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DSL, dialup, T1, locally connected ethernet, wireless, P2P high speed
wireless. And if they are doing a long term average of 1Mbps, they are very likely breaking the TOS or have a virus or are doing file trading. Most people just can't use that much as an average, and average is the important word. I use a ton of bandwidth compared to a lot of people, but my long term average is well below 50Kbps. We manage a dormitory which is mostly grad students, and the people who use large bandwidth are mostly file traders. These people can be assigned to 2 groups - those who actively trade, and those who installed a file trading program, used it and think they disabled it. Guess what, many aren't disabled when you disable them. They may still search for peers, and may also still run as an upload/download point even though the computer owner thinks it's disabled. I deal with this once or twice per week on a dorm with about 300 users. Uninfected, non-file trading users average less than 10Kbps in/out even though their connection is "free". And 1Mbps sustained is fairly trivial and normal. It gets missed all the time, at least for a while. Unfortunately it gets lost in the noise until someone looks at ALL the MRTG graphs. And again, it may be perfectly ok, not violating the TOS. Inwhich case all the ISP can do is call the customer and make ask them to check for a virus. And maybe not even that, depending on the fed and state laws. tom K0TAR Joel Kolstad wrote: Tom Ring wrote: And I forgot to mention that almost all our customers are of the unlimited type, so we don't don't monitor their traffic rate, or amount. Are you offering dial-up service only, or cable modem/DSL services? Where I live, cable modem users get well over a megabit per second of bandwidth, and someone filling that connection 24 hours a day is going to make a noticeable mark in the ISP's overall bandwidth usage. |
i had to switch isp's twice because their definitions of 'unlimited' did not
mean 24/7 on a dialup. i was not using much bandwidth, heck i could normally only get about a 33kbps connection to them, but the modem was tied up 24/7. on one of them i was a 'charter' member who had been with them since before they opened... to give me 24/7 access they wanted to go from their 'unlimited' account charge of $20/mo to around $300/mo on dialup. i ended up buying a business isdn service for 24/7 access to get more bandwidth and real unlimited access, the total for the line and isp is about $150/mo with one static ip.... some day we may get dsl out here and that wll come down to a reasonable charge. "Tyas_MT" wrote in message ... "Reg Edwards" wrote in message ... Anything which increases traffic volume benefits Internet service providers. Uhm no... If a normal customer is using more bandwidth (receiving and sending more email, committing virus controlled DDoS attacks, etc) Internet service providers LOSE MONEY. They pay by the byte, you don't. Most customers pay a flat fee for internet access. This is true of most Cable, DSL, ISDN, and Dial-up setups... they are priced based on an expectation of 'normal' usage, and the ISP loses money in 'extreme' usage cases. Why I ( a 'power user') get nasty emails from ISP's and have to switch often.... this one is good about that though. |
Hi Tom
I'm not real adept at understanding much of the lingo, but you might be able to answer a question for me. I use standard 56k dialup. I assume that when I'm online I'm tying up one of the ISP's modems. Therefore I never stay online longer than necessary to get my work done. Although I know plenty of folks that leave their computers on and connected all the time. My late wife, after she had her major heart attack and could not leave the house worked out an agreement with her employer to do her work at home. This required staying on-line at least 8 hours a day connected to her employer. At first the ISP said 'no problem' you have an unlimited account. But then they later came back and told us we needed a different service, it was still dial-up, but in effect we owned our own modems located in the ISP's racks. After a couple of more heart attacks, she had to quit work completely. I began using the sevice she was using for my regular dialup to retrieve e-mail, read the newsgroups, surf the web, etc. About 3 hours a day. I received a nasty note from the ISP saying I could not use that service in place of normal dialup, it was set up strictly for my wifes connection to her employer. I switched back to my original dial-up unlimited account, but still had to pay for the contract on the other dial-up account until it expired. Once it expired, I left that ISP and have been with my current one ever since. But lets get into a deeper question here. I moved to a different state but am still using the ISP I have used for years. I assume that my home ISP has a joint account with many ISPs around the country. I'm a ham radio operator and I can travel the country and use repeaters as a guest, because I AM a member of a repeater club. But how does this work as far as ISP's go? Should I change to a local ISP or is it OK to continue using one of the POP presences. How does the ISP I'm calling make any money from me? TTUL Gary |
Hi Dave
Perhaps I'm all wet on this, but I thought most reputable ISP's had a program in place that blocked outgoing e-mail over a certain quantity, configurable of course to allow certain users their needed outbound e-mail activity. I know when I was doing a newsletter that if I tried to send to everyone on the list at once, my ISP would block the transmission and an auto-responder would tell me to contact my ISP immediately. I would do so and tell them I was sending out a newsletter. They would either A: up my daily mailing limit or B: tell me to break it into 25 unit pieces. It seems to me that it wouldn't be to hard to implement a program that verified the domain of inbound e-mail. Most of the spam I do get has fraudulent headers. Although my ISP will do the filtering for me, I still elect to receive all of my inbound e-mail, including the spam, and have my own sets of filters that knock about 99% of it out, without fear of losing a valid e-mail that I should have received. TTUL Gary |
