Spiralling bandwidth caps a con?

[E1uSiV3]

Is it me or is there a spiralling bandwidth "war" going on at the moment?

Both Telewest and NTL are performing free service upgrades to 10Mbit. What they don't do is increase the upload caps to compensate in any way. Originally, when i was first on broadband, i had a 4:1 download to upload ratio (512/128Kbit) but on 10Mbit it is going to be closer to 26.6:1 (10240/384Kbit).

Does anyone know why all ISPs are so stingy with upload caps?

If you are downloading a single file @ 10Mbit, surely you are going to get close to maxing out your available upload speeds, meaning multithreading and ICS is going to suffer badly as a result?

If i remember correctly, at home when i max out at 450KB/sec, i end up using roughly 20-25KB/sec upload, so multiplying up the numbers gets me to 50KB+ for a 10MBit download. From this, i would have thought a 20:1 ratio would have performed a lot better, and i dont see how the overheads could not be justified by Telewest.

Don't get me wrong, i'm happy i'm getting 10Mbit at home, but i just wish these big companys would stop ignoring the people who share their pipes with several computers (which in my experience is nearly everyone i know) and give us some upload bandwidth, 10:1 would be nice

[Geoff]

On cable networks, upstream bandwidth is at a premium where as downstream bandwidth is not. This is due to the way the cable networks were originally designed. When cable networks were built no one had considered the internet and cablemodems. They were basically only interested in TV, phones and the new fangled Interactive TV.

The downstream channel is basically one or more TV channels. There are loads of those spare. The upstream however is limited (because interactive TV doesn't need much upstream) to one or more 128kbit return paths.

To fix this requires a complete rewire. This is prohibitively expensive. If you want more upstream, get ADSL.

[E1uSiV3]

Thanks for the info there Geoff, I understand now why upload is at a premium on cable networks. Interesting comment on the ADSL tho, i find ADSL speeds are usually comparable to cable regardless of what they are capable of, i'm guessing it makes no sense to give more upload to a market than what they believe is required, so if 384Kbit will do...

[Geoff]

Exactly. ADSL and Cable compete. As Cable can't offer much upstream, ADSL has no incentive to even though it technically can.

[Inox]

There is also the other obvious reason... the UK is big on stopping piracy at the moment and limiting the upload is an easy way of doing this.

I have a friend that is currently working for TW cable and he seems to think that if u were on 2Mb then your upload would be going up to 384k but if u were on 4Mb then your upload would be going up to somewhere around 2Mb. This is obviously something he has heard so i'm keeping my fingers crossed, but this is in NO WAY official, so we'll have to wait and see.

A 2Mb upload does make a lot more sense on a 10Mb download though... :-)

[Geoff]

There is also the other obvious reason... the UK is big on stopping piracy at the moment and limiting the upload is an easy way of doing this.

If they were serious about stopping piracy they would filter the traffic out. Some ISPs have a half hearted attempt at slowing it with bandwidth caps. But that just means the users go elsewhere. The ISPs with any business sense at all do not shoot themselves in the foot like this.

384k upload is plenty for effective movie/game/software piracy. I can download a 1Gb torrent in 6 to 8 hours. ie, when I'm asleep.

[Ric_]

I have an account with Eclipse (http://www.eclipse.co.uk) - currently only a 512kbps ADSL account. However, my upload speed is 256kbps. No caps on it!

The connection is due to be regraded very soon to 1Mbps free of charge - just like everyone else is doing after BT dropped the cost of the DSL lines to retailers.

I also get a static IP (can have up to 5 if I want) and the usual emaila dn web space. This costs the princely sum of £24/month.

[russdev]

got to say my isp moving to (freedom to surf) seems to havce best deal mainly chosse top package and they always put my on highest bandwidth for my line so when 8 meg connection comes to my exchanage will get that dna same with 24 meg connection.

Also up rate is good..

static ip and can get extra as well..

no cap on bandwidth and no shaping on bandwidth..

Russ