Friday, August 29

Anime

Animania

I was comparing notes with a couple of friends on how much bandwidth we use each month. I'm on slow-but-steady ADSL; they are on fast-but-limited cable. They boasted of high speeds - 700KB/sec downloads (that's bytes, not bits). I pointed out that I couldn't live with their pathetic monthly download limits.

What do you download?, they asked. Three gig seems plenty to us.

I pointed out that I download fan-subbed anime, since this is often the only way to get the less popular or older series - they simply aren't available to buy in English, neither dubbed nor subtitled. And my favourite site for finding new fansubs, AnimeSuki, often lists as much as a gigabyte of new anime a day.

Fair enough, they say, knowing well the depths of my addiction.

A gigabyte a day. Having said that, I became curious, and went and actually added the numbers up:

Sunday was busy - 1.8GB. Lots of fansubbers working on their projects over the weekend, perhaps.
Monday - 3.4GB. Yikes! I mean, wow! That's a lot! Presumably just a blip; that doesn't happen every day.
Tuesday - 4.8GB. Holy transatlantic cows, Batman! Where did that come from?
Wednesday - 1.3GB. Ah, a return to normalcy. But shortlived -
Thursday - 7.1GB. Nooo! My line's not fast enough! I can't download that much in a day!

Fortunately, people have started to collect the episodes of various series so that you can download four or five or ten episodes at once. Unfortunately, that means that a single click commits you to a twelve hour download. It's like being on dial-up again.

Now, you'll have to excuse me, as it's time for Kodocha.*

* That's the one with the squirrel, Susie.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:24 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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1 Seems like all Australian high-speed internet access services have a limit, huh? I have a cable modem and I can download at 700-900Kbps normally but I've never heard of anyone over here having D/L limits. I'm in Florida BTW...

Posted by: orange haired boy at Friday, August 29 2003 11:04 AM (4TVTH)

2 There are some ISPs who advertise "unlimited" downloads, but what that actually means is that they don't bother to measure the traffic on their painfully slow and unreliable networks. There are two basic problems: first, a majority of traffic goes either to or via the U.S., and we pay for bandwidth both ways. So Australian internet users are effectively subsidising U.S. users. Second, our largest (and not so long ago, our only) phone company, Telstra, has a stranglehold on certain parts of the phone and data networks here, and they charge a fortune for it. Telstra must die!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, August 29 2003 12:35 PM (jtW2s)

3 Comcast cable access has a monthly limit. I forget what it is exactly, but occasionally I'll get a notice when I reach 75% of my limit and then I'll slow down and keep an eye on it until the end of the month.

Posted by: Ted at Friday, August 29 2003 12:36 PM (bov8n)

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