Comcast sets traffic limit

250gigs is a huge limit. You'd have to buy a 1TB HDD every 4months. :) @ Eric, there aren't enough hours in the month for you to use up 250gig by gaming.

Great. Is this going to ruin my master plan to become a professional online multiplayer gamer? How can I determine how much bandwidth my online gaming uses? My son plays WOW, often at the same time while I'm playing F.E.A.R Combat, Halo CE, or Halflife Deathmatch. We only do that two weekends a month. Will that exceed my bandwidth? Will I have to reduce the amount of porn movie clips I download on a monthly basis?

Draconian? I'm with BT, and their 'Fair Use' policy is much lower than that. At least they are being up front with how much you use per month, instead of billing it as 'unlimited'.

Nobody likes caps on service, but is 250 GB per month a draconian limit? If we're considering download traffic, that's 8 GB per day. That's 8 films or nearly 40 albums, almost more than you can watch in a day. I'm no Comcast fan, but having a high, clearly stated limit is a lot better than not really nkowing what you're buying.

250GB is a really high limit, whoich my provider was so reasonable.

How much bandwidth does an HD video take to download? I assume 5-10GB. Let's just go with 10GB because math is then easy. If this means I rely on the internet for my "TV" (think Netflix streaming, etc.), then I can only watch 25 movies per month and I'm at my limit. This ignores all other browsing that I do! I think they need to find a way to identify TV-related activities and not count that against your limit. Otherwise, this is really something that they should be doing with some other means of qualification of people going over their limits (perhaps allow people to go over 250GB if they've not done so more than 50% of the time or something).

250 GB/month isn't draconian. My ISP has a 60 GB/month cap. Admittedly, it is clearly stated on their site and Comcast is just finally stating what their limit is. I think its sufficient for 99.9% of their users.

In Australia I'm paying $80 a month for 1.5mbit connection with only 12gb of monthly allowance before the connection is throttled back to dial up speeds.This is truly draconian.

1. I wonder if the number of customers requesting a limit exceeded the number of Comcast executives? 2. How long to you think it will stay 250? 3. Since 250 will have virtually no impact on their system load, how can they justify it at all? 4. What about their "promise" of unlimited? This is likely to last as long and have as much meaning as the average treaty between the United States and the American Indians.

For the amount of money we pay for broadband, TV and phone, there should be no cap! Where the hell is FiOS in MA, time for a change!!!!!!

"The draconian restrictions are slated to be enforced by October 1." Draconian? Hardly. 250 GB is very high, only a warz kiddy would use more then that. It give a clearly stated limit rather then some secret number. If you know the limit you can make a choice based on that limit. Draconian would be an ISP that cancels it's top 1% of bandwidth users to improve it's average.

They lost their throttling ability (if they comply with the FTC anyway). This is another way to shut down peer-to-peer sharing. It loses its effectiveness when people can't leave their systems up and sharing all the time. That said, 250 GB is a sensible limit, I think. Much better than the crap 5 GB limit I have on my mobile card.

I did some tests a while back and playing COD4 (xbox 360), I used 12 MBytes in 28 minutes. The bandwidth was split about 60% download and 40% upload. So even if you use half your bandwidth on porn and played 4 online games at once 24x7, you still wouldn't run out. (((250GB * 0.5porn * 1024MB/GB) / (12MB / 28 minutes)) / (24hours/day * 60 minutes/hour)) / 4games = 51.8 days

It is perfectly ok and within their rights for ComCa$t to put caps on usage. They already had internal unpublished caps that were used to keep the most egregious offenders from bringing down their network. Here's a few issues that they don't talk about: 1. How much they are going to charge for overage. 2. If your system becomes part of a botnet, will they waive the overage fee since you weren't aware? 3. Will they provide tools or email alerts to inform you that you are going to cross your limit? 4. Will they offer service plans that have a higher cap? As much as I hate ComCa$t, in many areas they have a veritable monopoly on broadband internet. This means that when customers have no other _real_ choice any policy changes can indeed be draconian.

Perhaps the airlines should have adopted the "fair-use" myth before they started overbookingthe flights. "Share the seat." That would have saved them a lot of trouble. The truth is that the ISPs do not have a bandwidth problem. They just overbooked the cables. And there is the conflict of interest. The large ISPs also sell TV and are mostly owned by or in partnership with the entertainment industry. The last thing they want is an uncontrolled scenario where the Internet replaces the TV channels. Now, let's see how long it takes for Comcast to introduce new plans with much lower limits and much higher price tags. I would still like to see what the FCC does about Comcast's blocking of their customers' servers (like web servers). We have the same situation with most other ISPs, in particular the market dominating ones.

