Why does bandwidth cost money?

[Wanni]

I've googled it already but didn't find any answers that I could understand, so I'll ask the great minds at MS. Why does bandwidth cost money? What is bandwidth?

I'm asking b/c I recently found out that my ISP, Comcast puts a cap on its customers of 200 GB per month. I think it's bullshit to cap customers but if they are doing it, it must be for monetary reasons.

[FM]

Re: Why does bandwidth cost money?

bandwidth...the amount of data that can be transferred over the network in a fixed amount of time. On the Net, it is usually expressed in bits per second (bps) or in higher units like Mbps (millions of bits per second). 28.8 modem can deliver 28,800 bps, a T1 line is about 1.5 Mbps.

Bandwidth prices vary depending on where you're getting it from; while a lot of costs used to be in infrastructure as well, even that's come down over the years.

The Comcast issue just began to really surface over the past couple of days...

http://digg.com/tech_news/Comcast_admits_bandwidth_cap_200_GB_month_and_is_a_moving_target

If you think about it, downloading 200GB/month is in some ways fairly hard to pull off..the average user will never reach that limit, while a few might in certain situations. As a floating limit, I'm willing to bet you surpass it in one month you're not gone automatically...

And I'm sure this "cap" is somewhat monetary in more ways then one...IMO while the speeds are good, I think still the price is a little high; I had DSL some years back elsewhere and it was slightly slower, but for over half less...so I wish I could get it now, but can't.... By the same token, a lot of providers around the world have much lower caps/month, some count it as uploading and downloading....

[Kamal]

Re: Why does bandwidth cost money?

Afaik, its mainly meant to discourage people from overusing their network resources and to help keep up their network speeds because for Comcast, their various digital cable services start getting affected i.e. HDTV, Regular TV, Broadband phone service, etc. since its all sharing the same infrastructure.

[unkownartist]

Re: Why does bandwidth cost money?

u should see it over here.....they dont have the networks installed outwith the city so were last to get the latest technology wen the cities are runnin on full speed for months sometimes years ahead of us, some packages are capped @ 2 gig of use per month etc shocking!! i recently changed my isp to an 8 meg line unlmited only to find that they have taken measures to limit the amount of bandwidth available to me er day, i complained like fuck within the first week of having the line saying that the contract stated that the line had an unlimited monthly use and its been fine ever since, they got back to me saying saying that some people were downloading hundreds of gigs per month and that BT ( the main telecommunications ompany in the uk ) were putting the strain on them because they were clogging the system i replied back basically telling them to fuck off i,m paying for that right lol ( i,m not doing hundreds of gigs a month anyway ), had no problems since appart from slow torrent speeds which i dont usually use anyway so its no a problem for me

[nabeyakiudon]

Re: Why does bandwidth cost money?

FIOS is the way to go!

[Lorn]

Re: Why does bandwidth cost money?

FIOS is the way to go!

Wish I could get it.

[day_for_night]

Re: Why does bandwidth cost money?

bandwidth...the amount of data that can be transferred over the network in a fixed amount of time. On the Net, it is usually expressed in bits per second (bps) or in higher units like Mbps (millions of bits per second). 28.8 modem can deliver 28,800 bps, a T1 line is about 1.5 Mbps.

Bandwidth prices vary depending on where you're getting it from; while a lot of costs used to be in infrastructure as well, even that's come down over the years.

The Comcast issue just began to really surface over the past couple of days...

http://digg.com/tech_news/Comcast_admits_bandwidth_cap_200_GB_month_and_is_a_moving_target

If you think about it, downloading 200GB/month is in some ways fairly hard to pull off..the average user will never reach that limit, while a few might in certain situations. As a floating limit, I'm willing to bet you surpass it in one month you're not gone automatically...

And I'm sure this "cap" is somewhat monetary in more ways then one...IMO while the speeds are good, I think still the price is a little high; I had DSL some years back elsewhere and it was slightly slower, but for over half less...so I wish I could get it now, but can't.... By the same token, a lot of providers around the world have much lower caps/month, some count it as uploading and downloading....

I can download 200 gigs in a week, let alone a month...bit torrent + soulseek = a shitload of bandwidth (and no, thats not porn, for those of you thinking it). My ISP is unlimited down and up, and i'm locked in on the contract. gotta love it!

[FM]

Re: Why does bandwidth cost money?

Oh I do the same with BitTorrent and a few community-based sites and if I don't download it, I can reach 200GB on a download/upload combination...but that's once in a while, not literally every month...

Out where I am (in a more rural section) I doubt that things are sorely affected, much less a lot of people having high-speed and those that do no one probably works it that much As well as all the other services that Comcast provides (and there are other cable providers around the regional area as well)

[neutrino]

Re: Why does bandwidth cost money?

It costs $$$ for your ISP to connect to another ISP. These Telco costs are passed onto you. Some ISP's throttle bandwidth to reduce the impact on their network, so if you are downloading heaps of stuff they may limit the transfer rate of each connection.