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The FCC wants to regulate broadband data caps again

83 points by el_duderino 3y ago

theandrewbailey 3y ago
> In the case of AT&T, pricing can start at $55 per month for a 25Gbps plan ... Cox internet is similar, with plans starting at $50 per month for a 100Gbps or 200Gbps plan... I absolutely refuse to believe those speeds are offered at those prices. Otherwise, I'm getting totally ripped off.
- activiation 3y ago
  If you don't switch provider yearly, you are almost certainly getting ripped off. I was paying less than $55/month for 25mbps with Comcast.
  - runako 3y ago
    > $55 per month for a 25Gbps plan > I was paying less than $55/month for 25mbps with Comcast The Comcast plan is ~1000x slower than the AT&T plan cited, FWIW I was not able to locate the 25Gbps plan on the linked AT&T site so likely a typo.
    - Goronmon 3y ago
      Screw the 25Gbps plan, I want that 200Gbps plan. That's 200 times fast than my current fiber connection.
      - activiation 3y ago
        Oops, I mistaken the G for a M... Thanks. Yeah, that would be extremely cheap then, but I'll believe it when I see it.
  - chankstein38 3y ago
    The parent comment said 25Gbps not Mbps
    - activiation 3y ago
      More than likely a mistake in the article
  - ihattendorf 3y ago
    Centurylink 100/10 mbps price for life @ $33/month. Golden handcuffs, I want faster but can't justify paying 3x the price.
- userbinator 3y ago
  I suspect that, as typical for ISPs, those are "up to" speeds they can set their throttling limits at. Possibly achievable under ideal conditions between you and your neighbor's house. Look up how much 100G NICs cost and the rest of the equipment required to reach those speeds, and it's clear that the vast majority of people using these plans are unlikely to ever get close to that limit.
- flutas 3y ago
  Yeah, that has to be someone not knowing what they are talking about and getting stuff confused... for example, in what world would 5Gbps upload speed be "teeny-tiny", while it would make sense to call it "teeny-tiny" if it's 5Mbps > teeny-tiny 5Gbps upload speed EDIT: Also, checking Cox, they have the exact plans the article mentions, but in Mbps not Gbps.
  - kelipso 3y ago
    Lol 100% it's a typo and it should be Mbps and not Gbps throughout the article.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  Drop the "ps" abbreviation/suffix off of those, so they become data cap measurements?
- Goronmon 3y ago
  I absolutely refuse to believe those speeds are offered at those prices. Otherwise, I'm getting totally ripped off. Yeah, someone definitely didn't sanity check the units on those speeds. Especially the reference to the "...with a teeny-tiny 5Gbps upload speed" which is more than twice as fast as the fastest (2Gbps) plan that my local fiber company offers.
- js2 3y ago
  Sloppy reporting. The full sentence for context: > In the case of AT&T, pricing can start at $55 per month for a 25Gbps plan before going up to $65 per month or more after a year, and the company will charge $10 for every extra 50GB you use (unless you upgrade to unlimited for $30 per month or have a plan that’s already unlimited). Links to https://www.att.com/internet/internet-service-plans/ https://www.att.com/internet/internet-service-plans/ The pricing can start at $55 per month for a 25Gbps plan is clearly a reference to the "Internet 25" plan which is 25Mbps (not Gbps). There's a footnote on the price for the Internet 25, 50, and 100 plans indicating the data cap: "Incl. 1.5TB data/mo., overage charges apply." There's also "See offer details" link with this pop-up: https://imgur.com/a/mZBetsA https://imgur.com/a/mZBetsA It links to https://www.att.com/help/internet/usage/ https://www.att.com/help/internet/usage/ for info on data allowances. Internet 25 and Internet 50 have a 1.5TB allowance, but Internet 100 is unlimited. All of the AT&T Fiber plans are also unlimited data. I don't know why anyone would choose Internet 25 or Internet 50 over Internet 100 since all three are the same price, so it must be an availability issue. It's also weird to me that AT&T would price all three of these plans the same and apply a data cap only to the slower speed plans. I wonder if it indicates is more expensive for them to provide the lower tier plans for some reason? Disclosure: I've had AT&T Gigabit Fiber since Jan 2017. It's $70/month (total) which has included HBO Max as a freebee for several years now. No data cap. It's the best residential Internet service I've ever had, by far.
  - xp84 3y ago
    Too bad AT&T is the world’s slowest to actually build out fiber. They advertise it to me on Facebook daily (too many dollars allocated to the marketing budget apparently), but they haven’t bothered to actually build it out. I’ve lived in their footprint all my life and they’ve never delivered FttP to anywhere I’ve lived. In many different cities and counties.
    - js2 3y ago
      Google Fiber has been advertising to me since 2015. I have the T-shirt to prove it: https://twitter.com/googlefiber/status/628651613637361665 https://twitter.com/googlefiber/status/628651613637361665 They finally trenched my neighborhood six months ago, a full six years after AT&T. But I still can't order service.
- loeg 3y ago
  It's almost certainly a typo for Mbps. 100Mbps and 200Mbps are common broadband offerings in the US. Rates in excess of 1Gbps are not -- certainly not 100Gbps. No consumer is going to have the expensive hardware required to terminate 100Gbps, much less utilize it, and there's no way in hell it would only cost $50/mo. 100Gbps+ is not even prevalent inside data centers; it's just super expensive and many applications don't need that kind of throughput.
