Beware Of Comcast!

[eovnu87435ds]

I came home yesterday to find that I had no internet. Everything seemed to be in perfect order in my end, so I called up Comcast. When I asked why I had no internet, they did some tests and then said that my internet account was suspended! When I asked why, they said I used it too much. WTF?!? Nowhere on the plan page does Comcast state anything about a usage cap, and the representative on the phone had clearly stated it was for "unlimited usage."

Apparently it is hidden in Comcast's Acceptable Use Policy, which states that users should not transfer more that 250GB a month(combined total of download and upload). Any more than 250GB, and Comcast will call and send a letter via snail mail. If you surpass 250GB again with 6 months, they will suspend your service.

For us, however, we received no letter, and no phone call. Not even an email. So now we got shafted and stuck with no internet until Verizon can set up a DSL line.

Take this as a warning, Comcast has some sneaky s**t going on, watch them carefully.

[Sparda]

Most services that are called "Unlimited" are, in fact, limited.

[xtr3m3]

My brother's Android phone contract has an 'unlimited' 3g data plan that is 1gb a month..

[h3%5kr3w]

Actually this was made public about a year ago when a good handfull of American internet providers decided to technically can their unlimited services for capped services. However instead of taking the wonderful marketing word "unlimited" from their plans they just slapped the cap in the fine print so it would cause the least bit of a stir. (the largest one being comcast, and the one that made the news the most about it)

Just go on your router and find out how much your using. If you have a linksys (and it's a supported model) use dd-wrt, or there are logistics software out there you can slap on a crappy server to keep up with it.

Damn dude... That is a lot of bandwidth. The most I have used in one month is around 68gb. And that's with two laptops, two desktops, a server, two android phones, a wii, and my directv+dvr box that I can stream media to/from.

[okiwan]

uh oh....

i think it applies to certain states. cause i think im over 250gb and im still online. unless they are just waiting to take me to court.

[digip]

If you used 250GB in a month, then you either have someone else using your network too, as in Botnet, someone stealing your wireless, or you are seeding too many illegal torrents. In any case, if you were doing torrents, be happy that a disconnect is all that happened and no one came after you, like the RIAA or MPAA.

Now, saying that assumes a lot, and I don't want to offend you, so if you weren't doing anything wrong or illegal, then I would fight it with Comcast and get a refund. In my house, we are online 24/7, we are heavy Netflix users, gamers, and online movie watchers, and we never come close to 250GB a month. If I were you, I would fight the issue, becuase even though they do have a cap (which I thought was 25GB not 250GB) they need to prove it as well, and if they never sent anything in writing or so much as an email warning to the main account holder, then where can they show you did what they said?

I've had my issues with Comcast. So much so to the point where I don't trust them. Ever. I've received emails from them trying to pedal their anti-virus offerings from Norton and McAfee, and took issue with it enough to complain about the spam and wanted to be taken off the mailing list. You can opt out, but I still received targeted marketing crap from them. When I sent a complaint, they tried telling me I had a botnet on my network and I needed to install anti malware or I would be disconnected. Needless to say, I am still online and I was livid with their customer service. They can suck a dick and choke on it. F U COMCAST!

One thing you can do though, is change your IP on a regular basis. If you have a home router that can do mac cloning, you can disconnect your modems incoming cable, then manually add a mac address in your routers clone settings, then reconnect everything and low and behold, you will get assigned a new IP from their DHCP. I do this often. It keeps your IP address to MAC address changing all the time, which I don't think I need to explain why this is a good thing, you can figure that out on your own if you don't already know.

[mdc4115]

I came home yesterday to find that I had no internet. Everything seemed to be in perfect order in my end, so I called up Comcast. When I asked why I had no internet, they did some tests and then said that my internet account was suspended! When I asked why, they said I used it too much. WTF?!? Nowhere on the plan page does Comcast state anything about a usage cap, and the representative on the phone had clearly stated it was for "unlimited usage."

Apparently it is hidden in Comcast's Acceptable Use Policy, which states that users should not transfer more that 250GB a month(combined total of download and upload). Any more than 250GB, and Comcast will call and send a letter via snail mail. If you surpass 250GB again with 6 months, they will suspend your service.

For us, however, we received no letter, and no phone call. Not even an email. So now we got shafted and stuck with no internet until Verizon can set up a DSL line.

Take this as a warning, Comcast has some sneaky s**t going on, watch them carefully.

Last month my bandwidth total was 316.18 Gigabytes. I have comcast also, I plan on using less per month now.

My brother's Android phone contract has an 'unlimited' 3g data plan that is 1gb a month..

