  Noah VailOh God please no.
Premium Member
join:2004-12-10
SouthAmerica
kudos:3 |
It's still the user's fault• Everyone knows consumers will lie about the meters being broken; so it's the user's fault.
• ISPs are corporations and corps need to look out for their own interests; so it's the user's fault.
• ISPs can't be expected to own up to every little technology glitch on their watch; so it's the user's fault.
• The meters can't work properly Because Torrenting; so it's the user's fault.
• Heavy handed government regulation causes untenable problems; so it's the user's fault.
Did I get all of them?
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Campaign contributions influence laws through a process called bribery. | |
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 |  KrKHeavy Artillery For The Little Guy
Premium Member
join:2000-01-17
Tulsa, OK
Zoom 5341J
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KrK
Premium Member
2012-Sep-19 2:35 pm
Re: It's still the user's fault• Misconfiguration issues on the ISP's end; so it's the users fault.
• Billing database issues; so it's the user's fault.
• Actually expecting services to be rendered; so it's the user's fault.
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"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini
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| Cobra11M
join:2010-12-23
Mineral Wells, TX |
to Noah Vail
said by Noah Vail:• Everyone knows consumers will lie about the meters being broken; so it's the user's fault.
• ISPs are corporations and corps need to look out for their own interests; so it's the user's fault.
• ISPs can't be expected to own up to every little technology glitch on their watch; so it's the user's fault.
• The meters can't work properly Because Torrenting; so it's the user's fault.
• Heavy handed government regulation causes untenable problems; so it's the user's fault.
Did I get all of them?
Oh of course now I get it!!!, Its always users fault.. heck I think ive heard that from someone before.........*crickets* Suddenlink thats right.....lol | |
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| dra6o0n
join:2011-08-15
Mississauga, ON |
to Noah Vail
Don't forget modem hacking, you know, where hackers clone or steal internet by using your Mac Address?
It's illegal by federal law so in the US you can have the FBI/Cops kick your door down for that.
But if the hackers are good at it, or if its in a Country like Canada.
They won't enforce it too much, especially if there are ways to spoof the ip and such to make it look like it's the 'owner's' location. | |
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This is not rocket science...Why is this so hard to do accurately? We track circuit usage as part of our network management (not to make money by selling data or for overages) and it's pretty accurate. I spent very little time setting up some open source tools to make it work. I am sure it would be trivial for someone who is a decent programmer to collect the data and turn it into something that could generate a bill.
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I do not, have not, and will not work for AT&T/Comcast/Verizon/Charter or similar sized company. | |
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Re: This is not rocket science...said by battleop:Why is this so hard to do accurately? ....
it's not hard; the ISPs have no interest in doing this accurately and they aren't going to do it accurately unless they are made to by (effective) regulation. since those regulations aren't likely to be forthcoming for some time (if ever), this raping of the customer will continue. | |
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to battleop
cable is a sheared link and they may be counting at the node or some other place that counts ARP traffic and attempts to send data to your modem. Also counts overhead as well. | |
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| |  cdruGo Colts
MVM
join:2003-05-14
Fort Wayne, IN
kudos:7 |
cdru
MVM
2012-Sep-19 11:29 am
Re: This is not rocket science...But if it's a sheared link then the cable company shouldn't be billing for traffic at all. If they measure traffic sent on a sheared link, they have an even more fundamental problem with their system. | |
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to battleop
said by battleop:Why is this so hard to do accurately?
I can see at least one simple reason for this: when the modem is powered down, the DHCP lease is not released so the IP address remains associated with the account and stray packets addressed to that IP continue getting counted against the subscriber who remains associated with the IP for the remainder of the lease. Another possibility would be that usage gets counted toward the cap of whichever account was last associated with the IP. In either case, the ISP would need to implement a method to disassociate the IP from the account when a modem goes offline. Seems simple enough but might be more complicated than it seems in practice. | |
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Re: This is not rocket science..."stray packets addressed to that IP"
Possible but not enough to push you anywhere near your cap.
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I do not, have not, and will not work for AT&T/Comcast/Verizon/Charter or similar sized company. | |
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Re: This is not rocket science...said by battleop:"stray packets addressed to that IP"
Possible but not enough to push you anywhere near your cap.
