Caps (again)

CyberGhost

Cr3m0 wrote:

hey I live in Bray and before you say adsl is in my area, that's not what I want since of the cap.

IBB has arrived in my area and I'm planning to get either the 512/512 package or the 1024/1024 package.

Now atm I have ISDN and I will get rid of it when I get the IBB.
what will my line rental go down to with just one line with eircom.

Also currently I'm on Esat IOL Anytime 180hours package and I haven't been billed for the last year (service turned on 1st August). I want to cancel this too but will this mean they'll look for their money? Is it not their fault for not charging the credit card?

One other question which is for the people on IBB 512/512 package.
I was on to IBB on the phone today and they said that you can't have the VL equipment with the 512/512 package and you can only have it with the 1024/1024 package.

I seem to remember that Mutant_Fruit from these boards is on the 512/512 package with the VL equipment. Were they just leading me up the proverbial garden path?


thanks in advance for your replies.

hey, congratulations man!

you are like me, you don't consider a BB a BB if it has a cap

Creamy Goodness

well i think of broadband is that like the net just becomes part of like windows and doesn't require you to think of dialing up, but when a cap is introduced your like going uhh ohh can i afford to go on now? will i smash my cap?

Mutant_Fruit

CyberGhost wrote:

hey, congratulations man!

you are like me, you don't consider a BB a BB if it has a cap

Why substitue watching an eggtimer to make sure you don't spend to long online for watching a cap limit, hoping you don't go over. Nothing is broadband unless its unmetered. Thats my view. Hell, i'd considar 128/128 unmetered slowband, but better than 512/128 with an 8gb cap.

Ripwave

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

Why substitue watching an eggtimer to make sure you don't spend to long online for watching a cap limit, hoping you don't go over. Nothing is broadband unless its unmetered. Thats my view.

And you're entitled to your view. But as you're in the 2% of the userbase who downloads more than 8G a month, your view is pretty much irrelevant to the rest of us.

CyberGhost

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

Why substitue watching an eggtimer to make sure you don't spend to long online for watching a cap limit, hoping you don't go over. Nothing is broadband unless its unmetered. Thats my view. Hell, i'd considar 128/128 unmetered slowband, but better than 512/128 with an 8gb cap.

God Bless you! now here's a man!

And you're entitled to your view. But as you're in the 2% of the userbase who downloads more than 8G a month, your view is pretty much irrelevant to the rest of us.

well those 98% of you are people that keep broadband at such a low level in Ireland

and btw, if there is 98% of people who don't use BB much, then why the hell do netsource, digiweb, ibb, throttle their users? cutting their bandwidth? if only 2% are heavy users, then they should have an ocean of bandwidth!

Mutant_Fruit

(not trying to attack anyone here but...) Where do you get the 98% statistic from? What was the criteria needed to be fulfilled to take part in the survey?

If they did a survey of all DSL users (a few months ago), of course they'd find 98% of people stay within 8gb, as at that time eircom had a 4gb cap, and iol had an 8gb cap! There is such a think as junk statistics... and unless you have access to the details about how the survey was done, where it was done, and who was surveyed you can't really trust it.

RicardoSmith

Its like networking and road traffic. Demand always increases to use all available bandwidth eventually.

Ripwave

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

(not trying to attack anyone here but...) Where do you get the 98% statistic from? What was the criteria needed to be fulfilled to take part in the survey?

If they did a survey of all DSL users (a few months ago), of course they'd find 98% of people stay within 8gb, as at that time eircom had a 4gb cap, and iol had an 8gb cap! There is such a think as junk statistics... and unless you have access to the details about how the survey was done, where it was done, and who was surveyed you can't really trust it.

The 98% figure came from UTV, who claimed that only 2% of their users exceed the cap. And those numbers date from a time before the current surge of interest in broadband, when the audience was more skewed towards the "tech savvy" audience who need a fresh Linux ISO every day, if you believe half the blather posted on boards.

