---

shiarua wrote:

 

---

oufanindallas wrote:

Since sirmaru won't post any links, he's the link to the story that's running in dslreports right now.

FCC asked to investigate

---

Thank God something is finally happening. Someone needs to {Keep it Appropriate} slap AT&T

 

---

Yep... the giants are here ...LOL.

 

 

---

bld522 wrote:

 

---

oufanindallas wrote:

Since sirmaru won't post any links, he's the link to the story that's running in dslreports right now.

FCC asked to investigate

---

 

Thanks.  I just e-mailed your link to the most successful television broadcast in history under the heading of "grist for your mill".  We'll see if they pick up the story . . .

 

---

 

BLD,

 

   Good MOVE!

 

---

sirmaru wrote:

---

oufanindallas wrote:

 

{Keep it Courteous}
  p2p sites were all about pirated software.  They may have legal sites now, but it's only in the past couple of years.  p2p site traffic is also diminishing due to the illegal sites being shut down.  It wasn't just music.  You could get just about any type of software illegally from p2p sites.

 

 

Hosted game sites are not p2p. If you are playing on line regardless whether you are playing in MMORGP or in single player mode, you are using the same amount of bandwidth and there for it won't help your usage cap.

---

ALL Steam games are P2P.  Go to their site.  That includes Shogun 2 plus Civilization V and thousands of others.  Its true that WOW is a multiplex of hosted sites. However, they ALL use bandwidth in TORRENTS.  All MMORG's have client software and exchange of data is HUGE.  Only web based games are free of obsessive bandwidth use.

 

ALL XBOX AND PS3 games are P2P as well and soak up terabytes of bandwidth by the minute all over the planet.

 

Be prepared for Bandwidth Shock when we finally get to see our Uverse meters.

---

 

Maru,

 

   The data stream on a MMPORG is about 64k. A touch more than modem line speed which is minute compared to the other services we use every day... it is like continously refreshing your browser.

 

---

sirmaru wrote:

---

bld522 wrote:

Sometimes it's a matter of the devil you know versus the devil you don't know.  Giving AT&T the power to both set caps and be the sole provider of usage data is ridiculous.  Something has to be done to protect AT&T consumers from the potential for abuse inherent in that kind of arrangement.  If not regulatory or governmental intervention, what else is there if you need HSI and AT&T is your only provider?

 

 

---

It was the same when the telephone companies told us our minutes and than charged us by the minute.  What else is new?

 

The purpose of the consumer is to pay and the purpose of the vendor is to profit.  Its always been like that.  Getting upset just boosts our blood pressure.  As stated above, either we will ALL pay more or just the heavy users will pay more.  One way or the other we WILL PAY.  In fact its highly probable that all of us will be over the cap at least for 6 months every year or even more and as years pass we will be over more and more months every year.

 

The electric utility and the fuel oil company tells me my usage and then also charges me.  I just send them the check and forget it.

 

Right now I'm forced to pay for 450 TV channels just to get the TWELVE I actually use.  That's just the way it is. I have no recourse.

Maru,

     I would say exactly and Many many many times there counts were WRONG. Plus at least with minutes you had the option of detailed billing where they had to show us where we called, on what date, at what time and for how long, and how much that call cost us. These meters that they are talking about show us nothing like that. Nothing at all.

---

 

 

---

sirmaru wrote:

---

SomeJoe7777 wrote:

 

• P2P: Short for "peer to peer".  In the generic sense, it means any communication between computers on the internet where the majority of the data traffic travels from one computer to the other directly, without going through any intervening application server.  The most common use of the "P2P" vernacular, however, specifically refers to file transfer clients that are designed to to this.  This includes programs like Napster, Limewire, Gnutella, and eDonkey.

 

By these definitions, the majority of internet-based games are NOT peer to peer.  Most of them communicate through a central server or servers.

 

There are a few games where the majority of the traffic travels directly from one user to another.  Technically these might be considered "peer to peer" in the generic sense, but they are not file transfer clients.  Nor are they "torrents" by any stretch of the definition.

 

Furthermore, game traffic is not a gigantic amount of bandwidth.  Most of the gaming forums all say that the average game uses around 50 MB per hour.  Even playing 24/7 for a month, that's only 1/7th of the allowed bandwidth usage (250GB).

 

You must have hundreds of rolls of paper towels available to wipe all the egg off your face that you get when posting here.

 

---

You can google the following:

 

"New research from German deep packet inspection gear maker Ipoque shows that P2P traffic consumes anywhere between 49 and 89 percent of all Internet traffic in the day. At night, it can spike up to an astonishing 95 percent.

 

New research from German deep packet inspection gear maker Ipoque shows that P2P traffic consumes anywhere between 49 and 89 percent of all Internet traffic in the day. At night, it can spike up to an astonishing 95 percent.

 

Ipoque gathered over three petabytes of information with the permission of ISPs and universities in Europe, the Middle East, and Australia between August and September this year.

 

In Southern Europe, for instance, game downloads account for 25.5 percent of P2P traffic. Movies make up 38.8 percent, while pornography is a mere 1.8 percent. In the Middle East, by contrast, games are downloaded far less (6.3 percent), but movies much more (48 percent). Porn also makes up 5 percent of the traffic.

 

An interesting trend is the use of encryption in P2P traffic, with up to 20 percent of such traffic falling into this category. Increased attempts to throttle or block P2P will surely force the development and use of more potent encryption or protocol obfuscation.

