Comcast Raises Bandwidth in Shot at DSL

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.

Comments

Can we run servers yet?

[Skidge]

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.

Re:Can we run servers yet?

[CptNerd]

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.

Re:Can we run servers yet?

[Ark42]

Comcast won't allow servers, but most DSL providers do, and they don't block your ports either usually. SBC lets you opt-out of any port blocking they do (currently just some outbound port 25 blocking I think, but only for the residential package)

Re:Can we run servers yet?

[zymurgyboy]

I think the problem the grandparent post is referring to is really more of a DNS question than anything else. Unless you're paying extra for business class service, Comcast issues a DHCP IP to your modem.

Really, it sounds more like a question about a change to their TOS, actually.

This is easily solved by services like DynDNS. But it's still in violation of the TOS.

I've been using it for sometime and never had a problem with them, however. But then, all I have is a crappy webpage I rarely update. Other than that, it's primarily so I can map my domain over to my DHCP addy and get to my mailserver (I don't use their mail services -- rather host my own thanks), move stuff around with scp or admin things with ssh remotely.

Re:Can we run servers yet?

[ZorinLynx]

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

Re:Can we run servers yet?

[krgallagher]

This is from their acceptable use policy.

"(xiv) run programs, equipment, or servers from the Premises that provide network content or any other services to anyone outside of your Premises LAN (Local Area Network), also commonly referred to as public services or servers. Examples of prohibited services and servers include, but are not limited to, e-mail, Web hosting, file sharing, and proxy services and servers;"

Re:Can we run servers yet?

[Jondaley]

Try Speakeasy.
As one of their tech support told me the other day, "That's the great thing about Speakeasy, you buy the connection from us, and then do whatever you want with it."

That was in response to, "can I sell wireless internet to my neighbors, and not tell you about it?"

Re:Can we run servers yet?

[zymurgyboy]

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.

Re:Can we run servers yet?

[Jondaley]

Hrm. Maybe that doesn't apply to me because I am considered a "business customer" in their eyes.

As far as I can tell, the only reason I am considered a business customer, is I talked to a sales person and asked him a bunch of questions before ordering, and to get me to sign up for a more expensive plan, he gave me a $10/month discount.

And, from then on, they put me in a special queue, for business customers, and a "Dedicated Account Manager", though I don't know if that is really anything special or not.

I do have more services, ie. email address/DNS hosting than other speakeasy customers I know of...

Hidden cap

[Dekks]

Doesn't matter how much more bandwidth you're given if you can't use it without fear of getting a letter saying you're over whats considered reasonable bandwith use in your area, which is why I've stuck with 1.5m/384k DSL.

Quick Question Actually.

[Bumjubeo]

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?

Re:Quick Question Actually.

[DaHat]

Their keeping your bandwidth low has less to do with the wiring between you and them than it does with the head end setup. Most cable modems support data transfers around 40mbs, each way. Most cable companies do not have enough bandwidth or hardware at the head end to support so a large number of people having so much bandwidth... so they cap you nice and low to keep their network running fast.

invisible bandwidth caps

[mabus42]

comcast also has invisible bandwidth caps of which they have been reluctant to publicly disclose. for those that have sbc's 6/608 or verizon's 3/768 service available to them, i would suggest dsl instead. oh yeah, comcast only gives out a paltry 2GB of newsgroups transfers, further diminishing the value of their services compared to dsl offerings with unlimited newsgroup access.

Re:invisible bandwidth caps

[mabus42]

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.

I would rather see them dropping prices

[Anonymous Coward]

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 ...

Dear Comcast,

[Anonymous Coward]

I apologize for moving away on you. Now that I live in Eastern CT I'm stuck with a crappy cable company, ECC. Would you please gobble up this pathetic company into your growing empire. And while you're at it would you please allow people to run servers at home with that 384 up bandwidth. I'd much rather host my own website than be forced to just share torrents all day. Oh and I promise not to extract any HD content from the new Motorola 6412

Thank you,
A former and soon hopefully future Comcast disciple.

Forced upgrade

[Linuxathome]

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.

Verizon FiOS

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Why are uploads so pathetic.

[EasyTarget]

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.

Re:Why are uploads so pathetic.

