Thanks for this. So glad HN limits ninja edits after a certain period of time. So frustrating when I'm hunting for an answer on Reddit, and stumbling on a thread with a bunch of "thanks, that solved it" replies to a [deleted] post.
Read the fine print in your contract. Unlimited usually does not really mean unlimited but if you think it does then consult with a lawyer. Nobody on HN will be able to force your ISP to keep you connected even if they agree. A tech should have an ID badge but they can also disco from the telephone pole if they can not access the property, it's just more hassle for them because they need the cable maint truck and they only have so many with the cherry picker lift.
If you wanted a technical answer it is probably something along the line of your neighborhood is probably over-subscribed on that laser group and or the CMTS is probably really old and over-subscribed. Even if that were the case you would not be able to force them to upgrade anything as it would not be in your contract.
As pnw_throwaway said just get a seed box. It will cost you more money but will avoid the hassle and drama in the neighborhood.
I was more intrigued by the discrepancy of my account being in good standing and a random tech rep deciding to physically disconnect the line to my house. I do have two 1Gbps seedboxes through OneProvider and those are saturated 24/7. They transfer about 300TB a month each. Having the long-term storage for preservation at home was just a bonus.
Depending on how far you are physically from OneProvider another option may be to bring a fast storage devices to them and transfer files off it to bring home. Or you may be able to ship storage to them for that purpose. They may even have a solution to offload your data to something they can ship to you. It rarely hurts to ask. Others have probably asked before you.
As for the cable company there are worse user experiences and always will be by design. Even the latest DOCSIS standards won't help if the ISP is over-subscribed in the neighborhood and/or at their edge or if they have fired or lost all their good network engineers. It will be an endless battle with their users. XFinity formerly Comcast formerly Excite@home formerly a few other names have gone through similar growing pains.
If all else fails one may have the option move to a neighborhood that has fiber vaults and hopefully a decent price on trenching it to the house or already has it preinstalled to the house. Even fiber providers will keep an eye on bandwidth hogs. Unlimited plans are never really unlimited. There is usually fine print. Get a contract in writing that allows you to saturate the link 24/7/365 and be ready for sticker shock. A few to several $k/mo.
i would be kinda concerned, what else was done when the cable was disconnected, such as connect to a sniffer,and do some back n forth packet inspection as the client reconnects and starts torrenting again.
They don't need to come on site to sniff your traffic. US law, and likely others, stipulate that the ISP is able to sniff traffic without a truck roll.
Obv if they have an issue with your usage, they should have told you that up front, but as has been litigated on HN over and over again - no one is actually offering unlimited usage of anything, no matter how many times they use the word unlimited. They may have used that word, the word may even have some legal meaning where you live, but one way or another, their capacity is limited, and your payments are limited, so their ability to serve you & their other customers is limited too. If the issues they are having really are coming from your usage, they are either going to drop you or drop the unlimited plan. Enjoy it while it lasts!
> I don't want to be the asshole who is making a shit experience for all of my neighbors, but at the same time, I pay for unlimited
What is it about the word “unlimited” that turns technology-minded people into lawyers? Anyone on HN knows that network pipes are inherently shared, somewhere. I’ve got a 10 gig Comcast fiber and I can’t download at 10 gig from Google Drive because there’s a maxed out pipe somewhere.
Believe it or not most people don’t like being sold a bill of goods.
It’s not our fault these technology companies (and others) have managed to capture the legal system to the point they can redefine words to mean the exact opposite of what they’ve always meant by trick of “terms of service” or some fine print printed on the bottom of a refrigerator in the basement somewhere.
I'm sorry, I really do think you should let the police handle the "who was that guy" angle before moving on to the technical one. It would take more than "drove a Mediacom truck, showed an ID and knew my address" before I concluded the guy Mediacom has no record of sending, and whose behavior violates their policy (and common sense), absolutely must have been either Mediacom or Jason Bourne.
I assumed from the title this would be about using overlapping 2.4ghz wifi channels, which I would probably support urban ISPs shaming users for doing.
I think people ITT are being weirdly bootlicking about the whole thing, and you're in the right entirely. I guess if I were in the same situation, I'd request footage from anyone else in the neighbourhood, or see if the neighbours can make the same call you did to track down exactly who visited them.
