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AP
Comcast to make monthly Internet use cap official
Thursday August 28, 6:21 pm ET 
Comcast to set official limit on Internet use to deter bandwidth hogs

NEW YORK (AP) -- Comcast Corp., the nation's second-largest Internet service provider, Thursday said it would set an official limit on the amount of data subscribers can download and upload each month.
On Oct. 1, the cable company will update its user agreement to say that users will be allowed 250 gigabytes of traffic per month, the company announced on its Web site.

Comcast has already reserved the right to cut off subscribers who use too much bandwidth each month, without specifying exactly what constitutes excessive use.

"We've listened to feedback from our customers who asked that we provide a specific threshold for data usage and this would help them understand the amount of usage that would qualify as excessive," the company said in a statement on its Web site.

Customers who go over the limit are contacted by the company and asked to curb their usage.

"We know from experience the vast majority of customers we ask to curb usage do so voluntarily," the company said.

Comcast floated the idea of a 250 gigabyte cap in May and mentioned then that it might charge users $15 for every 10 gigabytes they go over, but the overage fee was missing in Thursday's announcement.

Curbing the top users is necessary to keep the network fast and responsive for other users, Comcast has said.

Comcast stressed that the bandwidth cap is far above the median monthly usage of its customers, which 2 to 3 gigabytes.

Very few subscribers use more than 250 gigabytes, it said. A user could download 125 standard-definition movies, about four per day, before hitting the limit.

The cap is also above those of some other ISPs. Cox Communications' monthly caps vary from 5 gigabytes to 75 gigabytes depending the subscriber's plan. Time Warner Cable Inc. is testing caps between 5 gigabytes and 40 gigabytes in one market. Frontier Communications Co., a phone company, plans to start charging extra for use of more than 5 gigabytes per month.

My ISP caps us at 100GB up/down a month. It's reasonable for the speeds we get.

I'm hopefully going to be switch over to Comcast cable soon. I'll see how high I can go over the cap :awesome_for_real:

I'm one of those power users...  I'm wondering how close I'll be around or over that mark.

Does anyone know how much MMO's and Online Games usually take bandwith wise? 

A trivial amount since they were originally designed to be usable over modems. Even today you would be hard pressed to break 256 Kbps even in the most crowded situations.

Oh well.. there are just some things I'll have to DL and get out of the way before Oct. 1.   :awesome_for_real:

Even using very high numbers (5 times the normal amount of bandwidth, 3 times the normal amount of play time) you would have a hard time breaking 5G in a month.  If you used voice all the time, maybe.  If you hosted a voice or FPS server you could break 30 gig pretty easily, unfortunately.

This is really aimed at P2P and stuff like Skype.  Since the FCC won't let them carry on with "traffic shaping" that discriminates by protocol, they're going to roll out bandwidth caps that choke them out, then offer alternative services that don't count towards your cap (but cost extra).

The good news is that MMO's just dodged a bullet, it was pretty clear the broadband providers wanted to horn in on the revenue from those.  But as bandwidth hogs go, MMO's don't count for much by today's standards.

--Dave

For the tinfoil-types it's actually aimed at all the up-and-coming video download services. The cable companies don't want them cutting into their business. Things like VOIP and Skype only use a small amount of bandwidth. P2P obviously can use a lot if you have it running 24x7.

Some months I probably hit 250GB. Not often though. Probably somewhere between 150-200.

The Highest I've ever managed is like, 20gigs a month. I think I average out around 15.


Clearly I'm not downloading enough porn or something  :grin:

(http://pogoblog.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/tstevensmain.jpg)

Luckily, unlike Goldblum, Stevens is not watching you poop.

I think this sort of thing will impact photographers, videographers, etc. the most, no?  I suppose they'll either have to pony up the dosh for business bandwidth or find a new career if they work from home.  Even with Righ working from home and us getting the FIOS 20/20 internet, we have way more than we need.  Too bad you can't sell some back to them!

It's a reasonable seeming cap for now, but I agree with Trippy that's it's aimed at competing VOD services. And what seems like a reasonable cap today may not in 2 or 5 years. Somehow I doubt they'll invest in infrastructure any more than is absolutely necessary.