  - ihattendorf 3y ago
    Just want to point out it's not that far out there to terminate 100gbps without breaking the bank these days. 1x Mellanox ConnectX-5 Dual Port 100GbE NIC ~$400 (single port ~$200), Brocade ICX6610/6650 ~$150/$600, then a hardware router (pricey) or server with routing software. VyOS is fine up to maybe 40gbps depending on hardware (not line rate), anything more would need something like VPP+FRR/VPP+DPDK/DANOS/TNSR. More for homelab, but a road I would definitely go down if 100gbps service was available to me for $50/month.
    - seanp2k2 3y ago
      10gbps is ~800k-15m packets/sec. https://www.netgate.com/blog/tnsr-home-lab https://www.netgate.com/blog/tnsr-home-lab has a blog post about using their product to do 40gbps for someone with a home 100gbps lab setup (that uses a $30k switch among other things). Not sure what your financial situation is like, but getting even 10gbps across NAT is going to be at least a few grand (Netgate's HW solution that claims to saturate 10gbps with any packet size is $4k + $1k/yr software subscription https://shop.netgate.com/products/1541-base-tnsr https://shop.netgate.com/products/1541-base-tnsr ) and not many places would even support transferring at that speed, so what's the point unless you've got many heavy users?
      - ihattendorf 3y ago
        > so what's the point unless you've got many heavy users? There isn't really a point except some people like to push the boundary for fun. Agreed it's not anywhere close to necessary for normal home users. But we don't always do things just because they're necessary :) I mentioned VyOS won't handle line rate (it'll do ~5 Mpps on average hardware) but there are options like DANOS that will. 10 Gbps is do-able with < $1k in hardware, including the server. VPP+FRR or VPP+DPDK can handle 100 Mpps/100 Gbps across NAT. And with the new Linux Control Plane in VPP, it's possible VyOS will get support in the future (https://vyos.dev/T1797 https://vyos.dev/T1797). They're also considering using eXpress Data Path (XDP). Again, totally pointless but so are many other things we spend our time/money on.
- solardev 3y ago
  I think the article might've switched out the M for a G. Most home equipment, even the computers themselves, can't handle those speeds. Unless they're moving into the ultralow cost home data center segment, it's probably a mistake lol...
- Nifty3929 3y ago
  They're only 3 orders of magnitude off. Give them a break.
- activiation 3y ago
  They finally fixed the article. Of course they meant Mbps and not Gbps.
shmerl 3y ago
Since competition law is too toothless to do its job and ban data caps, FCC should step in.
- bleepblop 3y ago
  > That could be difficult because the FCC is currently headed by a four-person board that has been politically deadlocked since President Joe Biden took office and Chair Ajit Pai stepped down. Biden’s nominee to replace Pai, Gigi Sohn, was never confirmed, leading her to withdraw her nomination earlier this year. Biden submitted telecommunications attorney Anna Gomez in her place — her first hearing is expected to take place in two days on June 22nd. Well, until Congress decides to not kneecap every department in the government. We're kind of boned.
  - staringback 3y ago
    > Well, until Congress decides to not kneecap every department in the government Checks and balances is called kneecapping these days? There is a reason the president doesn't have unlimited power over the executive branch.
    - bleepblop 3y ago
      Well, I mean if you're all into getting nickeled and dimed using telecommunications services subsidized by the public; you do you I suppose.
  - justrealist 3y ago
    There are certainly many candidates that congress would approve. They are under no obligation to accept executive nominations they disapprove of. That's the point of senate approval! If Biden considered it a crisis that the FCC has an open seat, he would look for a clearly palatable candidate.
    - seanp2k2 3y ago
      https://www.theverge.com/23437518/biden-fcc-gigi-sohn-fox-news-comcast-senate-democrats-midterms-election https://www.theverge.com/23437518/biden-fcc-gigi-sohn-fox-ne... Rupert Murdoch & Co got scared that they'd somehow use the FCC to censor conservative speech so they ran a successful media campaign to slander her and used all their power to block her. The vote to confirm her never even made it to the Senate floor. Every day of FCC stalemate is another gift to companies that benefit from the huge lack of regulation in these sectors. It's just a shame that so many people now are convinced that this situation is fine (or they don't know / care and just go full team red on every issue) and that the critical infrastructure in this country should be entirely owned and operated by for-profit rent-seeking companies that collude in a race to the bottom.
Eumenes 3y ago
ISPs have data caps? Didn't know that. I've been on 3gb mint mobile since 2016, never run out.
- activiation 3y ago
  You don't use enough data
  - Eumenes 3y ago
    my pihole blocks 70-80% of requests, my ISP should be paying me ... I should also receive carbon credits
    - activiation 3y ago
      Pihole doesn't really block large data transfers...
      - tracker1 3y ago
        It blocks requests for ad and tracking requests (configured properly) which aside from video streaming, accounts for the majority of internet traffic.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  > I've been on 3gb mint mobile ...so you're on an ISP with a data cap. Not even a very high one.
  - Eumenes 3y ago
