How to deal with OptOnline?

[MonarchX]

Since they cap speeds, whats the best way/best settings for downloading from Torrent network?

[Ultima]

Tell them to uncap you. Otherwise, it's false advertising. If you're already uncapped, read this...

[SL83]

I used to work for OptOnline. I quit. It wasn't.....bearable.

Anyway, they have a system that automatically caps your upload speed. What happens is your modem's config file is changed, and they will cap the upload speed to around 15KB/s up. Most of the users that have this happen, never even realize it because they are generally not computer savvy.

The ones that do realize it, call in and have to bust their own ass to get uncapped. You call their tech support, tell them implicitly that the upload is slow and you KNOW you are capped/throttled. They will tell you that they will escalate your ticket to the QoS team, and they will give you a call back. Don't mention that you use P2P, don't mention that you run a server, etc.

They will uncap you after some hassle of having you agree to follow their ToS in the future. Eventually, if you are constantly capped, they will forward your call to another department, and this department basically has the authority to tell you to fuck off and get another ISP, because you agreed to ToS, and are breaking the agreement.

The reason they impose these caps on your upload speed is because upload speed is meant to be used as burst transfers only, and not all day long. Upload speed is a LOT more limited than download bandwidth with the setup of OOL's network. It has to do with the upload channels and how only 5 users on the same node can overload the node if they are all using their upload speeds at the max at the same time.

And as is known, if the upload speed is saturated, this causes problems with the download speeds, and the whole node's performance is then fucked.

So they impose the caps to maintain the quality of service basically.

Now, I've had OOL for years. And I've run games servers, file servers, P2P, etc. You name it, I've run it. I have NEVER been capped yet. At times I will run uTorrent at max upload speed for 3 hours at a time. But usually I leave it running all day long at 40KB/s upload. Haven't had any issues.

To be honest though, if your node is overloaded, you're more likely to get capped, because the upload bandwidth is spread quite thin. They've made updates since I quit, such as switching over to 256QAM and upping the default speeds to 15/2. So things may be different, but they still will impose the caps if you are impacting the network's quality.

Even BUSINESS OOL customers get capped if they are severely impacting network performance. There is a reason why dedicated guaranteed internet connection speeds cost as much as they do.

And it isn't false advertising at all. It's perfectly legal. They advertise as speeds UP TO 15Mbps down and 2Mbps up. They never guarantee those speeds. Most people don't even need those speeds anyway.

I agree that it does suck to get capped, I've never had the issue, but on the other hand, if 12 year old Joe Schmoe is hosting a porn server and making my connection crawl to a snail's pace, I'd be pretty pissed, too.

So if you're capped, call in, ask to be uncapped, go through their process, and from then on be more reasonable about your upload usage. I'm not sure if people that have been capped previously are flagged and watched more closely by the system.

[alwayscamp]

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?pid=194017#p194017

if you use the right tolls you wont get capped .

i use optonline/cablevision.

talking from experiance