ISP - Bandwidth Limits

Providers of your internet want to limit the amount of data you can download each month, they wish to introduce variable pricing which would charge you if you went over your subscriptions aloted amount. What do you Sci-Forumers think of this? Comcast currently has a 200GB limit I believe.... so are you willing to take this idea or will you just switch over if it ever did happen?

 

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Providers of my internet normally limit downloads.
What's your point?

 

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If everyone had unlimited bandwidth and data the the system would come to a complete stop. The Internet is not supported by governments but by corporations. They don't exist without profit, you don't make profit without cost effective products...

It cost billions of dollars to create the infrastructure to support the Internet.

I did not vote as the option i want is not there.
"You get what you pay for." and all the lazy poor Internet porn junkies should get off their pompous asses and start contributing to society rather then constantly take take take.

 

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my internet just slows down in the unlikly event i hit the download limit so what difference does it make?

 

To the best of my knowledge, it's only ISP cable companies (like Comcast) that are really involved in this. It's because they haven't provided extra capacity (additional parallel cables) and have to share the total banswidth available with ALL their subscribers as well as TV channels (some of which aren't worth having in the first place).

The other major players - like AT&T, Verison, etc. don't seem too concerned since they have enough current capacity already and are busy expanding it while in their present construction phase of placing fiber directly to homes in order to deliver TV service, phone and Internet access over a single connection.

Edit: I didn't vote because the choices are incomplete.

 

ISP's try to use the cheapest method to deliver people their connection to the internet. This means that people have to share equipment usage by way of a Contention Ratio. This basically means if it's uncapped or unthrottled that unfairness can occur. The First people to connect during a day when little use is being had will be able to max out their bandwidth, while everybody else would have to deal with a diminished bandwidth which is likely to be unstable.

This was the case up until recently with VirginMedia in the UK. I pay for a 20Mbit connection, however most of the time I was getting less than the bandwidth of their cheapest tariff for a 2Mbit connection. I was being robbed my bandwidth by others in the same Contention range who were likely constantly torrenting and therefore never allowing me to regain my bandwidth.

They have since started "Throttling" and "capping". The Caps aren't a limit in the sense that they stop all communication, just when a cap is reached, the throttling is triggered for the day, where transfer speeds are greatly reduced.

Since then my speeds can occasionally hit the maximum they are suppose to and for the most part the speeds I get are "Fairer" for the amount I pay for the service I expected.

It really just hits those data whores that want to constantly download films, games, music from the net, as their pursuit of getting something for nothing was costing people like me. (I am no way near rich, in fact to be honest I struggle like most.)

 

I would not do it as I already get an amazing deal on my limitless internet.

 

200Gb is hardly a limit. 6.66Gb per day, you'd have to stream TV over 12 hours per day to reach that.

Who downloads 200Gb of useful data per month? Who downloads 200Gb of legal data each month? With films being a couple of Gb's, nobody has time to watch that many, nor play all the games they could download, nor listen to the music. 200Gb is not really a limit.

 

It wouldn't bother me nearly as much if they didn't advertise like this:

Get UNLIMITED* Internet for only $39.95/month!!!!!!!

*Connection may not actually be unlimited.

As long as it's advertised like that you might as well say 5% of people are actually using what they paid for, and the rest aren't.

 

It's the introduction, the 'easing in' to a concept This is the way things are done, make people comfortable with an idea over time, the old 'frog in boiling water' idea. One precedent becomes grounds for another...

This thing will be carried very far into a much larger and more insidious thing. I see it's working well on several in this thread.

http://www.savetheinternet.com/

 

But why? What kind of resources would it take to support unlimited bandwidth? Larger hard drives? There are already hard drives of 1.5 Terabyte.

 

If you are using cabel, it is might be in your advantage. With cabel more users slowing the average connection down, thus if you are just an average user but there are heavy users in your area, that effects your speed too.

 

No, pluto, it's the physical limitation of the transmission medium (wires or fiber). They are data links and you can think of them as you would highways. A two-lane highway can only carry a limited number of cars - same with a lower-class data link. A 12-lane highway can carry MANY more cars - same with a higher-speed data link.

The term "bandwidth" is a measurement of how many bytes of data can be carried per second. (It also equates to frequency and overhead, but that's another whole story in itself.)

 

Nice, easy to understand explanation, R.O.

I wonder if there are restrictions for bandwidth on wireless? I'm getting my internet as we speak off the EV wireless network.

edit: clarification: I meant both the restrictions ISP's put on, and also the physical limitations of BW by transmitting using RF. I imagine the carrier frequency used would have some upper limit.

 

Thanks, Mac.

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Yes, there certainly would be limitations due to the frequency involved. It's been a long time since I was involved in all the various modulation techniques but I believe the minimum ratio of of carrier freq to intelligence is around 7:1.

I don't know if the ISP limits bandwidth for each user per se, but there's sure a limit on what the system can carry. And I think most of times, that restriction is actually found in the links and repeaters used to carry the local traffic to the backbone and back. From what I've read (been quite a while, though) most hotspots are fed by a T-1 or DSL tier-1 and a few go as high as T-4 in Philly in the heaviest loaded areas.

 

That can also be something entirely different - like the result of the load on the server you're connected to or the size of it's datalink to the backbone.

 

What the fuck have large hard drives got to do with bandwidth? NOTHING.

Bandwidth is about the network infrastructure that your ISP invest in, be it copper, or fibre optic. Copper has reached it's limits, the other option is fibre optic cabling for higher bandwidth, and that means re-investing, laying new cables, digging up the roads again, etc etc, and that is all cost. Cost to the company, and that gets passed on to the customer of course.

Do you really need more? I doubt many do, so limits and caps are to be expected, so the majority don't get shafted by the guy running his illegal DVD download shop from the server in his bedroom, sapping all the local POP's bandwidth.

 

In the UK, you can get a wireless Internet over the mobile phone 3G network. Cost is quite reasonable, at £15 a month, but the data xfer is capped at 3Gb per month. Fine for web browsing and emails, but not really enough to replace my wired connection, although almost cheap enough as a casual add-on for when I travel.

Other options are 'The Cloud' at £10 a month, giving access to a bunch of WiFi hotspots at various locations, but I can't find any cap info, other than
'9.5 You must not use the Service:
- to make high volume data transfers, especially sustained high volume data transfers;' which is a bit vague.

 

In the US ISP's (particularly Bell) promised to expand their fiber optic network if individual states lifted restrictions on their profits, allowing them to charge more for phone services so they could re-invest that money into their internet networks. A few years and almost $200 billion later we've got hardly any fibre optic in the last mile. They took the money and ran (and then kept taking the money). Fibre optic has been around for over 20 years, where is it?

In Japan 100mbps is standard. In Korea it's even higher. In Germany you can get 16mbps with VOIP for 20 EUR a month. Sweden, Norway, Iceland, France... they all offer over 16mbps on average.

You might think it's only a problem for people 'running illegal DVD download shops' now, but with more and more companies setting up streaming video services it's going to be everyone's problem soon enough.