Current state of Download Bandwidth Limits? *spawn*

[nutball]

Government.

Close then, if it's public govt. (JISC kind of unify all of this don't they?). If it's the bit of the govt that can read other peoples emails at 40Gb/s then obviously you wouldn't be saying that here My place also has 40Gb/s trunk, but I think if I asked for more than 10 there would be raised eye-brows. The social media bandwidth demand from 25 kilostudents is quite significant, and they don't react well to not being able to poke, friend and twit at low latency :/

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I'm not aware of the underlying infrastructure of UK Government departments but I don't believe it rests on .ac, there is the wider .gov.uk domain and within that the .gsi.gov.uk network although that layer of security is, I believe, mostly handled automatically by routers now and GSI is largely redundant. We're on that too, the 40Gbps is just our internet which is used mostly for high-speed access by our customers to access (and feed) our systems running their jobs.

We don't read anybody's emails, like most people we struggle to keep up with our own.

 

[brunogm]

https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-relative-cost-of-bandwidth-around-the-world/

Basically every ISP buys network data per 24/7 connection port. And the cost is relative to max Mbps.
the data cap bullshit from the ISP starts when they not scale by the industry metric of Mbps/month.

So every 1 mbps of connection, transfering 24h/30days a total (256GB) is 5 usd per month (varie by country). Then most people with basic 10mbps ADSL connection would have datacaps of 2.5TB (256*10 ).

And this number can be lowered in consumer grade networks that dont have SLA contracts of 99,999999.
In this case the ISP total network capacity can be lower than total nominal by clients if the SLA allows. Then by time of day the cost can be lowered as the enterprise connections are made available to consumers at dawn.

 

[JPT]

https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-relative-cost-of-bandwidth-around-the-world/

Basically every ISP buys network data per 24/7 connection port. And the cost is relative to max Mbps.
the data cap bullshit from the ISP starts when they not scale by the industry metric of Mbps/month.

So every 1 mbps of connection, transfering 24h/30days a total (256GB) is 5 usd per month (varie by country). Then most people with basic 10mbps ADSL connection would have datacaps of 2.5TB (256*10 ).

And this number can be lowered in consumer grade networks that dont have SLA contracts of 99,999999.
In this case the ISP total network capacity can be lower than total nominal by clients if the SLA allows. Then by time of day the cost can be lowered as the enterprise connections are made available to consumers at dawn.

Long time since I was involved with ISP capacity and the cost of that, but 15 years ago it was like this for the ISP I worked at.

We built/rented our own fiber network that connected to all our POPs/DSLAMs.
Traffic from POPs was routed to our upstream connection point and our peering point.

The peering point was for national traffic in norway and we payed a nominal maintaince fee, ie we did not pay for any traffic.

For international traffic we had a dynamic/flexible solution, where we payed a flat fee per month for x averaged Mbps second, ie 1Gbps.
If our average traffic per month exceeded our flexible cap, we were billed per byte over the limit.

So if our average traffic for a month was 990Mbps then we payed our fee. If it was 1001Mbps then we payed our fee + extra for the 1Mbps over the 1000Mbps limit, which had tier structured pricing.

Most of our customers back then, just wanted internet for email and some newspapers etc, so they bought 196K links or what it was

 

[BRiT]

About a month ago my local cable provider updated the lower tier plans data limits. The 3 tiers previously had soft limits of 250, 350, and 700 gigs, but now they have the same 1TB soft limit. The only difference in tiers is now the speed.

 

[Rangers]

I think I'm still on a 250GB cap, despite 50mb down speed, on cable...

It's never really come into effect, until I think I started playing Destiny a ton. Apparently this uses, IIRC like 200mb an hour? That seems too low to have an effect so maybe it's more. This can add up over time. Point being a couple times recently I've gotten a notice that I'm approaching the 250GB limit, and maybe I should consider signing up for a higher priced plan, etc etc. Yet, I dont think still I've exceeded 250, as the notices come with only like a day or two left in the plan month.

