HKPolice
join:2002-08-09
Scarborough, ON
 ·Look Communications
|  TSI misleading advertising regarding bandwidth caps?
According to the TSI website, Premium accounts are limited to 200G/month and additional bandwidth costs 25cents per GB per month.
»teksavvy.com/en/resdsl.asp?ID=7&mID=1
But if you use the bandwidth meter @ pppoe.ca the "gigabyte" measurements they use are not what you expect.
»www.pppoe.ca/gig_check.asp
Note: 1 Gigabyte = 1000000000 Bytes
In actual fact, 1 Gigabyte = 1024000000 Bytes
Therefore according to Teksavvy's measurement, 200 "Gigabytes" is actually 186 real Gigabytes, the same trick hard drive manufacturers use.
I think TSI should explicitly state the "1 Gigabyte = 1000000000 Bytes" on their product page, or change the bandwidth cap listing to 186GB/month. |
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blizzak
join:2004-05-13
Mississauga, ON
 ·Vonage
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| Sorry, but no dice. Wikipedia doesn't lie:
»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte
1,000,000,000 bytes or 109 bytes is the decimal definition, used in telecommunications (such as network speeds) and most computer storage manufacturers (such as hard disks and flash drives).
If they wanted to express what you are talking about, they would use the Gibibyte:
»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibibyte
To that end, you are also defining the gibibyte wrong: it is equal to 1024 mebibytes, which is equal to 1,073,741,824 bytes. |
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Angelo_
The Network Guy
Premium
join:2002-06-18 | tsi's calc are correct |
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NeoStylez
Cheers
join:2008-02-10
Peterborough, ON | at 25 cents a gig over who cares :P atleast they tell you how much you use  |
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Angelo_
The Network Guy
Premium
join:2002-06-18 | very fair  |
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NeoStylez
Cheers
join:2008-02-10
Peterborough, ON | plus the ability to guy blocks of 100gb for 10 bucks |
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Guspaz
Guspaz
Premium,MVM
join:2001-11-05
Montreal, QC
·Colbanet
| reply to HKPolice
Gibibytes, BTW, are abbreviated GiB.
I could go either way. On the one hand, the content people deal with is often measured in GiB. On the other hand, the domain that TSI is involved in, networking, everything is in GB. So You can't really say they're right or wrong for using one over the other. Either would make sense. |
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pnjunction
Teksavvy Premium
Premium
join:2008-01-24
Toronto, ON | reply to HKPolice
FAIL
Find something else to whine about. |
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LiQuiD
BSD geek
Premium
join:2002-08-08
Anjou, QC
2 edits | said by pnjunction  :FAIL Find something else to whine about. Seriously. With everything else going on... This is truly no more than stirring up shit.
.[/thread] |
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DarkStar33
join:2008-03-27
Toronto, ON
·TekSavvy Solutions..
| reply to HKPolice
I may be wrong on this but doesn't TSI only bill for overages if your 2 month average is more then 400gb?
I have had months were Ive downloaded 300gb and 80gb and never received a bill. However after speaking with one of my friends (TekSavvy reseller) he said that they use a weighted average across 2 months.
200gb and a low latency connection is pretty generous for the price you pay. I really have to try to find, download and store 200GB of content a month.
Keep in mind this is coming from someone with 4.4TB of mirrored storage space on his home network. |
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Trisomy21
join:2006-04-27
Kingston, ON
| reply to LiQuiD
said by LiQuiD :said by pnjunction :FAIL Find something else to whine about. Seriously. With everything else going on... This is truly no more than stirring up shit. . Precisely, bandwidth caps are irrelevant right now. Find something else to whine about. |
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rawrgerbl
@cgocable.net
| reply to HKPolice
said by HKPolice :Therefore according to Teksavvy's measurement, 200 "Gigabytes" is actually 186 real Gigabytes, the same trick hard drive manufacturers use. *sigh*
I understand why people would be confused about the difference between binary and decimal measurements. However, I am always baffled by people who think there is somehow an evil plot on the part of HDD manufacturers to make their drives appear to have more capacity than they really do.
Perhaps to satisfy your lust for base-2 Teksavvy should advertise their caps as 10111010 GB per month? |
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rawrgerbl
@cgocable.net
| reply to Guspaz
said by Guspaz :Gibibytes, BTW, are abbreviated GiB. I could go either way. On the one hand, the content people deal with is often measured in GiB. On the other hand, the domain that TSI is involved in, networking, everything is in GB. So You can't really say they're right or wrong for using one over the other. Either would make sense. It makes far more sense to measure things in decimal units of measurement. It is, after all, a decimal numbering system.
