Both Comcast and Time Warner are experimenting with ways to limit the amount of broadband usage per subscriber.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2316726,00.asp

I'm not a tech expert by any means, but I don't like the sound of this.

Would this only affect downloaders of big files like movies, or would long play at online poker sites be penalized? Does online play use big bandwidth? Does multitable play use a lot more?

well i pay time warner for extra bandwidth so when they cap mine I will give them the big finger.

I have two fingers for Comcast aswell !

Online poker uses very little bandwidth

If all you do is play online poker and email and browse some web pages you are a very light user and will not be affected.

Until recently I was playing (and mining!) via dial up and got by.

not going to be a problem

Not going to make any difference to online poker players even if you play 24 tables for 24 hours a day.

Now some of those web-cam girls out there might be a different story.
Not sure really.
If you are illegally uploading tons of movies and other videos and sending them out to as many of your friends as you can then that seems like it might be you on the their watch-list.

Last time I checked poker was at about 5MB/hr. Generally caps are about 60GB month so even if you played 24-7 poker would never exceed 6-7% of the quota.

This is to limit P2P stuff. First they tried to throttle torrent traffic now they want to try caps.

The cap is 40GB and it's $1 for every GB after. I'm pretty sure you could playing a few hundred thousand hands a month and not come even remotely close to this cap. Also, most european ISP's already use caps. I would MUCH prefer caps and unlimited speed to limited speed and no caps.

This kind of thing will only affect people who download lots of music and movies.....

poker uses so little bandwidth, it should never affect you.

Sounds like this would be a plus for most users by restricting the abusers hogging bandwidth.

Cue Mike Haven's "The Internet is a series of tubes..." post.

The amount of traffic sent to and from the client depends on many factors, including how busy the site is, and whether you keep the main lobby or tournament lobby open (doing so increases traffic).

Once you're in a game with all lobby windows minimized, a game will average about 10 k download per minute, and 5 k upload. This can vary with the speed of the game, and there is more data downloaded when you have the lobby open ('cause it's continually updating).

The article linked in the OP talks about a 250gb download limit. Assuming that they consider 1gb equal to 1000mb (as ISPs do here in Australia), you will get about 4,266,666 minutes of one-tabling download per month. Given that there are only 43,200 minutes in a month, you would have to be (approximately) 100-tabling continually, 24/7, for 30 days a month to hit the download limit from playing at PokerStars.

If you manage to do this, I'm sure that you'll rack up enough FPPs to concierge an additional internet connection.

Sincerely,

Michael J
PokerStars Game Security Team

Great response! ;-) Made me chuckle.

I didn't know you were based in Australia - where is the Stars office here?

Michael J is 2+2er Josem. He probably works remotely. All the stars offices, as far as im aware anyway, are based on the Isle of Man.

but constantly downloading porn uses a lot

no

They just started capping us here in Toronto, 60GB limit/month. One blue-ray porn dvd and I'm done.

Most broadband internet is capped here in the UK. A lot of the ISP's get away with claiming they offer unlimited downloads and then have some small print about a fair use policy, where they can cancel your contract with them if you download too much.

Trust me playing online poker won't be an issue with the caps mentioned unless you use 90% of your allowance doing something else.

datamining?

A rough calculation from PokerStarsMichaelJ figures (8 posts up) tells us you can datamine 24 tables, 24/7 for a 30 day month and you'd use around 60GB, maybe less as his figures were for playing, which I would think uses more upload bandwidth.

Didn't realise that MJ and Josem were one in the same. I know Josem is somewhere in Syd (moved up from Melb), but not sure where...

as I hear it they do have an actual staffed office. Josem lives like, acrost the street. His commute is probably not that much more than mine to my basement. If I ever need a job again, I want one like that

Switch to TekSavvy. Half the price of Sympatico and you get unlimited.

The big issue is throttling in Canada. Use to be that TekSavvy would not throttle and they still have a anti-throttling policy but no Sympatico throttles their customers.

Awesome post Michael.
That puts my very best FPP/rakeback calculation posts to shame.