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FCC Complaint Filed Over Comcast P2P Blocking
Enter Sandvine writes "A handful of consumer groups have filed a complaint with the FCC over Comcast's "delaying" some BitTorrent traffic. The complaint seeks fines of $195,000 for each Comcast subscriber affected by the traffic blocking as well as a permanent injunction barring the ISP from blocking P2P traffic. '"Comcast's defense is bogus," said Free Press policy director Ben Scott. "The FCC needs to take immediate action to put an end to this harmful practice. Comcast's blatant and deceptive BitTorrent blocking is exactly the type of problem advocates warned would occur without Net Neutrality laws.""
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If the FCC takes effective action on this complaint, then they are effectively mandating net neutrality as part of their remit, so no law would be needed.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Comcast getting fined is the kind of thing that needs to happen. Normally I'm against FCC fines, Howard Stern gets fined for saying the same thing Oprah does. Here, like Oprah I doubt the FCC will pursue this.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
Now, with that said, there is one option that could be taken now that Net Neutrality has been brought into this.
I see from the PDF that the people filing this complaint are from Washington, DC. It probably should have been filed in New York with the demands specifying only NY victims for the time being. Why might you ask NY? Well, it's the only state to have established net neutrality as a telecommunications standard (See 16 NYCRR Part 605). And this case is exactly the definition of what those standards are put in place to protect!
So while it may have had to be filed with the FCC, the real place where you could pretty much guaranty a (maybe even court case) win against Comcast is in the state of New York. I know they provide service there and I think it would be more prudent to first prove your point there, then file a complaint to the FCC from New York after the local government has awarded the victims there.
In my opinion, a guaranteed sure win in a small battle is bigger than a huge uncertainty in the overall war.
My work here is dung.
This has less to do with Net neutrality and more to do with not spoofing (fraudulent) packets. You can still shape traffic, you just can't fraudulently send packets to people.
There are many more things then illegal files that this is in use for in particular World of Warcraft Patching among some others. I Can only imagine more Businesses starting to use this to deliver their content as fast as possible.
What the FCC *ought* to do is say:
"OK, Comcast: you've decided you are going to pick and choose what traffic you want to carry. Fine - it's your equipment, it's your call, do what you want.
HOWEVER: since you've appointed yourselves the arbiter of what your system will carry, you are no longer a common carrier and you are no longer afforded the protections of a common carrier.
Have a nice day - oh, and BTW: Here's all the items over which we will be bringing enforcement action, since you are no longer a common carrier...."
www.eFax.com are spammers
I'm not sure if this is relevant or not. I use Giganews (a company that comcast sub-contracts out for usenet access) for poking around on usenet. They have a 10 concurrent connection limit on downloads etc. The problem is, that if I use all ten of them at the speeds I should be allowed, my modem kills itself. I occasionally use bittorrent and have never achieved the speeds that would make bt stand out as a network resource hog.
I'm curious, are RST's the reason I have to get up and reset my cable modem late at night during file transfers? If so, then it's not just bt suffering. It's anyone doing any kind of high speed (as in maxing out your connection) transfers. I used to think that it was just Giganews sending data too fast and effectively DoS'ing my connection but news like this makes me wonder. Has anyone else had a similar experience with comcast and giganews/highspeed transfers?
While I applaud this effort to hold Comcast accountable and hopes it works, it is going to be an uphill battle to defend bittorrent, given the current status of P2P in the courts, and media's eyes.
It seems the more prudent approach would be to use the blocking of Google traffic, as Google is loved by the media and has been helpful to the courts on a few occasions, to file the complaint, and then rely upon the Google decision to defend torrent traffic. Much like the "tame" playboy defends the more hardcore free "speech"
Go defenders of Neutrality!
Screw Comcast and get Gmail notifier to work again!
It's actually a pretty common thing within some networks to create some classes of TCP traffic and cause them to drop a packet. It causes the TCP session window to shrink by half, so now each side has to tighten up their acknowledgment window. It's called Random Early Detection. TCP is very resilient traffic, so this has very little impact on most networks (although I'd be very careful about using it within an ISP network).
However, this seems to be clearly stepping above that, and performing what is essentially source address spoofing, regardless of the whether or not there is congestion on the network. I don't know if you can really classify this as a QoS technique.
---don't make me break out my red pen.
Traffic shaping is ALSO bad because they will just "shape" your traffic to near-zero. They call it Quality of Service but the only thing it will be used for is to REDUCE the quality of your service.
WTF? Damn litigious bastards, even if they're pretending to take "our" side.
You know they aren't too concerned with QoS because they would shape *all* your bandwidth instead of just torrent traffic if you are using "too much," whatever that means. I say if I pay for X amount of bandwidth DAMN YOU if you say I can't use it all.
Based on how poorly Comcast treats its customers in sending them threatening emails and staggering their internet traffic, they are most likely scaring away many current and possible future customers.
There are plenty of competitors to choose from that don't treat their customers like criminals.
So goodbye Comcast, and good luck!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Huh? I'm still trying to figure out how Comcast was blatant and deceptive.
Wait, wait, I got it. They are so dumb, they failed at being deceptive and ended up being blatant! What kind of a world do we live in when a multi-million dollar evil corporation can't even be counted on to lie properly?!?
Yes, you can dance to Radiohead.
And lying about it is the worst part!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The bittorrent website actually has you choose whether you are a business or a personal interest when accessing their site. I know personally i get all my linux stuff through bit torrent. The look at this technology as something only used for piracy would definitely be doing the technology a disservice.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/27/1510219
"Cable Internet Service Not Common Carrier"
HA HA HA, OH WOW.
