully implement and realize a cap of 250GB, your top 1% is at 300GB. So now you might be hitting the top 5% and within time that will be the top 10%. Spidey will be quick to tell you that Comcast is ready to raise this limit at a heartbeat but that honestly doesn't seem feasible. All this time could have been better spent trying to figure out how to improve their network speeds.

3 - A lot of people seem to think that the highest bandwidth task anyone can do is illegal. While illegal downloads is probably pretty high up, the highest bandwidth items are most often legal - such as a webserver - check how much bandwidth pics.bbzzdd.com uses and this isn't any sort of revenue generating website. Comcast would want that running on their "$1500" a month service, despite the fact that it doesn't generate revenue. I don't actually know what kind of service bbzzdd runs on, however I personally believe sites should be runnable by home users, that was the entire principle of the internet when it started and in the 90s it was very easy to come across home grown websites being run by people with 0 ad revenue. These days, bandwidth costs have driven that right into the ground. It's a problem that needs to be resolved and bandwidth caps with massive pricing over the limit aren't the resolution.

Imagine this scenario. You've got a little home run website, it does OK, maybe you get 1,000 hits a month. It's modest and you are learning quite a bit in the process. One day you write something uniquely interesting on your site, and it gets dug and slashdotted, next thing you know, your shit deep in comcast bills for the month because your site got hammered and you are not sure you can even afford to keep it online now. Fun times.

 

[Regs]

Skace, I actually agree. For now it's only a stop-gap to the real problem which is growing demand and the inability to supply it. Like others said, if the FCC or legislative actually approve capping the bandwidth, it could lead to other restrictions on our service (which is all ready 40-80 dollars a month).

Call me conservative or naive, but when my connection slows down or gets restricted because that small 1% on my immediate network wants to run their lines maxed 24/7, then don't I have the right to be pissed at them? I won't feel sorry for them if their lines get throttled.

 

[BurnItDwn]

Caps suck.
That said, a visible cap is far better than an invisible cap.

Its about time they were honest about their cap.

 

[frostedflakes]

Originally posted by: skace
This cap doesn't affect me per say but it does annoy me. There is 3 issues here that I find significant.

1 - Nearly every single person in this thread made a judgment call on how much bandwidth they used solely based on how much they think they download. This is such flawed reasoning and yet it is going to be the basis of every person's metric for how much they think they use. When someone thinks "bandwidth" they always immediately go to "that's how much I can download". But this isn't a 1 way street, you use bandwidth to read this forum and you use bandwidth to post your replies. You use bandwidth to download and you use bandwidth to send back your acks, you use bandwidth to send to the peers while you leech from the seeds. Fact is, most don't have a clue what they use because they don't have commercial grade performance monitoring running on their little router.

2 - Any sort of capping when it comes to Computing is retarded. Computing is a very fast moving industry and by the time you can fully implement and realize a cap of 250GB, your top 1% is at 300GB. So now you might be hitting the top 5% and within time that will be the top 10%. Spidey will be quick to tell you that Comcast is ready to raise this limit at a heartbeat but that honestly doesn't seem feasible. All this time could have been better spent trying to figure out how to improve their network speeds.

3 - A lot of people seem to think that the highest bandwidth task anyone can do is illegal. While illegal downloads is probably pretty high up, the highest bandwidth items are most often legal - such as a webserver - check how much bandwidth pics.bbzzdd.com uses and this isn't any sort of revenue generating website. Comcast would want that running on their "$1500" a month service, despite the fact that it doesn't generate revenue. I don't actually know what kind of service bbzzdd runs on, however I personally believe sites should be runnable by home users, that was the entire principle of the internet when it started and in the 90s it was very easy to come across home grown websites being run by people with 0 ad revenue. These days, bandwidth costs have driven that right into the ground. It's a problem that needs to be resolved and bandwidth caps with massive pricing over the limit aren't the resolution.

Imagine this scenario. You've got a little home run website, it does OK, maybe you get 1,000 hits a month. It's modest and you are learning quite a bit in the process. One day you write something uniquely interesting on your site, and it gets dug and slashdotted, next thing you know, your shit deep in comcast bills for the month because your site got hammered and you are not sure you can even afford to keep it online now. Fun times.

