|
^^ Rogers lowered it on I think two of their six plans, but there's no question it was a dick move on their part. There's no question they're feeling threatened now that their world is crumbling. I'm sure BlockBuster's failure is having quite the foreboding effect on them. Vancouverite here (Coquitlam, technically) on Shaw. Technically has a 100 gig a month limit, but it's not actually checked so I've never been penalized or threatened despite doing 500+ gigs some months. Down speeds are awesome, too, I pretty much get the full 10 megabits if I download from the right places. However, the upload speed is god-awful, despite it being "up to" 1 megabit I don't even get 256 kilobits up (my upload pretty much maxes out at 20 kilobytes per second), so I'm limited in doing certain things, and pretty much can't use any online backup service because it would literally take years with the amount of data I have now.
|
#
¿
Nov 1, 2010 00:49
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 20, 2024 01:18 |
|
|
less than three posted:So my outrage has been noticed and CBC Marketplace asked me to do a TV interview tomorrow. This is a very good thing. It's worth noting that, in my experience (albeit mine was once with The National) they don't completely misquote you and the like to make it more interesting. I did a story a year and a half ago about Conficker (had a thread here) that was pretty much the only report about it that was realistic (i.e. if you have updated AV and your Microsoft Updates you're totally fine). Plus I got to plug AVG Free back when that was a good thing. If they haven't told you this already, you want at least one good soundbite, and keep it as short and simple as possible to lower the risk of them cutting out things you want kept in.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 6, 2011 23:43
|
|
|
For some hard numbers, some single-game Steam installs are HUGE. Uncompressed there are several games that take up 15 gigs or more. Grand Theft Auto 4 Complete is I think something like a 30 gig download. Basically if you bought GTA4 Complete, FEAR 1, Age of Conan and Star Wars The Force Unleashed (the first one) you'd have used up about 80-90 gigs of bandwidth, roughly. Four games, and if you'd taken advantage of the Christmas sale that entire bundle may have cost less than $50. NetFlix is 6 megabytes a minute for standard definition. No idea about high definition, although usually if you buy an HD movie on iTunes you're looking at between 3 and 5 gigs for one depending on how long it is. Also, if you're running Windows Vista RTM 64-bit and decide to update it, it's about a 1.5 gig download for both Service Packs and miscellaneous updates. If everyone in your family does it within a month, say 3-4 computers, that adds up to a pretty big chunk. And if you don't update it, and then your computer gets hacked and used to send spam or as an FTP, that's going to be an even bigger chunk. VV I'm aware that at least some games come down the pipe compressed on Steam. Having said that, there's a limit to how far compression goes, especially since a lot of game data is already "compressed" in a sense. univbee fucked around with this message at 07:02 on Jan 7, 2011 |
|
#
¿
Jan 7, 2011 00:40
|
|
|
less than three posted:I had a thread open in the background as I gave the interview. Can't remember if it's this one, it might have been. They did this kind of stuff with my boss too. I'll try to capture it and upload it to YouTube tonight. VV PM me with details of how you want to be credited for the contents of the segment so I can include it in the YouTube comments. univbee fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Jan 7, 2011 |
|
#
¿
Jan 7, 2011 23:18
|
|
|
Martytoof posted:It'll probably be on cbc.ca/thenational too, though I don't know what their turnaround is. Usually pretty fast, although their video quality is TERRIBLE (probably because of bandwidth limitations  ). Mine will be in super-HD, killing all Canadians' monthly quota. The irony of the whole situation shall be glorious!
