DA
join:2002-04-13
Greenville, SC
 ·Charter Pipeline
 ·ViaTalk
| reply to DA
Re: So Charter is going to go to metered service huh?
I just did a test, I applied an ACL to the inside interface of my router denying everything except SSH to the inside interface. I connected to it and watched the traffic on the external interface and it showed a 5 minute average of 7 kbps. Some rough math shows that to be 600mb (~75MB) of traffic per day that I am not using... So around 2.2 gigs of traffic per month that isn't mine?
Something regarding my test has to be flawed, that seems too high to me... |
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UneedTinFoil
@charter.com
| reply to DA
said by DA  : Everything you quoted looks fine BUT it does not protect Charter against valid cases of fraud if the tools are incorrect. That was the point BF69 was making. Fraud? On who's behalf? Charter's? Read the language ..Charter's sole discretion. This means they don't need "prove" their tools are correct or incorrect. It's their discretion. And it's not too hard to monitor BW on a cable modem, in fact, there is nothing to it.
said by DA :Let me also ask this, how is Charter determining what is my use? For example if a remote PC (Not mine or under my control) starts hammering my box with requests attempting to infect it will I be billed for that? ISP's have tool sets for determining that too. Again, quite simple really. Not to mention, how does your example even fit? A remote PC is hammering your box? How could you even be billed for that? Network tools look at what your downloading. In other words, requests from your cable modes MAC and your PC's IP address. A DOS attack or malicious traffic is detected and dealt with at need be. So Charter would be able to tell if you were being attacked, or a heavy user.
btw - no worky for Charter here, just a docsis guy passing by |
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Lazlow
join:2006-08-07
Saint Louis, MO
| Uneed
I am not sure that charter can tell the difference between say encrypted BT upload and an attack. Upload bandwidth is upload bandwidth.
Charter will seldom do jack about an attack unless you scream at them.
Sikmaz
I would guess your numbers are about right and probably pretty average. I do not run any servers nor do I run Bt very often (2X per year for Fedora releases for 1 week each) yet I will see roughly a hundred different foreign ips attempting to access my machine per week (never tracked the bandwidth usage). If they count upload bandwidth this could become a real issue with the metered plan. |
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DA
join:2002-04-13
Greenville, SC
·Charter Pipeline
·ViaTalk
2 edits | reply to UneedTinFoil
said by UneedTinFoil :said by DA : Everything you quoted looks fine BUT it does not protect Charter against valid cases of fraud if the tools are incorrect. That was the point BF69 was making. Fraud? On who's behalf? Charter's? Read the language ..Charter's sole discretion. This means they don't need "prove" their tools are correct or incorrect. It's their discretion. And it's not too hard to monitor BW on a cable modem, in fact, there is nothing to it. said by DA :Let me also ask this, how is Charter determining what is my use? For example if a remote PC (Not mine or under my control) starts hammering my box with requests attempting to infect it will I be billed for that? ISP's have tool sets for determining that too. Again, quite simple really. Not to mention, how does your example even fit? A remote PC is hammering your box? How could you even be billed for that? Network tools look at what your downloading. In other words, requests from your cable modes MAC and your PC's IP address. A DOS attack or malicious traffic is detected and dealt with at need be. So Charter would be able to tell if you were being attacked, or a heavy user. btw - no worky for Charter here, just a docsis guy passing by There are two HUGE problems that you are ignoring:
1) As I stated Charter can say anything they want in the TOS, it cannot take precedence over whatever law is in place in that jurisdiction. So Charter can say: "We bill you whatever we want and you have no recourse" but that won't mean anything...
2) As Lazlow says, how is Charter going to easily determine what is legit traffic or not? I use SSH to remotely connect to my box at home, can Charter tell if that is legit or if it is some random script kiddy checking for weak passwords? Heck I see 400 attempts this month in my log all of which were immediately denied since I require my public key to connect. By Charters current TOS I shouldn't be billed for that. I think you misunderstand something, someone making unsolicited SSH connections to my box would be an INBOUND (ie a download) connection so Charter would have to charge it against my quota.
Also using the municipal services example doesn't work since those are HIGHLY regulated services that flow one-way on request. ISP don't want to be regulated and the traffic can often be uninitiated.
Obviously many countries have ISP's who do hard caps, so some have figured out how to do it successfully I just can't imagine that it is worth it....
So you trim out the top 5% who REALLY use up bandwidth, do they go after the next 5%, then the next 5%? Where do these companies draw the line? I work in the corporate world and I have seen decisions made by non-technical people and they can be baffling. I can picture some executives sitting around a table and saying "We got rid of that 5% who were costing us money, lets get rid of the next 5% until we are down to JUST the purely profitable ones". As a private company they have every right to do this, but is it smart over the long-term for a company to do this? I suspect it is not and I am saying that as an IT manager with a Finance degree not some kid who doesn't know what a ROI is... ISP's have operated successfully under the model of usage balanced over the entire userbase and changing it can't that big of a benefit.
