Sharing Eircom Broadband with Housemates & Download Limits

fartislartbast

I'm sure I'm not the only person in this predicament but I can't seem to find any other posts on the subject.

I'm currently sharing an Eircom Broadband 3Meg connection with my housemates using the netopia router. We split the bills and that's all well and good, although the line is in my name. I've been looking at ways to reduce the cost of the service, possibly by moving to a 2Meg line/20Gb limit, so I did a little research on our usage to see if this was possible.

I was surprised at the amount used to say the least. We're averaging 80Gb per month on a 30Gb limit. One month we hit 120Gb. I work freelance from home and transfer large files daily which may account for a lot of that, but recently I was taken ill and spent a lot of time in hospital. The downloads for a month where I was missing was 79Gb. My housemates are by no means computer geeks or file-sharers and yet they seem to use this amount regularly.

Now this is all fine as long as Eircom are not enforcing their excess charges but I am concerned that I may be hit with a retroactive charge for this insane excess when the guilty parties have moved out of the house (granted I am also a guilty party). I am also concerned that no matter how much I economise my usage I have no control over others usage which would lead to a dispute in the event of an excess charge.

I have previously looked into enforcing a quota to split the connection in 3 parts so no one person can hog the line, but this was impossible on the netopia router. It also seems impossible to place a cap on usage per IP connected to the router. Some people may think it's unfair of me to be looking into caps/quotas for a shared connection, but as the service is in my name I will ultimately have to pay any retroactive charges which may (or may not) come into effect.

As there are no tools for me to control quotas I'm inclined to stop sharing the connection to avoid getting a surprise €7,000 bill in the door one day. Anyone else in the house who wants internet will have to sign up for it themselves. It's a shame that it comes to this but I don't believe that Eircom will hold off their excess charges indefinitely.

What are your thoughts on this? What would you do?

dub45

And people moan about Eircom:)

I doubt if Eircom would charge retrospectively but obviously that cannot be discounted entirely. Are you on a Smart exchange by any chance that would seem the most logical option.

fartislartbast

dub45 wrote: »

Are you on a Smart exchange by any chance that would seem the most logical option.

What is a Smart exchange? I googled it and got ladies-wear and teachers... I fail to see the connection

dub45

The mind doth truly boggle! Smart's advertising people mustn't be too happy reading your response:)

www.smarttelecom.ie

PogMoThoin

fartislartbast wrote: »

What is a Smart exchange? I googled it and got ladies-wear and teachers... I fail to see the connection

ROFL

SMART(Smart telecom) are one of the few providers who provide a completely unlimited service.

BTW I'm with Eircom and have given up checking my download limit as its never enforced, I just download as i like, but I respect others by not hogging the bandwidth during the day. My torrents run from 12 at night till morning.

fartislartbast

dub45 wrote: »

The mind doth truly boggle! Smart's advertising people mustn't be too happy reading your response:)

That was my first thought, but then I thought that maybe there's normal telephone exchanges and smart telephone exchanges and I didn't want to appear ignorant. Oops!

In any case, Smart isn't available on my exchange. I also seem to be in some sort of shadow as 100 yards in either direction up my street they can get Irish Broadband etc. and I won't touch NTL due to bad billing experiences after cancelling their service.

A simple quota on the router would solve this issue, even to the point of warning when a user hits a certain limit. I may just reserve the broadband for myself as my work uses between 20-30Gb per month, then let the others fend for themselves as we have someone moving in who doesn't want in on the router.

As far as Eircom enforcing the excess charges, I doubt they would do that without giving customers more control over the monitoring/limiting of the connection via a router update. They would also have to ease people into it to avoid a mass exodus to BT. My guess is that they'll increase the limit, reduce the excess charge and not implement retroactive charges. Anyway, this issue has been discussed to death elsewhere.

Are there any other solutions besides moving to another provider?

sdanseo

fartislartbast wrote: »

and I won't touch NTL due to bad billing experiences after cancelling their service

...if you could get over this you'd have double your current speed with a 60GB cap for less money, or 12MB with 120GB cap for the same

fartislartbast

sdonn_1 wrote: »

...if you could get over this you'd have double your current speed with a 60GB cap for less money, or 12MB with 120GB cap for the same

My NTL story: I cancelled my NTL broadband as I moved out of a house a number of years ago (before internet banking). I then moved twice again in a short space of time due to nasty landlords and housemates. By the time my bank finally managed to register my latest address change (after 6 branch visits, 3 written letters and 5 calls) I discovered that NTL had been taking direct debits for the service for the past 8 months. When I called them about it they apologised and finally cancelled the direct debit, when I asked for a refund they told me to get stuffed.

