Re: Bandwidth Throttling

On Friday 05 January 2007 17:22, Luke D wrote:
> I pay for there highest home service and I have not had any of my ports
> blocked. I run my own test web server and DNS and other projects. I heard
> GCI did that thought. I wish some one would do a side by side comparison, I
> would love to know who is the best.

I don't know about who's "best" but I've been a broadband customer for both
ISPs. Technically, they're both fine in my experience. I've had some
customer service issues with ACS, and a bad line with GCI, but all in all
it's OK.

When I was a GCI cable customer, www.juneau-lug.org, mail.juneau-lug.org, and
time.juneau-lug.org all ran off of my cable modem. I also ran my personal
web site, and the odd Empire game. GCI's AUP specifically mentioned running
servers at home is at the customer's risk, [1] and all I really needed was
$10 a month for a static IP (and they didn't even bill me for that for more
than a year). GCI didn't filter any inbound traffic. I knew how much
bandwidth I could use per month, and GCI has a counter you can check daily.
If you are victimized by spam/trojan/whatever they'll waive bandwidth
overage -- provided you stop it and tell them quickly. :) Very clear and
easy to understand.

Now I'm an ACS customer for non-technical reasons. Their AUP doesn't exactly
say I can't run these servers, but they do have a prohibition about
running "commercial" servers without really defining what commercial is.
Would a LUG server be commercial? I can apparently run personal servers,
because if my traffic is above average they can bump my fees.[2] Everything
is up to them and kind of vague. As I read it, at any point in time many of
their customers would be above average users and therefore subject to bumping
up. The thing about setting an "average" is that SOMEONE has to be above it.

Because the ACS AUP is so unclear, I don't run any services on the ACS
connection. At one point I used a Linux workstation as a firewall - the
iptables logs didn't look like any ports were blocked by ACS, and I've never
had connection trouble.

James

====================================================
[1] FTP/HTTP Server Setup. You should be aware that when using the Service to
access the Internet or any other online service, there are certain
applications, such as FTP (File Transfer Protocol) server and HTTP (Hyper
Text Transfer Protocol) server, which may be used to allow other Service
users and Internet users to gain access to your computer. If you choose to
run such applications, you should take the appropriate security measures.
Neither GCI nor any of its respective affiliates, subcontractors, employees
or agents shall have any liability whatsoever for any claims, losses,
actions, damages, suits or proceedings resulting from, arising out of or
otherwise relating to the use of such applications by you, including, without
limitation, damages resulting from others accessing your computer.

(http://portal.gci.net/terms_and_conditions)

[2] 14. Restrictions

The PIPE DSL prices are set much lower than SmartNet business services as PIPE
DSL customers are expected to use the service for primarily personal and
recreational purposes. PIPE DSL customers agree not to run any commercial
servers in conjunction with the Services, including but not limited to, Web,
game, Electronic Mail, NAT, DHCP and DNS servers. Under no circumstances may
any PIPE DSL customer run a streaming audio/video server, "shout-cast"
station, MP3 or other audio or video download area with the PIPE DSL service.
In the event any PIPE DSL customer attempts to utilize a commercial or any
above-mentioned server on the network, or if Customer's personal servers
generate more than average amounts of traffic and/or bandwidth usage, ACS
Internet may, at its sole discretion, increase the fees associated with the
Services, or terminate the Services.
 
(http://www.acsalaska.com/Cultures/en-US/Personal/Internet/Terms+and+Conditions.htm)
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Received on Fri Jan 5 19:23:42 2007