[clug] broadband usage on static IP

[Alex Satrapa]

On 11 Apr 2005, at 12:43, Bill Clarke wrote:

> i'm wondering what the standard measure for "usage" is with a 
> broadband connection with a static IP.  is it usual to charge for data 
> even if the account is not logged on?

Fix the Internet so that SYN and RST packets take up no bandwidth, fix 
BitTorrent so it gives up when the TCP connection fails. Fix the 
trackers so they remove servers from the list the way they're supposed 
to. Then start complaining about being charged for data you didn't ask 
for.

> .. i'm a cheapskate ...

Penny wise, pound foolish.

I'm on a shaped plan with Velocity that costs me $22 a month. Shaping 
means I don't have to worry about going over-quota. I only play games 
anyway - if I was running a business that relied on the Internet for 
income, different story.

People (such as you) who insist on going for cheap quota + expensive 
excess plans are doing themselves a disservice. It's like cutting the 
price of a car by taking out the seatbelts and using drum brakes to 
save $50, and figuring that you're a good driver and you'll never have 
an accident, so it doesn't matter.

For the plan I'm on, I get 60 hours of gaming entertainment a month for 
the price of one trip to the movies (it'd cost even more if I took my 
partner, since I'd be buying her ticket to). The extra $5 for the 
shaped plan means you spent $10 less on antacid tablets each month.

At least in the days of dial-up with dynamic IPs, if you were seeing 
lots of unexpected incoming traffic, you could just disconnect and dial 
up again - $0.30 for a new connection is cheaper than a few megabytes 
of excess charges.

If you're not planning on being connected 24x7 and being able to fund 
that connection (even to the tune of an extra few dollars a month for a 
shaped plan), why get a static IP?

> do other ISPs have this policy?

The money's got to come from somewhere. SYN packets do take up 
bandwidth, especially when there are thousands of them each minute. 
You'd probably be better off leaving the machine online and sending RST 
packets back (along with ICMP host-unreachable), to save on the repeat 
SYNs. BitTorrent is tenacious - it doesn't want to give up. So try it 
out sometime - leave the machine connected for an hour while dropping 
BitTorrent connections, then leave it connected for an hour while 
rejecting BitTorrent connections, and compare the traffic. I expect 
you'll have less traffic in the latter experiment. If the traffic 
doesn't disappear within about 15 minutes (because BitTorrent thinks it 
knows better than TCP or IP), then stop using BitTorrent, it's that 
simple.

What sort of excess are you talking about here anyway?

Alex