    I figured mobile = carrier and residential internet = ISP
denton-scratch 3y ago
> Going over a terabyte-plus data limit isn’t all that hard, either, I have zero problem with caps. I use my connection mainly for text and HTML; to the extent that I download video, it's usually being forced on me by advertisers. I use a satellite dish and STB/PVR for most of my film and TV news requirements. I don't want to share a cap-less contended channel with people who spend all day watching 4K movies on a 6"x3" device; and I certainly don't want to share the costs. It's like a vegetarian going to a restaurant with colleagues who all order T-bone steaks, and splitting the bill equally. For what it's worth, I have a no-data smartphone contract, and capped FTTC to my home. Even the smartphone contract is abusive; I have it mainly to call a taxi, or to receive 2FA challenges over SMS (i.e. ultralite usage), and yet I still seem to use up my monthly budget every month.
- seanp2k2 3y ago
  It's like the always-hilarious argument against universal healthcare, where people "don't want to pay for other peoples problems" without realizing that that's literally what they're doing with insurance, or indirectly via price increases due to non-paying customers at hospitals.
  - denton-scratch 3y ago
    > It's like the always-hilarious argument against universal healthcare Not really; I'm strongly in favour of universal healthcare. I would like it to be more universal, and better-funded. Now, you mention insurance: are you advocating for an insurance market where everyone pays the same rate, regardless of their previous claim record? Because that's what you get if there are no data caps. In fact it's even worse with insurance, because there are many situations where you must have insurance by law; nobody's compelled by law to have an internet connection, let alone a contested one.
dogleash 3y ago
Ultimately it's an issue of deceptive advertising. Comcast sold me a 1Gbps plan. That was the upfront marketing, that's what we agreed to, the salesman certainly didn't offer up any clarification, the cap is just buried in the fine print. If I were to max out my connection for 3 hours, I'd cross the limit. That's less than 1% of an actual 1Gbps link. I don't know if any home markets still advertise "burstable cap" billing, but it existed in the early 2000s. Comcast doesn't want a small number and a "sometimes more" asterisk. They want a big number with an "always less" asterisk. And they don't want to make usage-based billing part of the messaging, customers already understand the pain of cellphone data caps. It's just an argument about how much dishonesty they can get away with and for how long.
- aednichols 3y ago
  It is not just an issue of deceptive marketing. If the FCC intervenes minimally and just mandates a data cap disclosure (that most won’t read), you will still be stuck with a cap.
  - dogleash 3y ago
    You're right, and I agree. I wouldn't consider such a disclosure requirement to be make it no longer deceptive. They might just enshrine the deception into law. Like how all the spam in my inbox is (or at least masquerades as) CAN-SPAM act compliant junkmail. Following the law doesn't make it not-spam to anyone but the advertisers that were able to get a favorable legal definition.
  - mindslight 3y ago
    Yes, it's an issue of price gouging as well. If a basic plan is say 10TB/mo for $100, then overages shouldn't be allowed to be greater than $10/TB. In general plans should have to be a linear (or sublinear) combination of connection fee and data used. (Not that I have a dog in this fight. Municipal fiber ftfw. Unless you live somewhere that already has 3+ competing providers, the only question you should be asking is "what will it take?")
- tristor 3y ago
NorwegianDude 3y ago
What is this? Article makes no sense, and the numbers must be 1000x the actual value. Classic The Verge. Are datacaps normal on fibre in the US? I was first thinking it was mobile data. 1 Gbps 5G with 100 GB usage before the speed is reduced to 3 Mbps for the rest of the month is ~37 USD in Norway. As for fiber, ~100 USD is a normal price for 1 Gbps no matter how much data you use.
- fckgw 3y ago
  Fiber usually has no data caps but is not as common as other ISPs. The article talks about companies that offer cable and DSL services which are the most common connection types in the US. Those will often times have data caps.
  - aednichols 3y ago
    Fiber is rarely the only service, because just about everywhere that gets fiber also has DOCSIS due to the prevalence of cable TV. So it might be because of competition more than anything.
syntaxing 3y ago
The bigger issue is lack of competition. I lived in an area with multiple services. AT&T gave me a $50 1G symmetrical plan, no cap. Had a friend about 5 min drive away, pays $60 for a 200/10 Concast plan with a 1T cap because that’s all the community offers. Are there abusers in the system? Yes. Is it the reason why there’s a data cap? No.
- tristor 3y ago
  > The bigger issue is lack of competition. Agreed, I rent currently and the landlord has a deal with Comcast, so that's the only option. There are no alternatives. This is a commonplace practice for corporately owned rentals, which is like 70% of the US rental market. Compare this to my situation prior to my recentish relocation, where I had the ability to negotiate with multiple providers and was able to get two separate links dropped to provide myself redundancy/backup and maintain a negotiating position on price. Now I'm just over the barrel with one of the most consumer-hostile ISPs in the world.
- olyjohn 3y ago
