Isp Cannot Handle Constant Download and Uploads

Hidden limits on uploads —

Cable ISP warns "excessive" uploaders, says network tin't handle heavy usage

Mediacom says heavy uploaders harm network even if they don't exceed data cap.

Mediacom, a cable company with about 1.4 million Internet customers across 22 states, is telling heavy uploaders to reduce their data usage—fifty-fifty when those users are well below their monthly data caps.

Mediacom'south fastest Cyberspace plan offers gigabit download speeds and 50Mbps upload speeds with a monthly information cap of 6TB. Simply as Stop the Cap wrote in a detailed report on Wednesday, the Isp is "achieve[ing] out to a growing number of its heavy uploaders and telling them to reduce usage or face a speed throttle or the possible closure of their account." Mediacom told Ars that it is contacting heavy uploaders "more than frequently than before" considering of increased usage triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. The company said that heavy uploaders "may be under their total bandwidth usage allowance but all the same have a negative bear upon on Mediacom'southward network."

Mediacom's terms and atmospheric condition say the visitor charges $10 fees for each additional block of 50GB used by customers who exceed the data cap. But users may be warned about their usage long before they gamble overage fees. I user in Eastward Moline, Illinois, who described the predicament on a DSLReports forum in early Jan, said they paid for the 6TB programme "to make certain we wouldn't go over the cap" and had never used more than 4TB. The user wrote:

So, got a call from the Mediacom fraud and abuse department today. The rep told me they were calling customers that accept "higher than boilerplate" bandwidth usage as they are having network issues. I hurried up and checked my business relationship and only used a bit over 2.5TB terminal month. He told me my upload was 450GB over their average and if I didn't reduce my usage they would either throttle or disconnect me. I argued that I used less than half of the total data immune by my plan, but he said my 1.2TB of upload was too much and that this was my warning.

Another gigabit user in Missouri named Cory told Stop the Cap that the 6TB monthly cap "is manner more I will ever use, but I yet received a warning letter claiming I was uploading too much. I discovered I used about 900GB over the last 2 months, setting up a cloud backup of my computer. At most I tin send files at effectually 50Mbps, which they merits is interfering with other customers in my neighborhood. I don't understand."

Too much usage in "Mediacom's sole opinion"

Messages sent by Mediacom to heavy uploaders said, "your account's usage is greater than 99.5 percent of all Service customers. Due to your excessive apply, you lot are negatively impacting Mediacom's network and other users of the Service."

The letter goes on to say that it's a "violation" of Mediacom'due south acceptable use policy to "use excessive bandwidth, whether upstream or downstream, that in Mediacom's sole stance, places an unusually big burden on the network or goes over normal usage. Mediacom has the right to impose limits on excessive bandwidth consumption via any means available to Mediacom."

Mediacom provided slightly more detail to the Federal Communications Commission in response to customer complaints. A Mediacom letter to the FCC said the company's "network is built to let for more downstream usage than upstream usage." Mediacom's letter to the FCC also described the data cap as "a large conduit with a smaller conduit within it... Due to historical trends, the smaller conduit allows for upstream usage while the remainder of the conduit is reserved for downstream usage." Heavy upload use can stress that "smaller conduit," meaning that customers "can be under the total information usage allowance but still be negatively impacting the network."

Mediacom blames pandemic

Even without the overall data caps, Mediacom'southward Net plans have born limits on uploading. While the gigabit-download plan limits uploads to 50Mbps, the 60Mbps-download plan limits uploads to merely 5Mbps and the 100Mbps-download program limits uploads to 10Mbps. The 60/5Mbps plan has a 200GB monthly cap, and the 100/10Mbps plan has a 1TB cap.

We asked Mediacom why it hasn't upgraded its network enough to fully back up the upload speeds and information allotments that its customers pay for, only we didn't receive an answer. New versions of the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS), which accept been heavily hyped past the cablevision industry, can support symmetrical download and upload speeds of 10Gbps. Even an earlier version of the DOCSIS three.1 standard that'south now widely deployed theoretically allows 10Gbps downloads and 1Gbps upload speeds. But the cable manufacture has been slow to heighten upload speeds.

When contacted past Ars, Mediacom pointed to cable-industry statistics showing 31.8 percent growth in downstream traffic and 51.one percent growth in upstream traffic since the pandemic ramped upwardly in March 2020. Mediacom spokesperson Thomas Larsen also told us:

Given the surge in traffic during the pandemic, we accept been reaching out to the customers who fall into the superlative 0.v percent of upstream users more frequently than earlier. This is not the easiest topic to explicate because Internet usage is growing speedily in this piece of work from home/study from home environment, and so it is difficult to give an verbal number that puts a customer into the 0.5 percent category considering that number changes from month to month.

Ideally, we can help the customer identify the crusade of the upstream overutilization effect and help them take steps to manage it. We can offer business organisation class services that are designed to support greater upload chapters, but that's really non the point of this exercise.

Mediacom also contacts heavy download users "when their usage negatively impacts" other customers, Larsen said. "Since our network is engineered to be able to handle significantly more than downstream traffic, this happens less ofttimes."

As for whether customers who don't lower their usage will face throttling or account terminations, Larsen said, "use that causes a negative touch on on Mediacom's network is prohibited and Mediacom may implement necessary network programs to address such use or suspend or terminate the service."

Switching ISPs "not an option"

Mediacom's treatment of uploaders is reminiscent of steps taken by Cox Communications earlier in the pandemic. Cox imposed neighborhood-wide slowdowns in some cases, reducing the gigabit-download plan'southward upload speeds from 35Mbps to 10Mbps. Mediacom doesn't appear to take done annihilation that drastic, but telling users to reduce their upload usage when they haven't even come close to hitting their information caps is frustrating for customers.

"If there were any other Net options other than horribly boring AT&T DSL, with a small data cap, I would switch in a heartbeat," the Mediacom customer in Illinois who posted on the DSLReports forum wrote. "Unfortunately with my task and working from home, going without usable Cyberspace is not an pick."

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Source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/01/cable-isp-warns-excessive-uploaders-says-network-cant-handle-heavy-usage/

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