On Fri, 23 Apr 2004 19:03:39 -0500, Tom Ring
wrote: Close, but not quite. An ISP will buy pipes, such as a DS3 that does 45Mbps, for a flat rate per month. Theoretically the upstream provider doesn't care if 1 bps or 45 Mbps are passing through that pipe; from a billing perspective, they get the same money. But they have to play the statistical game on how much upstream pipe that they need to handle all the 45Mbps pipes they sold to ISPs like you. And eventually you get to the backbone providers, who have really really big pipes, and very expensive routers. This "power user" thing is something I've never heard anyone in the business speak of, so I have no idea why you would get bumped. If you I've been hearing the term ever since I got on the net and that was in 96 with my own site and in 87 through the colleges. are not breaking the TOS agreement, ISPs don't care a rat's rear end how much traffic you generate. You buy a pipe from the ISP and you have Maybe you don't but many do. They price their services based on an average user and they have a multi tiered service. Here if the average user is on 32 hours a month they don't complain until you hit around 5 or 6 times the average user. As I'm on DSL and networked 24 X 7 I pay a different rate than the dial up customer. Then even as a commercial user rates are based on the "bandwidth" used. I have both a high bandwidth limit and a lot of storage, but if my use, or my site generates traffic beyond a given point the rates go up, or like many sites I've attempted to visit you find the "This site has exceeded it's bandwidth limit for today", please try again tomorrow. every right to fill it if you can. The only exception to that would be that you have a maximum number of hours or bytes per month. They won't kick you if you exceed it, they just charge you an additional amount Only if you have that agreement. Most I've seen just block access to the site for the day, and I've come across a lot of those "this site has exceeded...." pages. Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member) (N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair) www.rogerhalstead.com Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member) (N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair) www.rogerhalstead.com that you agreed to in your contract with them. Some ISPs may do it a bit differently, but that's fairly normal in the industry. tom K0TAR Tyas_MT wrote: "Reg Edwards" wrote in message ... Anything which increases traffic volume benefits Internet service providers. Uhm no... If a normal customer is using more bandwidth (receiving and sending more email, committing virus controlled DDoS attacks, etc) Internet service providers LOSE MONEY. They pay by the byte, you don't. Most customers pay a flat fee for internet access. This is true of most Cable, DSL, ISDN, and Dial-up setups... they are priced based on an expectation of 'normal' usage, and the ISP loses money in 'extreme' usage cases. Why I ( a 'power user') get nasty emails from ISP's and have to switch often.... this one is good about that though. |
Hello,
That's what I suspect! "Arrow146" wrote in message ... Who writes VIRUS programs ? Who makes a profit from it ? Any chance it could be those who sell the ANTI VIRUS software ? Just a thought!! 73 Al Lowe N0IMW |
Hello,
So if you work at an ISP, why do people never block spammers? It's always the same companies people sign up to. You have the technology to block the users completely and/or take action after doing a trace. It can be done here in the UK. "Tom Ring" wrote in message ... Nope, absolutely incorrect. I work at an ISP, and with very few exceptions, we get the same money regardless of the traffic. It is therefore in our best interest to minimize traffic. This is a cutthroat business, and no one can raise prices without losing customers. tom K0TAR Reg Edwards wrote: Anything which increases traffic volume benefits Internet service providers. ===================================== |
Well, that's a tough question, because the modems are a totally
different situation than bandwidth usage. Modems are a real piece of hardware that you are tieing up. And some ISPs like to skimp on what is relatively cheap hardware. We don't tell our unlimited users they have the responsibility to disconnect, but we do disconnect them where longest idle (no traffic) users get kicked if, and only if, we are near to filling up our modem bank. It's a bit more complex algorithm than that, but that's close enough to what goes on at our place. Generally our users can and do stay connected until the power fails at their house. No, I won't tell you who I work for, and no, it's not who I use. No, I won't go into why I use who I do. On the shared accounts between ISPs, yes that goes on, and I believe it's based on trading the amount of service used between them, but I'm not quite sure. If so it implies that there is cash transferred if the hours used are mismatched. It's a large pool among lots of ISPs, there may be more than one of these pools, and I have no idea how they really address the balance. I live on the tech side, not the money side. tom K0TAR Gary V. Deutschmann, Sr. wrote: Hi Tom I'm not real adept at understanding much of the lingo, but you might be able to answer a question for me. I use standard 56k dialup. I assume that when I'm online I'm tying up one of the ISP's modems. Therefore I never stay online longer than necessary to get my work done. Although I know plenty of folks that leave their computers on and connected all the time. My late wife, after she had her major heart attack and could not leave the house worked out an agreement with her employer to do her work at home. This required staying on-line at least 8 hours a day connected to her employer. At first the ISP said 'no problem' you have an unlimited account. But then they later came back and told us we needed a different service, it was still dial-up, but in effect we owned our own modems located in the ISP's racks. After a couple of more heart