I have a 60g account, with 2 teenagers and would like unlimited?

[#1]

I have just signed up to plus net for my broadband and home phone, and have a 60G limit, in 5 days i have already used 12g, i would like to go to unlimited as i can see this is going to be an issue in my first week of use, always had unlimited before. can i get unlimited from plus net?
would like to know as i may well have to change before my 14 day period is up.
matt

[#2]

Plusnet don't have an unlimited product.

[#3]

Set an upper spend limit here and see how it goes.

[#4]

Ask them to go online for downloads etc post midnight and pre 8am during the unlimited period !

[#5]

You could schedule your downloads, updates, and iPlayer programmes, to occur overnight, when your account usage is free and doesn't come out of your 60GB allowance.

[#6]

thanks for the replays, but they can't go online past midnight as they will never be awake during the day, I have a feeling that plus net although a good service will not be enough as paying for an extra 5g is kinda expensive. i may well have to cancel and go back to an unlimited provider.

[#7]

Even an advertised 'unlimited' provider will have a fair usage policy.
The definition of 'unlimited broadband' has been argued and discussed greatly on the web.

[#8]

Quote from: vapormatt

would like to know as i may well have to change before my 14 day period is up.

Is the 14 days period you are referring to is the cooling off period? As far as I'm aware as soon as the service is provided the cooling off period ends

[#9]

well i hope i won't have to leave, but 14 days is from when the service started, otherwise how can you possibly tell if the service is any good until its started?

[#10]

Quote

they can't go online past midnight as they will never be awake during the day

That is fair enough, but they could still leave downloads running overnight, or start downloading when they wake up - at say 07:00am while it's still free, and then use the downloaded files during the day.
For example, I can easily use 2GB per day using the 'Series Record' feature of BBC iPlayer, but I only have a 15GB account.  So in the settings of the iPlayer desktop just configure "Series Record" for between "00:00 and 06:59"

You can configure your Windows computers to do updates at a specified time.
If you are using Linux you can configure 'apt-cache' to download updates overnight,
and many other types of download can be scheduled to happen overnight.
I have four people using my broadband account for many hours everyday and we just about reach our 15GB in the last days of each month, but our total usage of 'free' overnight download is many times the 15GB allowance - sometimes as much as 80GB or 90GB.

[#11]

Another trick to consider, is to configure an old PC to be a web cache, as a very large percentage of most peoples broadband usage is repeat downloads of stuff that has been fetched before.
Have a look at http://www.squid-cache.org/
Not only will it reduce the number of gigabytes each month you need to download, but it will speed up your broadband connection because a lot of fetches will come from the local cache, and any external fetches that are necessary will be faster because they are not fighting for bandwidth with all the stuff which is now cached.
I know this is a slightly extreme solution, but as they say "every little helps"

[#12]

Thanks for the info on downloading after midnight, The problem is leaving the computers on all night, not thats its a problem apart from 1 thing, that is the noise they make, both my son and daughter game and there machines are very noisy with crossfire GFX cards and big air coolers and case fans ect, during the day you don't notice the noise of the machines as its background noise. but at night living in a very quiet area the computers being in there bedrooms sound like vacuum cleaners and they both draw a few amps with 1kw power supplies, this in turn would put up the electric usage and cost ect which would intern negate any saving on over night downloads.
I have spoken to plus net and we think we can resolve the issue, have to call back monday and hopefully everything will be ok and i can stay with plus net as i don't really want to have to move to another provider anyway. the customer service is very good indeed.

[#13]

I built a very low power PC for network file sharing, cached DNS lookups, print spooling, web server, email server, and overnight downloading.
The PC is completely fanless, the only moving part is the laptop hard drive which is virtually silent, and the whole machine only consumes SIX WATTS, so leaving it switched on 24/7 in a silent room is not a problem 

[#14]

Quote from: vapormatt

I have spoken to plus net and we think we can resolve the issue, have to call back monday and hopefully everything will be ok and i can stay with plus net as i don't really want to have to move to another provider anyway. the customer service is very good indeed.

Wake the kids up at 6am !!
Plusnet may suggest you go onto a Business Tariff
http://www.plus.net/business/broadband/
Option 3

[#15]

Quote from: purleigh

So in the settings of the iPlayer desktop just configure "Series Record" for between "00:00 and 06:59" our total usage of 'free' overnight download is many times the 15GB allowance - sometimes as much as 80GB or 90GB.

This is what I do with my iMac and BBC iPlayer.
I access iPlayer website daytime to choose downloads, and bookmark pages.
Typically 8gb / month daytime, 40gb+ unlimited night-time
Monitoring via my predictive Excel SS.