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.