 

With the above sample statistics, it is obvious why some ISPs are trying anything from bandwidth throttling to outright throwing heavy users off their networks to conserve bandwidth."

 

You stick to programming.  I'll stick to GAMING AND FINANCE.

 

WE GAMERS ARE THE BANDWIDTH PROBLEM.  I'm sure my bandwidth is probably triple yours.  I'm prepared to pay ATT charges..  The rest had better prepare as well.  The ATT solution is still better than the Comcast solution of just cutting us off from the internet totally.

 

For the same reason I have to buy 450 channels to watch just 12 I will also have to pay for going over the cap.

 

However, I've been cutting down my gaming drastically for the last 12 months.  I'll try to get under the cap as everyone should as well.  We all have to adjust to changes all the time.  Bandwidth caps are just one more change.  Reading and posting to this thread has helped me cut my gaming substantially. Hey, I may stop gaming and just post to threads in the future.  I wonder how much bandwidth this thread forces us to use............

 

I will be very happy if you are right and I am wrong.  Then I will be under the cap.  However, without access to my ATT Uverse bandwidth monitor I have no idea at all if I am a low user or high user.

---

 

Maru,

 

   I would be interested to see the dates on this study? P2P traffic has fallen in the past 2 years dramatically, so I don't see them using 89% of the bandwidth. The entire issue behind this bandwidth cap is that Netflix right now has 61% of the online video market, followed in a distant second place by comcast with 8%. Those figures come out of Maximum PC magazine, June 2011 Issue, Page 8. They were not googled they are fact. Also make sure to read the article title High Speed Greed. Same issue page 7. Just so everyone knows. Netflix says the average HD movie uses 3.5 GB of data transfer. The average TV episode uses roughly one third of that (about 1.15GB data). I don't think less than 2% are capable of streaming that much content... ATT's numbers have to be either wrong or fabricated or both.

 

---

darktrancer wrote:

Does anyone know if AT&T will implement some kind of bandwidth meter that we can use to keep track of our usuage?  All i know is if i ever receive any kind of overage charges on my account that is the last day that AT&T will have me as a paying customer.

 

 

---

It was supposed to be online as of May 2nd. OOPS. lol.

 

 

---

sirmaru wrote:

SomeJoe,

 

That quote is about PLAYING games, not stealing them.  For example, my download from Steam for Shogun 2 was 15 Gb and for Civilization V was 5 Gb.  NO ONE buys games on DVD's anymore.  If you played them, you would know that.  Games that are sold today on DVD's just have ACTIVATION CODES on them.  The game software must still be downloaded from Steam or similar servers.  Some people play THOUSANDS of games.

 

Plus, I get Steam updates for their server quite a lot plus just those two games get frequent upgrades as well.  If I want to play them Multiplayer, it MUST be done P2P.  Even if I play them Single Player, they interact with the Steam server to clock my game time and achievements.  All of that uses a lot of bandwidth.

 

By the way, BitTorrent is used for the most part for LEGAL downloads.  It can speed them up tremendously.  It place small pieces of legal downloads on millions of PC's and then, if someone pays for a download from a software house, the bittorrent pieces put it together rapidly.  The purchaser must still pay for his activation code from the software publisher. It uses downtime on the millions of PC's to place the pieces.

 

Many observatories also use millions of PC's which are volunteered to do tracking of stars in their downtime.  The tracking files are downloaded in PC downtime and then gathered by the observatory when needed.  Other scientific pursuits use the same principle. However, all these uses soak up bandwidth where there otherwise would be idle PC's.

I used to play Mankind.net for 5 years.  It is hosted on a server but every player had to download a client and it was upgraded every third of fourth day.  It is nearly out of players by the way and few play that one now.

 

WOW has 10 million active players and intense graphic files are continually transferred back and forth between their hundreds of servers and the players.  It uses bandwidth by the carload and is NOT P2P.

 

Graphics files are bandwidth intensive. 

 

By the way, I get up to one hour upgrades from Microsoft every 5 to 7 days for all the licensed software I use from them.  Those upgrades can take up to one hour to install.  I'm sure they also use a lot of bandwidth.

 

What internet games do you play?  Do you play any?

 

Anyway, it doesn't matter.  ALL the ISP's have stated they have a bandwidth problem - not just ATT - Uverse.  They are all trying to cope with it as best they can.  I still think the ATT Uverse solution is the best by raising prices on a scarce resource to reduce demand.  That's economics by the way, not computer programming.

 

I'm curious what you think is the best way to cope with the bandwidth usage problem.  You can state it here in this thread.  Maybe ATT is reading all this and may take your suggestion.  I'm sure they are open to any reasonable solutions.

 

Finally, I have a hunch that a lot of ISP's are watching this thread very closely.  We are all participating here in a brain storming discussion whereby all of us are investing our own time and resources to develop all these ideas about bandwidth solutions.  In my son's company they spend millions for their top employees to do just the same as we are doing here. They do it with video conferencing spanning many continents.  It is really very fascinating.

---

Good then I expect ATT and Comcast will be giving us all free HSI for life then. LOL.

 

 

---

bubbba wrote:

 

---

jmsherman8 wrote:

---

bubbba wrote:

SomeJoe7777 wrote:

Until some know-nothing in congress gets on his soap box and claims that the FCC has no authority to do anything about it.

 

Only in our government can we witness one group stand up and claim they have the power to declare that another group of the same government doesn't have any power.