What logic is there in taking a decimal number, converting it into binary units, and then describing how many of those binary units you have with a decimal number? Just because Windows improperly uses GB in place of GiB? No thanks. |
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Rand2k1
join:2003-12-09
Canada
| reply to HKPolice
GiB were only invented to appease people who cannot simply comprehend binary.
Kilobyte = 1024 bytes.
It was called a Kilobyte because it was really close to 1000 in decimal, but in binary was a whole number, 10000000000 or 2 ^10. 1000 in binary on the other hand is 1111101000 which is considerably harder to remember, write, and impossible to write as a power of 2.
The other prefixes followed suit.
It was never confusing in the first place if you learn a little about how binary, and by extension, computers work. |
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rawrgerbl
@cgocable.net
| said by Rand2k1 :GiB were only invented to appease people who cannot simply comprehend binary. Kilobyte = 1024 bytes. It was called a Kilobyte because it was really close to 1000 in decimal, but in binary was a whole number, 10000000000 or 2 ^10. 1000 in binary on the other hand is 1111101000 which is considerably harder to remember, write, and impossible to write as a power of 2. The other prefixes followed suit. It was never confusing in the first place if you learn a little about how binary, and by extension, computers work. Sorry, no. GiB were 'invented' to remove the ambiguity between binary and decimal gigabytes. But I'm glad you feel smug about the fact that you know there are 1024 bytes in a kibibyte, just like all modern elementary school students do. Really, I am.
However, the confusion caused by binary and decimal measurements both using the same wording and prefixes is not, and never will be, alleviated by your smugness. |
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Sears
join:2008-02-17
2 edits | reply to HKPolice
Why is everyone tearing him a new one?
Windows uses the binary prefix, so most users assume that one "Gigabyte" on Tek's page is equal to one "GB" on their hard drive as measured by explorer.
Explorer displays "GB", Tek's page displays "Gigabyte". I suppose they must be morons to think they mean the same thing!  |
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decx
Premium
join:2002-06-07
Vancouver, BC
·Bell Sympatico
1 edit | reply to rawrgerbl
While the prefix of kilo and giga, etc, were decimal in nature, with respect to computers they have always been used in the binary context. The Gibi and kibi junk were only created quite recently to placate the confused being bombarded with misleading advertising from the likes of drive manufacturers who wanted to make their wares more appealing they they actually were. Up to this day, the mean OSes like Mac OS, Windows, and Unices still use the correct, binary form, of KB, GB, etc., data measurements.
--
Go Leafs Go! |
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nebular
join:2007-07-12
Peterborough, ON
| Drive manufacturers have always described their capacity in powers of 10, it was not done to make the drives seem larger (although that was an effect).
The real reason the new prefixes were created is because the kilo system was an already established standard for metric that used powers of 10. in smaller numbers the difference is negligible, but in larger numbers the difference gets huge making, so the kibi prefixes were created to differentiate.
Since network traffic is bulk bits it isn't needed to measure it in powers of 2, so it uses the decimal system.
the only reason the binary system was used to measure capacity was that it was simpler from a programming stand point not to convert. |
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Kareeser
hm?
Premium
join:2006-07-18
Hamilton, ON
·Bell Sympatico
·TekSavvy Solutions..
1 edit | reply to Trisomy21
pnjunction, Trisomy21... why are you being so mean?
I understand you're pissed at Bell, but to use Sears' analogy, why're you "tearing him a new one"?
It's a legitimate comment from a concerned customer, and he deserves to be responded to with respect.
With regard to his internet services, 186 GB vs. 200 GB is a big deal. Not everybody is technologically savvy like you guys are, and I myself only learned what a Gibibyte was in this thread, just now. Does that make me a technophobe, despite me using the computer daily, and running public web services at home?
Maybe he's shopping around for a new ISP... you may've just cost TSI a customer!
Please be nice. :\ |
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annnon
@teksavvy.com
| reply to decx
said by decx :While the prefix of kilo and giga, etc, were decimal in nature, with respect to computers they have always been used in the binary context. The Gibi and kibi junk were only created quite recently to placate the confused being bombarded with misleading advertising from the likes of drive manufacturers who wanted to make their wares more appealing they they actually were. Up to this day, the mean OSes like Mac OS, Windows, and Unices still use the correct, binary form, of KB, GB, etc., data measurements. Certain areas of computing have always used the SI prefixes to mean decimal multipliers, and not the binary sense (e.g. when specifying quantities of individual bits on a serial transmission medium.)
Kilobytes has always had a dual meaning, and nobody could possibly determine whether a measurement was binary or decimal without context. The reason this was a problem when computers became mainstream is because not everybody knows in which contexts a binary measurement is used and which use decimal. |
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