Island Jeff
join:2005-07-18
 ·WildBlue
 ·TDS
| reply to DrStrangeLov6
Re: Rolling 30 Day: The Truth
said by DrStrangeLov :
Yes, but currently, I am not aware of any articles suggesting they will back away from current monthly (rolling 30 day) accounting.
Correct - I was replying directly to the suggestion above in this very thread (look a few posts up please) that it be shortened. That's all. |
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DrStrangeLov6
join:2006-01-04
| reply to Island Jeff
said by Island Jeff  :
In my view, the shorter the FAP window the more inflexible and worse the system will be for the average user.
Yes, but currently, I am not aware of any articles suggesting they will back away from current monthly (rolling 30 day) accounting.
As "User-Options" suggested above, it would be nice if the user had options to choose from. As the upshot of that discussion with that gal from Montana, in her business, it would be better to have a daily cap since a single customer might exceed this cap. I doubt this will happen, but it would be nice if the user could choose.
No doubt about it, having daily or weekly caps could reduce the total amount used by the average Joe/Mary if they "porked-out" when they went online; and power users will get the most bytes from daily/weekly accounting setup since they would be counting the bytes.
But, as long as Wildblue maintains the monthly cap, much ado about nothing, for now. If they want to sell their product, they must maintain selling-point differences between them and the other two. |
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Island Jeff
join:2005-07-18
·WildBlue
·TDS
| reply to DrStrangeLov6
quote:
How is this so?
The longer the FAP window, the more time I have for my high usage days to average out with my low usage days.
Let's say I take a vacation and then come back the following week, turn on my computer get all my email, upload photos from vacation to share with friends and family, software updates, and files from work or freinds sent this and the previous week. With the current 30-day fap, it's no problem - my usage averages out with everyone elses and my high usage week (or days) is offset by my low usage week when I was away.
Let's now say that they shorten it to a 7 day FAP window as proposed above. In that case I would get zero credit for the week I was away with no usage, and then when I come back I only get 1/4 of the current FAP for those 7 days so I'm much more likely to get fapped now downloading two weeks of data and sending pictures from my vacation in the one week when I return.
Likewise, I would think many average useres offset low usage periods during the month when they're working long days or projects are taking much of their time with high usage periods when kids are home on snowdays or school vacations or when they're working on a project afterhours from home, etc.
In my view, the shorter the FAP window the more inflexible and worse the system will be for the average user. |
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DrStrangeLov6
join:2006-01-04
| reply to Island Jeff
said by Island Jeff :My argument is that shortening the FAP window means there is more liklihood for the average user to be inconvenienced How is this so? |
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Island Jeff
join:2005-07-18 | reply to JohnSmith2
My argument is that shortening the FAP window means there is more liklihood for the average user to be inconvenienced and it only benefits very very heavy users who wildblue doesn't really want to encourage as customers anyway. |
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Navigatr1
@wildblue.net
| reply to Guest77
Could the reduced FAP levels have something to do with beams that are full? By reducing the FAP levels for everyone, they can squeeze more customers on a beam. I imagine that for the average person these reduced FAP levels won't affect them as they never maxed the bandwidth out that they had bought. Although, some users are going to be affected by it.
I know that I have to think more when surfing and downloading to be sure that I am not wasting bandwidth. Some websites automatically download audio or video files when you access their webpage. If I can, I try to disable the download but that isn't always possible. I watched a CNN clip today, and it played a commercial first before it played the clip. I realize that they need sponsers to pay for their content, but that commercial used up bandwidth that I bought. |
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JohnSmith2
join:2005-02-25
Hillsboro, MO
| reply to Guest77
My basic argument is its simply takes far too long to go from fapped to unfapped. 20-30 days is quite possible. Going to a 7 day cycle would only negatively impact people that regularly use more than a fourth of their net bandwidth in a given week, which isn't many. It would also make the time to become unfapped much shorter, but as someone suggested before, the choice of options would be even better.
Personally, I'd have probably gone with 1) putting up the wifi tower i avoided with wb, or 2) going with directway had I known what I know now. The tower would have been expensive and time consuming to put up.