 

bubbba replies:

 

Yes, do I ever agree. It speaks to the fact that never have so many had too much power, and so few had none. And, I feel I am one of the few. But, at least in this case, I have some.

---

Bubbba,

 

   I think you meant never has so few had so much power, and so many had so little power. And we are part of the many perhaps?

---

 

Yes, thanks for the correction. You knew what I meant though, right?... In my mind I had it correct though...lol

 

---

 

Bubbba,

 

   yep I had it man...I just thought i would point it out...I had to do a double take on it. LOL.

 

---

bubbba wrote:

bubbba wrote:

 

Sirmaru wrote:

The purpose of the consumer is to pay and the purpose of the vendor is to profit.  Its always been like that.

 

Bubbba replies:

Is that so? And is this just your opinion or fact, becasue it sounds like you are stating a fact here? The way I have always looked at it is that a Consumer decides what to pay for and if it's the best value and quality for the price. The purpose of a vendor is to supply the best possible product and/or service so that consumers will want to buy it, and pay more if it is a superior product or service that the competition does not offer. When a company has a good product or service they deserve to profit, I have no problem with that, but consumers should always have the choice, it's not a purpose of theirs. There's that word Competition again... I forgot, that does not come into play here. In my opinion you make some of the most ridicules statements I have ever read in a thread.

 

---

Sirmaru wrote:

I refer you to Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth Of Nations (1776).  That is the basis of my economic and political beliefs.

 

Bubbba replies:

Okay, I get that, It is your opinion based on your beliefs. That's what I thought I asked.

---

1776 is your current source of economic belief system?  Wow.

 

 

sirmaru wrote:

SomeJoe,

 

That quote is about PLAYING games, not stealing them.  For example, my download from Steam for Shogun 2 was 15 Gb and for Civilization V was 5 Gb.  NO ONE buys games on DVD's anymore.  If you played them, you would know that.  Games that are sold today on DVD's just have ACTIVATION CODES on them.  The game software must still be downloaded from Steam or similar servers.  Some people play THOUSANDS of games.

 

Plus, I get Steam updates for their server quite a lot plus just those two games get frequent upgrades as well.  If I want to play them Multiplayer, it MUST be done P2P.  Even if I play them Single Player, they interact with the Steam server to clock my game time and achievements.  All of that uses a lot of bandwidth.

 

By the way, BitTorrent is used for the most part for LEGAL downloads.  It can speed them up tremendously.  It place small pieces of legal downloads on millions of PC's and then, if someone pays for a download from a software house, the bittorrent pieces put it together rapidly.  The purchaser must still pay for his activation code from the software publisher. It uses downtime on the millions of PC's to place the pieces.

 

Many observatories also use millions of PC's which are volunteered to do tracking of stars in their downtime.  The tracking files are downloaded in PC downtime and then gathered by the observatory when needed.  Other scientific pursuits use the same principle. However, all these uses soak up bandwidth where there otherwise would be idle PC's.

I used to play Mankind.net for 5 years.  It is hosted on a server but every player had to download a client and it was upgraded every third of fourth day.  It is nearly out of players by the way and few play that one now.

 

WOW has 10 million active players and intense graphic files are continually transferred back and forth between their hundreds of servers and the players.  It uses bandwidth by the carload and is NOT P2P.

 

Graphics files are bandwidth intensive. 

 

By the way, I get up to one hour upgrades from Microsoft every 5 to 7 days for all the licensed software I use from them.  Those upgrades can take up to one hour to install.  I'm sure they also use a lot of bandwidth.

 

What internet games do you play?  Do you play any?

 

Anyway, it doesn't matter.  ALL the ISP's have stated they have a bandwidth problem - not just ATT - Uverse.  They are all trying to cope with it as best they can.  I still think the ATT Uverse solution is the best by raising prices on a scarce resource to reduce demand.  That's economics by the way, not computer programming.

 

I'm curious what you think is the best way to cope with the bandwidth usage problem.  You can state it here in this thread.  Maybe ATT is reading all this and may take your suggestion.  I'm sure they are open to any reasonable solutions.

 

Finally, I have a hunch that a lot of ISP's are watching this thread very closely.  We are all participating here in a brain storming discussion whereby all of us are investing our own time and resources to develop all these ideas about bandwidth solutions.  In my son's company they spend millions for their top employees to do just the same as we are doing here. They do it with video conferencing spanning many continents.  It is really very fascinating.

 

What bandwidth usage problem exists?  Have you seen any real documentation that suggests there is a bandwidth usage problem, or are you still trying to justify the 2% like AT&T is?

 

The solution is simple, no limits, no extra fees, no problem.  WE get it, do you simaru (try a real answer and not another misdirection)?  The usage limits are fabricated until proven to be real, and the usage limit data has not been proven.  Do you have a cut-and-paste job that shows the usage limits are justified?  Google it, I doubt you will find it.  Maybe AT&T is reading this, but I haven't experienced AT&T being open to any reasonable solution.  They haven't moved from their usage limit terms, before or after they were implemented, and they continue to defend them.  Really, does it seem reasonalbe or rational to you simaru?  Can you provide any real information that is applicable and true?  AT&T was using the same usage limits in a test more than two years ago and you think they apply today?  Please stop insulting me.

