I’m a network abuser. I use my internet connection for everything. VPN access when at any public wifi location (VPN ddwrt). I also use it for Streaming movies on netflix, backup for my data (mozy, dropbox, rsync for business data) and just general browsing. So overall I am using a lot of data. When comcast put their 250GB limit in place I was worried (I’ll post on this later).

What the cap did was make me think about my network usage. I realized that I have created more of my own cloud service locally (internal home backup and syncing) vs using online services. Just doing this has cut down on some of my internet usage. The main thing I can’t see changing is our TV / Movie streaming. From netflix, youtube, and hulu we are always watching something.

Netflix just made news as Netflix’s share of digital movie units, either downloaded or streamed, was put at 61 percent between January and February.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20043475-93.html#ixzz1INT6Z4Jm

That is a huge market share, as well as a lot of bandwidth.  When you watch an HD move it uses more bandwidth than a standard Definition movie.   That said, how much bandwidth are you using.  Are you consuming all your allocated bandwidth on Netflix?   Here is a pretty good breakdown of what that usage looks like:

Netflix Movies (HD): These guys are around 3.8Mbit, which means it’s about 3600MB for a 2 hour HD movie.
Netflix Movies (SD): Each of these movies are around 500-700MB each, depending on the length of the movie.
Netflix TV Shows (HD): A 30-minute TV show will be about 1500MB.
Netflix TV Shows (SD): A 30-minute TV show will be about 400MB.

Even though that is a lot of bandwidth you would need to watch a lot of HD movies to hit the cap.  Around 70 HD movies in a month depending on the quality.   That is a lot of movie watching.  However, if you have a large family (as I do) and some are using their computer, others on the TV, and ipad; you would build up some usage (I’m not sure that the netflix account would even allow this).

That is a lot of bandwidth.  Netflix is using our internet bandwidth (that I purchase from comcast) to deliver their service.   Until recently this did not matter, because comcast did not have a cap.  Now that the average consumer is using more, the providers have to find a way to either cap (conserve) their bandwidth or charge more.   I’m not against this model at all, I just want to have bandwidth available.   A few years ago, a person would purchase high speed internet and only use a fraction of it.   Now, with out knowing they are using more and more bandwidth.  Their media devices; wii, ps2, and xbox are online.   The new TV and DVD players are hooked to pandora and netflix.   They are getting more content from youtube and netflix on their Computer.    I’m ok with paying, what I don’t want is my neighbor’s youtube addition to cause my backups to go slow (I don’t want others to hinder my internet usage).

It was recently posted that netflix has 20% of peak US bandwidth usage. http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/10/netflix-instant-accounts-for-20-percent-of-peak-u-s-bandwith-use/ That is amazing.

There is a lot more going on behind the scenes on who controls the bandwidth and who pays for the internet bandwidth.  For now, just realize that if you are streaming movies you are using your bandwidth that you pay for.   It is amazing how quickly the internet has changed our TV / Media viewing.   People now at least understand what streaming video is.

I love broadband internet.  I signed up for excite @home back in 1999.  @home eventually became Comcast and my love hate relationship with them continues.   In-fact, I still use the original Motorola surfboard that I got in 1999 (it has a date on it from 1998) as my cable modem.

I have been relatively happy with Comcast for all these years in terms of internet access.  I can’t say that for my TV subscription with Comcast.   But, they have provided me consistent internet access that I have used for Work, play, phone and entertainment.  I have multiple devices in our home: iPad, iPhone, laptops, computers, macs, tivo’s, wii, etc….  The list could keep going on, that use the internet.   More that I like to admit we are always connected online.  That is why it is important that our broadband be reliable and available.

Most recently, my broadband has been reliable (in that it has been up and running) but the performance Bandwidth has been poor.   I think this will become more of an issue in the future as people rely on high speed internet.

The issue I had last night  is pretty trivial in the whole scheme of things (though it really made me angry).   The family was camped out in front of the TV in excitement of watching an ABC special called “Prep and Landing”.  The special was on ABC.com and I typically just hook one of the laptops up to the Plasma via HDMI and we  have a wonderful picture.

However, last night my kids were not loving the show because they saw more of “buffering” than they did of the content.  How, could that be?  My cable modem connection was up and running, wifi working great, and I was also online reading email.   What it ended up being was that I had the connection speed of a 56k modem.  Even as I am typing this here is my speed.

My issue from last night is not that big of a deal in reality.  I basically turned on MyFi on my cell phone, and had the laptop use 3G to get the show (My kids cheered for me).

What this does show is how reliant we have become on bandwidth, not necessarily broadband.  At the time we could not watch a show on ABC.com, we also could not make a phone call (VOIP) or get to weather.com.

I’m not sure what my SLA with Comcast is but I am guessing there is not much in there about minimum bandwidth they will provide.   I do know that my advertised speed is 5MB down and 1 something up.

In the future, I am willing to pay for an SLA and also the amount of bandwidth I use.  I realize that I am a high bandwidth user.

I’m going to keep on this topic. I was watching crankygeeks (http://www.crankygeeks.com/) which I download on tivo. An the group was talking about ISP and traffic filtering. It was an interesting conversaton. For starters, I think John did not really care about the matter. But what I did get out of it was a few people who have my same feelings. That this change if it happens and an ISP would charge you for usage (more than normal) that it should be reverse. So currently I pay about 45 – 50 bucks for a cable modem service. I have my own cable modem but they still think I have to pay to rent one (long story) If I were to be considered a high volume user (though I don’t know what that volume would be) they may charge me more per Gig of downloading.

I don’t dissagree with that model. I would pay for the more bandwidth I use. The place that I want the ISP to be would be to 1. if I pay for it, give it to me. Meaning do not throttle my bandwidth, if I’m going to pay for more usage then allow me full P2P or MB’s per second when I’m using it. So if I want to backup my hard drive online (which I do) then I should be able to do that at 2mb per second. 2. If someone does not use that much bandwidth, then don’t charge them for it. So my mom and dad have a dsl line. I bet it gets used 4 hours a day to surf the web, not much traffic at all. So the ISP should have a package for them that was Cheap.. I mean in the 10 – 12 dollar a month range.

These are just my thoughts. I can already see where the industry is going to start calling out the ISP. As we get closer to being more connected and use our internet connections for entertainment and also work the $ to bandwidth equation becomes more important.

I may think more about downloading the movie from Itunes if I am near my cap for bandwidth and get charged an extra 5 dollars for the 5 gig download. I may just drive to the DVD rental store….

Think on that one…. More posts to come…