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dukebound85

macrumors Core
Jul 17, 2005
19,131
4,110
5045 feet above sea level
Torrents are NOT illegal. You can USE it for illegal things, just like you can use a knife for illegal things. Doesn't mean it's illegal itself. Get that through your head. I'm sick of people proclaiming that torrents is illegal and anyone who uses it are pirates.

I use torrents to download Linux distros all the time, about 600-700 MB at a time.

But I'm not worried about that 250 GB cap for downloading. I'm more concerned about video conferencing, though...

For video, they tend to be much less than 700 kbps, but let's say we have a high quality video chat at 700 kbps. Let's do the math:

It'll be 42 MB per minute. Let's say you had a long chat with your girlfriend for 3 hours. That'll consume 7.5 GB.

And to summarize all of this up, you'll have to video chat for only 33 hours each month. And that's assuming you don't use any bandwidth for anything else.

Shows how stupidly pathetic American broadband infrastructure is. In Japan, they look at 50 Mbps the way we look at 756kbps here, for chrissakes.

remember that a kbps is not a KBps. that changes some of your calculations
 

Willis

macrumors 68020
Apr 23, 2006
2,293
54
Beds, UK
considering the fact that in the UK majority of ISPs have 5, 15 and 30GB download limits, along with the unlimited (subject to fair usage)... 250GB you should have nothing to fear!
 

Phatpat

macrumors 6502a
Jun 15, 2003
903
2
Cambridge, MA
Comcast should have something in your account that tells you. I don't have comcast, but they really are obligated to...

Another option is to install some custom firmware on your router.

On a side note, if you have 5 people in your, using IPTV and that sort of thing it's not inconceivable to hit the cap.
 

KingYaba

macrumors 68040
Aug 7, 2005
3,414
12
Up the irons
Time for Comcast customers to write angry letters and find internet providers with zero caps. Hell, I'd even call their corporate office and give 'em a mouth full. :)
 

oban14

macrumors 6502a
Jan 4, 2008
554
1
You may not believe in them but what about your neighbors. If you are downloading 250Gb or more a month you are seriously hindering everyone else's bandwidth around you.

Now what if the shoe was on the other foot and your neighbor was running a full blown server from his home and hogging all the bandwidth and you had a hard time downloading? How would you fell about limits then?

I pay Comcast almost 60 dollars a month for unlimited internet access. You do understand what "unlimited" means, don't you?

If they can't support it, quit advertising it as unlimited and/or upgrade the network.
 

NeoMayhem

macrumors 6502a
Aug 22, 2003
916
1
I probably download about 3-4gb a day, sometimes a little more, so I am not worried about it yet.
 

paduck

macrumors 6502
Jul 5, 2007
426
0
while it is alot for some.

it just depends on your needs and necessities. which is not something most cable (or most companies) get.
[...]


doing film and audio projects with various classmates and professionals we use torrents alot to disburse our work to each other to work on across various networks. and they can get quite heavy especially uncompressed video and heavy amounts of audio.
and thusfar we havent had many bandwidth problems but its been shaky, but we depend on it since were not all on the same network or have huge budgets to get better non-consumer connections; but in the end it works, so hopefully it wont be a huge deal or limitation....we do tend to get crazy with the stuff we distribute to each other through our work.


nothing illegal there.... :rolleyes:

If I were Comcast, I might be able to make the argument that your use (if extensive and continuous) on film and audio projects with professionals might constitute a non-consumer use and thus might necessitate a commercial connection subject to different terms of use.

I find the cable companies to be extortionist in their pricing and slow to rollout new technologies which they invariably overcharge for. Having said that, I do think that they need to market, build and price for the broad consumer market (which is slowly, but steadily asking for more capacity). People who are at the very high-end need to understand that pushing well beyond the established limits of consumer use (into that top 1% of users) places them at risk of being asked to move to a different pricing tier. Having said that, I could see over time how Comcast (or in my case, Cox) could move lots and lots of people into that higher tier...

The key is making sure that they are open and transparent about consumer use and caps. Today, 250gb doesn't seem like an unreasonable restriction. If it is still 250gb in a few years, that might be a different story. Comcast should say they have a 250gb limit, but the limit will move upwards a certain percentage each year based on the general consumer use increase.