Plus the bandwidth seems to be the cheapest part of the deal for Charter... DS-3's are NOT that expensive, it is their plant infrastructure and maintenance that costs so much. Saving bandwidth wouldn't seem to save that much money. |
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Lazlow
join:2006-08-07
Saint Louis, MO | Sikmaz
Do you think this entire metered issue could just be a smoke screen to draw attention away from other issues? Maybe bandwidth shaping ( this all came up from Time Warners "leaked memo"). |
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tzbear
join:2006-01-11
Eau Claire, WI
| reply to BF69
Would powering down the cable modem when not using the internet be a good idea if caps are in place to save on bandwidth? More bandwidth savings could be done by installing ad blocking and javascript blocking plugins in Firefox. Also, turn off all program update functions off in software packages including Windows Update. |
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BF69
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN
| reply to UneedTinFoil
said by UneedTinFoil :said by DA : Everything you quoted looks fine BUT it does not protect Charter against valid cases of fraud if the tools are incorrect. That was the point BF69 was making. Fraud? On who's behalf? Charter's? Read the language ..Charter's sole discretion. This means they don't need "prove" their tools are correct or incorrect. It's their discretion. And it's not too hard to monitor BW on a cable modem, in fact, there is nothing to it. Sorry but if Chater started capping and said "You get 40 GB a month and anything over that you pay extra" well then they sure as hell have to provide you with accurate data. It doesn't matter what their TOS says. TOS doesn't mean you can violate the law. If Charter had a TOS that says it's discount offers are for whites only is that enforceable? no. |
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DA
join:2002-04-13
Greenville, SC
·Charter Pipeline
·ViaTalk
| reply to Lazlow
said by Lazlow :Sikmaz Do you think this entire metered issue could just be a smoke screen to draw attention away from other issues? Maybe bandwidth shaping ( this all came up from Time Warners "leaked memo"). Possibly but more likely it is Group-think from a bunch of executives when they met at a conference. This happens in IT all the time at various executive conferences so it wouldn't surprise me that it happens in other areas as well. |
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san123
join:2007-11-22
Sanford, NC
·Charter Pipeline
| reply to BF69
During peak neighborhood usage, my 10 meg connection averages 2 meg. Metered service will be welcome here if I am billed for what Charters system is capable of delivering rather than an expensive set price unjustified by the actual service....BRING IT ON!!!! |
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DA
join:2002-04-13
Greenville, SC
·Charter Pipeline
·ViaTalk
| said by san123 :During peak neighborhood usage, my 10 meg connection averages 2 meg. Metered service will be welcome here if I am billed for what Charters system is capable of delivering rather than an expensive set price unjustified by the actual service....BRING IT ON!!!! What you will get will be a limit on how much you can transfer before you be billed an "overage" fee. So it is doubtful that it will solve your issue in the long-run. In the short-run it will likely discourage heavy usage but the userbase will continue to grow and will eventually cause saturation problems again. |
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forreal
@charter.com
| said by DA :What you will get will be a limit on how much you can transfer before you be billed an "overage" fee. So it is doubtful that it will solve your issue in the long-run. In the short-run it will likely discourage heavy usage but the userbase will continue to grow and will eventually cause saturation problems again. No offense, but you sound like a typical IT guy, not a network guy. |
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san123
join:2007-11-22
Sanford, NC | reply to BF69
Intent of the post was to point out the problem service level today. Bill me for the 2 meg service I receive now rather than expensive 10 meg I do not receive. |
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DA
join:2002-04-13
Greenville, SC
·Charter Pipeline
·ViaTalk
1 edit | reply to forreal
said by forreal :said by DA :What you will get will be a limit on how much you can transfer before you be billed an "overage" fee. So it is doubtful that it will solve your issue in the long-run. In the short-run it will likely discourage heavy usage but the userbase will continue to grow and will eventually cause saturation problems again. No offense, but you sound like a typical IT guy, not a network guy. None taken but (Not that certs matter much) I am a CCNP and JNCIS and have worked as a lead engineer for 3 Fortune 200 companies. Though I have been in management the past 18 months. I have never worked for an ISP though, always on the Enterprise side.
Lets be clear though, how is my logic incorrect? Adding a cap would certainly limit usage in the short-term but if Charter continues to add users and doesn't increase bandwidth then the problem will return.
