• Comcast rolling out 1TB data cap on November 1st
    96 replies, posted
what are you downloading to use 420gb/month
My Comcast internet has been offline since midnight last night (now 2pm as of posting) and they have the nerve to do this? It's not like their service works consistently enough that one could use 1 tb of data. Fuck this company, if there was any alternative in this area I'd have left them in the dust ages ago.
[QUOTE=Map in a box;51166905]what are you downloading to use 420gb/month[/QUOTE] "stuff"
Why don't we just charge internet usage like water or electricity usage? If we're going to move away from unlimited/set payment plan, I feel that treating internet like a home utility makes the most sense.
Texas (Houston) Well fuck me, Does this just mean the city of Houston or like could this reach down to say Galveston?
[QUOTE=Map in a box;51166905]what are you downloading to use 420gb/month[/QUOTE] e-weed
I'm currently on a 200 GB cap, and with all the videos I watch, games I play/download, stuff I torrent, and Netflix my father and I watch, we still don't reach that cap in a month. I mean yeah, [B]caps suck in general[/B], but I have to wonder what most of these people complaining about a 1 TB cap actually do to be so worried about it. Do you host your own seedboxes or something? If you're a popular Twitch streamer or Youtuber, then sure, I can understand being worried, but if you're a casual user (like most are), I'd be surprised if you can reach even half that cap in a month.
Fucking shit. I'm about to move to an apartment in a comcast only area and was going to get the 250mbps connection. Guess I probably shouldn't anymore since I'll only be able to utilize it for part of the month. [editline]7th October 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=Map in a box;51166905]what are you downloading to use 420gb/month[/QUOTE] Are you kidding me? 420gb is piss easy to hit per month alone, excluded any sort of torrent based traffic.
I'd struggle to download over 100Gb of shit and I'd consider myself a heavy internet user
Comcast sucks. They hang up on you when you call to cancel service, their reps seem like random fucktards they hired off the street, constantly raising prices despite it being cheaper now to provide internet service than it ever has, and now this? I hope someone steps in and forms a company that really fucks them up [editline]7th October 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=ThePanther;51166952]Why don't we just charge internet usage like water or electricity usage? If we're going to move away from unlimited/set payment plan, I feel that treating internet like a home utility makes the most sense.[/QUOTE] Hell fucking no that's worse
[QUOTE=Kylel999;51167466]Comcast sucks. They hang up on you when you call to cancel service, their reps seem like random fucktards they hired off the street, constantly raising prices despite it being cheaper now to provide internet service than it ever has, and now this? [B]I hope someone steps in and forms a company that really fucks them up[/B][/QUOTE] Good luck with that when the big names are all actively abusing their power in the legal system to prevent any other company from having a chance. [editline]7th October 2016[/editline] [QUOTE=ThePanther;51166952]Why don't we just charge internet usage like water or electricity usage? If we're going to move away from unlimited/set payment plan, I feel that treating internet like a home utility makes the most sense.[/QUOTE] If done correctly and fairly I'm okay with this. A small, fair price and everyone just basically gets a gig handoff. The only issue with this would be congestion times, where everyone can burst up to a gig for whatever they need when they get home from work, etc.
[QUOTE=Levelog;51167491]If done correctly and fairly I'm okay with this. A small, fair price and everyone just basically gets a gig handoff. The only issue with this would be congestion times, where everyone can burst up to a gig for whatever they need when they get home from work, etc.[/QUOTE] Assuming direct fiber connections from the home to datacenter, congestion leaving the DC is the only concern, and for that we can install edge caching servers, Google, Netflix, Akamai, etc. After you have Caches from the major bandwidth hogs, you'll see even during peak time bandwidth usage is very manageable.
[QUOTE=glitchvid;51167536]Assuming direct fiber connections from the home to datacenter, congestion leaving the DC is the only concern, and for that we can install edge caching servers, Google, Netflix, Akamai, etc. After you have Caches from the major bandwidth hogs, you'll see even during peak time bandwidth usage is very manageable.[/QUOTE] Congestion is an issue irregardless of caching.
[QUOTE=Map in a box;51167544]Congestion is an issue irregardless of caching.[/QUOTE] Internal traffic is a lot cheaper, so installing Caches for Google (Youtube), Facebook, Netflix, Akamai, etc caches, with 10, or even multiple 10gbit ports on them, saves a lot of traffic from having to ever hit the border (where most congestion happens on a FTTH network).
snip wrong thread
[QUOTE=glitchvid;51167536]Assuming direct fiber connections from the home to datacenter, congestion leaving the DC is the only concern, and for that we can install edge caching servers, Google, Netflix, Akamai, etc. After you have Caches from the major bandwidth hogs, you'll see even during peak time bandwidth usage is very manageable.[/QUOTE] You're talking about dedicated circuits to the datacenter? That's hella expensive and would never happen. Have you ever worked with actual circuits?