Cogeco users have been under a long-term DNS spoof attack for quite a while. Meaning hackers target your router to send spoofed queries to a victim network using your Linksys routers broken DNS firmware. That uses up bandwidth, even when the modem is off, since, as one poster points out, the IP is still associated with a off modem, and Cogeco's network tries to route to it. Most users do not even notice the problem, hence the elegance of using residential crappy routers as your method of DDoS'ing someone. | |
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to InvalidError
also the cable boxes get a IP and some once had a cable box build in docsis modem (in the cable box for it's data use) profile linked to there Internet modem. | |
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| | cwcjr
join:2002-08-02
Huntsville, AL  ·WOW Internet and..
Netgear WNDR3800
ARRIS SB6121
3 edits |
to InvalidError
said by InvalidError:said by battleop:Why is this so hard to do accurately?
I can see at least one simple reason for this: when the modem is powered down, the DHCP lease is not released so the IP address remains associated with the account and stray packets addressed to that IP continue getting counted against the subscriber who remains associated with the IP for the remainder of the lease.. In either case, the ISP would need to implement a method to disassociate the IP from the account when a modem goes offline. Seems simple enough but might be more complicated than it seems in practice. The public IP assigned to you by that ISP, in general, does not change and is associated with the MAC (modem or individual device) presented directly to the ISP in obtaining the lease. The ISP knows when the modem is off and most leases on their side are pretty short (e.g. 3 hours) before they renew with the modem. As the MAC moves to different ISPs, then that ISP gives it a public IP that it uses whenever it sees that MAC. The advertisers, law enforcement, and Home Land Security want to make sure that they know where that physical device can be found.... | |
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Re: This is not rocket science...said by cwcjr:The ISP knows when the modem is off and most leases on their side are pretty short (e.g. 3 hours) before they renew with the modem.
The advertisers, law enforcement, and Home Land Security want to make sure that they know where that physical device can be found.... Cogeco is in Canada, DHS has no jurisdiction there. Most Canadian cable carriers have 5-7 days DHCP lease time under normal circumstances but reduce it to 24h or less while doing major network upgrades that include network renumbering or other activities that may disrupt routing. | |
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|  Thaler
Premium Member
join:2004-02-02
Los Angeles, CA
kudos:3 |
to battleop
said by battleop:Why is this so hard to do accurately?
Because it doesn't pay the ISP to be overly accurate on a user's bill. Overcharge the user? Sweet, mo' money. | |
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to battleop
said by battleop:Why is this so hard to do accurately? We track circuit usage as part of our network management (not to make money by selling data or for overages) and it's pretty accurate. I spent very little time setting up some open source tools to make it work. I am sure it would be trivial for someone who is a decent programmer to collect the data and turn it into something that could generate a bill.
What is interesting to me is the question of what "counts" as usage. This seems to fall into a category of problems appearing on the surface to be simple until you go about trying to solve. Billing in general seems easy enough on the surface. (service x costs y, you paid c and owe us z) yet reality is often quite a bit different. Does an incoming packet count if the packet is forwarded by an ISP router toward CPE but never makes it? Or dropped by CPE for some reason including but not limited to service provider provisioned rate limit? The same question except this time between ISP core and border router for network management or subscriber rate enforcement purposes? The user did not get value from the packet yet it has cost the ISP to forward it. What if someone decides to send you unsolicited packets having no value to you...yet it is costing you and you have no way of detecting or if you are aware ..no method of stopping unwanted traffic from being counted. This could easily blow thru your limit possibly even faster than the speed of service you are paying for. Same question except switch unsolicited packet with worm/virus/malware. Should you pay? Should your usage charge include overhead of the layer 2 header or layer two services such as ARP/ND? Should it include local administrative traffic to a managed CPE? When transmitting a packet what happens if it is forwarded from ISP core toward its destination but is dropped on link? For normal reasons? because ISP service is oversubscribed? Even if you can answer all of these questions and more good luck writing a policy the user is able to understand. Good luck finding any hardware byte counter pollable for the desired answer. | |
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| |  plencnerb
Premium Member
join:2000-09-25
Carpentersville, IL
kudos:3 |
Re: This is not rocket science...I have smoothwall express running on a dell desktop (PIII with 512 MB of RAM and an 80 GB HD) between my cable modem and my home network. It took me all of about 20 minutes to setup, and BY DEFAULT, it can measure the traffic coming in and going out, down to the second. I get all kinds of cool charts and graphs showing usage on each IP. And this coming from someone who knows nothing about Linux! The technology exists, and by looking at things, Smoothwall is not the only software that can do this. Not to mention, smoothwall is FREE! So, it cannot really be that hard to get this right, can it? I do want to point out that I am in no way in favor of this kind of billing. However, if an ISP chooses to do this, it has to be done correctly, and be accurate. --Brian --
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--Brian Plencner
E-Mail: CoasterBrian72Cancer@gmail.com
Note: Kill Cancer to Reply via e-mail | |
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| | | Thaler
Premium Member
join:2004-02-02
Los Angeles, CA
kudos:3 |
Thaler
Premium Member
2012-Sep-19 11:43 pm
Re: This is not rocket science...Problem is then getting your ISP's billing department to take your internet usage metrics over theirs. | |
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rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO ·Charter
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Electricity MetersIf the electric company could, would we like them to bill us from the central office? What happens if a repair is done miles away from our house and power now bleeds from the line causing a small increase in our bill that isn't discovered for years? (i.e. think spoofed MAC addresses).
