You guys hear about this?

[URL]http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/reporting/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=210201500[/URL]

If they tell me to curb my use I'm switching. :evil:

Re: Comcast BS

Wow. That's some horsehit. I rejoiced the day they gave up and turned over the local market to TimeWarner. I have faster speeds and my bill is much lower. Comcast Nazis.

Re: Comcast BS

250GB limit? You guys should try living in the UK. :lol:

Re: Comcast BS

true...there are several other ISP's in the US and overseas that give you at best a few GB's/month (and that's upload AND download combined).

I don't use 250 :lol: but I don't like this idea either...first traffic shaping for BitTorrent et Al, and now this.

Luckily, DSL is now in my area...bit slower, but half the price and I can get 6 months free. Let's see what the cable company can do to match that when I decide to cancel ;)

Re: Comcast BS

250gb is A LOT but that doesn't make this right.

Re: Comcast BS

is the 250 limit up and down? (for comcast)

Re: Comcast BS

Little OT but I never knew this about Comcast

"Comcast sues FCC, wants P2P throttling order overturned"

[url]http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080904-comcast-sues-fcc-wants-p2p-throttling-order-overturned.html[/url]

Re: Comcast BS

I think it is 250GB TOTAL per month. Up and down. I download more than most but I don't think I ever get near that much. You have to be downloading like 20 DVD's a month and a ton of games to hit that which is excessive anyway.

Re: Comcast BS

It shouldn't be limited and 250GB a month isn't that hard to hit for many people.

Re: Comcast BS

I agree limits suck, but how much porn does one need per month?

Re: Comcast BS

I haven't downloaded porn in a damn long time. It's music for me and 250GB of music a month is pretty easy to do when you have varied tastes. ;)

Re: Comcast BS

Damn...And I thought I had alot of mp3's :)

Re: Comcast BS

based on the Comcast PR when it mentiones "sending" and "uploading" photos and emails, sounds like 250/month total.

Re: Comcast BS

got my email about this from comcast this weekend.

[quote] [COLOR=#686868][FONT=Arial]Dear Comcast High-Speed Internet Customer,

We appreciate your business and strive to provide you with the best online experience possible. One of the ways we do this is through our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). The AUP outlines acceptable use of our service as well as steps we take to protect our customers from things that can negatively impact their experience online. This policy has been in place for many years and we update it periodically to keep it current with our customers' use of our service.

On October 1, 2008, we will post an updated AUP that will go into effect at that time.

In the updated AUP, we clarify that monthly data (or bandwidth) usage of more than 250 Gigabytes (GB) is the specific threshold that defines excessive use of our service. We have an excessive use policy because a fraction of one percent of our customers use such a disproportionate amount of bandwidth every month that they may degrade the online experience of other customers.

250 GB/month is an extremely large amount of bandwidth and it's very likely that your monthly data usage doesn't even come close to that amount. In fact, the threshold is approximately 100 times greater than the typical or median residential customer usage, which is 2 to 3 GB/month. To put it in perspective, to reach 250 GB of data usage in one month a customer would have to do any one of the following:

• Send more than 50 million plain text emails (at 5 KB/email);
• Download 62,500 songs (at 4 MB/song); or
• Download 125 standard definition movies (at 2 GB/movie).

And online gamers should know that even the heaviest multi- or single-player gaming activity would not typically come close to this threshold over the course of a month.

In addition to modifying the excessive use policy, the updated AUP contains other clarifications of terms concerning reporting violations, newsgroups, and network management. To read some helpful FAQs, please visit [URL="http://www.p.comcast.net/r?2.1.Gy.CK.1AR6lb.CdN3lq..N.CxBK.2Iv6.DSCWEYM0"]http://help.comcast.net/content/faq/Frequently-Asked-Questions-about-Excessive-Use[/URL].

Thank you again for choosing Comcast as your high-speed Internet provider. [/quote] [/FONT][/COLOR]

Re: Comcast BS

and then they will not even let you monitor your usage. so if you get close they just bam you with fees.