I typically hit about 250gb up and down each month just with p2p, but it's easy enough to tone things down a bit now that I know what their cap is. I'm probably over 350 this month due to a couple ginourmous betas. I wonder if I'll get a nastygram.

*scratch head* I wish I knew how to find out how much bandwidth I use in a month, so I knew whether or not I should be offended by this trend.

This month was unusually heavy because of the new computer. I had to re-download all my Steam and Gamersgate purchases.

The point isn't the size of the cap. You have to understand what they are doing. They are starting the cap ridiculously high to try and slip it by their users... a year from now they are going to lower it... or start introducing tiers.

That cap will NEVER go up. 10 years from now when we are streaming HD content to our TVs they will still be nailing you for breaching the cap.

Once the hand is in your pocket, it's never coming back out.

Your router, if you have one, may be able to gather those stats for you. Not sure if your typical bridge (i.e. cable modem) keeps that kind of information.

Skype?  What do mean?  For ftp or the supernode stuff it does?  If the latter, you can turn that off in in the registry.  I use Skype for in-game VoIP.

I was thinking supernodes, yes.  You can turn it off, but if everyone who is topologically close to you does the same, Skype isn't going to work very well for you.  There's a minimum proportion of supernodes that any P2P system needs to function under current architectures, taking every residential broadband user out of the pool could easily make them non-functional over large parts of the net.  It also makes the RIAA/MPAA's efforts to choke out P2P a lot easier, as they can target the remaining business-class supernodes with lawsuits, DMCA letters, and other chilling effects without new ones popping up faster than they can knock them down.

Another place it's going to nail people is zombienets.  Lots of people out there burning far more bandwidth than they realize because their kid downloaded something dodgy.

Much of the free and open internet we're accustomed to exists because providers of hardware and basic connectivity services focused on the customer utility they could provide.  But as they start thinking of their customers as a resource to be squeezed rather than a market to be served, things get interesting....

--Dave

I think this is actually just a really clear indication as to how poor Comcasts infrastructure is.
I work for a phone company, and I promise... if cable companies start capping bandwidth, we're going to immediately start running adds about how our service is un-capped.
Knowing what I know about how our network works, I really can't see it saving us a huge amount of money. Especially when we're starting to roll out 1gig fiber to the home in a lot of areas. Some of our standard residential customers could hit that 250gig cap in under an hour.  :grin:

I just calculated that I could hit Time Warner's 40-gig cap in less than 14 hours.  About 6.5mbps sustained is my normal connection, on the download side.  They're currently testing it in Beaumont TX, which is just a regulatory formality before putting it in all across Texas.  And I downloaded a good 30-35 gigabytes from Steam (all of the HL2 and Civ4 installments, plus Portal) just a few weeks ago.  With AAA games routinely being built around the 4.5 gigabyte DVD-ROM capacity now, it could add up pretty quick.  Admittedly, if size became a major market issue they could be trimmed (why the hell was Portal nearly 4 gig?), but the overall trend is always towards bigger and I can see a day fairly soon when Blu-Ray is the standard and the AAA size jumps to 50G.

--Dave

Wish I knew what I used...

250 gig is a huge cap. My ISP has a utility that tells me what my monthly usage is and I rarely go over 50 or 60 gig a month. And that's with downloading lots of TV shows. Before I got into bittorrentingI never used more than 4 or 5 gig.

Get BitMeter and install it.  I did the last time we had one of these discussions at someone else's suggestion.

I hit a high of 25gb down/ 2.5gb up within the last 3 months on this machine alone.  That was July, when I was playing MMOs more often and patching WAR pretty often (Gotta remember those patches, folks.)  There wasn't any ventrilo time or other heavy downloading, though.  If I could be arsed to hook into my router I'd wager my network of 3 machines (Mine, the wife's & kids for playing flash games) hit 150gb pretty easily in some of the past few months without doing anything like Bit Torrent or Skype.

Only the hardest of the hardcore torrent fiends will hit 250GB. Shit, you could probably buy half of Steam's catalog and not hit that cap. It's lame they're capping their "UNLIMITED!111" internet service but eh, it could be worse.

