I thought data caps for home internet were a thing of the past…
I’ve somewhat recently moved back to a very rural area of the Midwest. Small town. No stop lights. Biggest businesses other than the bars are Casey’s, Subway, and Dollar General.
And we have one ISP (not counting DSL) — Mediacom. When we first signed up, I had to go with the second service tier. But not because of speeds, but so I could have a reasonable 1 TB/mo data cap.
Lucky me, they increased the cap to 1.5 TB. 🙄
I hope that in my lifetime I can see ISPs regulated as a public utility.
This comes off as flippant, but it’s viable at least on a small scale as a WISP. Point to point wifi has become both good and cheap, with a pair of devices from companies like tplink or ubiquiti running around $200.
You can “shoot” wifi over air for miles now with near pinpoint accuracy. If your area has a tall landmark(water tower, grain elevator, etc) or is willing to let you put up a tower, you can trench line to just that location and load it up with WAPS to shoot wifi to customers in the surrounding area. You can also often use this customers as repeaters to widen the coversge.
Ideally, you would want to find 50-100 neighbors, or whatever your bandwidth/range could handle. Take a $1000 deposit or whatever seems sane to cover initial costs, giving them their first “X” months free. Maintain the system for that time period, then you are generating a profit and providing much better service.
Where I am, there was only one provider of internet for a long time, and I was paying for a plan that’s more or less what you have right now. Then another company came in and laid fiber, and both companies slashed prices and now I get over double my download speed, no data cap, and something crazy like 50x the old upload speed all for like 20 dollars less a month! Before I switched to the fiber company, the first company even increased my download speeds without increasing the price! Anyone who says competition doesn’t change things is crazy.
I live in a large city and as of last year I have two choices for high speed home internet. I was paying $70/month for 300/20 with cable, now I have fiber and pay $70/month for 300/300. At least the first year was cheaper as a new customer and the faster upload speed is helpful for work from home.
Yeah, the ISP cartels sucks. I’ve been stuck paying $170/mo for uncapped 1000/35mbps connection.
Thankfully, before the end of the year, a local ISP is moving into my area. They offer uncapped symmetrical gigabit, for $75/mo… I’ll be saving $95/mo for BETTER service.
The longstanding ISP cartels should seriously be punished for the abuse of their market positions and failure to appropriately use government funding they’ve been given.
Same boat here… and then the “default cap” is nothing. Between work and family, we hit the data cap of 1.25TB within three weeks.
Any place I can find more info about the “end of the year” timeframe you mentioned? A new ISP is also rolling in my area, but their site has been vague on time.
The main street into our house currently has it available, but our actual address not yet… driving me a little crazy.
Yeah that’s abysmal, but it’s a result of the fact that docsis has always been an asymmetrical standard in which upload speeds are lower than download. I recently moved house and my old ISP was fiber to prem, we had symmetrical gigabit. New house is cable ISP that only offers 1000/50… While docsis 3.0 supports up to 200mbps up. Bunch of greedy bastards.
What country are you in the midwest of? That really sucks, I emphasise :-(
I know they have a lot of data aps like that in developing nations still, like those in Africa, but generally in the western world we moved past those around 15 years ago at least, thank the gods. I’ve not even had a date limit on my phone since 2014, so handy for tethering the laptop when I’m on the move!
Perhaps unpopular opinion but I don’t know why people are saying they want ISPs to be treated like a utility. Most utilities charge based on how much you use… I don’t have a data cap at the moment but I’d much rather have a cap than a charge per GB used…
For most utilities (water, electricity), there’s a relatively linear relationship between the tangible value provided (energy used, water dispensed) and the cost to provide it (coal burned, water sourced/treated). Even for wind- or hydro-powered electricity, the amount that everybody uses has a proportional amount of wear on the system and consequent required maintenance.
But not so much for ISPs. Instead, you’re basically paying for a “fictional” amount (speed) of a non-tangible product. Granted, there is a linear relationship to the amount of electricity the ISP uses to provide each bit, but it’s negligible.
Instead, what you’re paying for with internet is essentially to recoup the fixed costs of the provider’s equipment. They do need to upgrade every so often to accommodate more capacity and faster speeds, but this is proportional to speeds provided and not data volume used.
Germany calling. Shot internet here. On my village (close to Ulm) telecom will give you a maximum 16mb dsl which in reality is around 8 down for 40€ a month.
Installed Starlink and get 150 to 250 down and 30 up for 65 a month.
I live in México and pay 1119 MXN (≈ 65 USD) per month for 600/100. It also includes TV channels and a phone line. I’m satisfied with my ISP. They’ve never had an outage and stuff just works!
I’ve used to temporarily live with 100mbps internet (~95mbps up/down). What really helped me:
CAKE queue (QoS stuff) - every device gets fair share of internet.
