Monthly limit - very stupid question

Robi

Robi

Robi

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14 Apr 2007
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I know this is a very stupid question, so stupid that I don't even know how to word it for a google search.

I was always under the impression that a monthly limit refers to all internet traffic in the month; browsing, file sharing, downloading etc. After coming off the phone with a TalkTalk call centre, the advisor stated the 40GB monthly limit is purely for "downloads only" and excluded standard browsing, i.e. facebook.

Which is it?

I download quite a bit of music (legit), no where near 40GB though.

I'm about to take out a new broadband package.
 
it would be a very smart system that can differentiate between standard browsing and actual downloaing. most ISP's count it as usage, which means pretty much everything that originates online that appears on your computer, be that webpages, online radio, BBC iPlayer or actual downloads. Therefore, said advisor didn't have a clue.
 
I know first hand Virgin Media is unlimited doanload. But once you download more than 3gb in a month which i do a few times a week with my steam games, they monitor you and slow your speed down. I've been having quite the problem as they say its to stop illegal downloads but I pay top dollar for these games. Bit irritating.
 
It could be possible to do it based on ports, ie traffic from 80/443 are not counted in download stats.. although not sure how likely that is as you could just tunnel it all over port 80 and download *
 
Some ISPs use transparent proxies for web traffic and maybe don't include traffic through this (these can distinguish between HTML and file downloads). So maybe they count everything thats not known HTTP traffic.

From my experience tho some ISPs say this but actually include all traffic in calculating your useage.
 
I'd be amazed if any mainstream ISP (such as TalkTalk) would exclude 'standard browsing' from usage. Apart from anything else, 'standard browsing' wouldn't use a significant portion of that 40GB cap anyway.

You do get some idiots at callcentres, I had some muppet at Virgin Mobile trying to tell me that I was being charged extra for internet usage on my phone because my 1024MB monthly allowance was 'just for looking at websites and email' and not downloads/applications/videos etc, that would all be charged for seperately. When of course after escalating to supervisors it turned out to be an error in their billing system.
 
TheEnosFam said:
I know first hand Virgin Media is unlimited doanload. But once you download more than 3gb in a month which i do a few times a week with my steam games, they monitor you and slow your speed down. I've been having quite the problem as they say its to stop illegal downloads but I pay top dollar for these games. Bit irritating.
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not sure who would have said that, but the limits dont usually have anything to do with illegal downloads

afterall, it wouldn't stop illegeal downloads anyways, just slow them down.

the traffic shaping is there to prevent heavy downloads from making the service slow for everyone else.

afterall, your sharing bandwidth with other users on the network
 
Yeah if anyone is bringing illegal downloads into it they are just fobbing you off, it is ALL downloads they need to limit irrespective of what the content is. Although to be fair, I suspect that traditionally a fairly sizeable chunk of bandwidth has been taken by illegal downloads.

Go back a few years and it was fairly safe to say that the majority of home users reguarly exceedingly 100GB/month (maybe even 50GB/month) were likely doing illegal downloads. But nowadays with digital game distribution, and more online video content, the problem has spread.
 
Just to let you know I have the 40gb TalkTalk and I download over that considerably every month, recently upto 60gb (not including browsing, a lot of iPlayer and Youtube - just pure downloads) in a month and I've had no charges, emails or letters to say anything..
 
TheEnosFam said:
I know first hand Virgin Media is unlimited doanload. But once you download more than 3gb in a month which i do a few times a week with my steam games, they monitor you and slow your speed down. I've been having quite the problem as they say its to stop illegal downloads but I pay top dollar for these games. Bit irritating.
Click to expand...

What service do you have?? Even the really old 2Mb service can download over 6GB a month without being slowed. The 10Mb services can do 4.5GB a day peak time without hitting the STM, 20MB can do 10.5GB and 30Mb can hit 15GB a day peak time without hitting the STM.
 
mhowarth said:
Just to let you know I have the 40gb TalkTalk and I download over that considerably every month, recently upto 60gb (not including browsing, a lot of iPlayer and Youtube - just pure downloads) in a month and I've had no charges, emails or letters to say anything..
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I would read the small print to see if they reserve the right to charge for over use, or if they'll simply telephone you to "discuss your options" or something. Just to be on the safe side!
 
PistolPete said:
What service do you have?? Even the really old 2Mb service can download over 6GB a month without being slowed. The 10Mb services can do 4.5GB a day peak time without hitting the STM, 20MB can do 10.5GB and 30Mb can hit 15GB a day peak time without hitting the STM.
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i have the virgin media 10mb package and I have been told this more than once when calling up about my speed. Might have been 3gb a day but i see my download go from 1.3mb/s to 250kb/s when downloading my steams games. quite annoying seeing as COD2 was 14mb and i just downloaded farcry 1 and 2 which was another 8gb.
 
Using something 'adblock plus' with Firefox, will greatly reduce the amount of traffic that you use for adverts
 
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