1 edit | Does Comcast track by month? By rolling 30-day? What? Can anyone answer to the claim that it is a rolling 30 day period? I keep track of my bandwidth with a Tomato enabled router and I just assumed it was by actual month.
I've seen people talk about this in the thread before but never saw a definitive answer on when the actual bandwidth period is. | |
|
 K PattersonPremium,MVM
join:2006-03-12
Columbus, OH
kudos:1
1 edit | Re: Does Comcast track by month? By rolling 30-day? What? I suggest that you IM jlivingood and ask him. | |
|
| | When I discussed it on the phone with the abuse department the response that I got was that it was based on calendar months. However, Comcast employees have been known to contradict one another, so I'm not 100% certain. | |
|
 |  jlivingoodPremium,VIP
join:2007-10-28
Philadelphia, PA
kudos:1 | Re: Does Comcast track by month? By rolling 30-day? What? said by freshzive:When I discussed it on the phone with the abuse department the response that I got was that it was based on calendar months. However, Comcast employees have been known to contradict one another, so I'm not 100% certain. Calendar month
--
JL
Comcast | |
|
| | | | Re: Does Comcast track by month? By rolling 30-day? What? Thank you, good to know it is by calendar month. | |
|
| | | | | Re: Does Comcast track by month? By rolling 30-day? What? yes, very good! | |
|
| | DDR4040
join:2006-12-25
Maple Shade, NJ
1 edit | Just to be perfectly clear, if I reset my modem meter at 12:01am on the 1st of every month, and never go above 225GB during that month, I am safely within the the terms of the AUP? Even if I happen to use 200GB in the last week of a month and another 200GB in the first week of the next month? | |
|
| | | | | Re: Does Comcast track by month? By rolling 30-day? What? Well, you should be fine then. | |
|
| | | jlivingoodPremium,VIP
join:2007-10-28
Philadelphia, PA
kudos:1 | said by DDR4040:Just to be perfectly clear, if I reset my modem meter at 12:01am on the 1st of every month, and never go above 225GB during that month, I am safely within the the terms of the AUP? Even if I happen to use 200GB in the last week of a month and another 200GB in the first week of the next month? It's 250GB for a calendar month, without respect to distribution of your utilization on a day to day or week to week basis.
--
JL
Comcast | |
|
| | | |  IPPlanManHoly Cable Modem Batman
join:2000-09-20
Washington, DC
kudos:1
4 edits | How do we know the CC meter is accurate? How can we be sure about the accuracy of your meter when all is said and done?
--
"We're going to start at one end of (Fallujah), and we're not going to stop until we get to the other. If there's anybody left when that happens, we're going to turn around and we're going to go back and finish it."
Lt. Col. Pete Newell: 1st Inf. US Army | |
|
| | | | |  espaethDigital PlumberPremium,MVM
join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN
kudos:2
 ·Vitelity VOIP
| Re: How do we know the CC meter is accurate? said by IPPlanMan:How can we be sure about the accuracy of your meter when all is said and done? You have a cornucopia of options for measuring bandwidth on your own equipment, so you can setup your own basis for comparison on the accuracy of the meter.
I'd argue this is far more reliable than utilities like water, electric, and gas where the only meter is owned by the company and all folks can really do is "gut check" the numbers based on previous bills to determine their accuracy. | |
|
| | | | | | IPPlanManHoly Cable Modem Batman
join:2000-09-20
Washington, DC
kudos:1
1 edit | Re: How do we know the CC meter is accurate? As far as we know, Comcast's meter is not subject to any regulatory oversight. I'm not sure that pointing to the Mcaffee meter for usage in a dispute will do any good. | |
|
| | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | Re: How do we know the CC meter is accurate? said by sortofageek:Do you know of any instances where anyone has reported a difference in their local metering results as compared to Comcast's. If reported here, I have missed it and would like to link to it. I would be glad to respond to that. Comcast said that I used 505 GB and I calculated I used about 430. Since at that time the 250 GB cap was not disclosed an argument about that was not useful since they would not disclose how much is too much. | |
|
| | | | | | | | | K PattersonPremium,MVM
join:2006-03-12
Columbus, OH
kudos:1 | Re: How do we know the CC meter is accurate? Boy, you just opened another opportunity for Comcast to create misunderstandings.
