The Comcast Banhammer. Welcome to insanity.

[x88x]

Ok, so we know two things:

1) Comcast offers residential plans up to 50Mbps download and 10Mbps upload. (At least in my area. I think in some areas they have rolled out their 100Mbps plans already.)

2) Comcast has a 250GB per month cap, covering combined upload and download. Supposedly it applies to all Comcast customers, but it is only enforced in certain areas. Is it enforced in your area? Who knows?

3) If you go over this limit, you get a phone call saying 'You went over the limit last month.* Don't do that again or we'll shut off your account.'


Now, let's do the math here. If you completely saturated a 50Mbps, you can hit that cap in 11 hours. ...last I checked, 11 hours is quite a bit less than one month.


Unbeknown to me, it turns out that the cap is actually enforced in my area. Who knew? :whistler: As a result of this, or more specifically, as a result of me recently upgrading my service to their 30M/7M plan, I discovered a fourth fact:

4) ...if you forgot to tell them about changing your cell number and they can't reach you on the phone, instead of sending a letter informing you of this, they just shut off your service until you call them.

Now, ok, I can kind of understand this. I can even understand them trying to protect their aging network by abusing their highest paying customers...wait...no I can't...

Anyways, long story short, I apparently hit 1,386GB of traffic in the last 3 weeks (HELLS YEAH!! :banana: :fight: :banana: ), so now I have 3 options:

1) Downgrade my Comcast connection and use the internet less.
(cheaper but crippling)

2) Get a Comcast Business line and pay more for a slower connection, but with no limit.
(very expensive)

3) Drop my Comcast connection and switch to a slower, cheaper Verizon DSL line with no limit.
(cheaper but still crippling..and pretty slow 3M/768k is the best I can get here)

4) Downgrade my Comcast connection (normal use) and get a separate Verizon DSL line (...abnormal use...).
(expensive)

Needless to say, none of these options is ideal. Of course, the ideal option would be to get FiOS, but aside from digging a hole in front of my apartment building and splicing myself in, that's not possible (yes, the line runs right outside my front door...but it doesn't go into the freaking building! :evil: ).

I'm trying to think of other options right now... Does anyone know of a good, cheap (ie, <= $50/mo) server collocation service with unlimited transfer?

[Spawn-Inc]

my question to you is, how much dam pr0n do you download?!?! i have a 60gb cap at 10mbps/512kbps and rarely exceed that. though thankfully when i do, they charge a dollar per gb over up to $25 after that, it's unlimited.

[xRyokenx]

I could definitely see someone using that much bandwidth if they do a lot of online gaming, streaming video (like from netflix), or maybe even hosting a website at home, hehe.

[chaksq]

Oh this is just great news (not). ISPs are trying to take advantage of powerusers, it's ridiculous. I wonder how Google's attempt at getting optical networks in place will pan out. Granted even if that does happen it won't help most of the country.

[x88x]

my question to you is, how much dam pr0n do you download?!?!

Strangely enough, none. :P

Most of the traffic is from torrents and me downloading and re-uploading tables from the Free Rainbow Tables project to rapidshare. ...I had one torrent, I think it was for one of the CoW WPA tables, that was constantly pulling as much upload bandwidth as I would let it...

Oh, and no, unfortunately I'm not hosting a webserver...stupid user agreements.. :evil:

[Spawn-Inc]

i think the most i've ever done was maybe 120gb's lol. and that's 3 people, not just me. though i did most of it. hopefully you find a better options, i'm wondering about bell's fiber optic stuff.

[d_stilgar]

I don't use comcast out of principle alone. I have slow verizon here which does not have a cap and as long as there is one company without a cap I will choose them first.

The only exception would be if my connection was so slow that if I was using it 24/7 I could not reach the cap that the other company is enforcing, ie if 24/7 slow verizon only got me up to 125Gb a month, and comcast was cheaper and faster, I would then make the switch.