My average monthly usage on my android phone is around 4-6 gigabytes.

[Sparda]

The largest ISP in China offers 100Mbps connections with 100GB per day upload caps (no download cap). Just saying.

[digip]

I stand corrected, it is 250GB/month. I also don't think we come close to this. Here is their policy.

Announcement Regarding An Amendment to Our Acceptable Use Policy

It's no secret we've been evaluating a specific monthly data usage or bandwidth threshold for our Comcast High-Speed Internet residential customers for some time. Rumors circulated online last year and they popped up again in May.

In January, we added new frequently asked questions about what we consider acceptable use of our service to our online Help site www.comcast.net/help and Security Channel page www.comcast.net/security.

We've listened to feedback from our customers who asked that we provide a specific threshold for data usage and this would help them understand the amount of usage that would qualify as excessive. Today, we're announcing that beginning on October 1, 2008, we will amend our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) available at http://www.comcast.com/policies and establish a specific monthly data usage threshold of 250 GB/month per account for all residential customers.

250 GB/month is an extremely large amount of data, much more than a typical residential customer uses on a monthly basis. Currently, the median monthly data usage by our residential customers is approximately 2 - 3 GB. To put 250 GB of monthly usage in perspective, a customer would have to do any one of the following:

Send 50 million emails (at 0.05 KB/email)

Download 62,500 songs (at 4 MB/song)

Download 125 standard-definition movies (at 2 GB/movie)

Upload 25,000 hi-resolution digital photos (at 10 MB/photo)

This is the same system we have in place today. The only difference is that we will now provide a limit by which a customer may be contacted. As part of our pre-existing policy, we will continue to contact the top users of our high-speed Internet service and ask them to curb their usage. If a customer uses more than 250 GB and is one of the top users of our service, he or she may be contacted by Comcast to notify them of excessive use. At that time, we'll tell them exactly how much data per month they had used. We know from experience the vast majority of customers we ask to curb usage do so voluntarily.

As stated above the new monthly data usage threshold will officially take effect starting October 1st. We are notifying customers in a number of ways. For example, we have posted a preview of the amended AUP as a PDF on this page. We are also running banner notices on our Comcast.net home page and on our Security Channel Web page to alert customers about this upcoming change. In addition, we have provided a number of FAQs that are available at http://help.comcast.net/content/faq/Freque...t-Excessive-Use. Finally, we will also notify our customers directly by including an insert (also called a bill stuffer) in an upcoming monthly billing statement.

Back to Network Management Policy

125 Movies at 2GB a piece, yeah I don't think we use close to that kind of bandwidth. What are you people seeding?? Stop all the pr0n and go outside for a change. Fapping all day will make you go blind..just saying.

(kidding)

[dr0p]

My record was like 400gb in a month when my HDD failed and I had to re-create my music and movie collection. Never got any letter from Comcast...

[okiwan]

im not even going to say anything cause i feel like im incriminating myself.

[Trip]

i always get the unlimited plan :D

[Netshroud]

I'm on an unlimited plan. And it's truly unlimited - I can download however much I please. After 50GB combined up/down however, they throttle to 256kbps (which is still technically broadband).

*tries to summon a ACCC for 50 mana*

[eovnu87435ds]

Apparently after being on the phone all day today, we used between 400-450GB every month since august. But thats because we started doing everything through the internet. Everybody in the house only watches tv and movies via the computer and the internet and videochat a combined total of about an hour a day. On top of that, I run a ftp server so I can access all my home files, from anywhere, which I do regularly. I do torrent, but not a whole lot. I also remote desktop in often, especially when someone at home is having an issue. I do use gotoassist, but for home, I already have admin rights on all the computers, so this way I do not have to worry about their permission, etc.

The biggest use is probably the distribution of the newest music for DJing. Basically, DJ's pay for a service in which they are able to download the newest music each month.

So basically, I was using my average of 22mbps down and 12mbps up to its fullest, nearly all the time, all month long.

[okiwan]

400-450GB every month

LMAO!!!!! thats insane. seriously! that is ALLOT!

[Sparda]

LMAO!!!!! thats insane. seriously! that is ALLOT!

450GB per 30 days is only 0.625GB per hour. Considering the connection is capable of 9.7GB per hour. That is approximately 6.4% usage of the maximum possible usage (Comcast want you to use about 3% of the connection you are paying for on average over the period of a month).

