Entertainment from my ISP

[loverboy]

I nearly fell off my chair with laughter when I read this little gem that arrived in my inbox.........

Fair Usage Policy: your speed may be restricted at peak times


Dear Customer,

We thought you'd like to know that your broadband usage in July has reached 80GB.

In accordance with our Fair Usage Policy, and to protect the online experience of all our customers, if your monthly broadband usage goes over 100GB, we'll restrict your broadband speed at peak times (typically this is between 5pm and 12am, but these times may change depending on the demands on the network) to 1Mbps for 30 days.

Please note: your service won't be affected in any other way - we'll restrict only your speed, not the amount you can upload and download.

We'll email you again to let you know if your usage exceeds 100GB. For more information, including tips on how to manage your usage, please see our Fair Usage Policy. Or call XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX 8am-5pm, Monday-Friday.

Best wishes,

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

What a load of bollocks!..........they've be throttling my bandwidth (or 'traffic shaping' as they cutely put it) ever since I've subscribed to their miserable service at home. I can't wait until I'm out of contract & they become history. Thank goodness my ISP at work understands the concept of giving the customer what they have paid for & supplies me with a fast, stable unrestricted service.

lb

[ptguardian]

it is hard to find a service that doesn't throttle. mine at least hasn't capped the amount i can download. earlier this year i had a month that i down loaded nearly 400 gb.
i find resetting your modem helps sometimes. i have heard there are programs that get around throttling but have yet to check in to them.

[FLL]

From an absolute perspective this is an outrage. But from a pragmatic perspective, in an era edging towards hard usage caps this is actually a reasonable way to limit.

If I read it right, at peak times they will limit you to 1Mbps, which is about 125K bytes/sec. Which (because of their throttling) is actually much higher than what you normally get.

Though I doubt it will be quite so innocuous, in theory it shouldn't affect your eMule. Torrent speed may be limited but who cares

My guess is it's aimed in great part at torrents but also at people who watch lots of streaming video, for whom 1Mbps might kill their quality (depending where they are streaming from).