[Drum Thumper]

From all accounts, Comcast is the devil, and Bresnan (my area's cable provider) isn't any better. I went with a local company that offers microwave service to my area, which isn't nearly as fast as what you're used to, is faster than anything Bresnan offers. Go figure.

[dr.walrus]

I apparently hit 1,386GB of traffic in the last 3 weeks (HELLS YEAH!! :banana: :fight: :banana: )

WIN

[FuzzyPlushroom]

This is why I have FairPoint DSL (Verizon sold our landlines to a bankrupt company, woo). It's only 1.5/384, so it's pretty slow, but I can saturate it as much as I want.

[Mark_Hardware]

I don't have the fastest connection, but that's by choice. (Decided by my wallet)
This cap idea scares me. I am always online, and I am always streaming movies. Be it Netflix or Hulu. Often I will have Netflix on my PC and PS3 at the same time. Plus my son that plays an online RPG all day. So yeah, we are very heavy users. If my ISP started enforcing a limit, I might just cry.

[x88x]

TBH, I would be fine if I didn't do any uploading. I'm a pretty heavy downloader, but even then I probably don't go over 200GB in a normal month. ...of course, when a new table set comes out, that goes out the window, what with the last couple topping 300GB. :P

I would say that probably about 800-900GB of that 1,386GB was upload traffic, and about 500-600GB of that was probably the Church of Wifi WPA tableset...a lot of people seem to want those. ;) That torrent always had upload traffic, and would use as much bandwidth as I would let it.

[dr.walrus]

TBH, I would be fine if I didn't do any uploading. I'm a pretty heavy downloader, but even then I probably don't go over 200GB in a normal month. ...of course, when a new table set comes out, that goes out the window, what with the last couple topping 300GB. :P

I would say that probably about 800-900GB of that 1,386GB was upload traffic, and about 500-600GB of that was probably the Church of Wifi WPA tableset...a lot of people seem to want those. ;) That torrent always had upload traffic, and would use as much bandwidth as I would let it.

oh god, you're the guy i leech off aren't you?

[x88x]

Hahaha! I might just be, yeah. I'm a firm believer in seeding everything as much as possible. :D Case in point, I'm actually a bit ashamed that my D******d ratio is only at 3.12 ...I normally try to seed things until I hit 10.0 :D ...that gives me an idea...find a cheap seedbox provider that will also let me run a webserver on it, and set up a thing where people can upload their torrents to, and then rotate torrents out by ratio when my storage gets too low. That way I have no control over what is seeded (read: limit my legal liability), and people can get a high speed seed for their torrent. ..hmmm... At the very least, it would be an interesting experiment to see what kinds of content people would use such a service for... I might just do that...I saw a few seedbox services for <$10/mo... :think:

[dr.walrus]

Hahaha! I might just be, yeah. I'm a firm believer in seeding everything as much as possible. :D Case in point, I'm actually a bit ashamed that my Demonoid ratio is only at 3.12 ...I normally try to seed things until I hit 10.0 :D ...that gives me an idea...find a cheap seedbox provider that will also let me run a webserver on it, and set up a thing where people can upload their torrents to, and then rotate torrents out by ratio when my storage gets too low. That way I have no control over what is seeded (read: limit my legal liability), and people can get a high speed seed for their torrent. ..hmmm... At the very least, it would be an interesting experiment to see what kinds of content people would use such a service for... I might just do that...I saw a few seedbox services for <$10/mo... :think:

I'm a firm believer in 'it's all illegal anyway, nobody has the right to the moral high ground' :twisted:

sorry

[x88x]

I'm a firm believer in 'it's all illegal anyway, nobody has the right to the moral high ground' :twisted:

sorry

Hey, not all torrent activity is illegal... :whistler: ..case in point, the stuff that really decimated Comcast's limit...

[Trace]

Haha! We all KNOW what it would be used for.

[x88x]

Haha! We all KNOW what it would be used for.

