Man of Honour
- Joined
- 17 Nov 2003
- Posts
- 36,747
- Location
- Southampton, UK
Iplayer is a peer to peer network for downloading programms that aren't streamed and this can generate a lot of traffic.
Why doesn't Unlimited mean Unlimited anymore? :/
- Thread starter DailyGeek
- Start date
Iplayer is a peer to peer network for downloading programms that aren't streamed and this can generate a lot of traffic.
Man of Honour
- Joined
- 17 Nov 2003
- Posts
- 36,747
- Location
- Southampton, UK
Surely that is what is being advertised for 'Unlimited' packages? If that's not the case then fine, but don't mislead consumers to think otherwise.
Soldato
- Joined
- 4 May 2004
- Posts
- 3,270
This is a totally different issue IMO. If a company advertises "unlimited broadband" or implies unlimited usage, then it should be unlimited.
The problem arises when people want to make use of the "unlimited" product they bought. It's not the users' fault that the company can't deliver what it advertised and sold.
You obviously can't expect to download 1tb/month for £10, and you wouldn't expect a company to do that because they would be losing money, so why the hell are the allowed to sell something that doesn't exist.
Does anyone else find it strange that broadband providers and mobile phone networks constantly advertise unlimited packages for bandwidth, texts etc but in reality they are almost all limited by a fair use policy or bandwidth restriction after a certain allowance etc.
Surely the OFT should stop people using the term unlimited when such packages have often very limiting restrictions?
Grrr. Rant over
Go with Enta suppliers, they have limited downloads but are never traffic shaped. (as far as i know.)
problem is I think that a lot of ISPs generally have to say unlimited, as end users dont know what the difference between it all is, for the majority its going to be unlimited for them, but since one advertises unlimited they all have to, else its going to be a case of someone convincing the uneducated they dont want a limit, even though theres not a chance they could ever reach said limit.
With Virgin I have to download over 700mb or something at peak times, how many shows is that streamed off iPlayer? Quite a few aint it, and even then I only get capped, and im still able to download shows faster than they are playing...
I don't like the fact that they advertise as unlimited either. There should be a clear cut approach to it, you get x for x amount a month. I'm a fairly heavy user, use skype, webcamming, iplayer(all the other vod sites), torrents, browsing web & much more on top of that.
I easily reach 4gb in total each way a day. That's not even with torrents running. I can easily push 6gb each way a day if torrents were running. Albeit I'm on virgin so my traffic just gets throttled after a while. But with a lot of things running being limited to 1mb gets tiresome, it is very noticeable. I do like this approach a little more than the monthly caps though I must say.
But there definitely needs to be a clear marking on what is acceptable & not just pushed into the small print.
I easily reach 4gb in total each way a day. That's not even with torrents running. I can easily push 6gb each way a day if torrents were running. Albeit I'm on virgin so my traffic just gets throttled after a while. But with a lot of things running being limited to 1mb gets tiresome, it is very noticeable. I do like this approach a little more than the monthly caps though I must say.
But there definitely needs to be a clear marking on what is acceptable & not just pushed into the small print.
No. My arse remains firmly detached from my asophagus and my hands are not typing lies. Why would i lie? To make myself sound cool? Oh wait, no i'm discussing how poorly i'm being treated, so it can't be to sound cool. Maybe i want your sympathy? Well, i can assure you that's not it. If i wanted sympathy i'd be moaning to the ISP, not to you.
So, i dont really care what you believe. My downloads are throttled from 1.1mb/sec to ~240kb/sec after the cap is breached, and torrents are always at between 2k/sec and 5k/sec regardless fo time of day or software.
Perhaps it's a hardware issue. 2 network cards and a million open ports and forwarded ports, and downloaded drivers later and the issue remains, so if it is a hardware issue, it's not mine.
Oh, and just to reply to you in a form you might understand (i'm going to imitate you here, just to make sure):
"omg, i get like 2k/sec when i torrent so like you must be talking rubbish. nobody gets torrenting speeds like you because i dont so it cant be true. You're a complete liar your internets are not that good omg."
Why are you shocked? That people should want what they are told they get in the big showy adverts? The case here is that ISPs should not be allowed to advertise unlimited broadband, because it isn't.
Guaranteed? By whom? Virgin Media is a disgrace during peak times, because like most ISPs they have oversold their network capacity due to their glitzy advertising campaigns, and cannot properly support the user base.
The sooner ISPs are taken in hand the better.
Which is exactly why OFCOM need to get involved.
If only it were possible, I would be off Virgin today. Sadly Virgin use long term contracts, and its not my house anyway.
Look around, not hard to find.Have you got any evidence to show that companies use Torrenting as a legal method of distribution?
Yeah definitely sounds like a case-specific problem there tbh, your figures are correct for being throttled to 25% from ~10Mb/s -> ~2.5Mb/s, have to say I'm on Virgin and my torrents work fine, fast as you like
I prefer the Virgin model I think, it is unlimited data so don't have to be keeping an eye on that or being stung for extra charges, sure it technically isn't 20Mb, but a minimum of 5Mb/s, going up to 20Mb off-peak is pretty good IMO!
I prefer the Virgin model I think, it is unlimited data so don't have to be keeping an eye on that or being stung for extra charges, sure it technically isn't 20Mb, but a minimum of 5Mb/s, going up to 20Mb off-peak is pretty good IMO!
Associate
- Joined
- 19 Dec 2007
- Posts
- 410
- Location
- US
I get unlimited downloads and speed capped at 20mb. In one day i downloaded 30gb from trying various linux distros. 
only $30 a month too.
only $30 a month too.
Alright. I agree that perhaps i am a pretty specialised case. I DO use a high amount of traffic and i'm not breaking any laws.
