| reply to Rob
Re: Thanks Comcast! While I agree that there are people that are abusing the service, I think there is a greater problem. Yes, certainly, right now those that use 200+ gigs of traffic per month could likely be pirates and those that are should be penalized for excessive usage.
However, I see a bigger problem developing. The Internet in general is shifting focus from pure information delivery to content delivery more and more. Video and audio downloads and streaming are becoming more popular and more mainstream. Online gaming is extremely popular.
At my apartment, there are 5 people constantly online. Since I setup the network, I know there is no pirated content being downloaded. Every file is legit and even so, we manage to use about 30-35 gigs per month.
Between 3 adults who all have different taste in video podcasts & music. Songs are pulled from iTunes or Yahoo Music. Two of us play World of Warcraft actively. The third adult is an active eBay power seller and is constantly uploading pictures of items which can use a surprising amount of bandwidth. Of course, there's also the seeming addiction to YouTube and other similar sites.
The point I'm driving at is that the amount of traffic that can be generated just by legitimate use is already pretty high in a multi-user home and is just going to get higher as time goes by. The policies and caps that ISPs are currently using do not line up with the increasing amount of bandwidth usage, and I have no doubt that they will continue to fail to do so. |
