What Are You Doing Right Now
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@wirestyle22 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Most people who are downloading aren't storing it, they are streaming it, then dumping it...
Which has no effect on how much you have downloaded. You started calling "total downloads" storage, now you are trying to define storage as not what you have downloaded. You are flip flopping on terms you introduced.
I did? Please quote it for me. I don't see myself flip flopping - I'm talking about bandwidth.
If my ISP sells me 20 Mbs for X, then 5 years later ups my connection to 100 Mbs and still lists it as unlimited, then I fully expect that I can now download 5 time as much as I could before.
Now if they say - hey, you can stay on your old 20 Mbs for price A, or move to 100 Mbs for price B.. .well then I have to decide what I want. (FYI, both are listed as unlimited).
I'm guessing that your family's connection is no longer listed as unlimited, it's now listed as 250 GB/month for X, and $10/50 GB above that... and while that sucks.. that's definitely fine for them to do... because it's not unlimited, and it's spelled out.
My question is though - WHY the need for the caps? other than to squeeze people for money money?
My two-cents: This is a way for them to market a lower price than competitors while also not losing any money in the process.
Once one did it, they all had to because people look at the monthly price not the total cost.
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@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
so the storage aspect has little or no baring at all - unless the ISP is keeping copies of everything moving through their network for some predetermined amount of time for some reason we are unaware of?
We are talking about storage as a volume of download. What are YOU talking about?
Storage in this use seems weird at best, completely confusing at worst.
That's why we weren't calling it that, only calling it bandwidth.
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@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
My question is though - WHY the need for the caps? other than to squeeze people for money money?
This seems a really silly question. Why charge people for Internet in the first place, other than to make money? Why be in business at all?
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@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Why the push for caps now?
Because the speeds are higher now. You can't download very much on 20Mb/s. But fiber with 120Mb/s let's you pull a crap tonne of stuff in no time. Suddenly three streams of 4K video, Steam machines downloading 1TB game libraries.... you can eat up insane amounts of storage on the new connections that were unthinkable before.
When did storage come into this picture?
Oh, I see, I referred to the amount of the pool as storage. Yes, I think it's an obvious use of the word. What do you call the "volume of downloads" if not storage? Bandwidth is not a possible term there. That it is not kept long term, but only stored in memory for a moment doesn't change that, to the network, it is stored.
Here Storage = volume of network traffic
Storage is a volume number. Bandwidth is an instantaneous rate.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
My question is though - WHY the need for the caps? other than to squeeze people for money money?
This seems a really silly question. Why charge people for Internet in the first place, other than to make money? Why be in business at all?
LOL - of course, but we've seen a huge shift in the charge structure recently (the past few years).
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@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
I'm guessing that your family's connection is no longer listed as unlimited, it's now listed as 250 GB/month for X, and $10/50 GB above that... and while that sucks.. that's definitely fine for them to do... because it's not unlimited, and it's spelled out.
It's not listed that way, but a lot of things are. Any kind of cap means that something is not unlimited. Whether it requires extra money, gets slower, etc. that means unlimited is wrong.
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Making the internet more expensive will do little more than kill online services.
At this rate Netflix will only be for the wealthy, etc.
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@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
My question is though - WHY the need for the caps? other than to squeeze people for money money?
This seems a really silly question. Why charge people for Internet in the first place, other than to make money? Why be in business at all?
LOL - of course, but we've seen a huge shift in the charge structure recently (the past few years).
Because the speeds have increased so how people use the Internet connections have changed. I hate caps, but they are incredibly obvious to use. Two people with 1Gb/s connections, one will use the same data that they did on 20Mb/s, one will use 50x that. Do you charge them the same when they cost the ISP totally different amounts of money?
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@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Making the internet more expensive will do little more than kill online services.
At this rate Netflix will only be for the wealthy, etc.
Opposite, actually. That's where you are getting confused. Caps help the smaller users. They are to protect the poor from having to subsidize the rich.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
I'm guessing that your family's connection is no longer listed as unlimited, it's now listed as 250 GB/month for X, and $10/50 GB above that... and while that sucks.. that's definitely fine for them to do... because it's not unlimited, and it's spelled out.