I've been burning their junk mail ever since and I'm glad I have no interest in TV :mad:

sdanseo

fartislartbast wrote: »

My NTL story: I cancelled my NTL broadband as I moved out of a house a number of years ago (before internet banking). I then moved twice again in a short space of time due to nasty landlords and housemates. By the time my bank finally managed to register my latest address change (after 6 branch visits, 3 written letters and 5 calls) I discovered that NTL had been taking direct debits for the service for the past 8 months. When I called them about it they apologised and finally cancelled the direct debit, when I asked for a refund they told me to get stuffed.

I've been burning their junk mail ever since and I'm glad I have no interest in TV :mad:

Sounds like at least partial blame lies with the bank tbh. How long ago was this? 8 months of €30-40 is a lot to be robbed of, you could (and if you can, should) still go the Small Claims route (dunno how long the time limit is, if any).

admol

Personally i think you better off going on your own when it comes to a broadband connection. 80gb a month by your house mates a month is taking the piss since its in your name and you would face any consequences down the line. There's only so much of the 80gb that can be legal stuff.

If you were to downgrade to a 2mb package(3mb soon) it would cut the costs for you and probably be better in the long run.

fartislartbast

sdonn_1 wrote: »

Sounds like at least partial blame lies with the bank tbh. How long ago was this? 8 months of €30-40 is a lot to be robbed of, you could (and if you can, should) still go the Small Claims route (dunno how long the time limit is, if any).

I think it's far too late for that. I'm taking it as a lesson learnt and I've never taken my eye off my bank account since. Internet banking makes this easier of course. Also, NTL can take a running jump if they think they're getting a cent off me again!

In response to Admol: That is what I thought. 80Gb is a bit much but they're working with laptops so they can't be downloading 40Gb each per month (and my router is secure so no neighbours are leeching). A large portion of it must be streaming media/video-conferencing etc. which leads me to believe that the limits should be increased for the average non-filesharing internet junkie. And yes, 120Gb is taking the piss. I think I'll reserve the line for myself, I can use over 20Gb a month myself and I need all the upload speed I can get to help me work faster.

Now... how to broach that subject with my housemates!

Cabaal

BT Business is LLU and is also truly unlimited and is available on more exchanges in Ireland then Smart

UTV offer an "unlimited" option for 5e extra a month

Imagine offer a 60GB cap for 98c extra a month - http://www.imagine.ie/pages/broadband-extras.html

NTL offer a 120GB cap on the 12MB package - http://www.upc.ie/internet/

Otherwise perhaps you could stay with the Eircom DSL and tell the flatmates to get NTL?

fartislartbast

Thanks for the summary Cabaal.

I think the bottom line is that as the service is in my name then I am ultimately responsible for the excess downloads, and as everything goes through the router I may even be responsible for what gets downloaded. As we don't live in happy-go-lucky-land I'm afraid I'll have to stop sharing the router to avoid getting bitten further down the road. It might seem overly cautious to some but opening myself up to an unquantifiable risk does not seem very wise.

Thanks for your help folks! Stay tuned for the next instalment in the controlled descent into terrain that is my life!

fartislartbast

As a final follow-up to this post, it was agreed that each housemate gets their own internet connection.

I did find the source of some of the excess downloads from my side, and to dispel the myth that excess download usage = illegal file-sharing I'll share some stats with you. I had recently bought an iMac and has subscribed to some podcasts. By default they download new episodes automatically, which can use up chunks of your monthly allowance if you're not aware of how big the files are (which iTunes doesn't tell you). Three podcasts had reached 2Gb each while I wasn't paying attention, and I've subscribed to over 30 different podcasts. I also downloaded a couple of audiobooks which can reach .5Gb each.

As new media is changing and getting larger, isn't it time to revise the download limits? The current set-up is limiting the proliferation of new media and arbitrarily discriminates against certain types of media. eReader/YouTube download: good, Audiobook/HDTV download: bad?!