This morning I went to use my internet and was redirected to a page that indicated I had exceeded my bandwidth for the month. Granted, with my recent purchase of Apple TV, I have been using more bandwidth. But as far as I’m concerned it’s not anything crazy (the odd TV show), and it’s strange to me that I hit my limit.
I upgraded to the next plan up which is a small SoHo package for now. The part that concerns me is that my upstream bandwidth was larger than my downstream, which makes no sense at all based on the things I do with my computer. My NAT is locked down, so it’s basically impossible for someone to be stealing my bandwidth from me, and I rarely torrent. So for now, I really have no idea what’s going on.
I’m going to keep a watch on it from my admin panel for Novus and see what happens. Do all you guys on Telus and Shaw have pretty hardcore limits these days?
..bandwith limit exceeded? ugly.. hope you can use it again, soon.. and luck in getting to know why you exceeded it.
have a nice day
Chris
As you know Duane – I’m not in the Vancouver area, but the monthly limit on my DSL connection from Teksavvy is 200 GB – quite a bit more than the 70 GB that you get. For the past two months (that’s the only stats I have) I’ve been around 100 GB or so, and my upload has been higher than my download, but not by a lot. Granted I *do* use bittorrent a bit and I’m also serving three websites off my server in the basement – although they are all very low traffic.
I’m going to keep my eye on it, that’s for sure. I’m sure my current Lost addiction isn’t helping your bandwidth at all 😛
Seeing as I work for Shaw, I can tell you that we do have bandwidth limits and do enforce them, but the caps are soft and you should receive a phone call when something out of the ordinary happens. Anywho, to obtain something similar to the speeds you’d have with Novus you’d be looking at 100GB with our Xtreme-I.
We’ve also begun to hear that telus has started enforcing their limits now too, albeit inconsistently.
You do raise a good point though. Novus doesn’t provide any explanation or information as to what they see used?
Well, they originally said their limits were soft as well. What that means I’m not sure, since they shut me down rather promptly. They said they are going to charge 50 cents per gig of overuse soon, which I think it actually a better scenario (especially considering I now have a SoHo account – shutting a business down is a rather shitty thing to do). They do need proper accounting though so you can see what is used.
I’m fairly certain part of my overuse came from Apple TV. I wonder if DSL/Internet providers in Canada are going to start making allowances for increased bandwidth. Otherwise the use of those types of devices are rather costly.
I believe our interpretation of soft means we don’t shut you down as soon as you hit the cap and ask you to wait till month’s end. Normally you would get a call, have a discussion on usage, and progress from there. If it’s consistent, you’re usually asked to upgrade but I’m not part of our AUP team so this is all a guess based on what I’ve seen happen.
As for increasing bandwidth, I know Shaw has increased it’s limits at least two-fold while I’ve worked there and I’m sure it’s going to happen again sometime soon with all the bandwidth consuming applications that are out there, although, I could be saying this today only to find when I go to work tomorrow the numbers are going down (I doubt it, but don’t make the decisions).
Anywho, that’s interesting to hear as to Novus thinking of charging for overuse. Telus has been doing that for years when they’ve enforced the limits, but Novus has always been the first to say they don’t. Go figure. I don’t imagine Shaw doing anything like that as it’s a damn sure good way to get the customer up in arms when a significantly higher bill arrives in the mail.
Of course, everything is different in Quebec. I’m with Videotron and they do have “limits”. If you exceed those limits they will just ding you with an extra charge based on how much beyond the limit you went on your bandwidth.
Us here at Shaw don’t impose our bandwidth limits very much at all, unless it’s hampering the node. Shaw never redirects to a page…either.