attacks, she had to quit work completely. I began using the sevice she was using for my regular dialup to retrieve e-mail, read the newsgroups, surf the web, etc. About 3 hours a day. I received a nasty note from the ISP saying I could not use that service in place of normal dialup, it was set up strictly for my wifes connection to her employer. I switched back to my original dial-up unlimited account, but still had to pay for the contract on the other dial-up account until it expired. Once it expired, I left that ISP and have been with my current one ever since. But lets get into a deeper question here. I moved to a different state but am still using the ISP I have used for years. I assume that my home ISP has a joint account with many ISPs around the country. I'm a ham radio operator and I can travel the country and use repeaters as a guest, because I AM a member of a repeater club. But how does this work as far as ISP's go? Should I change to a local ISP or is it OK to continue using one of the POP presences. How does the ISP I'm calling make any money from me? TTUL Gary |
The only part I would wonder about is did the Everquest trading break
the TOS. Other than that I don't see an issue if they were truly offering unlimited accounts. Did you run any servers? Because many ISPs don't allow that as you probably know. tom K0TAR Tyas_MT wrote: Clarification accepted ISP's pay for the pipe not by the byte... but if you get lots of power users it's more average bandwidth, therefore more pipe needed. Let me see, the ones who have cut me off (rather than me cut them off) These are in the order they occur to me, not chronological: ISP1: cut off because of excessive email traffic. I can only guess that receiving so much spam (oh, 4 years ago) got me suspended. My machine was clean of any kind of spyware/viruses, and I certainly was not a spammer. And they didn't say I was. One thing I was doing at the time was transferring some rather large files around through email regularly (was telecommuting and the company I was working for didn't have an FTP server), but I still don't think it was that much (2-3 files of 6-10 mb a week). Account was 'unlimited dial up' ISP2: Exceeded allowable bandwidth (on my "unlimited broadband" account) 4 months running. After they warned me the first month, I asked what 'allowable bandwidth' was. They could not tell me. I looked at my usage agreement, nothing about allowable bandwidth. Was a clause about 'abuse of service', but no allowable bandwidth. I cut back my usage, dinged me the next month. Called, talked to 7 people, got one guy who said 'yes, we have a cap. I can't tell you what it is, just that you will get cut off if you exceed it regularly'. Go-go stupid national cable ISP! Cut back usage, dinged me the third month. Again, I don't/didn't have spyware, viruses, (I don't run a virus program normally I will admit, but I use the online checks with housecall or Symantec once every month, and am careful beyond belief with material from the net. Download.com stuff gets scanned by the freebie virus program I use. I just don't keep it running. Ad aware/spybot once a month as well. No hits this year so far... ) and I've never run file sharing software since I had a linux box with a linux version of napster long long ago. I know that's not active anymore, as the at the time the box was running FreeBSD, and not even on the network. Admittedly I tend to be a heavy downloader... CD iso's for various free OS's, that sort of thing. I think I've run every OS to come down the pike in the last half dozen years. ISP3: One month and out. 'Unlimited' dial-up account. Terminated for using ~320 hours in one month. Admittedly I was running a trader in EverQuest... you have to be online to enable people to purchase from you in that game. That was avg 2-3 hours a night playing, 9-10 hours from morning till I get back from work with my bot online (better sales than overnight...), doing other things on weekends. ISP4: Purchased Unlimited ISDN account at a premium fee. Disconnected for using 1300 hours the second month. (channel hours, 2 channels count time at twice the rate). After signing up with another ISP determined that the router they made me buy from them (We won't allow you to connect with a netgear. You must use our 3-com ISDN PoS router. Oh yes, you must have a block of static ip's if you want to use multiple computers with ISDN with us, we won't allow you to use a nat boundary. Your router will be accessible from our side so we can reconfigure it. Oh yes we charge lots of cash for static IPs.) was not working properly... would not drop channels (experiment: connect, transfer enough data to bring up BOD for second channel, disconnect network from router, go to work. Router set for 2 min BOD channel drop and 5 min inactivity timeout. Router still online when back from work.) So it's out there... you may not do it (I applaud you). the ISP I worked for didn't do it (they tracked hours and bytes, but unlimited accounts were just that, unlimited), and my current ISP isn't looking over my shoulder too much, but it is out there. Besides, to get back on the original topic, nothing you said refutes my point (and I am not saying you wanted to, please understand that. I think you actually agree with me.), which is that ISPs (except when they charge for overage or overtime, and most accounts don't have provisions for that.. at least most I've seen do not) do not make more money on heavy usage. They make the most money on light usage. Therefore the ISP's are have little to no motivation to write these viruses. Now if you will excuse me I have 5 machines to work on who use the local cable provider that appear to have the latest infection... presumably because the cable ISP's entire virus protection scheme involves auto detecting if someone seems to have been infected (lots of email outbound traffic) and shutting them off till they come in with a clean bill of health from a tech, and a receipt that shows they have purchased Norton antivirus (only Norton... nothing else will be accepted) and presumably installed it. |
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