The thing is probably in months where I download one Triple A game, that is 40-80GB off the top, in addition to regular usage which is now much higher due to Destiny presumably. Those months might be where I can approach the cap.

In the past even though I'm on the internet a TON I only used 60-80GB a month. I scoffed at anyone who had problems with caps. You couldn't possibly need that much bandwidth unless you are an inveterate pirate, I thought.

Other things which likely increase my usage a lot in the last couple years that didn't used to be a factor, is occasional use of sling.tv (basically cable over internet, which I sub to some months, depending on sports) and twitch.tv, which hand in hand with Destiny I watch some now, though not a great deal. Even if I have a twitch tab in my browser that I'm not actively watching, it' still sucking bandwidth.

All that said I'm not worried about it. Thing is I dont think there's actually any penalty or enforcement with my ISP for exceeding the cap. Certainly they give you multiple months grace period anyway. It's more a mechanism for them to try to upsell you as I read it. If worst came to worse I guess I'd pay the extra ten or twenty bucks to go the next highest speed grade/cap. But again, I dont think there's any actual penalty for exceeding the cap limitless times with my ISP, and I've not exceeded it yet anyway.

What could easily do it is if I buy and download like, 3-4 60GB games one month. Could happen I guess with these XBL digital sales ( Like Metro Redux for 6 bucks recently), but hasn't happened yet.

My cell plan is now 8GB. Thing is a grandma could get by with that much probably, and not need land based internet at all (with some method of tethering that data, assuming she even uses a desktop or laptop). That's good as it's already providing de facto competition to the cable pseudo monopolies.

 

[baten]

just tested my speed:
Last Result:
Download Speed: 63418 kbps (7927.3 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 93880 kbps (11735 KB/sec transfer rate)
Latency: 10 ms
Jitter: 4 ms
12/2/2016, 8:46:28 AM

It's 7 Euro per month, unlimited Gb

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Data caps on land lines are a ripoff. Nothing more.

The Netherlands never had any data caps apart from real cheap plans meant for emailing over a decade ago. Japan doesn't have any caps either. 1Gbps is roughly 30 euros a month.

The only thing going backwards in Japan are 4G data caps. A couple of years ago I had an unlimited data plan for around 35 euros. Now everything is in line with that of the three big providers which is 7GB for 35 euros though I think one MVNO has a 25gb plan for 35 euros but last time I checked time it appeared they were massively overselling their bandwidth so speed was pretty bad. Still thinking about switching to them because on my current contract I am paying 20 euros a month just to have a phone number... no free calls or data included. I bought a new phone last summer but it doesn't work on their network (hurray for being freed of shitty Japanese phones that are slightly different from the international models).

 

[JPT]

Data caps on land lines are a ripoff. Nothing more.

Its a business decision, if its good or bad depends. But no ISP or business is in this to be fair or the goodness of their heart. Its about making money, if they get away with doing data caps then it's a valid business method for them.

 

[Davros]

Just watching a movie twice will nearly blow out most users monthly bandwidth limits!

Just watching it once will use up nearly 10 months bandwidth for a lot of bt broadband users

 

[eastmen]

I have Fios which is 100/50 unlimited and I pay $170 a month with tv and a phone line.... yea I know but it actually costs more to not have the phone.

I looked into Sony Vue but it would end up costing me the same as I am currently paying due to Verizons bundling.

Recently over black Friday I had a the chance to sit and watch BVS on 4k bluray and it is beautiful but I couldn't help but think of what it could have been on a Flash storage system. Bluay 4k is only transferring at 20Mb/s while a decent Flash card will do 70Mb/s .

I would have jumped at a format like this

 

[mrcorbo]

Recently over black Friday I had a the chance to sit and watch BVS on 4k bluray and it is beautiful but I couldn't help but think of what it could have been on a Flash storage system. Bluay 4k is only transferring at 20Mb/s while a decent Flash card will do 70Mb/s .

I would have jumped at a format like this

That doesn't seem right.

From here:

The new 4K Blu-ray drive players will be able to extract data from discs at 82 megabits per second for 50GB discs, 108Mbps for 66GB discs, and 128Mbps for 100GB discs.

