Comcast Makes it Official

Kilarney

Was there any question that Comcast was going to make their "test" a nation-wide policy?

Comcast has announced that they are limiting bandwidth for residential customers to 250 GB per month.

I'm not a Comcast customer, but if I was, I doubt I would get anywhere near 250GB per month. My only real beef is that they are providing NO tools to monitor usage.

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Ugh, Comcast. It will lower piracy, slightly, but it will also annoy people. And providing a simple webpage with the bandwidth usage isn't that hard. They're going to keep track of customers and the bandwidth used by them, just offer a page on your website which pulls up the correct data and displays it. No need for a fancy graph even, just in plain text the amount of bandwidth that has been used by that customer thus far for that month.

Neito

250 GB is a SHIT-TON of data, tho. A DVD ISO is about 5 gigs, to provide some reference, so you could do almost two a day for an entire month and not run out of data usage. I really don't see how this is going to be a problem to all but the mega-downloaders, even if the 250 GB is both upstream and down combined.

chaosof99

A year ago I still had a 4GB traffic limit...

I think it is enough but it is rather arbitrary and annoying.

Omnutia

I find it hard to believe that someone could consume 125GB of downloaded media (assuming you seed to a 1:1 ratio as uploads are included). My guess this is that this is just a starting point though..

Kilarney

This is actually a situation where a slower upload speed (versus download speed) is a good thing. If you torrent, you won't blow your limit as quickly.

I really don't have a big problem with these limits. Anyone using more than 250GB per month should probably be paying more.

Viga

I doubt it'll affect me much since I don't download or upload much torrents.

Starfox

What if it's a house of seven college guys? That's not so much then.

Themistakenone

That's still better than what the ISPs are doing here. I'm live in Southern Ontario and most of the ISPs have introduced bandwidth caps. My service is about 45 dollars a month, 7mb/s download, 512kb/s upload, but they started the damned caps and I can only use 60GBs per month. If you want to better service for 10 dollars more, you can get a 95GB cap. Most of the ISPs have decided using caps, it's incredibly annoying. For the lowest service running at 25 dollars a month, it's 2GB, so ridiculous.

jwallace

Hmm...it of course would constrain P2P and other sites that consume a lot of bandwidth but to be honest (as was already posted) those are the sites that should pay more or be limited anyway.

I do know of a perfect example of how this would SUCK for legitimate users. In the summer of 2006 one of Adam Christianson's (Maccast podcast) listeners posted his show on Digg, and in a matter of hours GoDaddy.com shut down the podcast website because the downloading traffic surged a hundredfold. What truly sucked about the ordeal was that GoDaddy didn't warn him - they received complaints from a business who happened to share the same server as the Maccast and simply pulled the plug.

The only was that Adam found out about the problem was that he received around one hundred emails the next morning regarding the 404 and found a clause in his web hosting documentation that the provider had the right to shut down the podcast if too much bandwidth is being consumed. After calling tech support he was told that they would NOT restore him.

The result: he had to purchase a dedicated server (a LOT of money) and since then had no choice but to include advertisements to cover costs. At least the advertisements are unobtrusive but you get the idea.

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Hmm...it of course would constrain P2P and other sites that consume a lot of bandwidth but to be honest (as was already posted) those are the sites that should pay more or be limited anyway.

This is not hosting that is talked about. This is consumer bandwidth caps we're talking about. Or are you really suggesting "Fuck net neutrality, let Google pay money to ISPs to have their pages load faster than Yahoo!"?

Kilarney

I just have a couple of problems:
1) Comcast must provide a metering tool. Shame on them for not doing so.
2) The limit is reasonable now - but it will become less reasonable over time. Will they up the limit in the future, or is this a stealthy way of forcing us to buy higher priced packages down the road?
3) Currently, they don't offer any higher priced packages. You either stay under the limit or you are out.

This whole thing is just an example of why cable sucks compared to fiber optic. Comcast is trying to compete speed-wise with fiber optic, but their network can't handle it. Thus, bandwidth limits are imposed.

Omnutia

Simpler solution to the podcast problem: Remove the direct download link and replace it with a torrent. You could even automate the process.
Another correction: Bittorrent sites consume very little bandwidth in relation to the amount of hits they get as all they serve is text files.

jwallace

Hmm...it of course would constrain P2P and other sites that consume a lot of bandwidth but to be honest (as was already posted) those are the sites that should pay more or be limited anyway.

This is not hosting that is talked about. This is consumer bandwidth caps we're talking about. Or are you really suggesting "Fuck net neutrality, let Google pay money to ISPs to have their pages load faster than Yahoo!"?

No, I wasn't saying that, and I certainly won't pretend to be an authority on the subject. I'm a little confused as I assumed that content providers would also be reined in as the caps initiative is used. I used the Maccast as an example to illustrate the reverse effect. If I'm wrong and the content providers WON'T be penalized for overuse of DOWNLOAD bandwidth by the end-users (and I know that such plans exist for those willing to pay a premium) then my point has no relation.

All I stated was that sometimes the reverse can be true for content providers but it seems that I should have used an example that would have been broader in scope.

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No, I wasn't saying that, and I certainly won't pretend to be an authority on the subject. I'm a little confused as I assumed that content providers would also be reined in as the caps initiative is used. I used the Maccast as an example to illustrate the reverse effect. If I'm wrong and the content providers WON'T be penalized for overuse of DOWNLOAD bandwidth by the end-users (and I know that such plans exist for those willing to pay a premium) then my point has no relation.

All I stated was that sometimes the reverse can be true for content providers but it seems that I should have used an example that would have been broader in scope.

That seems to have no relation to the topic at hand nor does it make sense. We are talking about consumers only being allowed to download 250GB worth of data in a month. A site serving 500GB worth of data each month has no relation whatsoever with this 250GB limit for consumers. And besides, server plans with bandwidth limits have existed for years.

I just have a couple of problems:

1) Can you give a source where it says that Comcast MUST provide bandwidth expenditure information?
2) I agree, I wouldn't be surprised if this 250GB limit will have an increased price next year when smaller packs are introduced. Which results in people suddenly paying more without realizing.
3) Which is one of the annoying points. But at least 250GB isn't that low.

Kilarney

Can you give a source where it says that Comcast MUST provide bandwidth expenditure information?

I was talking about the law, I was talking about good business practices. If you're going to shut people off, you should provide a metering tool so they can track their usage.

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Can you give a source where it says that Comcast MUST provide bandwidth expenditure information?

I was talking about the law, I was talking about good business practices. If you're going to shut people off, you should provide a metering tool so they can track their usage.

I take it the first 'was' should be 'wasn't'? As for good business practices, this is Comcast we are talking about. They actively blocked specific traffic without warning or notice or whatever else. They got called on it, and are no longer allowed to do so.

Kilarney

I take it the first 'was' should be 'wasn't'?

Yup. That's what I get for typing fast as I'm trying to get out of the door.