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OIVIG
join:2014-07-08

OIVIG to rgs_rx

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Re: [AZ] Speed Increase July Rollout Date for Preferred/Premier

According to this Omaha Article, Speed increase this thursday.
Shadowdane
join:2000-11-02
Fairfax, VA

Shadowdane

Member

said by OIVIG:

According to this Omaha Article, Speed increase this thursday.

I wonder if this is nationwide or just in Omaha? Seems NoVA is always a few months behind on these roll outs.
coxocala
join:2014-06-26
Ocala, FL

coxocala

Member

Cox never rolls out speed upgrades nationwide in the same month.

Reg Mauler
Premium Member
join:2004-01-06
Phoenix,AZ

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Had a power outage here earlier today which made my modem reboot. When it came back up I checked the status page and noticed it is bonding 4 upstream channels now which is up from 3.

Must be getting close!

This is in South Chandler, AZ area.
JasonCable
join:2013-01-31
Las Vegas, NV

JasonCable to Anonguy33

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Is this fact or opinion in regards to Ultimate not getting increased speeds or cap room? This makes me consider downgrading to save some money if that is the case.
Rakeesh
join:2011-10-30
Phoenix, AZ

Rakeesh to OpTiC

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to OpTiC
said by OpTiC :

Watch my video for rant for cap.

(youtube clip)

I stopped the video 33 seconds in when you say you can't come up with a logical reason for them. I just gave you one. Sure, data is unlimited, but spectrum isn't. If it was, we would have no use for an FCC.

OpTiC
Premium Member
join:2014-03-08
West Covina, CA

OpTiC

Premium Member

Go to the Comcast forums and it I have a post why data caps sucks. I think hobgoblin could come up with every reason that data caps suck.
OpTiC

2 edits

OpTiC to Rakeesh

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You have to learn this on the Xbox One and the PS4 games are downloaded on to the hard drive with a internet connection. Those games are somewhere between 30GB - 50gb. Back in those days every provider was unlimited. So that means the internet is walking backwards. Caps are bs and everyone on Comcast forums agree with me. Data sizes are getting bigger and 400 GB isn't enough. They are doing it for revenue. Please watch the rest of the video so you can understand better. Can you please explain Time Warner Cable , Bright House, and Verizon fios is still unlimited?
Maltz
join:2011-01-08
Fayetteville, AR
Calix 844G
Netgate SG-2100
Ubiquiti U6-LR

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said by JasonCable:

Is this fact or opinion in regards to Ultimate not getting increased speeds or cap room? This makes me consider downgrading to save some money if that is the case.

It's fact. But keep in mind that if you downgrade, your cap also gets smaller. From the press release:

As Cox begins its deployment of gigabit service to new residential developments, the company also said it will double the speeds on its most popular tiers of internet service for all customers this year. Cox High Speed Internet Preferred will increase from 25 megabits per second to 50 megabits per second. Cox High Speed Internet Premier will increase from 50 megabits per second to 100 megabits per second. These tiers represent more than 70 percent of Cox's high-speed internet customers. Over the last 12 years, Cox has increased broadband speeds 800 percent.


mrancier
Premium Member
join:2013-07-27
Murfreesboro, TN

1 edit

mrancier to Rakeesh

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to Rakeesh
said by Rakeesh:

said by OpTiC :

Watch my video for rant for cap.

(youtube clip)

I stopped the video 33 seconds in when you say you can't come up with a logical reason for them. I just gave you one. Sure, data is unlimited, but spectrum isn't. If it was, we would have no use for an FCC.

The biggest carriers in the USA hold the most spectrum. Most of it unused. I (and many others) think they have been buying out as much spectrum as they can to prevent competitors from emerging in the most convenient bands. If the FCC would implement a Use it or lose it rule for the spectrum they auction, you would probably hear no talk of the so called "impending spectrum shortage". The shortage seems largely artificial and created for the purpose of crushing competitors and new ventures. Also, this has no real relevance in the unlimited vs capped debate. The carriers have more than enough spectrum and capacity to accommodate unlimited or nearly unlimited plans. Personally, I think a good compromise would be for the Mobile carriers to offer realistically larger caps : say the base bucket be 50GB or 100GB a month. That should be sufficient for most users to watch videos and movies and listen to music, without managing their data like it was a prepaid calling card. But unlimited is more than feasible and profitable.
Azlen
join:2010-05-03
Peoria, AZ

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Why are we still talking about caps on Cox? All you get if you go over the cap is an email. You aren't charged and your data isn't throttled. If they ever do something punitive when you go over your cap, that would be the time to bring out the pitchforks but under today's rules, getting worked up about it makes no sense. It's a psychological cap, nothing more, but all the sound and fury about it is exhibit A on how well it works. People like to follow rules even if there isn't a punishment if you don't.