 

I hope my pile of U-verse equipment is delivered back to AT&T on Monday.  Once it is confirmed by AT&T, my relationship with U-verse will be over.  With the threat of a $150 per box bill if the pile is not received, I have no reason to stop asking you simaru why you would insult me, and perhaps other users here, with your questions.  Once I receive confirmation that the plie has been returned and AT&T releases my liability, I will be happy to walk away from this forum.  My phone number was finally switched over on Friday, so I can discontinue my POTS service as well.  I hope AT&T is reading the posts here, but if they are, they don't seem to get it, wouldn't you agree simaru?

 

 

This is the situation as I see it at the moment:

 

1.  If you cannot access your bandwidth usage meter yet, you have NO billing problem at all.  Keep doing exactly what you are doing now.

 

2. If you can access your bandwidth usage meter and use less than 250 Gb per month for Uverse (150 Gb for DSL), you have no problem.  Keep doing exacly what you are doing now.

 

3. If you can access your bandwudth usage meter and use over 250 Gb per month for Uverse (150 Gb for DSL), you have several options:

 

   a. Cut bandwidth usage by moving from cloud backups to external discs, cut gaming time and maybe use single player games rather than multiplayer games, use Netflix discs more intensively than Netflix streams, read more books, watch more regular TV, work more on your budget, talk to your spouse more, be with your kids and grandkids more, devote more time to your job, business and investments.

 

   b. Pay ATT Uverse's NOMINAL fees of $ 10 per 50 Gb per month of your overage and forget it.

 

   c. Switch to Verizon Fios if they are in your service area where 1.5 Tb per month appears fine and speeds are very high.

 

    d. Switch to a conventional cable company if you have such an option where you will have to accept frequent speed degradation if they do not control their high bandwidth users or comply with their policies if they also attempt to control high bandwidth users.

 

   e. Stop using all HSI services and go back to a dial up service where no restrictions apply.

 

In any event, do NOT get angry as it will harm your blood pressure and could cause a heart attack.  In addition, if you call ATT Customer Support or Technical Support, be calm and try to work out a solution.  Their new TOS agreement gives ATT employees a right to hang up on you and close your account if you abuse them.

 

Finally, all of us including me should access this thread only once per day or once every two or three days to keep our own bandwidth under control.  We don't want addiction to this thread causing us to exceed the new bandwidth usage caps.

Sirmaru wrote:

Finally, all of us including me should access this thread only once per day or once every two or three days to keep our own bandwidth under control.  We don't want addiction to this thread causing us to exceed the new bandwidth usage caps.

 

Bubbba replies:

Come on Sirmaru, are you serious? Do you really believe your own comment? Reading a forum and posting comments to, this one, or any one, could cause excessive bandwidth usage? These are the kinds of comments I referred to when replying to some of your other posts. Though, I would agree that accessing this thread less may be good, but not for the reason you suggest.

 

Sirmaru wrote:

1.  If you cannot access your bandwidth usage meter yet, you have NO billing problem at all.  Keep doing exactly what you are doing now.

 

Bubbba replies:

I do agree with you on #1, at least until I get more information from AT&T. That is what I have already decided to do.

 

Sirmaru wrote:

Cut bandwidth usage by moving from cloud backups to external discs, cut gaming time and maybe use single player games rather than multiplayer games, use Netflix discs more intensively than Netflix streams, read more books, watch more regular TV, work more on your budget, talk to your spouse more, be with your kids and grandkids more, devote more time to your job, business and investments.

 

Bubbba replies:

If this is what you would do, fine. But, it is easy for someone who only uses 9GB of bandwidth a month to suggest much of what you are suggesting. I have already made my points on most of these, External Drives, Cloud Services, Single Player Gaming, so you can go back and read that post. As for SOME of the other suggestions, you should consider them anyway no matter where your bandwidth usage is. I for one would LOVE to see my Children and Grandchildren more. Although, access to family is not always an option just because someone wants it.

 

 

Sirmaru wrote:

In any event, do NOT get angry as it will harm your blood pressure and could cause a heart attack.  In addition, if you call ATT Customer Support or Technical Support, be calm and try to work out a solution.  Their new TOS agreement gives ATT employees a right to hang up on you and close your account if you abuse them.

 

Bubbba replies:

Sirmaru, Any time I call any technical support I am always calm, with only 1 exception, and that is when I can not understand a word the tech is saying. Other then that, even if the problem is not resolved, I don't get upset to the point of wanting to be rude because I learned a long time ago, it gets you nowhere, and you still have a problem to solve. But, I can't say the same about reading many of your posts here. I was rude in several of my replies to you in the past, but I have learned that lesson. You are the only one affecting my blood pressure these days.

 

---

sirmaru wrote:

This is the situation as I see it at the moment:

 

1.  If you cannot access your bandwidth usage meter yet, you have NO billing problem at all.  Keep doing exactly what you are doing now.

 

2. If you can access your bandwidth usage meter and use less than 250 Gb per month for Uverse (150 Gb for DSL), you have no problem.  Keep doing exacly what you are doing now.

 

3. If you can access your bandwudth usage meter and use over 250 Gb per month for Uverse (150 Gb for DSL), you have several options:

 

   a. Cut bandwidth usage by moving from cloud backups to external discs, cut gaming time and maybe use single player games rather than multiplayer games, use Netflix discs more intensively than Netflix streams, read more books, watch more regular TV, work more on your budget, talk to your spouse more, be with your kids and grandkids more, devote more time to your job, business and investments.

 

   b. Pay ATT Uverse's NOMINAL fees of $ 10 per 50 Gb per month of your overage and forget it.

