Discussion Forums > Technology
ISP Bandwidth Limits
ColdFission:
--- Quote from: Freedom Kira on September 28, 2011, 04:25:51 AM ---Not to go political here, but yeah I voted NDP too.
Anyway, back to Internet. Shaw actually does not enforce its caps. With their new system, users on their older plans (High Speed Lite, High Speed, High Speed Extreme) have caps that they don't charge you for going over, but they will call you and bug you if you do it frequently.
With their Broadband plans, they use the bump-up program, in which you are bumped up to the next tier of Internet with higher speed and caps (and higher cost, like $10 more per level; the highest level has no caps but costs $120/mo IIRC) for the rest of the month if you do go over. I believe you do get a warning message before you go over, though.
Go read their website again. It's a nice system they put in. The $1-2/extra GB was months ago.
--- End quote ---
Well, its good to know that Shaw won't enforce the caps and they will bother you about. But, a cap is a cap, and I don't see it any other way. I just checked Bandwidth Meter Pro on my desktop and a total of 1.37 TB of traffic has gone through this month so far. I don't think Shaw would simply call me and say "Please don't do that again" and then I see my bill getting charged for their top tier plan when I was paying for the middle-high tier plan.
Anyway, it hasn't launched yet in my area despite seeing tons of ads for it for months now. I might have to re-read the site again if I get curious about their plans some more.
kitamesume:
actually, why couldn't the ISPs just give the ppl an uncapped 10MB/s(or whatever their fastest lines are) line and bill them $/GB?
Pentium100:
--- Quote from: kitamesume on September 28, 2011, 06:45:58 AM ---actually, why couldn't the ISPs just give the ppl an uncapped 10MB/s(or whatever their fastest lines are) line and bill them $/GB?
--- End quote ---
Because data is not the limited resource, bandwidth is. You do not "use up" GB, like you would energy or water.
Compare internet connection with, say, water or natural gas (I pay for every m^3 used). Once I used that water or gas, it's not coming back, nobody else can use it. If nobody uses it for a while, the amount gets saved and can be used later. The pipe size does not cost a lot, you can have a big pipe if you are planning to use a lot.
On the other hand, the gigabytes are not limited and they cannot be "saved". If nobody uses the internet for an hour, there is no more resources for the future - if you have a 10mbps network and you use it only 1 hour per day, you can't get 100mbps ("save up" the gigabytes for the time you need them), you are still limited to the bandwidth. Same thing on an ISP scale. The bandwidth is limited, but if the devices are idle (nobody is sending anything) they do not consume less power or wear out slower. The maintenance costs are the same whether the device is idle or fully utilized. Because of this, ISPs overbook the connections (sell 10mbps to 100 people even though they have 100mbps network for example). However, if all clients use the connection at the same time, they cannot get what is promised. So, one way ISPs decided to limit this was to limit the amount of data you can transfer, but this, in my opinion, is dishonest:
1.As I said, you cannot save up data, so if everyone decides to watch online videos at the same time, you have the same problem.
2.Limiting the amount of data you can transfer is just another bandwidth limit (100GB/month is ~300kbps and they want me to believe I am getting 10mbps?).
3.Since the limited resource is bandwidth, people should pay for it.
4.A lot of transferred data is not what the people want, for example, ads, spam. There is no equivalent for water, gas or energy.
Some ISPs play the "40% of bandwidth is used by 1% of clients" card - well, in that case either upgrade your infrastructure or do not offer such high speeds. Yes, a lot of people do not use the net for downloading, just for emails and such, but the ISP wants more money, so the slowest connection is usually 5mbps or so, so those people have to pay for it instead of the 1mbps they would be OK with, so of course only a small percentage would actually use what they buy.
Usage time in dial-up days made sense too, PSTN is circuit switched, so whether you are using the connection or not, as long as the call is on, the channel and the modem at the ISP is used and cannot service another client. A always-on (DSL, FTTH) connection uses dedicated end-point hardware, so even when I am not sending anything (or maybe not even connected), the DSLAM port cannot service another client.
Tiffanys:
Ha, speed here is atrocious... like 4/1Mbit for $50 a month. I'm out in the middle of nowhere though, but still. And the funny thing is, the higher speed plans that they don't even offer in my specific area have the same upload speed as mine... LOL... Their highest one, 60Mbit has 1Mbit upload. Really? lol...
We really need to start some faster internet movement here in the US... it's pretty sad.
Micharus:
--- Quote from: Spanks on September 19, 2011, 12:58:15 AM ---
--- Quote from: Tatsujin on September 13, 2011, 04:39:08 PM ---Lets just all of us move to Japan. Problems solved.
--- End quote ---
Come live in Australia, no one gives a shit about us down here. I have yet to see as article about an Australian being sent to court for illegally downloading lately (I'm sure someone has but)
--- End quote ---
Well, I'm paying $100 (Australian) a month for 200gb peak/200gb offpeak, with 3 e-mail addresses and 1gb of server space
ADSL2+. According to the 'toolbox' my current connection is 17,173kbps / 1,007kbps.
According to my ISP, my download speed can go as high as 24,000kbps, although I'm pretty sure it hasn't.
The good thing is, if I do happen to go beyond my cap, I don't lose my 'Net, they just slow the connection back to 256k, but after having the afore mentioned speeds, it may as well be turned off. lol
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