By the way, if you want to post alternative statistics, feel free - just don't pretend that the audience on boards is anything like representative of the "ordinary" broadband user in Ireland.

Ripwave

CyberGhost wrote:

and btw, if there is 98% of people who don't use BB much, then why the hell do netsource, digiweb, ibb, throttle their users? cutting their bandwidth? if only 2% are heavy users, then they should have an ocean of bandwidth!

512kbit/sec * 60 seconds * 60 minutes * 24 hours * 30 days / 48 users = 3.45G each, per month.

If you want to download 30G, then you better hope that there's lot's of ordinary users only using 2G a month on your exchange, because you'll be eating 20 other users lunches.

CyberGhost

Ripwave wrote:

512kbit/sec * 60 seconds * 60 minutes * 24 hours * 30 days / 48 users = 3.45G each, per month.

If you want to download 30G, then you better hope that there's lot's of ordinary users only using 2G a month on your exchange, because you'll be eating 20 other users lunches.

then they are simply lying!

because why would they call it unlimited?

I'm on unlimited digiweb now, and the bastards throlled me!

so I sent them a nice email

Mutant_Fruit

The 98% figure came from UTV, who claimed that only 2% of their users exceed the cap. And those numbers date from a time before the current surge of interest in broadband, when the audience was more skewed towards the "tech savvy" audience who need a fresh Linux ISO every day, if you believe half the blather posted on boards.

That does not mean that if they had no cap they wouldn't use more bandwidth. All that means is that 2% of UTV's users break their contract. It doesn't mean that 98% would use less than 8GiB if they had no cap, meaning it is a junk statistic. I.e. no real value.

The only proper statistic would be if the usage of an uncapped provider was tracked for a month, and then those were used to provide the "average usage". Of course, that'd be best done in a country where theu have several such ISP's, and therefore a large userbase.

I am by no means "just among the top 2%". I'm sure there are thousands of others out there who would use more than 8Gb's, if only they weren't capped.

CyberGhost

uncapped traffic - A man can dream Oh yes a man can dream ...

lol I still remember, when I was on eircom's 3GB cap!

lol

Ripwave

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

That does not mean that if they had no cap they wouldn't use more bandwidth. All that means is that 2% of UTV's users break their contract. It doesn't mean that 98% would use less than 8GiB if they had no cap, meaning it is a junk statistic. I.e. no real value.

Look, Mutant, you don't have any statistics at all, so you're in no position to say that this or that has no real value.

The 98% don't even come close to 8G, they're not restraining themselves in case they exceed the cap, they're not even in the same ballpark as the cap.

The bottom line is that a 48:1 contention ratio only provides 3.5G per user per month on a 512K service. For every user who exceeds that by 4G, you need 2 users downloading less than 2G. And that's okay, because real people actually get by quite happily with 2G, and never need to keep an eye on the amount they are downloading.

CyberGhost

I don't get this, how to do you calculate that a single user should 3.5g?

can you please explain that?

all I know is

standard, DSL lines are provided with 2-2.5 megs for 48 or 24 users = if all 48 users are downloading all together they should get 42kB/s

I have never heard about download calculations

Mutant_Fruit

Look, Mutant, you don't have any statistics at all, so you're in no position to say that this or that has no real value

You know that survey that the RIAA conducted about how many people downloaded movies illegally? Well, their statistics say that over 25% of all internet users have illegally download at least one movie.

Of course, when you actually investigated what they did, you notice how stupid the survey was. If i remeber correctly, they only surveyed people with broadband. Secondly, they only surveyed about 3000 people. Thirdly, they counted watching a free online trailor as a "movie". Fourthly, they counted free fully legal movies as "illegal movies".

Read about it here

So, unless you ahve specifics on how a survey was carried out, it really is nothing more than random numbers.

Ripwave

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

So, unless you ahve specifics on how a survey was carried out, it really is nothing more than random numbers.

