Comcast to cap Internet use starting October 1st

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26444853/

anyone know how much bandwith playing HL2DM for say 3-4 hours a day uses up?

I have two other fairly avid online gamers living in the same house and on the same connection, might be time to switch to Fios.

LOL WOW!

Well it depends on how many maps you have to download, but if you play alot and download a lot of stuff, its conceivable that you could eat that 250 GB your self, with 3 people I would not be surprised if you go over.

I think Comcast is shooting themselves in the foot with this unless other companies follow their lead. Could put a hurt in online gaming.

Well, depending on the tickrate you download/upload about ~2-6 kB/s.

Paradox wrote:LOL WOW!

Well it depends on how many maps you have to download, but if you play alot and download a lot of stuff, its conceivable that you could eat that 250 GB your self, with 3 people I would not be surprised if you go over.

I think Comcast is shooting themselves in the foot with this unless other companies follow their lead. Could put a hurt in online gaming.

that's what I was thinking, Verizon could destroy Comcast now by not imposing a cap on bandwidth.

Gaming does not utilize a large amount of bandwidth. It the large file sharers and people who are downloading and uploading torrents on a daily basis. For some time it has been reported that comcast has been monitoring the bandwidth usage of its customers, those who are exceeding a certain limit regularly will be capped. I do not expect gamers to be affected by this too much unless they are also running torrent clients or constantly uploading downloading large files. By netgraph info I do not think that source can take up more than 66 kbps on 66 tick server and 100 kbps on 100 tick servers, which is not very much.

odog, you're fine. you would have to be downloading every map in the game to have a problem, you play enough that you already have the maps. my entire map folder is only 4 gigs. think about it, you would have to be downloading enough data in one month to fill an entire 250 gig hd, (minus what windows and your games take) thats insane, i mean it can done, but why would you want to. this is strickly to cut down on file sharing, they are doing the same thing in England. my entire steam directory(every steam game i have) is only 40 gigs. once you have the maps, and for servers that have 80 fucking mp3 sound files on them, downloaded the packets of data that are sent between your machine and the server are very small, if you played 24 hours a day for the entire month you would go over, but you would prolly have other issues going on as well!!!

I do not have a GB limit but BT cap my bandwidth to 60KB/sec after 6pm if i downlaod too much, it really messes my gaming up because I have to lower my cl_updaterate to default otherwise i gets the chokes.
Here is my net at 4:40PM The tiem in the pic ids wrong, it doesnt include DST.

{EE}chEmicalBurn wrote:odog, you're fine. you would have to be downloading every map in the game to have a problem, you play enough that you already have the maps. my entire map folder is only 4 gigs. think about it, you would have to be downloading enough data in one month to fill an entire 250 gig hd, (minus what windows and your games take) thats insane, i mean it can done, but why would you want to. this is strickly to cut down on file sharing, they are doing the same thing in England. my entire steam directory(every steam game i have) is only 40 gigs. once you have the maps, and for servers that have 80 fucking mp3 sound files on them, downloaded the packets of data that are sent between your machine and the server are very small, if you played 24 hours a day for the entire month you would go over, but you would prolly have other issues going on as well!!!

cl_downloadfilter "nosounds" ;D

But when you are playing you download and upload packets as well. It depends on the server and how much time do you play.

nice, what config file does that go in?

{EE}chEmicalBurn wrote:nice, what config file does that go in?

config.cfg or just type it into the console.

My capped internet after 6pm

Ive been capped to 100gb for 3 years now, and ive never come close to reaching the cap. Gaming requires a fast connection, not a ton of total bandwidth, so if youve got a perfectly clean 128k up/down line (say, fractional T1), you should be seeing better pings and having smoother play than someone with 25mb/5mb cable whos sharing the line with 10,000 torrent users and youtube junkies.

