Simpsons fans will likely recall the classic episode in which Homer Simpson gets tossed out of an “all-you-can-eat” seafood restaurant after he devours not only its entire supply of shrimp but two of its decorative plastic lobsters. Ars Technica reports that an IT professional in California did something similar with his unlimited FiOS plan after he used up a whopping 77TB of data over the span of just one month. If you’re wondering how one human being could use that much data in just a month, consider that he had been using his home FiOS connection to deliver friends and family dedicated video streaming, VPN support and peer-to-peer file sharing while “running a rack of seven servers with 209TB of raw storage… in his house.”
It didn’t take long for Verizon to crack down on the man, who wishes to remain anonymous, by telling him that he needed to upgrade to a business subscription if he wanted to blow through 77TB of data every month. It didn’t help that the man was also violating Verizon’s terms of service by running servers over his home broadband connection and that his usage was approximately “30,000% higher” than the average FiOS customer. So the bottom line is that he’s still connected to FiOS but is paying more for his monthly connection than he was before. And now the vast majority of FiOS subscribers can breathe easier knowing that no matter how many videos they stream or peer-to-peer files they download, they’re unlikely to ever hit Verizon’s unofficial limit of 77TB per month.
