Comcast Defends Role As Internet Traffic Cop

RCTrucker7 writes "Comcast said yesterday that it purposely slows down some traffic on its network, including some music and movie downloads, an admission that sparked more controversy in the debate over how much control network operators should have over the Internet. In a filing with the Federal Communications Commission, Comcast said such measures — which can slow the transfer of music or video between subscribers sharing files, for example — are necessary to ensure better flow of traffic over its network. In defending its actions, Comcast stepped into one of the technology industry's most divisive battles. Comcast argues that it should be able to direct traffic so networks don't get clogged; consumer groups and some Internet companies argue that the networks should not be permitted to block or slow users' access to the Web."

Comments

If comcast want'sto do this

[geekoid]

Then they should not be protected from legal action regarding what flows over the network.

Make that stipulation and they will stop in a heart beat.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Aranykai]

Not a bad idea. If they are doing deep packet inspection to filter and slow traffic identified as peer to peer, are they not party responsible for the alleged infringment? I know if I offered a guy a ride in my car, then watched him shoot the person next to me, and continued to take him home, it would make me an accessory to murder

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[harrkev]

Then they should not be protected from legal action regarding what flows over the network.

Make that stipulation and they will stop in a heart beat.

Not at all. For cable internet service, an entire neighborhood typically shares the same chunk of bandwidth. Each cable modem has a bandwidth cap, but if you add the bandwidth for each subsriber in a neighborhood, it easily exceeds the available bandwidth. Also, there is a LOT less bandwidth alloted for upstream transmissions, so cable networks are a lot more sensitive to torrents, where up and down are roughly the same (or at least the should be). This has nothing to do with legality.

So, from the cable company perspective, big downloaders affect the speeds of the entire neighborhood. I can certainly see their complaint.

In fact, I have no problem with bandwidth limiting. When I grab torrents, I try to set reasonable bandwidth caps so as to not affect my neighbors (unless it is something that I need in a hurry, like when the latest Ubuntu is released).

If Comcast wants to throttle the bandwidth on my torrents, so be it. I can live with that. But ABORTING a torrent is just plain nasty on their part. Delay the packets, fine. Drop a few packets, fine. But to inject an abort signal, dirty trick.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the current law, bought by telcos. Isn't it obvious they now want to buy an update so that they can oversell their precious bandwidth even MORE? "Clogging the tubes" yeah, right.

Answer to Comcast : Light up some tiny fraction of dark fiber, you racketeering gluttonous parasites. Bandwidth might be expensive ONCE, but traffic is FREE forever after.
Maintenance costs? Yeah, $1/yr per customer and that's much. But, aren't you charging by the *month*? That's what I call continuous price-gouging.

Free, free, free. It's all free. Airwaves, what REALLY prevents me from tuning a device to what freq I want, and emit/receive on that? Nothing. Nothing at all whatsoever.

It's Free. Fuck regulations, fuck ISPs, fuck them all. I want it all, now, free. The Right Price is Fucking Zero.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[geekoid]

"..., it easily exceeds the available bandwidth"

Then don't sell 'unlimited' sell a tiered system. Do NOT blame the consumer for your(Comcasts) bad business decisions.

And if they were liable they would stop because no ISP wants to be liable for the consumers actions.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Anonymous Coward]

The speed they are concered about is not the local nodes shared with your neighbors. This limiting and inspection is down further up the path and probably at the exit/entry points into the regions. On that note, all sources of bandwidth are "shared" With DSL/FIOS, it is shared as well as all users that terminate at that CO, share the bandwidth that CO has to the next upstream point. Okay, your individual line to the CO is not "shared" but there is no exit point before that CO so there is NO difference at all.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Shakrai]

If they are doing deep packet inspection to filter and slow traffic identified as peer to peer, are they not party responsible for the alleged infringment?

Only if you are one of the dumbasses that thinks p2p == infringement.

This internet HDTV show is a perfectly legitimate use of bittorrent that just happens to be interfered with by policies like these. I'm sure that 20 people will chime in with replies to this post stating other legitimate uses as well.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Altus]

It would be one thing if they made traffic like HTTP higher priority than Torrents but from what I understand they are throttling torrents automatically, even if their aren't any HTTP requests on the local network... like say, in the middle of the night when your entire neighborhood is asleep, torrents still run much slower than the amount of bandwidth your supposed to have.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Anonymous Coward]

you HAD to bring in the car analogy, didnt you?

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Moonpie Madness]

I don't think that makes any sense. I will stop kids from smoking crack in my living room, but if I don't notice it, it's still their bad, not mine.

The only problem with this is that consumers don't really have any choice in internet providers. Comcast should be allowed to do whatever the hell it wants with its business, slowing down pink pictures and speeding up blue ones if it likes. So long as the customers know what they are getting and have a choice.

The whole problem is that there really is no market (which is also why these networks are so easily overwhelmed). It's time to dereg all local cable monopolies.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Ferzerp]

And so the "cable is shared! dsl is not!" myth still survives.

They are all shared and technically oversubscribed (were everyone to use their advertised bandwidth). *Where* the "sharing" starts is irrelevant.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Shakrai]

For cable internet service, an entire neighborhood typically shares the same chunk of bandwidth

And they can get around this by splitting their network into smaller nodes, devoting more channels on the HFC network to HSI services and investing in new technologies (DOCSIS 3.0) as they become available.

Also, there is a LOT less bandwidth alloted for upstream transmissions, so cable networks are a lot more sensitive to torrents

That's not as important as you might think. On DOCSIS 1.1 it's 38Mbits down/9Mbits up. On DOCSIS 2.0 it's 38/27. Even with DOCSIS 1.1 though it's not really a limitation because they typically have multiple upstream channels on the same node. In my area Roadrunner always uses the same channel/frequency for downstream (609mhz) but they have multiple upstream channels on each node that the cable modems are randomly assigned to. My neighbor is connected to the exact same cable drop as I am -- yet her modem is on a different upstream channel then mine is.

I can certainly see their complaint.

I can see their complaint too, but they need to be investing in upgrades. They don't have an interest in doing that though because the next killer-app on the internet is going to be video that directly competes with their own video offerings. They'll try to kill it by instituting bandwidth caps (like Time Warner is trying to do) and when that fails they will offer a "video-grade" service that costs a shitload more then a regular internet connection.

Where would the internet be if nobody had invested in upgrading beyond dialup technology?

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[spun]

Huh? You couldn't be less clear. Complaining about net neutrality? Complaining that it's good, or bad? And what does this have to do with the parent post? Sorry, maybe it's my lack of coffee this morning, but I'm just not following you here.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[harrkev]

You are right about selling "unlimited" bandwidth. They do need to be more transparent with what they are offering.

Their pricing is assuming that not all customers want to use their maximum available bandwidth at the same time, which is generally true. If they really DID beef up the system to handle ALL available bandwidth, then the price would likely double or more.

Basicly, if you want cheaper prices, you have to make a sacrifice or two. If you really want dedicated bandwidth, pay for your own T3 to your house. Cable is marketed to typcial home user, where the use is rather bursty.

This is kind of like an all-you-can-eat buffet having the local pro football team stopping by for supper after practice five times a week. After a while, the restaraunt starts to loose money. They then have three choices:
1) Raise prices.
2) Put limits on the service.
3) Go out of business.
None of the three are great options, #1 hurts everybody, not just the heavy users. #2 keeps the prices low for most, at the expense of the heavy users, and #3 hurts everybody in general.

Note that I am NOT defending Comcast. I understand to need to do something about heavy usage. However, I am vehemently agains the WAY they have done things. Secret bandwidth caps and cancelling transfers are just plain decpetive and customer hostile. Now, if they had implemented a more reasonable policy, and actually advertised it, that would be good for everybody. I would be agreeable to temporary bandwith reductions (maybe 25% to 50%) for heavy useres during peak usage periods.

To summarize: I understand the need for limits and bandwidth control. But, Comcast has done a crappy job of implementing it, and has done it in such a manner as to stir up customer wrath. They could have handled things MUCH better.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[lucky130]

Maybe they shouldn't advertise speeds they can't deliver (and people pay for). Personally, I consider it false advertising.

And in my area, I have no alternative (too far away to get decent DSL); it's more of an excuse to extort customers and not have to upgrade their lines to handle the advertised bandwidth.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Anonymous Coward]

I know if I offered a guy a ride in my car, then watched him shoot the person next to me, and continued to take him home, it would make me an accessory to murder.

Hardly. It would be easy enough to defend yourself by saying you feared for your life after seeing your passenger shoot someone to stop and make him get out, where he probably didn't want to, to avoid being retaliated against in kind.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[mooglez]

Option 2. is the correct way to proceed. BUT they are not telling their custoemrs there are limits, they are just throwing them out of the restaurant when they go over these invisible limits.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Kryptonian Jor-El]

obviously you aren't a comcast subscriber then. I've been dealing with this shit for about a year now.