What if a storm knocks down the line and serious power bleeds to ground for several days leading to hundreds of dollars added to your bill? Ridiculous, right?
Meters should be inside the CPE and they should measure what actually passes through the device. This shouldn't be difficult but it might require upgraded CPE.
Based on meters still running when the modem is disconnected, it sounds like they are charging for broadcast packets or they are charging for people sniffing the network from the outside. (i.e. traffic destined for the CPE but never reaching it.)
I think the CPE should also have a stateful firewall that the customer can configure to permit desired traffic. We shouldn't pay for someone slamming our IP from the outside with blocked requests.
Two ways to fix this: Multiple competitors (some offering quality meters and/or some offering no meters) or regulation. The industry should decide now what it wants because it won't take many of these stories before consumers start calling their AGs.
Of course the path of least resistance is to get rid of meters since we aren't dealing with a consumption model. Rates should reflect speed and whatever is necessary to keep the system maintained and upgraded to meet demand. If that means it costs $100/month for a 20Mbps connection, so be it. There should also be a $50/month 5Mbps connection and a $25/month 1Mbps connection. | |
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Re: Electricity Meterssaid by rradina:Two ways to fix this: Multiple competitors (some offering quality meters and/or some offering no meters) or regulation. The industry should decide now what it wants because it won't take many of these stories before consumers start calling their AGs.
Cogeco is a Canadian ISP, I'd wish this would be a US isp's problem a state attorney general would quickly jump on some litigation. Sadly the CRTC (Canadian regulator) is not acting, and the federally regulated measurement agency won't hear of certifying data transmit without act of parlament. Also competition exists now for most cable markets in a process called TPIA, however the meter exists for both competition and incumbent. --
AFK: Attack, fight, kill!! The healer is telling you to go pull mobs.
WTF: Way to fight! The healer is applauding your tactical genius | |
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| | rradina
join:2000-08-08
Chesterfield, MO |
rradina
Member
2012-Sep-19 10:02 am
Re: Electricity MetersI guess I'm making an assumption that if Canadian ISPs cannot bill correctly, accurate metering isn't easy and that means it will be an industry-wide problem. | |
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Re: Electricity Meterssaid by rradina:I guess I'm making an assumption that if Canadian ISPs cannot bill correctly, accurate metering isn't easy and that means it will be an industry-wide problem.
Usage monitoring was shoehorned in by Cogeco late 2007, then full usage billing in late 2010. Unless the network was designed around metering from day one, retrofiting is going to have problems. Canada has the Weights and Measures act to protect consumers from circumstances where accurate self measurement is not possible, Feasable, and where inaccurately can effect trade. Electricity Meters, Gas Pumps, Gas Meter, Trade Scales, and many other devices comply with the ACT. Why does the "invisible" counting of bits get to be excluded from an act designed to protect just such a trade. --
AFK: Attack, fight, kill!! The healer is telling you to go pull mobs.