[pavon]

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?

No they are a bunch of intelligent businessmen who know that somewhere around 95% of home broadband users have no need or desire to serve large amounts of data. Given a fixed amount of bandwidth (limited by customers physical connection), they choose to allocate it in a manner that best serves their customers.

Those 5% that do need to serve data can get a "business" connection that has a more balanced upstream, and whose contract allows the customer to run servers / LANs / etc off the connection.

A little coherence, maybe?

[Dragoon412]

In a move sure to be applauded by DDoS botnet owners everywhere...

So, we bitch when they cripple spam zombies, then we bitch when they raise the bandwidth cap.

Unbelievable.

Well, I, as a Comcast subscriber, am very happy with this change.

Contention Ratio

[saur2004]

Cable rep: Oh sure, we now offer 6Mb download speed comparable to high speed DSL.

/. Customer: Whats the contention ratio?

Cable rep: um....er....whats that?

/. Customer: Kindly shove it where only your proctologist can find it. *click*

I personally think that there should indeed be a law that all internet access providers must have their contention ratio prominently displayed. What good is 6Mb download if you have to share that with a thousand subscribers? Yes I know that DSL has its own contention ratios at the DSLAM but nowhere near the mess that cable trys to sell. But still they should be required to display this information as well.

Re:Ok thats nice for all "comcast pro" people.

[Detritus]

The problem is that their system was designed to have asymmetric bandwidth. The uplink and downlink use different paths and technology. This can't be changed by decree.

Docsis 1.1

[papasui]

Few people understand how Cable bandwidth actually works. It all hinges on your QAM modulation and the number of customers combined to the downstreams and upstreams. The max dowstream bandwidth at docsis 1.1 per cmts blade is about 35Mbit and the max upstream is roughly 10Mbit. This is at 256 QAM on the downstream and 16 QAM on the upstream and upstream channel width of 3.2Mhz. Now I manage 18 CMTS in my day job, that average customer count per blade is around 1250. Each blade has it's own downstream channel and 6 upstreams. So now you have 35 Mbit on the downstream shared between 1250 customers and approximately 125 customers sharing 10 Mbit up. You can get more bandwith by reducing the node combining down to a 1:1 ratio where each node has it's own upstream channel but that involves plant redesign work and additional investment in more CMTS's (big $$$$) and by running different frequencies. But the big gain would be to move to docsis 3.0 (2.0 only offers an additional 10Mbit on the upstream) where they say each downstream channel will be able to offer 200Mbit down and 100Mbit up. And yes I am a RF Network Engineer.

An old problem that stuck around

[billstewart]

Their dislike of upload bandwidth isn't the money - cable modem technology is inherently asymmetric.
Cable modem companies had serious performance problems in the early years - cable TV distribution equipment was pretty shoddy, and the cable modem equipment was relatively experimental, so the native performance wasn't very good, and they didn't have any effective way to limit user's upstream bandwidth. They were absolutely terrified that somebody would trash their neighborhood's cable modem performance by using too much upstream, and especially terrified that the bandwidth would be hogged by somebody running a Pr0n website, back when pr0n on the internet was still a somewhat scandalous concept. Their performance really wasn't all that good, and Pac Bell's "Web Hog" TV ads, while dishonest, were extremely effective.

So they made inflexible hard-core policies against running anything server-like, and it became a religion for them. The fact that they didn't understand what a "server" really was wasn't relevant - an Instant Messaging client is a server, and interactive game programs are servers, and they like both of those, and "email servers" don't consume scarce upstream bandwidth, they use plentiful downstream bandwidth.

Napster was another big issue - not only was it a bandwidth hog, but it was Pirating Content, and TV stations are really in the content business so that was obviously Bad Bad Bad. Not everybody at Comcast was clueless - when I talked with some of their engineers privately, their opinion was "Like, duh, why do you *think* people buy broadband? It's so they can download music faster, and Napster's the best marketing tool out there for us, even if we officially pretend to hate it."

Re:neeeeerrrrrrrds!!!!!

[kaustik]

That really should have stayed in Vegas. I feel like less of a person having just glanced at the thumbs...

Oh no SBC doesn't.

[emil]

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.