OpTiC
Premium Member
join:2014-03-08
West Covina, CA

1 edit

OpTiC

Premium Member

If Cox doesn't end Comcast caps will be worse because I'm going to be swapped to Comcast after the merger. For example you have to do something for work and you got kick off the internet for going over your cap. You have to call in to reactivate your internet service which sometimes there are long wait times and that is a waste of time.

mrancier
Premium Member
join:2013-07-27
Murfreesboro, TN

mrancier to Azlen

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said by Azlen:

Why are we still talking about caps on Cox? All you get if you go over the cap is an email. You aren't charged and your data isn't throttled. If they ever do something punitive when you go over your cap, that would be the time to bring out the pitchforks but under today's rules, getting worked up about it makes no sense. It's a psychological cap, nothing more, but all the sound and fury about it is exhibit A on how well it works. People like to follow rules even if there isn't a punishment if you don't.

You are correct about this. I've been over twice and have nothing more than a couple of emails to show for it. I think the discussion veered to wireless data at some point and its sort of stuck there. However, there is the possibility that at some point in the future Cox will decide to enforce caps and charge overage. That is something we should all consider. At that point, people that have ultimate will be paying $4.00 / GB plus Overage.
myronreiss
join:2004-07-24
Council Bluffs, IA

myronreiss to Needleinthha

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to Needleinthha
ultimate speeds will stay at 150
Azlen
join:2010-05-03
Peoria, AZ

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As I said, when Cox decides to enforce caps, that would be the time to push back. It's not worth the effort right now to get to riled up about something that is meaningless. I do expect them to raise the caps to more realistic levels if they do ever implement a hard cap though. Cap levels haven't been changing with the speeds and that is completely ridiculous with a hard cap
Where are you getting the $4/Gb number though. Right now if you used only your full allotment, a Ultimate customer would be paying a quarter per GB. $100/400GB = $.25/GB

OpTiC
Premium Member
join:2014-03-08
West Covina, CA

OpTiC

Premium Member

said by Azlen:

As I said, when Cox decides to enforce caps, that would be the time to push back. It's not worth the effort right now to get to riled up about something that is meaningless. I do expect them to raise the caps to more realistic levels if they do ever implement a hard cap though. Cap levels haven't been changing with the speeds and that is completely ridiculous with a hard cap
Where are you getting the $4/Gb number though. Right now if you used only your full allotment, a Ultimate customer would be paying a quarter per GB. $100/400GB = $.25/GB

It better to which about it now than later

dvd536
as Mr. Pink as they come
Premium Member
join:2001-04-27
Phoenix, AZ

dvd536 to OpTiC

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to OpTiC
if you're doing stuff for work you should be on comcast biz, not rez.

OpTiC
Premium Member
join:2014-03-08
West Covina, CA

OpTiC

Premium Member

The problem is they are nickel and dining customer. I'm not paying internet that is meant for a office building. I don't have Comcast my area will be Comcast probably next year or 2 years later.

mrancier
Premium Member
join:2013-07-27
Murfreesboro, TN

mrancier to Azlen

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to Azlen
said by Azlen:

As I said, when Cox decides to enforce caps, that would be the time to push back. It's not worth the effort right now to get to riled up about something that is meaningless. I do expect them to raise the caps to more realistic levels if they do ever implement a hard cap though. Cap levels haven't been changing with the speeds and that is completely ridiculous with a hard cap
Where are you getting the $4/Gb number though. Right now if you used only your full allotment, a Ultimate customer would be paying a quarter per GB. $100/400GB = $.25/GB

Bad math as a result of attempting to multitask. Sorry about that. 0.25 cents per GB is the correct number.

I think the cap, if need to be set, should be 4TB for Ultimate.