WTF: Way to fight! The healer is applauding your tactical genius | |
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Re: Electricity Meterssaid by I_H8_Spam:Electricity Meters, Gas Pumps, Gas Meter, Trade Scales, and many other devices comply with the ACT. Why does the "invisible" counting of bits get to be excluded from an act designed to protect just such a trade. The act only covers analogous values because physical measurements have to be periodically calibrated to compensate for precision drift over time. The size of a bit/kilobit/KB/KiB/etc. is invariant in time and space. The precision of usage accounting is all about the accounting, not the metering itself. W&M does not regulate accounting practices. | |
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to I_H8_Spam
Because it's a count. It's not measuring anything.
Weights and measures doesn't test a supermarket clerk to make sure that the 3 apples you purchased are rung up as 3 apples. | |
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| | | | | KearnstdSpace Elf
Premium Member
join:2002-01-22
Mullica Hill, NJ
kudos:2 |
Kearnstd
Premium Member
2012-Sep-19 5:07 pm
Re: Electricity Meterssaid by prairiesky:Because it's a count. It's not measuring anything.
Weights and measures doesn't test a supermarket clerk to make sure that the 3 apples you purchased are rung up as 3 apples.
no but they make sure the scale those three apples are weighed on is accurate. Apples are sold by weight, if you buy 1lb of apples you do not want the scale to charge for 1.5lbs. --
[65 Arcanist]Filan(High Elf) Zone: Broadband Reports | |
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to rradina
metering consumption is dumb anyway....... the number of bits moved across your pipe is not reflective of your load on the network. The average and peak bit-rates are what actually matter. Consider the example of a user who consumes about 20GB a month, mostly through web-surfing and audio streaming. Now consider the example of a user who consumes the same amount of data over the course of a few days, or maybe even in a single day, using services such as FTP, bittorrent, steam, or streaming video.
Both users have the same average bit-rate for the billing period (about 65kbit/s), does this imply that they place the same burden on the ISP? Hardly. User #2 will have a much higher peak bit-rate, he placed a heavier load on the network while he was downloading, and in the final analysis the ISP has to invest more money to ensure that User #2's activities don't interfere with the responsiveness of User #1's connection.
Billing for demand rather than consumption is much more logical, though it would be considerably harder to explain to the non-technical customer, which is probably why no ISP has opted to go in this direction.
In the absence of demand billing, or even with demand billing, it be nice to see something similar to the "nights and weekends" concept pioneered by the wireless industry. Exclude the hours of 1am to 7am from billing, on the basis that residential peak hours are 8pm to 1am, and few businesses open before 7am. Most torrent/porn kiddies could confine their downloads to these hours with minimal disruption, while operating systems/steam/etc could be configured to pull their updates during these hours. | |
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| | elray
join:2000-12-16
Santa Monica, CA ·Time Warner Cable
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elray
Member
2012-Sep-19 11:38 am
Re: metering consumption is dumb anyway....said by Crookshanks:... the number of bits moved across your pipe is not reflective of your load on the network. The average and peak bit-rates are what actually matter. Consider the example of a user who consumes about 20GB a month, mostly through web-surfing and audio streaming. Now consider the example of a user who consumes the same amount of data over the course of a few days, or maybe even in a single day, using services such as FTP, bittorrent, steam, or streaming video.
Caps make sense, in that they affect the subscriber's psychology, and result in more conservative consumption patterns overall. They also allow ISPs to offer lower entry prices for marginal users who might otherwise do without the connection. Yes, there is such a class of subscribers. | |
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Re: metering consumption is dumb anyway....Caps are not the discussion thats another argument beaten to death, but if the provider caps, the measurement needs to be accurate and independently verifiable. Failure of this allows for a. fraud, b. dispute
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AFK: Attack, fight, kill!! The healer is telling you to go pull mobs.
WTF: Way to fight! The healer is applauding your tactical genius | |
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| | | | elray
join:2000-12-16
Santa Monica, CA ·Time Warner Cable
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elray
Member
2012-Sep-19 11:55 am
Re: metering consumption is dumb anyway....Agreed.
If metering technology - software or hardware, is used to enforce billing, it should be subject to third-party certification and conform to an agreed-upon industry standard.
But metering isn't going away just because a few people declare it "dumb".
It has a valid application in any number of circumstances. | |
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| | |  RRedlineRated R
Premium Member
join:2002-05-15
USA |
to elray
said by elray:Caps make sense, in that they affect the subscriber's psychology, and result in more conservative consumption patterns overall.
