A cap of 1 TB seems completely reasonable to me.
edit: After reading some replies, let me modify it and put it this way: the concept of a cap of n TB, where n is such that 99% of users don't ever reach it, seems completely reasonable to me.
edit: After reading some replies, let me modify it and put it this way: the concept of a cap of n TB, where n is such that 99% of users don't ever reach it, seems completely reasonable to me.
You are paying for residential Internet service. The number of people who would legitimately need to transfer more than 1 TB per month over a residential Internet connection is vanishingly small. Bandwidth, particularly during high-demand hours, costs money. It is not fair for other users to subsidize your extreme usage scenario (since it is an axiom that all costs borne by the ISP are passed on to customers). It is far more fair that you, the extreme outlier, pays more.
It's called innovation and progress, thank God you are able to be corrected and change your thoughts as with your approach we'll never get anywhere
Try streaming 4k and get back to me, or is 140p "good enough"?
If it were equivalent, you could take any random person's 100 or 200 or 400 mbps service that has a 1 TB per month cap and replace it with 3 mbps uncapped and they would not care.
As someone currently on 400 mbps plan with a 1 TB cap, I can assure you that I would care, and would strenuously object to any such replacement.
I don't have 400 mbps so that I can download more than I could when I had slower plans. I have 400 mbps so I don't have to wait as long for downloads to finish.
1080p: 370-740 Hours @30fps, 246-494 Hours @60fps
1440p (2K): 171-370 Hours @30fps, 123-247 Hours @60fps
2160p (4K): 65-171 Hours @30fps, 44-111 Hours @60fps
With my tendencies to watch a lot of video content, I myself easily hit over 1.5TB of data consumption each month. Luckily my ISP doesn't do any data caps so I don't have to worry.
The real world of data is generally billed at the 95th percentile of traffic consumption, usually with a commit to buy a certain amount of traffic. So you pay for a specific rate of data, the vendor provisions equipment to handle the agreed upon rate, and then you can do traffic at that rate forever. If you go over your rate, you talk to your vendor.
I don't know of any equipment whose natural operation is to handle a certain amount of traffic, then shut down until the next billing cycle comes around. Data caps are a measure invented to extract money, not serve customers or packets.
If the cable companies were worried about fairness, they'd really be speaking in terms of bandwidth reservations at peak times and encouraging use during off-peak hours, and similar things. They're not, it's just a money grab.
I'm not sure that's even true. I'd expect power consumption as well as 'wear and tear' to be less, and possibly significantly so, at idle versus continuous use.
> Data caps are a measure invented to extract money, not serve customers or packets.
Some people will definitely test the limits of anything that's supposedly unlimited. I imagine you're partially correct but I suspect data caps are the most comprehensible product attribute for ISPs to limit the relevant costs.
> If the cable companies were worried about fairness, they'd really be speaking in terms of bandwidth reservations at peak times and encouraging use during off-peak hours, and similar things.
I'd imagine that'd be an even harder sell than congestion pricing for motor vehicle traffic. It is mostly just a 'fact' of the world that almost everyone is going to want bandwidth at the same times. The costs of transitioning to any other arrangement are considerable. And Netflix is probably the player most able to adjust. I'm not sure if they still do, but they did at one time host a lot of their content in ISP data centers.
Data caps are a poor tool for handling congestion. They're a great tool for frightening people into keeping their load low(and costs for the provider down), or for sucking more money out of people. They don't do a damn thing for immediate load.
Me? I have Comcast business class -- they guarantee me a specific bit rate and I can nail it up at that rate all month long and they don't care. For folks not paying for this service class, Comcast has bandwidth reservation and all the anti-congestion tools they need, they just don't use them -- they get more money out of people's behavior towards data caps.
Back when I had Comcast, that bug cost me $200. Thanks Microsoft.
It's a good reminder that our bugs have real world implications.
And assuming that the only thing that internet is used for is netflix then that's roughly then you're looking at 5780 minutes of video. (or, 50 movies, or 125~ episodes of your favourite netflix-length tv show)
I'm not sure if that's a lot or not, I suspect it's not, but I'm a heavy netflix user so I might be a shitty reference.
Nonetheless, those are the numbers.
To me, that seems pretty darned reasonable considering we're talking about 4k.
Even if you do, you should bear your share of the more beefy infrastructure needed to support that, instead of expecting Joe who only uses the internet once a day to check his email to subsidize you.
It is not, though.
https://qz.com/256586/the-inside-story-of-how-netflix-came-t...
https://www.comcasttechnologysolutions.com/our-portfolio/who...
On occasion, if you are an important enough customer, they'll give you peering for free - https://www.xfinity.com/peering . But they'd rather sell you Paid Peering (for obvious reasons)
Generally speaking ISPs don't pay anything for peering. (Unless they are smaller/local ISPs/WISPs or similar, who have to purchase backhaul or upstream to be able to offer service.)
It's complete bullshit and there's no practical reason for it beyond fucking over customers.
1. pay out the ass for the service i need
2. not have internet in 2019
oh boy oh golly i sure do have some reasonable choices here don't i
I mean it sucks when a company has so much leverage over you because you need what they're selling but you're not entitled to cheap high speed internet. You would have a case if you had no means to get internet access at all but that really isn't the case here.
Like this thread is hilarious because a bunch of hackers whose lives are on the internet and are deriving probably thousands of dollars of value from their high speed internet connection are mad when ISPs realize this and charge more appropriately.