Time Warner to Charge Extra for Over-Quota Bandwidth 933
duckygator writes: "I just came across this article on NetworkWorld discussing Time Warner's announcement that they will begin charging users a fee for exceeding a monthly download limit. The actual limits and associated fees aren't discussed. Guess I knew this would be coming sooner or later ... Now I guess I'll just have to guess where the threshold will be. Anything more than email? Active gamer? Graphic artist?"
Maybe this is kind of a stupid comment... (Score:5, Interesting)
If it ends up that 5% of users end up paying extra, good. If it ends up that 95% of users end up paying extra, there's a problem.
I think the biggest thing I fear is that the latter case will become the norm. Just like those per-pound salad bars, you never know how much you've used until you check out. I'm sure the cable companies would love to use that model, and want everyone to have $200 bills at the end of the month.
What percentage of users paying "extra" is appropriate?
Yeah well....they sink thier own boat..... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:No - unlimited bandwidth IS capitalism. (Score:2, Interesting)
As far as renting like you suggested, such as living in an apt. renting one of thost store-and-lock deals even then there are restrictions on use. Store and lock places aren't all 24x7, and those who are tend to cost more. My apartment complex has rules about how many cars I can park here, and how much work I can do on them on their property.
Get the picture yet?
Although there are places where you pay a one time fee and use the buffet as much as you want, there are others that force you to pick from a menu and pay for what you get - it's just that simple. You can pay a rate based on how many local phone calls you make, or up the thing to unlimited. If you exceed your base number you are just charged for the additional ones at some other higher fee than the bracket you are in.
Metering Specifics? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:i hate to say it (Score:3, Interesting)
Just recently Cornell announced they will raise the price of network access in the dorms to about $40/month, the students are all yelling about it. They definitely don't want to pay real-world prices.
Re:Bandwidth is cheap right now ... (Score:2, Interesting)
I wonder what they will count as bandwidth? (Score:3, Interesting)
Have any of the other companies that have done things like this made any distinction between the two?
Re:Security patches may be costly (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, but maybe not the company you're thinking of. The update packages available since the latest release a certain very popular Linux distro weigh in at something like 800MB. All of the "critical updates" to update an old CD installation of Win98 are only 30MB or so.
I sure wish they'd figure out how to issue binary diffs instead of complete rpm packages. How much bandwidth was wasted having millions of people download a dozen full packages for the 10 lines of screwed up code in zlib? (No, I don't want to compile it from source. I just want binary packages signed with the disto's gpg key.)
I live in a barn. (Score:3, Interesting)
good filters (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So Lets Recap (Score:3, Interesting)
If it was 30Gb per month, I'd be happy, I don't think I would exceed that in downloading (in uploading, I barely scratch a meg a day, just a couple e-mails and some simple browsing). However, if I was capped at 1Gb per day, It would take more than one day to get the latest Linux distro. I just downloaded the full Redhat Skipjack beta in six hours, 650Mb per disk, two disks for the basic Redhat install, plus three more for powertools, etc = 3,250Mb. That would annoy the crap out of me to have to wait four days to get my isos.
I don't think I'm alone here, either.
unfortunately you are right on the money (Score:2, Interesting)
A former net admin I know (he consults for 1000 a day now) said that once he was forced to create a policy that charged divisions 10 cents an email. What he noticed after announcing this (it was more of an experiment where he had insiders reporting to him) was that email usage droped to 14% of what it had been. People were just being silly and waistfull. Had they been more vigilant, they would not have had ANY charges... but that is the result of a lack of vigilance I guess.
Some here say that 'soon wireless communications will be free'. How can that be until we come up with a self sufficient system that requires absolutely NO maintenance and works over systems that require NO administration or cost themselves?
Re:Wrong model for bandwidth (Score:2, Interesting)
You're a moron. Bandwidth costs money - and right now it costs a lot of money. The going rate for a T1 and Internet connection in my town is about $500/month. Do you know how many cable modem users you could fit on a T1? Hint: about 1 (yes I know they're asymmetric).