  Not abusers. People who use the service. Using your bandwidth that you paid for is not abuse. Just because some people can't think of a way to use up "all that bandwidth" doesn't mean that using it is actually abuse.
- tracker1 3y ago
  Data caps are largely a scam... they could easily QoS or otherwise throttle their heavy users at times where total bandwidth is exhausted without creating a total cap, or overuse charges, or throttling the rest of the month.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
adoxyz 3y ago
Data caps are the biggest rip off and just a way for ISPs to extract extra revenue from customers that don't have a choices. I live in a newer community that has 2 providers that offer 1Gbps service. Neither has a data cap. My parents live 5 minutes away in a slightly older community that only has 1 high speed provider, and another provider that maxes out at 15Mbps. They have a data cap of 1TB/month, despite the ISP offering 1Gbps service. They then offer Unlimited Data for an extra $50/month. Consuming 1TB/month is pretty easy to do if you do any gaming/streaming. Most games these days easily consume 50-100GB to download and install.
- bauruine 3y ago
  50$ for unmetered 1Gbps is 0.000147964$ per Gigabyte. AWS charges like 0.02$ per Gigabyte or 6758$ per Gbps. Somehow people think the later is justified while the first is the biggest ripp off. Can somebody explain this to me?
  - adoxyz 3y ago
    I don't think anyone thinks AWS pricing is justified and in fact many complain about it, but AWS is a behemoth and if you want to reach your customers, you're going to spend money with them. With AWS you get charged on consumption only. If you consume 10GB of bandwidth, you get charged $0.20. With ISP's you pay $80-120 upfront for 1TB whether you use 10gb or 500gb, and then an extra $50 for unlimited on top of that. Why offer 1Gbps service, if your customers are not supposed to use it and would max out the data cap within a day of actually making use of the 1Gbps service?
Nifty3929 3y ago
If they do, then two things will happen: 1. The majority of ordinary-usage folks will be subsidizing the small number of high-usage folks, leading to higher prices for the majority over the medium-long term. 2. Connection speeds will stop going up.
- redundantly 3y ago
  Or Comcast can ensure their infrastructure can handle the load they advertise to their customers and keep upgrading and improving it using the subsidies provided by the US government to do just that. Comcast is ripping off customers twice. Don't defend it.
  - seanp2k2 3y ago
    Don't forget Comcast charging large companies to "deliver bits" to "their customers", so that's another time that Comcast rips off customers if anyone is counting. Read up on "Comcast zero rating" too for more reasons we shouldn't let critical infrastructure providers also own media companies in this country.
jewel 3y ago
I hate caps because they don't reflect the underlying reality of the way the backbone works. I run backups in the middle of the night when the lines are otherwise idle. This is also true of data plans for cell phones which have X GB of 5G data then unlimited 3G data. Caps discourage people from using too much and making the network slow for everyone and/or very expensive to run. It'd be great if, instead, bandwidth was prioritized based on usage each month. So the really heavy users that cause problems for everyone else will run slowly during the day but still can be fast at night. Ideally there would be a way to mark streams as low-priority in a way that didn't count against your quota, that could be used automatically by backup software and other cases. Another possible system which seems fair to me would be to give each user a guaranteed 1/N of the bandwidth. If there's any unused, then split it equally among those that are using it. In practice an ISP needs to have enough capacity to support streaming during the peak hours, so that'd keep the 1/N value reasonable. For example, if a local ISP offers 1 gbps connections to 200 customers and has them sharing a 10 gbps upstream connection to the wider internet, each would have a guaranteed 50 mbps, with ability to burst to all 1 gbps most of the time. That's plenty fast for streaming from several devices per household. If someone needs faster guaranteed speed, they can pay extra for more bandwidth shares.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > So the really heavy users that cause problems for everyone else will run slowly during the day but still can be fast at night. If you do backups at night and send 50TB/month but only at times when the network would otherwise be idle, why should your connection be slower than anyone else's during the day? Likewise, even if you did send a lot of data during peak hours, what would be the point of throttling you at night when the network has capacity to spare? It only make sense to throttle people during peak hours who send a lot of traffic during peak hours. But that's what already happens if you don't do anything, because the links get saturated during peak hours and people have to share them so the people who are using the network when it's saturated have slower speeds. What they could do is sell a more expensive plan where you get prioritization during congestion. Then if you don't use the network during peak hours or don't care about it being slow at those times you can save money, and if you want your connection to be fast all the time you can pay more. AFAICT the reason they don't do this is it requires admitting that their network is heavily oversubscribed and they're too cheap to upgrade it, which is kind of a PR fail.