Since I was lucky to have static speeds - bufferbloat was also eliminated.
QoS - my seedbox had only a spare internet. Which means if everyone/me uses internet at max, then seedbox would have literaly 0 bits per second throughput, and would get it once there is spare throughput available.
Local DNS-based adblocker. I prefer blocky, but others prefer Pi-Hole. Blocky has a feature to pre-cache commonly used domains, so additional internet performance. :)
Local DNS-based adblocker. I prefer blocky, but others prefer Pi-Hole. Blocky has a feature to pre-cache commonly used domains, so additional internet performance. :)
Blocky is written in Go, which I understand is an interpreted language program, versus a compiled language program. Please correct me on this if I’m wrong.
If I’m right, then what kind of performance issues if any do you see using Blocky? I asked this assuming that an interpreted program will run slower than a compiled one.
Blocky is written in Go, which I understand is an interpreted language program, versus a compiled language program. Please correct me on this if I’m wrong.
Yup, you are completelly wrong.
If I’m right, then what kind of performance issues if any do you see using Blocky? I asked this assuming that an interpreted program will run slower than a compiled one.
N/A
Go is awesome. My favorite programming language. <3
Blocky has the same functionality, but it also detects which domains are frequently requested, therefore puts them into “always keep up to date in cache”.
Basically let’s say that many devices keep requesting for “google.com”, blocky detects it as frequently reqiested domain, and as soon as it expires, instead of removing from cache, blocky simply refreshes it’s value and keeps in cache. Expires again? Refresh and keep in cache again. And does this idefinitely.
Let’s say “google.com” TTL time is 10 minutes. Once 10 minutes passes - blocky should remove it from cache, but because precatching is enabled - it will refresh it instead of removal.
I’m paying $115/mo for 1G down 30M up, no data cap.
I WAS paying $150 for the same until I called and bitched that new subscribers were getting the same for $89. So, still getting fucked, but at least they’re using lube now.
There’s fiber literally on the next street over from me. Come the fuck on guys - fiber in my neighborhood. Let’s fucking gooooooooooo already. You’ve been teasing me for years. Quit pulling my hair and fuck me already damn.
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Build your own ISP :)
This comes off as flippant, but it’s viable at least on a small scale as a WISP. Point to point wifi has become both good and cheap, with a pair of devices from companies like tplink or ubiquiti running around $200.
You can “shoot” wifi over air for miles now with near pinpoint accuracy. If your area has a tall landmark(water tower, grain elevator, etc) or is willing to let you put up a tower, you can trench line to just that location and load it up with WAPS to shoot wifi to customers in the surrounding area. You can also often use this customers as repeaters to widen the coversge.
For a real life example, some folk living in the islands off the coast of Washington started their own from scratch.
Also theoretically you can co-pay with your neighbour. Both of you are unlikely to utilize full channel at the same time anyway.
Ideally, you would want to find 50-100 neighbors, or whatever your bandwidth/range could handle. Take a $1000 deposit or whatever seems sane to cover initial costs, giving them their first “X” months free. Maintain the system for that time period, then you are generating a profit and providing much better service.
Except big ISPs will sue your ass
How?
Where I am, there was only one provider of internet for a long time, and I was paying for a plan that’s more or less what you have right now. Then another company came in and laid fiber, and both companies slashed prices and now I get over double my download speed, no data cap, and something crazy like 50x the old upload speed all for like 20 dollars less a month! Before I switched to the fiber company, the first company even increased my download speeds without increasing the price! Anyone who says competition doesn’t change things is crazy.
Competition is beautiful ain’t it?
I live in a large city and as of last year I have two choices for high speed home internet. I was paying $70/month for 300/20 with cable, now I have fiber and pay $70/month for 300/300. At least the first year was cheaper as a new customer and the faster upload speed is helpful for work from home.
deleted by creator
Yeah, the ISP cartels sucks. I’ve been stuck paying $170/mo for uncapped 1000/35mbps connection.
Thankfully, before the end of the year, a local ISP is moving into my area. They offer uncapped symmetrical gigabit, for $75/mo… I’ll be saving $95/mo for BETTER service.
The longstanding ISP cartels should seriously be punished for the abuse of their market positions and failure to appropriately use government funding they’ve been given.
Same boat here… and then the “default cap” is nothing. Between work and family, we hit the data cap of 1.25TB within three weeks.
Any place I can find more info about the “end of the year” timeframe you mentioned? A new ISP is also rolling in my area, but their site has been vague on time.
The main street into our house currently has it available, but our actual address not yet… driving me a little crazy.
Hope the new one is available for you soon.
Oh they appropriated it all right, straight into their yachts and mansions.
That download/upload dichotomy should be illegal in and of itself!