Can't be sure until it's done, right? ;) And maybe I happen to set it up to send the contents of the torrent to my system before it deletes it.....you know, for backup, right?

[Trace]

Yes, of course. Wouldn't want to lose those IMPORTANT torrents.

[d_stilgar]

I think we're all getting too friendly with the torrent talk. There are pretty strict rules about not talking about torrents here, even if they are from a legal torrent site that only has open source content torrents.

I think mentioning our bandwidth use is usually enough for people to get the idea of what we are talking about, and if they ask you can say 'downloads' or 'a very big WoW update'.

[OvRiDe]

I don't mind talking about legal torrents, although they are much rarer then the other stuff. So please just keep it to download speeds, etc, less focus on content of said downloads.

[d_stilgar]

I don't mind talking about legal torrents, although they are much rarer then the other stuff. So please just keep it to download speeds, etc, less focus on content of said downloads.

I thought it was a big big no no, but searching through past threads I think I'm wrong. That's good to know because there is a lot of freeware, open source stuff that gets distributed through torrents.

[x88x]

I don't mind talking about legal torrents, although they are much rarer then the other stuff. So please just keep it to download speeds, etc, less focus on content of said downloads.

Good to know. All too often, the bittorrent protocol in entirety is treated as illegal. It really is an amazing system, capable of almost complete decentralization and theoretically infinite transfer speeds.

Also, in all honesty the vast majority of that 1,386GB was from various rainbow and precomputed hash tables...those things are entirely too big. :P

[dr.walrus]

...I actually thought everyone was talking about pr0n?

[NightrainSrt4]

I hear ya about the FiOS stuff. Apparently my city has it all over yet I can't get it at my apartment because they have some dealio with Comcast. I can get a lowly DSL line, but not fios, even though the Verizon station building is DIRECTLY across the street from the apartments.

For those with comcast you can monitor your monthly usage. Log into customers.comcast.com and it's under User's & Settings. It's nice that they actually let you see what your usage is, compared to before when they would just tell you that you went over and you had no way of knowing.

When I switched the fiance and my gaming rigs over to new OS' (mine to 7, her's to Vista), my laptop to 7, and the htpc to 7, I had to stop reinstalling our Steam games as just that alone on the gaming rigs was pushing the cap. Had to wait till the next month to install the rest.

[x88x]

When I switched the fiance and my gaming rigs over to new OS' (mine to 7, her's to Vista), my laptop to 7, and the htpc to 7, I had to stop reinstalling our Steam games as just that alone on the gaming rigs was pushing the cap. Had to wait till the next month to install the rest.

This is a great example of why it's completely ridiculous. :facepalm:

[Luke122]

In the first month when we moved to our new place, we had 3 machines running (mine, wifes, roomates) and we moved 750gb in less than 30 days. We got a phone call. ;)

[diluzio91]

so stupid... havn't run into this as i live in wisconsin and have roadrunner at home, but god it sounds retarded...

[d_stilgar]

The whole cap this is moronic. I had thee months where I lived in a complex with internet included, but torrents and internet gaming was blocked, which for me is the same as no internet.

Needless to say when I moved to Vegas I had some catching up to do. I had over 1tb of use a month and never got a call. I love big cities for that reason alone.

Also, NBC was using a bit-torrent client of their own so people could share HD content from their site. There were ads included in the client/player, but the system could have been really good. Where it failed was that after sharing my bandwidth to have HD content without buffering, they only let you watch it for a certain time and then it disappeared. That was where it got stupid for me. I shared my bandwidth and had to watch ads, but then I can only watch it for a two week period and it deletes itself.

If they were getting ad revenue each time I watched, then why not let me keep it forever? Ad revenue is why it was on TV in the first place right? Now I have TV on demand on my computer forever that I share with other people and they get the revenue! It could have been genius, but they messed it up.

[Kayin]

**** you all. My connection is a Verizon aircard shared with 4 computers on a 5GB cap.

Guess who has a 400+ dollar phone bill.