Well first of all, using a residential connection for web hosting is against most ToS. Obviously businesses tends to use more bandwidth, so you're expected to purchase a more expensive business class connection. As spidey has pointed out many times, bandwidth is expensive. The only way residential ISPs can offer it at below market rates is because they oversell and bank on the fact that most users will not take full advantage of the connection. Kind of a messed up system I guess, but it's better than paying a few hundred a month for a T1.

 

[nismotigerwvu]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: nismotigerwvu

Then it is comcast's own fault for designing their network in the manner they have.

I have a crystal ball I would like to sell you. Me personally I can only look about 3-5 years into the future of network communications. You may want to look into depreciation schedules of network gear. Hell, any capital depreciation schedule.

Are you a Comcast excuse machine? Seriously you HAVE to be a focus group member or something. This is just insane.

 

[Modelworks]

I don't have comcast but I think the cap of 250GB is more than reasonable.
I wish everyone could have unlimited bandwidth but it isn't going to happen unless someone comes out with some cheap type of networking that everyone has access to. The fact is it cost to support the networks. My ISP currently does not have any caps , but I would not mind at all a 250GB monthly cap. I was looking at some ratios of people on torrent sites. some have transfers in the 2TB range and are using a home connection. That is insane and they ruin it for the rest of us.

Just because you have a 20MB connection doesn't mean you should leave it on 24/7 running at that speed. Try that with electric, gas, or water and see what happens to your bill.
Bandwidth like any other utility is limited and once used they can't just magically add more.

 

[sdifox]

It's their decision, don't like it, go somewhere else. Rogers decided to enforce the 65gb cap (up and down), 2 dollars per additional gb. So I dropped them.

 

[nismotigerwvu]

Originally posted by: frostedflakes

Originally posted by: skace
This cap doesn't affect me per say but it does annoy me. There is 3 issues here that I find significant.

1 - Nearly every single person in this thread made a judgment call on how much bandwidth they used solely based on how much they think they download. This is such flawed reasoning and yet it is going to be the basis of every person's metric for how much they think they use. When someone thinks "bandwidth" they always immediately go to "that's how much I can download". But this isn't a 1 way street, you use bandwidth to read this forum and you use bandwidth to post your replies. You use bandwidth to download and you use bandwidth to send back your acks, you use bandwidth to send to the peers while you leech from the seeds. Fact is, most don't have a clue what they use because they don't have commercial grade performance monitoring running on their little router.

2 - Any sort of capping when it comes to Computing is retarded. Computing is a very fast moving industry and by the time you can fully implement and realize a cap of 250GB, your top 1% is at 300GB. So now you might be hitting the top 5% and within time that will be the top 10%. Spidey will be quick to tell you that Comcast is ready to raise this limit at a heartbeat but that honestly doesn't seem feasible. All this time could have been better spent trying to figure out how to improve their network speeds.

3 - A lot of people seem to think that the highest bandwidth task anyone can do is illegal. While illegal downloads is probably pretty high up, the highest bandwidth items are most often legal - such as a webserver - check how much bandwidth pics.bbzzdd.com uses and this isn't any sort of revenue generating website. Comcast would want that running on their "$1500" a month service, despite the fact that it doesn't generate revenue. I don't actually know what kind of service bbzzdd runs on, however I personally believe sites should be runnable by home users, that was the entire principle of the internet when it started and in the 90s it was very easy to come across home grown websites being run by people with 0 ad revenue. These days, bandwidth costs have driven that right into the ground. It's a problem that needs to be resolved and bandwidth caps with massive pricing over the limit aren't the resolution.

Imagine this scenario. You've got a little home run website, it does OK, maybe you get 1,000 hits a month. It's modest and you are learning quite a bit in the process. One day you write something uniquely interesting on your site, and it gets dug and slashdotted, next thing you know, your shit deep in comcast bills for the month because your site got hammered and you are not sure you can even afford to keep it online now. Fun times.

