The existance or not of caps, unlimited downloads and a supreme being

Gone West

i was going to bitch with this thread a few days ago.
But now, on my first day with cox cable, I used 18 gigs of my hd. I probably used 20 gigs of bandwidth. There should be no cap on anything. Ireland is basically the only country that has download caps.

Sponge Bob

But you are in Westmeath and who the feck is Cox ?

_CyRuSS_

Slutmonkey57b wrote:

Incidentally, can anyone supply a reason why they would be using up a 100GB monthly cap without warez?

Linux ISO's? Don't tell me you don't have a cd burner. Download once, burn once, problem solved. Downloading the HL2 demo 150 times a month, are you?

Here we go, now we have someone who has to bring up that people download warez... yeh no sh*t.

What does it matter what they download, it's none of YOUR business what they download, people will download it no matter what your beliefs are (and please don't act like you've never downloaded a mp3 or anything in your life, or copied someones cd or hell even borrowed someones game or movie (it says right there at the start your not allowed to lend movies)). And no this is not meant to be a direct flame at you, but legality of what people do online is off topic.

You don't need a 2mbit connection to check your email and browse some pages. It is broadband for a reason... if you were to use your broadband 24/7 you'd be getting far more than 100 GB a month .... Whether or not what you got is legal is a totally different story which has nothing to do with the connection.

Assuming there is alot of legal, big files out there, you are still not allowed to use your connection to it's full potential. THAT is what people dislike about caps, paying for something and being restricted from using it for it's full potential.

As for why people want Smart to tell them what they count as "excessive" it is simple. I can speak from experience with this, I was a Esat No Limits customer many years ago (I don't know if you remember it ... but it was "no limits" dialup) .... I was kicked off the service from "overusing" it. Now nothing illegal there. so don't be bringing up legallity of what you do online. Esat No Limits is a perfect example of them not saying what was excessive, and ended up kicking 2,000 people off for overusing the 'unlimited' connection.

Everywhere else in the world has proper broadband without these limits, I know alot of people in other countries who download hundreds of gigs just fine without getting in any trouble from the ISP for doing it. We deserve real broadband like that too.

I can live with a realistic cap that isn't strictly enforced or charged extra per mb as soon as u go over it. Realistic being per month, 50GB, minimum 30GB .... It just doesn't feel like broadband otherwise

_CyRuSS_

Sponge Bob wrote:

But you are in Westmeath and who the feck is Cox ?

Cox is a Cable ISP in USA, one of the smaller ones but quite big, Comcast and RoadRunner Cable is bigger.

SkepticOne

FuzzyLogic wrote:

i was going to bitch with this thread a few days ago.
But now, on my first day with cox cable, I used 18 gigs of my hd. I probably used 20 gigs of bandwidth. There should be no cap on anything. Ireland is basically the only country that has download caps.

Eh...

Dear Cox High Speed Internet Customer:

In order to provide all Cox High Speed Internet customers with an optimal online experience, Cox must effectively manage network resources for our users. As part of our network management activities, we proactively identify accounts that may be utilizing excessive network bandwidth.

Our records indicate that your account may be exceeding our bandwidth usage policy. Please note that if the situation is not corrected, your Cox High Speed Internet account may be suspended. Privacy note: Cox does NOT track Internet sites that you visit or files you download - it only measures total bandwidth used for purposes of network management. Below are frequently asked questions regarding excessive bandwidth usage.

Slutmonkey57b

_CyRuSS_ wrote:

Here we go, now we have someone who has to bring up that people download warez... yeh no sh*t.

What does it matter what they download, it's none of YOUR business what they download, people will download it no matter what your beliefs are

Download what you like mate, but don't sit there saying you "deserve" uncontended uncapped bandwith for €30 a month because of it. Everyone's up in arms over "legitimate" caps when in fact the only people that care about caps are warez monkeys. And why should Smart worry about what a warez monkey "needs"?

As for why people want Smart to tell them what they count as "excessive" it is simple. I can speak from experience with this, I was a Esat No Limits customer many years ago (I don't know if you remember it ... but it was "no limits" dialup) .... I was kicked off the service from "overusing" it. Now nothing illegal there. so don't be bringing up legallity of what you do online. Esat No Limits is a perfect example of them not saying what was excessive, and ended up kicking 2,000 people off for overusing the 'unlimited' connection.

Umm wrong mate - I was also a NoLimits customer. Esat cut off the service because they didn't cost it properly from eircom, not because of the bandwith used. The letter they sent out was full of $hit which is what got them in far more trouble than the cutoff.

