There shouldn’t be any data caps on wired connections, especially fiber.
Comment on Researchers unlock fiber optic connection 1.2 million times faster than broadband
floridaman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 months agoI hate Comcast as much as the next guy but I feel like 1.5TB a month would be reasonable. Even at those speeds you probably wouldn’t be downloading more, just downloading whatever you do now but faster.
cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
RippleEffect@lemm.ee 5 months ago
The only thing data caps should affect is if there’s abnormal congestion.
RonSijm@programming.dev 5 months ago
The should be, that’s just how fiber works. If they lay a 10 Gb line in the street, they’ll probably sell a 1 Gb connection to a 100 households. (Margins depend per provider and location)
If they give you an uncapped connection to the entire wire, you’ll DoS the rest of the neighborhood
That’s why people are complaining “I bought 1Gb internet, but I’m only getting 100Mb!” - They oversold bandwidth in a busy area. 1Gb would probably be the max speed if everyone else was idle. If they gave everyone uncapped connections the problem would get even worse
ArtVandelay@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Maybe, just maybe… Don’t oversell your capacity.
crystenn@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
you’re talking about a bandwidth cap, not a data cap. data caps are when you get throttled after downloading a certain amount of data or get charged extra. think phone data plans where you have 10 or 20gb or whatever per month
ArchAengelus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 months ago
You’re taking about data rates here, measured in bits per second.
Data caps have to do with the total amount of data you are allocated over a longer period of time. Usually per month. In the case of Comcast, it’s 1.5 TB/month.
If the customer exceeds that allotment during the month, they will be charged an additional “overage fee” per arbitrary unit, usually by the gigabyte.
It has nothing to do with the speed they advertise on a line, but rather a way to charge “heavy users” more.
repungnant_canary@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Data caps are simply false advertising - if your infrastructure can only handle X Tb/s then sell lower client speeds or implement some clever QoS.
There are plenty of users for whom 1.5TB is quite or very restrictive - multi member households, video/photo editors working with raw data, scientists working with raw data, flatpak users with Nvidia GPU or people that selfhost their data or do frequent backups etc.
With the popularity of WFH and our dependence on online services the internet is virtually as vital as water or electricity, and you wouldn’t want to be restricted to having no electricity until the end of the month just because you used the angle grinder for a few afternoons.
scytale@lemm.ee 5 months ago
I’m on pace for 0.60 TB this month and I’m no heavy user. I only have 1 4k TV and a laptop for work that I use all day. My wife is mostly on her phone but is a heavy TV user in the evening. I can imagine people who download and/or torrent most of the content they consume can easily hit that.
4am@lemm.ee 5 months ago
Florida man fails math, yet sgain
floridaman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 months ago
I’m not even from Florida 😭😭 Planning on a namechange for my Internet personality soon though
SmoothLiquidation@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Tell that to my (nonexistent) off-site backup.
sneezycat@sopuli.xyz 5 months ago
Why the fuck would I want that speed if I can only fully use it for less than a second before hitting the data cap? I’d rather have 100 times less speed with 100 times more cap, so I can actually fully use it however I want.
Also it’s just ridiculous anyway because I don’t even think hard drive write speeds are that fast.
mb_@lemm.ee 5 months ago
I think you meant no data cap.