They should have made their complaint more clear cut from the common industry practice of QOS.
spoofing packets to intentionally interrupt a connection is very different of course, but the way they present it, using the term "degrading", is not specific enough.
"interrupting" is more accurate, and more egregious.
Comcast will likely use the long time case of QOS to weasel out of it, harming the credibility of an honestly legitimate gripe.
If they can't weasel out of it, this could put QOS in danger, resulting in terrible performance of voip, streaming video, vpn, online gaming, and other latency sensitive applications.
In their justifiable zealotry they did not put their complaint through the proper egghead QA channels, and not only may the entire net neutrality cause may suffer for it, but even a "win" may ultimately be a harm.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Every time something like this comes up, there is a cacophony of geekdom crying out tripe about "common carrier" status without any understanding about what those words *mean*.
Do we not ridicule politicians who make laws based on their completely boneheaded ideas about what technology means ("tubes", anyone?)? Do we not loathe judges who rule in favor of the "MAFIAA" due to their complete lack of even elementary comprehension of what is involved in, say, *watching* a DVD? Do we not scoff at the astonishingly anemic attempts to create engaging television and movie plots out of programming and information security? Do we not groan inwardly (and some of us, outwardly) when a reporter tarnishes the good name that was "hacker"?
If we're going to claim to be anything better than those who speak from ignorance, let us cease with the "common carrier" whine until such point as we know what it *means*!
It is acceptable to give a big Skywalkerian whine about the "system" that lets a huge corporation own separately regulated subsidiaries, with some being "telecommunications services" subject to "common carrier" laws and others being "information services" not included in "common carrier" laws. (Whining to elected officials may not be any more productive, but then again, it would be the proper venue.) On the other hand, whining here while not even bothering to know what you're whining about? That makes you ignorant, and if the trend I pointed out above is any indicator, we don't abide ignorance here.
(Guess I should've used the rant markup, but I couldn't remember whether it was supposed to be SGML, XML, OOpsXML, or what, so it likely wouldn't validate even if I did.)
It doesn't have to be illegal for Comcast to hate it -- remember that they have to pay some pennies for that pesky, pesky upstream traffic. Poor dears.
They absolutely are - there are companies out there (some with a recognizable big yellow character) that want to be able to leverage BitTorrent delivery methods.
This will just encourage comcast to say, "You're right, here is what it costs us" and establish a new class of service and adjust ToS. Its no longer net neutrality if its not part of the package. Jumping from $60 - $600/month to have isn't worth it to me. Premium dedicated bandwidth is like $200 per Mbps for sustained traffic. How much is BT worth to you?
I expect this will go nowhere or just like everything else, comes back to bite the consumer.
I think the people that do have a valid case is people not on Comcast receiving fake packets from Comcast. Comcast can pretend that they have the right to send fake packets on there own network, but to send them to other networks? I don't think so.
It is technically a D.O.S. attack against people not even on there network.
it's a news server, and it's maxing your downstream to the point your modem is gasping for air trying to maintain the communication necessary to remain on the comcast network.
if your newsreader has it, set a global maximum downstream to about 30k under what is normally possible. the problems should fix themselves.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I think it's more of the "kid with hands in the cookie jar" type of blatant and deceptive.
Parent: "Are you stealing cookies?"
Child: "No, I'd never do that!"
Parent (pulling childs hand out of cookie jar, revealing a hand covered with melted chocolate bits): "Then why is your hand in the cookie jar?"
Child: "It wasn't!"
Parent: "And why are there crumbs all over your shirt and your face?"
Child: "There aren't!"
Parent: "Really?"
Child: "Of course! You know I'd never disobey you!"
Parent: "So your hands are smeared with chocolate, your mouth isn't covered with crumbs, and cookie jar that was full when I left isn't now half-empty?"
Child: "Sounds right!"
Although in the case of Comcast, it's not like the people in the "parent" role can do anything, and Comcast gets to continue providing Comcastic service. ("Why are you blocking BitTorrent?" "We're not!" "But I can see you sending RST packets!" "I can't see any!" "I've got a log right here!" "Your client is just pining for the fjords!" etc.)
And I think there's also a Senator Craig joke in there somewhere.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
I was downloading the latest Ubuntu distribution a couple of days ago using TimeWarner cable. The download went very fast, but I notice I wasn't seeding very may users, and the few that were had 5Kb speeds.
After I finished downloading, I decided to let it run OVERNIGHT to reseed back to the world. When I checked in the morning, I had only updated 10MB and I noticed peers would pop-up in the window, show a few kb of transfer and then disappear again. I'm assuming that TimeWarner is sending dummy packets to the OTHER computers to stop my seeding.
However, MY download didn't seem affected AT ALL. Also, there were several clients that seems to stay connected but with very low transfer rates.
-Unresolved symbol? Byte me!
I would GLADLY take my service elsewhere and leave a flaming bag on Comcast's doorstep. But where could I go? Comcast is the only ISP offering speeds that don't suck.
Dear Verizon, 20 Mbit SDSL, guaranteed customer. Where's your service?
I don't have a choice. It's Craptastic! or nothing where I live in suburbia. No DSL, no fiber, no wireless, no kidding. Verizon has no interest in adding another DSLAM any closer to me either. Where's this competition you speak of?
That's essentially what I had to say in the letter I just sent to the FCC about this, that IP spoofing and DoS attacks are prosecutable offenses in any other case, and how is this really all that different?
