Question for the ISP employees

[wildcatgrrl]

There is another message board I go to, not customer-related. One of the posters there, let's call her "D", was complaining about her internet company "I". She said they told her that she was using too much bandwidth and affecting her neighbors' service with all her downloads. I asked hubby about this, since we go through the same company. He said as far as he knew, we had unlimited downloads-at least we've never exceeded our limit if there is one.

D then goes on to say they download so much because her hubby is a pirate (put in teeny tiny letters like no one's going to see it). Not the best thing to admit online, eh? :lol:

Anyway, I guess my question is 2-part: 1. Do ISPs usually have download limits, and 2. Is it common for people to exceed them if so, and if not, just how frickin frackin much do you have to download for your ISP to CALL YOU about it? That seems unreal to me.

[Raerlynn]

They have bandwidth caps, which are hard coded and cannot be exceeded.

There are some services where bandwidth is shared throughout an area, like cable internet, and some wireless bands.

[stormtreader]

Even the unlimited providers reserve the right to say youre downloading too much - i think it can affect everyone elses performance by tying up the line, and they also dont want you running a business on a home-use contract.
Theyd have to be downloading a LOT though :S

[Apallo]

What might have happened (depending on the method he was using to download) is the ISP saw a lot of upstream bandwidth being used. This is usually associated with running a website (a server sitting on the connection serving up pages) and is against the terms of service for most if not all residential cable/dsl intenet plans. The problem is that there are actually 2 different definitions for bandwidth:

<1> The maximum speed at which you can down/upoad (which cannot be exceeded because of limits hard coded into the modem's software)

<2> The maximum ammount of data a person can down/upload in a given ammount of time. This definition applies mostly to web hosting. You pay $X/month for a maximum amount of data to be served. ie $10/month for 30gigs of bandwidth/month. When this limit is exceeded, you'll see the "this site has exceeded their bandwidth" error.

I have never actually heard of a cable/dsl company capping bandwidth in the second sense, but if there is a lot of out-going traffic on his line, they could be suspisous of him running a server of some kind. I know for a fact that the most popular ways to download (bittorrent and kazaa/bearshare/limewire) also allow others to download from him (and in bittorrent's case, they pretty much force him to). I personally have never had this problem, and i tend to download between 50-80gb every 2-4 days. The method i use for downloading, however, does not use my upload bandwidth.

[Forgreatjustice]

most isp 's i have looked at have some monthly download limit.
the one i use is 60gb a month. (cable)
there competitor is 2gb for the same level of service ... (dsl)

so it really depends on the isp.

[HalloranElder]

She said they told her that she was using too much bandwidth and affecting her neighbors' service with all her downloads.

It is a potential problem, depending on what technology they are using.

Any of the DSL varieties don't have this problem, because you effectively have a private connection between you and the exchange.

Cable however can have this issue. A cable connection usually connects a number of people living in the neighbourhood together to a central point, and then that central point is connected to the backbone. As a result, if one person is saturating the connection then everyone else will suffer from a serious slowdown of their upload/download speeds because they are all going through a single bottleneck.

Just your friendly neighbourhood geek.

[Max]

ISPs absolutely have bandwidth caps. This is necessary for cable networks, which would be impossibly slow (if not completely overloaded) if every customer was a hardcore pirate or was running a high traffic website. This isn't normally a problem, as the caps are set so high that very few people are even aware of them. (I don't know anything about DSL, though. Hopefully someone else can weigh in?)

But why do ISPs then claim bandwidth is unlimited for their residential service? This is out and out LYING. Would it really be such a big deal to call it "high usage" bandwidth instead of unlimited bandwidth (or something suitably markety)? If the caps are so high, it's not like anyone is going to care. If they do, they'll just get a business account instead.

I read a horror story about a Comcast customer getting cut off because they exceeded their bandwidth cap on their supposedly "unlimited" account. The only way Comcast would reconnect them was if they run a line directly to their house, for the LOW LOW price of $1000 per month! The sick thing is, Comcast stubbornly refused to admit the amount of their bandwidth cap. So...if you exceed it, you get cut off, but you can't tell whether or not you're going to exceed it because you have NO IDEA what it is! :confused: Anyways, give it a read: http://tinyurl.com/243j39

[trunks2k]

While your total bandwidth usage for the month may be unlimited, that is not going to prevent the ISP from taking action if your usage is really hurting the performance of other customer's service.

I may be able to download/upload as much as I want over the course of the month, but let's say I'm trying to download ten huge files at once and upload another 3 all at the same time. At that moment, I could be seriously slowing down the rest of the network, which will probably automatically trigger action by the ISP to cut off some of the transfers or limit the speed at which they are done. But if I was to do this at, say 3AM, where I'm the only one on the network, then it might not be a problem. If this happens a lot, the ISP is likely within its rights to cancel the service if they feel that your usage is hindering overall performance too much too often.

