So I am seeding like a mad man and according to my boradband provider I have unlimited usage and data…
But I have heard that others when seeding and they were told they have “unlimited” the broadband provider cut them off after X amount… What can I do to ensure this doesn’t happen?
You’d have to read the fine print in the agreement you signed. Comcast is one that I’m aware of that says “unlimited” but if you exceed a large amount of data, they’ll throttle your speed to something unacceptably low for the remainder of the month. (I believe it used to be 350GB but I can’t believe it’s still that low.)
regular comcast limit is at 1.2tb, so the unlimited upgrade has to be higher than that before throttling
All I could find on a quick, cursory search was this, from their ToS:
What data consumption requirements apply to the Service?
Comcast applies a monthly data consumption threshold to Xfinity Internet accounts. The company retains the right to trial or adopt a different data consumption threshold or other usage plan for the Service at any time. If we do this we will notify customers and, if necessary, post an updated version of this Policy. You can learn about the data plan that applies in your area by going to https://dataplan.xfinity.com/. You can view your current data usage at any time by signing into your account on xfinity.com and viewing the data usage meter at https://customer.xfinity.com/MyServices/Internet/UsageMeter/. You can also use the Xfinity app to view your data usage.
I don’t have Comcast, so I can’t get any further details.
Same with Cox, the default is 1.25 TB. I pay extra for unlimited and use around 7 TB per month. Haven’t heard any complaints for the 2 years I’ve had them. I have a feeling the threshold is something like 8 or 10 TB but I’d rather not find out.
I’ve never had that cap with them, but then I’m also not paying for standard internet…
AT&T is another. Depending on your tier, they give you “unlimited usage” but only up to a certain usage point. After that they supposedly throttle you down as low as 2g speeds depending on your tier and network load.
Net neutrality can’t get brought back fast enough!
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe this falls under net neutrality. Net neutrality would only come into play if they were (for example) throttling you for most things but giving you full bandwidth for Twitch.tv and YouTube and Netflix, but nothing else.
Exactly right. Net neutrality stipulates that carriers must treat all traffic equally, not how a provider can meter your connection.
Wow. How did I not hear about this before?
Orange used to do this in Slovakia, but they had to cancel it thanks to this.We are forced to cancel nonstop data packages due to recent decisions of European institutions. In their view, these are not in line with the principles of network neutrality in the EU and we respect this decision.
Plan “Go yoxo” for students (requiring ISIC card) used to have one of those bundled in. 5GB of data + “Unlimited data for social networks”. So Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, Whatsapp, Messenger, Skype, Pinterest, Telegram, Viber, Badoo, LinkedIn, Samsung and Google messages. Shiny garbage for €15/month. Now it’s 30GB for €18/month.
Sure, it’s an improvement, but still garbage. Currently I get 300GB for €13/month with Swan Mobile.
But it shouldn’t be surprising. They also have this thing for €5/month:
Yep, that’s right. For just €5/month you can get €1 of credit. But don’t worry, you also get 250kB on 5G network.
What can you even do with 250kB???Geez, receiving a couple marketing emails would exceed 250kB. Maybe if you were using a text only email client and doing nothing else, and you only get emails from close friends and family, that could be sufficient…
I guess you’d also have to be using a non-smart phone, or you’d have to go in and disable all telemetrics and similar features of every app you used…
Most providers/teocos have a Fair Usage Policy in their Terms and Conditions. It will spell out the max amount you can use under their “unlimited” plan.
If you exceed that amount, usually they will throttle your speed to a crawl which is also stated in the T&C.
Yea, had my cell card account closed because I was torrenting with an “unlimited” plan that wasn’t so unlimited.
Argued with the management about what the word unlimited meant. This was years ago before they put that little asterisk on there.
This type of shit drives me up the wall. I recall that Verizon has 3 different tiers of “unlimited data” which is all horseshit because “unlimited” means unlimited. I wish the FTC would grow some balls and go after companies falsely advertising like this.
Do you mean home ISP or mobile provider? What country? Who is the provider? In the US, some ISPs (especially those with monopoly) charge after ~1-1.5TB/month which is complete bullshit (fuck you comcast who was hated so much by consumers they rebranded to xfinity)
Oh it’s unlimited all right! But everything above some data threshold will be transmitted at 10 kb/s. See, they upheld their part!
Unlimited is never unlimited. Why nobody forces them to disclose this clearly is a mystery to me. An unlimited contract with 5 TB data for 15€/m is better than an unlimited contract with 1 TB data for 15€/m, given everything else is aight.
