Ntl Cutting Off High Usage Users

Boomer23

i think its about time, abusers deserve to get cut off!

also, ye cant use the "nobody told us how to check what i have downloaded", anyone who downloads stupid amounts KNOWS what the cap is anf KNOWS when they have gone over it.

and finally, hands up who have had slow speeds on NTL!!!!! yeah, dont you think cutting off the people using YOUR bandwidth should be cut off so you can get what you are paying for?

RangeR

Boomer23 wrote:

i think its about time, abusers deserve to get cut off!

also, ye cant use the "nobody told us how to check what i have downloaded", anyone who downloads stupid amounts KNOWS what the cap is anf KNOWS when they have gone over it.

and finally, hands up who have had slow speeds on NTL!!!!! yeah, dont you think cutting off the people using YOUR bandwidth should be cut off so you can get what you are paying for?

Firstly, chill man. There are many, many, many residents out there that do NOT have sole use of the computer(s). Just one example of many, I have a couple of computers at home. There are a few of us who use them. I am on Chorus. There is NO way I can find out my usage without a usage monitor from Chorus. They do not supply that service. Neither deos NTL. They suggest DUMeter which is just a cop out and not a viable option [not all of my devices are computers] or to ring them and find out. Again, not a viable option.

Mojito

mandrk wrote:

Does the 40GB cap include up and download. You downloaded 34.6G could you have uploaded 16.2G? ..... I doubt it!

It states on the letter "You have downloaded" uploads are not included. My question is how are we supposed to monitor our downloads if DU Meter reports 34.6GB and NTL says it was 50.8GB

There's a big difference there! I rang them about 3 hours ago and they said they would get one of the managers to called me back...

FrankGrimes

they should genuinely receive at least one warning before they are cut off though if you are to be at all reasonable about it.

Boomer23

IrishTLR wrote:

They suggest DUMeter which is just a cop out and not a viable option [not all of my devices are computers]

is this thread not about NTL customers?

also, if you go over 40 Gb per month you know you have, 40Gb is quite a lot when you think a .avi movie is .7Gb and an MP3 is about .004Gb....so unless you are totally raping the service and downloading shed loads of illegal media you will not hit a cap.

i suppose they COULD send their IP range to Paramount Pictures and EMI Records and let them loose on the file sharers.........

kaizersoze

According to their t&c it's download only.
One thing I don't understand in all of this is, how can they claim to offer a 40gig allowance per month and on the other hand restrict you to 1gig per day?
Are there any months with 40 days in them?

RangeR

Boomer23 wrote:

is this thread not about NTL customers?

Of course it is. Chorus and NTL are pretty much the same company now. Either way, my post is my opinion.

Boomer23 wrote:

also, if you go over 40 Gb per month you know you have, 40Gb is quite a lot when you think a .avi movie is .7Gb and an MP3 is about .004Gb....so unless you are totally raping the service and downloading shed loads of illegal media you will not hit a cap.

Try think outside your fishbowl. There are MANY things you can do on the internet where usage is not easily calculated.

• Non computer devices [web cameras, ATA VoIP, Playstation, XBox ]
• VPN
• Email
• Remote Access
• Online radio
• Transmission overheads on normal filesizes [which can be significant especially with high packet loss]
• the list goes on

None of the items in this list have tangeable usage amounts. Hell, even if you are careful and ONLY download 40GB of files and NO other usage, you may think you are within the cap. But you haven't calculated the trasnmission overheads and re transmission of bad/lost packets. In fact by downloading 40GB of files you will probably have used a few GB more. [don't have the time or inclanation to do the calculations]

Boomer23 wrote:

i suppose they COULD send their IP range to Paramount Pictures and EMI Records and let them loose on the file sharers.........

Totally rubbish comment. I can easily go over my 40GB cap without using any illegal content. Again, take a step out of your fishbowl and open your mind.

FrankGrimes

I could easily hit 40GB a month by downloading legal material - as mentioned above xbox360 demos and HD trailers could get you to that amount in no time.

Fair enough, if I download 100GB a month I'll know I'm likely to have downloaded more than 40GB. But if I actually downloaded 42GB in one month I quite reasonably might have estimated that I downloaded 39GB. For this reason they should provide a way to monitor your usage - I can't imagine it'd be an expensive tool for them to deliver.