DSL runs along the road, and they refuse to give it to us. REFUSE.

[d_stilgar]

They refuse because you keep paying that crazy bill. J/k. That sucks.

[x88x]

Hey, you're back!

Ouch, that sucks man. I had a friend a while back who got a Verizon aircard because it was the only broadband he could get at his house...he hit the 5GB cap within hours. ...granted, that's because he found out about it after signing up for the card and was trying to max it out as fast as possible, but still... Also, I did some quick calculations, and I could max out their crappy 5GB cap if I saturated a 15kbps line... o_^

Are you in a apartment building? That's the only (good) reason I can think of why they wouldn't let you hook up.. If not, you could maybe try setting up a small business DSL line with them? It would cost more than a residential line, but probably less than the aircard, and they might be more willing to be flexible for a 'business'.

[crenn]

Living in CAPital country, let me tell you, capped plans suck, especially if you're charged $0.15 per MB over your limit. Most plans after a certain amount of bandwidth, move you to dial up speeds(64kbps/64kbps).

[simon275]

The only way you hit those huge limits if torrenting plain and simple. No way you watch that much in streaming movies.

In Australia I pay 56 USD and get 7mpbs down in real terms. I can use 15gb from 8am - 2am and 30 gb from 2am - 8am. It can get a bit tight with 15 gb but I don't see how you can be using more than 100gb a month legitematly. If I go over I get slowed to 128k or something.

You are all very lucky. At least though I can go online and track my usuage on an hourly basis.

[chaksq]

Capped internet plans are a horrible idea. Just out of curiosity, does anyone know of any good utilities for self monitoring your internet usage. Ideally I'd like someway of monitoring bandwidth I use on each site I regularly visit, possibly via a plugin for Chrome.

[dr.walrus]

I have a TV downstairs and never use it. I stream all my tv, and 90% of my music, and about 50% of my films, download all my software and just purchase the licenses, all 100% legit.

I use my computer a minimum of 8 hours and a maximum of 24 hours a day (curse of a compsci student / web designer / general hardcore geek), use about 50GB a month.

Oh yeah and streaming pr0n

[d_stilgar]

The only way you hit those huge limits if torrenting plain and simple. No way you watch that much in streaming movies.


Let's say I watch two 720p streaming shows a day, ten 720p youtube videos, and one 720p streaming movie.

2
+1.5
+4___
7.5 gigs a day. Multiplied by thirty you get 225gigs. Now, multiply that by the number of people in your home. It's really easy to legitimately go over a 250gig cap.

What is really horrible about it is that caps aren't the answer. People want to stream 1080p movies into their home through netflix, people want 1080p youtube streaming. I want to be able to download all my steam games onto a new computer without worry.

Caps slow progress because ISPs think that adding a bandwidth cap means they don't have to upgrade their infrastructure. It's not the answer. Internet use is going to increase and the only limit is the artificial one imposed by the ISP. There are possibilities we haven't even dreamed of, but they will never be possible unless we create a product opportunity gap for those technologies to fill. Increasing bandwidth 10 or 100 fold will create that space for new technologies.

Also, it really isn't about caps, but the fact that they advertise by speed (which is artificial considering increased money isn't what actually makes the internet faster, yet if I pay twice as much a month my speed goes up (it's the same wire people)). Why not give us all whatever speed we can get (let the demand on the system set the speed) and then have us all pay per mb?

I would be willing to pay $10 a month service fee and then $0.10 per gb if it meant I could have all the speed that the wire could give me. People downloading 250gb would have a bill of $35. People downloading 1Tb a month would have a $112.4 bill. It would be like electricity, water, and gasoline. If you use more you pay more.

[x88x]

As long as a reasonable price were set, I could see that being a great compromise. Personally, I would still want to have an unlimited plan, though, particularly upload.