Comcast sends fake packets to both the sending and receiving end of the transmission telling the programs that the other end has closed transmission. AKA, my upload speeds are virtually 0. well, when you don't upload, you can't download as fast. I'd love to host a torrent for a while to help keep the torrent network alive, but how can i do that if my upload ability is non-existant.

Next, my web surfing is severely limited when downloading torrents now. It takes a few minutes to load my email while DLing a torrent, no matter what the speed. Hell, it doesn't matter whether I download and surf on the same computer or not, the speed is still shit. I didn't have this problem before when i had adelphia (which comcast bought out).

I pay for UNLIMITED service. Unlimited means that there shall be no limits. Either give me that, or charge me less.

The funny thing is, the day that the FCC or whoever said they were going to investigate comcast's throttling, they had stopped. It soon resumed, but they stopped for a few days.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Shakrai]

None of the three are great options, #1 hurts everybody, not just the heavy users. #2 keeps the prices low for most, at the expense of the heavy users, and #3 hurts everybody in general.

Upgrading their network isn't an option?

would be agreeable to temporary bandwith reductions (maybe 25% to 50%) for heavy useres during peak usage periods.

I wouldn't be agreeable to those. The applications that are used by the minority of internet users today are going to become mainstream tomorrow. Everybody is slamming bittorrent but missing the point that internet video is probably going to be the next killer app.

I don't know about you, but the typical "infringing" bittorrent download in my experience doesn't exceed 1 - 2Mbits because they usually have an unfavorable seeder/leecher ratio. Contrast that to Netflix instant view which consumes more then 2Mbits the entire time you are watching it.

If they can't handle either of the above then how the hell are they going to handle HD video streams? Should we just give up on IP-Video because the cable companies say they can't handle it? Why did we even bother upgrading from dialup technology if they aren't going to be able to keep pace with the times?

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Anonymous Coward]

Atleast it wasn't a plumber analogy about setting up a sewer system and watching them flush illegal substances down the series of tubes you just installed.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[tepples]

Only if you are one of the dumbasses that thinks p2p == infringement.

This internet HDTV show is a perfectly legitimate use of bittorrent

But by whom is the use legitimate? Most residential Internet access plans offered by the last-mile duopoly have a stipulation that residential subscribers MUST NOT[1] "run a server" on the connection. So even if it isn't an infringement on anyone's copyright, seeding a torrent might still be an infringement on the exclusive rights of the owner of the last-mile physical medium.

[1] RFC 2119

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Intron]

But in this case he paid you to drive him to the guy's house (located on Strained Analogy Place) and then home again. No force was applied.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Lyrael]

As far as I'm aware there are a lot of choices of ISP's, at least where I live anyway (Virgin, BT, Sky, Tiscali, BeThere to name a few) and I, as a customer, have a wide variety of choices. All of the ISP's I've looked into that do choke your bandwidth say somewhere in the fine print something about 'Fair Usage Policies'. I agree with you in that I'd like to know exactly what that means for each company but otherwise the fact that they can choke you is there in the fine print, learn to read it. Incidentally, of all the ISP's I know, BeThere is the only one that specifically states in the fine print that it DOESN'T go in for this 'Fair Usage Policy' crap and they are the only ones who have actually given me the unlimited access that I pay for. RTFFN!

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Tassach]

I'm pretty sure they aren't doing any deep inspection -- before I dumped them they clamped down on any outbound file transfer. They would slow me down to about 40k/s after the first couple of MB when I was uploading pictures (that I took) to my photography website via SCP.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[maxume]

Any news on V2.0?

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand to need to do something about heavy usage. However, I am vehemently agains the WAY they have done things. Secret bandwidth caps and cancelling transfers are just plain decpetive and customer hostile.

Option 2. is the correct way to proceed. BUT they are not telling their custoemrs there are limits, they are just throwing them out of the restaurant when they go over these invisible limits.

echo... echo... echo...

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Anonymous Coward]

Comcast should be allowed to do whatever the hell it wants with its business, slowing down pink pictures and speeding up blue ones if it likes I think you're overestimating the interest in Smurf-porn.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Anonymous Coward]

And so the "cable is shared! dsl is not!" myth still survives. Where did harrkev mention DSL?

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[radish]

slowing down pink pictures

Don't give them any ideas! That particular strategy would probably work pretty well...

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Sillygates]

they should not be protected from legal action regarding what flows over the network. well, the problem is, companies like comcast don't want to have to upgrade their infrastructure. And, If they are allowed to impose filtering, they won't ever have an incentive to invest money in new equipment.

This has nothing to do with the type of data flowing.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Shakrai]

Most residential Internet access plans offered by the last-mile duopoly have a stipulation that residential subscribers MUST NOT[1] "run a server" on the connection

The classical definition of "server" would also preclude hosting that FPS game for your buddies or even mIRC's ident daemon if you want to get REALLY technical about it. I could also point out that most BT clients will work just fine (albeit with fewer peers) behind NAT without port forwarding, and an application that can't accept incoming connections hardly qualifies as a "server".

So even if it isn't an infringement on anyone's copyright, seeding a torrent might still be an infringement on the exclusive rights of the owner of the last-mile physical medium.

It could be if they decided to enforce it in such a manner. But I doubt they'd get away with it. Besides, if they really wanted to try that, then why not just NAT all of your customers? That would solve those pesky "servers".

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Qzukk]

But in this case he paid you to drive him to the guy's house (located on Strained Analogy Place) and then home again. No force was applied.

Well really it's more like I'm paying comcast to ship boxes back and forth from me to wherever they need to go, but rather than spending the money I give them for the service on buying more trucks or paying for gas, they just dump the boxes in a field somewhere, then run crying to mommy government when people demand to know why they're dumping boxes instead of buying enough trucks to handle the shipments.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[OptimusPaul]

I am having the same problem right now.. I was uploading files to my website for a client and was throttled. One of the files happened to be a video file, a file that my client had the copyrights to. It slowed down what should have been a 10 minute upload into a 4 hour snorefest. It seriously cripped my ability to do business.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Anonymous Coward]

What is being discussed here is making Comcast liable for illicit p2p traffic it lets pass. While it's correct that not all p2p traffic is illegal, it's not really relevant to this discussion.
Parent is not flamebait. Offtopic, maybe.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[russ1337]

This is kind of like an all-you-can-eat buffet having the local pro football team stopping by for supper after practice five times a week. After a while, the restaraunt starts to loose money. They then have three choices: 1) Raise prices. 2) Put limits on the service. 3) Go out of business. None of the three are great options, #1 hurts everybody, not just the heavy users. #2 keeps the prices low for most, at the expense of the heavy users, and #3 hurts everybody in general.

I'm not sure I agree 100% with your analogy. It's more like you only have 100 seats, and every night paying customers are filling them, leaving cues of people waiting outside. The answer is get more seats -i.e spend some more of their 13 billion gross profit on infrastructure to meet the growing demand.

Interesting fact: The same number of Old people eat FAR more than a football team. This comes directly from a friend who ran a restaurant with a lunchtime buffet. I said to him I thought young people would take advantage, but he reckons young people tend to eat during the day, so 'all you can eat' is less. Old people however: They *plan* to go to an all you can eat and get the most for their money. They don't eat breakfast, and make that their only meal of the day - and they're usually have much larger stomachs from years of practice and riding those little cart things. He had busloads of sports teams stopping in, but was much more fearful of bus loads of oldies on a tour coach. - He tried serving more slowly, but they just stayed longer till they were full. - same as p2p. Someone downloading at their full rate will do so even if that rate is lower - just for longer. p2p downloading a movie will still 'eat' the same number of bits. If you want to sell more bandwidth, then you have to *have more to sell*. So more seats - more pipes.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Ferzerp]

He didn't have to. That's the origin of that myth. We've seen new iterations of it with cable is shared! FIOS isn't! but it is all a bunch of b.s.

The internet by its very nature must be shared unless you are going to have discrete point to point physical links to every other network-enabled, internet-connected device in existence.

The important part is the overall capacity and management of the shared tubes. The point where all the trucks start using the same road doesn't matter as long as the onramp/merging is handled properly and as long as the road is large enough.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Shakrai]

*Where* the "sharing" starts is irrelevant.

Actually, it's quite relevant. It only takes a handful of bandwidth hogs in one neighborhood to peg a DOCSIS node. Contrast that to DSL where your actions have no impact on your neighbor. Besides, what do you think is easier? Upgrading the backhaul from the CO or splitting the cable-co's HFC network into smaller pieces?

If the DSL/cable "sharing" is a "myth" then why haven't we seen Verizon and AT&T bitching about "bandwidth hogs"? AT&T might be trying to get into bed with the content industry but I haven't heard bandwidth usage used as a justification for doing so. And Verizon seems to be perfectly content to let their residential customers peg their connections 24/7 if they choose to do so.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[gad_zuki!]

