[TriLUG] OT - TWC bandwidth caps on the way?

Tue Jun 3 12:59:37 EDT 2008

It just occurred to me that this is a very effective way to kill Vonage or
other VOIP providers on their network.  I somehow doubt that TWC digital
phone service is counted against that bandwidth cap, but you can be damned
sure that Vonage or Skype are counted against that 40GB.  I wonder how much
bandwidth is taken by a 1 hr conversation on Vonage.....

My issue will be with my mail server.  I wouldn't be surprised if I get
10-20GB per month in spam and viruses alone.  Which brings up another
issue....could you sue Microsoft for the overrun cost of your monthly cable
Internet bill if your PC gets infected with a self-replicating virus,
malware program, trojan or worm that comes as a result of an OS exploit?  Or
other software providers, for that matter, if their product is the
vulnerable one.  Apple could get sued for such things as a result of
vulnerabilities in Safari, for example.

Let's also talk about sabotage.  Find your enemy online and start hping2 to
constantly connect to some open port from a spoofed IP.  Do it unobtrusively
enough, and you wouldn't get caught easily, but you might push him over the
top of his bandwidth cap and cost him money.  How is TWC going to protect
against that type of fraud?

Look, I can see bandwidth caps on budget tiers of service, like their RR
Lite service, and may be even on the standard tier, but there should
absolutely be an uncapped tier as well.  Hell, just trying to use bittorrent
to pull down a Linux distro.  The Debian DVD image is 4.4GB alone, meaning
11% of the bandwidth cap mentioned in that article, even before it's
installed and patches and security updates are applied.

-Ben Pitzer

On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 11:59 AM, <OlsonE at aosa.army.mil> wrote:

> TimeWarner can suck it if this happens in our area. I'd even go as far
> as droping all of my services with them. I've had my finger on the
> trigger for a long time, until that last b/w increase ...which cooled me
> off for a bit.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: trilug-bounces at trilug.org [mailto:trilug-bounces at trilug.org] On
> Behalf Of Greg Brown
> Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2008 11:36 AM
> To: Triangle Linux Users Group General Discussion
> Subject: Re: [TriLUG] OT - TWC bandwidth caps on the way?
>
> Fark it all.  Good thing I just spent $100 on the Roku and I'm sure glad
> I
> rent movies on my Apple TV.   Ted Stevens was right... the Internet
> isn't a
> big truck you can just dump something on.  At least not without paying
> the
> truck owner, the driver, the driver's union, the highway tax, the fuel,
> new
> tires for the truck, the driver's lunch, a tax for a worker to clean up
> the
> roadkill hit by the driver............
>
> On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 11:25 AM, Jason Watts <jsnonzzr at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Wasn't it posted by someone that when you guys got your rate increase,
> that
> > the bill increase was shortly to follow?
> >
> > Subscriber:  "WHAT, my bill just went up $64k"
> > TWC:  "True, but you can download things a 2k quicker."
> >
> > Heath,  if those numbers are right and they carry over to dsl... I
> guess
> > the
> > only surfing I do will be done at from work.
> > On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 10:58 AM, Nick Goldwater <trilug at dogstar1.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > If all of this is in the works and they are oversubscribed then why
> boost
> > > the speeds?
> > > I sort of like the idea of no speed caps and perhaps 0.15 per gig...
> > > similar to Amazon pricing.
> > >
> > > Nick
> > >
> > >
> > > ----- "Heath Roberts" <htroberts at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > | Interesting. For $54.90 per month, you can use 15 megabits per
> second
> > > | for 26
> > > | minutes (40-gigabyte cap, assumed 10 bits per byte). If you
> include
> > > | IP
> > > | overhead, maybe 20-23 minutes per month. After that it's $90/hr,
> or
> > > | $64K per
> > > | month. That should certainly help "finance the needed investment
> in
> > > | the
> > > | infrastructure".
> > > |
> > > | I know that broadband access has always been oversubscribed, and
> the
> > > | providers have been extremely close-lipped about by how much, but
> this
> > > | seems
> > > | to say it's by a factor of 2000 or so.
> > > |
> > > | On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 10:14 AM, Ben Pitzer <bpitzer at gmail.com>
> > > | wrote:
> > > |
> > > | > Suprised that no one has posted this here yet.  Could this be
> the
> > > | end of
> > > | > the
> > > | > basically unfettered server functionality on TWC's network?  I'm
> > > | thinking
> > > | > that it may be, for me at least.
> > > | >
> > > | >
> > > |
> >
> http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jwm8wu3jZWZLcKfIlycqFqFegknwD9126HN8A
> > > | >
> > > | > Let the discussions begin.
> > > | > --
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> > > | >
> > > |
> > > |
> > > |
> > > | --
> > > | Heath Roberts
> > > | htroberts at gmail.com
> > > | --
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