So extrapolate those numbers and tell me how the hell an ISP is supposed to stay in business with a couple hundred teenagers like you running public warez and porn repositories 24/7?
Sorry for being such a prick about this, but I've had my fill of clueless network admins who insist on fighting what their users really want.
I can assure you that changes like this don't come from the netadmins - they come from accounting.
Welcome to Australia (Score:5, Interesting)
All Telstra content is exempt from this, and does not count towards your quota. Telstra mirror the major Linux and *BSD distros, service packs, game demos, movie trailers as well as providing video streams (including full replays of every NRL and AFL game).
The other major cable ISP, Optusnet [optusnet.com.au], allows users to download up to 10 times the average of all customers over a 14 day period. Currently, the average user downloads 75MB a day. They have a tool called Netstats that allows users to get this information. Optus does have a fairer system, but they haven very limited availability (only selected parts of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane; nothing outside those cities), and you cannot run servers at all (Telstra allows this). There are also rumours that since SingTel bought Optus, they are looking at changing this system to a flat download limit.
I'm going to go against popular opinion and say that I don't mind this system at all. I download less than 3GB's a month, I get all the Linux distros for free, and can comfortably download whatever I like. It costs a hell of a lot to send data to and from the US, and I'd rather that my ISP is profitable and won't sink.
I also don't see why I should subsidise 12-year old warez kiddies; if they want their warez, they can damn well pay for it.
actually (Score:3, Interesting)
So its deceptive to sell people an amount and them charge them again when they use it. I hope people will wake up and see that.
Re:Maybe this is kind of a stupid comment... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm pretty sure they can have it both ways.
Their line of reasoning was probably this: We project our average bandwidth use per user is X. At that rate if we charge $44, we will be making Y% profit.
So now maybe X is higher than they estimated, so they aren't making Y%... or maybe the operating costs have increased over the last few years (no way!), and they aren't making Y%... or maybe they are greedy and they actually want Y+n%.
I think the best and most effective way for them to do this would just be to raise everbody's rates. And I think that is perfectly fair too. I pay $44 per month to have *unlimited* bandwidth, and so does everyone else. You may only be downloading 1Meg or 2Megs, but that is your problem. If you didn't want to pay $44 for that, then you shouldn't have signed up.
I don't think TW will be able to make up the difference by charging more for the high bandwidth users, assuming that the high bandwidth users are only 5% of the population. They'd have to shuck out a lot of cash, and I doubt any of them will. There are other options available that become cost effective at that point.
So their option would be to raise everybody's rates, or define high bandwidth user such that it is something like 50%.
Luckily for me, there is DSL in my area. costs more, but it might not in the near future if TW goes through with this.
What you don't get. (Score:5, Interesting)
Streaming video, music, etc is *nothing* compared to the guy who runs a 100 gb 0-day ftp server from his cable modem. Those people send several gigs a day over the pipe, and its hurts everyone.
Wow, I almost feel angry at those theives that are stealing my bandwith, thanks for pointing out the evils lurking on my local cable net. I'll be sure to phone "r-u-shutup" if I notice any unauthorized port 21 traffic.
Now let's get real and pull apart what you said. Let's start with the purpose of the internet: to share information and computing resources. It was made for "servers". ISPs that don't let you run a server are not Internet Service Providers, but something else like a Browser Provider of Adverts. Now let's think about those 100 Gig/day ftp sites. When was the last day you made 100 Gigs of original content? I hate to admit it, but my ftp site does not see anything like that kind of creativity or traffic. People downloading Warez, movies and other comercial garbage deserve to have their line cut and will. It has NOTHING to do with what is happening here which is a pay per the minute fee for downloading adverts.