I can live with a realistic cap that isn't strictly enforced or charged extra per mb as soon as u go over it. Realistic being per month, 50GB, minimum 30GB .... It just doesn't feel like broadband otherwise

Smart don't propose to have ANY cap, and they don't propose to strictly enforce it. So why all the warez monkeys moaning about the lack of caps? Because they know the only people Smart will be having a quiet word with are monkeys.

Jorinn

SantaHoe wrote:

Although if people could just decide on one linux distro that they liked, we wouldn't have to worry about caps. :rolleyes:
Seriously wtf do you people be downloading that you have to worry about breaking 20gigs in a month?

Time shifting, or spaceshifting TV shows. Which is legal in Europe anyway AFAIK. Otherwise no-one would have video recorders etc.

_CyRuSS_

Slutmonkey57b wrote:

Download what you like mate, but don't sit there saying you "deserve" uncontended uncapped bandwith for €30 a month because of it. Everyone's up in arms over "legitimate" caps when in fact the only people that care about caps are warez monkeys. And why should Smart worry about what a warez monkey "needs"?



Umm wrong mate - I was also a NoLimits customer. Esat cut off the service because they didn't cost it properly from eircom, not because of the bandwith used. The letter they sent out was full of $hit which is what got them in far more trouble than the cutoff.



Smart don't propose to have ANY cap, and they don't propose to strictly enforce it. So why all the warez monkeys moaning about the lack of caps? Because they know the only people Smart will be having a quiet word with are monkeys.

Well like I have said, it is always possible that people can download big files, that are legal. Like you said in another thread, something that we should burn the stuff we download, like say linux to cd's? realisticly yes, but we don't have to... If we have broadband we should have the right to download whenever we want to, and have the right to use the connection to it's full potential that is given to us, otherwise whats the point in restricting us to 2mb? speeds can be alot faster than that.

As for Esat no Limits, I never said that was about Bandwidth, it was about usage in general.... it is still the same story tho, Esat claiming something is unlimited, then never saying that you can't use it over X amount of hours, and as a result people getting kicked off the service because of it. It is the same with broadband ISP's, advertising it as no download caps, then saying if you download excessive amounts they will kick you off.... but not saying what is excessive... sorry but that is just not fair.

And you say Smart will only have a word with the warez monkeys? .... Okay then you download a linux distro every day, run a website on ur box.... (says nothing in the T&C that you can't download the same thing daily or you have to burn things to cd's, save ur hd space/cd's)...... They will contact you aswell because you are using your connection alot. This has nothing to do with the legality of the files.

Yes 99.9% will probably be warez monkeys, but the point I am trying to make is that it is always possible you can use the connection 100% legally and still be using massive amounts of bandwidth, without using its full potential you are given and still get punished for it.

I personally don't really care as long as they are fair with what they consider excessive, but I still think we deserve proper unlimited broadband like most other countries have.

Moriarty

The point that is trying to be made cyruss, is that "unlimited" broadband isn't actually available in all that many places. Certainly "fair use" aspects are enforced all across the world on thousands of ISPs.

Turner

CiaranC wrote:

Care to explain what it is actually for then? Faster pings in Counter Strike? :rolleyes:

Everybody loves fast pings in CounterStrike

Sponge Bob

Chief--- wrote:

Everybody loves fast pings in CounterStrike

:eek: OMFG its one of the missing mods :eek: .

Care to give Moriarty a break and maybe shred the Smart thread into something (s) readable ?????

CuLT

AS much as I'd like to agree with you CyRuSS,

_CyRuSS_ wrote:

And you say Smart will only have a word with the warez monkeys? .... Okay then you download a linux distro every day,

Nobody does this. (realistically)

run a website on ur box.... (says nothing in the T&C that you can't download the same thing daily or you have to burn things to cd's, save ur hd space/cd's)......

Every T&C of every ISP that I've read contains a clause about not being allowed to host websites on the connection.

Yes 99.9% will probably be warez monkeys, but the point I am trying to make is that it is always possible you can use the connection 100% legally and still be using massive amounts of bandwidth, without using its full potential you are given and still get punished for it.

Plausible yes, practical, no. What's the point in trying to compensate for a severe minority when it's not going to make much of a dent on their revenue?

I really would like a much better upstream on it though.

Giblet

Lets see how many people would be breaking 100gigs if Smart decided to crack down on any Illegal downloads and cut you off. Greed will get you nowhere.

SkepticOne

What bothers me is that the heavy users are actually arguing against their own interests on this thread. They think that a product that is oriented to their needs will give them what they want - unlimited downloads. The only services that allow this are those offering dedicated bandwidth. These are already available in Ireland and are expensive.