|
|
#
¿
Jan 7, 2011 23:45
|
|
|
Ruklo Burosee posted:They misspelled Gigabyte, but that's okay. It was pretty informative, but I actually laughed when the other guy said "my usage this month will be about 40 gigabytes. Yeah, I kind of wish they'd picked a better candidate (e.g. college roommates in an apartment who are in the 200+ gig range). Oh well. I'm uploading the video now, since my upload sucks rear end and the video's 1080p it'll take a while. EDIT: gently caress, just looked at my bandwidth usage:  VV I said that because I had heard that there was a compression/decompression thing with Steam downloads, but it looks like I was misinformed anyway. univbee fucked around with this message at 04:25 on Jan 8, 2011 |
|
#
¿
Jan 8, 2011 04:14
|
|
|
8ender posted:I'm just startled to find out they don't work everything over with some brutal industrial strength compression already. I think half the problem is game data by nature already comes "compressed" to a certain degree, and compressing that kind of stuff losslessly can be near-impossible. Compressing data is becoming increasingly irrelevant in the sense that we're working with files that already have built-in compression, like jpg, mp3, docx and other file formats. Trying to compress a JPG or MP3 losslessly can in some cases even lead to a bigger "compressed" file, and generally will old save you like 1% if circumstances are good.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 8, 2011 06:27
|
|
|
It's about 30 minutes from being done uploading, and yes, it's very short (things on The National are always very short).
|
|
#
¿
Jan 8, 2011 08:38
|
|
|
less than three posted:They've had it up for like 3 hours here: Ha ha wow, they've gotten much better at this side of the equation since the story I was a part of ran. Here's my 720p version anyway: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBiYWBCzKPQ univbee fucked around with this message at 09:21 on Jan 8, 2011 |
|
#
¿
Jan 8, 2011 09:15
|
|
|
Nitr0 posted:I think the bigger issue here is that you can be practically inside an ISP's building in Toronto and STILL have to pay out the rear end. The other big issue here is that this reeks of "any excuse to make more money and lower our costs." They're basically trying to close Pandora's box, and the fact that they're doing it in-step with Netflix's announcement to come to Canada really enforces this point. No matter how well-intentioned you are, if you're taking things away from customers, you're the bad guy. I can understand your situation being a small ISP in a smaller neighborhood, though. Personally, I actually don't care if I have to pay $100 or $150 a month, but if I'm going to pay that much I expect fantastic download AND upload speed, and not have a reasonable transfer limit. I'm an excess internet user, I get it, and I'm willing to pay for it, within reason. Over $200 is too much. In fact, these limits wouldn't bother me so much if you took the Australian and New Zealand ISP's approach and had certain popular but bandwidth-heavy services set up separate and in a way that doesn't count towards the limits. Some Australian ISPs hosted Linux ISOs, Steam games and iTunes stuff so that downloads through them were exempt, which goes a hell of a long way towards innovation. I wouldn't even mind if there were limits but they were crazy-high, something so that if I'm saturating a 15 megabit connection 24/7 I do get a notice and risk having my service shut off. But like my previous screenshot showed, I DOUBLED my 100 gig download limit in five loving days; if my bill goes up tenfold month-to-month without my habits changing, that's really the ISP's fault. univbee fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Jan 8, 2011 |
|
#
¿
Jan 8, 2011 18:34
|
|
|
marketingman posted:3rd largest Aussie ISP chiming in here - we do have what we call a freezone which includes things like a Steam cache, our FTP server where we keep a I'll admit that this part does make it difficult. Do you actually work for the ISP or just use them? If it's the former, how would one setup their service as a free zone? If there was a simple and established way to do this (e.g. "make a server with all the files and poo poo stored on it and send it to us so we can plug it into our freezone switch, we'll charge you [reasonable colocation fee]") I don't think this would be terribly against net neutrality. It's not like every website would need something like this either. Outside of porn, the biggest legal services that are data hogs can be counted on one hand.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 8, 2011 20:04
|
|
|