They also allow ISPs to offer lower entry prices for marginal users who might otherwise do without the connection. Yes, there is such a class of subscribers.
Caps makes sense all right...for the providers! It stifles innovation. Period. I would rather that everyone's connection got throttled waaaay back to sub 1 Mbs speeds than impose ridiculous caps on everyone. Having a connection speed paired with a monthly cap that can be reached in mere minutes is absolutely, inexcusably, laughably RIDICULOUS, and we should not accept it. --
One nation, under Zod! | |
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| | | | elray
join:2000-12-16
Santa Monica, CA ·Time Warner Cable
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elray
Member
2012-Sep-19 1:02 pm
Re: metering consumption is dumb anyway....Caps do not "stifle innovation". Quite the contrary.
They encourage innovation - in the form of lower-cost offerings, bandwidth conservation techniques and software, and competitive access.
The presence of caps does not preclude a company from offering an unlimited tier - and in fact, most do. Caps just allow the firm to charge less to customers who use less. | |
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to elray
Ah. So if there were no caps that 99% crowd would all of a sudden be downloading 24/7.
I wish I had the drugs you are smoking. | |
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| | bt
join:2009-02-26
canada
kudos:1 |
to Crookshanks
said by Crookshanks:In the absence of demand billing, or even with demand billing, it be nice to see something similar to the "nights and weekends" concept pioneered by the wireless industry.
Some ISPs do that - off peak hours that don't count against the monthly usage cap. | |
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 skeechanAi Otsukaholic
Premium Member
join:2012-01-26
AA169|170
kudos:2 |
skeechan
Premium Member
2012-Sep-19 9:49 am
Executives should get 90 days in prisonIf I steal from someone I go to jail. They are aware of these issues and continue anyway. This eliminates any defense related to not having intent. By continuing the meters and overages they are intent on theft.
Time for Cogeco executives to go to jail for ignoring the company's criminality.
Regulatory authorities should insist that such meters be built into the firmware of the device and let the device report based not on the MACID but user information stored encrypted in the modem. | |
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Os
Member
2012-Sep-19 10:09 am
Won't it be great.....when Cogeco finally comes to America?  | |
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82gb in one day probably meant .82GB in one day.I think the 82GB in one day was a typo, and you sure jumped on that one Carl.
In the previous comment to that, a user said that they'd used
.77GB in one day. NOTICE THE DECIMAL! I think that meant .82GB and the op missed the decimal. | |
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Re: 82gb in one day probably meant .82GB in one day.said by compuguybna:I think the 82GB in one day was a typo, and you sure jumped on that one Carl.
In the previous comment to that, a user said that they'd used
.77GB in one day. NOTICE THE DECIMAL! I think that meant .82GB and the op missed the decimal.
I don't think so, the original comment is said by Livadia:And after that "system maintenance", my usage was 82 GB in just one day! (I seldom use more than 35 or so a month!)
So by your misplaced decimal suggestion the OP in this thread is claiming too use typically 350MB in a month and the meter picked up 820MB in a day? It's clear the OP uses typically 35GB of data in a billing cycle and was metered at 82GB following the meter outage. --
AFK: Attack, fight, kill!! The healer is telling you to go pull mobs.
WTF: Way to fight! The healer is applauding your tactical genius | |
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Metered Fixed Broadband is just a money grabluckily I still have unlimited, but I'm sure it will disappear one day. | |
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Re: Metered Fixed Broadband is just a money grabor just have no caps
yenius | |
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Re: Metered Fixed Broadband is just a money grabGotta protect that legacy (Cable) revenue stream, or the shareholders will have your head. --
AFK: Attack, fight, kill!! The healer is telling you to go pull mobs.
WTF: Way to fight! The healer is applauding your tactical genius | |
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dissilusion
Anon
2012-Sep-19 10:16 pm
Let's really think about it.Two birds with one stone.
The major ISPs saw the huge profit margins being achieved with wireless/cell plans and decided to apply the same rate\pricing scheme to wired internet. This in turn also protects their other vested interests/cash cows being traditional BDU and VOD services.
It's a win, win for the ISPs. As long as there is no threat of functional separation between network access provider and content delivery provider, we will never gain the upper hand as consumers. | |
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