Re: Charter Cable modem people, i got a question

["mike808" <mike808@users.sourceforge.net>]

> On Thu, 28 Aug 2003 fiaid@quasi-sane.com wrote:
>> Here is teh question, is there a cap on the amount of bandwidth you
>> are allowed to use in a month?

Unless the *legally binding contract*, that *both* of you agreed to
(you and Charter), states otherwise, no. But, IANAL.

As I understand contracts, you pay them a fee. They provide connectivity
to the internet at a certain bit *rate* or range.

If there is a cap, the *contract* will say so, and it must be disclosed,
or else it is a breach of contract for them to deny you a service you
contracted with them to provide. And you can take them to court and
win. Contracts are very well known legal instruments, and such a
situation should be cut and dry. They *can* cut you off from service
(as I'm sure the contract states) if you a) do not pay, or b) do not
abide by their TOS. So if the TOS has no download cap stated, then they
are not allowed to terminate service.

Now, on to the real-world answer to your question:

Since what they are providing is measured in terms of bits per second,
then the cap is effectively bits/sec * sec/min * min/hr * hr/day *
days/month.

Only the first is variable, the rest is a constant: 60*60*24*30 (assuming
September is the month we shall talk about) = 86400 * 30 = 2592000.

So, assuming you have a 1.5mbs connection cap. That's 1,500,000 bits-per-
second. Assuming start/stop bits for overhead, we divide by 10 to divine
the bytes-per-second - 150KB/s, or .15MB/s.

If you pull that rate for the entire month of September, you have
a "bandwidth cap" of 388800MB or 388.8GB. Your "daily bandwidth cap"
is 12.96GB/day.

Since your cable modem can probably has a cap of 6Mbs, you're looking
at a "bandwidth cap" of about 72GB/day or 2.3TB/month.

That *should* be *enough* pr0^H^H^Hinformation to at least tide you
over until the *next* month, no?

I hope this puts some context onto the scope of the SPAM and virus
problems Mickey$haft systems can pump out onto everyone else, even
though your *upstream* bitrate is only about 1.5Mbs - that's still
about 12GB per day of spam and "Thank You" messages.

Mike/



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