I've been looking around, and since I'm going to be moving in August (lease runs out then), and both Verizon DSL and Comcast business require a 1 year contract, I'm just gonna downgrade my plan with Comcast (no sense paying more if I can't really use it), and wait and see what I can get wherever I move to. I'm hoping I'll be able to get FiOS (and it'll be a little higher priority this time around). There's a really sweet 35/35 FiOS business plan for $105/mo... /drools... For 35Mbps symmetrical, guaranteed speeds (unlike cable's 'up to' speeds), no usage cap, and no limitations on what I can do with it (read: public server! :D ), I would be more than willing to pay that much. ...a static IP isn't really worth the $35/mo more ($130/mo) to me though...I'm perfectly happy with dynamic DNS. :D

[dr.walrus]

I would be willing to pay $10 a month service fee and then $0.10 per gb if it meant I could have all the speed that the wire could give me. People downloading 250gb would have a bill of $35. People downloading 1Tb a month would have a $112.4 bill. It would be like electricity, water, and gasoline. If you use more you pay more.

I like this idea. Lots.

[SXRguyinMA]

indeed

[NightrainSrt4]

The only way you hit those huge limits if torrenting plain and simple. No way you watch that much in streaming movies.


Like I said, just installing steam games onto a few computers in the house is enough to breach the 250GB limit, and that wasn't even close to all the games that we have.

There are plenty of other legitimate reasons as well. Take online off-site backups for example. People who need to do an online backups of their photo's all the time. Photographers for example. Shoot, teens who feel they need to upload every picture they've ever taken to Myspace AND Facebook.

Or take my brother, who is uploading very large HD game demo movies just about every day, on top of the ones that he downloads to compare his work to.

And the biggest thing it seems you are overlooking is that it isn't 250GB per person. Some people have large families all within the same household. Now have all these people all doing their own independent thing, and it is easy to see how it is legitimately possible to break the limits. AND, all it takes is once if your phone number isn't up to date.

[crenn]

I would be willing to pay $10 a month service fee and then $0.10 per gb if it meant I could have all the speed that the wire could give me. People downloading 250gb would have a bill of $35. People downloading 1Tb a month would have a $112.4 bill. It would be like electricity, water, and gasoline. If you use more you pay more.

Everyone would love that.... except for the telecommunication companies. Their profit margins would drop down too low and they'd also be sued by the MIAA and RIAA for encouraging illegal downloading.

[xRyokenx]

I don't see how that would encourage illegal downloading. Would you mind elaborating on that a bit?

[crenn]

I don't see how that would encourage illegal downloading. Would you mind elaborating on that a bit?
A recent case in Australia happened between AFACT (Australian version of RIAA pretty much) and an ISP iiNet where AFACT accused iiNet of encouraging illegal downloads by having larger cap values. I'm linking it by saying that with data so cheap, it's like increasing the cap values.

[d_stilgar]

The cheap rates are a result of supply and demand. In the cases I listed, 250gb and 1Tb, the price for a months worth of internet was about the same as what people are used to paying now. People who use significantly less are still paying at least $10 a month, and the people who use the most are going to be the ones that pay the most, so in the end they would be the people who pay for new infrastructure.

The speed of your internet would also be a supply and demand case. If everyone gets home from work at six and tries to watch hulu, then speeds go down, but if people decide to schedule their big steam update for 2 or 3 AM, then odds are you will have 100mb+ down speeds because everyone will be asleep.

I don't see how letting people watch as much hulu, netflix and youtube they want is considered encouraging illegal activity. Nor do I see how letting someone install all their steam games in one month is encouraging illegal activity.

A real benefit to this is that people could legitimately host their own server at home without a breach of EULA, and ISPs would want to encourage this because the more internet we use the more money they would make. The other real benefit would be that people like my grandma wouldn't be stuck paying $40/month for something she barely ever uses. Her bill might be $12.

Also, a single song is what, 4-6000kb? I think that should be our cap so we don't confuse anyone to believe we are encouraging illegal song downloading.