Also, if they are going to charge or limit, they should have a web tool that tells you what you are using...
 

taylorwilsdon

macrumors 68000
Nov 16, 2006
1,868
12
New York City
I have 7 people in my house and everyone is a heavy internet user, and I would really have to try hard to go over 250gb. That's an enormous limit and I'm totally fine with it.

Torrents aren't illegal. What you're doing with them probably is.

Hulu, gaming, video chatting, iTunes and whatever the hell else you have IS NOT going to put you over 250gb. Period. Unless you're downloading 200 "Linux distributions" (there aren't even that many in existence) per month, you aren't going to go over the limit.

MoreYouKnow.jpg
 

Julien

macrumors G4
Jun 30, 2007
11,835
5,432
Atlanta
I pay Comcast almost 60 dollars a month for unlimited internet access. You do understand what "unlimited" means, don't you?

If they can't support it, quit advertising it as unlimited and/or upgrade the network.

Strange that you quote me complaining that Comcast advertises "unlimited" internet when my post was not about Comcast advertising at all. However would you please post a link to where Comcast says you get "unlimited" internet (and help me to understand the word unlimited). May be wrong but I don't ever remember seeing Comcast advertised as "unlimited" internet. So for you and all the complainers please post the links that prove Comcast is using deceptive and illegal advertising.
 

oban14

macrumors 6502a
Jan 4, 2008
554
1
Strange that you quote me complaining that Comcast advertises "unlimited" internet when my post was not about Comcast advertising at all. However would you please post a link to where Comcast says you get "unlimited" internet (and help me to understand the word unlimited). May be wrong but I don't ever remember seeing Comcast advertised as "unlimited" internet. So for you and all the complainers please post the links that prove Comcast is using deceptive and illegal advertising.

Please provide a link where Comcast sells their service as limited first. I don't recall it ever being advertised as "limited" internet.

Thanks.
 

strikeinsilence

macrumors 6502
Jun 30, 2006
255
0
yea, torrent is illegal. just how many apps do you download? Say FCE is about 1GB, you'd have to download it at least 250 times a month. now that is ridiculous.

HD Movies, my friend. HDTV as well. Eats up HD space and bandwidth.

And to answer the OP's question, I've been using this program called Surplus meter to track my bandwidth. It works swimmingly, check it out:

Surplus Meter
 

Amdahl

macrumors 65816
Jul 28, 2004
1,438
1
Please provide a link where Comcast sells their service as limited first. I don't recall it ever being advertised as "limited" internet.

Thanks.

Frankly, there is no point to either of your demands for links.

Comcast can change the terms of service whenever they want.
 

JML42691

macrumors 68020
Oct 24, 2007
2,082
2
Please provide a link where Comcast sells their service as limited first. I don't recall it ever being advertised as "limited" internet.

Thanks.
Wow, where the heck are you coming from with that? He was perfectly fine with where he was coming from with that question, they never (at least from what I have seen) advertised their service as having unlimited bandwidth access. And if they did advertise their service as "unlimited," it was probably referring to what sites a user had access to, not the bandwidth allotted. And why exactly would a company advertise their service as limited?

And by the way, Comcast has always reserved the right to stop somebody's service for excessive use of bandwidth (it said it in the contract terms), they just never set a figure to that limit which is why they have now instated this 250 GB cap.
 

jbrenn

macrumors 6502a
Aug 27, 2008
638
0
limit

if they are so concerned with bandwidth they should let us have the full speed that is available. cable internet can go as fast as 50 mbps. i get 5 at best and there are very few people that have cable internet here only available since march.
 

xlii

macrumors 68000
Sep 19, 2006
1,867
121
Millis, Massachusetts
I'm going to weigh in on this... if comcast knows when you go over your 250GB limit... that means they know how much we all use each month... ie they already meter us. Now I'm a comcast broadband user. I don't come anywhere near the limit. Comcast isn't cheap. Since they meter us why not give those that only use a little a price drop? That's why comcast doesn't want you to know how much you use (unless you go over). If joe used 3 GB a month and Jim uses 200 GB a month and they both pay the same... Joe's gonna be pissed and maybe shop around. Maybe someone else comes along and offers the casual user a much cheaper price....