And yes. ISP's need to make more effort to judge the individual, and not to blanket everyone into the same group. This, of course, would require more resources than they currently use (as most ISP's probably run the "invest as little as humanly possible into making the business run" approach) and probably wont happen. Given that, perhas its about time they at least seperated them into smaller groups. ISP packages that are, say, "Basic", "advanced", "Specialist" and "Pirate", or something. I'm sur thi sprobably already exists, but more ISPs need to adopt this approach.
Tbh though, if ISP's did make that effort, I doubt you'd be able to pay £20 a month or so, as a heavy (even legitimate) user you'd be identified as such and charged a premium for your non-standard usage accordingly I imagine
Careful what you wish for!
Careful what you wish for!
Yeah definitely sounds like a case-specific problem there tbh, your figures are correct for being throttled to 25% from ~10Mb/s -> ~2.5Mb/s, have to say I'm on Virgin and my torrents work fine, fast as you like
I prefer the Virgin model I think, it is unlimited data so don't have to be keeping an eye on that or being stung for extra charges, sure it technically isn't 20Mb, but a minimum of 5Mb/s, going up to 20Mb off-peak is pretty good IMO!
Perhaps i'll look into it more. It's quite frustrating really. I'm on Virgin, and i dont particularly mind the 240k/sec downloads, i just seem to get them pretty quickly in the day
As for the torrenting, perhaps i'll see if this problem has been reported elsewhere. For the most part, everything i would usually torrent can be found as a download (WoW patches the next day, for example) so it's not a huge problem. Must be a reason for it though.
Tbh though, if ISP's did make that effort, I doubt you'd be able to pay £20 a month or so, as a heavy (even legitimate) user you'd be identified as such and charged a premium for your non-standard usage accordingly I imagine
Careful what you wish for!
I dont mind payign extra if i'm getting the service i want
**as long as it's not stupid extra!
Man of Honour
- Joined
- 17 Nov 2003
- Posts
- 36,747
- Location
- Southampton, UK
That's a very poor arguement at best. They should advertise what they provide. It's a simple premise really.
"Unlimited", "Always on", "Constant", etc is an argument over semantics really. Whilst I don't doubt it's misleading, the very fact it misleads is why they do it. "Unlimited" is a hook. It's a different debate entirely really whether it is scrupulous for them to use the word, because as I said originally technically they aren't lying. Assumption is the mother of all **** ups after all.
People have become so satiated by broadband/ADSL nowadays that they've forgotten what it was like "back in the day". It wasn't so long ago that most of us were on dialup, and before 0800 dialup became commonplace we were all paying BT and co. a fortune per quarter for a tiny fraction of the line speeds we have now. Times change but some of the blame has to fall on consumers - they expect the moon on a stick now for their paltry (by comparison to business leased lines) ~£20 a month. The ISPs share some of the blame too in chasing speed boosts and using ambiguous terms in advertising.
Bottom line - businesses pay thousands per year for uncontested guaranteed throughput leased lines, the tradeoff for consumers enjoying similar spoils at a fraction of the price is that a) there is a significant contention ratio, b) the speeds are not guaranteed and c) the bandwidth usage isn't limitless. That's just the way it is I'm afraid.
Tbh though, if ISP's did make that effort, I doubt you'd be able to pay £20 a month or so, as a heavy (even legitimate) user you'd be identified as such and charged a premium for your non-standard usage accordingly I imagine
Careful what you wish for!
I think the main problem is that many, many ISPs don't even say what their fair usage policy is. I take the point that most users don't have any idea how much they use, which is why ISPs have to call it "unlimited" but why hide the information from advanced/high consumption users? I suspect part of the reason they do this is that they don't want to scare potential customers off with specific caps.
In terms of many high-traffic activities being illegal, pretty much every ISP states quite clearly that their connections cannot be used for illegal purposes. If they really cared about it so much, they would pursue people who download a lot on the basis of this provision. The truth is, they couldn't care less what you download, so long as it does not "detrimentally affect other users".
I totally don't understand how some people on here can claim that it's reasonable for them to call it "unlimited" because for the "standard" user it is. Surely, if your company had a "non-discrimination policy" which ensured that white people weren't discriminated against ("standard employee") but others were because they're not standard employees, that wouldn't be very fair, right? At the end of the day, we're paying for a service, so it's not unreasonable of us to expect to know what it is, specifically!
Incidentally, I'm not saying that broadband should actually be unlimited (don't think that's possible really) but ISPs must be a lot clearer about what it is they are selling.
Man of Honour
- Joined
- 30 Jun 2005
- Posts
- 9,515
- Location
- London Town!
There's a whole load of idiocy in this thread...I do work for an ISP and designed most of the network. So, taken *directly*, this very minute from our monitoring platform, the percentage of users who've exceeded 100GB downstream traffic in the rolling month to date - 2.3%.
Or those exceeding 50GB download - 8.6%
Can you say minority??
And for those complaining about the minimum investment by ISPs, what exactly are you expecting? It's running the a business, which for 90%+ of users is perfectly adequate. You want to download at 5Mbps constantly, then hows about a reasonable price for that... £12.50 to cover costs to BT and admin, then £5.50 for each mbps, so thats £40...oh wait, thats somehow unreasonable....
Or those exceeding 50GB download - 8.6%
Can you say minority??
And for those complaining about the minimum investment by ISPs, what exactly are you expecting? It's running the a business, which for 90%+ of users is perfectly adequate. You want to download at 5Mbps constantly, then hows about a reasonable price for that... £12.50 to cover costs to BT and admin, then £5.50 for each mbps, so thats £40...oh wait, thats somehow unreasonable....
What about the point I made, which is that many ISPs don't actually say what the limit is? If you have a specific limit in mind, why not make it public so that consumers can compare the offerings from different companies and choose the price/quality/quantity ratio they want?