With (2) I would have had more available bandwidth apparently, although it would have required jumping through some hoops to setup shaping and prioritization so everything worked well. Ideally, this would also require shaping prior to the data coming down the sat pipe, which requires a fast server with a true broadband link, and quite a bit of knowledge of traffic shaping. |
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Spice300
Premium
join:2006-01-10
| reply to Think-Again
My electricity comes from my off-grid photovoltaic system. I can not spare 10 or 20 Watts consumed by a modem resting idle 24 hours a day. I live in a place where temperatures drop below 0 F in the winter and exceed 100 F in the summer. When I am not using electronics, I turn them completely off, always. I have had my WB system since October 2005 without any hardware problems. |
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Think-Again
@12.175.x.x | reply to Guest77
quote:
completely turn off the WB modem
Not a Good Idea! It is better to leave Modem/Tria on 24x7x365
Powering off Computer is a Good Idea. |
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Spice300
Premium
join:2006-01-10 | reply to User-Options
I use the switch on my power strip to completely turn off the WB modem and my computer when I am not using them. Hopefully that minimizes the times when a hacker or other malicious program can break in stealing my bandwidth. |
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User-Options
@12.175.x.x | reply to Island Jeff
It would be nice if they had some user options:
1. Daily
2. Weekly
3. Monthly
If some hacker gets to your machine, it's your problem. |
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Island Jeff
join:2005-07-18
·WildBlue
·TDS
1 edit | reply to JohnSmith2
quote:
Personally, I think the time periods involved are too long if they are going to do a rolling thing. I'd recommend they drop down to a rolling 7 days. If you just divided the numbers by four you would get the following per 7 days.
Value: 1875/575
Select: 3000/750
Pro: 4250/1250
That is the single worst suggestion I've heard to date. It offers no benefit at all to the customer (they can't do anything they couldn't do before) and it limits what you can do and means you will have less bandwidth available to use. What has always been awful about direcway is that the short FAP bucket makes it so you simply can't do things like download the new version of linux without taking great pains to self-throttle. What is great about wildblue is that the FAP period is long enough that things even out so you don't have to constantly pay attention to it.
If you want a small fap bucket, get direcway and let the rest of us enjoy the freedom that wildblue offers. |
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JohnSmith2
join:2005-02-25
Hillsboro, MO
| reply to Guest77
FYI -- What happens after being fapped.
It should be noted that unplugging the modem for several days may be required to get under the 80% threshold, and this will result in zero being added for say four or five days, and whatever you had 30 days ago during that time being subtracted.
Now, the interesting bit comes when you hit those same four or five days again, about 25 days from when you had them before. There, no matter what you do, short of unplugging the thing, will cause your last 30 days usage to continue to go up, since you are using it now, but not 30 days ago. At any rate, I just thought it worth mentioning, in case anyone is pushing the new lower limits now, they might suddenly find themselves over if they have a time around a month ago, where they had their modem unplugged.
Personally, I think the time periods involved are too long if they are going to do a rolling thing. I'd recommend they drop down to a rolling 7 days. If you just divided the numbers by four you would get the following per 7 days.
Value: 1875/575
Select: 3000/750
Pro: 4250/1250
Of course, personally, i still think the fap terms in place when the contract was signed should have been maintained during the term of the contract, but hey, i'm one of those unreasonable people, who despite seeing the fine print that they could change it all, figured it was the best bet at the time.
At any rate, one could argue the numbers, but there is no point since you have no say over them anyway, but dropping down to a 7 day cycle would allow a more realistic balance with being able to use what you want, and keeping the FAP cycles, should they occur, much shorter. |
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Drewman521
@wildblue.net
| reply to Spice300
The FAP sucks. They hit me without warning (actually a voice mail AFTER it was reached). The suggestion they gave me was unhook my stuff for a few days. What do I pay for anyways?? I believe I was hit in Jan with the rolling RAP before the new restrictive policy was released. They do not return any emails. I feel I'm being penalized for them growing too fast and not having the bandwidth to cover all their customers. :-( |
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Spice300
Premium
join:2006-01-10
|  reply to Guest77
The FAP effective on March 1, 2006, actually limits the maximum data that we can transfer in February. If one exceeds the new download limits of 7.5/12/17 GB in February while still being under the old limits of 10/16/22 GB, the rolling FAP will cause speed limiting on March 1, 2006, until the day after dropping below 6/9.6/13.6 GB. Beware the rolling FAP for those who push the FAP envelope. |
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Sippi
Premium
join:2002-01-01
Mississippi
| reply to hoss75
said by hoss75 :
Before it was great, I would have been able to download a 1Gig file if I wanted to and just had to be careful the rest of the month. But if I"m reading this right, I can't do that now.