>Upgrading their network isn't an option?

Upgrading to what exactly? Double the speed. Fine now all my torrents are twice as fast.

The idea is that if 5% use 90% of the bandwidth its time to start adderssing that in a fair and honest manner. If that means I have to move up to a Pro account and I get all the bandwidth advertised to me, then thats fine. Unfortunately, too many people have a free lunch mentality when it comes to bandwidth and media downloads.

Seems to be working fine for the T1/T3 system. Want bandwidth? Pay for it. No more of this fake unlimited marketing bs.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Shakrai]

and watching them flush illegal substances down the series of tubes you just installed.

I get rid of my illegal substances by dumping them onto a big truck. It's much more reliable then that series of tubes.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[JasterBobaMereel]

1 - Is at their discretion ....
2 - there are already limits on the service since they at their own admission cannot deliver the service "unlimited" as advertised
3 - Is not what they want to do

the problem is that they advertise an unlimited service which they have no intentions of delivering and are incabable of delivering - and now admit they deliberately do not deliver ....

Is this false advertising ?

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Ferzerp]

What you are attacking is subscription practices and has nothing to do with the network architecture itself. In fact, DSL oversubscribed has the potential to affect everyone connected to a particular CO instead of the more isolated nodes.

The fact is, your cable connection cannot use more bandwidth than is allowed to it. Nor can your DSL.

If the capacity is oversubscribed, performance is degraded. This is true for any ISP that you are going to have in your home.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[harrkev]

Upgrading their network isn't an option?

Yes, it is. That is covered under the "raise prices" option. Apparently you missed that part.

Internet service providers are not in this for the warm fuzzy feelings of helping people. They do it for a profit. Network upgrades raise costs. Yes, they are a necessary part of business, but they also cost.

You are right that more and more bandwidth will be needed. They will have to upgrade in the future. Evrhything in a business is a balancing act. If you don't upgrade, people complain and flee. You loose. If you upgrade too fast, you spend all of your money, can't pay your bills, and go out of business. You loose. The key is to upgrade at the right speed. I am not in the business. I do not know what the right speed is. What I am saying is "no, you can't have a pony (infinite speed internet for free)." The easiest job on the football team is armchair quarterback.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[poetmatt]

I participated in the research for this as well as some of the evidence used for AP's article about it. You are 100% correct. I was wondering what happened to the FCC stuff too, it seems fishy at this point as I have heard nothing.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Some_Llama]

"Fine now all my torrents are twice as fast."

and take half as long.

if you are downloading at 3-6 Mb/s and they upgrade everyone to 100Mb/s that's a 15-30x increase, so instead of something taking 8 hours to seed it takes less than 20 min.

That would relieve congestion, unless you are hosting the library of congress.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[ystar]

As a consumer, I don't *want* a tiered system. I don't want bluray. I want streaming HD movies from netflix (or apple, if their prices are lowered and appletv lockin is removed). I want to be able to watch youtube without watching a meter. Comcast and other ISPs will have to expand their network capacity to keep all the consumers happy, otherwise they will lose customers with either route (torrent blocking or tiered service).

Except for that whole broadband monopoly issue in most areas.... :(

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[knight24k]

I wouldn't be agreeable to those. The applications that are used by the minority of internet users today are going to become mainstream tomorrow. Everybody is slamming bittorrent but missing the point that internet video is probably going to be the next killer app.

You wouldn't be agreeable even if they sold you that service in that manner from the start? The problem isn't that they are limiting bandwidth, it's that they are not forthcoming about the policy from the start. If they sold tiered service and you choose to take the restricted service, then you can't complain to anyone when they limit you. That type of tiered service would allow the few that want or need higher bandwidth to pony up the funds to purchase it, but their policies need to be forthright and not hidden somewhere that only they know about.

Internet video and movies are coming and service providers will need to adjust their business practices accordingly. Selling tiered service is one way to address that. I personally have DSL and they provide 6 levels of service from 256k up to a 15mb option. Their service levels were totally up front so I could pick the level I needed. If I find out I am having bandwidth issues I just call them up and pay for the next level up and go again. Granted, DSL is a different technology and Cable does have different issues implementing a tiered system, but if they are going to engage in bandwidth limiting they need to provide the same tiered service that DSL does, advertise the rates, limitations etc and these complaints will cease or at least be seen as no merit (you signed up for that level of service, go away).

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[sr8outtalotech]

What's also great about the Comcast *choice* is that in markets where the consumers only option is Comcast / T1 / ISDN then you really get to see the best *service* they have to offer at a really great price. Due to various circumstances, like a mountain blocking satellite access and being 25,000 loop feet from a CO, I have 3 real options. Dual Channel ISDN, a T1 line or basic Comcast cable internet. The prices are around $100, $450 and $50 respectively. I have relatives and friends that live in other metro areas that pay less for the same Comcast service.

That $55 ($50 for basic + $5 for 2nd dynamic IP) a month buys me:
FTP upload QOS
RDP QOS, This is a great one, I have 2 IP's but they're on different subnets so RDP packets are routed a few hops over Comcast and they QOS that protocol. I can't RDP to my Cisco lab in a different room without getting at least 4 disconnects an hour + massive latency)
Spoofing RST packets if you try to share anything via torrent
Throttling [latency + bandwidth] your whole connection [http, smtp, etc.] when downloading via torrent

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Solandri]

None of the three are great options, #1 hurts everybody, not just the heavy users. #2 keeps the prices low for most, at the expense of the heavy users, and #3 hurts everybody in general.

Upgrading their network isn't an option?

Upgrading their network is option #1. They buy extra food (to compensate for the appetite of the football team) and raise prices for everyone.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Shakrai]

If the capacity is oversubscribed

The point is that it's easier to oversubscribe cable technology then it is to oversubscribe DSL. The bottleneck for DSL is the connection from the CO to the providers network core and from there the edge connections to the internet cloud. Cable has the exact same bottleneck plus the bottleneck of the nodes themselves.

In my area Roadrunner runs DOCSIS 1.1 and the standard package is 5.0/384. At 5.0mbits it takes less then eight users to completely saturate the downstream channel (38mbits). They can solve this problem by assigning more channels to HSI services and/or splitting the network into smaller nodes, but it seems that in the case of Comcast they've opted to restrict their customers instead of investing in the required upgrades.

Anyway, why is it that these arguments always have to degenerate into DSL vs. cable? Both are good solutions if they are properly implemented. Both can suck if they are implemented incorrectly or backed by shitty policies that restrict what their customers can do.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[jeffgreenberg]

Doesn't comcast (and other cable/isp) have essentially a monopoly? Didn't they receive government allocation to build this 'backbone' and not interfere with it?

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Shakrai]

The idea is that if 5% use 90% of the bandwidth its time to start adderssing that in a fair and honest manner.

And what happens when the other 95% of your users discover internet video? Or do you think that these services are going to remain obscure forever?

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[riggah]

It's not a "bad business decision," it's deceptive advertising, plain and simple. Using a word like "unlimited" wasn't a mistake by their marketing department, it was a deliberate misuse of a word which is then contradicted in fine print that hardly anyone bothers to read.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you on this. I say block all those stupid bittorrent servers and let me use my download speeds for the real stuff (newsgroups)

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Shakrai]

Oh, and not to reply to you twice, but:

Seems to be working fine for the T1/T3 system

Uhh, yeah, the high cost of a T-1 has more to do with the fact that you are leasing the lines themselves from the local phone company and less to do with the cost of the bandwidth itself. My employer pays $483/mo for our T-1. $50 of that is the "internet port charge" and the remaining amount is all mileage charges for the leased pairs. The original idea behind DSL was that you wouldn't need a second dedicated pair for data -- you could use the existing pair that was already there for POTS service.

Incidentally, that $50 cost for the 1.5/1.5 internet connection is actually cheaper then my 8.0/512 cable connection at home.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to see something like that from someone with such a low UID ..

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A T3

its DS3 Even a "t-1" is only the block on the wall. Its the Terminating point for a ds-1.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[SanityInAnarchy]

Besides, if they really wanted to try that, then why not just NAT all of your customers?

NO! Please don't give them ideas...

At the very least, they could do a stateful firewall without NAT.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Shakrai]

Network upgrades raise costs. Yes, they are a necessary part of business, but they also cost.

Indeed. And in my experience in the ISP business (I previously worked for a WISP) we actually spent more money hooking up a new customer (labor, CPE equipment, support costs, etc) then we did on upgrading our internal network & edge connections.

That is covered under the "raise prices" option. Apparently you missed that part.

Then why can Verizon offer unlimited downloading/uploading on their DSL and FiOS products for about the same price as most cable offerings (cheaper in some cases)? I don't see them rushing to restrict what their customers can do.

