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 NerdtalkerWorking Hard, Or Hardly Working?Premium,MVM
join:2003-02-18
Tucson, AZ
1 edit | Prediction: The 250G Cap Will Increase said by JohnInSJ:Honestly, with widespread moves to 12.5, 25, 50Mbps service the usage will continue to climb, and caps will move up. So sure, in a few years (years >=2) comcast won't be able to justify 250gb as a cap, and it will go up. But its not likely to happen this week  You know, what you've said is exactly right.
I've been kind of sitting on the sidelines this whole time, watching, because I think that the majority of what there is to be said has already been said. I hate this issue the whole way around, and honestly, talking about it just makes me want to find the nearest wall and bash myself against it until I forget about what I was thinking about. I was wrong at the very beginning about the original throttling (I didn't believe it), and I was wrong about them implementing this cap (didn't think it would ever happen).
That said, I'm completely sure I can predict that a few years down the road, they're going to be stuck with a number of interesting problems which they've created for themselves:
• The 250GB number in and of itself, is arbitrary. What makes 250GB so special? I have yet to see any sort of statistical, logical, reasonable backing behind the number other than "it's a reasonable number, and if you're downloading more than it, you're obviously just a warez/P2P/streaming radio ripper/streaming video junkie/pr0n addict." Until Comcast demonstrates something, anything reasonable about this number which makes it intrinsically special, I'm still calling it out.
• There is still no provision for increasing the cap over time as the network capacity scales. Everyone keeps talking about how DOCSIS 3.0 is coming with faster speeds, well, capacity is going to increase if Comcast (and other ISPs) don't immediately increase their caps so that they're in the same concurrency-saturation problem again. There's some sort of Moore's law equivalent here where the cap should be linked to a statistically correlated value, which gives us the cap. Anything else is purely arbitrary.
• User base usage as a whole is increasing. Netflix, Hulu, and other streaming, web-dependent, bandwidth intense applications are coming, and the networks are already straining. Comcast has certainly done a better job than other ISPs at managing the slow but steady increase of traffic, but still, at some point very soon 250GB is going to feel a whole lot tighter than it does now. Unless that cap is growing with some sort of correlation to what the majority of userbase is doing monthly, everyone is going to run into that brick wall.
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|   JohnInSJPremium
join:2003-09-22
San Jose, CA
 ·PHONE POWER
 ·Comcast
2 edits | Re: Prediction: The 250G Cap Will Increase said by Nerdtalker:Unless that cap is growing with some sort of correlation to what the majority of userbase is doing monthly, everyone is going to run into that brick wall. Supposedly, it is the number where 99% of the subs don't cross the line.
I *am* tracking my usage on my 12/2 business class service.
(that graph missed 5GB, as I was still futzing with it on april 1-2 and reset the counters.)
So far, in a household of three heavy users and a business with 4 domain websites, email server for 10 people, and a guy doing web2.0 development/experiments for a living, I'm averaging 5GB total up/down a day. If that holds steady, on a typical month that works out to 150GB. So I have roughly 100GB over my typical use "wiggle room" for unusual usage patterns in a month.
I don't think that my line's usage is typical today - likely that would be the upper quarter of usage, so to me it seems the 250GB number has a fair bit of headroom. We've gone around the track why that's not true for everyone (after all, those 1% folks are actual, real users) but pretty much that seems to be it.
Note, interestingly, I moved from 6/.8 DSL just a month ago, and while I did not track usage then, my usage pattern was exactly the same. For me, the increased speed just means stuff takes half as much time to accomplish - my line is essential idle 50% more then it used to be. | |
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1 edit | Again, I Am A Heavy User The problem is that mediocre or medium users proclaim always that they are "heavy" users and they have "headroom". I presume that gives them a good feeling.
A heavy user is somebody like me. Of course, CC considers that as "abuse".
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| | | JohnInSJPremium
join:2003-09-22
San Jose, CA
2 edits | Re: Again, I Am A Heavy User
If you use more then 99 out of 100 people, you're a very heavy user, just like if you have more money then 99 out of 100 people, you're very rich. | |
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2 edits | Re: Again, I Am A Heavy User said by JohnInSJ:If you use more then 99 out of 100 people, you're a very heavy user, just like if you have more money then 99 out of 100 people, you're very rich. Not if everyone around you is quite poor.
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Obama '08. Will help resolve the terrible broadband issues we have that put us so far behind other countries. | |
| | | | |  IPPlanManHoly Cable Modem Batman
join:2000-09-20
Washington, DC
kudos:1
1 edit | Re: Again, I Am A Heavy User Didn't you get the memo? We're all bandwidth-hogs now.... | |
| | | | | | | | Re: Again, I Am A Heavy User I was always a bandwidth and CPU "hog" since the days of MILNet in 1988. | |
| | | | | | |  funchordsHelloPremium,MVM
join:2001-03-11
Yarmouth Port, MA
kudos:6 | Re: Again, I Am A Heavy User said by sturmvogel:I was always a bandwidth and CPU "hog" since the days of MILNet in 1988. I think you've got me beat, although maybe I was doing FidoNet around that time.
Wow!
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| | | | | | | | | | Re: Again, I Am A Heavy User said by funchords:said by sturmvogel:I was always a bandwidth and CPU "hog" since the days of MILNet in 1988. I think you've got me beat, although maybe I was doing FidoNet around that time. Wow! Yes, the good old days. Even in that time, one was always a "hog" for using too much CPU time, too much load on a 2400 line, too much time connected, incorrect packet scheduling, and so on.
The more things change, the more they stay the same, but now they are much more visible due to more commonplace use and more corporate greed.
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Obama '08. Will help resolve the terrible broadband issues we have that put us so far behind other countries. | |
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