3 GB (typo?)--my ISP is saying 30GB/ month, but they don't really call until 60-70GB/month. It's not yet written policy, but the issue of "unlimited" in the advertising was argued on Slashdot a few months back http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/29/2257259 and it seemed to say that the Terms of Service of most ISP's do allow for such unwritten changes. Looks like more and more ISP's will be trying this to curb bandwidth peaks. Since my ISP is a community organization I am willingly cooperating for now (they think they have the same problem with 'abusive' clients that gnutella does) and I hope we can develop a fair use policy. If I find out that individuals are being sacrificed as a token way to cater to corporate demands--especially spam--then that will be a very different story.

So--to self-regulate: I leave 1 machine on that runs 24/7 as an UP and shares just a few select files. That uses up about 600MB/day. Then I let my machine with the bulk of my shares run up close to 1 GB on the weekends or maybe for few hours per weekday. If I need to run up the total when beta-testing, I call the help desk and make sure they add a note to my file that my usage is going to be higher for a while. Then when they call I ask them to call up my file and read the note. I'll see if this works--so far it has, and they also are learning that gnutella is being used for legitimate reasons. We've got to convince the ISP's that our use is as valid if not better than the corporate pressures that want us to pay for their infrastructure and marketing pitches, or for PC's that are used for M$ viral promotion [note to self--stop this! repetitive rant--stop!]

But if the kids are busy--aargh! And my ISP just announced they've increased the speeds:--for the same cost (~CDN$ 30.00/month). I now get 5 MB/s downloads, and 1 MB/s up. I used up my daily allowance very quickly just testing--I'd never seen 600KB/s internet downloads before. LOL--Maybe I'll have to ask for one of the older cablemodems that they don't log!