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? 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!! ), 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! ).

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.

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..

[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!! )

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.