[x88x]

I'm linking it by saying that with data so cheap, it's like increasing the cap values.
I don't see them sueing Verizon (no caps). :D Seriously though, that sucks.. who won that case? No offense, but I'm not entirely surprised that something like that would pop up in Australia first...your government has some pretty jacked up internet policies.



The speed of your internet would also be a supply and demand case. If everyone gets home from work at six and tries to watch hulu, then speeds go down, but if people decide to schedule their big steam update for 2 or 3 AM, then odds are you will have 100mb+ down speeds because everyone will be asleep.
Ah yes, prime time slowdown...that is something I will not miss in the least when I eventually get off cable internet.


The other real benefit would be that people like my grandma wouldn't be stuck paying $40/month for something she barely ever uses. Her bill might be $12.

Great for her, bad for the ISP.

[artoodeeto]

...bad for the ISP.

That's really it in a nutshell. As long as any alternative to the status quo isn't better for the ISP, they're not going to change a thing. In fact, imposing an artificial limit actually makes them more money, as it gives them a completely contrived way of charging 'violators' more. Sucks, but that's life - they won't change until they have an alternative that'll make them more money, or until they're forced to by outside influences.

I personally like the thought of paying per meg - make it more like other utilities. Course, my water/sewer/trash bill in my apartment has ballooned from $40-ish a couple years ago to over $100 now, and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it. It's a flat fee based on the size of the apartment. I could leave the taps on all day, or never ever use a drop, and the bill would still be the same. Way to encourage conservation! :facepalm:

[x88x]

I found this on Ars today; interesting example of an ISP off the deep end.

Frontier DSL is running a new policy on a trial period in Mound, MN...5GB monthly cap, and if you go over it repeatedly they up your bill from $50/mo to $100/mo...oh, and did I mention this is for 3Mbps DSL?

http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news/2010/04/welcome-to-mound-mn---home-of-250-data-tiers.ars

[diluzio91]

all it will take is one company to undercut these nut jobs and offer a good price, people will flock to them, then these idiots lose $$, and they all scramble to figure out what they need to do, service their customers, not themselves. Who wants to take the first jump? lol

[x88x]

The problem with that is that in so many parts of the country, the ISP owns the last-mile infrastructure, so any new ISP that wants to start up has to either build their own infrastructure or lease it from their competitor (unlikely if the competitor is already offering service in those areas). That's where public open-access infrastructures, like are popping up in some smaller cities in the US and some cities in Europe, are awesome, because a new ISP just has to hook in at one of the connection points, and they're in.

[d_stilgar]

Great for her, bad for the ISP.

It's not all bad for the ISP. They want to bring people high speed internet but they don't want to upgrade the infrastructure. $10 a month from people who pretty much do nothing is like $10 a month free to them. There is no cost to them if the internet isn't being used.

It also solves a big problem with ISPs, which is getting money to upgrade infrastructure. If everyone is using all the bandwidth they can 24/7, their bills will go up and the ISP will get more money to get those people more speed, which will get them more money.

[x88x]

It's not all bad for the ISP. They want to bring people high speed internet but they don't want to upgrade the infrastructure. $10 a month from people who pretty much do nothing is like $10 a month free to them.

True, but if they stick with their current model, they get $40 off that person. :P


I agree that it would be a great idea, I'm just quite pessimistic about the actions of ISPs. They're businesses, and more often than not, centered solely around turning a profit. Since the majority of their customers would probably end up paying them less with your proposed plan, and most of the customers who would use a lot of traffic probably already have an expensive plan, I doubt that their net profits would go up that much.

[d_stilgar]

Idk, I'm looking at my internet usage, and my bill would go up by $10-30 if we went with this plan.

The plan is more fair in the end, and encourages people to watch their internet use in a positive way. It doesn't have to be implemented the way I described it either. There are infinite ways that it could be set up with different flat service fees and different data rates. And there are plenty of options that will make the ISP the same amount of money per month (or more) and have the majority of people paying the same bill within a 10% margin.