FFS, it wasn't a freaking survey!!! UTV know exactly how much their users download. So do ESAT and Eircom. And UTV have publicly stated that less than 2% of their users exceed the cap on a regular basis. (I'd try to find the post, but it's impossible since the upgrade broke the search function).

The reason that the bandwidth hogs haven't been hassled is because there aren't enough of you to bother hassling. You're getting away with it precisely because normal users don't come anywhere using their "fair allocation", so there's enough left over. If and when your activities begin to impinge on the users that you're currently leeching off, you'll get squeezed - that's what happened on netsource, and what is likely to happen on other ISPs, especially the smaller players, in the future.

Ripwave

CyberGhost wrote:

I don't get this, how to do you calculate that a single user should 3.5g?

I'm sorry, I don't do remedial mathematics. If you can't do basic multiplication and division, then you'll have to get someone else to help you.

512kbit/sec * 60 seconds * 60 minutes * 24 hours * 30 days / 48 users = 3.45Gbyte each, per month

Mutant_Fruit

Ripwave wrote:

FFS, it wasn't a freaking survey!!! UTV know exactly how much their users download. And UTV have publicly stated that less than 2% of their users exceed the cap on a regular basis

So, UTV said that less than 2% of people are breaking their caps, thats fine. It means 98% of UTV users are either what you refer to as "normal" users or they are unfortunate people who are limiting their downloads so they don't break the cap. You can't prove who is part of which group. You're right, it isnt a survey, it has no statistical importance on any ISP or internet user except those on UTV. All that statistic says is that 98% of UTV users don't break their cap, it says nothing else that can be applied to other users.

Just because only 2% of their users went over the cap, doesn't mean the other 98% wouldn't like more bancwidth.

I'm sorry, I don't do remedial mathematics. If you can't do basic multiplication and division, then you'll have to get someone else to help you.

512kbit/sec * 60 seconds * 60 minutes * 24 hours * 30 days / 48 users = 3.45Gbyte each, per month

Sorry to say it, but that is complete crap. What you're saying is that at each Connectoin point (i forget the right word, the place where the 48 users connect to before they head on to their ISPs' main office) there is just 512kbps of bandwidth for ALL the 48 users.

If that were true, you would find that well over 90% of ADSL users would never be able to reach their max speed, as all it would take would be 2 peopple concurrently downloading to half the bandwidth. And i can assure you, my friend with Eircom broadband has had no such problems, ever, and i doubt he is the only one in Firhouse with ADSL.

The reason that the bandwidth hogs haven't been hassled is because there aren't enough of you to bother hassling. You're getting away with it precisely because normal users don't come anywhere using their "fair allocation"

Here we are, back the the mythical "fair allocation". You think its fair that i sign up to a package with no cap, and then limit myself to 3.45 GiB? Something i could download in under 9 hours? Do you think its fair that i pay EUR48.40 a month for a mere 3.45GiB of download allowance, on an uncapped service? I think not!

I think i am completely entitled to download as much as i want. After all, it is uncapped, i am "entitled" to as much "fair usage" as i want/need.

If you think that every ADSL user should only download 3.45GiB so as to not cut into someone else's allowance, why the hell do you think everyone has an 8GiB allowance! I'm sure everyone on the eircom system could easily download 8GiB a month, and not even stress eircom's bandwidth. Hell, i'm sure they could all grab 30GiB and not but to much strain.

If everyone at one exchange (is that the right word?) was to download 30GiB a month, the exchange would only have to have.... a 5 meg line. That means 1,509,949,440KiB (30GibX48users) of data could be transferred in 2592000seconds (30daysX24hoursx60minsx60seconds) on a mere 5meg line. Of course, thats just speculation...

EDIT: The edit button is there to stop the need for double posting...