The notion that only those who want to download tens of gigs of information are interested in high speeds, if true, would mean that the ISP would be forced to slap a very restrictive cap on usage or else make the service very expensive.

The reality is that any service in the 30-40 euro range, regardless of speed, will attract a large number of users for whom speed is associated with convenience (they can download what they want quicker) rather than volume. The irony is that it is this fact that makes heavier use possible while keeping costs down for heavier users, yet the heavy users argue against this and against their own interests. The smart thing to do would be to keep quiet.

Moriarty

Indeed.

Turner

Sponge Bob wrote:

:eek: OMFG its one of the missing mods :eek: .

Ya my internet access hasnt been the best lately. Moved house twice.. Should be sorted in the next few weeks.

Im still here though

GarfieldConnoll

Hi,

This topic appears to be one of the most contentious regarding our service and since a new thread has been created for it, I want to clear up some misconceptions.

A number of posts have refered to the cost to Smart of bandwidth.

First off, just to make sure everyone understands, it does cost money. It costs a lot less that it used to, but it still costs.

Secondly, we don't buy it by the GB downloaded. We pay our upstream providers a % of what our maximum concurrent connection was in the previous month.

For illustration purposes only: If we had a 1GB uplink to New York and we hit a maximum of 750MB concurrent in a month, we would be charged 750MB * % *€XX for that month.

The reason that it is a percentage is that 'spikes' that would skew the pricing are discounted. So, what does that mean in terms of caps?

You could download 100GB or 200GB or whatever from Smart Telecom and if you were the only person doing that and you were doing it in a spread out fashion over the month, then your downloads would have no affect on our overall bandwidth requirement.

So the idea of caps based on GB downloaded is kind of irrelevant. It all depends on how you are downloading the GBs. Of course, if everyone was downloading 200GB a month, the effect in aggragate would affect our costs.

Of course, the number of people who download lots of stuff is minimal. So the only reason that major ISPs place caps is to protect themselves in case their overall aggregate bandwidth requirements are being hiked up by 'heavy' users.

So Smart don't mind if you download 2GB or 200GB as long as everyone isn't downloading 200GB (because that would affect our aggragate concurrent download requirement) and as long as individuals aren't single handedly increasing our aggragate concurrent download requirement.

That's why we say 'no limits'.

So what about 'excessive usage'.

Well if you are single handedly increasing our bandwidth requirements we have to do something about it. We're not a charity. So what will we do?

Well we won't cap your downloads, restrict your IP adddress or put you in a 'bad boy pipe' with all the other 'heavy' downloaders.

We'll contact you regarding your downloads, possibly suggest an alternate package (to be decided), possibly suggest how you can stop affecting our aggregate concurrent download requirement (downloading between midnight and 8AM has been used successfully in Scandanavia), or suggest that you find an alternate provider.

If you're not happy with any of the above suggestions then you can break contract and move on to another provider.

Just to reiterate, we won't cap you, but if you don't make any of the changes suggested above, then we should go our seperate ways.

I hope this goes some way to explaining our position.

Thanks for reading.

Garfield.

lomb

thanks for the honesty, thats whats needed instead of some pseudo stuff

Slutmonkey57b

Garfield, you want to be careful with that response, it's intelligent, measured, clear and reasonable. Be prepared for the monkeys to start whining.

infomat

GarfieldConnoll wrote:

Hi,

This topic appears to be one of the most contentious regarding our service and since a new thread has been created for it, I want to clear up some misconceptions.


Thanks for reading.

Garfield.

I am very happy with this explanation ... I have, in fact, returned the DD form and I look forward to using your service.

LoBo

Good answer Garfield,

Looking forward to service becoming available - sounds great.

padraigf

Congratulations to garfield and smart telecom. That was without a doubt the most sensible, intelligent and well worded answer that I can imagine to such a sticky question.

I'm not an awfully heavy downloader, but I have come close to my 16gb cap a couple of months. However, I don't rape other people's connections. I start my torrents when I'm going to bed and stop them when I get home from school/work. If everyone relegated the big downloads to overnight everyone would benefit. Faster gaming, snappier surfing, less crappy packet loss. If only everyone were as considerate as me

Richard Dower

chorus techy wrote:

They don't necessarily have to quote usage allowances - so long as someone's downloading does not affect other users. Because, at the same time, if smart quoted say, 50 GB as the monthly allowance, there would be people out there who's attitude is "Well I'm paying €35 for 50GB so I'm going to use it", and they will purposely download rubbish just to fit their cap, when they might only use a few GB per month. Most people, even heavy downloaders like myself, would only use 30GB at most every month - I think this would suffice and is a lot more than most people would download, so it is pretty unnecessary for download limits.