marketingman posted:Basically, freezone is not a trivial matter and the scenario you're describing above is unlikely, it's usually going to be something that goes through commercials to decide whether this is going to help us earn money - backhaul within Aus, even when you 'own' your own fibre, is not cheap. I have no doubt that it's not a trivial matter on the backend and is a project that would require considerable time to implement, but in saying that I can't think of very many legal sites that would cause a major overage (100 gigs +). Porn aside, there are extremely few legitimate services that push that kind of data. Like, no one's hitting their 100 gig limit just using Facebook. Netflix, Steam and YouTube are the major ones I can think of that would likely cause overages. Are there any other major websites that offer a significant overage risk (where there's a plausible chance you'd download 40+ gigs in a month)? Persona non grata posted:This doesn't help innovation, it's a roadblock for innovators. Now instead of just having a good idea and getting it online you have to negotiate with ISPs. As an example Good Old Games, a Steam competitor, will have a hidden tax on their service imposed by the preferential treatment Steam receives. The main thing with GoG is that their games are a hell of a lot smaller than Steam's; the biggest game on that site is like a 3.5 gig download and very few of their titles are over a gig. This is a huge difference from Steam where they have more than a few single games in the 25+ gig range.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 10, 2011 08:12
|
|
|
marketingman posted:Online backup, TV streaming, IPTV, iTunes... I can't think of much more. poo poo, I'd forgotten about online backup. Now we're starting to get into harder-to-deal-with numbers of services. I thought it was possible to work within the 100 gig limit if certain sites were "free" (e.g. if Steam didn't count towards my quota, 100 gigs would probably be fine for me), but adding online backup to the mix does complicate this. The big issue right now is that while "heavy" internet users used to be able to go crazy and not affect your average internet user who used email and that's it, the increase in popular and legal bandwidth-heavy services have started eating into that. While only 10% of people are going "over," a shitload of users are probably using a pretty decent chunk of their monthly quota. Back in the early 2000s, almost everyone on an ISP would just use their DSL/Cable for basic internet and email, and probably a decent chunk of their users weren't using more than about 200 megs a month. Now with sites like Facebook and YouTube in the mix, the average internet user is probably using at least a few gigs, and if they use stuff like iTunes and Steam that adds up. So now instead of a sea of low-bandwidth users with the occasional heavy blip user (i.e. us), we now have a ton of people using a significant chunk of their share, and now all of a sudden there isn't sufficient overhead for heavy users to get by without calling attention to themselves. The bigger issue is that Canadian ISPs don't seem interested in implementing any sorts of solutions. While everyone bitches about Australian and New Zealand ISPs, at the very least they're are actually trying to tackle the problem and offer customers a lot of options. Freezones, increased traffic during off-hours...or hell, even just more reasonable overage charges. It costs money to move data, fine, but overage shouldn't be a 2000%+ markup. No one should end up with a $200+ suprise bill. univbee fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Jan 10, 2011 |
|
#
¿
Jan 10, 2011 17:08
|
|
|
less than three posted:+1. As someone who lives in Vancouver and is currently planning to move back to Montreal, this is a house of lies. Unless you're somehow allergic to snow and want it to be substituted for rain, which would make you insane  I've been looking at my ISP options and am considering VideoTron's $100/month 15/1 unmetered business package. Anyone know details about that?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 15, 2011 21:23
|
|
|
mik posted:If you know how much you typically download in a month, you might want to consider for ~$105 you can get 60/3 with 210GB down. I'm not sure I'd survive on 15mb down, but I never go above 150gb a month or so. I've gone over 200 gigs in a WEEK with 15 down here. Honestly, the download speed doesn't bother me at all within reason, especially since so few websites hit that speed. I'm happy with 15 down and TRUE 1 up (although 3 up would be pretty sweet) unmetered. Hell, I'll even throttle during the day if it's what the ISP wants (seriously ISPs, I can work for you if you'll let me, throw me a bone).
