Bandwidth Question

[Kal-El]

In about a week I'm moving into my own apartment. Naturally, I want internet. The problem, suddenly all the local ISP have upload/download monthly limits. A year ago when I was paying for the internet at my mom's there was no monthly bandwidth limits.

There's one company, Videotron Inc. (http://www.videotron.com/services/en/internet/tarifs-xtmplus.jsp), that always had bandwidth limitations. They have slghtly higher speeds, and because of it I never wanted to touch their service even with a 10 foot poll. I didn't want to have to deal with keeping track of what I download and upload.

A year after I cancelled my internet service because I moved in with someone that already had internet service (from the same company I was with) I called to get information about getting hooked up in my new apartment. To my dismay the company, Bell (http://www.bell.ca/shopping/PrsShpPromo_IntOptimax.page), have also began using upload and download bandwifth limitations.

While I was on the phone with the dude that hardly spoke English or French, I asked if there was any way that I could get the service I wanted without the limitation. I expected to be able to if I paid a little extra a month or signed a 2 year contract or something like that. Unfortunately, the guy told me that it wasn't possible. However, he told me that if I download stuff instead of streaming them that I wouldn't have to worry about the bandwidth.

I thought that it didn't make much difference. I thought that lets say a video that's 5mb in size took 5mb of bandwidth whether you downloaded or streamed it. So I was wondering, exactly how does bandwidth work?

For those curious, I'm interested in Bell Sympatico's Optimax 16 service. This is the little catch that's bugging me:

Sympatico Optimax 16 includes 75 GB of download and upload capacity/month; $1.00/additional GB, billed in increments of 1GB. Note: the maximum they could bill be is 30$ extra.

75GB IS a lot, but I download/upload a lot. The average anime series I download is around 5 or 6GB each. When you add that to regular internet/video viewing and gaming, I suspect the 75GB wouldn't last very long.

Anyways thanks in advance for the help!

[tehnaz]

most companies should still have an unlimited plan, they try to sell out their crap plans because they have high overcharge costs.
i couldnt recommend for your area as im in australia, but most to all companies have unlimited for around $100 a month here

we have crap services here also, fastest is ADSL2, and worst is i cant get it =( + companies here change plans and forget to tell you....

[H2O Snake]

It really depends on how much you download. I think i use over 75 gig a month. I download and upload a LOT. Luckily FIOS has not put a cap yet. I heard Comcast recently applied a cap without telling people. I think its like 200 gig and if you go over they cancel your service. I think they actually sued over it.

I really have a feeling most ISPs will be switching eventually. We are downloading more and more every year with all this streaming music/video. Imagine how much traffic you use at youtube alone. Its gotten so bad here at work, I have to extremely rate limit all streaming video and we have a T3 here and a whole bunch of other small lines.

[CrazyLSU]

I am so happy cox has not put a cap on mine yet... i am always gaming or downloading stuff. Why are they doing caps... it makes no sense. As tech advances files are going to get much bigger.

[And_then...]

Damn that's pretty sweat. Why can't ISPs here be that nice =[.

Right now I've got ~60 and with downloading it seems fine for me and my brother.

[Viper897]

Not sure what my cap is but i have FiOS from verizon and you may want to consider checking them out if they are in the area but im sure most of the high speed internet connections will work well for gaming

[Mr_Max]

I have a 2GB Limit (Wanadoo/Orange) when i first got it i got a letter telling me to stop downloading torrents!! so i thought to my self how they known i was downloading torrents... then it hit me !!! PORTS !!! that next month i changed my ports to all random numbers and now i haven't heard anything since and i download about 5gigs a months (1mb down)...

[l F0CUS l]

If you use uTorrent, it has an option to encrypt the URL so they won't be able to tell your doing torrents.

I highly recommend Verizon FIOS, below is what I get on Speedtest.net.

As far as I know, Verizon does not put a cap on how much you can download or upload, which is i great, so if you have it in your area, get it.

As for companies putting caps on how much we download or upload, I think that is ridiculous. We should just be paying for how we can download and upload per second, as it is now, not over a course of a month. Is this not somewhat like Net Neutrality?

[CrazyLSU]

I am praying that this does not happen where i live. It seems like every couple of months cox is raising my speed. That may be their response to the download needs of its customers.

[Viper897]

Focus is right. FiOS is the way to go for serious gaming like i stated before. I have had it since April of this year and i play games on wireless most of the time. In CS:Source i get a ping of roughly 0 to 5 on wireless.

[tehnaz]

Damn that's pretty sweat. Why can't ISPs here be that nice =[.

Right now I've got ~60 and with downloading it seems fine for me and my brother.

zzz i know australias services suck. very very bad. during peak my ping can double in quake - in a server based in LA normally i sit at 190/200 (which is already bad) and it can go up to 350/400 terrible, we are switching from tpg to iinet and i hope in vein it works

[Thrillbilly]

Focus is right. FiOS is the way to go for serious gaming like i stated before. I have had it since April of this year and i play games on wireless most of the time. In CS:Source i get a ping of roughly 0 to 5 on wireless.

I'll be so happy when I get back to Dallas and have that Option. I use Midcontinent right now (Dakotas and Western MN), and I was surprised they weren't running Dialup out here.