Boomer23

IrishTLR wrote:

[*]Non computer devices [web cameras, ATA VoIP, Playstation, XBox ]
[*]VPN
[*]Email
[*]Remote Access
[*]Online radio
[*]Transmission overheads on normal filesizes [which can be significant especially with high packet loss]
[*]the list goes on[/LIST]None of the items in this list have tangeable usage amounts.

Totally rubbish comment. I can easily go over my 40GB cap without using any illegal content. Again, take a step out of your fishbowl and open your mind.

right, so, wrong on a number of counts

1, all the above listed, with the expection of your consoles, will be noted in a DUMeter as it calculates ALL upstream and downstream traffic on your computers ports, unless your streaming media and webcam are somehow special

2, unless you are using a residential line for buisness purposes then its quite difficult to hit 40Gb legally, unless you send a lot of family photos....maybe, just unlikely

RangeR

Let's agree to disagree. This is going nowhere and you're not seeing the bigger picture.

Back on topic.

paulm17781

Boomer23 wrote:

right, so, wrong on a number of counts

1, all the above listed, with the expection of your consoles, will be noted in a DUMeter as it calculates ALL upstream and downstream traffic on your computers ports, unless your streaming media and webcam are somehow special

2, unless you are using a residential line for buisness purposes then its quite difficult to hit 40Gb legally, unless you send a lot of family photos....maybe, just unlikely

There is plenty to download legally. Linux isos can be several gigs. I downloaded a 5GB one in a day. If I was tesing a few versions that is 40GB in 8 days. Not likely to happen but it is plausible. I never go near my cap but I use xbox live for demos, VOIP as my main phone line, then other (all lega) crap on my pc. I have no idea how much I download, I would think less than 40GB but people can easily reach that limit legally.

tinkerbell

kaizersoze wrote:

According to their t&c it's download only.
One thing I don't understand in all of this is, how can they claim to offer a 40gig allowance per month and on the other hand restrict you to 1gig per day?
Are there any months with 40 days in them?

On the NTL user policy, it says:

All monthly usage allowances refer to levels of downstream data transfer monthly.

"Normal use" is 1GB downstream of data transfer daily (which equates to approx 200 music tracks, etc.)

If you scroll down the page, it breaks up the four different products, Broadband Starter, etc. If you look at Broadband, this is obviously the "normal" service they are referring to, because it says approx 200 music tracks: "For Broadband, this equates to approx 200 music tracks, etc."

So from that, they are just referring the 1GB to the Broadband package (30GB per month). I'm assuming that for the 16GB that it's 0.5GB a day, and for 40GB, 1.33GB a day ... I wonder if they take an average of your monthly usage, or do they put a cap on daily allowance?

Since they just mention downstream, then that's just packets received? Is 1,000 packets = 1 MB? Is that what it is? I'm running XP and on my connection status it says Packets Received and Sent ... so 1 packet = 1 byte then?

As someone else mentioned, lost packets and all that drives up your usage. I assume that if you check your network connection when you are downloading one of those xbox demo game things, that if it's 1GB, by the time the thing has actually downloaded, your usage could be 1.5GB .... even if you have nothing else running, which I'm assuming is from lost packets?

RangeR

tinkerbell wrote:

Since they just mention downstream, then that's just packets received? Is 1,000 packets = 1 MB?

Try not to think of it in terms of packets. Stick to file sizes and you won't go far wrong. Packet size can be variable depending on various factors.

Generally, 1MB is 1 minute of an MP3 music file.

snaps

I can't believe ntl want to cut people off! Surely they would want to keep them or why not charge every one that goes over their limit? The competition is getting strong now with Magnet and sky so surely they want to keep their customers?

.50c a GB is not to much to charge a customer if they go over their limit? Most other companys charge this and I wouldn't mind paying that charge. If I got disconnected they would loose me as a TV customer (4 Digital points) as well?

I have been thinking of changing providers for some time now (Magnet) so it would possibly be the push I would need.

xbox360dublin

im gonna just leave NTL and go with someone else, anyone know any good BB providers in Santry!

I dont think anyone is gonna call me back to be honest!

b0bbie

Lads get yoursleves onto irish broadband so... 18.95 for unlimited downloads yes unlimited downloads see below from the website:

Are there any download caps or additional charges with Irish Broadband?

No, with Irish Broadband there are no download caps. Irish Broadband do not charge any additional fees for usage, we have no additional download charges. To ensure a fair and equitable access to all users, a fair usage policy will apply.