I think that Bittorrent.com & Blizzard could persue a lanham act complaint against Comcast for this one. Comcast is deliberately interfering with Bittorrents legitimate business - distributing rental movies over bittorrent, and WOW updates. The point being that lanham reparations can be percentages of the offending companies gross profits ... doesn't take a big percentage of Comcast to make a big payoff for Bittorrent or Blizzard.
If Comcast were doing what they say they are doing, then they would actually be OK. It's the deliberate forging of headers on the terminate packets that's going to get them in trouble.
I was using comcast to distribute Ron Paul material (made by volunteers) during this time. I dropped Comcast as soon as it became apparent they were delaying torrents.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
I am a Comcast subscriber and I use Bittorrent to download Linux DVD ISOs and other legal content. My experience is that the performance of Bittorrent is abysmal, presumably due to their "delaying" method. Comcast should not be spoofing any packets.
I would have no problem with Comcast using CoS instead and just classify Bittorrent traffic as low-priority bulk transfers. This way it would get whatever bandwidth is left over yet prioritize more important traffic like games and VOIP. (In fact, this is how I have my firewall configured).
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
The logic should be if you don't treat all traffic the same, you aren't a common carrier and you are responsible for child porn on your network. Seems like an ok carrot and stick alternative for the 4 American ISPs to me.
I download linux iso's daily, and legal torrents all day long. This type of bandwithing hogging is fucking cocksucking bullshit.
First off before I even get to the throttling, we are the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and we lag so behind in other countries in bandwith speed, and comcast has literally done NOTHING in their long term plan to provide more bandwith speed. They are milking their shitty lines for every Americans last penny. Its corporate greed at its finest. Big brother setting his hand in there to make sure im not taking up to much bandwith that I PAY FOR and limiting my legal torrents download speed.
EAT A DICK
I would think that, unless the endpoint of the conversation is one of Comcast's servers, like a proxy relay, that forging packets as coming from an external source is just as bad as sending those same packets out to an external source. They're forging packets, plain and simple. I don't think it matters to whom they're sent.
... install and enable IPsec, even if they are not a Comcast vict^h^h^h^hcustomer.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
That's a pretty big IF there...
I live in a small town of blacksburg in a community served by some Shentel company (shentel.net). I am not sure if they are blocking p2p or throttling it but sometime I can't even connect to a host using gnutella. And if by chance it connects, it is almost impossible to download anything. Similarly bit-torrent speeds are near zero. As soon as I VPN to my school from my home, p2p connects and I get excellent bit torrent speeds. So, what can we do about ISP's like these? I am fed up with them but have no other option available.
Woosh!
It was a joke, moron.
It should be damages as 195,000 per packet slowed by comcast.
Actually, I think the way the Internet is tiered is that the end that makes the request pays. So that pesky upstream traffic is saving Comcast money. It's the downstream traffic that they're paying through the nose for. What should Comcast do, then? Prioritize traffic so that you get better data rates downloading from other hosts within the Comcast network and pushing content out.
Unfortunately, DSL and cable modem service is set up exactly the opposite way. Under the assumption that people will do more downloading than uploading, the bandwidth is divided unevenly between download and upload. This is, of course, an arbitrary choice---there's no reason they couldn't use nine channels up and one channel down instead of the other way around (or whatever)---but that is the way things are structured currently, and this should be taken into consideration.
Of course, what we really need is to move towards communication schemes similar to RADSL, in which the data rates in each direction can be adjusted to maximize throughput... but go one step farther and make it adaptive according to the mode of utilization (which AFAIK RADSL is not).
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
and yet strangely, they don't have to pay as much for downstream traffic.. Seems it would be more efficient to re-route the trackers to look to local clients on their network.. IE, if I want to download ubuntu, I would consider it a benefit if they pointed me to someone else on their network that was seeding, or further along downloading, as I could finish it faster.. And they wouldn't have duplicated traffic coming through their gateway pipes.
They could have manipulated things in a way that would be a win for all, but they chose to do it in a way that was a win for them.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
You are correct, this is a very very poor case to try to get a favorable ruling on.
For starters, the facts do not support a net neutrality argument. They aren't singling out Bit torrent and letting other p2p through unharmed. They are applying a protocol level solution.
Customers on the Comcast network are able to download their share of free linux distros and WoW patches to their hearts content. What they are not allowed to do is turn their home pc in to a server to allow non-comcast customers to download from them, at least not for 10 minutes anyway. So, if a Comcast customer is the only person seeding something and you are not a Comcast customer, you will be able to get it from them, eventually. A Comcast customer can still upload to another Comcast customer without an issue.
The whole RST issue really isn't an issue. The Sandvine could just as easily kill the connection request and not return anything at all. Sending the rst closes the connection on your side freeing up resources. This is standard network equipment behavior of firewall type equipment, is it not? Your connection is not getting through until it decides to allow it, whether it sends an rst or not.
I'm not saying there is nothing we can do, but any ruling based on this case will surely have very negative impacts.
A victory saying you can not prioritize traffic of any kind based on protocol, would be bad.
A victory saying network traffic cannot respond to packets that aren;t destined for itself would be beyond belief.
What is the ruling we are hoping for from this case?
their case is aweful, but don't defend their practice.
QOS packet shaping is one thing, but DDoSing someone's bit torrent connection is another.
If anything they should be filing class action for violation of anti-hacking laws.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
"...we don't abide ignorance in others." ;)
All fixed.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Why don't you do QOS on your own end, as I do on mine. Comcast should just push packets.
XBox live might be important to you, skype might be important to me, vpn might be important to wilma flintstone.