 

   c. Switch to Verizon Fios if they are in your service area where 1.5 Tb per month appears fine and speeds are very high.

 

    d. Switch to a conventional cable company if you have such an option where you will have to accept frequent speed degradation if they do not control their high bandwidth users or comply with their policies if they also attempt to control high bandwidth users.

 

   e. Stop using all HSI services and go back to a dial up service where no restrictions apply.

 

In any event, do NOT get angry as it will harm your blood pressure and could cause a heart attack.  In addition, if you call ATT Customer Support or Technical Support, be calm and try to work out a solution.  Their new TOS agreement gives ATT employees a right to hang up on you and close your account if you abuse them.

 

Finally, all of us including me should access this thread only once per day or once every two or three days to keep our own bandwidth under control.  We don't want addiction to this thread causing us to exceed the new bandwidth usage caps.

---

 

Maru,

 

  Accessing this thread is the least of my bandwidth concerns. It certainly will not cause me to go over. Streaming netflix and cloud backups man but accessing this threat wont. LOL.

If I had to choose between bandwidth caps or a 20% increase, I would rather pay the increase rather than checking an inaccurate meter or buying additional software to try to determine if my usage is within the caps. I think the potential charges of caps can exceed 20%.
I was at a party last night and shared about the caps. The majority of people were not aware of what is happening with AT&T. I told them I loved the television service but I was cancelling the service because of the caps. Not a single person thought the caps were a good idea, especially the individuals with families. I think many people will be discouraged from trying the service, which is unfortunate because the television portion of uverse is really good. The caps and overage fees are UNREASONABLE!

 

---

enamorate wrote:
If I had to choose between bandwidth caps or a 20% increase, I would rather pay the increase rather than checking an inaccurate meter or buying additional software to try to determine if my usage is within the caps. I think the potential charges of caps can exceed 20%.
I was at a party last night and shared about the caps. The majority of people were not aware of what is happening with AT&T. I told them I loved the television service but I was cancelling the service because of the caps. Not a single person thought the caps were a good idea, especially the individuals with families. I think many people will be discouraged from trying the service, which is unfortunate because the television portion of uverse is really good. The caps and overage fees are UNREASONABLE!

---

In my opinion, this is not likely unless they hear about the 'Usage Limits' somewhere else before signing up. If you go through the sign-up process, there is NO mention of any restrictions as far as Bandwidth is concerned. I just went through the process for ordering a DSL package myself just to verify this. Even though I was looking for some mention of it, I never found it. Although, I did not hit the 'Add To Cart' button, so I guess technically, I didn't go through the entire process.

 

Has anyone been notified that they have exceeded the bandwith cap?  Lots of speculation and conjecture, but I am waiting to see what notification ATT has given to subs who have gone beyond the caps.  There is good info in this thread, but I haven't seen anyone posting "This is what ATT said when they contacted me."  Anyone?  Anyone?

---

enamorate wrote:
If I had to choose between bandwidth caps or a 20% increase, I would rather pay the increase rather than checking an inaccurate meter or buying additional software to try to determine if my usage is within the caps. I think the potential charges of caps can exceed 20%.
I was at a party last night and shared about the caps. The majority of people were not aware of what is happening with AT&T. I told them I loved the television service but I was cancelling the service because of the caps. Not a single person thought the caps were a good idea, especially the individuals with families. I think many people will be discouraged from trying the service, which is unfortunate because the television portion of uverse is really good. The caps and overage fees are UNREASONABLE!

---

   The biggest gripe I have is why do we have to even pay an big increase or cap over charge at all?  My bill is already steadily increases every year (albeit a small percentage overall but still bites).

   If AT&T U-Verse/DSL is a big airplane that has limited capacity (bandwidth) that has been filled to full, perhap they should stop selling more tickets to new customers or upgrade the plane and not try to make the seats smaller to fit more people.  This is a very bad analogy but it's the only one I can think of at the moment.

---

RCSMG wrote:

Has anyone been notified that they have exceeded the bandwith cap?  Lots of speculation and conjecture, but I am waiting to see what notification ATT has given to subs who have gone beyond the caps.  There is good info in this thread, but I haven't seen anyone posting "This is what ATT said when they contacted me."  Anyone?  Anyone?

---

What bothers me is the fact that AT&T hangs this metering things over my head.  They already make the official announcement and the policy is already in effect on May 2th.  However, their metering site said otherwise.  When I go over (I'm almost pretty sure it will by the end of my billing cycle), which will AT&T honors??? charge me for going over (because policy already in effect) or honor what the myusage site said?

 

---

SomeJoe7777 wrote:

---

sirmaru wrote:

 

ALL Steam games are P2P.  Go to their site.  That includes Shogun 2 plus Civilization V and thousands of others.  Its true that WOW is a multiplex of hosted sites. However, they ALL use bandwidth in TORRENTS.  All MMORG's have client software and exchange of data is HUGE.  Only web based games are free of obsessive bandwidth use.

 

ALL XBOX AND PS3 games are P2P as well and soak up terabytes of bandwidth by the minute all over the planet.

 

Be prepared for Bandwidth Shock when we finally get to see our Uverse meters.

---

 

Maru, it's amazing how every time you post, you post something that's completely incorrect.  Once again, you have egg on your face.

 

You are mixing various terminology that doesn't have anything to do with each other because again, you don't understand what you're talking about.