Ya limit bandwidth, just before the internet starts steaming TV and movies, as a standard.

This means that I am going to start looking for another provider a.s.a.p, I’m tired of the comcast b/s, as it stands prices should be going down not up. They are just trying to see how far they can push the consumer, I’ll be sure to mention the reason why I’m canceling my internet, they’ll probably come up with some excuse and say its not applicable in the area or that they can make an exception, then I’ll tell them that they unethical, full of $4137, and that I do not wish to wave my rights and therefore I need my service cancelled.

I used to be on comcast for years, they didn't used to throttle downloads, only in recent years. First it started with throttling my torrents, now it's a full fledged cap on what i can and can't download. Quick! Everyone subscribe to AT&T U-Verse or FIOS! they have 0 limitations what so ever, and they don't throttle anything!

In my opinion if companies are going to institute these bandwidth limits, they need to provide the end user with some way to monitor the usage. The power company for example doesn't make me guess how much power I've used. There is a meter I can check if I so desire. Maybe I don't know what I am talking about, but it seems like they are stepping into lawsuit territory.

they dont say if it is actually 250gb d/l or total transfers up and down. that limit can be reached far easier than they are letting on if this is for up and down stream

Why do people assume 250GB cap is download only? Comcast will limit total traffic to 250GB, that includes uploads AND downloads. The company provides no way to check you transfer amount. They point to a search engine and tell us to download a bandwidth monitor software to run on all machines connected. That leaves consoles, VOIP connections, and set top boxes in the dark unless you have a router capable of providing that info. Yeah, 250GB is a lot. More than other providers, but if you limit the transfers I would like to see an easy way to comply with the limit.

HDTV in the US is 19.2mbps or roughly 8.5GB/hour. If you switched from MPEG2 to h264 you could probably squeeze that down to 5GB/hour for roughly the same picture quality - note though that many BLU-RAY movies run closer to 15GB/hour. That means any sort of HD streaming video users are going to run into problems with comcast because only 2 hour long shows per day will put them over the limit. HD streaming video is in its infancy, sites like Hulu have a handful of episodes online, xbox360 users are 'rent' HD movies online and all of the major networks have been experimenting with streaming HD versions of their primtime shows from their websites and tivo is itching to get into the game Amazon unbox and Netflix. Since Comcast would prefer that you get your television from THEM, it should come as no surprise that they set a limit low enough to strangle the business of streaming HDTV in its infancy.

I have to agree with the others - Draconian is not the word. Very reasonable is more suitable. I don't like limits at all, but if I had Comcast, I'd be perfectly happy with 250GB/month - especially since they're being up front about the limit and it's not being hidden on some obscure ToS page somewhere on their website, or worse yet - not disclosed at all, as I have read about many times in the past with various other service providers. I say thank you to Comcast for listening to their customer's feedback and for actually being very reasonable. I only wish Time Warner had done the same for me before I cancelled all services with them (phone/cable/internet). TW (in my area) throttles the hell out of the bandwidth and if you have digital phone with them also, the throttling is so slow, cuts off the phone service. Yep, no 911 calls or anything - just dead silence as if there were no wires connected to the phone at all. Way to go Comcast !!! You're off my sh!t list. Just please do not go back on your word or change the limit. You did a good thing :)

Comcast expects user's stop doing legal things, like going on hulu, using the netflix player, and stop uploading videos to youtube. I guess that they are forcing people to do more vandalism to their network.

Canadian wireless telco Telus is arbitrarily cutting off some unlucky wireless broadband clients that have used more than the top secret limit for the expensive so-called "Unlimited" wireless accounts. Even now, they will not admit that there is a limit, but they let leak that "5GB is cool" and 15GB is 'abuse'. Users with activity as low as 12GB per month have reportedly been notified of upcoming service cancellation. So, according to Telus: 'Unlimited' means just 5GB per month. (And to preclude the red herring, 'tethering' has nothing to do with it since this issue is about air-cards and the like, not phones with mobile browsers.) In comparison, Comcast has 1) issued a press release, 2) provided some advanced notice, 3) explicitly specified the limit, 4) provided a relatively generous limit, and 5) they will even provide a warning. None of things happened with Telus. Not one. Telus even advertised the EV-DO service as providing wireless access to streaming multi-media. And then they claim that actually receiving multi-media streams (like a little-known website called YouTube) is "abuse". Then their PR flak provided some entertaining corporate spin when he referred to the plan under discussion by the cleverly abbreviated name 'Connect 75', accidentally (LOL) leaving off the 3rd part of the full name, "...Unlimited". Did I mention that they called the plan "Unlimited" on every available writing surface? Did I mention that new users checked and double checked that Unlimited really meant without limit? So if you want to see just how bad it can be, Google the search terms 'EV-DO in Nova Scotia' (a blog on the topic) or Telus 'Connect 75 Unlimited' (the plan in question) for all sorts of background info. By comparison, Comcast is being relatively reasonable and upfront.

