Last year I wrote articles about how I frequently went over Comcast’s 250GB threshold and was NEVER called or warned about going. I feel that Comcast monitored its network by region and would not call people in regions that were less threatened by network congestion. Thus, living in a suburb of the Twin Cities, I hardly doubt most my surrounding neighbors know about bitorrent, or any sort of P2P.
We recently moved to a new townhouse in March of 2012. We’re still in the same city, but just a little further south. Ever since we joined with Comcast again in March, I have not been able to see my bandwidth meter when I login to my account. After Googling what the reasoning could be, I learned that Comcast got rid of their 250GB limit in May! Exciting, right!? Not quite… it looks like Comcast is axing their 250GB cap to give everyone a 300GB limit and then start charging $10 more for every 50GB you go over. Yikes! As you can see from some of my previous posts, I have easily gone over this limit by day 15.
From what I can find, Comcast is “still” calling customers that are going over the 250GB limit. However, this month I know I have easily gone over 500GB because I’m working on getting my torrent ration back to 1:1 for some of the private sites I belong to.
If you’re worried like me, don’t sweat it right now. Comcast is testing their new bandwidth structure in Nashville, TN. Until they roll this new plan out nationwide, then we should start freaking out! However, there’s a backup plan if you constantly will go over the 250GB limit! Switch to Comcast business. Although it’s $60/month for a 12Mbps/2Mbps connection, business class owners virtually get “unlimited” bandwidth. If Comcast eventually does flip the switch on us here in the Twin Cities, I will be switching to Comcast business Internet.
September 8, 2012 at 5:13 pm
Dude, if you’re torenting, and you want to get your ratio up? Two words: Seed. Box. Google it. You basically rent out a virtual machine on a server somewhere that does the actual torrenting, and then you connect to the seed box via FTP to download the content to your machine. The benefits are many. First of all, no more bandwidth concerns, as you’re not using any of YOUR bandwidth for uploading, only downloading. Second of all, it’s a LOT harder for you to get in trouble if you DL anything not that infringes; because your computer never never actually seeds anything. To date, no one has ever been sued for using a seed box. Think Mega Upload; they got shut down, but none of their users have had any problems. Same deal. Second of all, if ratio is what you want, seedboxes are king. You can dl your torrent and then keep it up and running 24/7, at full speeds, and it will never affect your internet speed. I can seed fifteen torrents at a couple MB/s per 24/7 and still watch Netflix streaming without a hiccup.
All this for ten or fifteen bucks a month. I use and recommend 100tbh.com; but there are a number of good services out there.
September 11, 2012 at 1:16 pm
Hey, sorry for the delay! Partying it up this weekend, recovery Sunday and partially last night
haha. Anyway, I was looking into this last night and it seems like a really good idea!
I’m not too concerned about my bandwidth right now since Comcast has yet to implement their new system. However, I was VERY curious to find seed boxes that allow public trackers to cover up my identity! I found two last night during my research and I think I’m going to go with ultraseedbox $15 service. It was either that or KPS Solutions, but I feel like ultraseedbox will be better and faster. Both of them allow public trackers… Thanks for the tip!!