Does Cox actually limit bandwidth.

I had them for the 8 months I lived in Florida, with a 150 mbps connection. Went massively over my "cap" all the time. Only thing they did was send me emails. No extra charges or anything. Absolutely love / miss their service. Now I'm on the other coast and stuck with Comcast right now. >____<
 
Don't trust Cox's metering, it's a little suspicious. I can't see my monthly consumption past the last three months, and one of the months reported is WAY below what I actually used. And the metering isn't always available.

I watch a lot of VOD, and I'm consistently 150-200% over my limit. I don't even get emails on it now. But I've never felt throttled or limited.
 
Most ISP's are just not "enforcing" overage charges. Doesn't mean they don't have them. In fact many have already stated they will be coming back in the future and I don't see why they would lie. The opportunity to profit in a declining subscriber market is huge.

Imagine what cell phone service providers did from the beginning. Charge you $20 for unlimited text messages that cost the network nothing. Charging you $20 to tether your phone. Taking away unlimited plans because people actually used their tethered phone as a service. Charging you higher Internet rates ($30-50 starting). Charging you overage charges to an insane level for SMS/Internet usage.

They backed off on enforcement a couple years ago for two reasons:

-The systems in place were practically broke and impossible to determine what was actually being charged. If I get DDoSed do I get charged for that traffic on my WAN port? People were constantly reporting numbers that made no sense from their own monitoring on PC's and third-party router software.

-The backlash about the overcharge fees that gave them 20x profit over what they were paying for bandwidth wholesale. Add to that the complexities of trying to maneuver themselves as "competitive" to the FCC/FTC. Right now the governments eyes are on them and they know from watching the Ma-Bell break up exactly how to avoid it. Cable ISP's are 10x smarter than AT&T was because of the fact they got to watch what screwed them over as it was happening and their rise was just beginning.
 



Looks like after I went 6x the quota they've put a speed limiter on me to make it so I can't do more than ~100 gb/day. Actually got email a couple weeks ago saying they think I'm infected with some worm.

It's possible something is messed up configuration wise on my server, but I'm doubtful. Will have to wait until it resets to see if my speeds magically go back up. Internet isn't ready for colud backups.
 
dr/owned said:
Internet isn't ready for colud backups.
Click to expand...


Oh the Internet is. ISP's aren't. Well that's not true either, but they aren't mature enough to allow the free flow of information without coming up with new schemes to squeeze out profits from artificial limits. Bandwidth does cost them money, but not as much as they'd charge/make from an overcharge per user, which is why they put them at a level that they know will be sufficient today, but eventually will cause people to go over years later.

They don't want to spend money on new gear. Unless they make 10x more than its cost per year it isn't worth it. Why you saw Time Warner and Comcast hold back new gear to purposely make Netflix traffic slow down. Bandwidth caps will prevent a lot of good technologies from taking off. One reason I'll never put any of my data "in the cloud" as a backup.
 
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