3 ms·

Unsure if sarcastic but most ISPs will throttle and "traffic" long before you use anything close to <bandwidth rating> times <seconds in a month>.

embedding-shape 6mo ago
I'm unsure if you're sarcastic or not, never have I've used a ISP that would throttle you, for any reason, this is unheard of in the countries I've lived, and I'm not sure many people would even subscribe to something like that, that sounds very reverse to how a typical at-home broadband connection works. Of course, in countries where the internet isn't so developed as in other parts of the world, this might make sense, but modern countries don't tend to do that, at least in my experience.
- lelandfe 6mo ago
  Alas, "isn't so developed" applies to the US: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/cox-slows-internet-speeds-in-entire-neighborhoods-to-punish-any-heavy-users/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/cox-slows-intern... My parents have gotten hit by this. Dad was downloading huge video files at one point on his WiFi and his ISP silently throttled him. A common term is "data cap": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_cap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_cap
  - embedding-shape 6mo ago
    > Alas, "isn't so developed" applies to the US Wow, I knew that was generally true, didn't know it was true for internet access in the US too, how backwards... > A common term is "data cap": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_cap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_cap I think most are familiar with throttling because most (all?) phone plans have some data cap at one point, but I don't think I've heard of any broadband connections here with data caps, that wouldn't make any sense.
    - lelandfe 6mo ago
      Our ISPs conspire to avoid competition (AKA "overbuilding") and so stuff like this just festers. It's truly a shame.
    - cestith 6mo ago
      I have 5 Gbps symmetric at home. I and my fiancee both work from home, so our backup fiber connection from another provider is 2 Gbps. We can also both tether to cell phones if necessary. We can get 5G home wireless Internet here, too, and we might ditch our 2 Gbps line in favor of that as a backup. We moved from Texas back home to Illinois last year, and one of the biggest considerations was who had service at what tiers due to remote work. Some of the houses we looked at in the same three-county area in the Chicago suburbs didn’t even have 5G home available (not from AT&T, Verizon, or T-Mobile anyway). My parents have 5G wireless home as their primary connection, and that was only introduced in their area a couple of years ago. Before that, they could get dial-up, 512 kbps wireless with about a $1000 startup cost, ISDN (although the phone company really didn’t want to sell it to them), Starlink, or HughesNet. The folks across the asphalt road from them had 20 Mbps Ethernet over power lines years ago, and that’s now I think 250 Mbps. It’s a different power company, though, so they aren’t eligible. Around 80% of the US population lives in large urban areas. The other 20% of the population range from smaller towns to living many kilometers from any town at all. There’s a lot of land in the US.
      - lelandfe 6mo ago
        Here in dense NYC, most apartments I've lived in have but a single ISP available. It's common to hunt for apartments by searching the address on service maps. I'm pretty sure one landlord was cut in by his ISP, as he skipped town when I tried to ask about getting fiber, and his office locked their door and drew their shades when I went there with a technician on two occasions. The final time, we got there before they opened and the woman ran into the office and slammed the door on us.
        cestith 6mo ago
        That’s pretty common in apartments to have a single provider, especially in high rise ones or ones built before broadband was common. It’s unfortunate, but the cost of running wiring for multiple providers through old buildings can be prohibitive. The providers won’t pay to install it for a single unit. Other tenants might not like the disruption if they’re not going to use the new service. If you get a big enough block of tenants to pre-sign then it becomes a conversation more worth having for the provider and the landlords.
Spooky23 6mo ago
I’ve used Spectrum and their predecessors since the 90s. Never ran into this, although the upstream speeds are ridiculously slow, and they used to force Netflix traffic to an undersized peer circuit.
dmantis 6mo ago
I've been running RPI-based torrent client 24/7 in several countries and never experienced that. Eats a few TBs per month, not the full line, but pretty decent amount. I guess it really depends on the country.
- gambiting 6mo ago
  I'm in the UK with Virgin Media on their 1Gbps package, going through multiple TB a month and I'm yet to be throttled in any way.
  - Dylan16807 6mo ago
    Well, multiple TB isn't close to your bandwidth rating. It only takes 2% of your connection in a single direction to hit 6TB a month.
    - gambiting 6mo ago
      Ha, yes I suppose that's correct.

