Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, Steel, notfred
Corrado wrote:Just got a free bump up from Comcast after threatening to leave and goto FiOS. Paying no more than I was for 20/6. I can sustain 7MByte/sec downloads. Win!
Captain Ned wrote:So you can kill your Comcast cap in a hair over 9 hours.
Corrado wrote:It doesn't matter how much you use as long as you stay out of the top 3%. I used to work for Comcast. Have you ever known anyone to get a letter for going over 250GB? I've never seen one go out for anything less than 1TB of data over a month.
equivicus wrote:@Carrado , you son-of-a.. err.. congratulations! I'm stuck with a measly 17.25 Mbps.
Captain Ned wrote:First, I should have added a [/sarcasm] tag. Second, I'm not trying to make a stink about it or stoke the whole debate again, but for those of us not on the inside of Comcast policy we must treat the 250GB as a hard cap given the language on the website and the AUP agreement.
For the record, my monthly usage rolls between 150GB and 200GB.
TurtlePerson2 wrote:]\
Also, the argument that the data cap is only ever used by pirates doesn't hold either. After I reformatted my hard drive last summer, I downloaded several of my favorite games from Steam. I used 300 GB in about a week, which wasn't a problem because this DSL connection has no cap.
Corrado wrote:A lot of people just love to bandwagon hate on Comcast without pointing out that every single decent ISP these days has a cap except for FIOS... which isn't exactly widely available to a LOT of people, myself included.
Corrado wrote:Captain Ned wrote:So you can kill your Comcast cap in a hair over 9 hours.
I'm not downloading any more than I would otherwise. I'm just not waiting as long for it. On top of that, the Comcast 'cap' is a soft cap. It doesn't matter how much you use as long as you stay out of the top 3%. I used to work for Comcast. Have you ever known anyone to get a letter for going over 250GB? I've never seen one go out for anything less than 1TB of data over a month.
If the speed limit on your commute increased, would you drive more? Or just get to where work faster?
Just to make my point a little more clear, a lot of people say 'Oh, I'm streaming a LOT of movies and I will hit my cap!' That line of thinking is bunk. If you're streaming a movie that is 2 hours long and a total size of 3GB, it doesn't matter if it takes 15 min to buffer the whole movie or if it takes an hour to buffer it. It still takes 2 hours to watch it. Anything over 20-25mbit at this point is e-peen swinging in a residential connection in WELL over 99% of homes.
ShadowEyez wrote:Corrado, are serious? You used to work for Comcast, and can confirm that no one who uses 250 gig/month gets a "mark", letter, or notice on their account? It's really 1 TB/month that gets you on their radar? If that's true, why is it that they say it's a 250 gig cap - why not just say 1 TB?
And do you know if they have any plans to raise it?
ShadowEyez wrote:And do you know if they have any plans to raise it?
JohnC wrote:ShadowEyez wrote:And do you know if they have any plans to raise it?
Raising the caps (unless forced by government) would be a very dumb business decision - they NEED to keep general users "scared" with these artificial caps, so those users will try to use less bandwidth (meaning less need for Comcast to spend extra $$$ on new infrastructure as the number of users increase) and will try to avoid 3rd-party movie streaming services (also good for Comcast's own PPV services)
Flying Fox wrote:Don't we have a thread already for bragging (or crying in case you have a slow one?
Corrado wrote:
Just got a free bump up from Comcast after threatening to leave and goto FiOS. Paying no more than I was for 20/6. I can sustain 7MByte/sec downloads. Win!
Corrado wrote:Flying Fox wrote:Don't we have a thread already for bragging (or crying in case you have a slow one?
Not that I saw on the first page... should be stickied if its a bragging thread.
Corrado wrote:Its not necessarily 1TB. Its if you're in the top 3% of users in your region AND over 250GB. After flagged, they'll dig a little deeper (without violating privacy, of course) and see what the traffic patterns look like. If you're uploading 24/7 for days/weeks at a time, its pretty safe to assume you're torrenting. Thats when you get the letter. If this happens AGAIN in the next 3-6 months, you get the boot for a year.
Corrado wrote:Theres no official policy on it, despite whats said. They say 250GB in order to have a number in writing so that no one can say its PURELY a judgement call and they have a legal out to disconnect people that are, without a doubt, abusing the network.
TurtlePerson2 wrote:This is perhaps the scariest thing I've ever heard about Comcast.
Glorious wrote:TurtlePerson2 wrote:This is perhaps the scariest thing I've ever heard about Comcast.
...and this is the scariest thing I've ever seen you say.
This is verging on R&P if it isn't there already, but the drive to eliminate human judgment in all areas of life is not only utterly impossible, but horrifically ruinous.
Corrado wrote:ShadowEyez wrote:Corrado, are serious? You used to work for Comcast, and can confirm that no one who uses 250 gig/month gets a "mark", letter, or notice on their account? It's really 1 TB/month that gets you on their radar? If that's true, why is it that they say it's a 250 gig cap - why not just say 1 TB?
And do you know if they have any plans to raise it?
Its not necessarily 1TB. Its if you're in the top 3% of users in your region AND over 250GB. After flagged, they'll dig a little deeper (without violating privacy, of course) and see what the traffic patterns look like. If you're uploading 24/7 for days/weeks at a time, its pretty safe to assume you're torrenting. Thats when you get the letter. If this happens AGAIN in the next 3-6 months, you get the boot for a year.
If they peek and you're mostly downloading and it looks like legitimate traffic (Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, gaming, what have you) it gets ignored for the most part unless its REALLY obscene (1TB+ a month).
Theres no official policy on it, despite whats said. They say 250GB in order to have a number in writing so that no one can say its PURELY a judgement call and they have a legal out to disconnect people that are, without a doubt, abusing the network.
Just like a police office is not going to generally pull you over and ticket you for 8mph over the limit, or even 15mph over the limit if you're in a group moving with the flow of traffic. Its when they see you on your cell phone, swurving with no seatbelt on and speeding that they pull you over under the guise of "you got caught speeding", even if it WAS only 5mph over.
Believe me, they are NOT in a hurry to STOP taking your money.