83 points by el_duderino 3y ago

> In the case of AT&T, pricing can start at $55 per month for a 25Gbps plan ... Cox internet is similar, with plans starting at $50 per month for a 100Gbps or 200Gbps plan... I absolutely refuse to believe those speeds are offered at those prices. Otherwise, I'm getting totally ripped off.

activiation 3y ago
If you don't switch provider yearly, you are almost certainly getting ripped off. I was paying less than $55/month for 25mbps with Comcast.
- runako 3y ago
  > $55 per month for a 25Gbps plan > I was paying less than $55/month for 25mbps with Comcast The Comcast plan is ~1000x slower than the AT&T plan cited, FWIW I was not able to locate the 25Gbps plan on the linked AT&T site so likely a typo.
  - Goronmon 3y ago
    Screw the 25Gbps plan, I want that 200Gbps plan. That's 200 times fast than my current fiber connection.
    - activiation 3y ago
      Oops, I mistaken the G for a M... Thanks. Yeah, that would be extremely cheap then, but I'll believe it when I see it.
- chankstein38 3y ago
  The parent comment said 25Gbps not Mbps
  - activiation 3y ago
    More than likely a mistake in the article
- ihattendorf 3y ago
  Centurylink 100/10 mbps price for life @ $33/month. Golden handcuffs, I want faster but can't justify paying 3x the price.
userbinator 3y ago
I suspect that, as typical for ISPs, those are "up to" speeds they can set their throttling limits at. Possibly achievable under ideal conditions between you and your neighbor's house. Look up how much 100G NICs cost and the rest of the equipment required to reach those speeds, and it's clear that the vast majority of people using these plans are unlikely to ever get close to that limit.
flutas 3y ago
Yeah, that has to be someone not knowing what they are talking about and getting stuff confused... for example, in what world would 5Gbps upload speed be "teeny-tiny", while it would make sense to call it "teeny-tiny" if it's 5Mbps > teeny-tiny 5Gbps upload speed EDIT: Also, checking Cox, they have the exact plans the article mentions, but in Mbps not Gbps.
- kelipso 3y ago
  Lol 100% it's a typo and it should be Mbps and not Gbps throughout the article.
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
Drop the "ps" abbreviation/suffix off of those, so they become data cap measurements?
Goronmon 3y ago
I absolutely refuse to believe those speeds are offered at those prices. Otherwise, I'm getting totally ripped off. Yeah, someone definitely didn't sanity check the units on those speeds. Especially the reference to the "...with a teeny-tiny 5Gbps upload speed" which is more than twice as fast as the fastest (2Gbps) plan that my local fiber company offers.
js2 3y ago
Sloppy reporting. The full sentence for context: > In the case of AT&T, pricing can start at $55 per month for a 25Gbps plan before going up to $65 per month or more after a year, and the company will charge $10 for every extra 50GB you use (unless you upgrade to unlimited for $30 per month or have a plan that’s already unlimited). Links to https://www.att.com/internet/internet-service-plans/ https://www.att.com/internet/internet-service-plans/ The pricing can start at $55 per month for a 25Gbps plan is clearly a reference to the "Internet 25" plan which is 25Mbps (not Gbps). There's a footnote on the price for the Internet 25, 50, and 100 plans indicating the data cap: "Incl. 1.5TB data/mo., overage charges apply." There's also "See offer details" link with this pop-up: https://imgur.com/a/mZBetsA https://imgur.com/a/mZBetsA It links to https://www.att.com/help/internet/usage/ https://www.att.com/help/internet/usage/ for info on data allowances. Internet 25 and Internet 50 have a 1.5TB allowance, but Internet 100 is unlimited. All of the AT&T Fiber plans are also unlimited data. I don't know why anyone would choose Internet 25 or Internet 50 over Internet 100 since all three are the same price, so it must be an availability issue. It's also weird to me that AT&T would price all three of these plans the same and apply a data cap only to the slower speed plans. I wonder if it indicates is more expensive for them to provide the lower tier plans for some reason? Disclosure: I've had AT&T Gigabit Fiber since Jan 2017. It's $70/month (total) which has included HBO Max as a freebee for several years now. No data cap. It's the best residential Internet service I've ever had, by far.
- xp84 3y ago
  Too bad AT&T is the world’s slowest to actually build out fiber. They advertise it to me on Facebook daily (too many dollars allocated to the marketing budget apparently), but they haven’t bothered to actually build it out. I’ve lived in their footprint all my life and they’ve never delivered FttP to anywhere I’ve lived. In many different cities and counties.
  - js2 3y ago
    Google Fiber has been advertising to me since 2015. I have the T-shirt to prove it: https://twitter.com/googlefiber/status/628651613637361665 https://twitter.com/googlefiber/status/628651613637361665 They finally trenched my neighborhood six months ago, a full six years after AT&T. But I still can't order service.
loeg 3y ago
It's almost certainly a typo for Mbps. 100Mbps and 200Mbps are common broadband offerings in the US. Rates in excess of 1Gbps are not -- certainly not 100Gbps. No consumer is going to have the expensive hardware required to terminate 100Gbps, much less utilize it, and there's no way in hell it would only cost $50/mo. 100Gbps+ is not even prevalent inside data centers; it's just super expensive and many applications don't need that kind of throughput.
- ihattendorf 3y ago
  Just want to point out it's not that far out there to terminate 100gbps without breaking the bank these days. 1x Mellanox ConnectX-5 Dual Port 100GbE NIC ~$400 (single port ~$200), Brocade ICX6610/6650 ~$150/$600, then a hardware router (pricey) or server with routing software. VyOS is fine up to maybe 40gbps depending on hardware (not line rate), anything more would need something like VPP+FRR/VPP+DPDK/DANOS/TNSR. More for homelab, but a road I would definitely go down if 100gbps service was available to me for $50/month.
  - seanp2k2 3y ago
    10gbps is ~800k-15m packets/sec. https://www.netgate.com/blog/tnsr-home-lab https://www.netgate.com/blog/tnsr-home-lab has a blog post about using their product to do 40gbps for someone with a home 100gbps lab setup (that uses a $30k switch among other things). Not sure what your financial situation is like, but getting even 10gbps across NAT is going to be at least a few grand (Netgate's HW solution that claims to saturate 10gbps with any packet size is $4k + $1k/yr software subscription https://shop.netgate.com/products/1541-base-tnsr https://shop.netgate.com/products/1541-base-tnsr ) and not many places would even support transferring at that speed, so what's the point unless you've got many heavy users?
    - ihattendorf 3y ago
      > so what's the point unless you've got many heavy users? There isn't really a point except some people like to push the boundary for fun. Agreed it's not anywhere close to necessary for normal home users. But we don't always do things just because they're necessary :) I mentioned VyOS won't handle line rate (it'll do ~5 Mpps on average hardware) but there are options like DANOS that will. 10 Gbps is do-able with < $1k in hardware, including the server. VPP+FRR or VPP+DPDK can handle 100 Mpps/100 Gbps across NAT. And with the new Linux Control Plane in VPP, it's possible VyOS will get support in the future (https://vyos.dev/T1797 https://vyos.dev/T1797). They're also considering using eXpress Data Path (XDP). Again, totally pointless but so are many other things we spend our time/money on.
solardev 3y ago
I think the article might've switched out the M for a G. Most home equipment, even the computers themselves, can't handle those speeds. Unless they're moving into the ultralow cost home data center segment, it's probably a mistake lol...
Nifty3929 3y ago
They're only 3 orders of magnitude off. Give them a break.
activiation 3y ago
They finally fixed the article. Of course they meant Mbps and not Gbps.

