Are You Under The Thumb Of A Bandwidth Restriction?

by Rich Menga on Oct 30, 2009 | 14 comments

Bandwidth restriction by the ISP directly is something most U.S. users don’t have to deal with – yet. But other countries have had to deal with monthly bandwidth limitations more or less since broadband was first introduced in their part of the world.

Here in the U.S., Comcast is gunning to impose monthly data restrictions widely, however there’s a problem and a huge one at that. There’s no way for the customer to check what they’ve used. This is like having a car without a fuel gauge or a cell phone without a battery life indicator. Comical? Yes.

Here are some things that are even more comical.

If you use any online banking at all, every time you login to whatever system you use, you’re blasted to “go paperless.” The supposed benefits are that it saves trees. Not true. All it does is save the bank the cost of mailing a bill to you. Regardless of that, what’s the point of going paperless if it puts a draw on your monthly bandwidth restriction that would potentially cost you more?

Want a better example? No problem.

Video web sites like YouTube and Hulu tell everybody that you should watch them instead of regular television. So let’s say you do. Do you have any idea how much draw all that video Flash content has? Quite a bit.

And the best example of all:

Our own President want to make sure that the entire nation has a minimum 10 megabit connectivity speed for all broadband connections. This is a good idea. But then all this means is that you’ll tap your bandwidth limit faster, so it serves no benefit.

It could be that our very own ISPs make this massive speed-increase effort by our own government to drop like a brick by widely imposing bandwidth restrictions. They have a saying in the military to describe this scenario: “Hurry up and wait.”

Do you have a monthly bandwidth limit where you are?

If you do, do you have some sort or metering program that tells you what you’ve used? If so, great! Comcast doesn’t.

Have you found your bandwidth restriction to get in the way of doing things you want to do on the internet?

Let us know by posting a comment.

