I don’t think anyone is disputing that some people are incredible bandwidth hogs and degrade service for others, and it would be appropriate to limit their use. All I ask is that if someone can have service terminated for excessive use, that they be informed of precisely how much they can use before such termination applies.
This happened to me not long after I signed up. I called Comcast and they told it was “localized server problems” - whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. Within a few hours, it was back on.
It’s only happened a few times since and never for longer than an hour or so.
I’ve had similar problems (with Adelphia), and once a service tech replaced the main cable-spliter in my home; it probably helped. Perhaps you could replace this yourself? I can’t say how to find it, though, it was behind one of my cable coax jacks. The service tech guy knew where it was from servicing other townhomes with the same setup as mine.
They just do on most things. Anything that’s essential (phones, internet, and the like), a business MUST have. No real debate involved.
People, of course, can get away without it.
My workplace has Time-Warner cable servce. 1 meg up, 1 meg down. One static IP address. $200 a month.
My home has Time-Warner cable service. Guaranteed around 1.5meg down, 384k up. $44.99 a month.
Of course, my real home speed is more like 1.9meg a month when I’m hitting TWC’s Usenet servers, which is my usual.
Been running Newsbin pro (Imagine that, I actually paid for some shareware) pretty much day and night for damn near 19 months now. I pull down something like 10GB a day. Pretty much the only time I stop it is when I need bandwidth uninterupted, such as when I’m playing an online game and don’t want to be handicapped. 80% of it is discarded as soon as I see what’s been downloaded, but that’s life.
So, I’m one of the Evil Downloaders that may or may not be responsible for crap like this from Comcast.
And guess what?
I’ll actually start feeling bad for Comcast when they start refunding money to people like my mom (who is on Comcast) who use it for little more than e-mail. After all, if they’re penalizing people for overages, shouldn’t they reward people for coming in below the mark?
-Joe, Evil Downloader™
Yeah… but.
I guess I think of it this way. It’s like looking at Montana and how they handled the ‘Safe and Reasonable’ speed limit issue of a few years back. After saying screw it to everyone around them, they essentially said, ‘Whatever speed you want to go, so long as it’s safe, is fine with us’. Kind of a kick-ass way of thinking, if you ask me. Everyone ran around and started driving… what, seventy-eighty miles an hour, with a few getting into the nineties and maybe a hundred or two?
For the most part, that seemed to work.
But eventually you had people streaming into the state simply to take advantage of a rather lax law, and drive like a bat out of hell whenever and wherever.
That’s not so good.
You’ve got ninety percent of the state driving between seventy and ninety on the interstate and a few bozo’s driving a hundred and fifty and higher… all over the state.
At that point you gotta do something. I mean, you got people seriously endangering those around them by driving way too fast yet when stopped would say, ‘Hey, it was safe and reasonable for me!’
In that case you’ve got to say ‘Well yeah, but…’ and somehow slow them down a bit. Right?
As it turns out, and if I remember it all correctly, the state eventually caved and set standard set limits throughout the state again… all because a few bozo’s ruined it for everyone.
Kinda sad, actually.
And given that, that I think this guys usage was way out of hand, I tend to side with Comcast who says, ‘Yeah it’s unlimited, but…’.
ntl did this in the UK; they ‘limited’ the downloads of every user to 1 GB per day, but AFAIK it was never actually enforced (we ignored this threat completley and continued d/loading 3-4 Gig per day).
They got around all the legal worries but having in the contract something like ‘users must make themselves aware of all changes to policy’.
You know, that whole analogy thing is kinda fun.
Say Austin Power’s Fat Bastard walked into an all-you-can-eat seafood restaurant and ate the place out of food in one sitting. And imagine him doing this day after day. Twenty-four seven.
Would you be on the side of the restaurant that would say, ‘Well yeah it’s all you can eat, but Jesus!’
If the guy is so far and above the average user, then it’s a simple matter to state a limit way above the average user but well below this guy. I can’t believe people support a company that says “you have lower your usage or we’ll cut you off, but we’re not saying by how much.”
So they should tell Fat Bastard “If you don’t eat less we’ll kick you out, but we can’t tell you how much less”?
Or maybe it’s like Chewbacca going to a Holographic Monster Chess tournament, and everyone knows how it has to be. But then Chewie challenges everyone at the same time, and won’t let anyone play with anyone but him, and when he wins a game he starts a new one, so that no one ever gets to play a game where they can win.
Would you be on the side that says, “Sure, we’re supposed to let the Wookie win, but for God’s sake!”
Or maybe it’s like Spock playing 3D chess, and… Ah, I got nothing.
If I recall the article correctly, it mentions something like 5% of the users are using 70% of the bandwidth. I don’t recall the exact numbers, but it is close to that. Wow! I can see the need to cap certain users who cause this, but they really should be clear about it. I hate Comcast anyway because of service issues. I’ve taken time off from work to meet them only to have no one show more than once.
One of my posts got eaten.
Dammit.
At any rate…
Bushido, good work! Revtim, well, don’t lose hope.
And Revtim, regarding your ‘so they should tell Fat Bastard "If you don’t eat less we’ll kick you out, but we can’t tell you how much less’”?
Yeah. Basically.