CyberGhost

he is full of crap, man! and his calculations are stupid too!

first of all DSL is not counted by how much do you download but how much bandwidth do you use - speed, not data!

if they do then all the isps in the world would have a cap

they do it so that you simply don't hog the bandwidth = speed

and they are full of crap too! because those 48(that are on 512kb/s line) people are "powered" by at least 2 megs(2048kb/s) which is divided by 48 = 42.6kB/s = this is the speed you will get if all those 48 people are downloading at once! and it doesn't matter how much data they download, because isps, care about the speed not the data! that's a bs! because there is enough for everyone! even if they download 24/7

the bottom line is that DSL shouldn't have a cap, and if they have a cap, it shouldn't be called a broadband, because it's not!

Moriarty

CyberGhost, you don't have a fucking notion what you're talking about, so just please stop now. You're only embarrassing yourself.

Mutant Fruit, your maths (among other things) are wrong in that post.

Moriarty

Split from this thread.

Ripwave

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

So, UTV said that less than 2% of people are breaking their caps, thats fine. It means 98% of UTV users are either what you refer to as "normal" users or they are unfortunate people who are limiting their downloads so they don't break the cap.

Okay, einstein, why would anyone limit themselves when the caps weren't being enforced?

Here's a clue - they weren't limiting themselves, they were just normal users who don't need to download the whole internet to enjoy themselves.

If you would like to continue this arguement, just provide 1, just 1, single piece of actual information, rather than your own uninformed opinion, for a change.

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

Sorry to say it, but that is complete crap. What you're saying is that at each Connectoin point (i forget the right word, the place where the 48 users connect to before they head on to their ISPs' main office) there is just 512kbps of bandwidth for ALL the 48 users.
No, MF, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that the very definition of a "48:1 contention ratio" is that 48 users share 1 unit of whatever is being contended. It doesn't matter whether that's 48 users sharing a 512K link, or 192 users sharing a 2G link, or 19200 users sharing a 200G link, it's all a 48:1 contention ratio. And if all 19200 users tried to max out their usage of this notional 200G link, at 512kbps, they'd each get 3.45G per month.

But the reality is that "normal" users only need and want 1 or 2 G a month, so there plenty left over for those of you who feel the need to download more than that.

Here we are, back the the mythical "fair allocation". You think its fair that i sign up to a package with no cap, and then limit myself to 3.45 GiB?

If you signed up to a no cap service, why limit yourself to 8G? Or 80G? Or 800G? Why not download a terabyte a month? After all, there is no cap! Oops, there a problem with the laws of physics, it's not physically possible to download a terabyte at 512kbps in a month. I guess it's not really an uncapped service after all!

Nobody gives a **** if you use up other peoples unused allocation. But if you signed up for a 48:1 contention ratio service, then yes, it is fair that you be prevented from spoling other peoples usage of the service by using excessive amounts of bandwidth. And the definition of "excessive" will depend on circumstances.

Something i could download in under 9 hours? Do you think its fair that i pay EUR48.40 a month for a mere 3.45GiB of download allowance, on an uncapped service? I think not!

Well, you know what they say - opinions are like arseholes - everyone should have one. I'm getting tired of repeating myself and saying that I really don't care about what a tiny minority of users think is "fair" or not.

<more irrelevant ravings deleted>

If everyone at one exchange (is that the right word?) was to download 30GiB a month, the exchange would only have to have.... a 5 meg line. That means 1,509,949,440KiB (30GibX48users) of data could be transferred in 2592000seconds (30daysX24hoursx60minsx60seconds) on a mere 5meg line. Of course, thats just speculation...

Sure. Of course, it wouldn't be a 48:1 contention ratio then, would it?

Ripwave

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

You know that survey that the RIAA conducted about how many people downloaded movies illegally? Well, their statistics say that over 25% of all internet users have illegally download at least one movie.

Of course, when you actually investigated what they did, you notice how stupid the survey was. If i remeber correctly, they only surveyed people with broadband. Secondly, they only surveyed about 3000 people. Thirdly, they counted watching a free online trailor as a "movie". Fourthly, they counted free fully legal movies as "illegal movies".