I don't want the ISP making those decisions at the application layer.
Now, if they want to push ICMP packets to the front of the line, and classify UDP differently, then go ahead and do it there. But don't decide for me which applications are "important" and which arent.
Besides, thanks to Web 2.0, everyone thinks is a hot shit brainiac idea to dump everything into an http request, so as that takes over, there will really be only one type of traffic on layer seven.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Bell Sympatico publically stated today that they are now throttling Bittorrent traffic during periods of congestion. Users are reporting being throttled to 30 KB/s. Non-throttled Bittorrent is quickly becoming scarce.
There are many ISPs that block BitTorrent:
http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Bad_ISPs
It seems odd to pick on only one of them.
Gah - you know when someone pulls out that phrase, you will soon see idiocy camouflaged with high-falutin' language.
The poster is correct - bandwidth is not an unlimited commodity, since there is no such thing as an unlimited commodity. Comcast, etc, attempted to pretend that it was in their advertising campaign by promising the impossible -- unlimited bandwidth. In a sane world, they contractually obligated themselves to bankruptcy by their fraud, hoping that the price in bandwidth costs would always outpace bandwidth usage growth, instead of actually advertising what limitations they could afford.
And now we get all kinds of sophistry to defend them. Obviously, you have to have some form of bandwidth cap. You could do it by total bandwidth monthly or weekly, you could degrade bulk services at high demand (and state it openly in your terms) or you could drop high-bandwidth users (and state it openly in your terms).
But they're the ones who have f*cked up, and want to have their cake and eat it too. They're the ones who still have "Unlimited Bandwidth!!!" ads at the malls still today.
This is no tragedy of the commons. There's no abuse because contractual obligations are lacking and oversight is limited to traditional norms. This is a case of explicit contractual obligations that are clearly delineated, where "property rights" are quite obvious, where private entities aren't sharing but are trading. It's just that one of those entities is much larger than the rest of the partners, and that entity is simply trying to defraud their partners by promising what they can't deliver.
Libertarian language is just so Orwellian.
Comcast only sent me R-S-T, but not L-N-E for the hint on that final round. I think I deserve $195,000 as well.
I am not defending it in any manner.
I am just questioning the logic behind this particular suit as there really isn't a 'satisfactory' ruling to be had.
I rather enjoyed having low ping times for my online games. Once the P2P floodgates are open, 1% of the users are going to slow the remaining 99% of everyone else down!
Don't block P2P, but put it on the bottom priority list.
Life is not for the lazy.
Actually I think that Comcast's connection to the "Internet" is based on the bandwidth without regard to the direction, Comcast's big problem is cable TV network is heavily weighted for the download with slight mounts allocated for upload and more and more applications are moving towards more symmetry. I'm on comcast Hi-speed and I'm not noticing problems except with Bit-torrent, but my wife has been having a lot of problems with her games from pogo.com. These aren't FPS games either but mostly interactive board games with a chat window, hi latency would be tolerable but when we get a forged [RST] packet the game client actually locks up, most annoying.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
no, I'm not talking about Comcast... the FCC is going to fine them $195,000 for each subscriber affected... of course the subscriber wont see any of that money, it will just go into the govt's pockets...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
The fact is, Comcast is blocking a lot more than p2p traffic. for example, my ssh logins to my remote servers get reset between 5-15 minutes after I log in. These connections use to stay open for days.
Sometimes, Comcast decided to block my access to sites like gmail, or even Google. These blocks are all REST packages that comcast is spoofing (I can't prove it with google, but google has no reason to "the remote server reset the connection"). I can prove they are doing it to my ssh connections because neither I nor my server are sending the REST packages that each receives.
It's deceptive to software - the forged packets cause BitTorrent et al to drop connections.
It's blatant to human observers.
They aren't just hitting bit-torrent, anything that has a lot of upload traffic gets reset; even FTP can be flaky during prime-time because it does a lot of handshaking. The wife's board games from pogo.com are even getting hit in the cross fire so we're not only not getting the bandwidth we're paying for, they are interfering with sites we have paid subscriptions with!
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
ISPs are not common carriers.
Wrong.
Common carrier status does NOT require explicit legislation. It is a creature of common law. Explicit legislation may codify the details of the obligations and immunities of a PARTICULAR type of common carrier, rather than leaving it to judges and precedent. But it isn't necessary to create such a state.
An ISP may be or may not be a common carrier, depending on its behavior:
- If it accepts all comers on equal terms it's a common carrier. Making no choices it is not obligated to make choices or responsible for those choices. In particular: its customers are responsible for the legality and results of their actions while using the service.
- If it picks and choses, it's not a common carrier. By making choices it becomes responsible for the choices and acquires an obligation to continue to make choices. In particular: If its customers use its service to commit a crime or a tort, the carrier becomes an accessory and/or co-conspirator.
(In Comcast's case there's the additional element of fraud: They could easily have gotten away with traffic shaping. But forging RST packets to disrupt undesired connections is not part of the the protocol specifications that define "internet service".)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Nice false dichotomy there - dial-up or $300 or more a month option. For God's sake, a T1 cost $300 bucks a month for business users years ago with reliability guarantees.
All Comcast has to do is actually sit back and calculate what they can actually afford to sell for a given price and then tier it. Or use QOS to throttle the bigger hogs during periods of high demand (who gives a crap about the bt users in Indiana at 3 am?).
And if they go bankrupt, we still won't go "back to dial-up". There'll be plenty of companies ready to buy up their cable lines and try again. Maybe with a lesson learned...