Well first of all, using a residential connection for web hosting is against most ToS. Obviously businesses tends to use more bandwidth, so you're expected to purchase a more expensive business class connection. As spidey has pointed out many times, bandwidth is expensive. The only way residential ISPs can offer it at below market rates is because they oversell and bank on the fact that most users will not take full advantage of the connection. Kind of a messed up system I guess, but it's better than paying a few hundred a month for a T1.

But Comcast won't sell you a business account to a residentially zoned address. Also, the man was just using that as an example.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: Linflas

Originally posted by: LumbergTech
i dont like the idea of the cap but if it has to be done why not do it like cell phones and have non-peak hours allow more downloading than on peak hours

You can't queue up cell phone conversations while you sleep the way you can large file downloads would be my first thought.

But the point of limiting usage is to ensure high quality of service to other customers. Most customers aren't using the Internet at 3 a.m.

The answer to Lumberg's question is that it's more complex to do it that way, and there is no need with such a high cap.

 

[bvalpati]

Since Comcast's options for expanding their infrastructure are limited until they begin laying fiber at the residential level they will lower the cap every year that demand increases. I would expect the cap to be around 25GB/mo. within 2-3 years but at that point hopefully there will be options for fiber internet access. Comcast, and all cable companies for that matter, can't even deliver decent HD television content over their POS old networks and if they don't invest heavily soon they will be out of business in 10 years.

Originally posted by: eos
Also, cable has been keeping prices static for years (or even dropping them) while increasing the available speed.

WTF are you smokin? My Comcast bill has gone up every single year for the past 6 years that I've had it. I can't really complain about the speed they provide but I'm about 98% certain it hasn't gone up even a little in the past 6 years here in Chicagoland. In fact other than the speed boost I would have to say it's actually gone down although it's difficult to monitor sustained speeds because of all the variables involved but I can say without doubt my lag and ping times in games have steadily increased over the last 6 years as more users have come onto the network.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: bvalpati
Since Comcast's options for expanding their infrastructure are limited until they begin laying fiber at the residential level they will lower the cap every year that demand increases. I would expect the cap to be around 25GB/mo. within 2-3 years but at that point hopefully there will be options for fiber internet access. Comcast, and all cable companies for that matter, can't even deliver decent HD television content over their POS old networks and if they don't invest heavily soon they will be out of business in 10 years.

You really have NO idea what you're talking about.

 

[alkemyst]

Originally posted by: ric1287
Too lazy to copy past the article. Comunestcast

So they're proposing a 250gb cap per month. $15 for every 10gb over that.

I think comcrap is the only company going the complete opposite direction technology wise. With streaming media (movies, tv, music,) and online gaming becoming more popular, this stupid cap will cripple all of it. Absolutely ass backwards.

you can pay for the extra bandwidth.

IMHO if people only DL'D what the needed/used rather than just suck down all the porn, video and music they could....everything would run better.

 

[Xavier434]

I want rollover bandwidth!!!

Also, anyone who believes that this cap will increase their speed is sadly mistaken. Your crapcastic quality will remain the same while they rake in the bucks. The consumer will be paying more for less.

 

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: nismotigerwvu

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: nismotigerwvu

Then it is comcast's own fault for designing their network in the manner they have.

I have a crystal ball I would like to sell you. Me personally I can only look about 3-5 years into the future of network communications. You may want to look into depreciation schedules of network gear. Hell, any capital depreciation schedule.

Are you a Comcast excuse machine? Seriously you HAVE to be a focus group member or something. This is just insane.

No, he is just some geek who is obsessed with networking and his hatred for entitlement that is getting off right now by pointing fingers on the internet and saying "I told you so". It's pretty weak.

 

[bvalpati]

Originally posted by: mugs

Originally posted by: bvalpati
Since Comcast's options for expanding their infrastructure are limited until they begin laying fiber at the residential level they will lower the cap every year that demand increases. I would expect the cap to be around 25GB/mo. within 2-3 years but at that point hopefully there will be options for fiber internet access. Comcast, and all cable companies for that matter, can't even deliver decent HD television content over their POS old networks and if they don't invest heavily soon they will be out of business in 10 years.