Hell, the only time I've ever seen them even mention bandwidth as a bottleneck was when they were talking about the future possibility of being able to offer 100mbits connections. Some Verizon executive made a statement along the lines of "We can probably offer 100mbits connections but there's no way we could provide for everybody using them at the same time". You'll notice that he didn't say that was a problem with their existing configuration.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[arth1]

This is kind of like an all-you-can-eat buffet having the local pro football team stopping by for supper after practice five times a week. After a while, the restaraunt starts to loose money. They then have three choices:
1) Raise prices.
2) Put limits on the service.
3) Go out of business.
None of the three are great options, #1 hurts everybody, not just the heavy users. #2 keeps the prices low for most, at the expense of the heavy users, and #3 hurts everybody in general.
I agree that they should be free to implement #2. But then they can't tell the newspaper that anyone who eats too much, will have their food taken away. They need to specify to the customers what "too much" entails -- exact enough that the customer can plan what to eat, and not suddenly have his plate jerked away from under him because him eating all that roast beef is hurting other customers.
And it needs to be stopped marketed as "all you can eat" -- even with a microscopic footnote telling "as long as you don't eat 'too much'". In this case, Comcast gives the customers the impression that they get an unlimited service at the advertised speed, and that's misleading. Doubly so. Deliberately so. Deceptively so. Fraudulently so.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[p0tat03]

The buffet is actually a great analogy. How do real-life buffets deal with this problem? Most of the ones I've seen impose seating time limits (2-3 hours usually). This in effect places a cap on the maximum amount of food you can eat, adjusted so you don't break the bank for them.

But don't ISPs already do this? We have bandwidth caps on almost all accounts up here in Canada these days, they're pretty damned high, and even for an occasional (couple of times a week) torrenter like myself it's more than adequate.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Kickersny.com]

Where I live, my choices are:

1. Comcast

There is no option #2. Dial-up is not an option since I require the bandwidth for work. I've lived in three different large US cities on the Northeast, and I have never had my choice of ISP.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[deesine]

"Where would the internet be if nobody had invested in upgrading beyond dialup technology?"

And didn't we pay for that upgrade too?

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[ACMENEWSLLC]

What I don't understand is why everyone is so big on rate limiting, versus priority queuing?

If Comcast has 100Mb/s of bandwidth for 500 subscribers (just making up numbers) Their 100Mb/s pipe is not 100% full 100% of the time. Prioritize my P2P traffic to be low priority. That way, if Joe Blow is trying to pull up his sports scores on ESPN, and the pipe is full, then my P2P is put on low priority to burst his ESPN page through. If it's 3AM and it's just a bunch of P2P freaks downloading over an otherwise unused pipe, let us have it.

TCP/IP has an issue with slow start. If the pipe truly is 100% utilized, it will take some time for the QoS to down shift my P2P to allow the ESPN page through. So I can understand a hard limit that 100% of all P2P/Movies/Downloads shall take no more than 75% of the available bandwidth.

Anyway, I run a company Firewall & that is what we do. Works very well as long as you have the proper ratio of bandwidth to users.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[cens0r]

I'm not sure what I'm doing that is different. I download quite a few torrents. It's almost all British TV that hasn't aired here yet. My up/down ratio is over 1. Sure downloads go faster than uploads, but a lot of that is because there are more people seeding than downloading. My upload speed cap is also lower than my download speed cap due to comcast. I still can max out sending 50 KB/s though. But I have no problem keeping a good ratio. I start the torrent, it's downloaded in a less than an hour and then I've uploaded the whole thing by the time I wake up in the morning.

I'm using deluge, on ubuntu, with encryption turned on. Other than that I've done nothing.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[grumpyman]

Upgrading their network isn't an option?

Yeah that's "raising the price" option. Where do you think they'll get the money to buy and deploy new equipment?

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[thrillseeker]

they advertise an unlimited service which they have no intentions of delivering ... is this false advertising ?

No - it's fraud.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[billcopc]

If you're on a commercial account, I would expressly order them to remove the throttle. It's one thing to crack down on teenagers sucking warez down like there's no tomorrow... it's a whole different ballgame when the ISP is directly impeding the flow of business.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[billcopc]

Internet service providers are not in this for the warm fuzzy feelings of helping people.

That right there is the fundamental problem with the internet. It's too commercial.

Everyone benefits from ubiquitous net access. It should be a publicly administered service. This old-world mentality of massive telco corporations is the #1 reason why we're stuck in the past.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[OptimusPaul]

It's at my house and I don't know that comcast offers business accounts to residences. but I will look into it.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[saltydogdesign]

Bittorrent is a very efficient way of moving around large files, and Comcast says they want to kneecap it. Great, so people will move around large files in an inefficient manner, like say, http (rapidshare, anyone?). Great, so where does that get us? Nowhere. In fact, the end result of this ploy is that while the rest of the world is enjoying the benefits of some super-efficient non-Comcast-developed son-of-Bittorrent, we'll still be poking along with the old-school technology, or worse, something out of Comcast's development center (Comchoice!). That's what Comcast is doing to us, all in the name of some illusory bandwidth gain (bandwidth for what?). What ever happened to giving the customer what they want?

Me: I want to move files quickly.

Comcast: Ok, I'll just make it impossible for you to move files *too* quickly and then everyone will be able to move files around at a slow, but level speed. How's that suit you?

Me: WTF?

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Anonymous Coward]

This is kind of like an all-you-can-eat buffet having the local pro football team stopping by for supper after practice five times a week. After a while, the restaraunt starts to loose money. They then have three choices:
1) Raise prices.
2) Put limits on the service.
3) Go out of business.


You forgot

4) discontinue 'all-you-can-eat' and charge by the plate. BUT- this includes changing your advertising to remove all references to 'all-you-can-eat'.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[celle]

You left out a few things. 1. Their bandwidth is overpriced already. 2. They oversell what bandwidth they have and then screw with it when we use it as advertised and paid for. 3. They want a stranglehold on access and no liability. 4. They are already making massive profits. Conclusion, how about putting money back into the system and expand it, you know their business, thereby eliminating the problem? They definitely have the money, low liability, and guaranteed monopoly to make it relatively low risk. Maybe we should take away some of those protections and/or make the tubes public, since a lot of them were built and are managed with public resources anyway. Somehow I don't think they wouldn't like the competition or face lawsuits from their users over a variety of their behaviors or crap over their network.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Shakrai]

The buffet is actually a great analogy

Actually it's a really bad analogy.

In the buffet the food itself has a fixed cost. Fruits, vegetables and meat all cost money.

In of themselves bytes don't cost a damn thing. It's the underlying capacity of the pipe itself that costs money. You can't solve your problem at the buffet by buying another stove because the food itself costs money.

I would make the argument that adding bandwidth to the last-mile of your network is a one time expense. Adding bandwidth to the edge is a recurring cost but even at that you are still paying for the capacity and not the bytes themselves.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[MBGMorden]

It's one thing to crack down on teenagers sucking warez down like there's no tomorrow... it's a whole different ballgame when the ISP is directly impeding the flow of business. I'd agrue that it's NOT a whole different ballgame. Both are consumers paying for access. How they use that access is none of the providers business. Saying that commercial use is "better" than personal is the exact same mouse trap that's getting us into this shit to begin with. Traffic is traffic, regardless of what it's used for. The ISP's should route the packet and not bother it.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[GreggBz]

I wouldn't be agreeable to those. The applications that are used by the minority of internet users today are going to become mainstream tomorrow. Everybody is slamming bittorrent but missing the point that internet video is probably going to be the next killer app.

Since I admin a smallish ISP, I can tell you that it's already the next killer app. We've been monitoring network demographics with NTOP for quite some time.

This past year, we've seen a 10% increase in subscribers and a 60% increse in traffic. That increase is almost entirely http.
P2P protocol usage, on the other hand, plateaued last year. It is becoming more and more insignificant.

You can watch 20 episodes of Lost commercial free in "HD" full screen at nbc.com. I watched the Sarah Conner Chronicles (brought to you by Cisco, the irony..) at home last night and monitored my bandwidth consumption, which saturated at around 3Mb. This isn't youtube, the picture is great. It's very impressive, and easy to do. It was a 10 second pluggin install on my Windows machine.

People are rapidly finding this. An informal survey of our CSRs reveals that they are getting increasing volumes of calls where the subject comes up.

Never bet against the Internet, as they say.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Shakrai]

Option 2. is the correct way to proceed

Actually, no, it's not. Bytes don't cost money. The capacity to transfer them does.