Which, btw, is of course why theyre imposing limits. Its generally only the heavy p2p/torrent users who get anywhere near those caps in general, and its certainly a big disincentive to go on dling sprees- when the price of the bandwidth required to steal a load of movies exceeds the cost of going to the store and buying them, the piracy issues that bother these companies so much are pretty much solved.

s0iz wrote:

{EE}chEmicalBurn wrote:odog, you're fine. you would have to be downloading every map in the game to have a problem, you play enough that you already have the maps. my entire map folder is only 4 gigs. think about it, you would have to be downloading enough data in one month to fill an entire 250 gig hd, (minus what windows and your games take) thats insane, i mean it can done, but why would you want to. this is strickly to cut down on file sharing, they are doing the same thing in England. my entire steam directory(every steam game i have) is only 40 gigs. once you have the maps, and for servers that have 80 fucking mp3 sound files on them, downloaded the packets of data that are sent between your machine and the server are very small, if you played 24 hours a day for the entire month you would go over, but you would prolly have other issues going on as well!!!

cl_downloadfilter "nosounds" ;D

But when you are playing you download and upload packets as well. It depends on the server and how much time do you play.

Once you have every map, I go with cl_downloadfilter "none" that way it doesn't download models and all that bullshit too.

Not sure if that works.

Try cl_allowdownload 0.

WT is right, you don't need all that bandwith for gaming.

Just for reference Mario 64 Maser has either a 5 or 25 GB limit over at cornell and he rarely ever goes over it, only happens when he downloads large movies. So I think you are all really safe at 250GB This will only effect extreme file mongers who download more mp3s and movies then they can watch or listen to. Those are the people who will freak out. I suppose some 1080p file streaming services will be upset though. Wont effect me though it will probably make my service better as the couple of idiots running kazaa all day and night will get capped.

yeah my only real concern was the fact that I have two other online gamers in the house and on the same connection, I would estimate that I use about 40 gigs a month and the others probably use about the same so we should be alright.

Fearsome has a point, this might actually make my connection better now that all the file-sharing people over at the college near where I live are gonna be capped/limited.

s0iz wrote:Not sure if that works.

Try cl_allowdownload 0.

WT is right, you don't need all that bandwith for gaming.

It does. I've already tried it.

That is another legitimate issue for comcast, up till now people have been sharing connections with multiple users many people are ignorant as to what they are doing and are sharing with their entire neighborhood inadvertently through an insecure wireless connection. This is another thing that bogs down our network with people who do not pay. And multiple users have a much better chance of bogging down the network. Companies sometimes try to make up stupid rules about how you can use the network to stop this which i disagree with. I have always said the way the whole industry should go is pay per GB of use. It is just like electricity or water which all had to be regulated to force companies to charge per unit in order to get people to think about using the item as a costly resource. When that happens people actually think about conserving. But when you give them unlimited bandwidth they try to hog as much as they can with no thought as to their effect on the company, other users, and environment.

I love Canada.

snipeIT wrote:I love Canada.

I love Snipe.

lol

I am with Virgin media (no puns) they have not set a cap but have signed up for the 3 strikes your out deal where they send letters to your house if you are caught d/l illegal mp3's and whatnot then after 3 letters they simply cut your connection...supposedly, but currently they are not willing to cut off your connection so they may impose a cap instead of cutting you off... which would be more sensible and preferable for both parties. Because in my house alone 4 people use the same connection and cutting 3 people off for one persons actions would seem a little harsh.

Fearsome* wrote:That is another legitimate issue for comcast, up till now people have been sharing connections with multiple users many people are ignorant as to what they are doing and are sharing with their entire neighborhood inadvertently through an insecure wireless connection. This is another thing that bogs down our network with people who do not pay. And multiple users have a much better chance of bogging down the network. Companies sometimes try to make up stupid rules about how you can use the network to stop this which i disagree with. I have always said the way the whole industry should go is pay per GB of use. It is just like electricity or water which all had to be regulated to force companies to charge per unit in order to get people to think about using the item as a costly resource. When that happens people actually think about conserving. But when you give them unlimited bandwidth they try to hog as much as they can with no thought as to their effect on the company, other users, and environment.

yeah we had no encryption on our connection for a while and we definitely had people in the neighborhood leeching off our connection which slowed it down a lot, eventually we smartened up and encrypted our network and that alone made it alot faster.

Makes sure it is WPA and not WEP the latter is easier to crack with a few tools which are freely available for linux.