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December 25, 2008 12:33 AM

What times does Comcast cap Bittorrent less?

Comcast caps bittorrent. They suck, but is there a time when they reduce the capping, such as during the night?

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December 25, 2008 01:27 AM
Comcast doesn't throttle bit torrent, they throttle your whole connection. There is a new user policy that started on October 1st:

1. Your first 250GB in the month are free.
2. If you run over 250GB, you pay extra for each 10GB in excess.
3. If at any time of the day, during 15 minutes in a row, you are on the top 15% users in terms of bandwidth, you will be switched to a lower priority rank for 15 minutes. This means that you will get hit with delays, so it counts as a way to throttle you.

I use torrents a lot, and I am yet to hit either the cap, or the 15%/15 minutes rule.

How to stay out of trouble:
1. Don't be greedy. If you know that you need to download something that is 10-20GB, don't crank open your client and saturate your connection, all you will do is hit the 15% rule quickly. Throttle your client yourself, it will take a bit longer and you will still get whatever it is that you want.

2. Be polite, take advantage of the scheduler in your torrent client. Unless you need something RIGHT NOW, you should be setting your client so at certain hours of the day it runs slower/faster.

3. Install a bandwidth meter in your PC. This gives you a very rough idea of how you are doing. If you are 10 days into your billable month and the meter says you have moved 150GB, you are in trouble and you need to adjust now, before you hit a cap.

4. Be realistic. Do you really need to download those four ISO images in one shot? Why not add them to your queue and pause all but one, then download one at a time? This helps you spread your usage a little bit, and will easily keep you closer to the median for your neighborhood.
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December 25, 2008 01:37 AM
Thanks a lot, this is a great answer, i'll tip you, but could you give me a link to a source doc from comcast?

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December 25, 2008 01:46 AM
Sure, this is the main policy page, http://www.comcast.net/terms/use/

Scroll down to where it says "Are there restrictions on bandwidth consumption that apply to the Service?" and it explains the basic 250GB figure.

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