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Acceptable bandwidth usage?

Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2018 4:50 pm
by dmazieres
I just got the fusion fiber service, and it's great. However, I'm wondering how much bandwidth I can use before running into problems. On this page https://help.sonic.com/hc/en-us/article ... use_quotas there is text about quotas but the link to the specifics is broken.

Suppose, for example, that once a month I use, say, ~500GiB for offsite backup purposes (either upstream or downstream or both) in a single day--would this get me banned or throttled for the rest of the month? What is a reasonable amount to use at one go? Thanks.

Re: Acceptable bandwidth usage?

Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2018 5:06 pm
by liamo
There currently is not a data limit on regular internet usage. The bandwidth and disk quota is more for email and hosting services as those do have caps before charges will occur.

Re: Acceptable bandwidth usage?

Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2018 5:21 pm
by dane
There is no usage cap on any of our broadband products, but the residential services are for residential, consumer use. The type of usage you describe is expected. Folks create or own a lot of content and need to back it up, and that is something we consider "typical household use".

Starting a wireless ISP off your roof, or running an Ethernet cable to the neighbor, those sort of things would not be okay.

Re: Acceptable bandwidth usage?

Posted: Thu Dec 20, 2018 9:27 am
by aanon4
Is there a written policy on the website somewhere or is it purely at Sonic's discretion?

Re: Acceptable bandwidth usage?

Posted: Thu Dec 20, 2018 9:32 am
by dane
aanon4 wrote:Is there a written policy on the website somewhere or is it purely at Sonic's discretion?
You can find a summary of policies here: https://help.sonic.com/hc/en-us/article ... t-Policies

Regarding commercial use or resale of residential services, we'd provide a warning and then terminate service.

Re: Acceptable bandwidth usage?

Posted: Thu Dec 20, 2018 10:06 am
by aanon4
Thanks!

Re: Acceptable bandwidth usage?

Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2018 3:05 pm
by tikvah
I have a nearly full 1TB hard drive on my computer. I've switched online backup companies a couple times over the years and had to redo that initial backup. It doesn't happen in a day of course, but it's pretty constant uploading for over a week. I've done it on DSL, on Fusion, and on FTTN. Never heard a peep from Sonic about the bandwidth.

BUT...if you use over a certain amount (I think it's 10 GB) in online storage (your website/blog plus all stored emails), you will get notices. If it's still there, you get charged for running over. Ranges from a buck to whoa this is seriously not cheap.

Pro tip: If you use Apple Mail, go to accounts and set it to dump all the messages on the server one month (or a shorter time) after they've been downloaded to your computer. Because if you download and delete things, they stay in the server forever unless you login to webmail and delete from there or set it up to delete from the computer.

Re: Acceptable bandwidth usage?

Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2018 3:21 pm
by aanon4
dane wrote:
aanon4 wrote:Is there a written policy on the website somewhere or is it purely at Sonic's discretion?
You can find a summary of policies here: https://help.sonic.com/hc/en-us/article ... t-Policies

Regarding commercial use or resale of residential services, we'd provide a warning and then terminate service.
The "Bandwidth and Disk use quotas" link 404s :-( (I guess this was already observed)

Also, the term "commercial" only appears 3 times in this document and at no point is used to describe the difference between commercial and residential internet use. Residential only appears in relation to the global calling plan.

Re: Acceptable bandwidth usage?

Posted: Mon Dec 24, 2018 9:14 pm
by rtrinh
aanon4 wrote: The "Bandwidth and Disk use quotas" link 404s :-( (I guess this was already observed)
The wiki has info for the Bandwidth and Disk usage quota.

https://wiki.sonic.net/wiki/Quotas

Re: Acceptable bandwidth usage?

Posted: Wed Dec 26, 2018 5:46 pm
by dane
aanon4 wrote: Also, the term "commercial" only appears 3 times in this document and at no point is used to describe the difference between commercial and residential internet use. Residential only appears in relation to the global calling plan.
Yeah, we probably need to clarify the document. It didn't matter as much with slower, asymmetric services, there just wasn't much opportunity for bad behavior. But to be clear, residential service is not for commercial use, resale, etc.

We certainly do expect many of our members to have really huge data usage that is related to totally valid household uses - huge backups, lots of downloading, etc. There is no usage meter or limit, but we will respond to someone using residential service in an unfair way and ask them to stop. Excessive or abusive usage can result in slowdowns for other members as well as high costs which must be covered by the membership as a whole, neither of which is fair.