Hmmmm. I wonder why I couldn't get that Time Warner plan. I mean mine is fast because I convinced the guy to leave it high, but normally I'd only get 1.5. Do you now when they're rolling that out?

He's talking about bits you are talking about bytes.

I.e. 6.5 Mbps (megabits per second) < 1.5 MBps (megabytes per second) = 12 Mbps

At 6.5 MBps (megabytes) sustained you would hit the 40 GB cap in less than 2 hours.

Trippy, he had a small m. Which makes it seem more like a typographical error. TW already offers 1.5MB around the state, as such I have to assume he meant 6.5MB. But yea, I know the difference between MB and Mb :oh_i_see:

Edit: In the last 24 Hours I have downloaded 30GB and uploaded 10GB. On my pc alone. A limit would fuck me raw.

Except that he said 14 hours as in slightly less than 2 hours * 8 (for bytes to bits) = 14 hours.

Ok. That's just too much thinking.

The first time you get a $500 bill from them because your kid got their computer infected with some trojan you wont be saying that.

ATM the only "penalty" is that Comcast will contact you and tell you to cut that shit out. Presumably if you keep going over the cap they'll just cut you off or throttle you somehow. At some point in the future there may be overage charges but that wasn't in the announcement (though apparently they did consider it).

Hell, I was tempted to say baud just because that never confuses anyone (except for youngsters who never heard an acoustic modem squeal).  Yes, bits per second.  On paper, I have the same plan you do, 1.5 megabytes/second.  And for the first couple of months it actually worked like that.  Then, mysteriously, it got cut roughly in half.  According to TWC nothing changed and it still works fine, something is wrong with my router if it says different.  It's enough better than DSL that I'm not going to switch like I did in Chattanooga (there the problem was just classic over-subscription making it useless during peak), but don't be surprised if you see the same eventually.

--Dave

Wow. That's terrible. I would throw a fucking fit.

I'm actually looking at dropping subscription TV altogether come February when my 18 month contract with Dish Network ends.  Between an antenna for network TV, Hulu, Netflix On Demand, and BitTorrent I just don't get much use out of subscription TV for the outrageous bills I'm paying for it.

Thank God I don't have ComCast.  This would definitely put the kibosh on that plan.

This is a fucking travesty. I download between 1 and 2 TB a month. I know that because I save most of it to external drives, and I've got them sitting right here. a 1080p movie is between 8 and 9 gig - for one movie. I almost just switched to the AT&T U-Verse fiber service, but then ended up losing my job and going back to school. Frankly, if Time Warner puts any cap at all on an internet service I'm paying $70 a month for I'll have the shit taken out that day and call AT&T. Out of curiosity, does anyone know offhand how much faster the U-Verse fiber optic is than the Roadrunner Turbo service?

And yeah - 250 gig a month sounds like a lot now to most people, but it really isn't - and it'll be shit in a few years. The size and quality of video files has been growing steadily in 2003-ish a top of the line SVCD mpeg encode of Band of Brothers was around 800meg. As of a couple years ago, a 720p MKV file of the same episode is double that. Following the curve, in 3 or f4 more years a 40 minute TV show that will show in good quality is going to be 4-5 gigs.

How much of a problem is this for people that are not dirty pirates?  :why_so_serious:

HD versions of BSG episodes are coming in at about 2G. Now that's a bit above my needs (downloaded via BT and streamed to the 360 with TVersity), but it's getting there already.


x264 fansubs of Macross Frontier are 350MB/week and that's only for one half-hour show.

Add on-demand stuff like Hulu, Netflix, and HD video podcasts on three computers and a handful of set-top boxes and you're using a lot of bandwidth for purely legal activities.

That said, I fully expect to get reamed with unlimited data plans ala AT&T/iPhone before long.

Bob - I've got U-verse in Arlington, and am getting 5.6Mbs down and a hair shy of 1Mbs up.  A bit dissapointing really, they had promised it would be much faster, but so far all of the shit they promised when we signed up over a year ago still hasn't happened.

They were supposed to have their networked DVR shit out in january, and as such will only give you 1 DVR box, because "it's coming real soon now".

They also promised that they would be upping the speed to 30Mbs down in January or February too, heh.

Sooo.. it spreads...