How is it that universities don't get killed by the hogs on their lines, with much wider guarantees on their system? And at less than $300 a month - usually $50 or so a lab. How are prices structured throughout the world to handle higher demands in Europe and developed Asia?
Don't sell what you can't afford. For the market to work, the customer's have to have adequate knowledge, the product has to be broken up into small enough quantities, and the customer's have to have real choice between vendors. Otherwise you get exactly these kinds of Comcastic decisions by vendors to focus primarily on marketing, and only secondarily on the economic and engineering realities of provisioning.
Jeez, just how hardcore are you guys? I tend to d/l about 8 half-hour tv shows per week. Let's see, that's roughly 1.4gb. Just last week I d/l three game betas/demos, 1.4gb, 1.3gb, and 800mb. I'm up to about 5gb now in one week. And all throughout, I watched maybe a couple dozen tv shows courtesy of nbc.com, abc.com, and cbs.com but I don't know how much bandwidth that used. Oh, and the latest Ubuntu, though I haven't installed it yet. Plus all my teamspeak, ventrillo, and game traffic, plus my vonage, which the wife is on for several hours every other night. I'm guessing I topped out at about 6gb downloaded (maybe 1gb uploaded) just last week. Granted it was a banner week, but I bet I average about 1-3gb downloaded per week, with about half of that coming via BT.
And yet! My service rocks?! I'm still waiting for the first shoe to drop but the couple of times I've had to call Comcast, my problem has been resolved to my satisfaction. My BT download speeds haven't really changed from what they were a year ago and I haven't noticed my ping go up or down in my favorite game servers.
What are you guys doing different from me that are experiencing problems so I can maybe avoid the same? You know, like lessons learned?
I don't care if this is modded off topic, I'd like to know, seriously.
There is simply too much glass..
Don't forget that this is the same thing that has been causing problems with Google for a lot of us who are stuck on comcast's crap service.
The Farewell Tour II
No, you'd still need a law because FCC policy can change at the FCC's (not the public's) whim.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
QOS can be implemented while still being net neutral. It has to be done out of band (allowing in band traffic to be net neutral).
But low latency is an artifact of a low use or mostly idle TCP/IP network link. There is nothing helping reduce latency in the TCP/IP protocols and many procedures to enhance error free reliable transmission increase latency by default. Even congestion controls speed up TCP/IP traffic until all traffic that can be handled, is. So the overall connection is as fast as its slowest link. So that link is the origination of a high contribution to overall latency.
The only two real methods to fix this is to push off load low latency traffic from the TCP/IP network and use another network like a virtual circuit switched network to move that traffic. You then encapsulate both streams and send those VCS streams onto another network after the local link and the TCP/IP traffic through the normal internet. At the latest point possible, merge the two streams back and seperate them at the receiving end.
The other is to increase capacity until no link of yours is bottlenecked and thus always has the low latency artifact. What other carriers do with their links is not your problem. If all carriers did this, the low latency artifact will be present on all links making the overall link have low latency.
The first method could be done for those gamers and other low latency low bandwidth traffic by using the same dial up VCS for all your gaming group. Then you use the modem to get to that VCS and move the low latency traffic through that connection (keyboard, mouse, joystick, player positions, etc.) and leave the high speed render stuff through the normal high BW and latency TCP/IP network. This way the things that need low latency have a small amount of known good bandwidth. The game server can then send back player position updates (a small BW) and visible object positions (bullets, fire, etc). The high bandwidth object definitions, textures, etc. can be thus transmitted back. If you have to wait for some, that's ok because the game server knows what impacted into what else and knows what happened at low latency. You would see the results with some speed variations. But the replays will show exactly what happened as they can be spooled in using the TCP/IP connection. The delays will be mostly halved as the higher latency is only from the game server to your PC that renders to your screen.
POTS for example uses out of band signalling to keep the connection at high quality. Only the local loop is in band. IDSN and ADSL both use out of band signalling for QOS. If Comcast tries to use the QOS card, I would rebut it that they simply can use a different out of band network for that traffic leaving the TCP/IP internet alone. That removes any latency sensitive traffic from the TCP/IP internet. It leaves it to Comcast how to get that traffic to its destination. That is what you are paying them to do with that traffic (whether it costs extra is up to you and Comcast). The TCP/IP internet thus can be network neutral satisfying those uses that it was designed for.
That other low latency network could be pooled with all others that offer it with some sort of revenue distribution scheme likely based on BW times circuit miles traversed on each network. For those destinations on the pooled network, low latency is guaranteed end to end. For those not directly on the pooled network, the closest (in latency terms) TCP/IP connection to the destination is routed through. That way only the originator pays for the low latency network use.
I'd like to see one of these infamous "unlimited bandwidth" ads. Can anyone direct me to them? As for the topic; their network, live with it or don't use it. Here is a very good example. Most states use taxes and/or tolls to pay for highway building and maintenance. Let's say you have a three lane road. Then the state, using the money you paid to them, decides to limit one lane to a specific type of traffic. This works against you in two ways, one you now have one less lane to use and congestion can lead to long travel times. Two, it makes it illegal for you to get into that lane and if caught by the cops you get a ticket, a nice long wait for that ticket to be handed over to you, and then you get put back into your two legal lanes. Basically you received a RST packet with a nice price attached to it. Guess what, their highway, your money, they do what they want. Live with it or don't drive on the highway.
Here's where your analogy fails: this commons isn't finite!