OpTiC
Premium Member
join:2014-03-08
West Covina, CA

OpTiC

Premium Member

said by mrancier:

said by Azlen:

As I said, when Cox decides to enforce caps, that would be the time to push back. It's not worth the effort right now to get to riled up about something that is meaningless. I do expect them to raise the caps to more realistic levels if they do ever implement a hard cap though. Cap levels haven't been changing with the speeds and that is completely ridiculous with a hard cap
Where are you getting the $4/Gb number though. Right now if you used only your full allotment, a Ultimate customer would be paying a quarter per GB. $100/400GB = $.25/GB

Bad math as a result of attempting to multitask. Sorry about that. 0.25 cents per GB is the correct number.

I think the cap, if need to be set, should be 4TB for Ultimate.

There shouldn't be a cap at all

mrancier
Premium Member
join:2013-07-27
Murfreesboro, TN

mrancier

Premium Member

said by OpTiC :

said by mrancier:

said by Azlen:

As I said, when Cox decides to enforce caps, that would be the time to push back. It's not worth the effort right now to get to riled up about something that is meaningless. I do expect them to raise the caps to more realistic levels if they do ever implement a hard cap though. Cap levels haven't been changing with the speeds and that is completely ridiculous with a hard cap
Where are you getting the $4/Gb number though. Right now if you used only your full allotment, a Ultimate customer would be paying a quarter per GB. $100/400GB = $.25/GB

Bad math as a result of attempting to multitask. Sorry about that. 0.25 cents per GB is the correct number.

I think the cap, if need to be set, should be 4TB for Ultimate.

There shouldn't be a cap at all

I agree with you. My point is that, if there needs to be a psychological barrier that tells you "I am using too much", if they absolutely must have one, 4TB Is the reasonable answer for the highest speed access plan they have. I imagine the average household with streaming entertainment consumes between 1-2 TB a month. This is a multi connected device home. We have 15 connected devices that get used every day. That much data allowance should cover streaming video, online gaming and chat ( including video) and habitual browsing, for the average connected home.
Rakeesh
join:2011-10-30
Phoenix, AZ

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said by OpTiC :

You have to learn this on the Xbox One and the PS4 games are downloaded on to the hard drive with a internet connection. Those games are somewhere between 30GB - 50gb. Back in those days every provider was unlimited. So that means the internet is walking backwards. Caps are bs and everyone on Comcast forums agree with me. Data sizes are getting bigger and 400 GB isn't enough. They are doing it for revenue. Please watch the rest of the video so you can understand better. Can you please explain Time Warner Cable , Bright House, and Verizon fios is still unlimited?

And you have to learn that data is data, regardless of the application; that is to say, your ethernet adapter isn't going to magically grant you an extra 100mbit beyond what it already gives you just because you want to play xbox. I get paid good money to manage networks, part of which includes making decisions on how bandwidth gets allocated to individual users so that everybody has an overall good quality of service with minimal latency, jitter, etc. I don't work for an ISP, rather I deal with smaller networks (which have larger amounts of internal traffic.)

Since you're a console game fan, I'll explain this in terms you should be able to understand. Bear with me, as this explanation will be necessarily long:

Consider a scenario in which you have a shared backbone on which you have 1000 gamers. Suppose you have 100 of them downloading a game at any one time at a rate of about 5mbyte/sec (that's 40mbit, which is rather below the rate I typically achieve with torrents/steam.) That means for 24 hours a day, you have a full 4 gigabits of your link saturated.

With docsis 3, RG6 cable isn't capable of much more than 8 gigabits per second in any one direction (this varies somewhat by cable provider.) Keep in mind that within this space you have to include spectrum being used on analog channels as well as digital video (including high def) channels. (This is mitigated somewhat with the use of SDV.) Also remember that cable is a broadcast medium in that everybody sees the same traffic (your modem only pays attention to whatever traffic is directed specifically to it's MAC address, in addition to being the only device with the necessary keys to decrypt YOUR traffic.)

So that means that with those xbox users alone, you've already lost half of your pipe (probably more actually, as 8gbit is even a bit unrealistic.) You've also lost another 2g to the TV subscribers (or somewhere near that; again varies by provider.) But what about the other users like netflix subscribers, youtube watchers, pandora, and all of the rest (web traffic, etc)? The reality is that if you had that many xbox users doing that at once, your other users would suffer. Furthermore, who would suffer the most would be the xbox users that are actually in a multiplayer game rather than downloading one (they'd see very high latency; aka "lag.") There simply isn't enough bandwidth available for that.

