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| Legit reasons to use alot of bandwidth? It's funny but to the novice computer user these caps don't seem unreasonable. I have read multiple posts where people have monitored their own bandwidth and only used 40 or 50 gb in a month.
They must not use their computer for much.
As a private home computer user I use considerable amounts of bandwidth - for legal purposes. One application alone - a streaming audio feed that is sent outbound to a server farm consumes over a gb a day by itself. Several online games I like to play also apparently use alot of bandwidth especially when you are hosting the game on your server (like Unreal Tournament). Throw in a few movies online, some legal music downloads, web surfing and chat and I can easily hit 50 gb with all legit purposes.
But what would happen if say I had a wife and two kids and at the very least one more computer. Their usage also then becomes a factor and raises that overall usage up even more.
Personally if all I used the internet for was surfing web pages and checking e-mail I would not need the 16/2 service I have now. If the throttle it that speed becomes useless because it won't be good for a single thing other than surfing the web. I would drop the package down to 1.5 and my web pages will load just as fast. Instead of paying to obtain a movie online I'll just go up the street to Blockbuster and fetch it.
That's the only way to stop this capping trend - drop your package. If each time these companies walk into a market and started capping and charging overages the users called in mass numbers and requested the slowest package that is offered these companies would lose their a$$. They want to sell huge fast packages because it makes them money and they have invested in the infrastructure for it. If the users stop spending their money for all but the most basic of packages these companies would give up these caps quickly or lose large amounts of income.
It's simple - SPEAK WITH YOUR WALLET AND DO IT LOUDLY. These caps are nothing more than another way to leech more money from the consumers.
Some many years ago cellular service was like this. You could generally purchase only a few plans and they only allotted a certain amount of usage. If you went over the charges could be enormous. Nowdays most companies offer an unlimited plan - calls, text, etc are all one price and you're done. Then why are the ISP's fading the other direction? Because they hoped for net neutrality laws to generate more money for them and failed. They tried selling package speeds that they can't adequately support.
SPEAK WITH YOUR WALLET. |
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Pv8man
join:2008-07-24
Hammond, IN | Amen
thank god for Micheal Copps |
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| reply to megarock
Your ISP allows you to host game servers? |
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 BF69Premium
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN | reply to megarock
said by megarock:It's funny but to the novice computer user these caps don't seem unreasonable. I have read multiple posts where people have monitored their own bandwidth and only used 40 or 50 gb in a month. They must not use their computer for much. As a private home computer user I use considerable amounts of bandwidth - for legal purposes. One application alone - a streaming audio feed that is sent outbound to a server farm consumes over a gb a day by itself. Several online games I like to play also apparently use alot of bandwidth especially when you are hosting the game on your server (like Unreal Tournament). Throw in a few movies online, some legal music downloads, web surfing and chat and I can easily hit 50 gb with all legit purposes. A) what exactly is the purpse of this streaming audio feed for and how do you know it's allowable within the TOS of your ISP? I've seen a lot of people claim legitimate uses when gripping about caps except this use was used within a business purpose and thus is NOT allowable within the TOS of thier ISP.
B) I'm pretty sure hosting game servers is not allowed by your ISPs TOS. So maybe you'll have to give that up. Oh well. just playing online without beign ahost wouldn't use more than 20 GB a month and you'd have to be on pretty much 24/7.
C) music? well downloading 1000 songs wouldn't even be 5 GB. Who has that much money to spend on music?( remember we're talking about LEGAL downloading )Even streaming music 6 house a day would be les than 15 GB a month.
D) you admit you only use 50 GB a month. Then you say "what if you had a wife and a kid?" ok 50 GB X 3 is 150 GB. That's only half of what you are allowed.
300 GB is quite generous and is 50 GB more than what Comcast allows which most people agree is also generous. Maybe in 3 years it won't be. Cross that bridge when you get to it.
That being said I think monthly caps ar a dumb way of controlling bandwidth if that's the intened purpose. You're setting up asituation wher you stil could have capacity problems( if tehey actualy exist ) for the majority of the month. Only at the end of the month when the caps kick in would there be any relief. A 10 GB daily cap would be more efficient than a 300 monthly cap. Even that's not really idea since it still doesn't do anything about high peak times. A 6 GB daily cap with unlimted useage between say 12 PM and 6 AM would encourage people to do things like schedule automatic downloads for a time when capacity is not likely to be pushed to it's limits. also cap overage fess also don't really solve the porblem since those that cna afford the fees won't reduce useage. Throttling speeds for going over caps DO solve capacity issues. Reducing speed to say 2 Mbps( durring capped hours ) would be reducing it by nearly 90%. |
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