|
|
#
¿
Jan 16, 2011 05:42
|
|
|
unknown posted:UBB decision was rendered this morning - http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2011/2011-44.htm Not sure if I'm reading this right, but I think it's saying that the big telecoms can't charge excessive per-GB amounts to resellers; they can charge by the gig, but can't charge way higher than cost price like they're doing now. I'm probably wrong about this, though 
|
|
#
¿
Jan 25, 2011 19:41
|
|
|
I'm trying to write up some layman's terms examples of this loving people over (Steam purchases, Netflix, etc.). Hopefully I'll have some good stuff tonight, I'm ready to tear rear end on this issue.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 25, 2011 23:20
|
|
|
Whimsy posted:The legislation will mandate the use of passwords on Wifi. Except it allows easily-cracked access points like WEP (not much choice, some devices only support WEP), which will give the Telcos leverage to say something like "no, you have a password so this is somehow your fault" even in cases of genuine hacking. It will be the same argument used against anyone who's first to use some new security system, because they are ALWAYS considered 100% secure by the company (e.g. first owners of car keys with chips often got insurance claims on stolen cars denied, even though those cars had a spare key in the glove box many drivers didn't know about, and within a year they were catching thieves that had master keys with all 15 chip variants they were using at the time).
|
|
#
¿
Jan 25, 2011 23:39
|
|
|
Oh, gently caress my rear end! This is in Coquitlam BTW.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 26, 2011 00:34
|
|
|
Shumagorath posted:What on Earth are you guys doing? Only in times when I was insanely bored have I ever cracked 150GB. As for what I'm doing, let's see if I can compile: Probably about 200+ gigs worth of Steam downloads, covering the English, French and Japanese versions of games (normally I wouldn't go this crazy, but I was stockpiling for this moment). The wife's been watching Heroes on Netflix, which means probably about 35 gigs a season (it's in HD) times 2 seasons, so 70 gigs. This is on top of other Netflix stuff we've watched (a dozen or so movies, again at roughly 2 gigs each); we probably cracked 100 gigs of usage with Netflix alone. Downloaded some Linux ISOs (yes, seriously), a few different versions, maybe 20 gigs' worth? This is just off the top of my head. Oh, just realized, a Brazzers (porn site) membership would fill this in nicely, they post 3 or 4 new videos a day, at 1080p, which would total 10-15 gigs of new content per day if you downloaded it in its highest quality.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 26, 2011 01:58
|
|
|
So under this plan, if you purchased Star Wars The Force Unleashed, World of Warcraft, or Age of Conan digitally (which means less packaged goods and more environmental friendliness) you could have to pay up to $60 in overages. For each game. On top of whatever you pay for it normally. (And a company like Steam can somehow charge $10 for the game license AND unlimited bandwidth to use it). And that's assuming you only download it once. Meanwhile, a New Zealand ISP would only charge you $1 New Zealand per gig over, which translates to something like 70 Canadian cents. WHY ARE WE PAYING TRIPLE WHAT THE WORST DEVELOPED COUNTRY'S INTERNET CHARGES gently caress VV gently caress me, I'd forgotten about that ad campaign. univbee fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Jan 26, 2011 |
|
#
¿
Jan 26, 2011 18:56
|
|
|
The Gunslinger posted:At $10 per gigabyte on overages without warning it becomes financially neutral to have a lawyer send them a nasty letter if you get that kind of bill. That can be some serious money. This part right here is what amazes me. $50-$100 in overages isn't going to bankrupt anybody, but with this system a single Steam game can result in $300 in overages. This happened in Montreal several years ago with VideoTron and their 10 gig/month limit on cable, and if I recall people who took them to court cleaned house pretty nicely.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 26, 2011 19:21
|
|
|
Viktor posted:Looks like Bell Canada has all the rates up: http://www.bell.ca/shopping/PrsShpInt_Access.page How is someone expected to keep up with even software and OS updates with that little bandwidth? Windows 7 SP1 64-bit will probably be in the neighborhood of 850-900 megs just on its own. And if you don't update, you can find yourself compromised by a spam bot, which Bell will blame you for because you should have been updated, but you can't update without going ove 
|
|
#
¿
Jan 26, 2011 23:08
|
|
|
Martytoof posted:Well, at that point it might be worth looking into small claims court. I'm not saying that it's the right thing to do, or whether Bell was even legally in the wrong, but if some rudimentary research concluded that yes, they did need a new T&C, then that seems like a pretty open and shut case. Yes you can. Even better, a lot of the time they won't bother showing up at all, which means if you can show that your case has any merit at all (i.e. it's not 100% retarded and it justifies a trial), you win by default.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 26, 2011 23:15
