#My internet speed cox download#

My day-time bandwidth usage is paltry (most of my bandwidth consumption is scheduled from 1am-8am), and that Cox should have been upgrading their infrastructure instead of oversubscribing nodes and pocketing the record revenue. I tried to explain that my usage is not out of the ordinary for me. He went on to explain that their network is overburdened and since I was an above-average user, I was being targeted to lower my usage or else have my account terminated. Immediately calling the number, I was funneled directly to a department for 'questions about your recent Internet speed changes,' and spoke with a representative there. Since I work from home, I naturally was very concerned they would pull the plug on me and I'd be unable to work. Your home is using an extraordinarily high amount of Internet data and adjustments need to be made immediately.' The voicemail warned that your 'Internet will be scheduled for termination' unless usage reductions are 'made within five days,' according to Mike. Assuming Mike was also downloading heavily during those 1-8am hours, then the overnight usage including both downloads and uploads would account for most of his overall data usage.) “Scheduled for termination”įirst, Mike got three calls from Cox including one that left a voicemail saying, 'we need to speak with you regarding your Internet usage.

The nightly uploads may have accounted for most of his upload usage, however, as his monthly usage of 8TB to 12TB includes both downloads and uploads. ( Clarification: Mike's nightly uploads alone couldn't have accounted for more than half of his monthly 8TB+ usage if his upload speeds were capped at 35Mbps seven hours of nightly uploads at that rate would amount to about 3.3TB per month. This may suggest that Cox is struggling to handle pandemic-level broadband traffic, but Cox says that the vast majority of its network is 'performing very well.'Ĭox provided a little more detail after this story published, saying that the neighborhood-wide slowdowns and disconnection threats sent to individual customers 'are two separate initiatives that could cross over in some cases.' Mike also said his level of Internet usage has been roughly the same for the past four years that he's been using Cox-but it was only in mid-May that the company flagged him for excessive use. Mike said his household's daytime and evening use is more like a typical Internet user's, with work-from-home activities during the day and streaming video in high-definition during the evening. In any case, Mike couldn't use more than 35Mbps for uploads at any given time because that's the limit Cox always imposed on its gigabit-download cable plan.

Generally speaking, data usage for most households declines significantly during those 1am-8am overnight hours, so a robustly built broadband network should be able to handle the traffic. (We agreed to publish Mike's first name only but reviewed his bills and confirmed the basic details of his account with Cox.) Mike told Ars via email that most of his 8TB+ monthly use consists of scheduled device backups and 'data sharing via various (encrypted) information-sharing protocols,' such as peer-to-peer networks, between 1am and 8am.

#My internet speed cox download#

Mike, a Cox customer from Gainesville, Florida, pays $150 a month, including $100 for 1Gbps download speeds and 35Mbps upload speeds, and another $50 for 'unlimited data' so that he can go over Cox's 1TB data cap. Cox confirmed to Ars that it has imposed neighborhood-wide slowdowns in multiple neighborhoods in cases like this one but didn't say how many excessive users are enough to trigger a speed decrease. In the case we will describe in this article, a gigabit customer who was paying $50 extra per month for unlimited data was flagged by Cox because he was using 8TB to 12TB a month.Ĭox responded by lowering the upload speeds on the gigabit-download plan from 35Mbps to 10Mbps for the customer's whole neighborhood. Getty Images | Bosca78 reader comments 288 withĬox Communications is lowering Internet upload speeds in entire neighborhoods to stop what it considers 'excessive usage,' in a decision that punishes both heavy Internet users and their neighbors.Ĭox, a cable company with about 5.2 million broadband customers in the United States, has been sending notices to some heavy Internet users warning them to use less data and notifying them of neighborhood-wide speed decreases.