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Old 29th August 2008
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Default Comcast to cap monthly consumer broadband

Here is the story, now I'm pretty sure I go over the limit, so what is good metering software for FreeBSD since I've never had to deal with this before.
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Old 29th August 2008
dk_netsvil dk_netsvil is offline
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One thing I do to limit bandwidth is to enable DUMMYNET and IPFIREWALL in my kernel and set up ipfw bandwidth caps using pipes. It defies the original purpose of the DUMMYNET module, which was to simulate network configurations, but works fairly well. If you want to look at your monthly traffic as a function of "what constant up and down rate can I get away with and not go over?" you'd need to know how long their definition of a month is and what that equates to in terms of a rate.

Lets assume that a month is 30 days. At 1 Mbps you're looking at about 308 Gigs of traffic. So, to prevent you from exceeding 250 Gigs, your constant rate limit needs to be around 800 kbps up and down.

Given, those are soft estimates, I am unaware of a FreeBSD application that will report your traffic consumed.
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Old 29th August 2008
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there's a ad-hoc daemon + script i wrote sometime back to check my net usage. see if you find it useful: http://www.daemonforums.org/showthread.php?t=851
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Old 29th August 2008
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Oh great! I just signed up with Comcast about a month ago. But seeing how they're the only high speed internet solution in my area, I guess I'll have to deal with it. Actually, I don't think it will be a large issue for me, but we'll see.
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Old 29th August 2008
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@ephemera - sweet, going to try it as soon as I get home!!

@BSDKaffee - yeah, they just upgrade me to the 16Mb download speed last week when I got the NFL & NHL networks, now they do this to me.
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Old 29th August 2008
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Finally, my friend has been bragging about his unlimited connection for years... I told him about the article last night, I swear he cried.

Poor American.
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Old 29th August 2008
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Oh, you have no idea. I have some non-geek friends that have been crazy about this since the rumours started about a month ago. I don't like how if you go over you get one warning, then your banded for a year for the next infraction.

Of all the things that go on in the US, I think this is something that could send people to the street protesting in mass!
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Old 29th August 2008
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The cap itself isn't that unreasonable, but the punishment for breaking the rule is, why not just disconnect people for the rest of the month? Or put them on a very low bandwidth connection?
Ban people for a year ...? That's going to be good for business ... :-/

Maybe it's time to start looking at other ISPs?
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Old 30th August 2008
Darwimy Darwimy is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dk_netsvil View Post
Given, those are soft estimates, I am unaware of a FreeBSD application that will report your traffic consumed.
Here is one: sysutils/iograph
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Old 31st August 2008
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You can also try www.speakeasy.net. They are *nix friendly and have service in some surprising areas.

-Tim
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Old 1st September 2008
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A cap at 250Gb per month, and people think it is unreasonable???

While a better call might be to charge a reasonable amount per GB over that ($1-$10, probably) or speed limiting (those are the two options available to Australian users, and you have a hard time getting 100GB/Month - 40peak/60off is standard), other than some penalty/ dropping connection, Unlimited data is not feasable anywhere. If ISPs charged $/GB, then they would have a nice incentive for increasing bandwidth, wouldn't they.
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Old 1st September 2008
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Elsewhere someone said that if they'd take the money they spend on lawyers and monitoring users and spent it on infrastructure they wouldn't have to do this.
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Old 1st September 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by robbak View Post
A cap at 250Gb per month, and people think it is unreasonable???

While a better call might be to charge a reasonable amount per GB over that ($1-$10, probably) or speed limiting (those are the two options available to Australian users, and you have a hard time getting 100GB/Month - 40peak/60off is standard), other than some penalty/ dropping connection, Unlimited data is not feasable anywhere. If ISPs charged $/GB, then they would have a nice incentive for increasing bandwidth, wouldn't they.
I think people realize the cap itself is fairly set... it's higher then mine, as Carpetsmoker said, the punishment for exceeding said cap is outrageous.
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Old 1st September 2008
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Are you guys whinning about the 250Gb cap, or did I miss something here?

I personally download merely 7Gb, 8Gb each month, 250Gb would take me 2 years to finish!!!
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Old 1st September 2008
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I agree with Googol, I find it hard to believe that there are people actually downloading >= 250gb per month! What are these people (kids i assume) downloading? illegal torrents?
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Old 1st September 2008
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I assume HD media, i.e: excessive "Youtube" and as ephemera said, torrents.. which, aren't necessarily illegal in every country.

As I said earlier, it's what happens if/when you exceed the bandwidth cap that people appear angry about... most ISP's simply warn customers where they're about to exceed their limit, comcast has gone a step further and plans to punish people.
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Old 1st September 2008
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For years, in some geographies Comcast has had "hidden" caps that have sparked warnings and terminations of service. News reports have stated those hidden caps were in the 100GB-150GB/mo range, where used.

If this new policy is company-wide, and published, then this is actually good news for geographies already dealing with Comcast capacity issues.
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Old 1st September 2008
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I'm not really whinning about the cap size, other than the fact that the service I signed up for and am paying for not longer exists, and they aren't reducing my payments.

I may run into problem with the caps and I download lots of ISO images, I remote connect to my home machine from work daily to transfer files, i download torrents mostly old books and videos from old TV and movies not sold and radio torrents from coast to coast. And that's just me, my daughters and wife also use it for things for online games.
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Old 5th September 2008
Darwimy Darwimy is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 18Googol2 View Post
Are you guys whinning about the 250Gb cap, or did I miss something here?

I personally download merely 7Gb, 8Gb each month, 250Gb would take me 2 years to finish!!!
One will have to download a lot to get this much data. But uploads are counted as well!

And most upload is caused by p2p programs. In the last 12 month my upload has been 10 times of my download. Typically I have 60-70 GB upload with the upload bandwith limited to 60 KB/s. If you have more upload bandwith available, 250 GB per month could easily be reached.
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Old 5th September 2008
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Yeah, thats valid point, but I thought Comcast doesnt count upload traffic?

When I was in need of changing ISP, one of requirements to rule out plan is if upload is counted. I need 7Gb, 8Gb monthly, but I upload about 5 times as much as I download (~40Gb). Running server and p2p client with upload counted isnt comfy at all.
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