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Download limits?!
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TheRant



Joined: 07 Apr 2002
Posts: 2
Location: Victoria,Canada

PostPosted: Sun Apr 07, 2002 2:10 pm    Post subject: Download limits?! Reply with quote

How many of you guys out there have servers with download limits?
I posted this about SHaw to the newsgroup last month and decided to see here if anybody else is having the same problems I have.

Shaw's 'rule' gives you a 6 GB download / 1 MB upload per month. That's total internet connection : Netscape,IE, FTP, usenet.. not just 6 GB from newsgroups..
Of course it's only recently that they are beginning to try and enforce it.

I used to download anything from the groups that I thought looked interesting and I hadn't seen. That totalled a hell of a lot of download. I never monitored it but I'm betting it was well over 100 GB per month. Under @home that seem to be a problem . They only jumped on people who were uploading a lot, there didn't seem to be any real download limit.

Shaw warned me last month that my downloads were too high so I began cutting back and set up a download monitor
I ended up at about 65 GB downloaded. If you're wondering that's about 2 GB a day or about 5 of the 50 or so anime posts per day.

Shaw said that's still too much.

Here's what I've done and I'm not too happy with it.

I've set myself a 1 GB per day limit (It's still way too high for Shaw's liking, so in about a month I'll probably get another threatening phone all from them.)
I'm trying to minimize what I download (hell, I've even turned off my images in Netcsape---but had to temporarily turn them back on to find the button so I could post this.)

I skipped a whole pile of posts I would have liked (like that Orphen flood).

I've done the unthinkable.... and got a additional dial-up connection. I can only download like about 500 - 600 megs a day on it if I run it continously, but that's 2.5-3 posts I would have missed otherwise. (Good luck on phoning me next month Shaw)

I was just wondering if anybody else out there is having similar problems.
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(inc)



Joined: 18 Feb 2002
Posts: 356
Location: San Diego

PostPosted: Sun Apr 07, 2002 7:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm still uncapped, but I wonder how long that will last -- for everyone. And I haven't looked at any numbers but I have the (very subjective) feeling this had to be the largest volume weekend I've ever seen in aba/abma. Sigh....and here I am about to add to it (Kenshin 67).

(inc)
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AlienBoy



Joined: 27 Feb 2002
Posts: 70
Location: Middle Management

PostPosted: Sun Apr 07, 2002 8:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, when the whole @home fiasco happened, Comcast picked me up. There hasn't been any talk of capping service here. Then again, I'm about the only customer in my area. I know of about 4 other people who have accounts around here. As far as upload caps go...I'd probably laugh myself to death if they ever put in such a thing here. Were still on a one-way setup so our upload capabilities are limited to a 26400 dial up connection.
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Gorunova



Joined: 10 Feb 2002
Posts: 318
Location: Burnaby, B.C., Canada

PostPosted: Sun Apr 07, 2002 10:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

During the last month before I switched from @home to Shaw, @home imposed a 3GB/3day byte cap on Usenet downloads. They had always had a 500msg/200MB upload cap.

I found it very difficult to live with the d/l cap. I started seriously considering getting a commercial news service in addition. I was having to be very selective and limit myself to about 700MB of actual files per day to stay under that limit.

Then Melchior pointed out I could switch to the Shaw news server, and I'm using that now. I don't know if there is an upload cap, but I'm voluntarily sticking to the same upload size just to be nice.

As for download cap, Shaw hasn't yelled at me yet. I typically grab 1.5 to 2GB per day. I don't know what I'll do if they do complain. I'll burn that bridge when I come to it.

I hear the cable ISP in Toronto is offering tiered service where you pay more for higher bandwidth usage. If they introduced that here, it would probably double my bill, but I would go for it until a better deal came along.

I wish we had competition in this market.

They way I look at it is, I've been getting a free haystack ride so far, and I can't reasonably expect it to go on forever. I've got a lot of good stuff to watch, and if they cap me, I'll still be able to download a few selected episodes per month.