[x88x]

Oh, don't get me wrong, I think it's a good idea. I just think that if an ISP were to go the route of charging for data used instead of by speed hierarchy, that they would do it in such a way that it ended up costing the consumer a lot more (like, $0.50/GB, or something). I would love to have an ISP prove me wrong though! :D

[d_stilgar]

That's why most presidents get two terms. We don't like the guy we have now but we're more afraid of how bad it could get if we vote for the unknown new guy. If things are bad, but tolerable, most people are happy to stick with it unless they are certain change will be for the better.

I'm afraid of what ISPs would charge as well.

[nevermind1534]

When my grandparents went to AT&T Yahoo DSL, they got it for $10 a month for the first year. It's their slowest one, but it's cheap and better than dial-up. AT&T offered that deal for a few years for people upgrading from dial-up as a concession for buying one of the bell companies. They're paying around $20 a month now, but it's still much better than $40 a month for cable internet.

[x88x]

So.....it happened again... I thought I put adequate safeguards in place, but it turns out my calculations were off by a factor of 10..oops. :P Unfortunately, I didn't find this out until I got home tonight at ~9:20...I managed to get one call in to the "24 hour" 800 number before they closed (hint, they aren't actually open 24 hours a day. They close at 9. -_^ ). And of course, the 'abuse' department closes at, like, 7 or something, but they don't actually tell you that, they just dump you into an endless hold music with a voice coming on every 5 minutes or so to ask if you want to leave a message instead.


...I f***ing hate Comcast....

EDIT:
In the mean time, I got my N900 hooked up as a modem over USB. Not all that fast, but decent.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/812786934.png (http://www.speedtest.net)

[ownaginatious]

lol, this thread is pretty funny. You guys have been spoiled with no-strings-attached internet.

Up here in Canada, I've been on a 5 Mb/s down, 800 Kb/s up profile since what feels like the dawn of time. My ISP blocks all p2p/torrenting (they can tell if you use encryption) between 4 PM and 2 AM.

Thankfully though, I do get a nice 200 GB cap (better than the common 60 to 100 GB cap most others are on).

Also, just out of curiosity... what's the point of downloading rainbow tables? It can't only be to retrieve unsalted encrypted passwords, can it? I hardly see that something worth blowing 1.3 TB on if that's all they can be used for. :p

[x88x]

That sucks about your ISP. IDK, maybe we are spoiled, but considering that the history in most of our country is for ISPs to offer uncapped, unmetered, unrestricted (besides speeds) internet service, I think we're justified in complaining about companies that start to change that.

Your ISP can certainly tell if you're passing encrypted traffic, but there is no way that they can tell what that encrypted traffic is without the keys on your end (ie, the whole point of using encryption). As far as they know, you could be running a VPN or just streaming a crapload of HD video over a proxy or something.

You pretty much hit the nail on the head with the rainbow tables. :P While there aren't many OSs that use unsalted hashes anymore (well, other than Windows... :whistler: ), there are plenty of applications that do. Besides, it's sort of a hobby of mine and unless my internet usage is capped, I'm not 'blowing' the traffic, I'm just using what I have available to me.

[x88x]

I am pleased to announce that this saga is finally coming to a close. Two weeks ago, I discovered the Verizon does actually have month-to-month plans..they just hide them.. -_^ So, after a long wait till last Thursday to get my service turned on, then another wait till today to find out that they never actually physically hooked up my line... :facepalm: ...and a few hours messing with it getting it to work correctly (DSL modem bridged to router #1, which acts as the master router, DHCP server, and wireless AP, then my gigabit router over by my two towers in wireless client bridge mode joining the two routers...) I am now (finally) a happy customer of Verizon DSL. :D It's not the fastest thing in the world, but I can use all the traffic I want and the 'internet police' won't cut off my service. *glares at Comcast*

http://www.speedtest.net/result/840185264.png (http://www.speedtest.net)