AT&T Bandwidth cap, how does it affect us gamers?
- Thread starter Blazingdragoon04
- Start date
If you take a look at which games actually get banned, you'll find that it's actually a very small number compared to the # of games that get rated 18+ in other countries.Vault101 said:
So .. Australia is also the land of giving 18+ games to 15 year-olds.
That's largely irrelevant seeing as Australia is its own continent.Tubez said:
See, I have a 20 megabit connection, and while I download stuff from Australian sites it's quite fast ... however, even while trying to play Starcraft 2 on the SEA server, I get pings of >300.
Heck, downloading from north america is about 20-50 kilobits per second most of the time.
In short, our undersea cable is way not thick enough.
to be honest I dont know exactally but its quite fast (except a steam download went between like 20kbps to like 200kps after I fiddled around with the settings) this was 1.9gb so usually steam downloads arnt that slowTubez said:
however in the country its a little slower, but mabye thats just because we were on a plan that if you went over it didnt cut you off but just got really really slow (want to watch a video? haha reading a book would be faster) I mean I dont its speed thats the issue (most of the time) more the low limits and the cost
they are trying to upgrade it and everything, anway Its because of the infastructure in Australia
well its not a huge thing, but its annoying as I would at least Like to have a choice to purchase such a gameDanceofmasks said:
AND when somthing like left 4 dead 2 gets cencored like that it puts me off
plus wouldnt an 18+ rating help keep "bad" games from the hands of those sweet inocent children should they corrupt them with their dark ways?
Some places are already on the NBN, though. >100 megabit connections.Vault101 said:
Also, some providers offer good value.
I think (off the top of my head, so I could be wrong) TPG has a $30 per month plan for unlimited ADSL2+. But only if you live in certain places.
Yeah, I was just pointing out just how stupid the current system is, 'cos it's doing the exact opposite of what those "save the children" idiots are saying.Vault101 said:
Heck, I helped the Australian Sex Party campaign during the last election just because they had an "18+ rating for games" policy.
(first post... yay)
personaly, I think this is a cash grab. If they want to restrict traffic, how about they severely restrict bandwidth
well, I have Telus up here in Canada, and with their cheapest package; so the only reason I have no problem not hitting a cap as high as 150 is due to my bandwidth (though I don't believe I have a cap anyways)...
My max bandwidth being 150Kb/s, or 1.2Mbit/s(ish)(yea..... probably why I have no cap) in about 3 months of streaming an average of 3 hours of video a night I've only downloaded about 335GB worth (I have a meter on my desktop). I would say that would cut down on traffic, although because of this abysmal speed, it becomes difficult to play some MMOs, like world of warcraft, because it does take that much for some content (world battlegrounds and instanced raid content). It is also difficult for watching video because I can only stream 480p at the most. quite frankly, I think they would have a $#!^storm on their hands from their subscribers if they did do this.
...kinda makes me want to make an ISP so i can get around this crap...
personaly, I think this is a cash grab. If they want to restrict traffic, how about they severely restrict bandwidth
well, I have Telus up here in Canada, and with their cheapest package; so the only reason I have no problem not hitting a cap as high as 150 is due to my bandwidth (though I don't believe I have a cap anyways)...
My max bandwidth being 150Kb/s, or 1.2Mbit/s(ish)(yea..... probably why I have no cap) in about 3 months of streaming an average of 3 hours of video a night I've only downloaded about 335GB worth (I have a meter on my desktop). I would say that would cut down on traffic, although because of this abysmal speed, it becomes difficult to play some MMOs, like world of warcraft, because it does take that much for some content (world battlegrounds and instanced raid content). It is also difficult for watching video because I can only stream 480p at the most. quite frankly, I think they would have a $#!^storm on their hands from their subscribers if they did do this.
...kinda makes me want to make an ISP so i can get around this crap...
Yeah but the NBN only promises Fibre To Node not Fibre To Premises so if you don't fork out for a fibre connection to the node, you're gonna have to eat the restrictions of copper lines.Danceofmasks said:
I think my cable is getting upgraded from 30Mbit to 100Mbit later this year... unfortunately it's with BigPondScum, so they'll try and find a way to fuck me. They always try.
Brendan O'Connor has said if the State AGs don't pull their heads out of their arses on this the Federal Govt is considering taking unilateral action about it.Danceofmasks said:
ikr?RhombusHatesYou said:
My other line is with Telstra, along with my fax line.
(Business run from home, so going with multiple providers just in case there's some sort of "authentication server error" or somesuch)
It's ... so rubbish I only use it to manage my email and some web browsing.
I wouldn't touch Telstra for anything that still uses the copper infrastructure. Hell, if smaller ISPs had inroads into cable I wouldn't touch Telstra at all.Danceofmasks said:
Wow, so I never really knew that this was already as widespread as it was (good ol' american news not telling us anything about the rest of the world). It really makes me wonder why so many companies think that this is a sustainable business model, or if it is really just the product of rampant monopolies on internet services by different companies across the globe.
Doesn't mean that I agree with it in any sense, and feel that it should be eliminated as soon as humanly possible. I mean, is there anything that we as a community can actually DO to prevent/revise these bullshit systems put into place, or are we stuck fighting against a group of corporations with a rule that 95% of the world doesn't give a shit about?
Doesn't mean that I agree with it in any sense, and feel that it should be eliminated as soon as humanly possible. I mean, is there anything that we as a community can actually DO to prevent/revise these bullshit systems put into place, or are we stuck fighting against a group of corporations with a rule that 95% of the world doesn't give a shit about?
Well, I think it's a symptom of inadequate infrastructure.Blazingdragoon04 said:
The reason we get throttled is 'cos our bundles of cables aren't thick enough.
Any more traffic, and everybody slows down.
As in, the band doesn't have enough width.
If AT&T's performance is degrading due to increased traffic, this could be a way to maintain quality of service for their customers who don't use >150GB/month.
Which should be most of them.
Just sayin'
Really the bigger question is why exactly are companies trying to revert to the AOL days and put in place bandwith allotments? There is no logical reason to do so. It is not like AT&T or any internet provider is limited by bandwith so there is no logical reason to try to charge for usage in that fashion.
I worked for the Cingular which became AT&T for their wireless division and I can tell you that their ideology on usage is "We are in the business of selling air." meaning they know what they provide is basically costless (btw, 1 cell phone hour costs less than 1c to produce) So they know their model is basically gouging people and reaping benefits.
Also, consider in these uncertain economic times why is it that your entertainment companies such as cell phone, broadband, etc companies are recording obscene levels of profits?
I worked for the Cingular which became AT&T for their wireless division and I can tell you that their ideology on usage is "We are in the business of selling air." meaning they know what they provide is basically costless (btw, 1 cell phone hour costs less than 1c to produce) So they know their model is basically gouging people and reaping benefits.
Also, consider in these uncertain economic times why is it that your entertainment companies such as cell phone, broadband, etc companies are recording obscene levels of profits?
No no ... you're confusing the terminology here.viranimus said:
Data limits are not bandwidth allotments on your end.
Bandwidth = how much data is moved per unit time, i.e. speeds.
Data limits reduce the amount of traffic they get per month.
It doesn't matter if an ISP doesn't have a data limit.
Every ISP has to deal with a limited bandwidth, because there is always a hard limit on how much data they can move every second.
Where the confusion comes in is, by imposing data limits, they experience less demand on their bandwidth, and are therefore able to provide faster speeds.
All your textures are stored client side, all that's really sent is raw primitive data types on what others are doing.Blazingdragoon04 said:
Gaming is very light on Download sizes.