Read about it here

It's funny how statistics are only "junk" when someone else provides them. While the MPAA study cited above is indeed misleading, it's not nearly as misleading as your presentation of it. For a start, the MPAA statement doesn't claim that "25% of all internet users have illegally download at least one movie." It states that "About one in four Internet users (24%) have downloaded a movie". And the MPAA didn't "counted watching a free online trailor as a "movie"". The survey didn't specify what was meant by "movie", and it was up to the respondents to decide whether what they had downloaded could be described as a "movie". The opponents of the MPAA have arbitrarily decided that it must include trailers. So much for "uncovering the truth" - it looks like the MPAA aren't the only ones prepared to twist the facts to suit their own agenda.

Of course, when a vested interested (whether it be the MPAA or bandwidth hogs) presents any argument, it's always worth examining it to see what the real truth might be. But there is no "vested interest" in declaring that 98% of users don't come anywhere near breaking their download cap. So before you try to spin a "survey" that never happened, why don't you try to explain the motivation behind claims?

CyberGhost

hmm... maybe I should listen to your advice Moriarty

but the thing that I don't get is

why the hell do you people protect isps, and talk as they are right, and there should be a cap? and the cap is a right thing?

OfflerCrocGod

Ripwave are you on a capped service?

Moriarty wrote:

CyberGhost, you don't have a fucking notion what you're talking about, so just please stop now. You're only embarrassing yourself.

Since your a mod you don't think you should support what you post with facts? Please tell us all why CyberGhost doesn't "have a fucking notion"

Moriarty wrote:

Mutant Fruit, your maths (among other things) are wrong in that post.

The maths you supplied to counter his proves that beyond a doubt.....Oh wait, you didn't supply any. Frankly both sides are acting like kids and can't counter each others arguments because they have no facts to back themselves with. This is a pointless rant of a thread.

CyberGhost

OfflerCrocGod wrote:

This is a pointless rant of a thread.

Agreed!

the thing is that some people are born to be controlled and capped, but some people like freedom

CyberGhost

btw, appologies to Ripwave, you are a nice guy, I didn't mean to insult you by calling your calculations stupid


I'm off this thread, I don't have a ****ing notion about anything

Mutant_Fruit

Yeah, tis pointless.

I'm adament that broadband is only broadband when its uncapped, Ripwave is adament that even capped broadband is broadband. We'll never convince each other to change our opinion. As for the maths, i can't see a mistake in it... maybe a PM pointing out my error would be nice.

EDIT: I know i have no facts, but i also know that you can twist any survey to suit your needs. Hell, i've picked holes at the UTV survey, and i've shown what happened in the RIAA survey, everything can be altered to suit your needs.

But facts delivered by an ISP saying that their own cap of 8GiB suits 98% of users reminds me of a similar claim of a british company who offer a 2GiB cap, can't find the thread though.

I don't need to download the whole internet to enjoy it, but i do like my favourite band, and i do like downloading and watching their live performances. Therefore, i do that. If that makes me download 30, 50, or 100GiB a month, so be it. I'm getting my fair share as far as i'm concerned.

EDIT2: I spent a good 90 mins searching around for any kind of statistics about bandwidth usage of broadband customers, can't find anything, not even UTV's survey.

Cabaal

CyberGhost wrote:

uncapped traffic - A man can dream Oh yes a man can dream ...

Hmm I guess I must be in that dream then

:cool:

As per broadband, its accepted both in UK & Ireland that either 256K or 512K + is allowed to be called Broadband, in no docs I've read has it mentioned ANYTHING about a cap causing a 512K service not to be called broadband

Broadband is refering to the speed not what you can download.
while I would have to agree caps of 8GB & 16GB are a joke the above info still holds true

Also regarding caps a 30GB cap per month is certainly something that would be better then current offerings