Bandwidth Caps Can Cause Risky Decisions and Uncertainty

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[citation][nom]leakingpaint[/nom]Where I work we have around 60 pcs all fighting over a 1024k connection and a 12gb cap. Our exchange doesn't support anything over 1mb...There are no other options! [/citation]

Your IT department clearly doesn't know what its doing then. At the very least they could approach Webafrica for their bonded DSL solution. VDSL is on the cards and 1Mb/s users will be bumped up to 2Mb/s. Its just a matter of time before Telkom pulls up its socks and figures out where the next cash cow will be, but things are a helluva lot better than they were two years ago.
 
If i had a bandwidth cap, i'd do like the study says: save up as much as i can initially and use up everything on the last few days. And i would also skip most software updates and non-critical security updates. To minimize my system's vulnerability, i visit only well known reputable sites.
 
Sorry mate but it is really not always that expensive in South Africa. I only pay R199 ($25 for 10Gb (and it's wireless, not adsl) go get yourself a contract from 8ta, you really won't regret it
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The wireless is very limited depending on where you stay and it isn't a solution for businesses. Most schools and businesses would need to invest in a diginet / leased line which starts at R7000 per month. That is hellishly expensive! particularly for public schools who could never afford this.

Not only is wireless limited as far as coverage goes but it simply isn't fast enough for more than 3 pcs. If I am gaming on my 4mb connection and someone else in the house decides to look at pictures on Google then I get horrendous lag in my game.

This is straight from wikipedia "ADSL prices in South Africa still remain among the highest in the world which has prompted consumer groups such as Hellkom and MyADSL to charge that Telkom's ADSL prices are excessive" Wireless isn't a solution for people who want reliable fast access, it simply isn't. WiMax may be, but coverage is even more limited and prices are even more expensive.

It should not be this expensive! Just have a look at what the CEO of Telkom gets paid in bonuses alone and then tell me our Internet isn't expensive. 8ta is run by who?....oh that's right Telkom...
 
I would drive nuts, when they start capping in europe. But it won't happen here :). We enjoy our 250 and soon 500mb/s internetz 😀 (at least here in The Netherlands)
 
At the very least they could approach Webafrica for their bonded DSL solution. VDSL is on the cards and 1Mb/s users will be bumped up to 2Mb/s.
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ahhh no...if the exchange only supports 1024k then adding another 1024k line will not bump it to 2mb. It will allow PC's to share more lines making the speed faster even then for 60 pc's you would need at least 3 lines which is R3000 per month from webafrica, and according to the telephone conversation I had 2 minutes ago with "Angela" from webafrica 086 000 9555 they don't offer any bonded solutions? That's not me saying that, that's them.
 
ISP wants to limits the bandwidth but today with all the updates for many softwares, buying software/MP3/movies online and downloading them, renting movies on services like Netflix, playing games online and so on...
Today even my BD-player will connect to internet for updates.

Someone is putting a lot of money in his pocket.
 
[citation][nom]leakingpaint[/nom]Yes we could...how much is a bonded DSL solution?[/citation]

I can't find it on the WA site now, but Openweb still advertises it. You can check out the prices here, but send them a mail and ask if they can help. At the very least, maybe they can work out a cheaper price for you, or perhaps see if your line is 4Mb's capable.

For a network of 60 computers you'd at least need a 10Mb/s line with the local network running on Gigabit Ethernet lines, although 100Mb/s would be fine as well. There are also options if the company you're working for is a school or situated in a business centre. The other non-Telkom option is Dark Fiber Africa. A buddy of mine works with them occasionally, and they maybe able to give you a better internet connection than what Telkom can provide right now.
 
Hmm... just received a notice in the mail the other day from my ISP that they're going to start capping our internet as well. Doesn't seem as bad as some of the examples mentioned (250Gb) but its annoying at the least. Now its got me thinking about just how much data we consume in a month just keeping a desktop with two operating systems, three laptops, ipod touch, iphone, tv, wii, & blu-ray up to date on updates and security. Not to mention the non-essential downloads, music streaming, video streaming, etc. Are there any good (preferably free) utilities for keeping tabs on how much data is used? Even if there are for computers and iwhatevers, how do I keep tabs on things like the Wii (which we do Netflix on)? Is some sort of utility to track usage something we should be expecting out of our providers? It seems to me that without something to keep tabs on it how do we know we're not being ripped off by the ISP (I guess even with one from an ISP we still may not know if we're getting jacked around). Seems to me that's like buying a new car with a 36,000 mile warranty but the car not having an odometer you can see. With more and more software companies wanting you to buy software online and download, I can foresee a lot of people running into issues with download caps. And even if I buy a piece of software on disc, there is almost always an update (sometimes really big) that needs to be downloaded. Boy if this is progress then I feel sorry for the future
 