 

[eastmen]

1Mbp = .0125MB/s . 128Mbp = 16 MB/s

I have a 128G micro sd card that sustains 75MB/s

I mean please correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[BRiT]

1Mbp = .0125MB/s . 128Mbp = 16 MB/s

I have a 128G micro sd card that sustains 75MB/s

I mean please correct me if I'm wrong.

Your original msg (not this one quoted) didnt uppercase the b in MB/s. Thats why people jumped, but I figured you meant MB/s and not Mb/s in it.

 

[eastmen]

Your original msg (not this one quoted) didnt uppercase the b in MB/s. Thats why people jumped, but I figured you meant MB/s and not Mb/s in it.

Thanks for the correction everyone. I always mess up the MB Mb and so on.

 

[digitalwanderer]

I'm on Comcast right outside of Chicago and we're doing a phone line and internet through them. We gave up on TV, not worth the monies and we've been customers with Comcast for over 2 decades so we get some wiggle room in negotiating contracts and I actually have a very easy time usually dealing with Comcast. (I know that's not the usual thing, but it's how it's worked out for me. I think having worked phone tech support I have more sympathy than most for 'em and they really appreciate a bit of sympathy/understanding. That and I usually have all my shit together before contacting them so I know most of what we're talking about. )


We're getting 85/13 which is considered great around here, and we were paying $60/mos for it, but recently Comcast came out with an additional "cap fee". $20/mos extra for a 1TB cap per/mos, with insane over charges after that until you max out at $200 or an additional $70/mos for unlimited bandwidth. We were averaging about 1.5 to 1.75TB/mos for the last few months with the graph continually going up, so I got the bloody unlimited bloody upgrade for bloody $70 a bloody month. (Although I am not very bloody happy about it.)

Before y'all get on with the, "OMG Digi, how can you pirate so much!", please know that I've been doing that a hell of a lot less lately. My son has amassed a pretty insane collection on Steam that I've been playing offline, and he's constantly online with the account. We have a 4 person netflix account that we abuse the hell out of, and we pretty much stream everything now. I've been downloading a ton of anime lately, whether I'm interested in it or not...I just wanna make sure I get my monies worth out of this unlimited bandwidth option. I also leave all our netflix accounts streaming before I go to bed at night, I know it won't affect much but it's my little form of protest!

 

[zed]

I pay nz $80 a month for 100 GB at home
mobile, I pay nz $19 for 0.5 GB a month

 

[orangpelupa]

35 mbps up and down with unlimited quota for 20 USD.

On mobile, 1GB 3G (real 3.5G bandwidth) + 10 GB 4G (with a bandwidth of 2.5G) goes for 5 USD.

But these last few days my home Internet got international connection problem due to severed underwater cable.

Ugh

 

[RobertR1]

The other day I bought Gears 4 and Forza horizon 3. The downloads on the PC were massive as were the Xbox version.

Didn't realize how ridiculously big these games are becoming (how much is bloat?)

Couple that with console HDD sizes not being that big meaning you might be removing/downloading games more frequently.

Then you have normal internet usage, youtube, streaming etc and it all gets pretty bandwidth intensive pretty fast.

How are Comcast guys handling this in the US? what are the penalties?

 

[sebbbi]

Data caps on land lines are a ripoff. Nothing more.

The Netherlands never had any data caps apart from real cheap plans meant for emailing over a decade ago. Japan doesn't have any caps either. 1Gbps is roughly 30 euros a month.

Same here in Finland. No download limits on landline and mobile contracts, except for cheapest (sub 10€/month mobile contracts). We don't however have commonly available consumer 1 Gbps connections (300 mbit is the fastest). My 100/10 mbit (up/down) fiber is 25 euros / month. It delivers 90%+ of promised speed pretty much always. 24 mbit ADSL is slightly cheaper (that's the slowest available in big cities). Rural areas far away from cities still have 8 mbit connections available and often 24 mbit ADSL is the max available.