First to Eric: you can have your enteir familly play wow + fear +halo + HL (including voice chat) all games at once all at the same time 24/7 and you will not even be close to 250gb a month. Games are really not bandwhich intesive for a broadband connection and aim most of the time for low volume of traffic , effenciency so latency and server requirements dont go true the roof. Second i live in belgium and data limits have always been here since there is almost no competion at all. AFter years of 10gb then a upgrade to 30gb-35gb and now finally 60gb (and sepped depending from 4 to 17mbps) if you pay a assfucking 60 euro a month. The funny thing is the 2 companys always insisted customers never needed 60gb a month. (Off coruse they never mention how many people buy there 5gb download packs for 5 euro each cause they ran out of download limit again) so 250 gb make me drool. The question you can ask yourself can you legally fill 250 gb. Well I always was complety furious at the major belgian providers cause you can easly fill 30gb a month legally. For example i bought one time vista for students online had to download it 4 times(2*32 and 2*64bit) cause they had a corrupt version on there server plus Steam is a other huge legally download example that can easly if you buy your games there eat a couple of 10gbs so if you live belgium these purchases online must be carefully be planned in your downloads limits , dont get me started if you live with 5 people at home all connected. I can see in some rare cases a familly or some professional it working at home reaching the 250gb. But I honstly beleive comcast is just trying to stop the gigantic abuse of unlimted downloadlimits most of with illegal material. I only am suprized at comcast stupidity of how to try and deal with this cause download limits are the only way to protect: -neutrallity of traffic(instead of there dumbest idiotic idea ever namely p2p traffic blocking which get each day more and more legal uses like patch system) -privacy of cutomer (no sniffing around for abusers) -unfair uses of network compared to other people Unlimited never really excist since there will always be people that abuse it beyond fair use.And i doubt it will be there for the next 20 years. And if legal HD tv via internet really kicks off,legal game downloads size increase (and they defently will) comcast should just make exceptions that Steam purchases,Microsoft,Linux distributions,...... generated from these legal transactions should not be added to the 250GB a month which shouldnt be to hard to implement.

"An official statement claimed the company had "listened to feedback" from customers who requested a "specific threshold for data usage". " Dear comcast, Please set a cap on the bandwidth I have per month as soon as possible. I have been calling, and calling about my complaint of too much bandwidth and am glad you are finally getting rid of this burden. Xoxoxoxox -MPAA...errr...Jim

I've got a fair limit to cap a service at: Contract Speed / 8 * 60 Seconds * 60 Minutes * 24 Hours * 7 Days * 52 Weeks / 12 Months. I completely understand that the theoretical maximum is not always possible, but it should be roughly equal to about 80% of that. If that cannot be given then they should simply decrease the advertised speed. When paying for a 24/7 service that's exactly what's expected. As for their generous cap, they are only doing this after being caught limiting speeds and disconnecting people using P2P technologies. Oh thank God Comcast is so generous to it's customers.

I have put up will all of Comcasts crap in the past for one reason only. Speed, but when I get disconnected for exceeding the limits it won't be very fast anymore. I use mine for both buisness and pleasure. You cannot measure your usage off the bytes of a file that you receive. There is fairly substantial overhead that will be counted in that 250GB a month. I won't risk it, if I get disconnected once, it could cost me dearly.

Keeping you online alone takes up some meaningful bandwidth. 250GB is too fuxking low, that's < 1GB/day. Just another way of blocking P2p. Fuck you comcast I hope you get owned by ATT soon.

I'm sure the word "draconian" was not intended to be literal. Oh, and nice one "stupid moron" Feckcast, maybe you should spend less time downloading, and more time going to school.

The one major thing no one has mentioned is how this is going to affect people who work remotely from home. Many companies (mine included) have security policies and applications in place which restrict our employees from installing our applications on their home computers and working on their own machines. We have a pure Terminal Server setup for our employees who work from home. This means bandwidth consumption. It's not uncommon for an 8-hour session to consume about 1GB/hr for some of our employees who deal with applications that scroll, web surfing, and sending large attachments (think production proofs/PDFs to be manufactured). At that rate of data use, if we had employees on Comcast's network, we would have to urge them to cancel their cable modem service and get the local phone company to come out and install a T1 for every remote user. It means two things: 1) Comcast would lose business to a T-Tier provider 2) T-Tier services are way more expensive. Either way Comcast would lose our business and their competitors would make ~30x more per month for it, assuming cable is $50/mo and T-1 is $1,500/mo. Food for thought.