It's not listed that way, but a lot of things are. Any kind of cap means that something is not unlimited. Whether it requires extra money, gets slower, etc. that means unlimited is wrong.
I completely agree - and until a few years ago, most directly connection ISPs has no limits/caps on internet usage. But, now with the advent of things like streaming media, now we see companies putting caps in place.
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Story Time:
This Christmas my mother-in-law (more or less) asked if I could look at her computer since we were coming over anyway. She hasn't had internet for 2 1/2 weeks. Her neighbors internet has also been out for the same amount of time. She told me she's had 3 Comcast techs come out and a supervisor. No one could get her internet up and running. They told her that it was her modem so she bought a new modem, which I'm sure costed her a good amount of money but I don't know the specific figure. Then they still couldn't get her internet working. They went through her crawlspaces, replaced cabling, etc. Nothing worked. then they told her its her PC and that she needs to call Dell. Dell said sure we can help you but it's over $200 a year to get service and if you want a single instance of service it's $120. I say sure, I'll take a look at it.
CMD
ipconfig /all
Oh, she has a 169 IP address. Oh, Comcast DNS must be broken. I change her DNS settings to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.
It took 60 seconds to fix a problem that had taken her WEEKS to try to get fixed. Hours on the phone with Comast. 4 different appointments to try to get this fixed and no one could do it. Needless to say she now thinks I'm some kind of super genius and I have brownie points until the end of eternity.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Making the internet more expensive will do little more than kill online services.
At this rate Netflix will only be for the wealthy, etc.
Opposite, actually. That's where you are getting confused. Caps help the smaller users. They are to protect the poor from having to subsidize the rich.
OK Scott. The poor today who has a baseline cable modem in Omaha pays $40/month and only has Netflix, for which they pay $10/month, so their fee is $50/month. Now with these new caps, they could easily see that bill being 5X that if they stream at the max possible of the $40 ISP rate - which they probably would, because they used Netflix and Youtube as their primary sources of entertainment.
Now the rich can afford this, but the poor can't, so now the poor simply go without. How does this help the poor?
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@wirestyle22 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Story Time:
This Christmas my mother-in-law (more or less) asked if I could look at her computer since we were coming over anyway. She hasn't had internet for 2 1/2 weeks. Her neighbors internet has also been out for the same amount of time. She told me she's had 3 Comcast techs come out and a supervisor. No one could get her internet up and running. They told her that it was her modem so she bought a new modem, which I'm sure costed her a good amount of money but I don't know the specific figure. Then they still couldn't get her internet working. They went through her crawlspaces, replaced cabling, etc. Nothing worked. I say sure, I'll take a look at it.
CMD
ipconfig /all
Oh, she has a 169 IP address. Oh, Comcast DNS must be broken. I change her DNS settings to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.
It took 60 seconds to fix a problem that had taken her WEEKS to try to get fixed. Hours on the phone with Comast. 4 different appointments to try to get this fixed and no one could do it. Needless to say she now thinks I'm some kind of super genius and I have brownie points until the end of eternity.
I guess that's a decent stance to be held in with a Mother-In-Law. lol
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@FiyaFly said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@wirestyle22 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Story Time:
This Christmas my mother-in-law (more or less) asked if I could look at her computer since we were coming over anyway. She hasn't had internet for 2 1/2 weeks. Her neighbors internet has also been out for the same amount of time. She told me she's had 3 Comcast techs come out and a supervisor. No one could get her internet up and running. They told her that it was her modem so she bought a new modem, which I'm sure costed her a good amount of money but I don't know the specific figure. Then they still couldn't get her internet working. They went through her crawlspaces, replaced cabling, etc. Nothing worked. I say sure, I'll take a look at it.
CMD
ipconfig /all
Oh, she has a 169 IP address. Oh, Comcast DNS must be broken. I change her DNS settings to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.