I'm with them now and have no complaints at all....:D

Mojito

Boomer23 wrote:

noted in a DUMeter as it calculates ALL upstream and downstream traffic on your computers ports

Thats no good as NTL will calculate all upstream and downstream traffic sent to your router.

If you download a 1MB file, DUMeter may report 1MB but there will be anywhere between 5% - 10% or more overhead on this that is impossible for DUMeter or you to catch but NTL will have recorded that. Thats just one example.

JNive

Irish Broadband lol, sorry but its clear why youve recommended them, only 7 posts here lol.

CiaranC

right, so, wrong on a number of counts

1, all the above listed, with the expection of your consoles, will be noted in a DUMeter as it calculates ALL upstream and downstream traffic on your computers ports, unless your streaming media and webcam are somehow special

2, unless you are using a residential line for buisness purposes then its quite difficult to hit 40Gb legally, unless you send a lot of family photos....maybe, just unlikely

You really shouldnt get into these kind of debates if you dont know what you are talking about.

1. Theres no way im running all my network traffic through a single PC to run a software based bandwidth monitor. Get real.

2. We are talking about people who are on Broadband MAX, not casual users here. This is the highest bandwidth residential product widely available and its the most expensive available from NTL.

People pay for it because they want to do lots of transfer, fast. If they didnt, they'd be on a lower spec'ed package.

RangeR

b0bbie wrote:

Lads get yoursleves onto irish broadband so... 18.95 for unlimited downloads yes unlimited downloads see below from the website:

Are there any download caps or additional charges with Irish Broadband?

No, with Irish Broadband there are no download caps. Irish Broadband do not charge any additional fees for usage, we have no additional download charges. To ensure a fair and equitable access to all users, a fair usage policy will apply.

I'm with them now and have no complaints at all....:D

Nice one. That has cheered me up for the weekend. Ripwave being reliable and fast.... I won't hold my breath

hurleyd

I just got a letter saying I downloaded 44.124GB. A whole 4 gigs over the limit.

There's two computers hooked upto the router and another couple of laptops using wireless. How am I suppose to monitor those without NTL providing a way for me to check our usage?

dathiultaigh

really this is complete b*llix : as for me i got the digital NTL TV Package with all your extra TV channels and NTL as my ISP. I dont watch so much TRV but when i use the Net I want the best and that why "in the past" I was prepared to pay more --> NTL up to 3 months ago i feel WAS a quality service.

WTF do NTL/chello/chorus want? If its a customer who is wants to pay for a quality service then rule me IN but if not i am not going to be messed around and i am not going to accept less than i have had in the past.

On top of this I go to your website and see no contenton rate listed and new T's and C's !!!??

So NTL is trying to be like every other "irish COWBOY isp"? I dont need this ****e. Was nice while it lasted

soiaf

I got a letter yesterday telling me I downloaded 41.72 GB and that I'll be automatically disconnected if I keep exceeding the usage allowance.

I'm going to keep a closer eye on my usage, but I think I'm also going to start looking for a different service provider.

CiaranC

I got a letter yesterday telling me I downloaded 41.72 GB and that I'll be automatically disconnected if I keep exceeding the usage allowance.

Unbelievable

PixelTrawler

This thread makes for pretty depressing reading:(

In this day and age at the very least they should be able to provide a download monitor...

Sponge Bob

soiaf wrote:

I got a letter yesterday telling me I downloaded 41.72 GB and that I'll be automatically disconnected if I keep exceeding the usage allowance.

Such generosity, did anybody with a 20Gb limit get a warning about going 0.01Gb over their limit yet ????

Nietzschean

bk wrote:

As I suspected a few months ago, since NTL merged with Chorus, NTL is starting to slip from one of the best ISP's to one of the worst.

Alas i've been getting the same feeling

First of all we have all the problems with them routing all traffic through Amsterdam and now this.

Yes the latency to anything in ireland is really painfull, NTL irl when it was part of NTL only started routing through inex though maybe a year or so ago, but even before that pings weren't too bad as only the uk, now via amsterdam, back through level3 in london and on, its really rather crap.

Ironically if they bothered to peer in INEX, they mightn't need to do this. For instance Microsoft is peered in the INEX, so all of your xbox360 downloads would be very cheap to do if they bothered to just peer with MS in the INEX. But because they are routing through Amsterdam, of course it is going to be very expensive and cause a bottleneck.