Re: Comcast BS

I think they actually will, from the FAQ above:

[quote] [B]Does Comcast use a monthly data usage threshold to determine excessive use?[/B]

Comcast will initiate a 250 GB monthly data usage threshold for all residential Comcast High-Speed Internet accounts. This threshold will be in place to provide a clear definition of what would constitute as excessive use of the service.

The new monthly data usage threshold will go into effect starting October 1, 2008.

[B]Why is Comcast going to provide a monthly data usage threshold for its residential high-speed Internet users?[/B]

Comcast has been evaluating a monthly data usage threshold for quite some time and it has heard from high-speed Internet customers who have asked that it provide a specific number for excessive use. By providing a specific monthly data usage threshold, Comcast hopes to provide more clarification to its customers about what would qualify as excessive use.

[/quote] People on the net I know were bitching before this official policy that they were getting cease and desist type letters for download too much, but they never said what that upper limit was. I think now that they are setting a hard limit, they have to tell you when you are getting close. I bet if they don't that would be a nice grounds for a good lawsuit since I would think they would need to inform you when you are overstepping your bounds.

Re: Comcast BS

^^^looks like they won't..they'll call you when you exceed it. But I believe also "in good faith", you also get a free pass the first time around.

I would think as part of the notifications they would also direct you to obtain a list of programs of your choice that monitors bandwidth, should you feel somehow that you are getting too close...then again they would be affiliates to make more money off of sales of them.

Since it's 250 total, I'm willing to bet I'd come close because of all the uploading I do for credits. Still going to call next week to try and cancel; see if I can get a reduced rate, otherwise off to DSL I go...(I REALLY wish I had FIOS around here).

Worst case, I'll keep going and monitor myself for a month or 2.

Re: Comcast BS

With more and more services going internet based this is just BS. My legitimate phone service runs across the internet, my Netfilx player runs across the internet, I leave SLSK running to share my sets - all live sets. My PVR gets its listing updates via the web. I listen to audit streams while working. My Xbox connects via the web. I also work from home and use a VPN connection to access my company (I actually have a seperate modem and account for that though).

As more services take advantage of your internet connection this is going to creep up pretty quickly. I'm paying for a connection, if they want to refund me for my unused portion of the 250 then fine. 60 bucks a month is a rip-off to just do casual surfing and checking email (which is all they would like you to do). This is just a way for them to get around upgrading/paying for additional capacity on their backbones. Besides that I can't do anything about the unsolicited traffic hitting my router and that could be all that puts someone over the limit.

Re: Comcast BS

Exactly. I know I exceed that amount on a monthly basis.

Re: Comcast BS

[quote=beanzncheez;652717]Exactly. I know I exceed that amount on a monthly basis.[/quote]

I'm going to exceed bigtime also, as a moderator on a torrent site and seeding 1100 torrents I figure I'm uploading between 300-350 GB a month alone, not even taking into consideration how many GB of music/video that I download.

Re: Comcast BS

^I'm suprised they havent told you to cut it out already actually.

Re: Comcast BS

[quote=res0nat0r;653948]^I'm suprised they havent told you to cut it out already actually.[/quote]

never had a problem, last week they started sending me notices of their new Acceptable Usage Policy going into affect on October 1st

Re: Comcast BS

yeah i got an email from them too...lame :(

Re: Comcast BS

I think the 250 was probably some amicable agreed #. The crazy ones I'm sure were pulling at least 500 ;)

I ordered DSL today but am still keeping CC at the moment as my billing goes till 10/5. So it'll allow me to get the stuff, and have 30 days free to try it (stuff takes a week to ship or so).

Verizon is 3Mps, while CC was 6. Let's see how much of a speed difference there really is on my setup (I'll be testing both).

I cancel CC, get prorated. I cancel Verizon/DSL, get charged nothing and will get CC hopefully reduced when I call them up to "cancel."