February 13, 201214 yr I'm wondering who you guys have for an ISP and do they have a bandwidth limit? If so, how do you manage the best use of the allowed bandwidth given. I'm new to unRAID and a HTPC environment. I have a large dvd/bluray collection that I've started ripping and encoding but as many of you know, it's a time consuming process. The easier thing to do would be to use couchpotato, set it up to download and process each movie I own, and be done with the whole process. I estimate that the initial setup this way would likely take a few hours versus the several weeks it will take me to rip my movie/tv collection. My fear in doing this is that I will blow by my ISP's (Comcast) bandwidth limit of 250GB. On top of that, I would like to start backing my data up to Crashplan. The most obvious items to back up are my pictures, home videos, and documents, of which I have about 500GB worth. I know I can pay and seed the data with Crashplan but again, this is an inconvenience caused by the cap imposed by my ISP. Most of my data is currently backed up with iDrive and that account doesn't expire for another month or two. I may start incrementally uploading my files (pictures and documents first) over the next couple months until I'm completely backed up. So how do you manage? If you're with Comcast, have you had any problems if/when exceeding the cap? I'm thinking of switching to their business service since I do office from home and run a part time business from here. That will help me avoid the bandwidth limit altogether, albeit at a premium price.
February 13, 201214 yr You're better off ripping than dealing with Comcast limits. First, if you go over 250 GB, you will get a call from the "security" division and you may actually be cutoff until you call. Then they tell you that you DL'd x amount and it's over their limit. Then they will tell you that if you go over the limit again in the next 6 months you wil be disconnected and can't reactivity your account for a year. Second, unless you take steps to hide your IP, you will begin to get DMCA letters from Comcast about the movies you are torrenting. Doesn't matter if you own them, the second you seed any part of it your distributing copyrighted info. Comcast has signed up for the "six strikes" plan so after a few such letters sanctions may be forthcoming. I have gotten 2 calls from the security goons, so far. Not within 6months though.
February 13, 201214 yr Author You're better off ripping than dealing with Comcast limits. First, if you go over 250 GB, you will get a call from the "security" division and you may actually be cutoff until you call. Then they tell you that you DL'd x amount and it's over their limit. Then they will tell you that if you go over the limit again in the next 6 months you wil be disconnected and can't reactivity your account for a year. Second, unless you take steps to hide your IP, you will begin to get DMCA letters from Comcast about the movies you are torrenting. Doesn't matter if you own them, the second you seed any part of it your distributing copyrighted info. Comcast has signed up for the "six strikes" plan so after a few such letters sanctions may be forthcoming. I have gotten 2 calls from the security goons, so far. Not within 6months though. I use SSL on newsgroups to prevent prying eyes from seeing what I'm downloading. However, I don't want the call the about going over the limit. When you exceeded the bandwidth limit, how far over were you? I'm wondering if it's worth it to go all out this month just to get it over with and then manage my bandwidth in the coming months. In the meantime, it looks like it's back to the grind of ripping everything manually. I'll have to reserve my bandwidth for my files that need to be backed up.
February 13, 201214 yr AT&T has not bothered be as of yet. I do have there Cable service and supposedly there is no cap if you have that (that may have changed recently, I have not checked lately). I have done a lot of downloading on my AT&T service and never gotten a call/letter/or otherwise heard a peep out of them.
February 14, 201214 yr I got sick of dealing with the Comcast caps so I switched to Comcast for business. No caps and it was the same price since I didn't have any bundled discounts with the residential service. You do have to commit for at least a year but it is transferable if you change residences.
February 14, 201214 yr Author I got sick of dealing with the Comcast caps so I switched to Comcast for business. No caps and it was the same price since I didn't have any bundled discounts with the residential service. You do have to commit for at least a year but it is transferable if you change residences. I've also heard there are no speed caps, or if there are, they are ridiculously high. I've looked into this and would sign up for the 22/5 plan (I think that's what it is) and I read that people were consistently downloading at 75 mbps. They mentioned the only thing that really slows it down is network congestion on the node. Any experience with that? A year commitment is nothing. I already have a motorola surfboard docsis 3.0 modem, will they need to install a new one or is it as simple as provisioning my account/equipment to be on a business plan?
February 14, 201214 yr Fios residential also has no caps. My 35/35 service regularly downloads at 5.2megabytes/second but I cap the download at 4.5 to avoid flooding my connection and letting other devices have some breathing room. The newer bundles are 50/20 I think and if you have more money than you really feel like hanging onto every month you can get 150/50 service as well, though getting a gigabyte downloaded in under 4 minutes makes me really question the need for anything faster than my 35/35 for now. Plus you know if you get Fios and call tech support you can maybe chat with me, I worked for comcast for 5 years and am so glad I work at verizon now. So much better place to work.
February 14, 201214 yr Author I just signed up for 22/5 business plan with Comcast. Because I'm cutting the cord with DirecTV, I'll be doing a lot of streaming via XBMC (netfilx, hulu, amazon prime, live streams, etc). I need the capacity and in the end, this will be much much cheaper. The fact that I can back up my data now without worrying about exceeding the 250 gb cap makes me feel much better. Best of all, because I office from home anyway, this is also a tax write off for me.
February 19, 201214 yr I specifically shopped around for an ISP with no limit for this very reason. I use Sonic.net, which is a small local ISP. However, if you are stuck with a bandwidth limit, you can use a torrent client with a transfer cap, such as uTorrent.
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