The only "fair" solution IMHO would be to upgrade their network or reduce the transfer rates that they are selling. If the network can't handle the load of having 5.0/8.0/10.0 mbits of downstream for each customer then they should be looking at reducing those tiers instead of punishing people for using the product that they are paying for.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Anonymous Coward]

also 5) now that you do more volume business, buy food in bulk. ie:upgrade your network

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Anonymous Coward]

Where would the internet be if nobody had invested in upgrading beyond dialup technology?

In a much better place.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Anonymous Coward]

if you are downloading at 3-6 Mb/s and they upgrade everyone to 100Mb/s that's a 15-30x increase, so instead of something taking 8 hours to seed it takes less than 20 min.

What in this scenerio leads you to believe people won't use the rest of that seven hours and forty minutes to download other things?

In dreaded car analogy terms, widening a road doesn't necessarily reduce congestion because the number of cars on the road will increase.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Agripa]

IPv6 over IPv4 tunneling to the rescue! And as a bonus, not only does the loss of efficiency mean more total traffic but everything can be encrypted using IPSEC.

I KNEW porn and p2p would speed the adoption of IPv6.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Shakrai]

Where do you think they'll get the money to buy and deploy new equipment?

Maybe from the hundreds of millions of dollars in profits that they are raking in?

C'mon, this "infrastructure costs money" argument is stupid. These companies aren't running at a loss any longer. They can afford to put some of that money into network maintenance/infrastructure improvements.

It's the same with the energy industry. Half of the arguments I've heard for gas prices being so high relate to a bottleneck with refining capacity. Yet, nobody is trying to build new refineries. It's not as though they can't afford to build them with the amount of profit they are hauling in.

Eh, whatever. They won't get away with it forever. Verizon has an interest in making FiOS as competitive as possible because they need a new bread-n-butter business to replace POTS. It's kind of ironic -- the cableco's thought they could kill the telcos by going after their POTS business. In a few years though, the cableco's video business is going to start hemmoraging customers to IP-TV and FiOS TV. If that isn't irony then I don't know what is.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Deadstick]

The classical definition of "server" would also preclude hosting that FPS game for your buddies or even mIRC's ident daemon if you want to get REALLY technical about it.

...or ftp'ing files home when you're on the road, for that matter.

rj

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Shotgun]

So, what this boils down to is a truth-in-advertising issue?

If Comcast wasn't lying in their advertisements there wouldn't be an issue here. But I guess "56kbps guaranteed service, but more when it's available" doesn't have that certain ring to it.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[morgan_greywolf]

If Comcast has 100Mb/s of bandwidth for 500 subscribers (just making up numbers) Their 100Mb/s pipe is not 100% full 100% of the time. Prioritize my P2P traffic to be low priority. That way, if Joe Blow is trying to pull up his sports scores on ESPN, and the pipe is full, then my P2P is put on low priority to burst his ESPN page through. If it's 3AM and it's just a bunch of P2P freaks downloading over an otherwise unused pipe, let us have it. All ISPs, including Crapcast, already do this. This isn't about people clogging their network and it never has been. It's about Comcast wanting more money for their service. That's it. It's always been about the money and nothing else.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Shakrai]

You wouldn't be agreeable even if they sold you that service in that manner from the start?

No, I wouldn't. Because I think a per-byte model will destroy innovation on the internet. Besides which, I've made the argument in the past that it's not the bytes themselves that cost money -- it's the underlying capacity needed to transfer them. A 100mbits pipe costs the same whether or not you are using it.

Selling tiered service is one way to address that. I personally have DSL and they provide 6 levels of service from 256k up to a 15mb option.

I'd be all for tiered service if the prices were kept competitive.

Cable does have different issues implementing a tiered system

There's nothing stopping them from doing this. The only issue they have is the capacity of the shared last mile. But cable-modems already have provisions for 'capping' the amount of bandwidth that you can get.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Svartalf]

Heh... Your name dropping of available ISPs indicates you're in the UK. You're where there's some
hefty competition in the cell, data, etc. space (with an effective monopoly ran by the government
on the television space...which seems to work reasonably well all the same... ;-)

Where the parent poster was referring to is in the States. Where while we came UP with the whole
idea of the Internet, we don't have competition in many of the areas of the country because many
don't find it economically viable to compete with the incumbents (i.e. Comcast, Time Warner, etc...)
or the companies in the area don't deem a "rural" area as being economically viable enough to roll
service out to (even though they promised to do so over time... See: AT&T or
Verizon...).

While we have other countries like Japan, Finland, etc. having ISPs rolling out 100Mb service to
customers, we're forced to piddling 1.5Mbit/128kbit configurations with DSL and 6Mbit/256kbit
configurations, with 15Mbit/2Mbit or 50Mbit/5Mbit configurations if you're one of the "lucky"
customers in a Verizon area where they're flogging FiOS and you get a business grade connection
(With at least a $130-250/mo account charge associated with the same...).

None of the real connection options are cheap right at the moment over here. Not everywhere offers
it- nor in many cases do you have more than ONE ISP or perhaps two, neither of which really offer
any good choices for you if you live in one of the areas in question. It's all because the
companies are operating off of pure unrestrained greed. They're more worried about short-term
profitability and highest return on their investment in the shortest time. Laudable goals, really
but unrealistic in that they'd see a better return if they risk a little more and think in terms
of 5-10 years down the road. Unfortunately, that's not what's going on these days.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[korekrash]

It doesn't really matter what their network management problem is. If they say I get X bandwidth, then I should have access to X bandwidth all the time. Why should they be able to false advertise based on assumptions? I don't care what the "average" home user does. Since you used the restaurant analogy I'll use one of my own. If I buy a Chevy Corvette that says it goes 210 mph and they put a rev limiter on it to make it only go 110, I am not getting the car I agreed upon. If I wanted a car that went 110 I would buy a toyota, which is cheaper. Basically, If I knew they were going to cap certain downloads, and that is what I use my connection for the most, I would have just paid less for a slower DSL or something.....

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Anonymous Coward]

He didn't have to. That's the origin of that myth. We've seen new iterations of it with cable is shared! FIOS isn't! but it is all a bunch of b.s.

At some point all bandwidth is shared. We've seen this when Amazon/Best Buy/wherever gets slammed in a Black Friday sale. It might not even be the pipe from Amazon to the net that is the problem, but some other choke point.

But, this doesn't change the fact that the difference between DSL, cable, and FIOS is where the first sharing occurs (with respect to the end-user). Without DSLAM-like technology, DSL gets shared at the central office, which would generally have more than enough bandwidth to handle it.

Both cable and FIOS are shared at the neighborhood level. The big difference between them is that FIOS doesn't hit contention until everyone in the neighborhood is running at over 20Mbps, while cable will hit the wall before 1Mbps. The new hardware rollouts that Verizon is doing will avoid contention until the neighborhood hits 80Mbps for all customers simultaneously.

So, in that sense the sharing that FIOS and DSL use are not nearly as signficant in actual practice as the sharing that cable uses.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[thrillseeker]

Prioritize my P2P traffic to be low priority.

One man's low priority is another man's treasure ...

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[electrosoccertux]

As big of a problem this can be for some people; when I'm done with university and looking for a house, I'll simply be sure it's in a neighborhood where I can get FIOS, as well as AT&T and Comcast/whatever. Then I'll start with Comcast, switch to AT&T when they give me problem, and then go to FIOS. Or maybe just start with FIOS and forget about CC once and for all.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[AmaDaden]

It's a different ball game when you are paying more to get faster connection. Something that a business is very likely to do. If you are paying more and getting the same there is a problem.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Amouth]

you are so correct.. we have bonneded T1's here providing PRI's for the phone system and net access. we pay 350$ per T1 pair + 200$ for pri sevice for each PRI on top of the T1's... and 100$ a month for our ip block.... when you have something like what we have.. the don't even bother charging you for the bandwith.. jsut an access charge (50-100 per T1)

all in all the bandwidth is the cheap part for the telcos.. the TV cable company is diffrent though.... they didn't build their netowrk to the same standards.... and they are paying the price... well atempting to not have to.. but damnit they will have to in the end..

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[ngr8]

Where would the internet be if nobody had invested in upgrading beyond dialup technology?
Available here in rural Verizon territory.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Cajun Hell]

It looks like it's time for a definition of "server." Is it something that accepts incoming connections (the classical definition), or something that uploads "lots" (what's a lot?) of data, or what? When I send an email, is my machine being a server (since I'm making content available to other people)? If I listen on port 25 and receive 10 emails per day, am I a server? If I upload 10 gigabytes to someone else's ftp site, am I a server? If I don't receive incoming connections, but always have a connection open to someone else's jabber server (making it easy to anyone to contact my machine on demand), am I a server?

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[russ1337]

Their 100Mb/s pipe is not 100% full 100% of the time.

This is becoming less true as time goes on - due to more (legitimate) p2p, itunes, netflix downloads, with more legitimate companies actually using p2p as their distribution channel etc.

