Comcast to stop blocking Internet traffic

[babylonsister]

Comcast to stop blocking Internet traffic
In an about-face, company says it will treat all Internet traffic equally

By Deborah Yao
updated 11:19 a.m. ET March 27, 2008


PHILADELPHIA - Comcast Corp., an Internet service provider under investigation for hampering online file-sharing by its subscribers, announced Thursday an about-face in its stance and said it will treat all types of Internet traffic equally.

Since user reports of interference with file-sharing traffic were confirmed by an Associated Press investigation in October, Comcast has been vigorously defending its practices, most recently at a hearing of the Federal Communications Commission in February.

Consumer and "Net Neutrality" advocates have been equally vigorous in their attacks on the company, saying that by secretly blocking some connections between file-sharing computers, Comcast made itself a judge and gatekeeper for the Internet.
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They also accused Comcast of stifling delivery of Internet video, an emerging competitor to the cable company's core business.

Comcast has said that its practices were necessary to keep file-sharing traffic from overwhelming local cable lines, where neighbors share capacity with one another. On Thursday, Comcast said that by the end of the year, it will move to a system that manages capacity without favoring one type of traffic over another.

more...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23827953/

[fascisthunter]

1. Thank You...

I pay for a service not to be policed by that same service.

[Uncle Joe]

2. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, babylonsister.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

3. Whoohoo! I've had a suspicion that they were messing with our speed...

4 users in-house, streaming video, online gamers. Our speed has SUCKED the past few months. every test we run says we're at 1/10th of where it should be.

[Tesha]

8. Comcast service in an area slows down as they become more popular.

Comcast service in an area slows down as they become
more popular.

When they first enter an area and have just one or two
customers on a given cable segment, those two customers
are splitting the service from a "very wide pipe". You
get many megabits per second.

But as the word spreads and more and more customers
are connected to the cable segment, now you have a hundred
or more customers splitting the service from that same-
sized pipe. So now we're talking kilobits, many lost
packets, and dropped connections.

We watched this exact phenomenon as our "early adopters"
Comcast cable broadband went from stunningly great to
pathetically unusable. And you could tell exactly what
was happening: When we first bought the service, the
yellow "activity" LED on our cable modem used to be
dark much of the time. Now, it goes days without ever
blinking "OFF", even in the middle of the night.

We're now benchmarking Verizon DSL against Comcast cable,
but while Verizon is clearly better, it's still nowhere
near the level of reliable service that I would expect
froma network service provider. Or maybe DU is just
overloaded every evening ;) ?

Tesha

[Viva_La_Revolution]

12. I've watched the slow drain happen too, but this was an incredibly swift drop

in speed over just a week or so.

I'll just have to wait and see if it gets better or not.

[Tesha]

15. Maybe some porn-hound just got cable broadband?

The other aspect of the phenomenon is that it's like road
traffic. As the "occupancy" on the road goes from 0 to
(say) 75%, nothing interesting happens; everyone keeps
blasting along at 75 MPH. But from 75% to 85%, everyone
starts being slowed down and when you hit 90% road
occupancy, traffic has become stop-and-go. At 95%,
rear-end collisions start to occur and they stop
traffic dead.

The same sorts of "queueing" and congestion phenomena
apply to shared-bandwidth networks such as cable broadband.

So it's that last few percent of usage that reach a sort
of "tipping" point and broadband performance goes to Hell.

Tesha

[tridim]

4. Big brother just increased the chocolate ration by 4%.

Gee, thanks Comcrap.

[dkofos]

5. How about Time Warner / Roadrunner?

[babylonsister]

6. Comcast bought Time-Warner in my area, so I'm stuck. nt

[dkofos]

9. Time Warner bought Comcast in my area.

So what's up with that??

[babylonsister]

10. I dunno, but you won! nt

[dkofos]

11. I wouldn't call it a win.

[Wizard777]

7. Comcast love to charge their customers for nothing.

When cable TV first came out. Comcast would be down for months. But we still had to pay our cable bills. If you read the contract fine print. The only thing it did was lock you into payments to comcast. Comcast was never obligated to give you anything for the money you were paying them. Maryland finally passed a law requiring cable companies to prorate cable bills. They could not charge for any day that cable was out for 6 hours or more. I will never deal with dirty SOB's Comcast again.

[DCKit]

13. "...will move to a system that manages capacity without favoring..."

That's heartening. Here's a novel idea: How about providing the service and speed your customers - all your customers - are paying for?

[woo me with science]

14. But they still want to spy on you....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3042177

[Breeze54]

16. They must not want to pay big fines and lose customers!

This is good news for their customers!

Maybe now I'll get cable... ;)