Ask HN: My ISP is telling my neighbors their slow internet is because of me
32
__z369 about 5 hours ago 37 comments
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Nevermind.
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Discussion (37 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
https://web.archive.org/web/20260415000855/https://news.ycom...
Edit: I wasn't the SPNer
Obv if they have an issue with your usage, they should have told you that up front, but as has been litigated on HN over and over again - no one is actually offering unlimited usage of anything, no matter how many times they use the word unlimited. They may have used that word, the word may even have some legal meaning where you live, but one way or another, their capacity is limited, and your payments are limited, so their ability to serve you & their other customers is limited too. If the issues they are having really are coming from your usage, they are either going to drop you or drop the unlimited plan. Enjoy it while it lasts!
If you wanted a technical answer it is probably something along the line of your neighborhood is probably over-subscribed on that laser group and or the CMTS is probably really old and over-subscribed. Even if that were the case you would not be able to force them to upgrade anything as it would not be in your contract.
As pnw_throwaway said just get a seed box. It will cost you more money but will avoid the hassle and drama in the neighborhood.
As for the cable company there are worse user experiences and always will be by design. Even the latest DOCSIS standards won't help if the ISP is over-subscribed in the neighborhood and/or at their edge or if they have fired or lost all their good network engineers. It will be an endless battle with their users. XFinity formerly Comcast formerly Excite@home formerly a few other names have gone through similar growing pains.
If all else fails one may have the option move to a neighborhood that has fiber vaults and hopefully a decent price on trenching it to the house or already has it preinstalled to the house. Even fiber providers will keep an eye on bandwidth hogs. Unlimited plans are never really unlimited. There is usually fine print. Get a contract in writing that allows you to saturate the link 24/7/365 and be ready for sticker shock. A few to several $k/mo.
What is it about the word “unlimited” that turns technology-minded people into lawyers? Anyone on HN knows that network pipes are inherently shared, somewhere. I’ve got a 10 gig Comcast fiber and I can’t download at 10 gig from Google Drive because there’s a maxed out pipe somewhere.
It’s not our fault these technology companies (and others) have managed to capture the legal system to the point they can redefine words to mean the exact opposite of what they’ve always meant by trick of “terms of service” or some fine print printed on the bottom of a refrigerator in the basement somewhere.
So? The end users aren't the ones with the power to enforce QoS policies on that contended link.
I don't understand whag thr archive is doing either, why does that mean 14TB upload a month?
You could go with a cloud provider that has low to no egress or ingress charges??
People don't seem to appreciate that regardless of how reasonable your bandwidth usage is, a company does not have the right to physically disconnect your house from the internet on your property without warning. In theory, they can legally disconnect your house from their service remotely, but without warning (or maybe they do, but that would have to be in the fine print) and that would also be a major problem. They'd have to assume liability for any consequences occurred by intentionally disrupting your connection.
that said, it’s become so normalized by now for companies to basically lie what they’re giving to you, so ultimately there isn’t a whole lot you can do.
my grandpa used to always say “i fought the law and the law won” that should be updated to, “i fought misleading/lying corp and the corp won.”
You are saying it is unreasonable to understand the words a company uses as having the same meaning as understood by every other speaker, writer, listener, and reader.
And you are saying it is reasonable for a company to lie, to make claims that are the opposite of the words it uses.
Yes, the company's network resources are finite, and it is reasonable to put in limits on abuse. That does not (and should not) create a license to abuse the language. There are many other words a company could HONESTLY use to describe its biggest plan that do not mean infinite when they mean finite. Any competent marketer and lawyer can find a thesaurus.
(and the same applies to "Full Self Driving", an obvious lie in it's second decade.)
I believe the answers on reddit said about the same, why drag this out further?
And call the cops if the tech was trespassing.
I'm still trying to get to the bottom of why a rep would come to my house and disconnected my internet after talking to a 15 year old that was home alone. I called Mediacom and they said speaking to minors is against their policy and doing any sort of maintenance without the account holder present is against their policy.
They were going to disconnect it either way, and the 15-year-old was the one that answered the door.
Why would he ask a 15 year old what their parent does for a living or what he uses the internet for when policy says not to interact with minors?
having a badge ID is no surety. a badge can be manufactured, using a legitimate employees identity as an alias.
camera your place up, old school con men hate that, they like it when people id each other with general attributes instead of specifics.
if you are heavy torrenting, you could be compromised and serving an open relay w/o knowing, and ANYTHING could be moving through it.
if your doing anything criminal STOP ! i wouldnt be surprised if the logs on your router are what they really want, regardless of who they are. cops or crooks.