Now that would be plain intelligent, UPC couldn't do that, i saw some statistic once that something like 60% of website traffic from irish bb users goes to irish webpages, soe peering with eircom/h365/heanet and so on via inex would surely reduce costs massively, it seems mad not to make use of it?

If UPC continues this way they are going to be losing lots of their customers to Smart and Magnet and lose any positive good will that they had built up.

True i've already been looking at magnet, though still stuck with tv and phone for which i've no use looking at their packages(hrm i miss their original package lineup which had alot of bb only stuff)

Just FYI, NTL UK (no longer related to NTL Ireland) use to have a 75GB cap, but now has no cap and is unlimited.

well that woudl be nice, but NTL IRL never had the backhaul to allow no cap, i've had period 's of massive latency problems, explaining to NTL engineers how latency was different than thruput was interesting and scary at the same time.They never had enough capacity into INEX which caused massive latency problems if the link was saturated, though i guess even that was better than via amsterdam..

andrew163

Boomer23 wrote:

right, so, wrong on a number of counts

1, all the above listed, with the expection of your consoles, will be noted in a DUMeter as it calculates ALL upstream and downstream traffic on your computers ports, unless your streaming media and webcam are somehow special

2, unless you are using a residential line for buisness purposes then its quite difficult to hit 40Gb legally, unless you send a lot of family photos....maybe, just unlikely

Oddly enough whenever I use an internet connection (I didn't say *this* internet connection, AN internet connection) for business purposes it's only been SSH terminals.. which use virtually no bandwidth. But anyway,

There are 3 desktops and 2 laptops here, as well as an xbox and a server that I use for testing code on (not open to the public/outside world without a password as per NTL's T&Cs), all connected through a router to the internet. How would you suggest that I monitor bandwidth?

NTL's broadband service has been a load of **** lately (speeds are fine, it just disconnects every few hours requiring a reboot of the router). Pings into Dublin are far higher than they should be because of the routing everything via Amsterdam and back through London. Their digital TV service is unreliable and we're one step away from just completely cancelling all services with them. I have heard a similar story from most people I know. The last thing they want to be doing right now is pushing more users away.

Snake Plisken

I knew this would happen when Chorarse bought NTL, Comreg should never have allowed the deal to go through, for one thing the service has really got worse with speeds all over the place and also sending letters out is par for the game with Chorarse as my dad got one a couple of months back and he is only on a two meg service. I am currently paying for their top package, I expect better Cap from NTL. And if they are going to enforce limits they are going to have to provide a monitoring tool for customers to monitor their usage.

Snake

Sponge Bob

Snake Plisken wrote:

I knew this would happen when Chorarse bought NTL,

Nope, UPC bought BOTH Chorus and NTL and are integrating them now.

Comreg should never have allowed the deal to go through, for one thing the service has really got worse with speeds all over the place and also sending letters out is par for the game with Chorarse as my dad got one a couple of months back and he is only on a two meg service.

Comreg deregulated Cable about 3 years back, the only requirements are accurate billing and sticking to contratc terms and ensuring these contract terms and user policies are clear and easy available.

I am currently paying for their top package, I expect better Cap from NTL. And if they are going to enforce limits they are going to have to provide a monitoring tool for customers to monitor their usage.

Absolutely, all licencees have requirements for their customers under the basic licence , this includes a published disconnect policy . Thats where Comreg needs to set a standard for all of them. If you wish to cap your customers they should know when they are likely to exceed that cap and be able to change their behaviour to avoid a disconnnect procedure.

You can say what you like about eircom but such a system is in place.

Once an accurate traffic measuring system is in place then NTL or any other capped carrier is free to enforce T&Cs and disconnect after the disconnect procedure as their customers know whats going on.

At present the customers only know AFTER THE FACT and AFTER they are threatened with loss of service and there is NO PUBLISHED PROCEDURE.

Being threatened with disconnect where there is no published disconnect procedure or online stats is a breach of NTL and Choruses basic licences and should be brought straight to Comreg to deal with. You are all fully paid up so its not a money thing

info@comreg.ie or Consumerline@comreg.ie
OR Telephone: + 353 1 8049668 or LoCall 1890 22 9668.

Simple breach of licence, let Comreg call them off and straighten their asses up