COMCAST Testing System Targeting Heavy Bandwidth Users

[snot]

"Comcast will start testing a new method for managing traffic on its network this week that targets heavy Internet users.

"Starting Thursday, Comcast will test a new system that will throttle back or slow down traffic during times of congestion for heavy bandwidth users. The initial tests will be conducted in Chambersburg, Pa. and Warrenton, Va. Later this summer the company plans to expand testing to Colorado Springs, Colo.

"Comcast, the largest cable provider in the U.S., has been under fire for months after it was discovered the company had been slowing down peer-to-peer traffic on its network. The company claimed it had singled out peer-to-peer, file-sharing traffic, because it was eating up an inordinate amount of bandwidth, which caused degradation across the rest of its customers.

"Consumer groups were incensed by the tactic, and the blogosphere filled with criticism. The Federal Communications Commission is currently looking into the situation to see if Comcast has violated any of its Net neutrality principles."

. . . .

(More at http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9959597-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5 )

[babylonsister]

1. So their penalizing customers who use their product more often than others?

:wtf: Seems to me, that'd be a good reason to leave them in the dust.
Yep, I've been forced into Comcast after Time=Warner sold out, but they're not the only game in town.

[DadOf2LittleAngels]

4. Folks who bring up kazaa (or whatever its called now)

or azureus and download movie after movie are damaging the service of everyone around them... It all depends on how draconian they are going to be...

After all I from time to time pull down my Fedora iso's from bit torrent, and there are many legitimate reasons for temporary spikes but if your running a file sharing site out of your home on a consumer link that wrong..

[Greyhound]

17. Is there no corporate malfeasance that you won't excuse?

I've seen you intermittently since you came here and in every single case you rise to the defense of thieves and liars, IOW, the powerful, and blame the innocent.

Every.
Single.
Case.

[Trillo]

2. Curious FCC compliance technique

They get caught with their hand in the cookie jar, doing what they repeatedly denied they had done, so they switch tactics slightly to achieve the same end (reduction in total bandwidth available to all customers), and essentially continue doing.

Talk about giving the middle finger to regulatory agencies, the rest of us, and their customers.

[DadOf2LittleAngels]

5. If this is being applies as advertised

It does not hit all users and during light hours its not hitting any users. This is probabally nothing different than different QOS settings on the switches. When traffic is heavy you have to cap the biggest users so the little guys dont get squeezed out..

[Trillo]

13. I've said this before, and this is a good place to repeat it.

If users on a node or router, each buying ISP access, decided to network their computers (outside the ISP as a second network), perhaps through low power wifi (typical network card -- think house to house), it should be possible for the entire customer base to average their use. This tactic could also put a damper on any Big Brother monitoring (either with or without a warrant) that may occur. Not sure if there's any software that does this specifically, I have seen some designed to run on a small network to distribute GET requests over two ISP connection lines. I think there's even a home or small biz router that offers to connect to two access points, perhaps to 'speed up' or redistribute traffic. Just scale this idea up to entire neighborhoods with many connection points.

[Trillo]

15. Software Allows Neighbors To Improve Internet Access At No Extra Cost

ScienceDaily (Apr. 28, 2006) — Computer scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed software that enables the sharing of high-speed wireless connections without compromising security or privacy. The software can improve Internet connectivity in residential areas at no additional cost.

"Significantly improved speed and the 'always on' feature of wireless routers have been driving the rapid spread of broadband Internet access in many residential areas," said Haiyun Luo, a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "More than 56 percent of homes in the United States already have Internet access, and more than half of those homes are using Wi-Fi wireless home networks."

A typical residential user accesses his broadband home connection about 12 to 15 hours per week, Luo said. "So, while the Internet connection is always on, most of the time it sits idle." Luo would like to see that idleness put to good use by benefiting other users, and he and graduate student Nathanael Thompson came up with a way to do it.

Luo and Thompson have developed a software framework called PERM (Practical End-host collaborative Residential Multihoming) that allows neighbors to pool their Internet access and thereby improve both performance and resilience.

read more @ http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/04/060428095341.htm

[DadOf2LittleAngels]

3. I can understand comcasts position in this

Cable is a shared pipe and if someone is downloading 50 movie torrents at a time they can impact everyone around them.

IMHO so long as its purely bandwidth based and stays away from filtering on network or tansport layer information its all good...

[Spike89]

6. Sorta right

Cable is a shared (within localized networks) connection, but Comcast sells access by bandwidth, i.e., they literally told me I had a 6MB connection with only certain restrictions (no home-based file-servers, etc.). They never said I had a download limit, and it is their responsibility to maintain enough overall bandwidth to deliver the connection speeds they promise.

