*moan*

[Xev]

I get 5 gigs a month of bandwidth to play with.

It was 50-60mb worth of bandwidth on every Mega D fight, this was a video driver download month, there was the patch, and I had to dl a new ever-expanding texture.hogg file, so, less than 1 week into billing I've burned through half of my bandwidth for the month already even tho I didn't log on much, and usually when I did it was on the hour and 20 mins later I logged off..

Last month when the anniversary stuff started I managed to burn through about the same amount at ~ the same time frame.

*moan*

/load Fortuna

*click click*

*sigh*

I can't get too upset because I know this area didn't even have broadband a few years ago and getting goodies at the Mega D fights will help ease the pain.. And I do have some FF guides to read while trying to figure out how to start my first..

Just had to get a moan in, thx.

[Xev]

To insert something vaguely useful...

The texture file dl'd due to me doing a a Force Verify with the launcher. In my experience until now, Force Verify didn't do anything more than list stuff it found a problem with. In this case, it actually deleted my texture.hogg file, forcing a new download. The launcher was recently updated, too. (20mb worth iirc..hehe)

[General Idiot]

Wow. Where do you live that you only get 5 gigs per month? Even here in New Zealand the lowest one available is 20 gigs per month.

[dwturducken]

My cable internet provide recently instituted a limit of 250GB per month. That may sound like a lot, but my older son recently discovered the Buffyverse, and had been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel episodes on Netflix. At 12 seasons altogether, 24 episodes per season, and about 1GB per episode at the resolution on the WiiU, that alone would hit our cap before he finished. With four other internet users, we have to actually budget our streaming, particularly since my wife is taking a class that involves watching and discussing/critiquing movies. One person should be able to keep it under 5GB, unless that is his/her only internet to use.

Most likely, he's in an area where the only high speed internet available is via his wireless (mobile) provider. In the US, "unlimited" is really more like 5GB. I've never hit mine, because I have "land" internet, but what they used to do was throttle your speed to a point where it's useless beyond email and basic browsing if you hit that cap. I know there are folks here who started off with CoH on dial-up, but I'd be surprised if any of the current crop of MMOs are really enjoyable at 56K.

[Xev]

Yeah it's wireless. I live in (finally moved back to) the still a lil bit wild west in northern California.

I wish I could remember the bandwidth limit we had when I lived in Austria. It was low enough that 2 overtime working people could go over the limit just by doing basic surfing and playing EQ with their every free moment. It was cable but Internet was new in the area (small dorf) and so was usage tracking to me so I never knew how far over we went until we got the bill. I don't remember what the overage fee was either. I probably never knew. I used to just hand my paychecks to the missus and let her handle that stuff, being as we were in her country and all.

We were paying ~ $500 every month just to play EQ. That part I do remember.

When I played Neverwinter nights with my dialup modem on AOL I spent like $500+ a month to play.

I'm kinda used to getting punished for having new things  : /

Difference is, on this go with the wireless, I've finally been sucked dry of cash. So when the well runs dry the fun stops.

I've had mainstream Internet more often than not. I had dsl at my last place - they instituted a bandwidth limit of something like 250G on it, too. This is a very bad trend. Things need to continue along the natural order for technology - cheaper and cheaper and more and more. I'll settle for the more and more part - or at least not less and less.

This thing with the Wireless being so expensive won't last. Imo wires in general have their days numbered! *waves fist* *snicker*

[dwturducken]

I know the cable companies are instituting BW caps to punish customers who drop video service and move to streaming services. Not sure why a DSL provider would do that. So much backbone is fiber, now, the wholesale is pretty cheap, comparatively. (Still in the thousands of dollars, but these are providers buying it, not users.) Unless something has changed in the couple of years since I worked at an ISP, anyway.

[eabrace]

I got dinged by AT&T for going over my monthly bandwidth limit a couple of months ago because I downloaded a bunch of TV series to my DVR that I wanted to get caught up on (my DVR uses my DSL connection for on-demand downloads.)

My reaction:  Limit?  What limit?

I went looking all over their site for any documentation of that limit.  None of the descriptions of the data plans they offer say anything about a limit.  The only place I finally found any information was on of the support pages.  ('Cause, you know, people look for information on the data plans you offer by visiting your support pages. </sarsacm>)  But outside of the notice they had just emailed to me saying that I'd exceeded my limit, I'd never heard of such a thing.

