AfterDawn: News

Belgian ISP subscriber used 2.7TB of bandwidth last month

The Belgian ISP Telenet has posted via their forums an interesting list this week; the subscribers who have used the most bandwidth in the last month.

At the top of the list was a user of their TurboNet service, and that subscriber used an incredibly high 2.7TB worth of bandwidth for the period of July 4th to August 6th.



Continuing down the list were a few more users with excessive amounts of data transferred, with seven other users with over 1TB for the same period.

Those subscribers used 1.86TB, 1.49TB, 1.33TB, 1.1TB, 1.08TB, 1.07TB and 1.04TB, respectively, with most using the ISP's TurboNet XL service.

If you are curious as to why Telenet posted the top 25 bandwidth hogs, it was to encourage users to move from capped plans (50GB or 80GB) to their more expensive "fair use" "unlimited" plans. "Fair use," according to the ISP "means that you can send and receive a very large quantity of data via the Telenet network. Telenet will only ask you to adjust your consumption in the case of excessive volume consumption that may threaten the comfort of other subscribers."

Ars, while agreeing that 2.7TB is excessive, says they were told of an American in 2009 that used 4TB in one month, from a consumer account.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 20 Aug 2010 13:44

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• 22 comments

• 5fdpfan

  Wow! Tha'ts freakin insane! These people using this much bandwidth must have no life at all whatsoever. How many movies albums does one person need in one month's time? My goodness, it's no wonder ISP's are cappping their service with knuckleheads like those on this list.

  20.8.2010 14:13 #1

• GryphB

  Wow, just wow!

  20.8.2010 15:55 #2

• andmill11

  It just sounds like they are a good company to set up seedboxes with. There is probably more than 1 user on those lines with 1-2TB of bandwidth.

  20.8.2010 17:39 #3

• biglo30

  Those guys have got to be super pirates to be downloading so much in so little time.

  20.8.2010 19:08 #4

• Pop_Smith

  Originally posted by 5fdpfan: Wow! Tha'ts freakin insane! These people using this much bandwidth must have no life at all whatsoever. Considering the "TurboNet" service is their mid-level service I'm actually surprised by this. The "TurboNet" service is €61.32/month for 30 Mbps down/1.25 Mbps up. Their most expensive service is €99/month for 100Mbps down/5 Mbps up.
  
  http://telenet.be/260/0/1/en/residential/internet/turbonet.html
  
  According to that site they throttle you to 512 Kbps for the rest of the billing cycle if you're usage is causing the network to slow. I wish all ISPs would do that.
  

  http://www.megavideo.com/?v=V1VZAD0O <-- Brian Regan "Take Luck" video.
  
  "The only people who should buy Monster cable are people who light cigars with Benjamins." - Gizmodo

  20.8.2010 20:41 #5

• xyqo

  correct me if wrong and I very well could be but this guy had to be using ~90% of the capability of a 30 mbps connection 24 hrs a day for 30 days
  

  XXYYQQOO!!! Yeah WELCOME TO JAMROCK
  
  

  20.8.2010 22:41 #6

• nonoitall

  Originally posted by xyqo: correct me if wrong and I very well could be but this guy had to be using ~90% of the capability of a 30 mbps connection 24 hrs a day for 30 days
  Actually it would be ~90% of a 10 Mbps connection running 24/7 for thirty days. (You said to correct you if you were wrong, so... :-P)
  
  To expound on that:
  * 90% of a 10 Mbps connection is 9 Mbps
  * 9 Mbps = 9,000,000 bits per second
  * 9,000,000 bits per second = 1,125,000 bytes per second
  * 1,125,000 bytes per second times 3,600 = 4,050,000,000 bytes per hour
  * 4,050,000,000 bytes per hour times 24 = 97,200,000,000 bytes per day
  * 97,200,000,000 bytes per day times 30 = 2,916,000,000,000 bytes per month
  * 2,916,000,000,000 bytes per month divided by 1024^4 = ~2.7 terabytes per month
  

  20.8.2010 22:54 #7

• KillerBug

  Just to be clear, was this TB or tb? Usually service providers say everything in bits because it seems like 8x more.
  