Sure you can, as long as you're under the rolling 30 day FAP limit.
--
Barry, WildBlue ProPak, Beam 35 / Direcway DW3000, Satmex 5, 1270 |
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hoss75
@direcpc.com
| reply to Guest77
Hmm.. maybe I should be glad WB hasn't been available in my area for the past few months. With this new 'rolling' FAP, is it any better than Direcways policy? Before it was great, I would have been able to download a 1Gig file if I wanted to and just had to be careful the rest of the month. But if I"m reading this right, I can't do that now. Is that the case? If so, I"m sticking with DWay. Man I would have been ticked off had I switched and found myself back in the same situation. Please God, PLEASE get some company to run cable out here! |
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davidjneff
join:2005-09-19
Stevenson, WA
| reply to JohnSmith2
I was actually semi-joking with my post about the rolling FAP giving us more bandwidth. Even though in theory you could get a few extra gig a year with the rolling FAP, in practice, the psychology of it means none of us will want to get close to the FAP, since as you pointed out, once you are FAPped, it can be a while to get it back. At least with the old FAP, you knew you were golden first of the month.
But it all depends on your usage pattern. With the old FAP, if you could in theory download your entire FAP within the first few days, and also have to wait for weeks for the new month.
I agree that for most folks, the rolling FAP will result in lower bandwidth usage in practice. But I really do think it was an attempt to even out bandwidth usage more, which really is a sensible thing to do and actually in our best interests.
Algebra models like we used are an approximation. In reality I think some monte carlo simulations would be necessarily to figure out probability distributions of fapping and time to unfapping  |
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JohnSmith2
join:2005-02-25
Hillsboro, MO
| reply to Guest77
I'm going to try to explain how a rolling FAP works, once you are FAPed. I apologize for the algebra, but this is not the kind of thing I'm having much luck fully explaining with only words. This is of course a simplified model, yet I hope some clarity will result.
R = Average daily rate of utilization.
G = Plan Gigabytes.
Remember that, if your average daily usage is pretty constant at R, you expire just as much per day as you add on. Therefore once you are fapped, you stay fapped for a full thirty days regardless, unless you bring your average usage down.
Now assume, that somehow you can change how you are using the internet and adjust your daily utilization to only 2/3 of what it was before being fapped. Let us try to calculate the number of days it takes to get unfapped under that assumption.
G - R*n + 2/3R*n = 8/10*G. ; n = number of days
1/5G = 1/3*R*n
3G=5*R*n
n=3G/(5R)
So for the 10GB case, and assuming you normally use 3/4 of your average allowed daily bandwidth you get have:
G=10GB
R= 3/4*(10GB)/30=0.25GB/day
n=3*10/(5*.25)=24 days
Let me clarify this. If you normally use 3/4 of what you pay for on a daily basis, and for some reason you need to download more and get FAPed, then even if you can suddenly cut your normal usage to 2/3 of what it was, then you still have to wait 24 days to be unfapped.
The best case scenario for getting back to 80% is the person unplugs the modem. In that case you would have:
G - R*n = 8/10*G
1/5G=R*n
G=5*R*n
n=G/(5*R)
Supposing you normally were a moderate user and used R= (1/2)(G/30) = G/60
n=G*60/(5*G)
n=20 days.
Ironically here, it is better for getting under FAP if the event that sent you under was not that big and your past average daily usage was bigger. Suppose R= (3/4)(G/30)=G/40
n=G*40/(5*G)
n=8 days to get under fap.
At any rate, this post has gotten too long, but I thought it worthwhile to try to explain how a rolling FAP like this works in practice, and that, the change really was not any kind of benefit to the end user. They had it better when it was easy to know when they were going to reset. Yes, some would likely download more towards the end, but then they did pay for that bandwidth. |
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Guest77
@12.175.x.x
| Interesting post at WB.CC:
"The rolling FAP in theory gave us 3 more gigs a year! So, obviously somebody at WildBlue, no doubt also while drifing off to sleep, realized this side effect of the rolling bandwidth, and thereby realized they had to lower the FAP"
»www.wildblue.cc/wbforums/showthr···p?t=1357
And to think about all the "boo-hoo" arguments just ate the dust...give me a break. |
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