1GB = 1000 * 1000 * 1000.
That's hardly negotiable - it's set by international treaty.
Unfortunately there are computer folks who insist that
1 GB = 1024 * 1024 * 1024
That's a difference of 7.4 %.
I wonder how McAfee and the various router software calculate?? | |
|
| | | | | | | | | | | Re: How do we know the CC meter is accurate? hmmm... that is very interesting! | |
|
| | | | | | | | |  joetaxpayerI'M Here Till Thursday
join:2001-09-07
Sudbury, MA
 ·Comcast
| said by K Patterson:Boy, you just opened another opportunity for Comcast to create misunderstandings. 1GB = 1000 * 1000 * 1000. That's hardly negotiable - it's set by international treaty. Are these the same geniuses who once declared pi to be 22/7?
(I understand your point. BUT, there are situations where in fact 1GB has to equal 8*2^30. A processor with 32 bit addressing doesn't just quit at 4,000,000,000 because some law was passed.) | |
|
| | | | | | | | | K PattersonPremium,MVM
join:2006-03-12
Columbus, OH
kudos:1 | Re: How do we know the CC meter is accurate? You might want to look at the Wikipedia article for "Gigabyte". | |
|
| | | | | | | | | joetaxpayerI'M Here Till Thursday
join:2001-09-07
Sudbury, MA Reviews:
·Comcast
| Re: How do we know the CC meter is accurate? said by K Patterson:You might want to look at the Wikipedia article for "Gigabyte". Yup - Giga means billion. Wiki does reference both uses. I am in high tech, so for me 64K = 65536 when talking tech, but only 64,000 when talking money. No issue there, but the confusion is understandable. Henceforth, I will think of you as One Thousand Patterson, and not 1,024 Patterson.  | |
|
| | | | | | | | | K PattersonPremium,MVM
join:2006-03-12
Columbus, OH
kudos:1 | Re: How do we know the CC meter is accurate? Oh, cool!
A kilo Patterson.
Thank you | |
|
| | | | | | | | | | | said by joetaxpayer:BUT, there are situations where in fact 1GB has to equal 8*2^30. A processor with 32 bit addressing doesn't just quit at 4,000,000,000 because some law was passed.) Meh, technically you are talking GiBs rather than GBs.. 1GB technically never has to equal 8*2^30, just 1 GiB does.
As trivial as it seems however, it could mean big differences depending on how much the bandwidth cap actually is.. I mean when you add it all up, say we're talking TiBs vs TBs, if they are counting in TBs rather than binary based TiBs, you could be losing out on just about 100 GBs (which if we are talking servers, that's maybe the month's bandwidth of what, like a server dedicated solely to a semi-popular message board with no extra features than just a forum?)
If you watch a lot of videos online (like I do, I'm a hulu-maniac), depending on how comcast decides to guess it, it could actually have a pretty big difference. | |
|
| | | | | | | | | joetaxpayerI'M Here Till Thursday
join:2001-09-07
Sudbury, MA Reviews:
·Comcast
| Re: How do we know the CC meter is accurate? said by raffletime:said by joetaxpayer:BUT, there are situations where in fact 1GB has to equal 8*2^30. A processor with 32 bit addressing doesn't just quit at 4,000,000,000 because some law was passed.) Meh, technically you are talking GiBs rather than GBs.. 1GB technically never has to equal 8*2^30, just 1 GiB does. Well, let me offer you this. 8 bit processors that had 64K (16 bits addressing) memory were out long before we talked about this bandwidth. Modems were 300 baud then. 32 bit addressing for 4GB memory was available in the early 80's, still long before this bandwidth discussion. So the use of 2^30 came first. I acknowledged to my friend Kilo-Patterson that common usage now favors all zeros 10^3. No problem. But my 32 bit processor memory is still 2^32. That's all. Binary for me, decimal for Comcast and bandwidth, ok? | |
|
| | | | | | | | | IPPlanManHoly Cable Modem Batman
join:2000-09-20
Washington, DC
kudos:1 | Good points....
I can't stand how vague this all is... | |
|
| | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | Re: How do we know the CC meter is accurate? I was using Netmeter on 2 PC's, I added them up and put 10% more for overhead. I did not take any screen shots since the rep would not say how much is too much. That was a while back anyway. | |
|
| | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | |  JohnInSJPremium
join:2003-09-22
San Jose, CA
·PHONE POWER
·Comcast
| Re: How do we know the CC meter is accurate? Yeah, and you have to be really careful how you count.