shmerl 3y ago

Since competition law is too toothless to do its job and ban data caps, FCC should step in.

bleepblop 3y ago
> That could be difficult because the FCC is currently headed by a four-person board that has been politically deadlocked since President Joe Biden took office and Chair Ajit Pai stepped down. Biden’s nominee to replace Pai, Gigi Sohn, was never confirmed, leading her to withdraw her nomination earlier this year. Biden submitted telecommunications attorney Anna Gomez in her place — her first hearing is expected to take place in two days on June 22nd. Well, until Congress decides to not kneecap every department in the government. We're kind of boned.
- staringback 3y ago
  > Well, until Congress decides to not kneecap every department in the government Checks and balances is called kneecapping these days? There is a reason the president doesn't have unlimited power over the executive branch.
  - bleepblop 3y ago
    Well, I mean if you're all into getting nickeled and dimed using telecommunications services subsidized by the public; you do you I suppose.
- justrealist 3y ago
  There are certainly many candidates that congress would approve. They are under no obligation to accept executive nominations they disapprove of. That's the point of senate approval! If Biden considered it a crisis that the FCC has an open seat, he would look for a clearly palatable candidate.
  - seanp2k2 3y ago
    https://www.theverge.com/23437518/biden-fcc-gigi-sohn-fox-news-comcast-senate-democrats-midterms-election https://www.theverge.com/23437518/biden-fcc-gigi-sohn-fox-ne... Rupert Murdoch & Co got scared that they'd somehow use the FCC to censor conservative speech so they ran a successful media campaign to slander her and used all their power to block her. The vote to confirm her never even made it to the Senate floor. Every day of FCC stalemate is another gift to companies that benefit from the huge lack of regulation in these sectors. It's just a shame that so many people now are convinced that this situation is fine (or they don't know / care and just go full team red on every issue) and that the critical infrastructure in this country should be entirely owned and operated by for-profit rent-seeking companies that collude in a race to the bottom.