Therefore at some point you have to place limits on how much anybody can use at any one time. This could come either in the form of lower per second rate limits, or extended period rate limits (this what you call the caps here; in reality there are numerous caps that you have to deal with when it comes to networking) or both.

Generally things work out such that in your typical situation, most users aren't doing large data transfers all at once. It comes in spurts. It isn't like a spigot where the outgoing rate varies; it sits at either one extreme or the other, but *usually* at the near zero extreme. The thing is though, it wouldn't work if everybody filled their pipe 24/7. No network ever would; even within closed environments you MUST oversubscribe your backbone. If you didn't, internetworking would NEVER be practical.

The purpose of the longer term rate limits (aka your "caps") is to remind users that indeed, bandwidth is not unlimited, and they need to be mindful not to consume too much of it at once. This encourages them to reduce the number and frequency of large downloads they do.

Now as for your question about why some providers do it differently, that depends on a lot of things. In the case of Fios, or Google Fiber, their medium has such a high capacity that they haven't seen their users come anywhere close to saturating their wan links. In one case, Verizon HAS had to tell one person that he was using too much, which was mainly as a result of him practically running a datacenter from a home ISP link (a big no-no.) For similar reasons, Google also forbids running a business from their fiber service (business users do tend to saturate their links; unlike home users, hence they pay quite a bit more, which offsets the extra burden they place on the backbone provider.)

Another reason might be that some providers notice that in certain areas, they have a lot more heavy users than in other areas. For example, I know that in the case of Cox, one neighborhood might have 10 users who torrent every movie they find on the pirate bay, where another neighborhood might have zero. For that reason, they might actually enforce their soft caps in that node but not the other node (in which case, a heavy user in the other node can go along downloading merrily because his node remains unsaturated by other users.)

Sometimes some network admins are more strict about how they manage their networks. I tend to be very libertarian (hey what do you know; I'm politically libertarian too) when it comes to managing my networks in that I'll allow anybody to do anything so long is it doesn't impact other users. Some admins tend to be very strict and will lock everything down "because they can," which sounds like what Comcast does. Equally bad are the admins who allow their users to get away with anything, because their networks are poorly managed and performance is shitty (I'm looking at Centurylink here.) Again, caps are one way to mitigate and/or prevent that.

Wireless (i.e. cell phones) are even more spectrum limited than cable. Not only do aerial transmissions have less bandwidth in general (various reasons why,) but there's also more users crowding the same space. As for the earlier comment about unused spectrum by big carriers by mrancier; I'm well aware of this, however also keep in mind that most of this isn't used because there haven't been any radios developed to make use of them (something the carriers themselves don't necessarily have a say in; OEMs and chipset makers have to supply these, and the FCC has to approve their use, even if the spectrum is available for them already.) The frequencies that are being used however have to be shared by the devices that are currently on them, which is where the main problem is.

I think that should pretty thoroughly answer your question.
Rakeesh

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Rakeesh to mrancier

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to mrancier
said by mrancier:

I agree with you. My point is that, if there needs to be a psychological barrier that tells you "I am using too much", if they absolutely must have one, 4TB Is the reasonable answer for the highest speed access plan they have.

And how did you reach that number? Do you know something about the capabilities of their backbone and their subscriber numbers and usage patterns that you'd like to share with the class? Or did you just pull that number from /dev/random and type it in?

Do tell us exactly how you reached that number, and how you know their networks are capable of doing this without any performance penalty. Since in your own words that is a "reasonable answer," then show us your work just like you would to a college math professor to prove WHY it is reasonable.
ajwees41
Premium Member
join:2002-05-10
Omaha, NE

ajwees41 to Reg Mauler

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to Reg Mauler
shouldn't matter Omaha has been 8 down 4 up for awhile.

JiuJitsu
@70.181.132.x

JiuJitsu

Anon

Any word on upgrades in Southern California as well? Heck, we are *still* waiting for Ultimate tier speeds here to catch up with all the other Cox areas.

If they upgrade the middle tiers without a big improvement in the Ultimate speeds like this then I will likely downgrade.