Broadband Providers Cap Monthly Usage

[screwballl]

most ISPs have limits on email inboxes (in their webmail) and limits on attachments coming in or going out. Usually at the low end it may be 5MB and high end may be 20MB attachments and with some there is no limit sending out.

[Panda Man]

Now you know why they call themselves Cox :D

Just wanted to say that for all the bashing comcrap gets, they're limit is going to be a pretty generous 250GB a month.

[screwballl]

There are no caps on most Cox connections, except the Las Vegas area and maybe a few others... I know their webmail inbox storage limit is 2GB.

[Captain Crunch]

Edit: Also, just found this article. Good old Google is at it again, developing software tools for users to determine if their ISP's are tampering with their service! 3 Cheers for google!

That's good news........You got to love Google.!

[Stormcrow]

This has been going on for years in Canada, my friends across the border have to deal with this provider here: Rogers Communications - Wireless, Digital Cable TV, Hi-Speed Internet, Home Phone
The bandwidth caps are stupidly low, and they charge you out the ass when you DO and WILL go over. It's been a big worry that ISPs would pull the same crap here in the States for a while now, and throttling ports and connections at certain times seems to be a precursor.

[screwballl]

This guy had some key words... he seems all for caps and packet prioritization...

George Ou - Technology for mortals > Home

Ou is adamant that - whether it (Net Neutrality rules) forbids ISPs from prioritizing apps and services or it forbids them from selling prioritization - neutrality regulation would actually prevent things like video and voice from flourishing on our worldwide IP network. "If you forbid prioritization, you forbid converged networks," he said. "And if you forbid converged networks, you get a bunch of tiny networks that are designed to do very specific things. Why not merge them into one fat pipe and let the consumer pick and choose what they want to run?

This is such an important point because latency/jitter is a killer for real-time applications like VoIP, gaming, and IPTV. As I showed in my research, even mild usage of BitTorrent on a single computer in a home can ruin the experience for everyone in that home. If prioritization technology is banned in Broadband, then we'll simply end up with less functional broadband and we'll have a statically separated IPTV service. With a converged IP broadband network that delivers IPTV and Internet access, the consumer gets a massive converged pipe and they have the power of control at their fingers when they turn off the IPTV to free up all that bandwidth for their Internet service. If the Government prohibits intelligent networks that guarantee quality of service, ISPs will be forced to separate their TV and Internet pipe with a fixed boundary and the consumer gets left with a permanent slow lane rather than getting a slow lane plus a fast lane that they can dynamically allocate to their TV or their Internet.

one key point that he seems to forget... VoIP when optimized uses very little bandwidth... with the service I use for my work from home uses less than 400kbps, and this is on a 8Mbps (8000kbps) cable internet line.

[Jokerswild]

I have Qwest DSL right now and I was looking at their terms of service and it has a vague statement that pretty much said there is no guarantee as far as limits. That being said I doubt that there's that much traffic here in Iowa for them since Mediacom cable also services the area. They start capping and I'll switch back.

[Capper]

Originally Posted by screwballl

There are no caps on most Cox connections, except the Las Vegas area and maybe a few others... I know their webmail inbox storage limit is 2GB.

Really?

Cox Communications started phasing in hard usage limits in February, and now a majority of that company's subscribers are limited to downloading 2 gigabytes a day--the equivalent of about two compressed feature-length movies or about 400 MP3 songs. AOL Time Warner's Road Runner cable modem service recently instituted download caps of 40 gigabytes per month.

Dear Cox High Speed Internet Customer:

..........
The Cox High Speed Internet acceptable use policy allows each user a maximum of 2GB per day and/or 30GB of downloads per month. Uploads are limited to 1GB per day and/or 7.5GB per month. This is an extremely high limit - for example 2GB of content is equivalent to about 60,000 pictures, 2000 minutes of MP3 music or 3 to 4 full-length movies.

Like the Las Vegas area, most are dictated by the package you have......

[polobunny]

Originally Posted by Capper

Really?



Like the Las Vegas area, most are dictated by the package you have......

I love how they try to make you believe this is an "extremely high limit".
A quick look at perfectly legal software repositories such as this Ubuntu bittorrent tracker I can see many linux distributions well over the 2GB limit, most of the more complete and updated ones comming in at around 4GB, also known as a full DVD. I know these can be acquired very quickly, probably in less than half a day...

Edit: And that's via Peer2Peer. There's straight http downloads available too.

[Capper]

Yeah, it really bothers me as well that they try to pretend it a huge limit that no legit person is going to reach.

I do weekly backups of the site to my NAS box, and that 1GB a pop, then you have to figure uploading images to the server for articles and downloading software for testing, etc........and I come close to the max limit for my package rather quickly. They tried to tell me my usage is actually business, and i should upgrade my package accordingly (Actually, they are correct in that my usage is a business....but thats another story).