Eumenes 3y ago

ISPs have data caps? Didn't know that. I've been on 3gb mint mobile since 2016, never run out.

activiation 3y ago
You don't use enough data
- Eumenes 3y ago
  my pihole blocks 70-80% of requests, my ISP should be paying me ... I should also receive carbon credits
  - activiation 3y ago
    Pihole doesn't really block large data transfers...
    - tracker1 3y ago
      It blocks requests for ad and tracking requests (configured properly) which aside from video streaming, accounts for the majority of internet traffic.
yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
> I've been on 3gb mint mobile ...so you're on an ISP with a data cap. Not even a very high one.
- Eumenes 3y ago
  I figured mobile = carrier and residential internet = ISP

denton-scratch 3y ago

> Going over a terabyte-plus data limit isn’t all that hard, either, I have zero problem with caps. I use my connection mainly for text and HTML; to the extent that I download video, it's usually being forced on me by advertisers. I use a satellite dish and STB/PVR for most of my film and TV news requirements. I don't want to share a cap-less contended channel with people who spend all day watching 4K movies on a 6"x3" device; and I certainly don't want to share the costs. It's like a vegetarian going to a restaurant with colleagues who all order T-bone steaks, and splitting the bill equally. For what it's worth, I have a no-data smartphone contract, and capped FTTC to my home. Even the smartphone contract is abusive; I have it mainly to call a taxi, or to receive 2FA challenges over SMS (i.e. ultralite usage), and yet I still seem to use up my monthly budget every month.

seanp2k2 3y ago
It's like the always-hilarious argument against universal healthcare, where people "don't want to pay for other peoples problems" without realizing that that's literally what they're doing with insurance, or indirectly via price increases due to non-paying customers at hospitals.
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  > It's like the always-hilarious argument against universal healthcare Not really; I'm strongly in favour of universal healthcare. I would like it to be more universal, and better-funded. Now, you mention insurance: are you advocating for an insurance market where everyone pays the same rate, regardless of their previous claim record? Because that's what you get if there are no data caps. In fact it's even worse with insurance, because there are many situations where you must have insurance by law; nobody's compelled by law to have an internet connection, let alone a contested one.

dogleash 3y ago

Ultimately it's an issue of deceptive advertising. Comcast sold me a 1Gbps plan. That was the upfront marketing, that's what we agreed to, the salesman certainly didn't offer up any clarification, the cap is just buried in the fine print. If I were to max out my connection for 3 hours, I'd cross the limit. That's less than 1% of an actual 1Gbps link. I don't know if any home markets still advertise "burstable cap" billing, but it existed in the early 2000s. Comcast doesn't want a small number and a "sometimes more" asterisk. They want a big number with an "always less" asterisk. And they don't want to make usage-based billing part of the messaging, customers already understand the pain of cellphone data caps. It's just an argument about how much dishonesty they can get away with and for how long.

aednichols 3y ago
It is not just an issue of deceptive marketing. If the FCC intervenes minimally and just mandates a data cap disclosure (that most won’t read), you will still be stuck with a cap.
- dogleash 3y ago
  You're right, and I agree. I wouldn't consider such a disclosure requirement to be make it no longer deceptive. They might just enshrine the deception into law. Like how all the spam in my inbox is (or at least masquerades as) CAN-SPAM act compliant junkmail. Following the law doesn't make it not-spam to anyone but the advertisers that were able to get a favorable legal definition.
- mindslight 3y ago
  Yes, it's an issue of price gouging as well. If a basic plan is say 10TB/mo for $100, then overages shouldn't be allowed to be greater than $10/TB. In general plans should have to be a linear (or sublinear) combination of connection fee and data used. (Not that I have a dog in this fight. Municipal fiber ftfw. Unless you live somewhere that already has 3+ competing providers, the only question you should be asking is "what will it take?")
tristor 3y ago

NorwegianDude 3y ago

What is this? Article makes no sense, and the numbers must be 1000x the actual value. Classic The Verge. Are datacaps normal on fibre in the US? I was first thinking it was mobile data. 1 Gbps 5G with 100 GB usage before the speed is reduced to 3 Mbps for the rest of the month is ~37 USD in Norway. As for fiber, ~100 USD is a normal price for 1 Gbps no matter how much data you use.

fckgw 3y ago
Fiber usually has no data caps but is not as common as other ISPs. The article talks about companies that offer cable and DSL services which are the most common connection types in the US. Those will often times have data caps.
- aednichols 3y ago
  Fiber is rarely the only service, because just about everywhere that gets fiber also has DOCSIS due to the prevalence of cable TV. So it might be because of competition more than anything.

syntaxing 3y ago

The bigger issue is lack of competition. I lived in an area with multiple services. AT&T gave me a $50 1G symmetrical plan, no cap. Had a friend about 5 min drive away, pays $60 for a 200/10 Concast plan with a 1T cap because that’s all the community offers. Are there abusers in the system? Yes. Is it the reason why there’s a data cap? No.