  I could almost agree with speed regulations if they were not so unreasonable. I mean, if someone is paying for 100mbps, and you drop them to .5mbps for using too much, that is terrible. It should be more of a plan-drop...you are using too much of your 100mbps connection, so now it drops to a 50mbps connection, or a 50 to 25, or whatever.
  
  In the end, the company is selling a service for a monthly fee. They knew that there would be people like this, they included them in their numbers, and they did the math. They figured out they could still make a fortune, so they built the networks, sold the hardware, and signed up the customers. Now, the greedy bastards decide that they just are not making enough millions per month, and that they should shave a few thousand from their costs at the expense of their users...and they throw this crap online to justify it.

  20.8.2010 23:26 #8

• mm2000y

  It is possible this guy could be in an apartment building using unprotected wireless with up to 20 or more people using his internet connection.

  21.8.2010 08:53 #9

• xboxdvl2

  if they are willing to pay for it they can use as much as they want and should be allowed to use as much as they want.
  

  PS2 with 12 games.
  pc-windows 7,intel core quad Q8400,4 Gb ddr2,WD 500 GB hdd,ATI Radeon HD 4550 graphics,AOC 22inch LCD moniter.

  21.8.2010 10:00 #10

• Mysttic

  I would not be surprised if it was TB, I know some people in Canada that have set up seed boxes to build ratio in private torrent boards and they have easily reached a TB or 2.

  21.8.2010 10:34 #11

• lissenup2

  4TB?????????
  
  That's overkill, that's ridiculous and that's clearly a MASSIVE leecher and copyright infringer whom contributes nothing back EVER. That's an internet jihadist and normal rules shouldn't apply to him/her (though it's no doubt a 'her'). They should be banned, investigated and kicked with a giant Australian boot.
  
  Anyone and I mean ANYONE that's downloading even close to 1TB in a month is a useless leecher and copyright infringer and should be forced to perform 10,000 hours of community service to compensate for all they took and didn't give back................this coming from me who DOES download movies and games but I buy a lot of Blu-rays and games too. There's no excuse to take and take and take and not give back. I'm sure these are the same people with the mentality of "If Hollywood did not produce crap/junk then I'd buy their stuff", yet they probably paid to go see what they're calling "junk/crap". Hypocrisy at it's finest.

  21.8.2010 16:09 #12

• lissenup2

  Originally posted by KillerBug: Just to be clear, was this TB or tb? Usually service providers say everything in bits because it seems like 8x more.
  
  I could almost agree with speed regulations if they were not so unreasonable. I mean, if someone is paying for 100mbps, and you drop them to .5mbps for using too much, that is terrible. It should be more of a plan-drop...you are using too much of your 100mbps connection, so now it drops to a 50mbps connection, or a 50 to 25, or whatever.
  
  In the end, the company is selling a service for a monthly fee. They knew that there would be people like this, they included them in their numbers, and they did the math. They figured out they could still make a fortune, so they built the networks, sold the hardware, and signed up the customers. Now, the greedy bastards decide that they just are not making enough millions per month, and that they should shave a few thousand from their costs at the expense of their users...and they throw this crap online to justify it. You schmo!
  
  TB or TERABYTES. Terabits are NEVER used in the world of IT...............NEVER EVER EVER. 8 bits = 1 byte, 1024 = 1MB
  
  If "terabits" were used then we'd be talking about numbers passing the trillions which is relatively impractical. Kinda like 'Calorie'. They actually are KCals and you'll notice that in the US ALL food has calories with a capital C meaning KCals because 100 Calories is ridiculous to refer to as 100,000 calories all the time, besides being intimidating and making hard to some food producers to sell certain foods to people knowing that a million calories are in some things.

  21.8.2010 16:15 #13

• Dela

  2.7TB... wow... that must be a LOT... and i mean a LOT of Porn!

  21.8.2010 17:22 #14

• cmcjk

  Originally posted by lissenup2: Originally posted by KillerBug: Just to be clear, was this TB or tb? Usually service providers say everything in bits because it seems like 8x more.
  
