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Comcast Raises Bandwidth in Shot at DSL

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the the-battle-continues-on-and-on-and-on-and-on dept.

bigtallmofo writes "In a move sure to be applauded by DDoS botnet owners everywhere, news.com.com is reporting that Comcast is raising the speed of its cable Internet offerings. The standard rate will change from 3 Mbps downstream and 256 Kbps upstream to 4 Mbps downstream and 384 Kbps upstream. Customers that currently pay extra for faster service will see a 50% speed increase over what they have today to 6 Mbps downstream and 768 Kbps upstream." Combine this move with the VoIP announcement and the rumblings about more Baby Bell mergers -- we should see an...interesting landscape soon.

11 of 422 comments (clear)

  1. Can we run servers yet? by Skidge · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As it has hiked speeds, Comcast has been giving customers more to do with that bandwidth. Its Comcast.net home page has become more of a media portal, with emphasis on higher-bandwidth services such as video news clips, on-demand video games, a flashier interface and more personalization tools.

    That's all well and good, but will they let us do something actually useful with our service like run a web server? Not that I'm trying to run a big website out of my home, but I'd rather to be officially allowed to run my own photo gallery on my linux box for my family rather than have "a flashier interface," whatever that means.

    1. Re:Can we run servers yet? by CptNerd · · Score: 3, Interesting


      Comcast and other cable/DSL providers will never allow servers of any kind, so long as they can't negotiate the kind of "peering" agreements that the major backbones have with each other.

      Comcast has to pay for packets that are routed outside their nets, and get to charge for packets coming into their nets, so they throttle upload and open up download rates.

      Always follow the money.

      --
      By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
    2. Re:Can we run servers yet? by ZorinLynx · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This doesn't make sense; they don't allow servers, but they don't seem to mind BitTorrent, which consumes a lot more upstream bandwidth than webservers.

      I think they just put in the "no webservers" clauses so they have teeth to shut down abusers who post commercial websites and high bandwidth sites on the service. I know tons of people who run servers on ISP's that supposedly ban them and are never bothered about it.

      -Z

    3. Re:Can we run servers yet? by zymurgyboy · · Score: 3, Interesting
      On the contrary; it's plenty good enough for hosting your own IMAP server too. Being able to make and destroy as many mailboxes or aliases as you want, at will, is damned handy.

      If you've got the means and the wherewithall to access your server remotely, you can literally do this from anywhere you can get a port 22 connection.

      This is nice when you want to give some corporate sales slug an e-mail address but you don't quite know if you trust them. I've given out addresses that didn't exist on my domain to people like that, then quick made it so on my server after our meatspace conversation ended. Voila! I get their marketing crap for a while, then if they become annoying or I'm simply not interested in their stuff, I just remove the alias I gave them and... Bubye.

      That approach has proven a lot easier than having to say, "gee, I don't think I'm interested," and then having to live through their hard sell.

      --
      If you never make mistakes, it's probably because you're not doing anything.
  2. Quick Question Actually. by Bumjubeo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    All the cable companies seem to be increasing the bandwidth of their cable service. The cable company in my city recently upped to 5mb down, 1mb up. How are they making their bandwidth so much higher without changing the cables? Is it all about voltage, or has coax been able to handle this all along, that they have just been throttling back?

  3. I would rather see them dropping prices by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The minimum price is $43 for comcast customers and
    almost $60 otherwise.
    I think $29 for 1.5/384 servce from verizon looks a lot more attractive.
    The extra bandwidth will not improve my experience 2 fold ...

  4. Forced upgrade by Linuxathome · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Some of us running the older DOCSIS 1 compliant cable modems can only get a max of 3Mbps download. This move could also mean more money for Comcast with more people wanting to rent their cable modem to capitalize on this increase in bandwidth.

    --
    Linux at home
  5. Verizon FiOS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and just got the new Fiber Optic service from Verizon. I'm currently using the slowest package offered, which is 5mbps down and 2mbps up. There are also 10 down and 30 down packages. I was paying $60 a month for Comcast at 3mbps down, but now I'm paying half that for this new service. I had nothing but trouble with my Comcast connection, so this little bump in speed isn't going to help them much.

  6. Why are uploads so pathetic. by EasyTarget · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Why are US DSL lines sooo asymettric. 6Mb down, 0.25Mb up, etc.. My experience here in yrp is that things are more even, 8Mb down usually gives 2Mb up, etc.
    Do US provides buy their upstream bandwidth asymetrically too? So they have to cap customers upload.
    Or are they just a bunch of ex TV retards who think of the Internet as a TV with the remote connected directly to their marketing database? and are horrified/confused by the idea that other people might want to broadcast too.
    Maybe I'm too cynical, and this is just how people want it.

    --
    "Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
  7. Re:invisible bandwidth caps by mabus42 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    According to many of the reports in the comcast forum at http://www.dslreports.com comcast has re-worked their contract with giganews to double the amount... perhaps you should search the forums there for more info.

  8. Oh no SBC doesn't. by emil · · Score: 3, Interesting

    All outbound traffic on port 25 is or will be blocked. Outbound email must be routed through their authenticated SMTP agent.

    I ordered SBC DSL basic service and was considering a switch from cable modem (mediacom). I requested that the port 25 block not be applied to my account and was refused (they advised me to upgrade to the more expensive service).

    Remember that there was a recent court decision allowing ISPs to read your email when it touches their hard drive.

    I dumped them, and I told them exactly why. You should too.