People don't seem to appreciate that regardless of how reasonable your bandwidth usage is, a company does not have the right to physically disconnect your house from the internet on your property without warning. In theory, they can legally disconnect your house from their service remotely, but without warning (or maybe they do, but that would have to be in the fine print) and that would also be a major problem. They'd have to assume liability for any consequences occurred by intentionally disrupting your connection.
it should be illegal to insinuate unlimited when it isn’t unlimited.
that said, it’s become so normalized by now for companies to basically lie what they’re giving to you, so ultimately there isn’t a whole lot you can do.
my grandpa used to always say “i fought the law and the law won” that should be updated to, “i fought misleading/lying corp and the corp won.”
They should still be allowed to disconnect you or cap it if you abuse it. Businesses shouldn't be forced to put up with customers that are costing them money by being unreasonable.
"Unlimited" is just the plan name / description. It doesn't mean you can defy physics. You cannot have more Olive Garden breadsticks than there are atoms in the universe.
Sure, but if you advertise unlimited data and a data rate of 100mbps you should be obligated to deliver 100mbps for as long as the user continues to pay for service.
Except that I guarantee there's some fine print in the terms that says otherwise. Also, cancelling his service means he's not continuing to pay for service.
So, you are saying it is unreasonable to take a company at its word.
You are saying it is unreasonable to understand the words a company uses as having the same meaning as understood by every other speaker, writer, listener, and reader.
And you are saying it is reasonable for a company to lie, to make claims that are the opposite of the words it uses.
Yes, the company's network resources are finite, and it is reasonable to put in limits on abuse. That does not (and should not) create a license to abuse the language. There are many other words a company could HONESTLY use to describe its biggest plan that do not mean infinite when they mean finite. Any competent marketer and lawyer can find a thesaurus.
(and the same applies to "Full Self Driving", an obvious lie in it's second decade.)
It's not trespassing, this individual would have had to show an ID and be on an access list to get in to my community. He either was Jason Bourne or an actual Mediacom rep. He knew my address specifically was using a ton of bandwidth and he was confirmed in my neighbors home earlier.
I'm still trying to get to the bottom of why a rep would come to my house and disconnected my internet after talking to a 15 year old that was home alone. I called Mediacom and they said speaking to minors is against their policy and doing any sort of maintenance without the account holder present is against their policy.
So why is my account still active? Why not permanently suspend my account or throttle me instead of coming to my house and disconnecting the internet and then when I call Mediacom they say my account is in good standing and tell me to reconnect it? None of this is strange to you?
Why would he ask a 15 year old what their parent does for a living or what he uses the internet for when policy says not to interact with minors?
I would guess it's because the tech decided there's something fuck-y going on on your home network. Because there is.
He doesn't know what, exactly... he just knows that it's wildly abnormal and jeopardizing local service, so he put a tourniquet on it. He tried to ask but nobody at the house could tell him.
There probably should have been service notes for the CSRs to see, but you'll probably get a call to figure out what's going on.
I was more intrigued by the discrepancy of my account being in good standing and a random tech rep deciding to physically disconnect the line to my house. I do have two 1Gbps seedboxes through OneProvider and those are saturated 24/7. They transfer about 300TB a month each. Having the long-term storage for preservation at home was just a bonus.
it looks a lot like what you would do to foist a compromised router on someone.
if push comes to shove, factory reset the router x2 or 3, before you hand it off to anyone claiming to be mediacom.
having a badge ID is no surety. a badge can be manufactured, using a legitimate employees identity as an alias.
camera your place up, old school con men hate that, they like it when people id each other with general attributes instead of specifics.
if you are heavy torrenting, you could be compromised and serving an open relay w/o knowing, and ANYTHING could be moving through it.
if your doing anything criminal STOP !
i wouldnt be surprised if the logs on your router are what they really want, regardless of who they are. cops or crooks.
I was with you at the 14tb a month not being much until I reread the post and noticed uploading 10tb a month. That's fucking stupid. ISPs have ALWAYS cared more about upload.
Original question from before it was edited:
https://web.archive.org/web/20260415000855/https://news.ycom...
Edit: I wasn't the SPNer
Deleted the post and deleted their account an hour after posting this, how bizarre.
Actual original post: <https://reddit.com/r/datahoarder/comments/1sljeh6/my_isp_is_...>
That one got deleted too.
Thanks for this. So glad HN limits ninja edits after a certain period of time. So frustrating when I'm hunting for an answer on Reddit, and stumbling on a thread with a bunch of "thanks, that solved it" replies to a [deleted] post.
HN does a lot of things that it doesn't really tell the user it's doing, like this which has annoyed me in the past.