Are you counting every TYPE of packet (TCP and UDP) UP AND DOWN?
Are you counting the full packet size, or just the payload bytes?
Are you counting all those ACK packets your machine has to send back?
Are you counting the endless background packets (ARP, etc)
Are you counting all the background noise packets that hit your machine, but for which you might not have any service running to "hear" it, or have blocked at your firewall?
Comcast can count all that crap - a "meter" running on your machine might not.
The guy that posted 430 vs 505 could easily have measured exactly 430 content bytes, for example, up *and* down. The 75gb remaining easily could have been ACK and various other crap not counted on his end.
Which then begs the question - the cap is 250GB of WHAT? Content bytes Download, up/down, raw data down, up/down, all traffic down, up/down?
Which is why, IMHO, it remains a vague definition, and generally speaking you only hear of gross overages getting flagged.
--
My place : »www.schettino.us | |
|
| | | | | | | | | | | Re: How do we know the CC meter is accurate? said by JohnInSJ:Which is why, IMHO, it remains a vague definition, and generally speaking you only hear of gross overages getting flagged. I agree with you. | |
|
| | | | | | | | | IPPlanManHoly Cable Modem Batman
join:2000-09-20
Washington, DC
kudos:1
2 edits | Until there is an official meter, there should not be a cap. We pay a flat rate for this service, differentiated by speeds on price.
Comcast is perpetuating underutilization of their service by not clarifying the issues you raised.
I can't imagine why they'd want to exclude control/maintenance packets from the cap. I'd be honestly surprised if they did. And if they did, you'd have to make sure that your third party meter treats data the same way.
Comcast is playing loose with this, but the truth is this: We are nearly halfway through august and still no meter.
Until there is an official meter, there should not be a cap.
--
"We're going to start at one end of (Fallujah), and we're not going to stop until we get to the other. If there's anybody left when that happens, we're going to turn around and we're going to go back and finish it."
Lt. Col. Pete Newell: 1st Inf. US Army | |
|
| | | | | | | | |
1 edit | Re: Until there is an official meter, there should not be a cap. said by IPPlanMan:Until there is an official meter, there should not be a cap. And I also agree with you. | |
|
| | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | |
1 edit | Good point sortofageek. I don't see much of any widespread disagreements over usage levels by those who were warned of exceeding the cap, on this board or others. | |
|
| | | | | | | | | | said by sortofageek:Do you know of any instances where anyone has reported a difference in their local metering results as compared to Comcast's. If reported here, I have missed it and would like to link to it. If you use a PC based meter, then Comcast's count may be different for two reasons:
1. There may be other users such as people stealing your wireless services or other devices on your own net such as a Netflix streaming box.
2. There may be a lot of traffic that never leaves your net. For example, I see a LOT of traffic between my PC and my Motorola router related to UPNP. I think it's a bug in thye Motorola firmware. | |
|
| | | | | | | | | IPPlanManHoly Cable Modem Batman
join:2000-09-20
Washington, DC
kudos:1
1 edit | Re: How do we know the CC meter is accurate? Good points.
However, Comcast's expectation is that you "secure" your network to keep this from happening.
»www.comcast.net/terms/subscriber/
7. Use Of Services
You agree that the Services and the Comcast Equipment will be used only by you and the members of your immediate household living with you at the same address and only for personal, residential, non-commercial purposes, unless otherwise specifically authorized by us in writing.
Of course, if someone on your network is legitimately watching a bunch of Netflix/iTunes/Apple TV/Vudu movies without telling you, and their "meter" is not keeping track accurately, you could be in for a nasty surprise from Comcast.
This whole situation is ridiculous, and it's been this way since October 1st of 2008.
--
"We're going to start at one end of (Fallujah), and we're not going to stop until we get to the other. If there's anybody left when that happens, we're going to turn around and we're going to go back and finish it."
Lt. Col. Pete Newell: 1st Inf. US Army | |
|
| | | | | | | | |  sortofageekNot TroublePremium,Mod
join:2001-08-19
There & Then
kudos:14 | Yes, that has been pointed out repeatedly. However, that wasn't my question. | |
|
|
|