  I could almost agree with speed regulations if they were not so unreasonable. I mean, if someone is paying for 100mbps, and you drop them to .5mbps for using too much, that is terrible. It should be more of a plan-drop...you are using too much of your 100mbps connection, so now it drops to a 50mbps connection, or a 50 to 25, or whatever.
  
  In the end, the company is selling a service for a monthly fee. They knew that there would be people like this, they included them in their numbers, and they did the math. They figured out they could still make a fortune, so they built the networks, sold the hardware, and signed up the customers. Now, the greedy bastards decide that they just are not making enough millions per month, and that they should shave a few thousand from their costs at the expense of their users...and they throw this crap online to justify it. You schmo!
  
  TB or TERABYTES. Terabits are NEVER used in the world of IT...............NEVER EVER EVER. 8 bits = 1 byte, 1024 = 1MB
  
  If "terabits" were used then we'd be talking about numbers passing the trillions which is relatively impractical. Kinda like 'Calorie'. They actually are KCals and you'll notice that in the US ALL food has calories with a capital C meaning KCals because 100 Calories is ridiculous to refer to as 100,000 calories all the time, besides being intimidating and making hard to some food producers to sell certain foods to people knowing that a million calories are in some things. Yeah remember no-one EVER EVER EVVVVEEER uses "terabits". Hold on apart from when their talking about bandwidth (30 Mbit connection for example). That's ok because this article has nothing to do with connection speeds......hold on again it does.
  
  Saying 8 terabits is so much difficult than 1 terabyte. Wait it was easy.

  21.8.2010 17:40 #15

• gwhiz

  What bothers me most about this story is that someone is actually keeping track of exactly how much data is going to a specific IP address. That's like some entity keeping track of how many miles I put on my car or how many calories I consume in a day. This is a bothersome precedent. If this ISP is aware and keeps track of every bit moving up and down my IP address, then it is also perfectly feasible for them to know and track every website and file I view and download. This is very scary. Good thing I'm not running for office.

  23.8.2010 12:20 #16

• KillerBug

  Yes, you are monitored while on the internet...did you think it was some other way? Did you think the internet was a vast anonymous "wild west"? Well, it isn't 1985 anymore. If you don't like it, do what I do: use a VPN.

  24.8.2010 00:24 #17

• xboxdvl2

  who really cares if your monitered on the internet.Now your monitered everywhere you go anyway.thanx to google earth.not to mention practically every shop has a security camera.Unless your using the internet for something highly illegal it shouldnt bother you.
  

  PS2 with 12 games.
  pc-windows 7,intel core quad Q8400,4 Gb ddr2,WD 500 GB hdd,ATI Radeon HD 4550 graphics,AOC 22inch LCD moniter.

  24.8.2010 08:00 #18

• KillerBug

  "Unless your using the internet for something highly illegal it shouldnt bother you."
  
  Just because it is legal, that does not mean you want the whole world to know about it. For that matter, just because it is legal, that does not mean that the government won't kill you because of it.

  24.8.2010 08:52 #19

• forkndave

  lisinup2-You are not quite correct when you say that 1024 = 1MB unless you are talking about 1024KB which would be 1048576 bytes.
  

  31.8.2010 18:32 #20

• xboxdvl2

  Originally posted by KillerBug: "Unless your using the internet for something highly illegal it shouldnt bother you."
  
  Just because it is legal, that does not mean you want the whole world to know about it. For that matter, just because it is legal, that does not mean that the government won't kill you because of it. well some stuff you might not want the whole world knowing about but the government or your ISP isn't likely to go around telling everyone what you have been looking at.I'm sure there are rights in place that claim your isp and the government isnt allowed to give your data to the general public.
  

  PS2 with 12 games.
  pc-windows 7,intel core quad Q8400,4 Gb ddr2,WD 500 GB hdd,ATI Radeon HD 4550 graphics,AOC 22inch LCD moniter.

  1.9.2010 00:37 #21

• pmshah

  I have a feeling that this user is running a private internet service providing facility to any number of people within his own building and neighboring ones!
  
  Believe me I know how this works!

  1.9.2010 00:45 #22