I mean, what’s the point of telling him the limit, especially since no one but him ever goes above it? The majority may be eating one or two entrees tops, with the occasional four entrée goofball, but no one approaches Fat Bastards fifteen entrees. What’s the point of putting in a set and hard limit that’s only meant to exclude his huge excess?
But OK, just to argue along. Say they do say, ‘Well alright, the limit is six entrees per person, per visit’. Now everyone and their brother are going to find ways to get to that limit, or at least encourage others to get there themselves. You’re kind of encouraging it, in a way. Or so I think. You’ve created all kinds of bureaucracy that you have to deal with simply to get rid of an egregious abuser. An abuser, who like the guy dealing with Comcast, knows damn well that’s he’s eating up a hell of a lot of resources.
I mean seriously, 200-300 Gigs a month? That’s unreal.
And to tie into this comment…
The number I saw getting tossed around was the top 1% use 68% of the bandwidth, with people like the topic of this thread, and Comcast’s ire, compiling to upper part of that one percent.
Or put simply, this guy is the worst of the worst bandwidth hog.
Charge him accordingly, or boot ‘em.
CnoteChris,
“What’s the point of putting in a set and hard limit that’s only meant to exclude his huge excess?” You answered your own question; the point is the exclude his huge excess that they lose money on.
Not the mention the slightly logical practice of avoiding this ridiculous “If you don’t lower your usage we’ll drop you, but we can’t tell you how low” practice. I doubt many would consider it a good business practice to assume your clients are psychic.
You say “Charge him accordingly, or boot ‘em.” How is this to occur without actually setting defined bandwidths costs and limits?
And I don’t see how anyone could easily get around a bandwith limit. All the bits gotta go through the ISP’s network; and besides, if they already know how much bandwidth he’s using, it’s 90 percent in place already, isn’t it?
They should either define a limit, or drop it.
Fine Revtim. Go ahead. Be the person who says you can’t have ‘safe and reasonable’ speed limits because it leaves too much open for interpretation. Be the nag.
Or in this case, fully support Comcast adopting strict guidelines and rules and specific caps for bandwidth usage each month, per person. Because without it, well, you just don’t know, do you. You’d have to argue for the guy who wants to come in and abuse the hell out of it because it really just isn’t prohibited in the rules, is it?
Like the people that demanded signs in Montana, who couldn’t live without clearly defined and enforced rules, be the person who can’t handle, or reasonably think, without having everything black and white.
Personally, I kinda the open-ended thing. You can probably get away with more in the long run.
I can’t figure what the buga-boo is on a definite bandwidth limit is either. I’m a Comcast user at home and a). I’ve never had any trouble, outages or the like and b). I download tons of stuff.
There’s tons of stuff to download out there, as has been pointed out. I mean, that’s why you get the high speed line in the first place. If I were going to just send email and surf the web then less would do and I would be paying less.
But I’m paying a premium for high speed access because I’m going to be moving a ton of shit around. Plus I’m buying into their cable television service and if I had the need I’d buy into their long distance as well. Would they put a limit on how many phone calls I made or a limit on how much TV I watch?
I understand the costs involved in dishing out bandwidth but you think they would have taken all this into account. What it looks like to me is someone didn’t do they’re homework. They obviously miscalculated the costs.
I mean if the opportunity was there for someone to utilize the maximum bandwidth 24/7 then they should have thought of that and priced it accordingly. If they knew they couldn’t support it but went ahead and supplied it anyway, then I have no sympathy.
It’s not that I’m for limits, I’m just less for this idiotic “you must reduce your use but we can’t say how much” idiocy. Maybe it’s because I’m an engineer (or was one before I got laid off); we like stuff precise.
If they make a fine-print limit that’s well above most users use but well below these massive consumers, thats sounds like the least of all evils to me.
They do price it that way, for businesses. That’s why business accounts are so much more expensive. For home users, they have to assume a lower AVERAGE usage, with each user going to the max infrequently. Or they could just artificially reduce your bandwidth, so that every time you go on the net it’s slower.
If they cut out 5% of the top users (using 75% of the bandwith) they could add 3-4x as many customers to the same infrastructure. That’s a big cost savings for them and would trickle down to lower prices for you.
Ooh, analogies.
Fat Bastard comes in one day and cleans house. You tell him he’s eating way too much, and that he has to eat less. The next day, he comes in and eats everything but a chicken wing. That’s still too much. So he stops eating a leaf of lettuce. Obviously, he’s still eating too much.
EVENTUALLY, there must be a point at which you’re satisfied with the amount he’s eating, assuming you haven’t just banned him altogether. Voila, you’ve just set a precedent and a hard limit. It’s illogical to be vague on a limit and expect people to be satisfied with that.
The thing is Revtim, to him, the Comcast guy, it’s not idiotic because he knows what he’s doing. You cant download or upload close to 300 Gigs a month and not know you way around a computer, or know that your bandwidth usage is above and beyond. This guy’s running some serious shit and he knows exactly what it is their after. To him, it’d be like throttling back server six, of ten. Or something.
So it’s kinda stupid, in my opinion, to keep asking for the definitive limit when people like us, the true residencial user; that the plan is designed and priced out for, would probably be hurt most from that cap.
And BayleDomon… that’s kinda where the analogy falls apart, isn’t it.Well you’re right, if we were talking about Fat Bastard. But in this case we’re talking about Comcast.