[ale] bittorrent issues with Bellsouth

[Mike Harrison]

> Is throttling legal?  I would think you could call tech support and have
> them address the throttling issue.  You are a paying customer and I
> think you're entitled to the full bandwidth you're paying for.

But you are NOT paying for 'full bandwidth'. As a former small ISP 
owner (Dual DS3's and 1 GigE, a few thousand customers)....
And I've helped setup a couple of small cable TV companies as ISP's. 
I can assure you that you aren't paying for "full bandwidth".
What you are paying for is marketting bs technospeak that means:

"It's a 6MBPS connection, You -MAY- actually get that as a short burst
  or longer if there is bandwidth available."

It's all configurable in the cable/dsl modem and in upstream routers.

I don't know what a Tier 1/2 DS3 costs currently, but in 2003 I could
buy them for about $6k/month. Adjust my logic below accordingly:

   If a Tier 1 or 2 DS3 is 6k per month and is approximately 45mbps
   it will feed less than 8 users at 6mbps or 16 at 3mbps

   If it's 3mbps or 16 customers, that's about $375/month.

At my office downtown (Chattanooga) I have a full 3mbps up and down 
connection.. I can run 3mbps up or down all day long (and sometimes do, 
doing backups, server syncs, etc.. ) I typically get just under 3mbps
according to iptraf, sometimes just a smidgen over. I pay $300 per month
for this wonderful connection. What a deal! I'm sure DS3's or equiv are 
cheaper now.. but I still think this is a great deal. Why? Because in 1994 
I was paying $3+k per month for 128k frac T1.

Note: My Ubuntu 8.04 Bittorrent has been pegged at 512k UP for days..
'cause that's what I set it to so I have bandwidth for other things.