Read the fine print in your contract. Unlimited usually does not really mean unlimited but if you think it does then consult with a lawyer. Nobody on HN will be able to force your ISP to keep you connected even if they agree. A tech should have an ID badge but they can also disco from the telephone pole if they can not access the property, it's just more hassle for them because they need the cable maint truck and they only have so many with the cherry picker lift.
If you wanted a technical answer it is probably something along the line of your neighborhood is probably over-subscribed on that laser group and or the CMTS is probably really old and over-subscribed. Even if that were the case you would not be able to force them to upgrade anything as it would not be in your contract.
As pnw_throwaway said just get a seed box. It will cost you more money but will avoid the hassle and drama in the neighborhood.
I was more intrigued by the discrepancy of my account being in good standing and a random tech rep deciding to physically disconnect the line to my house. I do have two 1Gbps seedboxes through OneProvider and those are saturated 24/7. They transfer about 300TB a month each. Having the long-term storage for preservation at home was just a bonus.
Depending on how far you are physically from OneProvider another option may be to bring a fast storage devices to them and transfer files off it to bring home. Or you may be able to ship storage to them for that purpose. They may even have a solution to offload your data to something they can ship to you. It rarely hurts to ask. Others have probably asked before you.
As for the cable company there are worse user experiences and always will be by design. Even the latest DOCSIS standards won't help if the ISP is over-subscribed in the neighborhood and/or at their edge or if they have fired or lost all their good network engineers. It will be an endless battle with their users. XFinity formerly Comcast formerly Excite@home formerly a few other names have gone through similar growing pains.
If all else fails one may have the option move to a neighborhood that has fiber vaults and hopefully a decent price on trenching it to the house or already has it preinstalled to the house. Even fiber providers will keep an eye on bandwidth hogs. Unlimited plans are never really unlimited. There is usually fine print. Get a contract in writing that allows you to saturate the link 24/7/365 and be ready for sticker shock. A few to several $k/mo.
i would be kinda concerned, what else was done when the cable was disconnected, such as connect to a sniffer,and do some back n forth packet inspection as the client reconnects and starts torrenting again.
They don't need to come on site to sniff your traffic. US law, and likely others, stipulate that the ISP is able to sniff traffic without a truck roll.
> I pay for unlimited
Obv if they have an issue with your usage, they should have told you that up front, but as has been litigated on HN over and over again - no one is actually offering unlimited usage of anything, no matter how many times they use the word unlimited. They may have used that word, the word may even have some legal meaning where you live, but one way or another, their capacity is limited, and your payments are limited, so their ability to serve you & their other customers is limited too. If the issues they are having really are coming from your usage, they are either going to drop you or drop the unlimited plan. Enjoy it while it lasts!
> I don't want to be the asshole who is making a shit experience for all of my neighbors, but at the same time, I pay for unlimited
What is it about the word “unlimited” that turns technology-minded people into lawyers? Anyone on HN knows that network pipes are inherently shared, somewhere. I’ve got a 10 gig Comcast fiber and I can’t download at 10 gig from Google Drive because there’s a maxed out pipe somewhere.
Believe it or not most people don’t like being sold a bill of goods.
It’s not our fault these technology companies (and others) have managed to capture the legal system to the point they can redefine words to mean the exact opposite of what they’ve always meant by trick of “terms of service” or some fine print printed on the bottom of a refrigerator in the basement somewhere.
> Anyone on HN knows that network pipes are inherently shared, somewhere.
So? The end users aren't the ones with the power to enforce QoS policies on that contended link.
I'm sorry, I really do think you should let the police handle the "who was that guy" angle before moving on to the technical one. It would take more than "drove a Mediacom truck, showed an ID and knew my address" before I concluded the guy Mediacom has no record of sending, and whose behavior violates their policy (and common sense), absolutely must have been either Mediacom or Jason Bourne.
What's the cost difference of doing this via S3?
I don't understand whag thr archive is doing either, why does that mean 14TB upload a month?
You could go with a cloud provider that has low to no egress or ingress charges??
I assumed from the title this would be about using overlapping 2.4ghz wifi channels, which I would probably support urban ISPs shaming users for doing.
Super unprofessional, they’re not doing their own traffic management job
I think people ITT are being weirdly bootlicking about the whole thing, and you're in the right entirely. I guess if I were in the same situation, I'd request footage from anyone else in the neighbourhood, or see if the neighbours can make the same call you did to track down exactly who visited them.