|
|
|
HorusTheAvenger posted:Oof! Switching back to dial-up is almost worth considering with those caps. To add to this, 100 gigs a month is equivalent to downloading at 37 kilobytes a second 24/7 in a 31-day month.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2011 04:36
|
|
|
drcru posted:e: Can someone make one of those info graphics of how many TV shows, videos, or movies you can get on Netflix, iTunes, YouTube or whatever for the bandwidth Bell provides? Make sure you account for HD content since that's what most of you guys get, I assume. People love that stuff and it'll make it simpler for people to understand how much more they'll have to pay for what they used to get. 75 gigs is Bell's highest cap. 1 hour of Netflix HD is 1885 megabytes, which means you get just under 40 hours of Netflix HD (less than 2 hours a day). iTunes is in the same realm on a per-hour level, the bitrates are about the same on rented/purchased content. So if you bought 2 TV seasons of an hour-long show with a full season, including any CSI, House, 24 or Grey's Anatomy, your month's quota would probably be hosed. YouTube I have no idea, but it's probably similar. For Steam games, it can be as few as three or four games, broken up as follows: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed = 25400 megs Age of Conan (no expansions) = 27200 megs Dragon Age Origins + Expansion = 19200 megs FEAR 1 Collection = 17000 megs World of Warcraft with all expansions is 23.6 GB. There are a lot of games on Steam that are over 10 gigs (Borderlands, Alpha Protocol, DIRT 2, Left 4 Dead 2, and Mass Effect 1 and 2 are the ones I currently have installed) univbee fucked around with this message at 08:33 on Jan 27, 2011 |
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2011 08:16
|
|
|
Just sent this to the CRTC (best I could do before having to go to work): Allowing for metered internet has given Canada the award of having the worst internet service in the developed world, behind countries like New Zealand that are doing better than we are despite being isolated from the rest of the world and having underwater cable monopolies to contend with. Why are they able to pay 1/3 of what we pay for internet access while many Canadians will end up with overage bills of hundreds or even thousands of dollars when we share the world's longest land border with the country that invented the internet? This decision of yours is setting Canadian technology back at least ten years and serves no one except the big telcos, shafting tax-paying Canadian citizens. Please repeal this decision for the good of our country's citizens. Will probably re-word it and send to my MP and whoever else I can think of.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2011 17:42
|
|
|
One thing I'm doing right the gently caress now and recommend others follow suit: TAKE YOUR INTERNET OFF ANY AUTO-PAYMENT. If they come up with a $1200 bill for me, I want them to have to fight me to pay it, not me fight them to pay me back.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2011 18:20
|
|
|
unknown posted:You're incorrect in that - a significant portion of users on average use less than 5 gigs per month combined up+down. Not only is this no longer the case (isn't it closer to like 35 gigs now?), that's per user. What if you're a family with 3 kids? Or college roommates? Or just happened to get a certain digital download PC game for yourself (or even as a gift)? It's also an average, meaning 50% of people use more. Appealing to the status quo/lowest common denominator has resulted in fantastic policies like No Child Left Behind and is in no way something to strive for.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2011 18:57
|
|
|
Nomenklatura posted:But, then again, the real solution is this VVVVVVV. Upgrade the loving network. Japan did it, we can do it. Maybe not for all of the country at once, but we're highly, highly urbanized and concentrated. Focus on the densest areas and move outward from there. A lot of areas probably wouldn't need that much. Seriously, I don't think a place like Kuujuuaq could crash itself even if all its residents were on Pirate Bay 24/7, there isn't that high of a population that you need a crazy backbone.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2011 19:20
|
|
|
My comments belowDudebro posted:I actually got a response from my MP.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2011 20:20
|
|
|
You see, I have no problem with paying extra for using the internet "a lot," as long as it's reasonable. $40 more for "unlimited" internet? Fine. I'll live. I'm still paying more that the rest of the developed world, but I'll live. Or make a "free" time period, like between midnight and 8 a.m. or something where I can go nuts. I'm willing to work with you ISPs, I pay you lots of money, WHY THE gently caress AREN'T YOU WILLING TO WORK WITH ME?!