30 years ago I worked for a company that made large timesharing computers. Could handle up to 1000 users. Had a board in there that was called the meter board to keep track of how much cpu time a user used so they could be billed for their share of the timesharing.
 

zachsilvey

macrumors 6502
Feb 5, 2008
444
3
Battle Ground
os x automatically keeps track of the bandwidth used since booting the computer, this is why things like istat start over whenever you start your computer.

the best way that i have seen is to buy a cheap linksys wrt54d router and install the tomato router firmware. it allows you to keep track of bandwidth on a monthly basis.
 

Julien

macrumors G4
Jun 30, 2007
11,835
5,432
Atlanta
Frankly, there is no point to either of your demands for links.

Comcast can change the terms of service whenever they want.
I completely understand that Comcast has the right to change the terms (as most service contracts include these types of clauses) but please don't lump me in with the other poster. He did unjustifiably and insultingly challenge me by typing "You do understand what "unlimited" means, don't you?" when I never mentioned unlimited. I was just simply pointing out that in fact he was the one who didn't even "understand" what he had.
 

Amdahl

macrumors 65816
Jul 28, 2004
1,438
1
Julien, Agreed. Comcast has not been selling what some people think they were buying for a long time, if ever.
 

Consultant

macrumors G5
Jun 27, 2007
13,314
34
But I'm not worried about that 250 GB cap for downloading. I'm more concerned about video conferencing, though...

For video, they tend to be much less than 700 kbps, but let's say we have a high quality video chat at 700 kbps. Let's do the math:

It'll be 42 MB per minute. Let's say you had a long chat with your girlfriend for 3 hours. That'll consume 7.5 GB.

And to summarize all of this up, you'll have to video chat for only 33 hours each month. And that's assuming you don't use any bandwidth for anything else.

Shows how stupidly pathetic American broadband infrastructure is. In Japan, they look at 50 Mbps the way we look at 756kbps here, for chrissakes.


Do you know that KB is not the same as kbps?

700 kbps = 4 MB/minute

By the way, video chat??? Hum I thought p0rn are usually one way?
 

iMouse

macrumors 6502
Jul 23, 2002
254
17
Boardman, Ohio
Bandwidth Cap = Bad

This is a 30-day capture of my bandwidth from my iMac at work. Less than 10% of this bandwidth is internal as this system is set up as a location for us to download drivers and other misc things that we need to fix Windows boxes from the web.

If you have more than 4 or 5 computers, game consoles, slingboxes, etc in your house, the 250GB cap is gonna spell disaster for many of those who have moderate bandwidth usage generated from each device.
 

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Julien

macrumors G4
Jun 30, 2007
11,835
5,432
Atlanta
Here is a new freeware program called TraffiX that was just added to the Apple site. I downloaded it and it sees my Linksys router but you must input a SNMP password. Have tried my router password and my wireless password but neither work. What is and how do I find (or create) my SNMP password (don't see anything in the router's Intranet (is that the right word?) page)?
 

bobr1952

macrumors 68020
Jan 21, 2008
2,040
39
Melbourne, FL
I don't much care for that policy of theirs regardless of if you even come close. Why wouldn't they want to just bump those people up to a different tier and charge them additional fees? Seems like a more reasonable approach--and one I hope that Bright House would use if it comes to that--not that I could imagine ever reaching that level but who knows.
 

e.m.

macrumors 6502
Mar 18, 2005
280
0
San Francisco
Here is a new freeware program called TraffiX that was just added to the Apple site. I downloaded it and it sees my Linksys router but you must input a SNMP password. Have tried my router password and my wireless password but neither work. What is and how do I find (or create) my SNMP password (don't see anything in the router's Intranet (is that the right word?) page)?

Hey, thanks for the link. This seems to be exactly what I was looking for. It only monitors traffic through the internet at the router level. So it accounts for all the machines at my house, and it excludes local traffic such as wireless timemachine, airtunes, etc. Awesome!
 
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