Thats only my opinion

No matter if they define the limit or not people will try use as much bandwidth as they can, be it 16/30 or 60GB they'll try use it. Because they can...because they're paying for it.

I'm not keen on this whole "no contention" scenario from Smart, disaster waiting to happen, they'll fire 5,000 people on one pipe to make money.

Richard Dower

_CyRuSS_ wrote:

I can live with a realistic cap that isn't strictly enforced or charged extra per mb as soon as u go over it. Realistic being per month, 50GB, minimum 30GB .... It just doesn't feel like broadband otherwise

I'd like to see a 40GB per month cap + 256k up + a 16.1 contention....if Smart claim 2MB broadband then i WANT 2MB down all the time, 2MB is 2MB and is what the product is being sold at.

I don't want to be sharing it with 100 other people who will most likely be online every nite after 6pm and pulling down data, which in turn means i'll never come close to 2MB down and there isn't enough bandwidth to go around.

And if people are doing illegal **** they should be canned and booted off the service. 100GB month down SCREAMS illegal activity.

TimTim

You know, there is practical limits to a unlimited cap too.

Lets do the math. (Excuse me if I'm wrong, I suck at math)

I'll use myself as an example

If I was to download 200gb off smart
I don't want to get into nit-picking lets say I'm downloading the latest torrent at 200KB/sec which happens to be a 200gb file. (This is a theory, odds are you'll never get this speed constant off a torrent.)

So I work it out at 1mb every 5 seconds.
Which is 12mb a minute.
Then is 720mb an hour.
1480mb in two hours
etc etc...
So roughly about 100 hours to do 200gb

EDIT: I seem to have done half of it in mb and the other in gb

Odds are you've filled your free hdd space? I would of. What you gonna do burn 200gb to dvd, Fair enough.

20 minutes on average for me to fill a 4.7gb dvd
14.1gb an hour
14.18 hours to fill dvds with 200gb which is 42.5 dvds
Which will cost you approx 26 euro in dvds and many spent hours.

Or buy a new 200gb hdd?
That will be a 100 euro please.

I doubt anyone has the time or money to be doing this on a constant rate.
Just my 2 cents.

EDIT: I told you my math sucked.

Blindpew

I think a good idea would be to allocate a set amount of bandwidth per month for the 35 euro charge, say 35gb, and then charge a euro per gb after that. I consider Esat's 3 cent a mb for over quota usage as an excessive charge, thankfully they have never applied it to me.

silent

TimTim wrote:

So I work it out at 1mb every 5 seconds.
Which is 12mb a minute.
Then is 720mb an hour.
1480mb in two hours
etc etc...
So roughly about 100 hours to do 200gb

your math is flawed
if 1 hour is 720M then how are 100h 200G?

expect 200K/s, that's 12,000K/min, 720,000K/h = 703M/h
703*100=703,000M = 68.65G in 100 hours

to make 200G you'll need approx 291,3 hours at full speed which is 40.5% of the whole month (30day month).
downloading 24/7 at that speed (theoretical max you can download in a month) = 494.3G


edit: if an ISP is setting a low cap then I'd welcome a low per GB charge (1-2E max, 3c per MB is excessive). But a fair use contract is more than acceptable. but asking for sustained 100G+/mo for 35E is beyond any sound reason - besides having a necessity of using 100G+/mo every month for any legal content is extremely unlikely.

uteotw

Thanks for the explanation Garfield, it sounds fair... but still conflicts with the "unlimited" appeal.

- What alternate packages will Smart offer? If you don't have details yet then do you have a time frame in mind of when these would be announced?

- You said "If you're not happy with any of the above suggestions then you can break contract and move on to another provider." but if you won't cap downloads, restrict IP address or put excessive users in a 'bad boy pipe' with all the other 'heavy' downloaders, why would such user break the contract? Is there a clause in the contract allowing Smart to break it?

Otherwise, with a 2MB line (theoratically) you could download 16GB (roughly) per day, that 480GB per month. Even if you limit the downloads to 12h per day that's still 240GB per month.

Will one burn the equivalent of 2 to 4 DVDs per day... that's a 40 minutes job max... well if you sharing a place with other people who also use the connection it's not improbable.

halenger

Garfield has "left the building"...

lomb

uteotw wrote:

.

Will one burn the equivalent of 2 to 4 DVDs per day... that's a 40 minutes job max... well if you sharing a place with other people who also use the connection it's not improbable.

and all warez- and u want all this for 11 euros a month. dream on.........................................

didnt u ever hear of esat business broadband, uncapped for 100................