embedding-shape 6mo ago

I'm unsure if you're sarcastic or not, never have I've used a ISP that would throttle you, for any reason, this is unheard of in the countries I've lived, and I'm not sure many people would even subscribe to something like that, that sounds very reverse to how a typical at-home broadband connection works. Of course, in countries where the internet isn't so developed as in other parts of the world, this might make sense, but modern countries don't tend to do that, at least in my experience.

lelandfe 6mo ago
Alas, "isn't so developed" applies to the US: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/cox-slows-internet-speeds-in-entire-neighborhoods-to-punish-any-heavy-users/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/cox-slows-intern... My parents have gotten hit by this. Dad was downloading huge video files at one point on his WiFi and his ISP silently throttled him. A common term is "data cap": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_cap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_cap
- embedding-shape 6mo ago
  > Alas, "isn't so developed" applies to the US Wow, I knew that was generally true, didn't know it was true for internet access in the US too, how backwards... > A common term is "data cap": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_cap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_cap I think most are familiar with throttling because most (all?) phone plans have some data cap at one point, but I don't think I've heard of any broadband connections here with data caps, that wouldn't make any sense.
  - lelandfe 6mo ago
    Our ISPs conspire to avoid competition (AKA "overbuilding") and so stuff like this just festers. It's truly a shame.
  - cestith 6mo ago
    I have 5 Gbps symmetric at home. I and my fiancee both work from home, so our backup fiber connection from another provider is 2 Gbps. We can also both tether to cell phones if necessary. We can get 5G home wireless Internet here, too, and we might ditch our 2 Gbps line in favor of that as a backup. We moved from Texas back home to Illinois last year, and one of the biggest considerations was who had service at what tiers due to remote work. Some of the houses we looked at in the same three-county area in the Chicago suburbs didn’t even have 5G home available (not from AT&T, Verizon, or T-Mobile anyway). My parents have 5G wireless home as their primary connection, and that was only introduced in their area a couple of years ago. Before that, they could get dial-up, 512 kbps wireless with about a $1000 startup cost, ISDN (although the phone company really didn’t want to sell it to them), Starlink, or HughesNet. The folks across the asphalt road from them had 20 Mbps Ethernet over power lines years ago, and that’s now I think 250 Mbps. It’s a different power company, though, so they aren’t eligible. Around 80% of the US population lives in large urban areas. The other 20% of the population range from smaller towns to living many kilometers from any town at all. There’s a lot of land in the US.
    - lelandfe 6mo ago
      Here in dense NYC, most apartments I've lived in have but a single ISP available. It's common to hunt for apartments by searching the address on service maps. I'm pretty sure one landlord was cut in by his ISP, as he skipped town when I tried to ask about getting fiber, and his office locked their door and drew their shades when I went there with a technician on two occasions. The final time, we got there before they opened and the woman ran into the office and slammed the door on us.
      - cestith 6mo ago
        That’s pretty common in apartments to have a single provider, especially in high rise ones or ones built before broadband was common. It’s unfortunate, but the cost of running wiring for multiple providers through old buildings can be prohibitive. The providers won’t pay to install it for a single unit. Other tenants might not like the disruption if they’re not going to use the new service. If you get a big enough block of tenants to pre-sign then it becomes a conversation more worth having for the provider and the landlords.

Spooky23 6mo ago

I’ve used Spectrum and their predecessors since the 90s. Never ran into this, although the upstream speeds are ridiculously slow, and they used to force Netflix traffic to an undersized peer circuit.

dmantis 6mo ago

I've been running RPI-based torrent client 24/7 in several countries and never experienced that. Eats a few TBs per month, not the full line, but pretty decent amount. I guess it really depends on the country.

gambiting 6mo ago
I'm in the UK with Virgin Media on their 1Gbps package, going through multiple TB a month and I'm yet to be throttled in any way.
- Dylan16807 6mo ago
  Well, multiple TB isn't close to your bandwidth rating. It only takes 2% of your connection in a single direction to hit 6TB a month.
  - gambiting 6mo ago
    Ha, yes I suppose that's correct.