[QUOTE=Clovis;51165104]considering the average data cap here is like 100gb i ask all you people do you all really NEED anything more than 1tb a month? i find it impossible to reach even 250gb a month deliberately downloading large amounts of files. i really dont think this is a big deal at all. if the cap was much smaller than 1tb maybe but come on thats 250gb a week. thats shitloads[/QUOTE] We used to have a 500gb cap, but would regularly get throttled once it passed 100gb, most ISP's are scumbags and do whatever the fuck they want. No data caps is how it should be, and fiber needs to replace outdated as shit copper lines.
[QUOTE=Levelog;51167579]You're talking about dedicated circuits to the datacenter? That's hella expensive and would never happen. Have you ever worked with actual circuits?[/QUOTE] Yeah, more or less. Iirc it's what Utopia did, though they run two lines in from the local distribution point. Since the network uses multiple ISPs they physically switch the termination point for them to the ISP. Lol no I've never actually worked with the hardware of this stuff, I was going to go into telecom after HS but the teacher that I was cool with got fired, so I decided not to.
Yeah Utopia is a bit of a special snowflake, but I don't think it's quite true circuits. Back when I was a Jr Network Engineer for an ISP that had fiber circuits all over town it was amazing the maze of shit. They are expensive as fuck and the margins aren't as high as you'd think. We'd need a massive infrastructure spending bill ala many highway bills put together to even get started on this.
[QUOTE=dark_console2;51164896] I highly doubt Comcast is the only option.[/QUOTE] You're right! It's one of two in my area.
[QUOTE=xalener;51167930]You're right! It's one of two in my area.[/QUOTE] My other is century link DSL, with a max speed of 25mbps vs 250mbps with Comcast.
Today I've learned that you can have datacap on wired internet. Guess it's not all bad in my country.
[QUOTE=MissingGlitch;51166966]Texas (Houston) Well fuck me, Does this just mean the city of Houston or like could this reach down to say Galveston?[/QUOTE] You're going to be permanently underwater by the time you get fiber.
[QUOTE=Levelog;51167677]Yeah Utopia is a bit of a special snowflake, but I don't think it's quite true circuits. Back when I was a Jr Network Engineer for an ISP that had fiber circuits all over town it was amazing the maze of shit. They are expensive as fuck and the margins aren't as high as you'd think. We'd need a massive infrastructure spending bill ala many highway bills put together to even get started on this.[/QUOTE] Yeah, I'm not exactly sure how they've done the network in detail, it's an active switched fiber network, so each person should be getting their full paid bandwidth since they're basically on a direct path to their ISP, and the connections are full duplex. Yeah, it was very expensive to build, but once you have the fiber down, it isn't particularly more expensive to maintain. Another big point in them doing it the way they did they said, was it allowed them much more flexibility for network upgrades, since the fiber is already there, they just need to switch out the hardware on either end, and never have to dig up the fiber again for it. That was the whole point, they'd install fiber as infrastructure, everyone would have fast internet and could chose their ISP. The plan is that it would effectively become a utility, like water or electricity.
[QUOTE=Wii60;51164771]google fiber is comin to jax cant wait, esp since there will be more room to build when matthew wipes out the entire city[/QUOTE] For real? Hot damn, thanks for giving me the best news of today.
[QUOTE=glitchvid;51168240]Yeah, I'm not exactly sure how they've done the network in detail, it's an active switched fiber network, so each person should be getting their full paid bandwidth since they're basically on a direct path to their ISP, and the connections are full duplex. Yeah, it was very expensive to build, but once you have the fiber down, it isn't particularly more expensive to maintain. Another big point in them doing it the way they did they said, was it allowed them much more flexibility for network upgrades, since the fiber is already there, they just need to switch out the hardware on either end, and never have to dig up the fiber again for it. That was the whole point, they'd install fiber as infrastructure, everyone would have fast internet and could chose their ISP. The plan is that it would effectively become a utility, like water or electricity.[/QUOTE] The installation of Fiber to a property only implies a 1:1 connection back to the point of interconnect or much, much less frequently a point of presence, from there it's typically a shared aggregated back haul link to the ISPs edge network and then to their core network, Fiber is just a transmission method, packet switched networks regardless of of the supplied medium, copper, fiber, fixed wireless, hybrid fiber coax you will still experience the same problems with contention and on top of the intended contention ratios, potentially congestion if the links become overly saturated. Fiber to the end point is extremely expensive to build and somewhat more expensive to maintain as your run of the mil techs specialize in hybrid fiber coax or copper, there are strict regulations surrounding the maintenance and installation of fiber meaning that your run of the mill tech has to be trained and certified to handle it, the cost of fiber patching equipment is also extremely expensive, few providers with the obvious exception of Google are willing to roll out 9/125 or 9 Micron, it provides the best options for for high capacity data transmission, over 10GBIT however it is also extremely brittle and requires conduit where ever it is placed, the terminating SFP is usually left exposed where the cable rises out of the conduit and is very easy to damage, if not enough fiber is laid it can't easily be replaced and the expense of a fix rises astronomically. Fiber networks are the current way forward but the same problems that have existed for 30 years will still be apparent.
