DISQUS

Louis Gray · 11 months ago

I literally jumped on my neighbor's open wireless network to post this. Meanwhile, I've maxed my pipe out. :-)

Paul Stamatiou · 11 months ago

Agreed! I will practically never ever move from my apartment. It's tied to the fiber lines that go around downtown/midtown Atlanta and I get a top download of 80mbps and upload of ~37megabits/sec. :-) All for $22/month. Can't be beat.

Louis Gray · 11 months ago

Sounds like a good plan. And in case anyone is skeptical... I changed the WiFi network so I'm browsing on my neighbor's unprotected network, which has plenty of pipe available. Mine is no doubt still impacted. Nice to have as a backup!

Susan Beebe · 11 months ago

hahahahaa !

ontarioemperor · 11 months ago

Just shows that users advance beyond what users are "perceived" to need. Back in the mid 1990s we had to justify our use of the Internet. Earlier this year Dave Winer was told by his provider that he was using too much bandwidth.

A family of four, in which two of the four are not yet surfing the Internet, theoretically doesn't need that much bandwidth. Then again, people theoretically don't need petabytes either. Digital video is changing a lot of things.

Louis Gray · 11 months ago

Ontario, meanwhile, I'm still at the point where I read "family of
four" and wonder who you're talking about. :-)

Yuvi Panda · 11 months ago

Filling it up takes a whole new meaning when it's just 256kbps big (and slows down to about 56 when a couple of undersea cables get cut)

Bryce Roney · 11 months ago

This blog post made me so envious, and disgusted at the crap broadband in Australia. I pay US$40 for 25GB of downloads at 1.5 mbps speed.

dkemper · 11 months ago

Louis, your blog post resonated with me in more ways than one.

In Quebec, Canada, where cable and digital TV and Internet service provider giant Videotron provides internet service to more than one million Quebecers, including me, I pay roughly $50 CDN per month with a 20GB download and 10GB upload limit. If I ever go beyond those limits, I pay approx. 0.00745 cents per additional MB used above the limits.

Repeated emails to Videotron's offices regarding these unrealistic caps were responded with an email to me explaining that these caps were protecting the network and ultimately the consumer. Absolute crap!

While I lived and worked in Washington, DC last year, I subscribed to Verizon DSL, paying around $40 USD per month for unlimited downloads and uploads. While folks around me complained and compared Verizon to other services such as Comcast, I simply kept my mouth shut, because I knew back in Quebec Videotron subscribers were getting ripped off left and right, back to front.

I cannot use the Internet to its full potential lest I face penalties. Granted, the Videotron cable Internet service is fast, stable and reliable. But I firmly believe that these caps--especially the amount--are unrealistic!

Louis Gray · 11 months ago

Nobody ever says they have enough bandwidth, or that they are paying a
fair price. I know that by being in the Bay Area, it's a rare thing to
run into problems, which is why this night's example was one I thought
to share.

Joost Schuur · 11 months ago

To be fair, you're mixing local bandwidth with traffic outside of your home network. Your time machine backup and TiVo to TiVo transfer isn't going to impact your Amazon/AppleTV downloads. At least not significantly.

I'm also not sure that recording a new show off of cable impinges on your Internet bandwidth. It's not like that data wouldn't have reached your house anyway. You just decided to record it.

Louis Gray · 11 months ago

You are of course right. But it is fun to think about how if you press
enough buttons, the data can begin to flow in every direction, and
there's always more data available than you can possibly consume.

Joost Schuur · 11 months ago

Think of it this way too: Most bandwidth consumed (backups aside) is also paid with some sort of attention span cost. Once the video quality of what we're downloading becomes as good as our eyes will ever be able to discern, we've reached a natural cap.

I have about a hundred hours of History Channel recordings on one of my TiVos that remain unwatched as living proof.

vicaya · 11 months ago

The problem is not about bandwidth but queuing latency here. Time to study network QoS options, man. All the batch copies should have lower priority than interactive or email traffic.

Kol Tregaskes · 11 months ago

VIrgin Media is offering 50Gb rates now, at a price though. I'm in their area but happy spending £15 a month on max 8Gb unlimited atm.

mathewballard · 11 months ago

With more and more of the electronics that people use in the home using a network to do their thing it doesn't surprise me that you would have an issue like this. Although, I do want to ask how long does it usually take Time Machine to backup your laptop over the network? I've thought about setting that up but it would seem to take too long to me. Especially since I would have to go through the network, to another computer and then to an external hard drive connected via USB.

Josh Peters · 11 months ago

Never stop expecting more. There are place around the world and even in this counttry that offer more, though my neighborhood isn't one of those. I'm in the same boat as you are right now :(

Neil · 11 months ago

I keep running into upload limitatons. Uploading pics and movies of the baby takes way longer than I'd like. I hope providers start increasing upload speed like they have been doing downloads.