Worried about data caps? Here's how to check your usage. Bandwidth caps are all the rage these days, in North America and around the world.
We're talking about the notorious ceilings on how much broadband data you can use before your ISP starts charging you extra, or slowing down your connection, or shaping your traffic use (eg, blocking your access to certain applications). AT&T's shiny new caps started on May 2: 150GB a month for DSL and 250GB for UVerse. AT&T customers will get a $10 charge if they cross the line, with that ding repeated for every 50GB thereafter. Comcast set a 250GB cap in 2008. Canadian ISPs have had them for a while, too. Ars readers sometimes write in asking us how they can monitor their bandwidth use to avoid extra charges. AT&T offers a monitoring site here. This is from the AT&T DSL account retained at my end of the Ars Orbiting HQ. Comcast has a similar meter, which offers the same basic features: the metric for your cap (250GB), how much of the allotment you have used, and how much you have left to consume. How well does your ISP stream Netflix? As promised, Netflix released a report today on the company's tech blog about which Internet service providers are best at distributing the company's streaming video to customers' homes.
According to Netflix's data, the nation's largest cable operators are tops in delivering the company's content. Netflix, the high-flying video rental service , said cable operator Charter Communications was the best-performing Internet service provider, with Cox Communications, Comcast, Cablevision, and Time Warner Cable all outperforming phone companies AT&T and Verizon Communications, as well as wireless broadband provider Clearwire.
Ken Florance, Netflix's director of content delivery, wrote on the company's technology blog: "We find ourselves in the unique position of having insight into the performance of hundreds of millions of long-duration, high-definition video streams delivered over the Internet. " 1. Charter 2. Viewers cannot sustain a 4,800kbps bit rate from start to finish, Florance said. Internet Speed Test: The Fastest ISPs in the U.S. 2010 - The Fas. The Fastest ISP: Nationwide When it comes down to what type of broadband connection is fastest, the perception is that fiber-to-the-premises services, exemplified by Verizon FiOS, sets the gold standard and that if you can't get FTTP, go with cable and lastly DSL.
Only select satellite if you have no other alternatives. While we did not have enough SurfSpeed users on satellite connections to measure its throughput, the few PCMag readers who use satellite have typically given it very mediocre marks. Perception and reality are mostly in sync here, though the differences may not be as great as you think. Verizon FiOS did, in fact, take the top spot, with a SurfSpeed score of 1.22 Mbps. However, the second and third spots were taken by two cable providers, Cox and Optimum Online, which scored SurfSpeeds of 1.14 and 1.12 Mbps, respectively. The fourth fastest ISP was AT&T U-verse, which just topped the 1 Mbps mark. DSL brings up the rear. Source: Centris.