If I am a customer and I pay for a 10mbps connection and I chose to use it only for a p2p (paid or free & legitimate) service, Why should my traffic be throttled compared to someone who is downloading music or TV from itunes or whoever is partnered with Comcast.

If Comcast has 1000Mb/s of bandwidth for 500 subscribers, Then Comcast should not be selling more than 1000Mb/s in service. Lets just say they offer 2Mbps service to all 500 (or any combination therein), that allows each user to flood their own 2mbps connection with *whatever the hell they want*, and it will not affect other users. Of course little old lady Jones only uses it for e-mail, (so first she might prefer a 100Kbps connection), and she will not use it all the time leaving extra bandwidth on the pipe: so Comcast could offer a 'STEP-UP' plan which allows those users that want pay for access to the unused BANDWIDTH***, *when and if* it is available on a metered basis (and perhaps charge accordingly) So if no body was on for a 10 minute period, you'd get full 1000Mbps for 10 minutes, but you'd pay for that speed/period as you'd agreed over your basic 200mbps).

Or offer a plan where you *only* have access to 50kbps + any spare BANDWIDTH on a metered (Kb/s)basis. Perfect for people who only use the net to check e-mails once a day. Or, have those that use the step-up plan, to discount the services of those that are not using their full BANDWIDTH***.

My point is there are plenty of options, but they basically involve not overselling your bandwidth (which is a common but dirty practice) - and allow each customer to chose what they want to use their connection for. This DOES require Comcast to upgrade their network (or downgrade service) to existing customers so each customer can use their connection to meet their needs. Everyone else can flood their 200Mbps connection with *whatever the hell they want*. That means if i've set my p2p to use the max BW available and given it a high QOS because it is important to me, then I have to put up with slow or interrupted Http/FTP connections. - but I've affected NOBODY ELSE'S service.

(*** Note: what I suggested is NOT an "XXXGB/Month" style plan)

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[smellsofbikes]

>I will stop kids from smoking crack in my living room, but if I don't notice it, it's still their bad, not mine.

Wow. Have you missed the part where the DEA routinely seizes houses and cars if there's any *indication* they were used for drug-related crimes, regardless of whether the owner was the person involved in committing the crime? Did you not notice when they passed laws saying that people who organize events where drugs are used are held personally, criminally liable for drug-related offenses? Whether you're right or wrong, ethically, in your statement, the US drug laws very strongly indicate that if you don't notice it, it's both their *and* your bad, and you'll end up in the same amount of trouble they're in.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Pharmboy]

I'd agrue that it's NOT a whole different ballgame. Both are consumers paying for access.

And you would be showing that you don't know anything about internet access. Business class access comes with a guarantee of throughput, a guarantee of uptime (typically 4 nines, or 99.99% uptime) and a different level of service. Otherwise, we wouldn't be paying $850 a month for 3mbit/3mbit service (two bonded T1s), when 6mbit service is only $50 for homes.

Residential service doesn't cover fully saturating the available bandwidth because it is shared: I can saturate my T1s all I want. Residential doesn't require 2 or 3 year service contracts, but business class often does. Residential service doesn't guarantee to get your internet access back up in 60 minutes or less, even if they have to come string new copper or fiber, but they do on mine. Residential Terms of Service are NOT the same as business class in any shape, form or fashion. The fact that there may be limits on a lower grade of service (residential) shouldn't come as a surprise considering how cheap it is compared to business class.

Yes, that sucks, that is the breaks. If you don't like the limits, you can always go get business class service in your home. Then you don't have to worry about any limitations.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[cuantar]

If they were really serious about that part of the agreement, they wouldn't offer static IPs ever, for any reason, correct? The facts that static IPs are advertised as a part of various broadband plans, and that ports 80, 22, 25, etc. are all open for incoming connections lead me to believe that the no server rule has never been enforced.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[MBGMorden]

But we're talking about throttling, not tiered bandwidth. The whole point of net neutrality is that an ISP should not be able to hold data hostage for more money based on it's type, destination, or their own perception of it's importance.

If I pay $19.95 per month for 2Mbps, and you pay $199.95 per month for 20Mbps, then I have just as much right to complain if ANYTHING I transfer is limited to below 2Mbps, as you do to complain if your traffic is artificially slowed to less than 20Mbps.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Anonymous Coward]

Upgrading their network isn't an option? Oh for God's sake. Do any of you whinging about "network upgrades" have any idea how expensive it is to maintain a cable plant? Not to mention the time involved in swapping out nodes, performing node splits, upgrading drops to 1 GHz, etc. From here:

North America's largest MSO [Comcast] said it plans to spend a record $5.7 billion on cable plant upgrades and new service launches in 2007

This is not like putting a new line card in a router. This is upgrading or adding thousands of devices in hundreds of miles of physical infrastructure in a single system.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[PitaBred]

Because you download things to a hard drive. Even with a few terabytes of space, you end up filling it. Only a few people are digital "packrats", downloading everything they can get their hands on, mostly just because they can. Other people only get what they want, and move on. With faster speeds, they'll move on faster.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why can Verizon offer unlimited downloading/uploading on their DSL and FiOS products for about the same price as most cable offerings (cheaper in some cases)? I don't see them rushing to restrict what their customers can do.

Cause they cut out the big fat middle man?

Verizon Business (what became of UUNET/MCI when Verizon acquired them) are about tied with AT&T as the largest Tier 1 provider in the US. They resell their bandwidth to competitors at preposterous rates. Since the geographical circumstances and last mile delivery can be different for each competitor they deliver to, just maybe they fudge the numbers up as they please based on who they are selling to and get away with it.

They're also "The Phone Company". The largest ILEC in the US. I think they can virtually print money at this point.

I should not have to say that cable is a big threat to them. Undersell a better product to potential cable customers, and oversell your OC-12 to the local Comcast headend. I don't doubt that this is their model for crushing those annoying cable companies.

If Comcast is evil Verizon is evilerr.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Mister Whirly]

Administered by whom? The United Nations? Do you really want them to be in charge of the entire internet? If the entire world were one giant socialist country, you idea would work great. But it breaks down when all the "who pays for what?" and "who benefits more?" questions start...

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[gad_zuki!]

>And what happens when the other 95% of your users discover internet video? Or do you think that these services are going to remain obscure forever?

Whose to say they arent using these services? They just dont live on the computer 24/7 like the 5% who use all the bandwidth. They watch youtube and probably do all sorts of downloading, they just arent running 5 torrents at a time, seeding 2 others, running a server, etc. If they ever become like this then they can join us in the Pro club with a real SLA.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[geekoid]

"Their pricing is assuming that not all customers want to use their maximum available bandwidth at the same time, which is generally true."

There assumptions they base their business model on is clearly flawed or this wouldn't be an issue.

"f they really DID beef up the system to handle ALL available bandwidth, then the price would likely double or more."

ok. Or offer a tiered service and charge appropriately.

"Cable is marketed to typcial home user, where the use is rather bursty." Yes, bursty with Bit torrent(used legally with services like WoW), video, music, IM, and a whole lot of other things that will mostly be used at the same time. I.E. after school and work; which will apply to most neighborhoods.

Number three only hurts the company, another will step in with a properly managed business plan.
Number four- remove the effective monopoly from comcast.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[nurb432]

Now you see why the administration is trying so hard to get that immunity bill passed thru.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Anonymous Coward]

Upgrading the network doesn't do anything for congestion caused by P2P. Let's say they double the amount of bandwidth available. What happens? The P2P apps will automatically double their bandwidth usage(actually, more than double, but that doesn't change my point).

It boggles my mind that so many slashdotters can't understand this simple point: a single P2P file transfer will use as much bandwidth as possible. Therefore, if P2P is causing congestion problems, throwing more bandwidth at the problem solves nothing.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Anonymous Coward]

While the concept may not be immediately obvious, you can delete files from a hard drive. In the case of movies, it's download-watch-delete or download-burn-delete. With increased throughput, an individual essentially has on-demand viewing of anything they want to watch, so there is no need for permanent local storage of every download.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Dahamma]

Interesting fact: The same number of Old people eat FAR more than a football team.

Ok, this is getting way off topic, but... that's not a fact, it's an anecdote, and it's wrong anyway. Worst case if an "old person" ate their whole meal once a day that's still only 2000 calories. I knew football players in college who would eat more than 2000 calories at the *breakfast* training table (which of course they would immediately burn off in the next 2 hour practice).

I read that a 300lb lineman consumes 5000+ calories a day during the season and up to 10,000 during training camp. "Old people vs young people" is one thing. "Old people vs a pro football team" is ENTIRELY different.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[pipatron]

Usually the business/home business accounts are slower, more expensive, but guaranteed bandwidth and service.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[knight24k]

No, I wouldn't. Because I think a per-byte model will destroy innovation on the internet. Besides which, I've made the argument in the past that it's not the bytes themselves that cost money -- it's the underlying capacity needed to transfer them. A 100mbits pipe costs the same whether or not you are using it.