What you see is the inevitable result of the death of "broadband" competition. The local Bells feel free to crush their DSL competitors and the cable companies have municipal monopolies in most of their areas of domination. With your coices left to two or fewer providers, is it any supprise that you will pay for the minute? People once tollerated this for phone service and seem destined to put up with it again, even if they decide to re regulate the whole mess.
Attitudes like yours make the local Bell, large publishers and the government happy. None of them want you to publish, and all of them want as much of your money as they can grab. "Shut up and give it up, Bitch" is their song. Why would you want to sing it?
Not as much as not patching (Score:2, Interesting)
Going through my Snort [snort.org] logs, I find that I'm hit by CodeRed (I and II) and a number of Nimda variants at least 4 times per day. (This is extreamly better than 4 months ago!) As a good Netizen, I inform the ISPs as soon as I'm notified of an attack (often within an hour).
I've found that university administration is often on top of it before I contact them, while some large ISPs take forever. After getting attacked by one IP at US West Minneapolis several times per day for a week, I blocked their entire network at the firewall. For some reason, the NNNNNNNNNN variation of Code Red seems to be very popular this week, though. I don't know if this is all that bad a thing. Idiots who don't patch their bone head machines "from a certain company" are going to be hurt where it counts.
Re:This calls for the "R" word (Score:2, Interesting)
A corporation exists for one reason- to make money. If a corporation is losing money because its prices suck and customers can go elsewhere, then it will obviously have to cut prices. Ain't it simple??????
Remember when you were a kid and a long distance phone call was a big deal? It cost a boatload of cash and the quality sucked. Now that there is competitions the phone companies are forced to compete for customers, and I pay 5 cents a minute for long distance--- not bad.
Dumb question (Score:5, Interesting)
Right and left, I see personal sites dropping like flies or going members-only because they're being hit with multi-thousand dollar bills because they suddenly got popular. Why does it cost so much? What resource is being consumed that justifies these huge amounts of money?
It's an honest question -- I really don't know how it works, and I'm curious to know.
Re:This will reveal the true value of mp3s/warez. (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh my god, what tripe you utter. One of the primary benefits, if not the primary benefit of Linux is how it is free for download, and for several very, very valid reasons.
a) It means someone (say, the 16-year-old using the familay computer)can try out a new operating system without paying $50. Seriously, how many people would have ever tried Linux, would have ever used anything besides Windows, if they had had to pay for a boxed distro instead of downloading one? (I know I sure as hell wouldn't have - let me tell you, when I started using Linux, I was in high school, and I did not have $50 lying around to test something I didn't need.) That's how Linux started - people in colleges freely downloading Slack to try out on their 386s.
b) You know Linux's vaunted stability and high bug-catching rate? Yeah? You know where that comes from? I'll tell you. People downloading betas and unfinished distros to test them. Your plan would entail causing the download a beta to cost more than buying a release version. You know where Linux's stability and security goes from there? Down the drain.
Repeat after me: Allowing people to download Linux gratis is good.
Re:Real Bandwidth Needs (Score:3, Interesting)
Good News for AdSubtract (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course, increased adsubtract usage will decrease ad revenue at commercial web sites.
Re:Sucks, but makes sense (Score:3, Interesting)
Combine that with a limited upstream, say 128-256k/sec and noone can kill your bandwidth. People still get fast transactions on small things, but they have to share when they want to download large files.
Can they do it? (Score:4, Interesting)
For example, the typical account server that manages BOOTP requests and allows modems on the network is operated by the national Road Runner, while we operate our own DHCP servers. The TFTP server that transfers configuration information to customer modems to adjust settings is hosted and operated by a 3rd party service. In the first case, the BOOTP server runs on an AIX system, the DHCP server is Win NT, and the TFTP server is run directly off of the Cisco UBR.