But on the other hand, news downloading is really the only reason I subscribed to broadband. I can do everything else I want over dialup. I'd like to think that $45/mo is enough for a decent news service, and since it's a local server I'm not costing them anything in terms of their big, expensive Internet connection.
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Highspar



Joined: 18 Feb 2002
Posts: 27
Location: London, Canada

PostPosted: Mon Apr 08, 2002 6:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Any idea where this information is posted? I keep expecting to see an email filter in to tell me that I'm dling too much (right now 1GB/day off usenet due to caps) and I get maybe another 1 - 2 gig a day on friday - sunday when I'm trying to get stuff off a DC hub. that's just downloads though. my uploads (thanks to DC) usually runs 1 gig a day.

Personally, I'd like to know how we can be labled "abusers" if we are just using the system they provided for us. if we are only allowed to dl 6 GB in a month, why not just cap the modems at 4.5K (think I got that math right) if I recall a 5.6K transfer is 8 GB and change.

main reason why I'm looking for This info, is because I'm though rogers (remember their infamous "negative billing" thing?). I can see myself waking up one day, going down expecting to surf, and to discover that I need to depost another 10 bucks just to get on-line.
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oblio



Joined: 20 Feb 2002
Posts: 106
Location: Detroix, MI

PostPosted: Mon Apr 08, 2002 9:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Comcast has given unto us news servers to the tune of 3G down a month, but I haven't even tried it yet... after the @home rollover, we were without usenet at all for 3 months. I took the opportunity to get multiple commercial accounts and really haven't looked back.

Bandwidth caps will be a scary thing. I'm getting closer and closer to a IDSL, crappiest of the DSL family, and way overpriced, but at least its a raw pipe.

oblio
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Gorunova



Joined: 10 Feb 2002
Posts: 318
Location: Burnaby, B.C., Canada

PostPosted: Mon Apr 08, 2002 10:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Highspar wrote:
Any idea where this information is posted? I keep expecting to see an email filter in to tell me that I'm dling too much


Most people seem to get email warnings or phone calls. As for where the info is, that depends on your ISP. At @Home and Shaw I found it in or near the AUP, on their web page.

Highspar wrote:
Personally, I'd like to know how we can be labled "abusers" if we are just using the system they provided for us.


Well, because they built their business model around the expected traffic patterns of web, email, game and IRC/IM users.

That said, I feel it's bullshit. As I said before, the news is the only thing I want from them, and since it comes from a local server it shouldn't bother anyone how much I download unless it interferes with other customers on my subnet.

When @Home capped me, I went and read their justification on their web site, and basically it said that they had decided to call the top 3% (by d/l bandwidth) of their users abusers and cut them off. Of course they'd still take our money, but we'd have to play nice. They all but called us criminals. Never mind they might be right, it was downright insulting.

Highspar wrote:
Personally, I'd if we are only allowed to dl 6 GB in a month, why not just cap the modems at 4.5K (think I got that math right) if I recall a 5.6K transfer is 8 GB and change.


I would definitely prefer a speed limit to a d/l cap or a rate increase. It's no problem for my to leave my machine sucking on the hose all night. Used to do that frequently back when we had access to multiple @Home news servers with rate caps.
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Tobias Rieper



Joined: 18 Feb 2002
Posts: 41
Location: Berlin, Germany

PostPosted: Tue Apr 09, 2002 2:41 am    Post subject: My situation Reply with quote

As a Kraut, my situation is different, but FYI here is what it looks like in germany:

There is yet not much broadband in germany. The dial up telephone connections are pay per minute with ca. 2 cent per min. Some ISPs tried to offer a flatrate but they still have to pay 1.8 cent per minute to the Telekom, who owns all telephone lines. So they set up a high monthly rate (ca. 50-75$) and hoped that the users won't stay too long online. But they got users like me who used the connection 24/7 and so they went all bankrupt.