tristor 3y ago
> The bigger issue is lack of competition. Agreed, I rent currently and the landlord has a deal with Comcast, so that's the only option. There are no alternatives. This is a commonplace practice for corporately owned rentals, which is like 70% of the US rental market. Compare this to my situation prior to my recentish relocation, where I had the ability to negotiate with multiple providers and was able to get two separate links dropped to provide myself redundancy/backup and maintain a negotiating position on price. Now I'm just over the barrel with one of the most consumer-hostile ISPs in the world.
olyjohn 3y ago
Not abusers. People who use the service. Using your bandwidth that you paid for is not abuse. Just because some people can't think of a way to use up "all that bandwidth" doesn't mean that using it is actually abuse.
tracker1 3y ago
Data caps are largely a scam... they could easily QoS or otherwise throttle their heavy users at times where total bandwidth is exhausted without creating a total cap, or overuse charges, or throttling the rest of the month.
deleted 3y ago
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adoxyz 3y ago

Data caps are the biggest rip off and just a way for ISPs to extract extra revenue from customers that don't have a choices. I live in a newer community that has 2 providers that offer 1Gbps service. Neither has a data cap. My parents live 5 minutes away in a slightly older community that only has 1 high speed provider, and another provider that maxes out at 15Mbps. They have a data cap of 1TB/month, despite the ISP offering 1Gbps service. They then offer Unlimited Data for an extra $50/month. Consuming 1TB/month is pretty easy to do if you do any gaming/streaming. Most games these days easily consume 50-100GB to download and install.

bauruine 3y ago
50$ for unmetered 1Gbps is 0.000147964$ per Gigabyte. AWS charges like 0.02$ per Gigabyte or 6758$ per Gbps. Somehow people think the later is justified while the first is the biggest ripp off. Can somebody explain this to me?
- adoxyz 3y ago
  I don't think anyone thinks AWS pricing is justified and in fact many complain about it, but AWS is a behemoth and if you want to reach your customers, you're going to spend money with them. With AWS you get charged on consumption only. If you consume 10GB of bandwidth, you get charged $0.20. With ISP's you pay $80-120 upfront for 1TB whether you use 10gb or 500gb, and then an extra $50 for unlimited on top of that. Why offer 1Gbps service, if your customers are not supposed to use it and would max out the data cap within a day of actually making use of the 1Gbps service?

Nifty3929 3y ago

If they do, then two things will happen: 1. The majority of ordinary-usage folks will be subsidizing the small number of high-usage folks, leading to higher prices for the majority over the medium-long term. 2. Connection speeds will stop going up.

redundantly 3y ago
Or Comcast can ensure their infrastructure can handle the load they advertise to their customers and keep upgrading and improving it using the subsidies provided by the US government to do just that. Comcast is ripping off customers twice. Don't defend it.
- seanp2k2 3y ago
  Don't forget Comcast charging large companies to "deliver bits" to "their customers", so that's another time that Comcast rips off customers if anyone is counting. Read up on "Comcast zero rating" too for more reasons we shouldn't let critical infrastructure providers also own media companies in this country.

jewel 3y ago

I hate caps because they don't reflect the underlying reality of the way the backbone works. I run backups in the middle of the night when the lines are otherwise idle. This is also true of data plans for cell phones which have X GB of 5G data then unlimited 3G data. Caps discourage people from using too much and making the network slow for everyone and/or very expensive to run. It'd be great if, instead, bandwidth was prioritized based on usage each month. So the really heavy users that cause problems for everyone else will run slowly during the day but still can be fast at night. Ideally there would be a way to mark streams as low-priority in a way that didn't count against your quota, that could be used automatically by backup software and other cases. Another possible system which seems fair to me would be to give each user a guaranteed 1/N of the bandwidth. If there's any unused, then split it equally among those that are using it. In practice an ISP needs to have enough capacity to support streaming during the peak hours, so that'd keep the 1/N value reasonable. For example, if a local ISP offers 1 gbps connections to 200 customers and has them sharing a 10 gbps upstream connection to the wider internet, each would have a guaranteed 50 mbps, with ability to burst to all 1 gbps most of the time. That's plenty fast for streaming from several devices per household. If someone needs faster guaranteed speed, they can pay extra for more bandwidth shares.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago
> So the really heavy users that cause problems for everyone else will run slowly during the day but still can be fast at night. If you do backups at night and send 50TB/month but only at times when the network would otherwise be idle, why should your connection be slower than anyone else's during the day? Likewise, even if you did send a lot of data during peak hours, what would be the point of throttling you at night when the network has capacity to spare? It only make sense to throttle people during peak hours who send a lot of traffic during peak hours. But that's what already happens if you don't do anything, because the links get saturated during peak hours and people have to share them so the people who are using the network when it's saturated have slower speeds. What they could do is sell a more expensive plan where you get prioritization during congestion. Then if you don't use the network during peak hours or don't care about it being slow at those times you can save money, and if you want your connection to be fast all the time you can pay more. AFAICT the reason they don't do this is it requires admitting that their network is heavily oversubscribed and they're too cheap to upgrade it, which is kind of a PR fail.