 

• P2P: Short for "peer to peer".  In the generic sense, it means any communication between computers on the internet where the majority of the data traffic travels from one computer to the other directly, without going through any intervening application server.  The most common use of the "P2P" vernacular, however, specifically refers to file transfer clients that are designed to to this.  This includes programs like Napster, Limewire, Gnutella, and eDonkey.

 

• Torrent: Short for "BitTorrent".  BitTorrent is a specific peer-to-peer protocol that's used for file transfers.  It is unique in that ot can gather different pieces of the file from multiple clients as opposed to just one.  BitTorrent has replaced nearly all other P2P file transfer software.

 

By these definitions, the majority of internet-based games are NOT peer to peer.  Most of them communicate through a central server or servers.

 

There are a few games where the majority of the traffic travels directly from one user to another.  Technically these might be considered "peer to peer" in the generic sense, but they are not file transfer clients.  Nor are they "torrents" by any stretch of the definition.

 

Furthermore, game traffic is not a gigantic amount of bandwidth.  Most of the gaming forums all say that the average game uses around 50 MB per hour.  Even playing 24/7 for a month, that's only 1/7th of the allowed bandwidth usage (250GB).

 

You must have hundreds of rolls of paper towels available to wipe all the egg off your face that you get when posting here.

 

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You do realize just about every MMORPG and every FPS distributes patches/updates/expansions via P2P, spceifiically bit torrent clients built into the game software, right?

 

Some folks have been wondering where ATT got that 2% of their customers who will be above their 250 Gb cap and 98% unaffected by it.

 

I saw this on the internet:

 

"Let’s take Comcast as an example. Comcast’s own web pages that show your monthly data usage make it clear that 99 percent of its customers fall well below the 250 GB limit. That’s an important statement in itself. It reflects the realities of the current usage by its 20 million customers."

 

It looks like they just used Comcast as their source and just dropped the number by 1% to 98% just to be sure about their own estimate.  With Comcast numbers already known and based on 20 million customers, ATT probably has the right number.  It was NOT a statistical sample or a European ISP; it was a very large US ISP which probably supplied the data.  They may have also just lifted the 250Gb number from Comcast as well. 

 

I'll post the link but it may or may not make it to the final post since its about a competing ISP:

 

[removed third-party link]

 

Thus, almost all of us who are posting here, no matter how they use the internet, are probably NOT affected by the 250 Gb cap. We have all been wasting a lot of heat about a NON-issue.  That link also has a lot of reasons why the caps are necessary and how they will probably not affect even future uses of bandwidth coming down the pike.

 

Of course, others may read the same article and come to diametrically opposite conclusions as has happened here in other articles I posted.  That's fine.  We all have our facts filtered by our own perceptions.

 

The only ones, who may have suffered here, are those, who jumped the gun, and already have fled to conventional cable companies and may now be getting much worse service as a consequence.  Remember, conventional cable companies are all coax based.  ATT Uverse is hybrid coax and fiber.  Verizon FIOS is all fiber.  ATT's marketing strategy may have been to capture the mass market first with hybrid coax and fiber and then flesh it out with all fiber.  That means they will probably end up with a much larger market than Verizon FIOS with the same infrastructure.  At that point all of us will have terabytes of bandwidth available per month with super speeds.  The conventional cable companies based on coax, only, will have been left behind in the dustbin of technology history.

 

Finally, since Comcast has now had 3 years of development on their own bandwidth meters, it makes a lot of sense if ATT Uverse just purchased the technology from Comcast and is now implementing them here.  I have a hunch those meters are going to be VERY ACCURATE since they have already had plenty of testing until now and many of the bugs have worked themselves out over this extended period of use.

 

 

 

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ryanmercer wrote:

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SomeJoe7777 wrote:

 

• P2P: Short for "peer to peer".  In the generic sense, it means any communication between computers on the internet where the majority of the data traffic travels from one computer to the other directly, without going through any intervening application server.  The most common use of the "P2P" vernacular, however, specifically refers to file transfer clients that are designed to to this.  This includes programs like Napster, Limewire, Gnutella, and eDonkey.

 

• Torrent: Short for "BitTorrent".  BitTorrent is a specific peer-to-peer protocol that's used for file transfers.  It is unique in that it can gather different pieces of the file from multiple clients as opposed to just one.  BitTorrent has replaced nearly all other P2P file transfer software.

 

By these definitions, the majority of internet-based games are NOT peer to peer.  Most of them communicate through a central server or servers.

 

There are a few games where the majority of the traffic travels directly from one user to another.  Technically these might be considered "peer to peer" in the generic sense, but they are not file transfer clients.  Nor are they "torrents" by any stretch of the definition.

 

Furthermore, game traffic is not a gigantic amount of bandwidth.  Most of the gaming forums all say that the average game uses around 50 MB per hour.  Even playing 24/7 for a month, that's only 1/7th of the allowed bandwidth usage (250GB).

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You do realize just about every MMORPG and every FPS distributes patches/updates/expansions via P2P, spceifiically bit torrent clients built into the game software, right?

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Yes, however:

 

1. That is for the distribution of the patches/updates/expansions only.  It does not have anything to do with the data that is transferred back and forth during game play.

 

2. The acquisition of the patch/update/expansion is automatic and built-in, thus the user does not launch a separate "P2P" file sharing software application.

 

3. The bandwidth used by the patches/updates/expansions is a constant, thus if the patch is 2 GB, that would count as 2 GB against the usage cap regardless of whether the patch was acquired via P2P or via a more classic download from a web site.