The money to buy bandwidth isn't either. Most people have no idea that Comcast has to buy bandwidth and think the answer is simply to upgrade equipment to handle more bandwidth. Buying the bits is the problem. There is a point where the bits used exceed many users contribution to the purchased bits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_cap
Here is an idea of what ISP's pay for broadband.
http://isp-lists.isp-planet.com/isp-bandwidth/0608/msg00015.html
Buying a lot more bandwidth without gaining a lot more subscribers is not a money maker. Limiting the high bandwidth users enable your investment to serve more users.
And... $8/meg isn't really a super great price... I deal with an ISP
currently that has 700 meg committ to two different tier 1 carriers and
pays slightly less... This person is asking for 10GE with an unknown
commit but for 10GE it's usually at least 1 Gig for sure...
If you were an ISP and one user was using the same bandwidth as 200 other users combined, I'm sure you would be looking at options. Especially if the applications were spreading to the rest of the users so your number of high usage users grew like clockwork. It will be the time to decide to up the subscription cost 200X or limit high bandwidth use. Maybe just put the penalty on the non-profitable users so they will simply go elsewhere. Sucking a little water from the drinking fountain is fine. Connecting a fire pump and using the fountain for flood irrigation because the water is "Free and Unlimited" is not OK regardless of the free and unlimited claim. Home unlimited accounts were never sold for 24X7 saturated connections. When your ISP has to plumb for bigger pipes and buy the bits, they are getting sticker shock. They noticed the system is leaking large amounts of money to a few high demand users and the numbers of those users is multiplying. Taking no action is not an option, unless you consider simply canceling broadband service altogether as it becomes unprofitable.
The truth shall set you free!
Can someone explain to me how the hell this got modded up? Some mouth-breathing libertarian is "tarding" up the internet with useless propaganda and we're supposed to care about his service provider. Birds of feather I guess.... retards
I'm debugging a connection right now, and it appears that Comcast is blocking inbound IPSec packets (and NAT-T over UDP)...
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
And shows how stupid the US legal system is. I don't care if your last years internet usage was totally blocked of bit-torrent sue, to claim that you deserve that amount of compensation is just juvenile and silly, and the whole case should be thrown out as a result. It's no good complaining that the RIAA pushes for huge payments when a single song is downloaded, if the same people turn around and act just as stupidly over a few faked TCP packets.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Good on those people for filing complaints. The Internet is NOT to be censored, because that defeats the whole purpose of the Internet. If I knew that my ISP was going to try and control what I accessed on the Internet, I would leave them faster then they could say "censor".
Why don't we let ISPs decide whether they are common carriers? If they are common carriers, then net neutrality should apply as a matter of course: the key feature of a common carrier is that it doesn't distinguish between "good" and "bad" content flowing across its network, as long as the content doesn't harm the network itself. That's why you can't sue the phone company if someone slanders you while talking on their phone, and the police won't go after Verizon if someone uses FIOS to download something illegal.
On the other hand, if an ISP filters traffic in any way, they are implicitly saying "We monitor our network." Once they do this, they should assume responsibility for whatever flows across it.
I think most ISPs would choose common carrier status over perpetual civil and criminal liability for the usage of their networks.
It got modded up because it raises the spectre of Comcast attempting to block political speech either deliberately or as collateral damage from their ham-fisted attempts to block a protocol that "might" be used to distribute illegal material.
Of course, if you had put any thought into your comment at all, you 1) wouldn't be posting as an AC and 2) wouldn't be dismissing someone's comments as "retarded" just becuase their political philosophy is different from yours.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Oh man. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one with those ssh connections getting reset.
I always find it amusing that people say things like this. My subscription (given, I'm on RoadRunner not ComCast) is for an unlimited 5Mb connection. If I was sold an unlimited 5Mb connection, why am I not allowed to use it? Your rationale is that if I went to McDonald's and was sold a double cheeseburger, I shouldn't be allowed to eat the whole thing.
ISP's have oversold their abilities and they are feeling the pinch. Instead of doing the right thing and putting more of their hard swindled money into their infrastructure, they go about their day whining about subscribers that are actually using what they pay for.
Try this: track your connection speeds for a month or two. Tell your ISP that you will pay them a percentage of your bill as compared to the percent of bandwidth you were able to reach. Wouldn't it be nice if we could be like the ISP's? They promise "up to" xMb connection. Have you ever tried to pay "up to" $x and keep your service? I've tried... it does't work.
orz
Courage is endurance for one moment more... Unknown Marine Second Lieutenant in Vietnam
why am I not allowed to use it? Your rationale is that if I went to McDonald's and was sold a double cheeseburger, I shouldn't be allowed to eat the whole thing.
The same reason you can go to an all you can eat buffet and can eat all you can. If you bring in an automated eating machine with you that continued to eat 24X7 when you were no longer in the chair would be a problem in an all you can eat place. Unlimited was intended for while the space between the keyboard and chair was occupied. The automated 24X7 hogs are a problem on the supply side as they eat the resources that would otherwise feed about 200 other typical users. Buying the extra bits to feed this growing part of the population while not charging more for the entrance fee is the problem.
Putting a cap or asking them to leave are the only options to avoiding negative income. Simply ignoring the problem as more hogs show up is not sustainable and not an option.
The truth shall set you free!
Uhhhh, I always thought it was exactly the opposite? That upstream cost more money then downstream and this had to do with the way that the Tier 1 and Tier 2 carriers peer with each other? They don't like having massive amounts of traffic dumped on them through a peering arrangement because they then have to route that traffic to it's destination. Much better (from their perspective) if they can dump that traffic on someone else to deal with.
