[ale] WARNING - RANT Re: Comcast Caps Data at 250G/Month

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Sat, Sep 06, 2008 at 06:11:46PM -0400, Sean wrote:
> 
> Robert Reese hinted at another question I have on this whole issue of
> metered/block allocation of bandwidth:
> 
> My router/firewall is hit hundreds of times each day by automated scripts
> trying to break in. Are those "knocks at the door" (KATD) counted as part
> of my bandwidth usage?
> Does the counting software have a minimum size that is counted?  That is
> do these KATD add up per byte or per KB?
> I am thinking that some cell phone carriers count by the minute and some
> by the second.  It makes a difference!  If ISPs are counting by the KB then
> all those KATD are going to add up in a hurry.
> 

While I haven't gotten a response to my question directed at Comcast
yet, I would be interested in finding out.  For the moment, I am making
the assumption that all traffic that makes it in or out, including the
overhead of TCP/IP, and including things that are filtered by your
router/NAT (e.g., inbound packets that get dropped due to iptables
rules) count against your limit.

Does anyone know if all that stuff makes it through to the statistics
that are output by the "ifconfig" utility?  If a packet comes through
eth0, and it is dropped because it's filtered, does it still make it
into the stats?

And I can't imagine they'd count in bulk like that... I can pull
down-to-the-byte stats that (I am fairly sure) are accurate, they should
be able to do the same.  If they are using any unit other than bits or
bytes for measurement, then they're going to be logging inaccurate
counts, and that would be wrong.

   --- Mike

-- 
My sigfile ran away and is on hiatus.
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