[eovnu87435ds]

LMAO!!!!! thats insane. seriously! that is ALLOT!

well then they shouldn't tease me with those sort of speeds and not expect me to use it! Seriously? Who needs 22 down 12 up for facebook and email? A 300kb page will not load noticibly with a 22 down compared to a 4 down

[Infiltrator]

One thing you can do though, is change your IP on a regular basis. If you have a home router that can do mac cloning, you can disconnect your modems incoming cable, then manually add a mac address in your routers clone settings, then reconnect everything and low and behold, you will get assigned a new IP from their DHCP. I do this often. It keeps your IP address to MAC address changing all the time, which I don't think I need to explain why this is a good thing, you can figure that out on your own if you don't already know.

I do that very often, my modem gets disconnected from the wall every night when I go to sleep.

Now for the Mac Part, how do you change your modem mac address.

Edit: Just out of curiosity what modem brand do you have?

Edited November 10, 2010 by Infiltrator

[digip]

I do that very often, my modem gets disconnected from the wall every night when I go to sleep.

Now for the Mac Part, how do you change your modem mac address.

Edit: Just out of curiosity what modem brand do you have?

Just an FYI, I change my Router's MAC address, not the MODEM's, or I would have to call Comcast to get online again, since they allow accounts online by approved MAC address of the modem itself.

When the modem itself sees a new device (MAC address) requesting DHCP, it then requests a new lease from Comcast, since the current one it would have in its MAC table would correspond to an IP address already in use by a different device or MAC address. Once your router's MAC changes the old lease would still be in use on a different MAC to IP lookup, so it forces a new DHCP request, thus getting a new IP in the process. One way to test that, go to ipchicken and write down your IP address. Then, unplug your modem and configure your routers mac clone settings to some random shit, power back on the modem and then go back to ipchicken and see the new IP address.

A quick power off and on of the modem shouldn't grant you a new IP alone unless comcast's DHCP lease has timed out during that time period. In your case, you would, because after a night of being off, I'm sure that lease will have expired in that time.

I've powered off my modem for as long as 5 minutes before and when plugged back in, I still get the same IP address. It wasn't until I learned about how DHCP and MAC address tables worked that I started using the routers MAC cloning panel to force a new address at will.

[Infiltrator]

Just an FYI, I change my Router's MAC address, not the MODEM's, or I would have to call Comcast to get online again, since they allow accounts online by approved MAC address of the modem itself.

When the modem itself sees a new device (MAC address) requesting DHCP, it then requests a new lease from Comcast, since the current one it would have in its MAC table would correspond to an IP address already in use by a different device or MAC address. Once your router's MAC changes the old lease would still be in use on a different MAC to IP lookup, so it forces a new DHCP request, thus getting a new IP in the process. One way to test that, go to ipchicken and write down your IP address. Then, unplug your modem and configure your routers mac clone settings to some random shit, power back on the modem and then go back to ipchicken and see the new IP address.

A quick power off and on of the modem shouldn't grant you a new IP alone unless comcast's DHCP lease has timed out during that time period. In your case, you would, because after a night of being off, I'm sure that lease will have expired in that time.

I've powered off my modem for as long as 5 minutes before and when plugged back in, I still get the same IP address. It wasn't until I learned about how DHCP and MAC address tables worked that I started using the routers MAC cloning panel to force a new address at will.

Whenever I turn off my modem for the night, and then turn it back on on the next day I always get a different IP address, from the ISP DHCP pool. Would that be sufficient?

[Mr-Protocol]

It depends on the DHCP lease time of your ISP. Typically a clone mac and reboot of the modem does the trick every time for me.

[Infiltrator]

It depends on the DHCP lease time of your ISP. Typically a clone mac and reboot of the modem does the trick every time for me.

It worked, I turned off the modem and left it turned off for 15 minutes, turned it back on and it got a different ip address, totally different.

[digip]

It worked, I turned off the modem and left it turned off for 15 minutes, turned it back on and it got a different ip address, totally different.

Again, depends on your lease time, but typically if you wanted to force it right away instead of having to wait 15 minutes or half hour or however long their lease is, then changing your MAC address in the router and a quick power reset of the modem should trigger a new address right away.

[Infiltrator]

Again, depends on your lease time, but typically if you wanted to force it right away instead of having to wait 15 minutes or half hour or however long their lease is, then changing your MAC address in the router and a quick power reset of the modem should trigger a new address right away.

Thank you for the info Digip.

[psydT0ne]

I live in australia....i have a 1.5megabit connection with 256k upload speed with 40gb peak 12pm to 12am and 30 gb off peak 12am to 12pm for $60 a month $au.

Our dollar is pretty close to the $us so think yourself lucky.

i make do just fine and dont come close to my limits, because i control my network with an iron fist.