Nowadays you can only get a flatrate with a broadband connection. But there are not much alternatives. Cable is not available yet. (Only some small private cable companies offer a internet connection.)

So DSL is the only option. It has currently ca. 500000 users - another 250000 are waiting for it. The biggest provider is t-online (a daughter of the Telekom). They charge ca. 30$ without any time and download limit.

I'm downloading ca. 100 gigs per month. Considering the prices for a gig in the european interconnection market, i suppose that they are loosing pretty much money with me. But they don't seem to care about it. (at least not yet...)

As for their newsserver: There is not a single ISP in germany with a newsserver suitable for the binary groups. (At the newsserver of t-online, there is only one group in the alt.binaries.multimedia tree: alt.binaries.multimedia.d.)

So I only use premium servers in the states (currently Easynews, Usenetserver and Newscene) and have to live with their rates.

T.Rieper
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user



Joined: 19 Feb 2002
Posts: 72

PostPosted: Tue Apr 09, 2002 10:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Some more info:

http://www.nwfusion.com/net.worker/news/2002/0408networker.html

And I used to think broadband == unmetered usage. How silly of me. Mad
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Melchior



Joined: 19 Feb 2002
Posts: 190
Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada

PostPosted: Tue Apr 09, 2002 10:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

As far as Shaw goes, I know a couple of people who've been told to restrict their downloads, multiple times. They've both been complained to at around the 60GB/month point. They've been *advised* to drop their usage to 6GB down and 1G up. Shaw's residential cable service is (officially) unlimited, though they recommend 6G down and 1GB up. They claim that while their residential service is advertised as being unlimited, they just mean "unlimited access", as in you can connect anytime you want, 24/7. If they were to actually cut somebody off, I doubt that their claim of "what we meant by 'unlimited' is..." would hold any water, legally; if it's not specifically in the contract, they didn't mean it. That said, I don't want to be the one to test those legal waters-- I'm happy not having them call me. Based on the number of CDs that I burn in a given month, I think I'm in the 50GB down per month neighbourhood (including UUE bloat)...

If Shaw were to implement hard limits of 6 GB down per month, I will be saying good-bye to my cable connection in a day and buying myself a fancy-ass new 56K modem. I figure that with a concerted effort, I can pull over 12G per month through dialup. Better than 6G! ...And if I was to stay on Shaw, you can bet that every last byte of my downloads would be during peak periods-- no more scheduling downloads in the middle of the night or in the early morning!

I think, however, that if severe download restrictions were to be implemented like that, they'd fall flat on their face as a substantial number of long-time customers flew back to dialup, or heck, even download-capped DSL at the same price. Bandwidth, especially from local Usenet servers, doesn't "cost" your cable provider anything... Unless, of course, it was slowing network speeds in your area to the point where customers were complaining or leaving the network because of the slowness.

For now, as far as Shaw goes, I wouldn't worry if you're only downloading. If you use P2P clients that a lot of people download from you with, that'll attract Shaw's attention. If you are getting calls, then try to cut your donwloads until Shaw's calls stop coming-- better not to attract unecessary attention...

Ultimately, though, I've got a plan for if Shaw does severely restrict our downloads: basically, set things up so that different people download different series, then burn them to one CD, which them mail off to the next person on the recipient list for that show, who then mails it on to the next person, and so on until nobody else is waiting for those episodes. Anybody acting strictly as a leech in such a system would pay (via Paypal, etc.) a buck a CD or something, plus postage to send it to the next person, and that money could go towards blank CDs for the people downloading and burning and such. It would take somebody who knows a heck of a lot more about databases than myself, though. ...And such a system would *need* to be limited to fansubs. When a burner burns a CD, they input the data into the system and get a disc-code to write on the disc so that the database can track where it is and who it's supposed to go to next, etc.

I dunno. It would be neat to get such a system running-- to see if it could be done.