 

4. The bandwidth used during game play is still quite low, estimated by various sites at around 50 MB/hour.  Even 24/7 usage totals only 1/7th of the monthly 250GB data cap.

 

5. If the size of the downloads, patches, expansions, and updates is approaching a point where you're worried about the data cap, doesn't that mean that you're spending more time acquiring the game software than you are actually playing the game?  At some point you're supposed to actually play, correct?  We aren't downloading games, updates, and expansions 24/7 are we?

 

No att will come out with a higher tier whcih i was told like 50/10mb and make it unlimited but not for a cheap price i'm sure of that. I'f u do business at home get a busuness line period. torrent people should be kicked period! Funny how vezion is upgrading there pipes to 100tb line and att just making more and more profits. Sfter reading that the ceo of att said that people wanted the caps a joke. If i get one call i'll cancel i have option even though i know alot of companys stay away from each other so there is no competetion. Can't wait to see att 3rd and 4th quarter profits i'm expecting them to fall by 25% if not more. When we are 30th in the world for boardband speeds thats the saddest thing ever. i know we are a lerger country then most but we spend alot more money then all of them so it should balance out. it's the companys not the people and the middle class and poor get stepped on. Some people can't afford tv so they use netflix so let punish the poor for not taking uverse tv. Everything att is doing is a joke and it will hurt them in the long run forsure!!!!

"ATT's marketing strategy may have been to capture the mass market first with hybrid coax and fiber and then flesh it out with all fiber.  That means they will probably end up with a much larger market than Verizon FIOS with the same infrastructure.  At that point all of us will have terabytes of bandwidth available per month with super speeds."

 

You don't get it, do you?  The "excess traffic" AT&T is trying to reduce is traffic between AT&T and other networks, and possibly on AT&T's internal network infrastructure betweeen the dslam and their network borders.  Building out FTTH does nothing to improve AT&T's internal or external network capacity.  It improves the capacity of the link between you and AT&T.  Nothing else.

 

AT&T needs to be building out their internal and border infrastructure, but they're not because they're lazy, because they can get away with it (little or no competition in most markets), and because these caps give them an excuse not to.  They need to do these upgrades if they have any hope of supporting the fiber deployments you're talking about, yet they're making excuses and capping even their existing slow copper links!

 

 

More, from the article: "These new caps likely won’t affect our routine operations in the cloud. Even the best Internet speeds are only adequate to back up a few GB of data."

 

Lies.  At 150KB/s upload (yes, kilobytes), which is not even maxed out, I could upload (back up) 375GB/mo.  That's right.  I could exceed the cap by over 50% by ONLY UPLOADING.at a moderate rate.  It sounds like the author John Martello is still on some lousy dsl connection, and thinks everyone is still stuck with 768/128 kbit connections.  Someone should welcome him to the 21st century.

 

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sirmaru wrote:

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YodaEXE wrote:

 

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Read this about Left 4 Dead:

If you follow the entire thread carefully, I am trying to show that the bandwidth problem is universal and ATT Uverse is trying to use the best ECONOMIC theory by raising prices on a resource in short supply to discourage demand.  The bandwidth usage problem is worldwide and all the ISP's have to deal with it in one way or another.  Other ISP's have their own way of dealing with the same problem and it is up to you to choose your best option in your local service area.

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There is no shortage of bandwidth.  The more you type the less intelligent you sound.  really.  just quit while you are behind.

These caps have nothing to do with data congestion and every thing to do with cable cutters.  They are trying to protect their larger investement by limiting their secondary offering.

Sirnaru wrote:

I'll post the link but it may or may not make it to the final post since its about a competing ISP:

 

[removed third-party link]

 

Bubbba replies:

Sirmaru, I thought I was seeing things when I saw that you actually posted the link. I did a double take and re-checked to see who posted the message...lol

 

It sould not be a problem since it is exactly on topic.

 

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jmsherman8 wrote:

 

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sirmaru wrote:

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oufanindallas wrote:

Here is an interesting article regarding cloud computing and bandwidth caps.

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Maru,

 

  Actually if you read the first article he posted on DSL reports you will notice that the cost for upgrading ATT's Backbone is relatively small compared to the massive profit that they make off of there HSI business. Try picking up this months Maximum PC and you will find two very interesting articles in it on ATT. One on the first page by the editor and chief and the second on the second page directly addressing the ATT bandwidth cap and the associated studies that have been done by INDEPENDENT market research firms regarding this. I think you will find both articles highly enlightening and they may just open your eyes to exactly what is going on here.

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I actually subscribe to Maximum PC and had to laugh when the first article of the month is disputing the AT&T caps and the twisted logic AT&T is using for implementing the caps.

 

 

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ummann wrote:

No att will come out with a higher tier whcih i was told like 50/10mb and make it unlimited but not for a cheap price i'm sure of that. I'f u do business at home get a busuness line period. torrent people should be kicked period! Funny how vezion is upgrading there pipes to 100tb line and att just making more and more profits. Sfter reading that the ceo of att said that people wanted the caps a joke. If i get one call i'll cancel i have option even though i know alot of companys stay away from each other so there is no competetion. Can't wait to see att 3rd and 4th quarter profits i'm expecting them to fall by 25% if not more. When we are 30th in the world for boardband speeds thats the saddest thing ever. i know we are a lerger country then most but we spend alot more money then all of them so it should balance out. it's the companys not the people and the middle class and poor get stepped on. Some people can't afford tv so they use netflix so let punish the poor for not taking uverse tv. Everything att is doing is a joke and it will hurt them in the long run forsure!!!!