Further, the support page states that you'll only get a notification the first time you exceed the limit and won't be charged extra until the third time it happens.  That's a load of crap.  They charged me the extra $10 on my next bill.

And since I hadn't previously exceeded my limit, I couldn't view my usage per day when I logged in to check my account.  (They only display your bandwidth by month unless you break the limit at least once.)  So, I had to really dig to figure out what I was doing that was eating all that bandwidth.  I started monitoring my bandwidth on all of my computers and couldn't find anything that was consuming that much.  It took me a couple of days to start wondering if it was my DVR, but that didn't make sense, did it?  I mean, I've sat through more Netflix binge sessions than I can count and I'd never come close to my limit before.  Oh, but wait... the DVR downloads everything at the highest possible HD resolution.  A ding of about 2.5 GB per hour of on-demand is fairly realistic and I'd downloaded something like 75 hour-long episodes of TV... so yeah, that would break the 150 GB mark.  (I've never actually specified a video quality setting on Netflix, and most of the streaming content I've watched wasn't in full HD, so it isn't using anywhere near that bandwidth.)

[PSI-on]

I would raise hell and bring that up. They should take that 10 off your bill, if this is your first time and everything says it is. I'd also take the opportunity to see what your limit is anyway.

I got dinged by AT&T for going over my monthly bandwidth limit a couple of months ago because I downloaded a bunch of TV series to my DVR that I wanted to get caught up on (my DVR uses my DSL connection for on-demand downloads.)

My reaction:  Limit?  What limit?

I went looking all over their site for any documentation of that limit.  None of the descriptions of the data plans they offer say anything about a limit.  The only place I finally found any information was on of the support pages.  ('Cause, you know, people look for information on the data plans you offer by visiting your support pages. </sarsacm>)  But outside of the notice they had just emailed to me saying that I'd exceeded my limit, I'd never heard of such a thing.

Further, the support page states that you'll only get a notification the first time you exceed the limit and won't be charged extra until the third time it happens.  That's a load of crap.  They charged me the extra $10 on my next bill.

And since I hadn't previously exceeded my limit, I couldn't view my usage per day when I logged in to check my account.  (They only display your bandwidth by month unless you break the limit at least once.)  So, I had to really dig to figure out what I was doing that was eating all that bandwidth.  I started monitoring my bandwidth on all of my computers and couldn't find anything that was consuming that much.  It took me a couple of days to start wondering if it was my DVR, but that didn't make sense, did it?  I mean, I've sat through more Netflix binge sessions than I can count and I'd never come close to my limit before.  Oh, but wait... the DVR downloads everything at the highest possible HD resolution.  A ding of about 2.5 GB per hour of on-demand is fairly realistic and I'd downloaded something like 75 hour-long episodes of TV... so yeah, that would break the 150 GB mark.  (I've never actually specified a video quality setting on Netflix, and most of the streaming content I've watched wasn't in full HD, so it isn't using anywhere near that bandwidth.)

[eabrace]

When they dinged me, there wasn't anything on the support page about "first", "second", or "third" time.  They've added that in the last month or so.

[PSI-on]

I see AT&T suck. I have them too.

When they dinged me, there wasn't anything on the support page about "first", "second", or "third" time.  They've added that in the last month or so.

[eabrace]

I've had very, very few complaints about the service in the time I've had them (over a decade now), but when they do screw something up, they do it up big.

A couple of years ago now:  "You can't access your connection?  Our diagnostics show that it's working fine up to your house.  Must be you."  (It was working fine for a year and a half and then suddenly stopped.) "Let's try resetting your password.  Still nothing?  Let's try ... "  Half an hour after hanging up with support, it starts mysteriously working again.  Not the first time I'd had that happen, which was why I'd called them to begin with.  But I couldn't access my email.  Another call.  "Oh, well let's reset your email password."  And my internet connection drops out.  "Oh, well, those passwords are synced now.  That changed about four months ago."  OK, so let's change those passwords to something I can actually remember instead of some randomly generated string.  "Oh, we don't have any way to do that anymore.  It's all automatic."  *facepalm*

[dwturducken]

My mother had AT&T before switching to cable for internet. She was having speed and connection problems for months, but all they would do is send out a tech, who would say the line was fine, and then they'd send her a new modem. After three, I came and looked at her lines from the modem to the demarc, the grey box on the outside of your house where the outside line meets the inside line. It's a two chamber box, with one secured with just a screw, and the other secured with one of those "secure" hex screws (most times, a small enough screwdriver will turn it, but line techs are usually in too much of a hurry to tighten them properly). Since she has a full, unfinished basement, I could visually check the lines and connectors from end to end.