..and you would be free to make that decision being fully informed about the service being offered. The problem I have with Comcast is that they are NOT disclosing their bandwidth limits, not that they are limiting them in the first place. That and their service sucks beyond this issue, but that's another matter.

Whether or not the market will accept a tiered system is another argument that will be decided in the marketplace regardless of whether we agree with the fee per byte model or not.

There's nothing stopping them from doing this. The only issue they have is the capacity of the shared last mile. But cable-modems already have provisions for 'capping' the amount of bandwidth that you can get.

Only having experience building and servicing DSLAM cabinets for DSL implementations I can't comment on how they may or may not implement caps. I don't know the technology well enough, except in passing, to comment on it. It shouldn't be that difficult, but it is different than DSL.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should actually do research before posting.

http://www.realtimet1search.com/news/article_282.php

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Shakrai]

And why is this a problem? There are many legitimate channels for downloading feature length movies. If the ISPs can't handle this load then they will eventually go out of business and be replaced by those that can.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Shakrai]

Business class access comes with a guarantee of throughput, a guarantee of uptime (typically 4 nines, or 99.99% uptime) and a different level of service

Pffft, I've never seen a cable provider willing to provide a "4 nines" SLA or throughout guarantees for any of their commercial products. If you really care about having an SLA then you are going to wind up looking at some sort of leased line solution, or MAYBE DSL from a CLEC (I've never seen an ILEC DSL provider with an SLA either).

Otherwise, we wouldn't be paying $850 a month for 3mbit/3mbit service (two bonded T1s), when 6mbit service is only $50 for homes.

Most of the charges for my T-1 are mileage/loop charges, not port charges. The port charge on my T-1 here at the office is a whooping $50/mo. The of the expense is all loop charges that winds up going to the local phone company for the privilege of allowing me to lease those pairs.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[tkrotchko]

"Unfortunately, too many people have a free lunch mentality when it comes to bandwidth and media downloads."

To be fair to those "people", doesn't Comcast's marketing department bear some responsibility for what you call a "free lunch mentality"?

It's not like Comcast is giving anything away. They charge $40/month for using their network, they've talked about always-on bandwidth, never talked about any limits, and now that they've set that expectation, some people seem to think that it's a "free lunch mentality".

I get that bandwidth costs money, and I get that you can't truly give unlimited bandwidth, but since Comcast created the perception, it's up to Comcast to fix it (if it really needs to be fixed. I think they're crying the blues to raise prices and get the FCC to enable them to drop network neutrality.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[GreggBz]

I know how much a Cisco UBR10012 costs. I can imagine how many Comcast has purchased. I do love working in the Cable industry though. It's by far the most interesting IT job I've ever had.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Shakrai]

Whose to say they arent using these services?

You just don't get it do you? Let me spell it out for you:

As you probably recall, Time Warner is looking at setting up bandwidth caps. The highest tier that they are planning on offering is 40GB/mo. I'm guessing since that's the highest tier it will likely be priced higher then existing connections, though I have no evidence to prove this.

Netflix instant view uses around 2.2Mbit/s to stream at the highest quality offered, which is still sub-DVD quality. That works out to about 275,000 bytes per second. Or roughly 990 megabytes per hour of video. If all you did was use Netflix instant view then you'd have roughly 40 hours a month of allowed video watching before you exceeded your bandwidth cap. Toss in some internet radio (roughly 58 megabytes per hour for a 128kbit stream), surfing, youtube, etc, etc and you can see how quickly this becomes a problem. Now try and imagine a moderately sized family (Dad, Mom and 2.5 kids) where you have multiple people sharing the same internet connection.

Now run those calculations for HDTV. HDTV will require at least four times as much bandwidth. More if you want a better compression rate with less artifacts.

Sorry, but 40GB as the highest tier? You realize that you could almost attain that with an ISDN connection, right? Are the cablecos really trying to tell us that they don't have the ability to provide more bandwidth then a technology that's at least two decades old? This wouldn't have anything to do with a fear of competing video services, would it?

I was regularly blowing through close to 40GB before I discovered streaming video and not including torrent activity (legal or otherwise). Upgrade your fucking networks or FiOS is going to kick your ass.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Shakrai]

Cause they cut out the big fat middle man?

Uhh, I don't know about Comcast, but I do know that Roadrunner is working on cutting out the middle man and building their own national backbone that peers with as many content providers as possible. So I don't think this argument holds as much water as you might think. I'd say that about half of the traceroutes that I do wind up on Level3 and the other half wind up going across tbone.rr.com. Most of the big bandwidth users (Netflix instant view and Youtube, among others) wind up on tbone.

Verizon Business (what became of UUNET/MCI when Verizon acquired them) are about tied with AT&T as the largest Tier 1 provider in the US. They resell their bandwidth to competitors at preposterous rates.

Verizon and AT&T aren't the only Tier 1 providers in the United States. Roadrunner does business with Level3. I don't know who Comcast uses but don't pretend that Verizon and AT&T have a monopoly on Tier 1.

If Comcast is evil Verizon is evilerr.

You'll brook no argument from me on Verizon being evil. That said, they are being less evil then the cable companies are with regards to consumer broadband. And I still have a strange sort of respect for them for standing up to RIAA way back when and refusing to name their customer.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Jerry]

No.

The ISPs, cable companies and baby bells were given $200 BILLION to lay optical cables over 15 years ago.
http://www.newnetworks.com/scandalquotes.htm

Had they fulfilled their end of the bargain we wouldn't be having bandwidth problems today. Then they couldn't claim they were throttling p2p and other down loaders to "preserve bandwidth".

It's time some public interest group sued them for breach of promise and force them to complete their end of the agreement.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Shakrai]

..and you would be free to make that decision being fully informed about the service being offered. The problem I have with Comcast is that they are NOT disclosing their bandwidth limits, not that they are limiting them in the first place. That and their service sucks beyond this issue, but that's another matter.

I won't argue with you on the point that full disclosure would better then secret caps and shaping technology that they deny even using. But I still don't think a per-byte model is the way to go. Bandwidth isn't electricity or natural gas. It doesn't directly cost money for me to move a byte of data across the globe.

Whether or not the market will accept a tiered system is another argument that will be decided in the marketplace regardless of whether we agree with the fee per byte model or not.

A tiered system would be more fair then a per-byte system, but even at that you know they'll still oversubscribe the hell out of it. That's basically what this all boils down to. Had all of these services existed (bittorrent, ip-video, etc) when they were building their networks they probably would have used different oversubscription ratios and we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

At the end of the day bandwidth requirements are going to keep going up. They can whine about it all they want, but I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for companies that are making billions of dollars in profits with their Government granted monopolies. It's not that they can't afford to upgrade their networks -- it's that they don't want to. It's not a growth industry anymore, so where is the incentive?

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[tinkerghost]

My point is there are plenty of options, but they basically involve not overselling your bandwidth (which is a common but dirty practice) - and allow each customer to chose what they want to use their connection for.

Here in MA, one of the cable companies so oversold their network that you could set your clock by the throughput crash when everyone go home from work - from 0 to 85% packet loss in a 15 minute period every day on every UBR with an apartment complex.

As for the limits on bandwidth, sorry, the telco's have gotten close to $23B in grants & tax breaks since the mid 90's for expanding/upgrading the network - and they've posted record profits & dividends during that period without providing the services - for you or me that's fraud, for them it's business as usual.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[cjb658]

If Comcast has 100Mb/s of bandwidth for 500 subscribers (just making up numbers) Their 100Mb/s pipe is not 100% full 100% of the time. Prioritize my P2P traffic to be low priority. That way, if Joe Blow is trying to pull up his sports scores on ESPN, and the pipe is full, then my P2P is put on low priority to burst his ESPN page through. If it's 3AM and it's just a bunch of P2P freaks downloading over an otherwise unused pipe, let us have it.

The problem, though, isn't that Comcast is concerned about the experience of the 90% of their customers browsing the web. They just see an opportunity to get more money from the other 10% without spending any money to upgrade their infrastructure. If net neutrality fails and ISPs start selling tiered services, do you think the cost will go down for low bandwidth users, or up for high bandwidth users?

I think I know the answer.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[LWATCDR]

Okay I will give you that but then they need to disclose this in all their ads.
Every add for "Internet access" needs to include bandwidth limits, ports blocked, and what parts of the internet they include or don't.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[milsoRgen]

Yeah I'd say they've been making a little money... http://moneycentral.msn.com/companyreport?Symbol=US%3Acmcsa

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[milsoRgen]

Oh for God's sake. Do any of you whining about "network upgrades" have any idea how expensive it is to maintain a cable plant? Nope, but I have a good idea how much Comcast has to spend.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[FredFredrickson]

To clarify the difference between making files available (a daemon that sits and listens 24/7) and responding to requests (a SERVER) and uploading to a server, downloading emails, sending email, is simply where the request begins- When you go to download email, you initiate the connection to the mail server. When you send email, you initiate a connection with the mail server. When you upload files to an FTP site, you initiate the connection.