Currently, we have no way of knowing what users are even on the system (e.g. IP's or MAC's to names). Why? Because our user database isn't connected to the CMTS. When we have to turn off a modem for non-payment, we have to go in and add a line in the UBR's file to map specific MAC addresses to a disabled DOCSIS configuration file. So yes, it is controlled by your MAC addresses but still the config file can be forged to give you access anyway. Cable modems have voluntary network access, that is, they must restrict themselves from going on the network if the head end tells them. That doesn't mean they can't somehow still go on the network, albeit not 'authorized'. Quite literally, there are no network locks other than the customer's modem.
Things were more of a mess just a few weeks ago. The configuration files weren't even using shared secret or message integrity checks to ensure customers didn't tamper with the files to gain unauthorized service. We only found this out after our OC-192 was getting heavily saturated connected to the Road Runner backbone. Doing a dump of connected modems (which displays frequency info, signal info, etc. and is generally used for debugging), yielded over 65 modems operating in excess of 10 Mb/s up and down. Talk about getting a deal for $39 a month. I had no idea how long these users had been exploiting the system, but I suspected at least a few had done so for around 11 months based on old logs from one of our router, which keeps bandwidth info for specific IP's (we could determine it was these users because they were also using static IP's).
Currently, there are around 80 modems on the system that technically shouldn't be. The reasons for this are varied, from mistyped MAC addresses to fraud, we don't have time to investigate and the current DOCSIS version we are using doesn't offer fixes for these types of problems.
Clearly, Time Warner needs to do a lot of work if they want to do anything like bandwidth limits. This may be a franchise-only problem, but the way I see it is the combination of the very much flawed DOCSIS spec to cable operators who ARE NOT internet service providers leads to these kinds of network abuses. Just look at TR's national web site that ends in errors every turn for proof they are running are glued together operation. This leads me to wonder if that article was to scare users into using less bandwidth, thus solving the problem for them? Otherwise they need a serious investment in infrastructure in order to make it happen in real life. Personally, I haven't heard anything to the affect of bandwidth limiting. We don't even have the capability to monitor it now, as I've said all along...
Re:Really now... (Score:3, Interesting)
The next problem is Internet access. Where does the neighborhood network geek hook into? He'll either need to purchase high speed access (business class, since he's sharing the bw) or he'll need to hook up to other networks around town. Somewhere, somebody will have to foot the bill to get these networks onto a backbone. This person will want to be paid but how? I suppose the homeowners' association could come up with the dough to pay for this but if you know anything about how homeowners' associations work, you know that this has a snowball's chance in hell.
I think, at best, you'll come up with something similar to what FidoNET had in the 80s. Geeks will band together with other geeks to chip in for upstream network access. And just like old Fight-o-NET, there will be tons of politics and bickering. And if you're not a hardcore geek (ie, you're part of the 99% of Internet users in the US), you'll never participate in the first place.
Re:i hate to say it (Score:3, Interesting)
Then this asshole posts that P2P is just about 14 year old kids trading warez and pr0n!?!!? Are brainwashed chimps like this guy all we've got left in the geek community?
Well, before jumping to calling names, the local ISP here did the same thing, and most of the people who switched services here were "warez leecher". 10GB per month is pretty nice, here I have 6, it's a bit tight especially if one month you feel like trying a lot of linux/bsd distros, etc... if I go over 6 gigs, it's 2$/100megs.. this is where I find it a bit expensive.. The other complain is that they should put a 6 gig low usage, 20 gig average usage and 20+ leech, you use, you pay more, you don't, it's cheap.
Right now the problem is out of 100 home connection to the internet, probably 5 of them are over-abusing leaving their 100 gigs of MP3 on a P2P system trading like hell (which is a good thing some will say). Well ISP has to pay for the bandwidth, and they do their pricing to be profitable and expect a certain bandwidth per month, if 5% of your user hrab as much bandwidth that the 95% others, you need to implement something either to get revenues from this or cut them off because they destroy your buisness plan.