There is no reason to villify anyone for downloading 50 movies at once (as long as they are legal downloads). There ARE bandwidth limits in place, my connection doesn't gobble up more than 6 MB no matter how many movies I queue (actually, I never really get 6 MB, but that's the nature of the beast).

Basically, if Comcast knows that the node in my neighborhood can support a dozen homes at the speed promised, then sells 3 dozen subscriptions, who is at fault if the network starts to bog down?

[DadOf2LittleAngels]

7. Are you prepared to pay 300% more for cable modems?

It seems to me reasonable, in high traffic times, to enforce a little old QoS. And I do not think a provider should be held to guarantee that level of QoS at all times, such a thing is extreemly costly and internet access could not be a commodity with them in place.. baby sitting a network is part of the business..

[Spike89]

11. Actually happy with Comcast

And I do understand the tradeoff between performance and price. I just don't think it is as simple as saying heavy users are the problem. They sell a service that they tout as broadband, but blame the customer if they use it? Seriously, the 50 movies simultaneously thing is an exaggeration, especially when some of Comcast's "leaked" plans would limit customers to 1 or 2 a month. The problem is simple--Comcast is overselling the availability of its bandwidth. Sure, it could cost 300% if Comcast had to beef the network up enough to truly guarantee "full" speed at all times, but under most of the plans I've heard, the metering solution will also cost the moderate user about the same (moderate being a NetFlix customer downloading 5-6 hi-def movies a month, maybe accessing YouTube a couple hours a week, having an active iTunes account, etc.)

[DadOf2LittleAngels]

12. Depends on the metrics

"And I do understand the tradeoff between performance and price. I just don't think it is as simple as saying heavy users are the problem"

If were talking a few hours a day then its probably heavy users, if its more than say 4 and they are clustered in the evening then this is a problem..

"They sell a service that they tout as broadband, but blame the customer if they use it?"

Look they can hand me a ds3 and I could saturate the thing *by my self* band width is a complex metric and from my comcast experience I generally get it, I have some hours though when its slow as crap because of people who decided they need to saturate the pipe for inane garbage and if comcast want to come across and say 'you get a 6mb burst but only a sustained 2-4' to me, as a customer and someone who understands whats going on under the hood, thats acceptable.

"The problem is simple--Comcast is overselling the availability of its bandwidth."

Only if this congestion period is significant, and if it is Im more than willing to bash them for it..

[htuttle]

8. They shouldn't oversell their network bandwidth -- that's the real problem

If they sell 10 users service that's supposed to give them 3mb download speeds, they better be able to support them all downloading at 3mb at the same time, or they've defrauded their users. Which of course, they do all the time.

It's similar to an airline selling 200 tickets for a 150 seat airplane, in the hope that 50 of them will cancel or fail to show up before the plane is ready to load.

[DadOf2LittleAngels]

10. This is not fraud...

Utilities (and internet is most certainly becoming one of those) never provide enough to supply if *everyone* at the same time turns the hose all the way up...

Go open up every fire hydrant in a neighborhood, have everyone on a hot day leave all their lights and turn on the ac during peak hours. Also even on a private shared network its basically impossible to provide constant band with to everyone. Now if their 'congestion times' are more than just a few hours a day Ill agree they are over sold but there is very pricey equipment out there to shape bandwidth during peak times because its the nature of the beast..



--
On a side note... Oh Noz! we have no internet.

[Eurobabe]

9. Well you knew this was coming with TimeWarner doing it

Fucking bastards. Guess they need to jack up their fees to pay for the new skyscraper in Philadelphia. :mad:

[Firespirit]

14. I WILL NOT use this company anymore

Last summer I activated cable and Internet with a "three free months and free installation" coupon. Used my own modem. Within a day, the Internet was dying every 20 minutes. I wrangled with them about it for a month. They wanted to send a tech out to mess with MY computer, and charge me for it. I'm an engineer and I'd already diagnosed the problem as occurring in their lines, and when I said this, the a-hole rep snapped back that I had no authority to do that (test the lines in my own freaking house) and it was illegal. I told her to cancel the Internet service if the company wouldn't do anything about it.

The next day... the Internet and the cable had been shut off. I was pissed, but I hardly watch TV anyway, so I sent the box back to them.

Three months later, I get a notice from a collections agency that I owe them an installation fee, three months of cable and Internet, and... an equipment fee for my own modem. It took me months to get it straightened out.

:grr:

This is a thuggish mafia-esque company, whose business model is apparently "Screw the customer out of everything you can get," and it does not surprise me in the slightest that they're doing this to heavy bandwidth users.

[bbernardini]

16. One of the reasons I'm switching to Verizon in a little over a week.

I know Verizon is evil too, but with this, and the downtime last week they kept trying to claim didn't happen, I've had it with Comcast.