I certainly would not be complaining about that much bandwidth. Come and live in Australia for a while, an "unlimited" plan is a very rare jewel indeed. You guys have it lucky, finding that much bandwidth from even a hosting company for a reasonable price is next to impossible. I pay 89.95AUD for 25GB + 40GB offpeak (2am till noon) download allowance. I can't run a game server from my connection because the average Half-Life 2: Garry's Mod server can chew 500GB a month for 8 players 24/7 Most dedicated providers here to get that bandwidth. you would be making very little use of the powerful CPU's in dedicated systems as you would hit the limit long before you could run more than one server. That truly does suck.

To the reader who commented: 8 GB per day represents all that one can watch (if not more than) in one day. To which I reply: BAD ASSUMPTION! One can download more that one can watch in one day because the downloads can, for example, be movies available only now that one intends to watch over the next week's time. Don't assume facts not in evidence. FURTHER, Comcast has not provided (and seems it WILL NOT PROVIDE) a tool to measure and record download traffic from Comcast.

"(And to preclude the red herring, 'tethering' has nothing to do with it since this issue is about air-cards and the like, not phones with mobile browsers.) " Just to clear something up for you... "Tethering" is taking that little phone with the mobile browser and attaching it to a computer to be used as a wireless modem in the *EXACT* same fashion as the air-cards. While attached to a computer, both are considered, and operate as, wireless dial-up broadband cellular modems. The only difference between the two is that without the computer, the air-card is useless while the phone is..well..a phone. Both set-ups have the potential of downloading and uploading mass amounts of data. That mobile broswer on the phone you mentioned only functions when the phone is not connected, ie. "tethered" to a computer and acting as a modem. When those browsing plans were first released, that is all the general public was using the connection for: light web browsing and email, etc. So for then, 5GB WAS effectively an unlimited amount of data since you could not theoretically reach that limit with simple light web browsing, IM, and email. Unfortunately, the problem began when, in the ever increasing reach for subscribers, the marketing depts. of those companies discovered that people's usage patterns were changing and decided to try to market to that new usage, to the detriment of the networks that really still aren't completely capable of handling it. As people discovered that they could do more and more bandwidth intensive things using the connection, the companies discovered that their capacity was beginning to dwindle in busy areas faster than they could feasibly keep ahead of. So, they began to enforce the caps they had originally set to alleviate some of the pressure from subscribers complaining that their service was dog slow, while giving them more breathing room to continue to expand the network in the most efficient way they can. (and I will tell you that ALL the carriers are working hard to expand their networks as best as they can *at least in the US/Canada.*) The mistake these companies made was not disclosing the cap from the get-go. If they had, there wouldn't be nearly as much drama or mis-information being spread around as is currently the case. But hey, people love drama. I do wish though, that people would stop comparing wireless service with wireline service. They are two very different animals.

Advertisement: We deliver utlrafast Internet to your door and you can reach our 250GB cap faster than using our competitor service! What strikes me is a ISPs do not participate in modernization in communication technologies to allow us to see/hear better quality everything we get. Internet I have right now and 9 years ago is almost the same speed. We may find the answer if we look in lobbying efforts cable companies do to convince congress to limit competition in their area, they are on top 10 biggest lobbyist list.

Last week my Netflix service slowed to unusable. It took almost twenty minutes to cache enough to start streaming. Then still stopped multiple times for 2-3 minutes to cache. Previously Netflix showed "High Bandwidth" now I get a screen that says " Internet speed too slow to begin movie please wait" while we trickle your movie to you. It is obvious they are trying to get people to use their video service. You can bet they won't block that! I've issued a request to unblock me, if not bye.

AT&T Broadband Internet Service was bought out by Comcast. AT&T's shareholders couldn't stand how much the cable systems bleed money. They got out while the getting was good. Plus, you'll find that AT&T's U-verse doesn't have a cap because it doesn't need one. Reaching 250GB/month at their speeds is mathematically impossible. Boy, have we gotten spoiled or what? Just a few years ago we were paying $20-$25/month for dial-up. Also, I welcome the throttling of p2p and bit-torrent. high bandwidth usage 24/7 is unreasonable, given the fact that users share a fiber node's bandwidth, and it causes slower speeds for others. If you come anywhere near 250GB/month you shouldn't expect to pay only for common residential service levels.