A Connection's Tale

For the past four or five days, I've been shaped, connection-wise, instead of what some of you may think. Its annoying, especially for one who relies on the influx (and outflux) of bandwidth rather heavily as compared to some.

"What is shaping?" some of you might ask, since it's a fairly unheard-of concept from the motherland (Malaysia, where connections are bad enough anyhow without being shaped). Without going into too many details, some broadband plans over where I am currently have this idea of setting a limit for the amount of data you can download per month, and once you reach that threshold, your line's capability gets cut down to about ten percent.

To put it in an analogy, imagine driving your car down the highway, and the speed limit happens to be 120 km/h. You cruise along that speed until you reach a little let's say, one or two km above that particular limit, and then a cop comes over, stops your car, takes out your engine and replaces it with a steam boiler.

Therefore, you have the same car, same look, but wholly different feel. Same thing with what I'm feeling right now, as my ADSL has been cut down to the power of dial-up. Mind you, it still connects as broadband, but is no faster than a 56k. Which is quite annoying, if you have to get from one point to another.

And the thing is, my Internet provider had this sort of a policy for more than a year now, although for some reason, they implemented the policing until not more than a month ago. And at the same time, they threw in a bunch of connection problems which just made everyone else's life miserable in terms of connecting to the Internet. So, a number of users took off (including a friend of mine who was hooked up on the same service) and got on to another provider.

Thing is, I've always been somewhat of a heavy user, and spent most of my Internet time by downloading various media and reading all sorts of articles that came as an interest to my being. Now a little question remains for about eight more days until this shape thing is lifted.

Should I upgrade my service for 10 dollars more (thus granting me 15 more GB per month) or should I follow my friends and search for greener pastures?


Ah well.


Currently listening to: Sonata Arctica - Peacemaker