Cable Internet Account Suspended

[Staples]

The only way you could do it is to set up a computer as a router. With all traffic going through it, you can easily monitor the amount of bandwidth with the right software. Dedicated home routers have very small OS and they are not capible of much at all.

 

[BigJ]

Originally posted by: Staples
The only way you could do it is to set up a computer as a router. With all traffic going through it, you can easily monitor the amount of bandwidth with the right software. Dedicated home routers have very small OS and they are not capible of much at all.

Or if you're using a single computer, just download Bandwidth Monitor software onto it.

 

[undeclared]

erm.. just one simple comment without reading 200 posts

My local cable is like this:
$52 / month - 5.1 mbit, 20 gb/month download 10gb/month upload per month
$75 / month - 10 mbit, unlimited

I pay for unlimited. I do 200-300 gigs a month, and don't hear a peep.

Furthermore, the assumption that it has to be illegal is just wrong. This b/w is not being used illegally, I actually need to use it for my work.

 

[blckgrffn]

Originally posted by: BigJ

Originally posted by: blckgrffn

Originally posted by: Pepsi90919

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: ultimatebob
I think that spidey is a network admin, so you know damn well that he's going to take the ISP's side.

Anyway... If the service agreement for your ISP doesn't have any bandwidth limits listed in writing, you just might have grounds for a small claims court case against them. Just keep in mind that they might have logs of what you downloaded, so I wouldn't be going to court if they can show a history of you downloading 50 GB worth of donkey pr0n last month

For the record I am a network/security architect consultant that builds and designs network communication systems and have been doing so for the last 13 years. Please don't call me an admin.

The point is 30 bucks only gets you so much with this ISP and if you want more you have to pay for it. Networks are very expensive on the operations/expense side (the gear is a small portion of the cost with most of the cost ongoing expense and maintenance). What that means is even though the network is built out it costs even more money to operate it.

I'll say again that 50 GB a month is a large amount of traffic and businesses with thousands of employees hardly move that much a month.

If you want more, then pay for it.

With guys like this as Commanders of the Internets, it's no wonder the U.S. is falling fast.

DOWN WITH CAPITALISM!!

The point is, we already pay a ton, and we don't get the equivalent of what other countries get. Capitalism has nothing to do with it, more like our government in bed with the telecoms, but that is a discussion for another day and another forum.

And what makes you think we won't see higher quality movie downloads online? I mean, other parts of the world can handle the higher service, so they will obviously progress in quality. Are we to be punished because the telecoms haven't provided much in the way in infrastructure lately, and what they do have sits dark?

Google may be our next evil overlord, but perhaps they will have the fundage to bring all that fiber online.

Nat

Population Density.

That's why we don't get the speeds that other countries do.

This is a factor, but don't you think the richest country (and the least afraid of debt ) could do a little better? I can think of one good reason we don't, and that it because telecoms don't want to risk their profit margin to improve their infrastructure. Poor government mandated monopolies, I feel so sorry for you...

I admit that it just bothers me a bit that we lag behind in this respect.

Nat

 

[Topplayer]

i got a warning from cable vison

 

[d94]

******
we got 6mb commercial cable
ford pays $200/month for us to have that ******
me and my dad probably dl between 2-400gb worth of stuff monthly
and hell yes its ALL pirated

 

[NickelTitanium]

Stop being a lil bitch. Move out and handle your business

 

[Blazin Trav]

Verizon DSL 3mbps/768k up for $22-30 per month... get that and ditch Comcast.

 

[Eeezee]

Originally posted by: Pepsi90919

DOWN WITH BUREUCRATIC BULLSHIT!!

fixed

 

[DayLaPaul]

Already spent way too much time reading the rant so I'm not going to bother to read all the replies, but here's my Sherlock 101.

The 3 letters were indeed sent, but under your dad's name, just as the cable bill. You're used to receiving said cable bill, so you know what it looks like and catch it every month, but chances are good that the warning letters would look totally different and could have easily blended in with his other mail. You mentioned a divorce. Most divorces end sour. If I were a betting man, I'd bet that your mom tossed them out like she does with all his other mail.

 

[roguerower]

That sucks. Good post though, well worth the read. I liked the part where they "informed" you that there was a bandwidth limit and you asked if it was stated anywhere and they just decided to turn your internet back on really quickly.

At my college, the bandwidth limitation per day is somewhere like 700-800mb and I usually get a bandwidth limitation every week.

 

[Pepsi90919]

Originally posted by: Eeezee

Originally posted by: Pepsi90919

DOWN WITH BUREUCRATIC BULLSHIT!!

fixed

i wouldn't spell bureaucratic wrong.