Basically it's like a health system or insurances, you can be lucky, healthy... you'll have to pay for those who "needs" it. In this respect I find disgusting that the ISP are not actually profiting from this by charging a decent fee (cmon, 2$/100 megs is kind of expensive a bit, I'd take a "package" instead) for those who use it more, and LOWER THE FEE for the others. That would balance things out, but I guess lowering the fee of 95% of the people isn't profitable or you'd have to overcharge the 5% by a big factor.
You make a good point though. Internet becomes bigger, technology makes it faster, and it's like if it's not moving or degrading sometimes... but that's capitalism and greed doing their job.
Pay for limit? Just use traffic management (Score:2, Interesting)
Miami University does sort of the same thing. They carved out a chunk of bandwidth from their T-3 with router rules for their library. There it was because of a grant to give it Internet access so they wanted to make sure the dorms weren't slamming so much traffic it stalled the library.
Less administration, less hassle. And I'm happy.
Everyone knew this would happen... (Score:2, Interesting)
Just like 256KB of Sipp memory was more than I'd ever use in 93, and that 1GB HD (Gasp) would be impossible for me to filll up.
It's pointless to keep asking "Why the hell don't they learn." They aren't dumb. They want to be able to bitch and whine to the government so that their pocket polititians can convince everyone else to look at their woes instead of what they are doing. They are raping the consumer with "local market monopolies" perpetuated by county and city regulations which keep out competitors.
I'm speaking mostly about Bell South, I don't know about most of the rest, other than the company I used to work for.
Do the math: In the greater metropolitan area of Atlanta, GA there are about 3,142,857 [atlantaguidebook.com] people, of which I estimate about 1/3 have phones (students, families, etc...). At an extreemly conservative estimate of $40/phone bill per month (and none of that is DSL) Bell South groses about $125,714,280/month from Atlanta alone.
Based on the fact that I have worked for a large telecomm company I can (probably over-)estimate their total number of employees at about 25,000 with perhaps 8,000 service techs(probably BS, because they take forever to respond to a call) in Atlanta which is their base of operations. At an average rate of $12/hr for a 40 hour week they can pay these 8,000 full-time employees $15,360,000/month.
I know my estimates are probably grossly inaccurate on the conservative side, but they aren't even touching this monopoly's corporate revenues! All of the telecomm companies are making money hand-over-fist as fast as they can pump their friggin arms (all 24,000 of them
I'm glad more people don't understand the problem because their would probably be riot if they did.
Re:A Technical Solution (Score:3, Interesting)
You make a slight confusion here (or make it sound confusing), what do you mean by 56kb sustained? Because if it's 56 kbit, that's dial-up speed, and I don't think anybody would be stupid enough to pay "broadband" price for dial-up speed. I wouldn't, for sure.
Also, why call "offenders" people who just use what they paid for? Do you also call people drinking all the coke before trashing the can "offenders"?
(ok, maybe this sounds too harsh; the technical point and the link to Cisco are ok, and you actually deserve +5, informative)
Analogy: electric companies and the police (Score:3, Interesting)
This brings up significant privacy concerns. Today, electric companies are required by law to report "inordinate amounts" of electricity being used in residences. This is because people growing marijuana in their closets use UV lamps, which require gobs of power per day. The electric companies contact the cops, the cops get a search warrant, and the drug dealers are taken to jail.
In the scheme described in the NetworkWorld article, Time Warner will keep track of how much you will upload/download. Download too much, and the police may suspect that you're getting illegal software or music. See the logical progression? I don't relish the idea of the cops snooping in on my business because I u/d too many packets while deathmatching...
Re:Kudos to you! (Score:3, Interesting)
Umm, what's inherently inferior about "residential quality" lines? Oh yeah, I forgot the corporate owners of those lines won't let anyone else lay wires on the PUBLIC right of way. Sorry, I just don't have much respect for the quality of service the slave masters so generously restrict me to. Wireless is going to leave those loosers holding a bunch of worthless wires they can strangle till the cows come home. The smart thing to do would be to try to make some money off their assest now.