That said, most ISPs that I know of have an inherent bandwidth cap that is supposed to be a number that will keep the network running smoothly under normal usage. As mentioned before, this is necessary for most networks. In this type of scenario, no one person is goin to slow down the network. So what might be happening is that the person is trying to upload/download a bunch of stuff and is hitting that bandwidth cap so each transfer is automatically being throttled down to keep within that bandwidth cap.

[trunks2k]

But why do ISPs then claim bandwidth is unlimited for their residential service? This is out and out LYING. Would it really be such a big deal to call it "high usage" bandwidth instead of unlimited bandwidth (or something suitably markety)? If the caps are so high, it's not like anyone is going to care. If they do, they'll just get a business account instead.


They're using a different definition of bandwidth when talkin about that. As someone mentioned earlier there are two commonly used definition for bandwidth.

1. The max amount of traffic on a given connection at a point in time (i.e. 56k).
2. The overall amount of traffic over a period of time.

The first is really the accurate term, but the second is used often. When an ISP says something like unlimited bandwidth, they are talking about the latter. Which is often true, I can download or upload as much as I want over the course of a month. However bandwidth limits of the former type will keep me from reaching huge amounts of transfers. It's just marketing.

Edit: After reading your link, it seems that Comcast was actually enforcing a limit on an "unlimited" plan. That's just false advertising then.

[wildcatgrrl]

OK, thanks for all your replies. I knew that they had to downloading/uploading a MASSIVE amount for the ISP to get involved. Still strikes me as funny that she went on the internet on a public message board to complain that her ISP wasn't making it easy for them to continue illegal downloading. DUH!!! I mean, I'm not the illegal download police, but if you're going to do it, be discreet, for goodness' sake!!

But then, she also said that it was her hubby's right to download as much as he wanted, since they paid for the service, and that if one wasn't meant to download so much, computers wouldn't be made with so much RAM. Well, cars can go WAY over 65, but it's still illegal in most places.

[trunks2k]

But then, she also said that it was her hubby's right to download as much as he wanted, since they paid for the service, and that if one wasn't meant to download so much, computers wouldn't be made with so much RAM.

That doesn't even make any sense, even on a technological level. RAM has little to do with how much you can download. If she's using what they are capable of doing as a benchmark of what she should be allowed to do, then nobody better tell her how fast her DSL/Cable is capable of transferring data.

[Apallo]

...nobody better tell her how fast her DSL/Cable is capable of transferring data.

I really really really want the ISP that offers downloads that will saturate the max bandwidth my hard drive is capable of, that woulld be simply awesome! :D 133 megabytes/second here i come!

[trunks2k]

I really really really want the ISP that offers downloads that will saturate the max bandwidth my hard drive is capable of, that woulld be simply awesome! :D 133 megabytes/second here i come!

It was awesome when I first got to college. At the time my school had one of, if not THE, fastest networks of any university in the US. It was BLAZING fast. I had little problem getting 700+KB/s from places outside the network, and within the network... well let's just say I could transfer MP3s over as fast as I could click on them. I think the max speed I saw was about 5 MB/s.

[TNT]

But why do ISPs then claim bandwidth is unlimited for their residential service?

They don't.

[Rapscallion]

Mine does. It also has software caps - if you do download a metric craptonne, you will suddenly find that your download speed halves, then halves again, and again. Eventually, it will wait until you stop downloading for a while before allowing your speed up again.

It's quite a sales point over here for ISPs - very few are limited download these days.

Rapscallion

[BravoOrig]

Well I paid $16,000 for my van, so I should be able to do 110MPH no matter the speed limit or road conditions!
The ISP I work for can see your cablemodem's upload and download consumption, so expect a letter or some kind of notice if your upload is 1GB or more for a weeks timespan. We have a customer who always called and complained about slow speeds this and that, then we got the tool to check his consumption, and lets just say that the MPAA and the music industry people are "talking" to him. We can also check the consumption for people on the same connection as yours, and see if someone is hogging the bandwidth.

That said, your speed is always an "upto" speed, not guaranteed for residential service. And some people confuse the "download/transfer" speed that Internet Explorer reports versus their bandwidth speed. And never forget, that you are downloading from someone else, or a server on the net, so its always point to point, thus if their connection is slow, your download speed will suffer.

[digilight]

Man I loved when we first got cable internet at the condo about 6 years ago. At the time there was only 2 other people on the same node so we got lightning fast speeds. But yeah as others have said you would have to be down/up loading a metric crapton of stuff to get capped normally. In the days of Napster and Morphius I would spend hours straight just downloading thousands of songs with no problem, I don't do it anymore (don't wanna tango with the dang RIAA). But to boldly admit that they are doing naughty things like that is just asking for a suit from the RIAA or MPAA since i'm sure they search tons of boards as well.

[cpux]

I too have heard that horror story about a Comcast customer exceeding the bandwidth limit, and getting the complete runaround when asking simple questions like "What is the maximum allowed bandwidth?" and "Why does your service say 'unlimited' when it obviously isn't?"

