Comments on: Bandwidth Metering and why it hurts Apple TV

By: Edward

Edward — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 21:37:26 +0000

To check the used bandwidth from my AppleTV I wrote AirPort Flow, a small tool to monitor the bandwidth going through an Airport Basestation.

http://www.memention.com/airportflow/

By: Keith Foster

Keith Foster — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 01:05:47 +0000

@cjohn17

Interesting article in the NYT, tonight was the first time I read it. My “inspiration” as it might be was after the discussion on This Week in Tech. I will post the link you gave.

By: cjohn17

cjohn17 — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 00:05:50 +0000

You really should have posted the link to the New York Times report I sent you June 16th; http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/technology/15cable.html

I’m sure it was the inspiration for your editorial. All VOD services, ATV to VUDU to NetFlix, need to take this threat seriously.

By: rscott505

rscott505 — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 22:26:47 +0000

I had posted about this on macrumors and got nowhere, so I’m glad to see this addressed somewhere.

Unlike pvera, I have not heard about what the proposed cap will be, but I doubt it will be as much as 250 GB a month.

The conspiracy theorist in me agrees that the cable companies feel threatened by download services, whether it is Netflix, Hulu or ATV. If they can kill the competition, they will. Just look at the battle between Comcast and the NFL over placement of the NFL network.

I’m sure that some of the goal of cable companies is to limit those using BitTorrent from downloading movies non-stop, but I also believe that part of their goal is to destroy the competition.

This is just a back door around net neutrality.

By: pvera

pvera — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 18:32:20 +0000

The new proposed cap for Comcast is rumored to be 250GB, that’s almost 56 DVDs in one month. Run over the cap once, and they’ll let it pass. Keep doing it and you pay $10 for each 10GB in excess.

If you can afford to buy or rent 56 full movies from iTunes in one month, then you can afford the $10 fine for the overage.

Another thing you are not taking about is that these limits are usually applied to out-of-network traffic. As soon as one of the major ISPs hit with one of those caps, expect Apple and Netflix to push either an exclusion for their traffic, or caching within the ISP boundary.

The common guy is not going to have to worry about 250GB/month, but the miscreant pirate is going to think twice before seeding a Blu Ray rip for weeks at a time.

By: jamier

jamier — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 14:52:05 +0000

I think it is the conspiracy theorist in you. I am not sure how many HD movies you rent per month, but I think who they are looking to cap are people that are downloading almost 24/7. I have a few friends here that are constantly downloading TV shows and music from the Internet. From what they have told me they have BitTorrent going 24/7. Those are the people they are looking to put a cap on.

Also, with networking software, I am sure that the companies can find out the ‘X’ amount of data came from Apple’s site, so we will not count that as it is legitimate use. Of course then the question of what are legitimate sites come into question.

I am not worried about it and I do not feel as though it is ironic that 6 out of 10 that are talking are into TV. One of the biggest problems is most are cable connections that share the bandwidth in the neighborhood. If neighbor X and Y are downloading like bandits, neighbor Z will have slower bandwidth.

Just my two cents.