|
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2011 20:37
|
|
|
unknown posted:Nope - I've got access to raw usage data, and I'm just letting people know that not everyone uses 50+gigs of data. You'd be surprised how many people don't use anywhere near their cap max. There are lots of people that just get emails and surf a little bit. It's not 50%, but it's not 1% either - and no, I can't release the data. That may be, but the fact of the matter is that we've gotten used to using the internet a certain way: I've been using tons of bandwidth for the better part of ten years (and even before that on dial-up) and am pretty sure I never caused any sort of hiccup for whatever ISP I was with. This is like if satellite cable swooped in and said you could now only watch 30 hours of TV a month. There are plenty of people who don't watch that much TV, but you bet your rear end people will be up in arms about it, and rightly so. EDIT: How widespread is your data sample anyway? Canada-wide, or a single community?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2011 23:39
|
|
|
THANK YOU http://openmedia.ca/blog/cbc-news-pays-openmediaca-visit CBC News segment with good sound bites. Also http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/01/netflix-charging-by-the-gigabyte-is-ridiculous.ars : Netflix posted:Netflix: ISPs who charge by the gigabyte are ridiculous univbee fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Jan 28, 2011 |
|
#
¿
Jan 28, 2011 16:51
|
|
|
Nitr0 posted:I agree the networks need to be overhauled to meet current and future demands. There needs to be some sort of government oversight to determine if these problems exist or if they're all made up by the large companies to make more money. I'd really like an explanation why practically the entire rest of the developed world is somehow not having this problem, and that even in countries that do have real bandwidth barriers like Australia and New Zealand with their undersea cable monopoly, they aren't charging anything close to these rates.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 28, 2011 19:27
|
|
|
Nitr0 posted:Right, because then instead of someone downloading 20GB @ 20Mb/s in 2.2 hours they download at 10Mb/s in 4.5 hours. How don't caps relieve congestion? If you are limited to the amount of data you can pass then you are not on the network as often. The faster they get you on and off the more speed they have to give to someone else. Sending half as many cars down a busy road absolutely reduces congestion and is exactly why some companies are starting to have 7-3 and 8-4 shifts, to spread things out so there isn't a clusterfuck on the road at 8:45 and 5:05 respectively.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 28, 2011 20:20
|
|
|
Nitr0 posted:So maybe the problem is with the government and not totally the isp's? gasp... You do realize we're equally blaming the CRTC and the ISPs in this thread, right?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 28, 2011 20:59
|
|
|
Nomenklatura posted:MPs would be briefed on it by staff, presumably. Though what would REALLY happen is that either the Minister (that'd be Tony) would be briefed by Industry Minister officials, or the Prime Minister's Office would be briefed on it by someone at the cabinet minister's office. This part right here makes me glad a Montrealer wrote it: quote:106. Considering that UBB rates are not cost based , are purely arbitrary in nature and designed to affect behaviour, how can a regulator use logic to justify imposing different rates for Québec and Ontario, especially when Quebeckers would be asked to be 2.5 times more for per gig charges on a 25mbps services ? Such federally regulated rates could become a rather hot potato if the media starts to portray this as the federal government forcing francophones to pay 2.5 times more than anglophones. No way in hell will anyone from Quebec support this.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 31, 2011 20:54
|
|
|
^^ I'm seriously tempted to start offering this as a service (with traditional drives instead, of course).
|
|
#
¿
Feb 1, 2011 18:32
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 20, 2024 01:18 |
|
|
priznat posted:Anyone got a link for the GB discussion on this handy? I had a look at the front page and none of the clever thread titles jumped out at me as obvious but perhaps it has shuffled off a couple pages deep.. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3385801
|
|
#
¿
Feb 1, 2011 20:24
|
|