said by EG :

Sorry that I misinterpreted the true meaning of your posting as we do not have the benefits of facial expressions, vocal nuances, and eye contact when communicating via an electronic media such as this...

said by sturmvogel :

I see. I believe what you are trying to say is that we should all share the food equally. I agree, but pray tell, how could I know how much the other node users were each using so I could adjust my consumption ?

said by CleanGene :

Flexible caps allow you to avoid robo-disconnects, where you get cut off for going even a single bit over some hard transfer limit, even if it this usage is not adversely affecting anyone else. As a result, if you would like to download X bytes per day, you can, so long as it does not adversely affect others. If you would like to download X + Y bytes per day, you can, so long as it does not adversely affect others. If you would like to download X + Y + Z bytes per day, you can, so long as it does not adversely affect others. How will you know if it's adversely affecting others? Well, one big hint will be someone from network security contacting you to see what's up.

Since I haven't heard of any cases where someone was disconnected without at least an attempt to contact them and work to mitigate the issue constructively, and I assume that you've been disconnected, what was your response when you were contacted?

said by CleanGene :

I see you were asked to adjust your habits "drastically". Did you?

said by sturmvogel :

It does show wilingness to work on the problem, but I guess for them that see this quite often anything over the limit that they would not disclose is a clear case of bad faith.

said by CleanGene :

I think the problem is that, while your desire for a number is eminently reasonable, there's no one-size-fits-all number that can be given. Maybe your area is fairly heavily populated with lots of techno-savvy DLSR readers, who all have eight computers, three XBox360s, a Slingbox, a robo-X-10-enabled partridge in a pear tree, and they're all running their own web spiders to create a home-grown version of archive.org, along with religiously gathering DVD .ISOs of every Linux flavor they can find, all 300-something of them. In that case, you might find that things are a bit more constricted.

Or maybe you live in the middle of nowhere. Your neighbors are mostly not online, and the ones that are stick pretty much to email and occasionally buying tea cozies on eBay. In that case, you'll probably have some more elbow room, so why should you be treated as though you live amongst a zillion other power users

said by sturmvogel :

That is why I asked the "abuse" rep how much I could download/month to avoid creating a problem. And he said (drumroll corporate line script) "you have to drastically alter your download habits". See a number there ? No ? So I did try, very little the next month and supposedly 460 GB the one after when they cut me off. Yeah, 600 GB cap, sure.

said by funchords :

The question you ought to be asking: was Dave Winer actually unreasonably impacting someone else's use of the Internet or did he just "use too much bandwidth."

said by netcool :

No you don't have the same pipe now that you did back in 2002.

said by netcool :

To say the cable companies do nothing but take more money and let their networks sit idle without upgrades is silly.

said by netcool :

Bandwidth hogs are nothing new, they've been a thorn in the side of the cable industry since the @Home days. And people were kicked off then as they are now for excessive use.

said by netcool :

Though today we have a lot more people blogging about it so I'm not sure if it's happening more or it's just more widely publicized.

said by netcool :

Ultimately only the cable operators know how many people they are disconnecting each year.

said by espaeth :

I think the real question is -- how could someone so juiced in to the Internet community miss the fact that Comcast has usage limits? He was called once before, there's been articles posted everywhere about the proposed idea of 250GB caps, and the issue continues to be discussed regularly in forums like those here at DSLR.

Does anyone honestly believe Dave really didn't know?

said by sturmvogel :

Also, the 12 month disconnection to teach a lesson is extreme.

said by sturmvogel :

My question them was in order so I have an idea what they want, a ballpark. When the guy said that I used "hundreds of times" what a regular user uses, of course that is upsetting. Should I use 2 GB/mo ? Would 200 be acceptable ? He would not answer and that is a bit sticking point why there is now an issue.

said by espaeth :

For what it's worth, I also agree with you here. Especially so for the folks that were cut off well before any of the Comcast usage limits were well publicized.

It seems to me 30 days would have still got the message across.

said by espaeth :

Does anyone honestly believe Dave really didn't know?

said by CleanGene :

Well, let me say that I'm sorry you got caught up in this. Obviously more transparency is better than less, and everyone wants to feel like they have enough information to make good decisions and adjust where needed, and I understand your frustration at not getting what, in your eyes, constituted enough information to proceed without running into a problem again. I'm with you there, and all I can say is that if it were up to me, I'd do things a bit differently. I'd make sure you had access to some sort of meter for your own usage, and I'd probably institute some sort of throttling before cutting someone off completely, but it's not really up to me, so there you go

That being said, I also understand why the rep was a little bit fuzzy when asked for details of acceptable usage - acceptable usage depends as much on your area as it does on you. Maybe this month 500GB (or whatever) is just fine and doesn't cause a problem for anyone. And then next month, your evil twin (and his twin, and his twin) all move on to your block, and they all want to download 500GB too. So now you have a problem - or more accurately, Madge next door has a problem, because she couldn't properly snipe that floral-pattern tea cozy she had her eye on, and so she calls to complain. And then, when you're told you have to cut back, you (rightly!) say "but I was told 500GB is just fine!" and (rightly!) complain about how those sonsaguns at Comcast are going back on their word, when they just said last month that 500 GB was okay.

Yes, they should split the node or whatever. Yes, they should invest in increasing downstream capacity. And they do, but as someone else pointed out earlier, those things don't happen overnight, and in the mean time, you have to do something.

said by justin :

Of course Comcast should create a meter that shows up to the minute usage and a warning system when it is exceeded however in this poisonous atmosphere of "unlimited for everyone" I kind of understand why they haven't raced ahead with this because they would lose customers to any competitors that _claim_ to be unlimited (but actually are not).