>One other point: some cable companies not only cap the speeds, but cap >the total amount of data transferred. If you use a lot bandwidth in, >say, a month, they may consider you a 'bandwidth hog' and send you a >warning or disable your service. DSL providers may do this too, but I >haven't heard of it. Find out if there's a bandwidth limit, what it is, >how you can measure how much you've used, and how it's enforced.
I was researching this recently, and found a few interesting things. "big" companies who offer DSL usually don't monitor DSL accounts, unless there is a specific problem. Smaller ISP companies sometimes do, but all they do is check the top 10 bandwidth usages as a snapshot, and if the same name shows up more than X times, they monitor it for the month. I was digging into this as I wanted to know if I was anywhere near the limits for my "pro" account, and they warned me "your don't ever want to get monitored". ;-) All DSL providers are paying for total bandwidth. So they don't like high end users, but if the percentage of them remains small, they don't care. Its noise. But if a significant percent start using up the lines, and they have to buy more bandwidth, instead of doing so, they start looking for who they can "force" into a higher paying account, or failing that, get rid of. Cable does it more regularly, but they don't tell you ,and if they decide you use too much, simply warn you, and turn you off if you violate again. I do not believe they can "cap" usage, but they can disconnect you. Its a fascinating world. I was looking into this as I am investigating a product which would help users serve their own web pages/photos/sites, without paying for ISP's. It could be a hot item, or it could still be premature. Joe Theisman: "The word 'genius' isn't applicable to the game of football. A genius is someone like Norman Einstein." (good work Joe!) Mark James SoftRAID, LLC mjames@ softraid.com ___________________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe send a mail message with a SUBJECT line of "unsubscribe" to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