People don't seem to appreciate that regardless of how reasonable your bandwidth usage is, a company does not have the right to physically disconnect your house from the internet on your property without warning. In theory, they can legally disconnect your house from their service remotely, but without warning (or maybe they do, but that would have to be in the fine print) and that would also be a major problem. They'd have to assume liability for any consequences occurred by intentionally disrupting your connection.
it should be illegal to insinuate unlimited when it isn’t unlimited.
that said, it’s become so normalized by now for companies to basically lie what they’re giving to you, so ultimately there isn’t a whole lot you can do.
my grandpa used to always say “i fought the law and the law won” that should be updated to, “i fought misleading/lying corp and the corp won.”
They should still be allowed to disconnect you or cap it if you abuse it. Businesses shouldn't be forced to put up with customers that are costing them money by being unreasonable.
The "unreasonableness" of using what you pay for.
"Unlimited" is just the plan name / description. It doesn't mean you can defy physics. You cannot have more Olive Garden breadsticks than there are atoms in the universe.
Sure, but if you advertise unlimited data and a data rate of 100mbps you should be obligated to deliver 100mbps for as long as the user continues to pay for service.
Except that I guarantee there's some fine print in the terms that says otherwise. Also, cancelling his service means he's not continuing to pay for service.
So, you are saying it is unreasonable to take a company at its word.
You are saying it is unreasonable to understand the words a company uses as having the same meaning as understood by every other speaker, writer, listener, and reader.
And you are saying it is reasonable for a company to lie, to make claims that are the opposite of the words it uses.
Yes, the company's network resources are finite, and it is reasonable to put in limits on abuse. That does not (and should not) create a license to abuse the language. There are many other words a company could HONESTLY use to describe its biggest plan that do not mean infinite when they mean finite. Any competent marketer and lawyer can find a thesaurus.
(and the same applies to "Full Self Driving", an obvious lie in it's second decade.)
It's still unlimited if they cap you, it's just slow.
Cable internet sucks, but you’re being ridiculous. Get a seedbox if you’re torrenting that much my dude.
I believe the answers on reddit said about the same, why drag this out further?
And call the cops if the tech was trespassing.
It's not trespassing, this individual would have had to show an ID and be on an access list to get in to my community. He either was Jason Bourne or an actual Mediacom rep. He knew my address specifically was using a ton of bandwidth and he was confirmed in my neighbors home earlier.
I'm still trying to get to the bottom of why a rep would come to my house and disconnected my internet after talking to a 15 year old that was home alone. I called Mediacom and they said speaking to minors is against their policy and doing any sort of maintenance without the account holder present is against their policy.
Isn’t the answer fairly simple?
They were going to disconnect it either way, and the 15-year-old was the one that answered the door.
So why is my account still active? Why not permanently suspend my account or throttle me instead of coming to my house and disconnecting the internet and then when I call Mediacom they say my account is in good standing and tell me to reconnect it? None of this is strange to you?
Why would he ask a 15 year old what their parent does for a living or what he uses the internet for when policy says not to interact with minors?
I would guess it's because the tech decided there's something fuck-y going on on your home network. Because there is.
He doesn't know what, exactly... he just knows that it's wildly abnormal and jeopardizing local service, so he put a tourniquet on it. He tried to ask but nobody at the house could tell him.
There probably should have been service notes for the CSRs to see, but you'll probably get a call to figure out what's going on.
Sure it’s strange, which is exactly why so many folks* recommended calling the police.
I’m really unsure what you want this community to answer beyond that. There’s nothing we can investigate for you.
*Context: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/1sljeh6/my_isp...
I was more intrigued by the discrepancy of my account being in good standing and a random tech rep deciding to physically disconnect the line to my house. I do have two 1Gbps seedboxes through OneProvider and those are saturated 24/7. They transfer about 300TB a month each. Having the long-term storage for preservation at home was just a bonus.
it looks a lot like what you would do to foist a compromised router on someone. if push comes to shove, factory reset the router x2 or 3, before you hand it off to anyone claiming to be mediacom.
having a badge ID is no surety. a badge can be manufactured, using a legitimate employees identity as an alias.
camera your place up, old school con men hate that, they like it when people id each other with general attributes instead of specifics.
if you are heavy torrenting, you could be compromised and serving an open relay w/o knowing, and ANYTHING could be moving through it.
if your doing anything criminal STOP ! i wouldnt be surprised if the logs on your router are what they really want, regardless of who they are. cops or crooks.
I was with you at the 14tb a month not being much until I reread the post and noticed uploading 10tb a month. That's fucking stupid. ISPs have ALWAYS cared more about upload.