[QUOTE=ThePanther;51166952]Why don't we just charge internet usage like water or electricity usage? If we're going to move away from unlimited/set payment plan, I feel that treating internet like a home utility makes the most sense.[/QUOTE] Mainly because the cost difference between servicing someone who uses 5000GB per month isn't realisitically much more than someone who uses 50GB per month. The cost is in actually making the connection and making sure it's functioning. The marginal cost in data isn't like the marginal cost of electricity. With a utility it costs money to clean, filter, and deliver each gallon of water. It costs money to for the fuel for each KW used. If the population used half the amount of electricity or half the water, it's running at half capacity and could then scale capacity to meet demands, thus cutting costs. Realistically with an ISP if you use more data, maybe you're causing congestion so the ISP has to bulk infrastructure. But we pay for the speeds we want so the ISP needs to make sure it can deliver those speeds whenever we want. The capacity is there and present. Caps don't really help congestion if it's only on a per month basis. Within that one month, plenty of data can be used in a short window and overload a system the caps theorhetically would stop. But as we know Comcast knows and says it's nothing to do with congestion. Just "fairness" [QUOTE=Map in a box;51166098]Are people honestly complaining? The caps were previously 300gib, this is a Good Thing.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=DeathDoom;51165768]I don't quite understand the sudden outrage over this. Yeah, it's shitty, but throttling users who go over a certain limit per month on high speed "unlimited" plans has been standard practice for Comcast for years. The only difference now is they're being honest with what they're actually doing. Nothing has changed. If this hasn't affected you before it won't now. It's only an issue if you broadcast regularly on Twitch, in which case you've probably already experienced this.[/QUOTE] People are complaining because they are EXPANDING the areas with the cap. Most of the US had no caps, I'm someone who is going from unlimited internet to 1024GB with no price drop or service improvement. They had 250-300GB caps for years but they were basically a target or encouragement. They were well known for not doing anything about it for years and years. Now it's different because they are putting the cap in more places but now charging for when you go over and then charging 50 bucks a month if you think you'll use more. They're adding a limiter and then charging to remove the limit.
[QUOTE=dark_console2;51164896]This is probably a very unpopular opinion but the concept of 'Unlimited Data' plans is the route course of of a lot of congestion, I can't comment on how well Comcast provisions their network but not a single backhaul provider will sell asynchronous bandwith, you must purchase both upstream and downstream capacity in equal portions, this is due to network protocols in this day and age being incapable of managing asynchronous without stressing a routers processor. The problem the most of the worlds residential service providers will experience is the concept of 'peak' services, everyone wants to jump on and smash the guts out of their connections during peak times because they're paying for a service and wish to use it whenever they want when in reality, signing up to the big boys will get your consumer rights waived, particularly in the form of CSGs (customer service guarantees) meaning that you can't even process a complaint for a breach of contract terms the best you will ever get is maybe a months credit and the freedom to leave your contract. The cost of backhaul between major sites is not equal so it seems pretty obvious that Comcast has either under provisioned, can't provision further or there isn't enough revenue being generated to justify improving the network. Allowing unlimited plans and the expectation to experience full theoretical peak speeds is a joke, all residential services are supplied of a many to one contention ratio and unless you are being provided a 1:1 service with a service level agreement, good luck, you are literally at the mercy of any other person who decides to smash the guts out of the shared bandwidth across a particular POI or backhaul. Why would anyone want to share a network with anyone else who can literally take an unequal portion of the capacity for use all the time and slow everything down for everyone else? 'Unlimited' is just a marketing gimmick for you to pay more and effectively get less because you can't even use 'unlimited' data due to contention / congestion. Hell, your 'unlimited' plans probably have a fair use waiver capping you at 1TB anyway. Find yourselves a quality ISP that provides a quality service, educate yourselves about network logistics so you can make better informed decisions about where you can get the most value for money, [b]I highly doubt Comcast is the only option.[/b][/QUOTE] For a lot of us it actually is though. I want our government to break up Comcast and all the big ISP's and actually encourage competition. Stagnation has led us to this kind of bullshit.
Most users of Comcast/XFINITY -HAVE- had caps, if not all.
[QUOTE=Map in a box;51174338]Most users of Comcast/XFINITY -HAVE- had caps, if not all.[/QUOTE] Most definitely not nearly all. They weren't enforcing caps in tons of service areas.
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