Even after cleaning up contacts, she still had trouble, though not as severe. AT&T sent out another tech, he said the line was clean, and they sent her another modem. Now, the "customer side" of the demarc has a funny little connector that has multiple terminals and an RJ11 jack, for testing. I took one of the (now many) spare modems out with enough cords to get it to power on and connect to the central office equipment. Look in the modem interface, and the speed's still not right, and, fortunately, the connection dropped a couple of times, or I'd've had to leave it out overnight. So, I open the company side, disconnect the leads from the connector and clip on a jack that I kept with alligator clip leads on it. Plug the modem into that, and it was solid!

Anything "inside" the demarc belongs to the customer, meaning the wiring from the demarc to the jacks, but anything actually inside the demarc belongs to the incumbent carrier. Their testing method assumes that the demarc is a black box that always works, to the point where AT&T and QWest (and I would assume Century Link) outside techs don't even carry them on their trucks.

Man! Sorry about that. TL;DR: Yup, they sure do!

[General Idiot]

I hate when companies do that. See also: replacing $200 hard drives because a $12.50 cable was busted. Admittedly that one was my fault, I never suspected the cable until I got the replacement drives back and immediately had the same problem.

[JaguarX]

My mother had AT&T before switching to cable for internet. She was having speed and connection problems for months, but all they would do is send out a tech, who would say the line was fine, and then they'd send her a new modem. After three, I came and looked at her lines from the modem to the demarc, the grey box on the outside of your house where the outside line meets the inside line. It's a two chamber box, with one secured with just a screw, and the other secured with one of those "secure" hex screws (most times, a small enough screwdriver will turn it, but line techs are usually in too much of a hurry to tighten them properly). Since she has a full, unfinished basement, I could visually check the lines and connectors from end to end.

Even after cleaning up contacts, she still had trouble, though not as severe. AT&T sent out another tech, he said the line was clean, and they sent her another modem. Now, the "customer side" of the demarc has a funny little connector that has multiple terminals and an RJ11 jack, for testing. I took one of the (now many) spare modems out with enough cords to get it to power on and connect to the central office equipment. Look in the modem interface, and the speed's still not right, and, fortunately, the connection dropped a couple of times, or I'd've had to leave it out overnight. So, I open the company side, disconnect the leads from the connector and clip on a jack that I kept with alligator clip leads on it. Plug the modem into that, and it was solid!

Anything "inside" the demarc belongs to the customer, meaning the wiring from the demarc to the jacks, but anything actually inside the demarc belongs to the incumbent carrier. Their testing method assumes that the demarc is a black box that always works, to the point where AT&T and QWest (and I would assume Century Link) outside techs don't even carry them on their trucks.

Man! Sorry about that. TL;DR: Yup, they sure do!

yeah, took forever for them to fix my problem when I had internet. Time Warner. If you can, stay away from those folks.

First thing they do is put the blame on the customer end. Which his fie, for the first few days, but I would think any one with a sliver of common sense would think after resetting the modem 100 times didn't work then it's something else, especially on a brand new computer.

Come to find out, it was on their end. Their service box that supply the connection to the block was a mess according to the head tech they finally sent out here after two weeks. According to him he was ready to retire in two days to get away from those people.  I don't blame him.

Then they tried to charge me for those days. I wasn't having it. If they didn't waste so many days trying everything they can to assume it's was on my end, the problem probably would have been found out in two days flat at the most.

[LaughingAlex]

Not even game related, but instead job related a year ago I was using cable one for my privider, which only allowed a 5 mb connection if I wanted no bandwidth limit.  Any higher then that and they had a bandwidth limit so I was forced to stay with the 5mb since, well, my job was work at home, and I far exceeded the data limits they proposed.  Needless to say I had to change my ISP as 5mb was just not enough to do my job without problems, busy hours took all of my bandwidth and i'd sometimes lose calls for it.

That was a year ago, I'd just recently switched to xfinity and so far things have been fine here.  So far...