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John McCloskey
I am limited in the speed that I can upload or download by At&t every day.
My maximum download speed is 100 megabits and the maximum upload speed is 37 megabits which frustrates me to no end. I pay At&t $32 a month for Pro Internet services, but why am I limited in how fast I can get data, which slows down my downloads to days for a gig of music?
Aaron Fournier
Comcast’s bandwidth have already been imposed for a little over a year now. At least it’s 250GB. It’s not really a number I see me or the rest of my family going over. As a Comcast customer I would really appreciate a meter though.
http://www.diy-computer-repair.com Monte
Holly Dial-up! Batman!
I have a meter that is about 7 years old, DU Meter, don’t know if it is still available. Bought it back in the Dial Up days when USWest.net was giving me problems with my dial up. Still works with XP, haven’t loaded it up on the Windows 7 side yet, not Mac compatable BTW.
I wonder why the Online Gaming community hasn’t jumped on this?
Yup remember that 56K (really 48K) dial up very well…
Cap and Trade comes to the Internet also???
LetFreedomReign
It’s not Cap and Trade, it’s Net Neutrality. The model will be for the ISPs to offer tiers of bandwidth and tiers of data, and to have services like Google, Bing, Hulu, YouTube, etc… begin to charge for the use of their services. They call that monetizing the sites. All this so the federal government can impose various degrees of taxes to use each service.
Net Neutrality wishes to imposes a VAT (value added tax) each time to do anything on the Internet. All commerce, all gaming, all Internet functionality is under the umbrella of Net Neutrality.
I recommend you do a little research and read the Bill, then go jump down your Representative’s and Senator’s throats. Because, with healthcare, cap and trade and net neutrality YOU will be taxed into oblivion. All this so you could have your smooth talking new president who wishes to impose his “social justice” and “redistribution” of your wealth to those who won’t get jobs and expect us to foot their bill for living in a free society.
Sorry, I digress, here is a great illustration of Net Neutrality and what you have to look forward to if it’s passed.
http://gizmodo.com/5391707/losing-net-neutrality-the-worst-case-scenario
http://www.bytehead.org/blog/ Bryan Price
Comcast here.
I suspect that I might bump the 250GB limit at times. Due to four different computers being used (not including the Palm TX’s, the DSi’s and other stuff that hits my AP, I run an open AP), without a meter from Comcast, I don’t have much of a clue. I suspect that my desktop is the biggest (ab)user (torrents, and I seed high), followed by my wife’s desktop (she does a boat load of streaming, even when I’ve already got the show downloaded and available for her to use), her work laptop (which is probably a low bandwith deal, mostly email), and then there’s the kids’ laptop, of which I haven’t any kind of clue as to how much bandwidth or P2P.
I’ve had thoughts of getting a (working) NNTP account. Not sure that I’ve got the bandwidth to play with, although I guess some of my torrenting would be replaced with binary news downloads, which by not seeding would be a help.
Comcast really needs to have a meter available. They were talking about it a year ago!
And I disagree with Aaron, I think Comcast’s caps have been in place for a lot longer. Dave Winer got kicked off the service because they said he was using too much, although they wouldn’t say what that limit was, nor would they say how much he had actually used (his estimate was about 450GB if I remember). It was getting to the point that if Comcast didn’t come out and say, somebody was going to come in and tell them to say, if not set that limit as well. At least Comcast is supposed to give out warning letters, and the 250GB cap is a minimum. I also find it odd that their Fancast service still counts against that cap.
bkilinski
Capping is a joke. Well, it is actually reality. Cable companies/ISPs (TWC/Comcast/Cox/etc…) know that television and entertainment is going to the internet. With people dropping cable for internet TV (as I did six months ago), a large spike in internet usage is possible. these companies need to keep making money somehow. If we the people allow for this to happen, who’s going to be able to stop them from tightening their stranglehold on us??? It is a crock of s#!$. I understand that companies need to make money, but this is lame. These types of actions will only hinder the power and freedom of the internet as an educational/entertainment medium. Please take action locally to ensure the caps can not be imposed in your area if it is not already too late.
David K.
This was one of the reasons I switched from cable to DSL earlier this year. TWC is working on imposing a limit, and when you go over they want to charge you per MB or whatever. Just like your cell phone. I’m sure if they get it without mobs with pitchforks and torches coming down, then it’ll hit DSL next. But at least I have some time.
What a scam. I understand very high bandwidth usage can be trouble. But for the most part it doesn’t cost them one dime more for the more bandwidth you use. Greed gone wild, pure and simple.
David M
You can bet these ISP’s would not be considering this if they had true competition. What if everyone in the US had 4 or 5 ISP’s to choose from? You can bet this would not be happening. As in most cases, true competition will bring the best for the least to the consumer. This is the real solution to the problem, not the taxpayers sinking even more of their hard earned money into a government plan to increase bandwidth for everyone. The government could save the taxpayers billons by assuring that all US consumers will have a choice of IPS’s to choose from.
The talk now is of providing high definition streaming over the internet. It’s not going to happen if all we will be able to download are a few high definition movies per month.
Larry Thompson
http://www.shaHere In British Columbia I Use Shaw , with there system the more you pay the more you get I currently use Shaw High speed and it works just fine for me . Check it out here http://www.shaw.ca/en-ca/ProductsServices/Internet/
draceena
Here in Canada, Rogers has placed a monthly cap and provided no way to check it realtime, instead you have to login their website (using some of that precious bandwidth). Thankfully I heard about a great, free, program (that works on XP and Windows 7) called NetWorx. It not only show the current upload/download speeds, you can set a Quota (max limit of download) and have it alert you when you get to within a user set percentage of maximum. It also can be set to ignore Local Traffic if you are on a Lan.
perkster
in the uk, some isps impose limits on bandwidth, but they are cheaper plans usually for low use people. however almost all isps have a fair use policy on their unlimited plans which they can ue against the worst bandwidth hogs
http://www.mts-designs.com John Bent
Many Isp’s impose bandwidth limit which unfair for users, after charging prices they should provide unlimited. but limited bandwidth plans are cheaper ones.
http://www.opensourceresource.com.au Gareth Evans
I have a bandwidth limit here in Australia. Since I live in a rural area, I have 5GB of bandwidth per month whereas I get 8mb p/s downloads and 384kb p/s uploads. Thankfully, my ISP (Bigpond) have their own Unmetered Files archive where I can download what I want without using any bandwidth.
After I use up my 5GB, I get capped down to 64kb p/s. It’s not a good thing to have. Fight against the bandwidth limitation, it’s terrible!
John
I just suffered from comcast 250 gig monthly limit. Last month I had my computer crash. I had all of my files backed up online and I downloaded them all again. Unfortunately I was oblivious to the 250 gig limit imposed and I downloaded all of my 450 gigs worth of files. They shut down my service today, and when I call a “customer service” rep they said I had violated my agreement and asked me why I was using so much bandwidth that month. Then they threatened me and said if it happens again, I will have my account banned for a year. I asked about a monitoring software that I could better track it, and they told me to I need to find my own with no recommendations. Once again Comcast shows it’s true colors with it’s customer service. Well done.