[citation][nom]Paragongx[/nom]Hmm... just received a notice in the mail the other day from my ISP that they're going to start capping our internet as well. Doesn't seem as bad as some of the examples mentioned (250Gb) but its annoying at the least. Now its got me thinking about just how much data we consume in a month just keeping a desktop with two operating systems, three laptops, ipod touch, iphone, tv, wii, & blu-ray up to date on updates and security. Not to mention the non-essential downloads, music streaming, video streaming, etc. Are there any good (preferably free) utilities for keeping tabs on how much data is used? Even if there are for computers and iwhatevers, how do I keep tabs on things like the Wii (which we do Netflix on)? Is some sort of utility to track usage something we should be expecting out of our providers? It seems to me that without something to keep tabs on it how do we know we're not being ripped off by the ISP (I guess even with one from an ISP we still may not know if we're getting jacked around). Seems to me that's like buying a new car with a 36,000 mile warranty but the car not having an odometer you can see. With more and more software companies wanting you to buy software online and download, I can foresee a lot of people running into issues with download caps. And even if I buy a piece of software on disc, there is almost always an update (sometimes really big) that needs to be downloaded. Boy if this is progress then I feel sorry for the future[/citation]

There's probably a way to have your router (assuming you use one) keep a log of how much data passes through it to and from the internet in a given unit of time.
 
Stop using the internet and go outside maybe?

[citation][nom]Pherule[/nom]So what happens when every single ISP in the country imposes caps, as it is still in many countries? What happens if the ISP covering your area is the ONLY ISP that covers your area? You can't always just drop an ISP. (Oh and they ARE called 'bandwidth' caps in preference to 'download' caps, despite the fact that it's referring to the cap limit, not speed limit)It's not just the caps that are the limiting factor however. While Europeans enjoy 100Mbits up/down, there are some countries still stuck with 384Kbit ADSL. You try downloading Netlimiter and limiting your connection speed to 384Kbits/sec and then try browsing the web and a few downloads. Suddenly 50MB becomes a 'big' download, not something you click on a whim.I've heard people say "move to another country then". Oh sure, like anyone's going to move to another country JUST for Internet.[/citation]
 
I can't find it on the WA site now, but Openweb still advertises it
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WA don't offer it (I mentioned it in another post) & we are 500m from the nearest fibre lines so getting it would cost too much. Neotel offer the closest solution, 1024kbs is R1600 which still wouldn't be sufficient speed wise for this amount of PC's

So again to repeat what I did say previously maybe in a different way, yes I can pay for 3 ADSL lines and use a specific router with Untangle (or similar) as a WAN Balancer or something but the fact is that that's still COSTING considerably more than it needs to cost. We'd be spending a minimum of R3000 per month on internet that shouldn't even be costing us R1000. Some organizations just can't afford to pay that. It's not an issue of whether or not the IT guys know what they're doing (they do) but more importantly why we as South Africans pay such an enormous premium for our Internet.

The article is about capping, we've been there and still are there, so as South Africans lets tell the rest of the world how completely terrible capping is. I can only pray that no other nation on earth follows our telecom prices or capping regulations. Lets not pretend otherwise.
 
We have data caps in Canada, but as far as I can tell they aren't enforced. I currently have a 25/1mbps connection with a 250GB cap (Shaw). I've downloaded over 1TB/month a few times and go over my limit most months, all with no charges. It seems like they've started to throttle my speed (started about 6 months ago) once I'm over my cap, choking it down to ~10mbps or so, which isn't so bad.
 