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I wouldn't hold my breath or expect any drops.  While I'm sure a few people have left AT&T due to the implementation of the caps, most won't leave and more and more customers will be added to make up for the loss of the few that do leave.

 

I've had U-Verse for 12 days now.  I love the speed and stability, it is much much better than the AT&T dsl was.  I'm able to get many YouTube uploads done fairly quickly and were taking forever to finish on the DSL.

 

Now a few questions:

 

Is the monthly cap based upon the calendar month or your billing cycle?

 

How do I find out my useage?  I went to www.att.com/internet-usage and it only shows my use from my old DSL account and says that use is not available for my U-Verse.

 

I checked on my U-Verse modem and my total use came to 116GB for the past 12 days.  At that rate, that puts me at 290GB for a 30 day period.

 

I really wanted to start using an Internet Backup service now that I have a faster more stable connection, but it looks like I am going to be paying extremely high overage fees if I do that.

 

Can anyone tell me why the overage fees are so extremly high?  Frankly .10 cents pet GB is outrageous.  That is right about the same cost as transfer on a premium CDN.

 

Wholesale bandwidth purchased on a large scale in a datacenter is down around $1 - $2 / meg / month.  So a gb connection that would cost $1,000 - $2,000 a month for the Internet Portion and could transport up to 330TB of data (maxed out 24x7).  Meaning that would work out to supporting about 825 customers that each used a full 250GB of transfer.  So from a network standpoint, 250GB of data transfer should cost them around $1-3 per month, likely on the low end with the scale they are at.  That doesn't take into account traffic that stays on their network or traffic exchanged between piers, which drives cost even lower.

 

So we are being charged overage fees at around 1000% markup?

 

If I am going to pay for overage, at least make it fair.  We all hate the cell phone companies as it is because their overage fees are completely out of perportion to the fees you pay on a plan.  However, unlike cell phone companies, you don't give us the option to buy a higher plan, you call us "Abusive" and basically assess us with a penalty. 

 

Is there anyone else out there that uses Netflix?  How about anyone that uses an Internet Backup service for your data?  How about any IT professionals or web masters that like to backup a copy of your remote data locally?  Any of you own an HD video camera? 

 

1 Hour of raw HD video off a consumer grade camera is over 20GB,  YouTube strongly suggest you upload the original file.  I've tried various means of reducing the file first and it pretty much always looks bad after they re-encode it.

 

AT&T has come up with a really great service with the U-Verse, but the way they have structure this overage penalty system is extremly poor.  Look, I'm not unreasoable, everything is going up in cost these days, just please do something more reasonable like offering a plan for another $10 - $15 a month that include 500GB or is unlimited.  If I end up using 500GB's on the current price structure that puts me at a $100 a month bill.   In most areas that have fiber to the home, I could get a much faster connection with no useage limits for far under $100 a month, several areas in my state already have such a service.

 

Jamie

 

p.s. Check out this article on Netflix and AT&T:  http://gigaom.com/video/att-bandwidth-cap-netflix/    This makes it even more frustrating to see how much bandwidth Netflix actually uses.  I was considering ditching satelite only to use netflix, but it sounds like that could end up costing me more in overage fees that what satelite costs. 

 

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ummann wrote:

No att will come out with a higher tier whcih i was told like 50/10mb and make it unlimited but not for a cheap price i'm sure of that. I'f u do business at home get a busuness line period. torrent people should be kicked period! Funny how vezion is upgrading there pipes to 100tb line and att just making more and more profits. Sfter reading that the ceo of att said that people wanted the caps a joke. If i get one call i'll cancel i have option even though i know alot of companys stay away from each other so there is no competetion. Can't wait to see att 3rd and 4th quarter profits i'm expecting them to fall by 25% if not more. When we are 30th in the world for boardband speeds thats the saddest thing ever. i know we are a lerger country then most but we spend alot more money then all of them so it should balance out. it's the companys not the people and the middle class and poor get stepped on. Some people can't afford tv so they use netflix so let punish the poor for not taking uverse tv. Everything att is doing is a joke and it will hurt them in the long run forsure!!!!

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What exactly is the business line option?  I'd like to know what it is and what it costs.  I don't use my home connection for any for profit activities, but run several web sites as a hobby along with various other activities that are causing the cap to be a problem.

 

I'm not sure how much this will hurt AT&T other than in markets where people have the choice between AT&T and fiber that is unlimited.  If people are in markets where they have the choice between $50 AT&T with a cap and $70 fiber without, I suspect many will take the jump, just because it is unlimited and historically people hate worrying about limits and overage fees (thank you cell phone companies).

 

This whole thing is going backwords.  Technology is growing everyday and there is no reason technically to be imposing these limits.  Transmission and networking equipment probably double in capacity(capability) every year now. 

 

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enamorate wrote:
If I had to choose between bandwidth caps or a 20% increase, I would rather pay the increase rather than checking an inaccurate meter or buying additional software to try to determine if my usage is within the caps. I think the potential charges of caps can exceed 20%.
I was at a party last night and shared about the caps. The majority of people were not aware of what is happening with AT&T. I told them I loved the television service but I was cancelling the service because of the caps. Not a single person thought the caps were a good idea, especially the individuals with families. I think many people will be discouraged from trying the service, which is unfortunate because the television portion of uverse is really good. The caps and overage fees are UNREASONABLE!

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Agree  100%