Bah. Whatever, I've gotta sleep.
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Gorunova



Joined: 10 Feb 2002
Posts: 318
Location: Burnaby, B.C., Canada

PostPosted: Tue Apr 09, 2002 10:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

A few good thoughts there, Melchior. Perhaps they leave bandwidth hogs alone until someone on their network leg complains about slow speeds. If that's true, then doing news downloading in the wee hours may be the answer.

Good point about the modem too, but that would also need getting a second phone line on top of the ISP cost. It would probably come to more than Shaw charges in total - but maybe not so much as to make it unworthwhile.

Of course, trading CDs by mail is a good way to draw attention, so your grass-roots plan might be better done in person when possible. I'll have to buy a disguise. Smile
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Melchior



Joined: 19 Feb 2002
Posts: 190
Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada

PostPosted: Tue Apr 09, 2002 10:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Gorunova wrote:
Of course, trading CDs by mail is a good way to draw attention, so your grass-roots plan might be better done in person when possible. I'll have to buy a disguise. :)


Heh, diguises are always fun!

As far as trading CDs by mail goes, as long as it's just fansubs, then the idea probably would run at about the same level of legality as VHS-fansub distribution. To keep problems at a minimum, distribution could be kept to only 'trusted' people, such as the regulars, and personal friends of the regulars, etc.

...But to avoid problems altogether, it could be done as just basically a local group-- it'd only take a handful of people in the Lower Mainland to get us our anime, even with a 6 gig cap. There's me, you (I assume you'd join in), a buddy of mine, ummm, and I'm sure we could round up some others...

One way that an ISP could implement caps that might not be so restrictive is to limit downloads from off the network, or from off the continent, etc. This would keep usenet cheap for us (unless you had to pay more to get stuff from the premium ISPs) ... But I'm sure that'd be too tough to regulate, or at least too tough to get people to understand what sites are or are not allowed...

Need sleep...
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xo
Site Admin


Joined: 09 Feb 2002
Posts: 466
Location: Los Angeles [comcast]

PostPosted: Wed Apr 10, 2002 12:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Melchior wrote:

Ultimately, though, I've got a plan for if Shaw does severely restrict our downloads: basically, set things up so that different people download different series, then burn them to one CD, which them mail off to the next person on the recipient list for that show, who then mails it on to the next person, and so on until nobody else is waiting for those episodes.


Interesting idea. I've been sort of reflecting on how things are going to be, say, a year for now. Most of my musings dealt with a death-of-Usenet scenario, but this is somewhat analogous. I was thinking a small circle of peers to do trading. I think with just the memberlist here, we can probably come up with pretty much anything that comes through the newsgroups (all hail hiso!).

Of course, I was thinking online trading somehow and that's fine in a post-Usenet world, a bandwidth-limited world is a bit different. I kinda like the idea of CD trading as I'm in no great hurry for anything. Centralized planning of downloads so that we can all optimize or precious alottment is key and developing a web-based database system sounds like my cup o' tea Smile.

So, count me in!

-xo
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Highspar



Joined: 18 Feb 2002
Posts: 27
Location: London, Canada

PostPosted: Wed Apr 10, 2002 8:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I need my anime. I'm addicted, and an aspiring fanboy. Though I'm suddenly wondering if that's a good thing? or if I should go for an otaku position... anyways, that was my way of saying yeah, I'd be in for that, but only when highspeed is not an option anymore. I have a great deal of problems allowing money to leave my wallet for anything other than computer parts/software....

/me suddenly realizes that he should aspire to get rid of the geek mentality before becoming otaku.
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Gorunova



Joined: 10 Feb 2002
Posts: 318
Location: Burnaby, B.C., Canada

PostPosted: Wed Apr 10, 2002 8:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Melchior wrote:

only take a handful of people in the Lower Mainland to get us our anime, even with a 6 gig cap. There's me, you (I assume you'd join in), a buddy of mine, ummm, and I'm sure we could round up some others...


Of course I would. Cool

A situation like that would also make it easy for people to get massive fills, assuming someone locally had them. But let's not count our CDRs until the End is actually nigh.
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