 

[CTho9305]

50 GB per month really isn't that much. I have a few images (more) on my site that people like to use as webpage backgrounds, and I was uploading ~60GB per month for my web site alone until I started blocking referers from myspace, livejournal, xanga, and a couple auction sites. Apache alone used over 16GB a couple months ago (more recent stats won't be useful, because my PC wasn't reliably online between graduation and a couple weeks ago, so Google dropped my page ranks for having my server unavailable - it used to be that if you searched Google for "background", one of the 3 image suggestions was from my site).

If my ISP set some limit without fair warning and gave me support like VenomXTF got, I'd probably monitor my monthly usage and make sure I came within 1MB of it every month. I understand that they all oversell their bandwidth, but if they want to advertise blazing speeds and media and music downloads, it's their problem when they can't actually afford the bandwidth to support media downloads.

Some of the more popular files recently, bandwidth-wise:

4.8GB ;"/tmp/rain-night0.jpg"
4.7GB;"/phil/The Art of Squirrel Fishing.wmv"
4.1GB;"/tmp/122_2236.AVI"
2.8GB;"/tmp/RussellPeters-Accents.wmv"
2.6GB;"/3ds/taliban-duck-512.wmv"
1.6GB;"/pics/cool/cst not cube.jpg"
1.1GB;"/3ds/taliban-duck.wmv"
0.9GB;"/pics/funny/Doughboy.jpg"

 

[EyeMWing]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: VenomXTF
Nice of you to jump the gun Spidey. The letter was not for illegal content, none of which was downloaded.

Cliffs:
Internet gets shut off one day.
Next day tech comes up and removes blocker. Internet still not working.
Call again, get forwarded to 10 different departments/people none of which help.
The internet was shut off for using too much bandwidth. Three letters were supposebly sent, all of which the "post office lost."
After 4 hours on the phone, a manager turns it back on, tells me there is a 50GB limit and it's still the fualt of the post office.
The next day the internet finally works.

Sorry.

50 GB a month is definately abuse. Many large business with a DS3 don't move that much.

Don't want to get shut off? Pay for a higher service.

Many large businesses with DS3's don't NEED DS3's and simply have IT departments run by total smacktards (like you). This ROOM moves 74gb/DAY according to the router stats (after filtering out stuff sent to/from our own IP blocks). There are 5 more just like it in this building, and 3 buildings just like this on the site. And that's only workstations for a few hundred people.

Also, look at traffic stats for your own home network. You'd be surprised how much you use.

If the limitation was not stated in the contract, it doesn't exist, and thereby isn't abuse.

 

[VenomXTF]

Originally posted by: DayLaPaul
Already spent way too much time reading the rant so I'm not going to bother to read all the replies, but here's my Sherlock 101.

The 3 letters were indeed sent, but under your dad's name, just as the cable bill. You're used to receiving said cable bill, so you know what it looks like and catch it every month, but chances are good that the warning letters would look totally different and could have easily blended in with his other mail. You mentioned a divorce. Most divorces end sour. If I were a betting man, I'd bet that your mom tossed them out like she does with all his other mail.

Are you serious? Good thing you're not a betting man. I won't get into personal details, but I will tell you that none of the mail gets thrown out before it's opened. You really think some people are that stupid?

Originally posted by: NickelTitanium
Stop being a lil bitch. Move out and handle your business

And you know everything about me, my family, and my living situation? I could make you look like an asshat right now, but it has nothing to do with this thread.

I do not live here permanently though.

 

[Philippine Mango]

How do you figure out your bandwidth usage? I don't see this anywhere on my ISP's website..

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: EyeMWing

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: VenomXTF
Nice of you to jump the gun Spidey. The letter was not for illegal content, none of which was downloaded.

Cliffs:
Internet gets shut off one day.
Next day tech comes up and removes blocker. Internet still not working.
Call again, get forwarded to 10 different departments/people none of which help.
The internet was shut off for using too much bandwidth. Three letters were supposebly sent, all of which the "post office lost."
After 4 hours on the phone, a manager turns it back on, tells me there is a 50GB limit and it's still the fualt of the post office.
The next day the internet finally works.

Sorry.

50 GB a month is definately abuse. Many large business with a DS3 don't move that much.

Don't want to get shut off? Pay for a higher service.

Many large businesses with DS3's don't NEED DS3's and simply have IT departments run by total smacktards (like you). This ROOM moves 74gb/DAY according to the router stats (after filtering out stuff sent to/from our own IP blocks). There are 5 more just like it in this building, and 3 buildings just like this on the site. And that's only workstations for a few hundred people.

