ISPs Experiment With Broadband Download Capping

W33dz writes "News.com has an article detailing how some ISPs are now capping bandwidth usage by some of their high end users. Comcast claims this is an attempt to create better speeds for their average users, but you can't help but wonder how much of this is in response to the RIAA's subpoenas. Interestingly enough, there is no set limit, but just a subjective limit of 'more than the average user.' The World Tech Tribune has an article on the same topic."

Comments

Throttle it.

[grub]

.. but you can't help but wonder how much of this is in response to RIAA's subpoenas. Interestingly enough, there is no set limit, but just a subjective limit of 'more than the average user.'

Lose the tinfoil hat, Sparky. Home broadband is dirt cheap for what you get. It's subsidized by business accounts much like telephone service. When cable and DSL first came out no one heard of Napster let alone Kazaa or eMule. Those apps use up a huge amount of available bandwidth which we get damn cheap.

Personally I'd rather them use bandwidth throttling for P2P apps rather than dictating a certain amount of usage over the course of a month. Most P2P users leave the thing running all day anyhow (I do and check in to home via VNC through an SSH tunnel) so why not throttle it back? A few K less incoming for P2P isn't much, but when you're waiting for a website to load.. well that's where you want the real speed.

Re:Throttle it.

[Torinaga-Sama]

Someone has to be a grub fanboy, so I suppose it will be me.

He is right. Tinfoil hat and all. The problem is really noticable on residential Cable networks.

When I am actually reading text in a browser noting upsets me more than having to wait for the next page, where on the otherhand if I am downloading something that takes an hour, an additional 15 mintues would not even be noticable (as I usually get up and go something else while doing that anyway)

Also I think there are a lot of people on file sharing networks that are pack rats, they download everything they think might even be vaguly interesting even though a lot of it they will never use it.

This f's my ping and I hate that too. :-)

Re:Throttle it.

[danila]

Wow, that was good. :) You almost persuaded me to uninstall eMule and KaZaA. :) Still, the common sense took me back over. ;)

P2P doesn't create much noise. Actually you can easily get the whole traffic picturee simply by measuring your own searching and download traffic. You'll see. Dedicated server might be a good idea in theory, but the truth is, it's not so bulletproof. Just look at Steam and it's recent problems and compare it with eDonkey2000. Do you think eDonkey will slow to crawl when Half-Life 2 is released? I don't. ;) But anyway, P2P was specifically designed to avoid the need for servers. It's not its fault, it's part of the specification. And claiming that P2P users consume more electricity is just plain nonsense. But you might want trying to sell this idea to RIAA for their PR^H^H FUD campaign. :)

Now back to topic. When P2P was created, there simply wasn't a feasible alternative authorised by labels. To deny labels' partial responsiblility for the emergence of P2P is to ignore reality. Today there are such alternative (still not perfect) and people gradually start using them. But the problem is that users are now accustomed to another consumption patterns and labels still try to ignore that. People want a more active role in selection of the music. They want to taste much more than before and only then buy what they like. Labels still can't face this reality and continue pushing their 15$ CDs, now copy-protected. That's simply not what consumers want and in the end consumers always win.

May be, if labels had offered online music services in 1995, P2P would not emerge and online piracy would remain confined to Usenet, IRC and private FTP. But now people know the taste of music without limits and nobody will be able to take it away. At least I hope so.

Makes sense...

[Anonymous Coward]

Give more bandwidth to the people who don't download anything and less to the people who do...

Why is it always a devious plot?

[DragonMagic]

Why on earth if someone changes a policy that somehow will affect mass P2P traders, etc., it's some underhanded effort behind the scenes of one of the hated groups, SCO, MS, RIAA, MPAA, etc.?

Could it just be that bandwidth costs money, and some people just use way too much of it? That perhaps this usage could hinder others in the area or across the whole network?

Nah, usual paranoia sets in, it must be the RIAA strongarming them to change their policy so people have to take an extra thirty seconds to download that song off Kazaa . . .

This is the way it is...

[Crusty Oldman]

If they have the capacity, then using that capacity doesn't cost the ISP an extra nickel. If they don't have the capacity, then they are selling you something they do not have. We call this fraud.

You must be joking?

[Srin Tuar]

Home broadband is dirt cheap for what you get.

You cant be serious?
What you call "broadband" I call a poor quality, overpriced, asymmetric leecher link. The telecom monopolies have been trying to prevent broadband adoption inasmuch as they are averse to change of any kind.

Fiber to the curb should be here, and it should be cheap. I dont know why so many are happy to be bent over a barrel for a pittance in bandwidth. The network grows in value for each user online, and not the other way around.

Re:You must be joking?

[jasonditz]

I can see where he's coming from though.

I'm paying $40 a month for cable modem service right now, two years ago I was paying $30, and it was twice as fast, and there weren't any restrictions on what I could do with my bandwidth.

Everything else in the technology world is getting faster, cheaper, and less restrictive. Broadband is going to opposite way.

I'm all for it

[realmolo]

I work for a cable ISP, and I set up an Allot NetEnforcer to do some packet-shaping. The P2P apps just KILL us, and really any other broadband provider. I throttled that shit down to 16 kilobytes/sec down/8 kb/sec up (per user), and watched in amazement as network utilization by 40% during peak hours. And so far, no one has complained. Keep in mind that I throttled ONLY P2P stuff. It's not that we want to screw you, but the truth is that P2P apps use up more than their share. E-mail and web pages and even games are a higher priority. It's all kind of a moot point anyway. I expect that within the next year or so, most ISPs will simply block all the P2P stuff to avoid the legal hassles.

Re:Stop being a troll

[SirChive]

Are you an absolute idiot? You admit that their terms of service give you unlimited downloads. Unlimited means without any limits. Nobody is a "freaky weirdo" because they actualy use their "unlimited" service as much as possible.