[citation][nom]blazorthon[/nom]9GB in two minutes? That's an average of 600Mb/s. That's one heck of an internet connection you have there... At least 750Mb or 1Gb. I envy your internet a little.We just need to then implement incredible compression algorithms much more into our internet. With CPU performance increasing and GPUs getting more general-purpose, the computers can more than handle decompressing lots of data quickly enough (you just need to have storage that can keep up and all that takes is having two hard drives, one to download to and one to decompress too, so you can just have a spare hard drive that can write a download to and then read it to be decompressed to your main drive. Or, a single SSD or RAM drive can do the same job).Websites need to compress communications to client devices (especially updates and other downloads, big and small) and such. That could reduce the impact of ISPs doing something as *heinous* as capping our internet even more than they do now (for those of us who are already capped) greatly. Opera Turbo is a step in the right direction for this. This would also help people who share an internet connection with several or even many other people so that they can afford a fast connection (not a too uncommon thing to do) because each person would be far less taxing on the internet connection.A problem with this would be that it increases performance requirements for both the client and server side, but for the most part, that can probably be alleviated in a multitude of ways.Of course, if ISPs would update their service regularly, then this would be much less of a problem, but both upgrading and doing this would reduce load on the ISPs and would mean that people get much more out of their connections, so it could be a win-win. We already know that GPUs can be ridiculously fast (especially for the amount ofpower that they use) for this type of thing, so why not make greater use of it? Even lower end GPUs, such as HD 4000 and Llano, could do the trick well enough (although probably not at the same time as gaming, unless dedicated compression hardware is added, like how we are moving towards dedicated hardware for encoding/transcoding, such as Intel's Quick-Sync, Nvidia's NVENC, and hopefully soon, AMD's VCE) and chances are than even weaker GPUs, such as HD 2500, can do it, albeit maybe not as quickly.Point is, there are ways to both have the ISPs (assholes some of them may be) and the users happy. Problem is, it would take a lot of work. However, many things that take a lot of work are all the more worth doing because of it, yes? Does anyone have any thoughts about any of this?[/citation]
Wouldn't that increase latency?.....
 
[citation][nom]madjimms[/nom]Wouldn't that increase latency?.....[/citation]

No, not really. In fact, it would mean less data gets shuffled around the web servers, DNS servers, and more on the way to your computer every time you connect to the internet (such as visiting a website), so it could decrease latency, in addition to decreasing wasted internet bandwidth.
 
@blazorthon, sounds like a good idea BUT most significant data will be pictures, music and video these are ALREADY MASSIVELY compressed, go zip a mkv or jpg. The simple text transmitted via pages is SO small and in many cases already compressed too. Back in BBS days we already compressed data.
 
[citation][nom]dftsa[/nom]@blazorthon, sounds like a good idea BUT most significant data will be pictures, music and video these are ALREADY MASSIVELY compressed, go zip a mkv or jpg. The simple text transmitted via pages is SO small and in many cases already compressed too. Back in BBS days we already compressed data.[/citation]

That has nothing to do with program updates and such. Compressing those would yield large benefits and that's the point. It's not just the web page text that I'm talking about, but compressing anything practical. Compressing updates would be a big step forward.
 
[citation][nom]demonhorde665[/nom]"A solution may be to provide customers better tools that analyze bandwidth usage, Chetty suggested."BULLSHIT, A solution ? the only solution is for corporate communication companies to stop being blood sucking butt f---king leeches, that try to shake every dollar they can out of consumers. I swear i respect criminals more than these guys . at least criminals honestly stick a gun in your face when they rob you instead smiling at you, acting chummy and telling you thank you for servicing my d---,m in ever so clearly disguised words.[/citation]

That was one of the reasons I dropped AT&T... once they started with that 250GB limit and then wanted to charge me more to go over that, I dropped em and went to Time Warner and got not only twice the speed (50mbps down and 5 up) compared to 24mbps down and 3 up but also don't have to deal with any limit like that. Granted, I'm not the type to be a total bandwidth hog downloading illegal stuff.. I don't do that. I do enjoy looking at youtube, downloading games on steam (I have over 900 steam games), watching movies on netflix and hulu, and playing games. I'm not constantly streaming data by any means. I do have a program that keeps track of how much I use up and down... I average around 250GB every 4 months... which I don't feel is that unreasonable. It's not like these ISP's are using real resources like it takes to generate power.... and I don't see them using the money they get from us to upgrade their networks much. I managed to get my entire family to drop AT&T, myself with 2 lines and my mom with her line, and about 5 or 6 other friends and family. So AT&T, you lost a total of 9 customers.. including cell and home. Is that going to matter to you at all? Do you even give a damn? Obviously you don't.
 
personally if you have more than one pc id try running wsus on a windows home server to save have the amount if pcs are running same os
 
[citation][nom]USHypertraxx[/nom]I would drive nuts, when they start capping in europe. But it won't happen here . We enjoy our 250 and soon 500mb/s internetz (at least here in The Netherlands)[/citation]
it won't happen here in Portugal too. bandwidth caps are illegal. we enjoy our 150mps 4G and 1gbps wired internet.
 
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