Also, look at traffic stats for your own home network. You'd be surprised how much you use.

If the limitation was not stated in the contract, it doesn't exist, and thereby isn't abuse.

Go get em.

People like him make it that bandwidth is OK for the rest of the world but god forbid Joe Blow American citizen use any bandwidth.

If he does, make him pay till he bleeds.

 

[Josh7289]

I also have that ProLog Express BS for my cable connection (which is a one-way cable connection, mind you), but through Service Electric Cable TV & Communications in Milford, NJ. Throughout my time with this connection since June 2005, I have had nothing but problems. Because I don't feel like typing all of it again, I'll just summarize. Basically, the modem woudl always kick off the Internet from 5:00 PM until the morning the next day, every day. It took them about two months to replace our modem, which worked for about a week until they had to replace the modem once more, with an even older model (mind you, the "new" ones were from 1999). This actually worked for about six months, but them gave us similar problems of not being able to keep a stable connection. Basically, it took until about another month for them to actually come to my house and play around with their wiring until they got it to work. And since then, it has mostly been working.

Recently, I had another tech come to my house to explain our crappy cable TV feed (like it always is), and he just gave us the same mantra -- they're working on it. I don't know how much of this is the truth, but apparently they are installing digital simulcasts for every channel, then we will get HDTV and two-way cable Internet. However, we were supposed to get two-way back in 2001. Oh, and throughout all this, both ProLog and Service Electric lied to us over the phone, never called us back when they said they would, and whenever we called supervisors, we would get his/her voicemail and never a returned call. Basically, these companies absolutely suck and if it were possible, I would completely cleanse myself of them and get Verizon for Internet and TV (IPTV w00t), but alas, giving us DSL and whatnot might hurt their bottom line, so here we are, stuck using seven+ year old modems and ancient unreliable cable and phone lines for Internet access, waiting for the promised day of getting technologies that are now five years old at least.

I understand your pain, VenomXTF.

 

[Shava]

Ok this is to all you idiots that think "50gb is def. abuse" Its not even close. I see 200gb possibly as abuse and even then, was it anywhere in your TOS. Apparently not so you could use 9999999999999gb and then when they shut off your net sue them.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: Shava
Ok this is to all you idiots that think "50gb is def. abuse" Its not even close. I see 200gb possibly as abuse and even then, was it anywhere in your TOS. Apparently not so you could use 9999999999999gb and then when they shut off your net sue them.

LOL.

Read the aup.

Can shut you down for any reason, at any time.

That's the "out"

 

[thescreensavers]

Switch to DSL thats it.

 

[Josh7289]

Originally posted by: thescreensavers
Switch to DSL thats it.

Can you read? He can't get DSL, like me, but if he (we, actually) could, there is no doubt in my mind that both of us would get it right away. I ****ing hate cable companies more than telecoms...

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: Shava
Ok this is to all you idiots that think "50gb is def. abuse" Its not even close. I see 200gb possibly as abuse and even then, was it anywhere in your TOS. Apparently not so you could use 9999999999999gb and then when they shut off your net sue them.

LOL.

Read the aup.

Can shut you down for any reason, at any time.

That's the "out"

Yep, that's great for the lowly peon U.S. citizens.

Just shut em down, even if they are paying up the ying yang for subpar Internets and only if you live close to where the Monopolies feel like installing it.

 

[evilbix]

I think it's unreasonable from an end-user perspective. Unfortunately, it's idiotic to let you use that kind of bandwidth from their point of view. These companies don't care about the 5% if you are providing them with 90% of their expenses in terms of bandwidth. I know I would block your service in a heartbeat if I were to make the decision. I would also be just as mad as you are to have my service turned off if I were downloading too much and, didn't know about any limits.

IMO no one is going to win on this issue. Just get a higher tier of service and hope it doesn't happen again.

 

[Josh7289]

Originally posted by: evilbix
I think it's unreasonable from an end-user perspective. Unfortunately, it's idiotic to let you use that kind of bandwidth from their point of view. These companies don't care about the 5% if you are providing them with 90% of their expenses in terms of bandwidth. I know I would block your service in a heartbeat if I were to make the decision. I would also be just as mad as you are to have my service turned off if I were downloading too much and, didn't know about any limits.

IMO no one is going to win on this issue. Just get a higher tier of service and hope it doesn't happen again.

Ah, human greed at its finest...No offense to you, but that is the mentality of both parties, although the ISP is not at all justified in its actions, while the end-user was never told about these limits, or at least wasn't notified when he was using too much bandwidth.