You really have NO idea what you're talking about.

Explain how you're going to expand to 100mbps service to the curb over coax lol?

 

[Xavier434]

I just found this on a Comcast FAQ about this new policy.

What will happen if a customer exceeds 250 GB of data usage in a month?

The vast majority - more than 99% - of Comcast customers will not be impacted by a 250 GB monthly bandwidth or data usage threshold. If a customer exceeds more than 250 GB and is one of the heaviest data users who consume the most data on our high-speed Internet service, he or she may receive a call from Comcast's Customer Security Assurance ("CSA") group to notify them of excessive use. At that time, Comcast will tell the customer exactly how much data per month he or she had used.

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.

That is really strict.

 

[oznerol]

Originally posted by: bvalpati

Originally posted by: mugs

Originally posted by: bvalpati
Since Comcast's options for expanding their infrastructure are limited until they begin laying fiber at the residential level they will lower the cap every year that demand increases. I would expect the cap to be around 25GB/mo. within 2-3 years but at that point hopefully there will be options for fiber internet access. Comcast, and all cable companies for that matter, can't even deliver decent HD television content over their POS old networks and if they don't invest heavily soon they will be out of business in 10 years.

You really have NO idea what you're talking about.

Explain how you're going to expand to 100mbps service to the curb over coax lol?

Transmission lines. Crash course. Ready. Go.

 

[Anubis]

Originally posted by: bvalpati
Since Comcast's options for expanding their infrastructure are limited until they begin laying fiber at the residential level they will lower the cap every year that demand increases. I would expect the cap to be around 25GB/mo. within 2-3 years but at that point hopefully there will be options for fiber internet access. Comcast, and all cable companies for that matter, can't even deliver decent HD television content over their POS old networks and if they don't invest heavily soon they will be out of business in 10 years.

Originally posted by: eos
Also, cable has been keeping prices static for years (or even dropping them) while increasing the available speed.

WTF are you smokin? My Comcast bill has gone up every single year for the past 6 years that I've had it. I can't really complain about the speed they provide but I'm about 98% certain it hasn't gone up even a little in the past 6 years here in Chicagoland. In fact other than the speed boost I would have to say it's actually gone down although it's difficult to monitor sustained speeds because of all the variables involved but I can say without doubt my lag and ping times in games have steadily increased over the last 6 years as more users have come onto the network.

comcast isnt the only one who raises prices and not speed

we have had Time Warner for liek 7 years now, it was a 5/384 plan 7 years ago and its still a 5/384 plan today

no other providers in the area no other speeds offered by TWC

yet it cost 18$ a month more now

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: eos
Also, cable has been keeping prices static for years (or even dropping them)...

LOLZ! EPIC LOLZ!

 

[Brainonska511]

Originally posted by: sdifox
It's their decision, don't like it, go somewhere else. Rogers decided to enforce the 65gb cap (up and down), 2 dollars per additional gb. So I dropped them.

It's nice to say - don't like it, go somewhere else, but where else is there to go? For many people the choice is cable or dial-up or extremely slow DSL (according to ATT's website, I can't even get that in my building, so for me it, it's Comcast or nothing).

 

[Anubis]

Originally posted by: Brainonska511

Originally posted by: sdifox
It's their decision, don't like it, go somewhere else. Rogers decided to enforce the 65gb cap (up and down), 2 dollars per additional gb. So I dropped them.

It's nice to say - don't like it, go somewhere else, but where else is there to go? For many people the choice is cable or dial-up or extremely slow DSL (according to ATT's website, I can't even get that in my building, so for me it, it's Comcast or nothing).

this is also a major issue there is no real competition unless you happen to live in a massive urban area

most people in the country have the choice of 1 high speed Cable provide, 1 shitty speed DSL provider or dial up

 

[Brainonska511]

Originally posted by: PingSpike

Originally posted by: eos
Also, cable has been keeping prices static for years (or even dropping them)...

LOLZ! EPIC LOLZ!

That's what I thought. When my parents had Cablevision, the price was staying relatively constant, but the number of channels you would pull through with the "Family Cable" package was becoming less and less (so same price for less stuff).