On a side note, you are posting from a subnet that's ptr records point to something.charter.com. Charter has always used that for their own use and .net for their ISP side... You posted earlier that you did not work for Charter, why are you posting from that subnet then? |
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Xelloss
join:2007-03-02
Paso Robles, CA
| reply to BF69
Capped system will not work for me, for one My house is a heavy bandwidth house, when it comes to Youtube or other websites. A Big list of bandwidth sites that I use is Revision 3, there videos can range from 50MB - 1 GB, I probably download 5 a week, then we have Xbox Live, a Demo, Moive download, trailer etc can range from 50 mb - 5 GBs. Gametrailers, Gamespot.com, IGN, Random downloads. Its adds up quck, this is just what I surf. If we include the rest of the family using the web probably another 20 GB ontop of that.
If charter goes to a capped solution then well I will drop not just Highspeed internet but probably TV, HDTV, 2 DVRs etc, along with I bet I can get at least 2 other family's to comply. Then talking crap about the company for the rest of my life, and boy do I know a lot of people that talk crap about Charter, well since I personally don't have no tech issues (most of the time) I can't complain. |
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Lazlow
join:2006-08-07
Saint Louis, MO
| Xelloss
That may work for you but a LOT of us really do not have any other reasonable HSI choice. If they do this I think a lot of us will be in the situation where we will have to go to some sort of mobile solution. Laptops with multiple wireless nics? I really do not know what I will do if they put a sub 100gb per month limit on our connections.
Anybody have any suggestions? |
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BF69
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN
| reply to Xelloss
said by Xelloss :Capped system will not work for me, for one My house is a heavy bandwidth house, when it comes to Youtube or other websites. A Big list of bandwidth sites that I use is Revision 3, there videos can range from 50MB - 1 GB, I probably download 5 a week, then we have Xbox Live, a Demo, Moive download, trailer etc can range from 50 mb - 5 GBs. Gametrailers, Gamespot.com, IGN, Random downloads. Its adds up quck, this is just what I surf. If we include the rest of the family using the web probably another 20 GB ontop of that. If charter goes to a capped solution then well I will drop not just Highspeed internet but probably TV, HDTV, 2 DVRs etc, along with I bet I can get at least 2 other family's to comply. Then talking crap about the company for the rest of my life, and boy do I know a lot of people that talk crap about Charter, well since I personally don't have no tech issues (most of the time) I can't complain. Well you're the type of heavy user the ISPs are trying to get a handle on. Pretty simple, if you need more bandwidth pay the higher price. I'm not against a cap as long as it's reasnable. TW 40 GB cap is NOT what I call reasonable. 300 GB a month is reasonable at this point. Anything over that and I'm not really feeling sorry for you having to pay extra. Bandwidth isn't free you know. You seem to have the attitude that if you want to download 5 TB of data a month you should get that for your $50-$70. |
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BF69
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN
| reply to Lazlow
said by Lazlow :Xelloss That may work for you but a LOT of us really do not have any other reasonable HSI choice. If they do this I think a lot of us will be in the situation where we will have to go to some sort of mobile solution. Yeah Verizon has a 5 GB a month cap. And I can only get around 100 kbps with Verizon. And they want $60 a month for that. I have at&t and they offer up to 6 Mbps. And actually anything under the current 10 Mbps price and at&t is a better deal anyways. |
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matt314159
join:2006-01-18
Hesperia, CA
·Charter Pipeline
| reply to BF69
If charter tries to pull this crap, I will switch to Verizon 3mb DSL quicker than charter can say, "what could we have done to keep you with us?".
There's no way i would stand for a bandwidth cap of anything less than 300GB per month. Even then, I don't like it, because to me that signals the beginning of the end. It's a slippery slope once you let them start whittling away on your services. And I guarantee you they'll still increase their rates every chance they get.
Hopefully there is such an outcry from people who object to this, that they'll drop the idea alltogether. Or at least get the 40GB limit out of their heads.
At my house, we have three desktop computers, two laptop computers, a slingbox, vonage, and orb, all of which suck bandwdith whenever they need to. I bet we would hit 20GB easily in a month with just everybody's browsing, some video streaming, and our phone usage. That doesnt leave a lot of overhead, really. |
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useless
join:2006-07-16 | I think Charter is waiting for Comcast in regards to this.
You could probably get better information in that forum, believe it or not. ( Same with the bit torrent throttling )
A cap would indeed suck. |
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Plattsburgh NY
@charter.com
| reply to BF69
After years of Charter rate increases and the promise of better service only to still have nothing new, this takes the cake. I still only have 3 meg service and no telephone in my area. If they go to metered billing I will dump them faster than you can say 20 billion in debt, because that's the direction they will be heading in when they switch to metered billing. |
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