It took 60 seconds to fix a problem that had taken her WEEKS to try to get fixed. Hours on the phone with Comast. 4 different appointments to try to get this fixed and no one could do it. Needless to say she now thinks I'm some kind of super genius and I have brownie points until the end of eternity.
I guess that's a decent stance to be held in with a Mother-In-Law. lol
Well, she listens to every word I say now. So that's good.
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@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Making the internet more expensive will do little more than kill online services.
At this rate Netflix will only be for the wealthy, etc.
You say making it more expensive, but it's getting cheaper. Where do you see it costing more?
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@wirestyle22 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Oh, she has a 169 IP address. Oh, Comcast DNS must be broken. I change her DNS settings to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.
eh? what? DNS? because you say 169 IP? lol
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@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Making the internet more expensive will do little more than kill online services.
At this rate Netflix will only be for the wealthy, etc.
Opposite, actually. That's where you are getting confused. Caps help the smaller users. They are to protect the poor from having to subsidize the rich.
OK Scott. The poor today who has a baseline cable modem in Omaha pays $40/month and only has Netflix, for which they pay $10/month, so their fee is $50/month. Now with these new caps, they could easily see that bill being 5X that if they stream at the max possible of the $40 ISP rate - which they probably would, because they used Netflix and Youtube as their primary sources of entertainment.
Now the rich can afford this, but the poor can't, so now the poor simply go without. How does this help the poor?
You are cherry picking. You can watch unlimited Netflix with the baseline Internet with any market of which I know.
It helps the poor by keeping the price down to $40 instead of making them pay the $300 that they are looking at here. Saving the poor $260 seems like helping them a lot.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Making the internet more expensive will do little more than kill online services.
At this rate Netflix will only be for the wealthy, etc.
You say making it more expensive, but it's getting cheaper. Where do you see it costing more?
where is it getting less expensive?
Today I pay $80/month and I utilize 200 GB of throughput. If they cap me at 100 GB for my $80/month, now I'm suddenly paying more...
I know of almost no one who will pay less with caps in place.
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@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
Making the internet more expensive will do little more than kill online services.
At this rate Netflix will only be for the wealthy, etc.
Opposite, actually. That's where you are getting confused. Caps help the smaller users. They are to protect the poor from having to subsidize the rich.
OK Scott. The poor today who has a baseline cable modem in Omaha pays $40/month and only has Netflix, for which they pay $10/month, so their fee is $50/month. Now with these new caps, they could easily see that bill being 5X that if they stream at the max possible of the $40 ISP rate - which they probably would, because they used Netflix and Youtube as their primary sources of entertainment.
Now the rich can afford this, but the poor can't, so now the poor simply go without. How does this help the poor?
You are cherry picking. You can watch unlimited Netflix with the baseline Internet with any market of which I know.
It helps the poor by keeping the price down to $40 instead of making them pay the $300 that they are looking at here. Saving the poor $260 seems like helping them a lot.
How are they able to watch unlimited Netflix for $40 and you can't?
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@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:
I'm guessing that your family's connection is no longer listed as unlimited, it's now listed as 250 GB/month for X, and $10/50 GB above that... and while that sucks.. that's definitely fine for them to do... because it's not unlimited, and it's spelled out.
It's not listed that way, but a lot of things are. Any kind of cap means that something is not unlimited. Whether it requires extra money, gets slower, etc. that means unlimited is wrong.
I completely agree - and until a few years ago, most directly connection ISPs has no limits/caps on internet usage. But, now with the advent of things like streaming media, now we see companies putting caps in place.
I think you are making unrelated connections. We've had streaming services for forever and there weren't caps. It's very clearly the larger bandwidths that are bringing caps with them. And it's the one thing that is so obviously the cause of it that I don't see why we are discussing it. I'm unsure where the confusion is coming from.
With huge bandwidths comes the ability to consume insane amounts of it, and therefore a need for caps to make big bandwidth affordable.
In reality, we should change a base rate for the lines and charge per GB to be totally fair. Anything else is skewing to the rich.