Starting in November, AT&T will limit downloads to 20 gigabytes per month for users of their slowest DSL service, at 768 kilobits per second. The limit increases with the speed of the plan, up to 150 gigabytes per month at the 10 megabits-per-second level.

To exceed the limits, subscribers would need to download constantly at maximum speeds for more than 42 hours, depending on the tier. In practice, use of e-mail and the Web wouldn't take a subscriber anywhere near the limit, but streaming video services like the one Netflix Inc. (NFLX) offers could. For example, subscribers who get downloads of 3 megabits per second have a monthly cap of 60 gigabytes, which allows for the download of about 30 DVD-quality movies.

The limits will initially apply to new customers in the Reno area, AT&T said. Current users will be enrolled if they exceed 150 gigabytes in a month, regardless of their connection speed.

"This is a preliminary step to find the right model to address this trend," Coe said. The company may add another market to the test before the end of the year, he said.

Customers will be able to track their usage on an AT&T Web site. The company will also contact people who reach 80 percent of their limit. After a grace period to get subscribers acquainted with the system, those who exceed their allotment will pay $1 per gigabyte, Coe said.

Well, balls.  And I was about to sign up for AT&T DSL.  Time to investigate alternatives.

This does not bode well for my house. I think we have 1.5mbs so our limit, if it rolls out here, will probably be around 40gb. The four of us here can rack that up in no time. Piss.

I downloaded 22GB of things just yesterday....

I can tell you from experience that AT&T DSL sucks balls anyways.  Horrible speeds, and always disconnects/has outages.

I may have asked this before, and I can't remember if I got an answer.  Hell, I can't remember what I had for breakfast most of the time.  But how does how someone who downloads 250GB of data a month actually cost Comcast (or whomever) any more money than someone who downloads 5GB?  I realize electrical power comes into play somewhat, but I can't think of anything else it would cost more of (hardware?).  I mean, it's not like they have the proverbial hamster or child sweatshop laborers manufacturing 'bandwidth'. 

Or is merely a means to curb piracy (movies, games, etc)?

Please to be hearing laymans terms.  

Its a pretty slippery slope but I'm still kinda glad my ISP (http://www.eastlink.ca/internet/highspeed/index.asp) has chosen for the traffic shaping route (ellacoya (http://www.arbornetworks.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1466&Itemid=693) deep packet inspection). It really can clam you down as it can track down any sessions related to the initial setup of the P2P session (the initial check in with say a tracker) and grab the tracker related information and restrict that flow down to like 50KB/s outbound.

They use to have a bandwidth cap of 20Gbyte/month in 1998, then went unrestricted in 2002(issuing warnings to high bandwidth users) then in 2004 started using shaping tools. As of right now the product they use is amazingly accurate and reliable to sniff out traffic. Still I have access to 15Mbit/s downstream that you can get close to it various sources but I expect them to wise up sooner or later. Other standard things here are common server ports are blocked (25 inbound/25 out except to their relay host/smb ports/etc), the real downside is a limit of ~200 concurrent connections which is probably to keep the ellacoya from having a meltdown.

Not bad for $50USD.

How's FIOS in the states? And either Comcast/AT&T filter your ports?


Indeed, you can really hit caps very quick with delivery of digital media now and I really worry for the people that have unpatched computer systems.

I don't think its an actual direct cost *but* it basically it boils down to overselling access and limiting the companies concurrent subscribers. So in effect the person could be costing company XYZ  49 * subscriber fee.

At the end user level in a neighborhood if someone is consuming all the bandwidth from a substation to the companies central office users will complain resulting in staff time and cost to increase the infrastructure in that area. This can be reflected in the companies backbone access where multiple subscribers can be consuming more bandwidth then allotted for.

And my AT&T DSL (originally Pacific Bell DSL, then SBC DSL) connection in the SF Bay Area (where Samwise also lives) has been excellent. The first year or so the DNS was kind of shaky back when it was Pacific Bell and they were new the consumer DSL business but after that it's been great. My Comcast connection has gone down more times in the last month than my DSL connection would go down in a full year.

It really is situational, depending on where you live.  I rarely have problems with my Comcast connection.

Exactly.