Yeah that’s abysmal, but it’s a result of the fact that docsis has always been an asymmetrical standard in which upload speeds are lower than download. I recently moved house and my old ISP was fiber to prem, we had symmetrical gigabit. New house is cable ISP that only offers 1000/50… While docsis 3.0 supports up to 200mbps up. Bunch of greedy bastards.
What country are you in the midwest of? That really sucks, I emphasise :-(
I know they have a lot of data aps like that in developing nations still, like those in Africa, but generally in the western world we moved past those around 15 years ago at least, thank the gods. I’ve not even had a date limit on my phone since 2014, so handy for tethering the laptop when I’m on the move!
I’m in the UK, for reference :-)
The Western world, try anywhere. I’m from Eastern Europe and I haven’t had a data cap even on my mobile network for a while.
I’ve never even seen even offers of data capped wire connections in person.
Give me your sim card please
Can’t, it’s an e-sim.
But you can get your own for 30 EUR here with no data cap, or 10 EUR with a data cap.
Just curious, which country is “here”
The NL.
Mediacom is an American telco.
The FCC is still to my knowledge taking public comments about data caps:
https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us/requests
May be worth people here commenting about how they are ridiculous
deleted by creator
Perhaps unpopular opinion but I don’t know why people are saying they want ISPs to be treated like a utility. Most utilities charge based on how much you use… I don’t have a data cap at the moment but I’d much rather have a cap than a charge per GB used…
For most utilities (water, electricity), there’s a relatively linear relationship between the tangible value provided (energy used, water dispensed) and the cost to provide it (coal burned, water sourced/treated). Even for wind- or hydro-powered electricity, the amount that everybody uses has a proportional amount of wear on the system and consequent required maintenance.
But not so much for ISPs. Instead, you’re basically paying for a “fictional” amount (speed) of a non-tangible product. Granted, there is a linear relationship to the amount of electricity the ISP uses to provide each bit, but it’s negligible.
Instead, what you’re paying for with internet is essentially to recoup the fixed costs of the provider’s equipment. They do need to upgrade every so often to accommodate more capacity and faster speeds, but this is proportional to speeds provided and not data volume used.
Germany calling. Shot internet here. On my village (close to Ulm) telecom will give you a maximum 16mb dsl which in reality is around 8 down for 40€ a month.
Installed Starlink and get 150 to 250 down and 30 up for 65 a month.
Let’s be real here, for a gas station Casey’s has damn good pizza.
I live in México and pay 1119 MXN (≈ 65 USD) per month for 600/100. It also includes TV channels and a phone line. I’m satisfied with my ISP. They’ve never had an outage and stuff just works!
Looking at all you guys with your gigabit connections, meanwhile I’m in Aus and lucky to get 30 down and 15 up
Wish i had 15 up, im getting 40 down 3 up. They started putting fiber down my street but not active yet, cant wait to go to 1 gig
I’ve used to temporarily live with 100mbps internet (~95mbps up/down). What really helped me:
Blocky is written in Go, which I understand is an interpreted language program, versus a compiled language program. Please correct me on this if I’m wrong.
If I’m right, then what kind of performance issues if any do you see using Blocky? I asked this assuming that an interpreted program will run slower than a compiled one.
Yup, you are completelly wrong.
N/A
Go is awesome. My favorite programming language. <3
To confirm, Go is a compiled language?
Yes, just like rust. It compiles into a single binary.
Thanks.
https://0xerr0r.github.io/blocky/v0.21/ This? I’ll have to give it a try later. Pihole has a cache also though, does this do something different?
Yes, this one.
The cache you are referring to is basically:
Blocky has the same functionality, but it also detects which domains are frequently requested, therefore puts them into “always keep up to date in cache”.
Basically let’s say that many devices keep requesting for “google.com”, blocky detects it as frequently reqiested domain, and as soon as it expires, instead of removing from cache, blocky simply refreshes it’s value and keeps in cache. Expires again? Refresh and keep in cache again. And does this idefinitely.
Let’s say “google.com” TTL time is 10 minutes. Once 10 minutes passes - blocky should remove it from cache, but because precatching is enabled - it will refresh it instead of removal.
Check documentation for details. ✌️
Very cool thank you!
Not eligible yet for the fttp upgrade? Hang in there mate.
I got upgraded from fttn to fttp at the start of this year.
20€ a month for 200/20 on cable with unlimited data. Im expecting 500/200 after I move to fiber this month and hope <30€. Damn some of you pay a lot 😮
I’m paying $115/mo for 1G down 30M up, no data cap.
I WAS paying $150 for the same until I called and bitched that new subscribers were getting the same for $89. So, still getting fucked, but at least they’re using lube now.
There’s fiber literally on the next street over from me. Come the fuck on guys - fiber in my neighborhood. Let’s fucking gooooooooooo already. You’ve been teasing me for years. Quit pulling my hair and fuck me already damn.