Is that not the case?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Uhh, that is the answer dude. Comcast's problem isn't with IP Transit. Comcast's problem is the same problem faced by all cableco's -- they have a shared last mile. I don't know what speeds they offer, but I do know that my Roadrunner connection is 5.0/384. At 5.0 it takes less then nine customers to completely max out the downstream on a DOCSIS channel. The only real solution to this problem is to split the network into smaller nodes so less people are sharing the bandwidth on them.
Here is an idea of what ISP's pay for broadband.Eight dollars a megabit? So then why the hell is Comcast worrying about seeders? I have a whooping 384kbits of upload. That works out to around $3/mo. I'm paying $44.95/mo for my connection.
No, I see no logical reason for them to worry about seeders at $8/mbit (and they doubtless pay less then that anyway). They are blocking seeding because they are either worried about the upstream channel on DOCSIS being pegged, or because they are in the content delivery business and don't like the idea of their network being used for piracy. Or a combination of both.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
This has less to do with Net neutrality and more to do with not spoofing (fraudulent) packets. You can still shape traffic, you just can't fraudulently send packets to people.
:D
sure you can. Comcast does it all the time
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
I think you got that backwards. Weren't you trying to say that the money to buy bandwidth is finite (or equivalently, not infinite)?
On the contrary, in the general case, all the ISPs have to do is upgrade equipment. How so, you ask? Well, I'm saying that the equipment upgrades have to occur up the ISP chain too, all the way to the backbone. Upgrade the equipment on the background, and Comcast can buy cheaper bits! Ultimately, upgrading the equipment is the solution -- the entire solution -- that matters./p>
Oh, certainly! I can appreciate that Comcast is screwed, because they promised an "unlimited" service. However, you can't escape the fact that they chose to call it "unlimited," and thus screwed themselves. If I were in their shoes, the first thing I'd be doing is re-evaluating my "unlimited" claim (assuming I even made such a stupid claim in the first place).
See, here's the thing: all those bits have to be going somewhere. Therefore, the places those bits are going have to be "growing like clockwork" too. Now, we all know that different pieces of technology don't improve at the same rate; e.g., transistor count/speed is growing faster than HDD storage density. But if those bits are going to HDDs, then the bandwidth ought to be improving at a fast enough rate to keep up!
Why isn't it? You say it's because the technology is inherently too expensive; I say that's BS. I say it's due to the ability of telcos to charge monopolist rents while renenging on the promises they made to the government, when they received all the various grants, exclusive right-of-way, and other public support they've received in the last few decades.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Several months ago I, as an IT administrator, emailed Homeland Security about the threat P2P programs presented to National Security. That programs that were written to evade security, desguise themself as other traffic, alter firewall settings, etc. should be made illegal and distributers of such software should face severe crimal penalties. Happily, Congress has just asked the FTC to look into the threat to National Security posed by P2P programs.
All this really means is that P2P programs will have to be open about their activity: fixed port numbers, protocol identifiers, etc. like any ligitimate Internet protocol. That will make them manageable, like any other protocol, by IT managers.
You know they aren't too concerned with QoS because they would shape *all* your bandwidth instead of just torrent traffic if you are using "too much," whatever that means. I say if I pay for X amount of bandwidth DAMN YOU if you say I can't use it all.
.... well... you get the point.
:D
I've been wondering if this is why Comcast is terminating user's internet accounts all over the place. I was terminated in Janaury, 30 days later another family down my street was terminated along with several other friends in my neighborhood. Then I find more through the Salt Lake Valley, googling I found more and more and
It's becoming a serious issue. I understand the company needs to make money. They however are taking this way over board. What's unfortunate is they claim people are using too much bandwidth and yet refuse to provide ANY guidelines on what is acceptable. The argument they use is "well.. if we tell then people will use up to that much". I don't understand what's wrong with that. The Government posts speed limit signs to give people a maximum speed limit so they can (hopefully) make good decisions. If the Government didn't provide guidelines then we'd have an awful lot more problems on the roads beyond what we experience today
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
To pick up some power converters!
Uhh, that is the answer dude. Comcast's problem isn't with IP Transit. Comcast's problem is the same problem faced by all cableco's -- they have a shared last mile. I don't know what speeds they offer, but I do know that my Roadrunner connection is 5.0/384. At 5.0 it takes less then nine customers to completely max out the downstream on a DOCSIS channel. The only real solution to this problem is to split the network into smaller nodes so less people are sharing the bandwidth on them.
You are in the dark if you think the problem is just the last mile. On the other end the ISP has to buy the bits and bandwidth. Fixing the last mile simply exceeds the capacity of the ISP's connection. Fixing the ISP's connection is only part of the cost. Buying the extra bits is the big expense. Who do you think Comcast peers with and how do you think they get a connection to the backbone? Do a trace to Google for example. Comcast in my area connects to Level 3 net in Seattle.
http://www.level3.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_3_Communications
If you think fixing the ISP bandwidth problem is simply upgrading the last mile, you are mistaken. The growing bill for bits from Level 3 is the problem.
Level 3's primary focus is selling service to organizations with large bandwidth requirements, such as telecom carriers, cable TV operators, universities, web hosting companies, and to other, smaller ISPs, often known as Tier 2 carriers.
They sell bandwidth to Comcast. For Comcast to buy more bandwidth without increasing revenue is poor business planning. Many people only see the last mile problem and fail to look upstream.
Great proposal. For $60/month form the subscribers, provide service that cost you $150/month per subscriber. Good answer. ISPs buy bits. Buying a bigger pipe and greater monthly traffic isn't free.