Here in Nordics datacaps outside of mobile are unknown. Unlimited is standard here.
central europe here, landline internet is truly unlimited here. my router reports around 6.5TB of total traffic (up+down) in my home network over the last month. we still have cellular data with soft caps (EDGE type speed after your 30 Gig or whatever are used up) but cable internet is limitless.
Nothing is ever unlimited. I once rented a server with unlimited storage, so I fork bombed it and basically used the unlimited storage. Turned out, they added storage to my account when I reached 75% of my storage. Turned out, they kinda paid me to stop.
You are the reason we can’t have nice things.
Yes they shut down the product shortly afterwards.
Why
It depends on
- Where you are in the world.
- If you’re talking about mobile or home internet (or both)
- What provider you have.
In the states, I’ve never hit a wall of any kind on my home internet. I’m on fiber now, but when I was on cable it was the same, in several different states. In general, as soon as one of the (usually only two, because USA broadband monopolies yay!) providers for the area tried to implement some kind of cap, everyone in the area just jumped onto the other provider and the cap eventually went away because they were hemorrhaging customers.
For mobile, its vastly different. There are only a couple cell providers in the whole united states that actually offer uncapped unlimited data, and both of those still come with stipulations, usually things like “During peak hours your bandwidth may be throttled” or something similar. They also cost $80 to $100+ per month. Most cell providers in the states throttle you hard when you go over a certain cap, usually 15-30gb depending on the provider, and what kind of contract you got. You can still connect, but you’re now running at 256kbs or something terrible. So technically, its still unlimited, just useless until next month when your cap refreshes.
This is common in Australia broadband, heard awful stories about that…
Knowing who your provider is would (might) help. Xfinity has a 1TB or 1.2TB soft cap, which you can exceed once or twice a year without concern. Beyond that you fall into their top (I think it’s) 1% of users and may be asked to scale back or to pay an excess usage fee (which was non-trivial the last time I looked - something like $10/50GB).
Is that the US? I’m on another side of the Earth and never heard about any caps at any speed.
Also fuck that $10, I’m getting unlimited 1Gbps (most of the time) with that amount of money and they even offer 2 free months/12months subscription (you can cancel at anytime with either refunds or only pay for the months you used).
Other free things I can get from my ISP:
- Free decent WiFi router/mesh system depending on sale off.
- Free initial fiber installation fee if you know someone in the ISP (also very easy to find one on the internet).
- Free torrent without ever getting busted (ISP knows we don’t have money to support good developers).
Because fiber and WiFi are everywhere due to too cheap even mountainous, mobile providers are in trouble of extinction.
Yeah, US is a real backwater when it comes to data - availability, privacy, you name it. Heck, my ISP will let me install for free, but I either have to buy my own modem or pay them $15/mo to rent one of theirs. I technically get wifi roaming with the company I use, but it’s rarely useful. I won’t torrent without a VPN; my ISP is a hardass for torrenting.
There are decent plans in some areas in the big cities in the US, but outside of that it’s pretty bleak…and there’s a lot of “outside of the cities” in the US.
Which part of the world is this?
You would need to look at the terms of service with your provider.
For my home internet, I’m pleased to have municipal fiber optic broadband in my city.
I don’t know what the width of the bottleneck is or where it’s located (because there will always be one) but i have never hit it.I also use T-Mobile for my cellular data.
They were fairly straightforward with me about how it works:
The data transfer bandwidth will never be throttled by ‘decree’,
though it is finite and everyone connected to the same signal tower as I am are all going to have to share whatever is available
up to the hardware limitations of the mobile devices themselves which are connected.
however, after I have downloaded approximately 10 gigabytes of data, my pings are to be de-prioritized. If there is not a lot of activity on the network, then connections establish in a snappy and responsive manner. If there is a lot of network traffic, however, I may have to ‘wait my turn’ while other people who have not downloaded as much get to go first, to an extent. Once the connection is established, the speed of data transfer is just as fast as before. It just takes longer for that connection to be established in the first place.I am satisfied with this arrangement.
If it has a limit, it isn’t unlimited.
In which case, it is false advertisement.
Go sue them for it.
I am in India. Here, broadband providers give 3.33 TB of high speed usage, after which the speed gets limited to 1mbps. Some postpaid mobile plans also have “unlimited” usage, but they give only 100GB data, and if you exceed it, they convert your regular plan to a commercial plan and will bill you a relatively huge amount.
Between me and my room mate we’ve downloaded approximately 1202tb this month and uploaded about 105tb.
AFAIK unlimited = unlimited. If there’s a limit we’ve not hit it yet.
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