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ctgreybeard
Old dogs can learn new tricks
Premium Member
join:2001-11-13
Bethel, CT

ctgreybeard to ctggzg

Premium Member

to ctggzg

Re: Enforcement of the 250 GB data consumption is suspended.

said by ctggzg:

Let the bandwidth hogs rejoice. I expect thank-you notes in the mail since I'm subsidizing your heavy usage, much of which I'll bet is fishy.

I cannot agree with you at all, even though I have never exceeded the 250GB cap. I don't understand your claim that "bandwidth hogs" are "subsidized" by your connection. There is no evidence, at all, that there is a bandwidth crises beyond the marketing claims of the providers. Who, it has to be understood, are the prime beneficiaries of such claims. It is Smoke and Mirrors plain and simple.

The reason behind such claims of bandwidth depletion are pure-and-simple reactions to legitimate competition. They don't want you to go to other, useful, services that compete with their legacy services. And, because they are the Gatekeepers, they think they have the right (and certainly the ability) to block competitors. This is NOT what we want or need as consumers. Active competition as GOOD. And not only for us but for technology as a whole, some innovators my fail, some may survive, but to artificially FAIL some because a legacy incumbent chooses to squash them is against the public interest.

But back to the topic... if Comcast can provide exhibits that "bandwidth hogs" are causing ACTUAL HARM then I will accept the caps/overages. But, to my knowledge, they have not and cannot provided any such justification.

To my mind it is a simple cash grab "because they can" ...
iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Austin, TX

iansltx

Member

Depends on the area I suppose.

Here, Comcast has four-plus bonded downstreams per node and two or three bonded upstreams (a friend who just re-switched-on his service on an SB6121 got 3 upstream, and he's 1.5 miles away from me). That's not a ton of capacity, but it's plenty enough that I've never seen slowdowns due to load.

This is from someone who, for the last few months, has consistently broken 250GB. I also pay $115/mo for 50/15...stop whining about you subsidizing me because I'm probably paying more per GB than you are even with the 758GB I transferred in May. Or the 293 I transferred in June (which by the way will be below the new cap). Or the 406GB I transferred in April.

Thing is, most of those GBs were not during peak hours (so no detriment to the last mile network). Many were on the upload side, which, granted, has less capacity, but the upload volume has dropped significantly since I finished seeding my external drive to Backblaze (my internal got seeded awhile ago).

On the backbone level, many of the sites that I connect to...that I download a fair amount of data from...are directly connected to Comcast or peer with Comcast through their host etc. Netflix's CDN connects directly with Comcast (so Comcast is probably being paid from that end for access), and Backblaze's upstream uses Cogent (which I guarantee you is doing settlement-free peering with Comcast these days) to connect to me. If you're in Florida and aren't using Backblaze, that traffic never mixes with yours (unless, somehow, said traffic runs over Cogent through Las Vegas), so I'm not in the slightest impacting anyone else's Internet performance, something that the caps are ostensibly designed to prevent.

Even though I'm moving to an area without Comcast (going to love unlimited data transfer on my upcoming TWC connection, though 5 Mbps uploads for the moment will be a letdown) I'm looking forward to when Comcast institutes a higher, harder cap, preferably starting at 300GB (which they will do no matter what) and increasing with higher tiers (my bet is that Blast will end up at 400-500GB and Extreme will sit in the 500-750 range). That way anyone whining about residential users subsidizing other residential users can...well...shut up, because the heavier users will be apying more some way (higher tier and/or overage fees).

Comcast's network has limited capacity on the last mile. I get that. But between 2008 and now Comcast has rolled out DOCSIS 3, with 4+ downstreams and 2+ upstreams per (smallish) node, to most of their footprint. They've driven harder bargains with upstream providers and anyone who pushes a lot of data onto their network from the other side. They've reclaimed analog channels so they have more room for Internet. The result is probably a 4x capacity improvement over four years ago on the downstream side, and at least a 4x improvement on the upload side.

So, do I feel like I've abused Comcast by pushing 750GB over my 50/15 connection? Nope. I figure they'd rather have me doing that and paying as much as their average triple-play customer (except I don't rent any equipment from them, so they have way less support to do on that end) than paying half as much, using one-eighth as much data, and calling twice a month due to issues with either their rental equipment or my non-power-user...uh...silly questions.