University of Oregon had to deal with just this issue in the early Napster days.
http://scout.wisc.edu/Projects/PastProjects/net-news/00-01/00-01-25/0001.html
Oregon State University became concerned
about the program before the RIAA suit, when systems
administrators noticed that Napster was consuming 5 percent of
the school's bandwidth. Napster activity could have pushed the
school over its $75,000 yearly budget for bandwidth, says Oregon
State's vice provost for information services Curt Pederson,
noting that the school's bandwidth usage would double every 90
days if not controlled.
How many times do you propose letting the annual budget of $75,0000 double every 90 days as Peer to Peer catches on.
The bill doubles regularly while not adding a single new paying customer. This is not a good business plan.
This heavy use is created by only about 20% of the population and is growing. It's chop time or die. Comcast having to buy bits is faced directly with the rising cost of exploding bandwidth use. The throttling the universities had to do to maintain IT budgets is why most universities web pages load like they are served on a dial-up connection. They buy limited bandwidth which is mostly saturated in the evenings. The RIAA when nailing college students only download a few songs from the A list from the student. The big reason for this is it would take forever to download the entire A list through a saturated edu connection to the ISP.
Check with any university student regarding the speeds they get on campus. It's nothing to write home about.
The truth shall set you free!
Think of all the DVDs and CDs those BitTorrent users will buy with $195,000 !!!
Before you buy any CD's and line the pockets of the litigious bastards, please visit here;
http://www.riaaradar.com/
http://defectivebydesign.org/
Shop informed.
The truth shall set you free!
You just pulled a link out of your ass that used $8/mbit as the figure for bandwidth costs. I couldn't find anything more recent then 2001 on that webpage, but I find it hard to fathom that bandwidth costs have gone up since then. In any event, you glossed over my point that even if ip transit costs are the issue, it's fucking stupid for Comcast to be going after seeders.
If you buy into IP transit costs being the problem (which I don't, but for the sake of the argument), then you can justify their bandwidth capping practice. But you can't justify this fucking Sandvine main-in-the-middle attack bullshit.
Great proposal. For $60/month form the subscribers, provide service that cost you $150/month per subscriber. Good answer. ISPs buy bits. Buying a bigger pipe and greater monthly traffic isn't free.It's not that expensive either in the grand scheme of things. But regardless, p2p is just the favorite whipping boy because it's used for a lot of illegal activities. What happens when ip-tv catches on? What happens when more archived video content (think of The Daily Show) becomes legally available?
The people like you whose entire argument boils down to "bits cost money" conveniently ignore most of the reasons why the people like me are upset. If they are actually losing money over p2p/heavy bandwidth users then they need to change their fucking business model. The cellular industry (hardly a group of pro-consumer people....) doesn't advertise un-metered calling plans and then interfere with your calls or terminate users who use over X minutes per minute. They advertise a set number of minutes for a set price with overage rates if you exceed them. They also provide unlimited calling during off-peak times.
If IP transit costs really are the issue then perhaps they need to adopt a pricing model similar to the wireless industry. Terminating people for violating an unpublished cap or interfering with their traffic is not an acceptable solution and I hope the FCC comes down on them like a ton of bricks for it.
Ever stop and ask yourself why it is that outfits like Verizon and Time Warner seemingly make money without using these practices? Something tells me they have their fair share of bandwidth hogs, but I don't see them injecting fake RSTs onto my connection.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Oh... well... ok...
But where's the +funny in that?
Yes, you can dance to Radiohead.
I really don't understand why some people believe that gamers should have more bandwidth than file sharing people or visa versa, both should have wjhatever they pay for. It's not a question of legal vs non-legal it's a question of providing a service that is paid for.I pay extra to Comcast to allow me twice the upload speed of their normal subscriber, and I should be allowed to use the extra bandwidth I pay for the way I want to use it, not be restricted because some kid down the block wants to play a game.If Comcast can not support he bandwidth they should not sell it, plain and simple. If all Comcast wants me to do with their bandwidth is web browsing and gaming, I will take my current $200.00 a month to Comcast and go back to dial up and satelite TV.
From "savetheinternet.com"
It's About Video
The not-so-hidden secret behind all of this is video. Network owners are waging a quiet campaign to control how video gets distributed via the Web. In their view, the Internet should only be used for e-mail and surfing. Internet video should be distributed via ISPs. It's a model that treats the Internet like cable TV -- where companies like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon get to pick the channels you get to see.
The popular trend in video, however, is streaming in the opposite direction. More and more people are becoming their own creators and distributors of homespun video content. For proof that people like to watch videos created by others, go no further than YouTube, which boasts more than 100 million "views" each day.
YouTube is just the beginning of this revolution. It's heart and soul, though, beats elsewhere -- with the use of peer-to-peer applications. Peer-to-peer traffic is spreading via popular technologies like Bit Torrent and Gnutella, which allow users to upload and share videos, music and other rich media without a middleman. It's follows a non-discriminatory Web model that encourages innovation without permission.
The phone and cable companies are desperate to shut this down. In the case of Comcast, they're doing it by spying on traffic and stifling the free exchange of ideas that will continue to make the Internet so remarkable.
>>>please remove "nospam" from email address
But regardless, p2p is just the favorite whipping boy because it's used for a lot of illegal activities.
It is the whipping boy because it is used constantly by less than 20% of the subscribers, but consumes 2/3rds of the bandwidth. You can drop your bill to level 3 over half by ticking off less than 20% of your users. The over 80% notice reduced ping times and faster page loads.
The truth shall set you free!
Courage is endurance for one moment more... Unknown Marine Second Lieutenant in Vietnam