The thing is, I believe that it's all in context. In the not-so-good ol' days, when AOL hit the scene and non-techies were entering the internet for the first time, AOL and other ISPs would impose "hour limits", basically limiting the amount of time you could use their service each month. And I think that to this day, what ISPs expect their customers to assume is that "unlimited" means "unlimited time", not "unlimited bandwidth". And it would be fairly easy to argue that if the need to do so ever arised.

[trunks2k]

And I think that to this day, what ISPs expect their customers to assume is that "unlimited" means "unlimited time", not "unlimited bandwidth". And it would be fairly easy to argue that if the need to do so ever arised.

It could also be unlimited bandwidth.*

*provided you are not using so much traffic that you are being a constant nuisance to the rest of the network.

[Naaman]

Most of the radio adverts I hear nowdays (I hardly watch TV) say that you have 'unlimited bandwidth' but are subject to a 'fair usage policy'.

Whilst this may seem a rather arbitrary redefinition of the word 'unlimited' most customers will never hit the "You've downloaded too much" cap IMO so for them the term unlimited is accurate. The only people it should affect consistently are the people who are constantly downloading dodgy music, movies and games.

[EmiOfBrie]

True, but the ISPs could be honest as to what that cap is, and many are.. just Comcast isn't. They claim their cap is a trade secret, and don't let customers know they're over until it's too late, which is what happened to that family in the link. Comcast could at least have told said family when they were getting close to the limit.

Personally, I pay the $120+ for a business class Comcast account (I have had the account for quite some time, dating back to when Time Warner owned our cable lines), but it's because I run my own website at home, so it's good to be prepared. I would absolutely hate to be in that family's situation.

[Rapscallion]

Got me curious, Emi. How much bandwidth do you use a week? We're up to about 11Gb a week on this server. It's been going up slowly, but steadily, for a while.

Rapscallion

[Rapscallion]

Scratch that. I just checked and we apparently did 30.55Gb of bandwidth this last week...

Wowsers.

Over four thousand views of the comic strip... Must have been the link Jennie put on her front page for us.

Rapscallion

[BlackIronCrown]

Anyway, I guess my question is 2-part: 1. Do ISPs usually have download limits, and 2. Is it common for people to exceed them if so, and if not, just how frickin frackin much do you have to download for your ISP to CALL YOU about it? That seems unreal to me.

1) Yes on cable, -usually- no on ADSL.

2) Yes, it is common on cable. There is no way for you to know what the limit is - it's usually not posted. However, breaching 100GB a month is a good way to do it.

Simple explanation: Cable suffers from the cable loop problem. Say you have 20 houses in your neighborhood and all of them are on your cable loop. There is a set amount of bandwidth assigned to the loop. If you have 2 houses using cable internet, the bandwidth is divided between those 2. If you have 20 houses, it's divided 20 ways. If you have one dude leeching huge amounts of data via torrent, he's making everyone else run slow by hogging the bandwidth.

ADSL does not have this problem, being a direct connect to the telco CO, but it suffers from distance issues. If you have crappy speed, you will ALWAYS have crappy speed. Makes ADSL a crap shoot. Cable is often the more reliable....unless everyone is on the cable loop.

[TNT]

A "hard cap" is besides the point and I would be suspicious of any company that announces one. When someone is abusing the network -- that is, doing things far beyond what a cheap residential account was designed to do -- you can't reasonably draw a line between 300 gigabytes and 299.9.

It's a matter of conduct, not bandwidth.

[tollbaby]

The only people it should affect consistently are the people who are constantly downloading dodgy music, movies and games.

Okay, I kind of resent that, since in Canada, it's perfectly legal to download music from the internet, as long as you don't provide any for upload. Seriously. It's legal (even though my mom doesn't believe that). My bandwidth keeps getting capped, and I download MAYBE a dozen songs a week, if that. I haven't been able to download ANYTHING for almost a month.

[trunks2k]

Okay, I kind of resent that, since in Canada, it's perfectly legal to download music from the internet, as long as you don't provide any for upload. Seriously. It's legal (even though my mom doesn't believe that)

IIRC it's legal in the US to download as well, you just can't distribute it.

[tollbaby]

no... as far as my understanding of copyright law in the US, it's not legal to download unauthorized copies either (thus the PITA new disclaimers with Morpheus every single freaking time you try to download something, and then it disables the download *grumble*)

[Naaman]

Sorry tollbaby - didn't mean to insult anyone :(

Perhaps a better phrasing would be "People who illegally and consistently download large amounts of movies, music and cracked software from non-legitimate sources because in most countries downloading copyrighted media through an unauthorised site is considered piracy"

[tollbaby]

sorry about that... tollbaby had a bad day. :o I can get bitchy when things snowball on me, and I didn't mean to take it out on anyone.

[Naaman]

Pfft - I've done my stint on the phones, at least you didn't threaten to bomb me :)

No harm, no foul