When you serve files you sit and listen to a port (typically 80 for websites) and when somebody else initiates a connection with you, you respond- that's a server.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[uncqual]

As a consumer, I don't *want* a tiered system. [...] I want streaming HD movies from netflix (or apple, if their prices are lowered and appletv lockin is removed). I want to be able to watch youtube without watching a meter. No problem. If you don't *want* a tiered system and Comcast offers a top "unlimited" tier, just buy that - the fact that there are tiers below your selected tier that have caps doesn't affect you much (Comcast signup pages might be a bit more complicated, but that's a pretty small burden in exchange for choice). If Comcast doesn't offer a "unlimited" tier, go with something like T1s.

Comcast and other ISPs will have to expand their network capacity to keep all the consumers happy, otherwise they will lose customers with either route (torrent blocking or tiered service). The 90% of the users who probably use only 10% of their bandwidth won't bolt because you want unmetered and unlimited access. These 90% are likely happy customers who would never exceed their baseline usage anyway and would probably rather pay less for ala carte service. So the odds of losing many of their customers due to well implemented bandwidth limitations is small - far more likely that the 90% of low usage users will bolt for a cheaper service, not a faster service at the same price. Indeed, Comcast would probably love to see the top 5% of their residential bandwidth users switch to competitors.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Curunir_wolf]

Oh for God's sake. Do any of you whinging about "network upgrades" have any idea how expensive it is to maintain a cable plant? Not to mention the time involved in swapping out nodes, performing node splits, upgrading drops to 1 GHz, etc. From here:

North America's largest MSO [Comcast] said it plans to spend a record $5.7 billion on cable plant upgrades and new service launches in 2007

This is not like putting a new line card in a router. This is upgrading or adding thousands of devices in hundreds of miles of physical infrastructure in a single system.

So how is that a problem when they are raking in $13 billion a year?

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[das_schmitt]

Good luck in finding 20 people who watch your stupid internet "HDTV show." :)

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Cajun Hell]

Your definition sounds very classical, and alas for Comcast, wouldn't apply to bittorrent.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[AmaDaden]

Your missing the point. I fully agree with what you are saying but the worlds does not. To everybody else there is a huge difference between a business line and a home line. The logic is that if they mess with a business line they are costing people money, but a home line is "just some kids messing around". A business line is a called a business line because it has higher priority. They look at it as if the you were holding up a 911 call with to your friend to 'just talk', even if it is nothing like that. If you tell them that you depend on your home internet for work I bet they will ask if you want to upgrade to a business line.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[TooMuchToDo]

I've got business class service from Comcast for $160/month. 4 nine's uptime SLA, 20Mb/s down, 3Mb/s up. Chicago area near O'hare, in an industrial park. Also, they said I could bond two connections together if I want.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Grail]

To continue the analogy though, Comcast is opening the boxes, having a peek at what's inside, deciding that it does or doesn't look important, then dumping it in a field somewhere.

As opposed to, for example, reading the consignment note that says, "Express Delivery" and making sure the box gets where it's going, quickly. Or letting that box marked, "Surface Only" and putting it on the slow boat so that it eventually gets where it's going but to at the expense of Express boxes.

The Internet Protocol already provides the means to selectively prioritised packets. I don't know why we can't just be clever about this and use the quality of service mechanism that already exists.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[ScrewMaster]

They aren't now. As a data service provider, they aren't a common carrier. They just don't want the costs associated with regulatory burden of that status, and especially don't want the Feds dictating Quality of Service standards.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Shakrai]

Lucky you. That amount of money gets you a 5.0/768 here in Time Warner land for a business class account with a static IP. And no SLA.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[TooMuchToDo]

I had to pay $5/month extra for 1 static IP, and $10/month if I wanted 5 static IPs. We went with just one, as I'm doing a slew of IPSEC tunnels.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[calebt3]

pay for your own T3 to your house Outrageous costs aside, where do we buy it from? I've never seen T3 advertised. Only T1 from Speakeasy.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[ACMENEWSLLC]

I have a dual T1 connection with Verizon. 3Mb/s. I can fill this up to 100% utilization 100% of the time, and they don't care. I'm also paying $1300/mo for this. This includes BGP with disparate paths to two different major cities, and a fiber ring out to the RBOC. This has incoming traffic on it and rarely has downtime due to the BGP. (less than one time per year.)

I also have 100Mb/s connection with a local city entity. I pay $800/mo for this. The 100Mb/s is shared with other people on this fiber loop. They monitor it for abuse. I can not use 100% of this link 100% of the time. Outbound web surfing and such has multiple routes out, with this as the primary path out. We average about 1.5Mb/s on this pipe. But having the bursting abilities is very nice.

I understand the business model of over subscribing - it brings costs down. You have an option of buying a T1 for ~$300/mo and not having these issues. If I'm a heavy downloader, I of course want my cake and eat it too. I want the large quantity of bandwidth at a low cost. But that makes you the bad apple ruining the bunch. Comcast is doing something. I suggest they prioritize the traffic over rate limit it or send a reset packet. Saying they should offer unlimited bandwidth 100% of the time with no limits at all for such a low price seems unreasonable to me.

I have public water running to my home. I can use reasonable amounts and be fine. Most people think it is unlimited. But abuse it and see how fast the utility comes out and shuts off your water. Especially in places like LA.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Anonymous Coward]

Comcast charges $121.43 per month for TV and internet.

For that, one should at least get some sort of e-mail saying that your bandwidth is being reduced, and give some figures.

How about if we get "credit" for not watching channels that show old movies and TV shows that they get cheap.

Also, I want credit for not watching the exercise channels, and the home-shopping channels, and the religious channels, and the political-opinion channels. Also, throw in the local channels, that I could just get by hooking up my TV antenna.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[gad_zuki!]

So what youre saying is that the pricing and GB limit is not to your liking? That's why we have competition. oh wait, now youre saying you dont have competition. Hmm, perhaps that explains why comcast can even get away with any of this.

My point is that if this issue is strong enough to force a federal net neutrality bill then its strong enough to force a deregulation bill. The latter gives us many more choices than the former. But I doubt any of this will get passed, thus my practical stance on tiered pricing at near market prices.

There is no fios in chicago and wont be for a long, long time.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[fugue]

I switched to DSL here because I had noticed Comcast doing this.

But here in Boulder it is not based on deep packet inspection or anything sophisticated. It is just a cap on bandwidth, pure and simple. I was downloading large files with scp (data files, mostly, but some music and movies and photos from my own server, but all encrypted). For exactly 30 seconds I would get rates on par with what Comcast advertises, and then they would throttle my connection from 1.5Mb/s to rather less than 256kb/s (I forget the exact number). I wrote a wrapper that would download for a short time and then rest and then resume the download, but they are tracking and averaging in a way that was pretty effective against anything I could think of.

What it looks like is that Comcast runs software that lets you "confirm" its advertised download rates using the common "test your bandwidth" websites, but allows them to avoid having to actually provide that level of service reliably to their paying customers. I believe there's something in their contract about not having to give you what they advertise. I wonder if it would stand up in court. Anyone feel class-actiony?

Qwest DSL in Boulder is much, much faster for long downloads, despite being advertised as slower, as they don't (yet) throttle my downloads after 30 seconds.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

It's not that I don't agree with you, but, quite frankly, your analogy sucks. That's what comcast should be doing: continuing to ignore the murderer in the back, rather than driving slower in response.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[rtechie]

Comcast is not doing deep packet inspection. If your IP connects to too many hosts within a given timeframe (ex. You open 100 connections in less than 1 minute, I don't know what the actual thresholds are) their Sandvine boxes start sending TCP RSTs to both ends of the connection. They're not actually looking for P2P. ANY application (like Lotus Notes) that makes "too many" connections is affected.

DPI DOES NOT WORK TO BLOCK BITTORRENT. I repeat, deep packet inspection is useless for blocking Bittorrent traffic. Bittorrent traffic is now encrypted and uses randomized ports SPECIFICALLY to defeat DPI. And it works very well. This is why Comcast has resorted to this crude TCP RST approach.

It will not work. It's easily defeated by shimming your network stack to ignore TCP RSTs on particular ports (the ones you use for Bittorrent). As soon as standardized tools become available to do this (it's already being patched into clients) this approach will be finished. Assuming the Bittorrent people don't switch to UDP, which they're also working on.

I've actually talked to Comcast directly about this and suggested the OBVIOUS solution, QoS for Bittorrent. They can prioritize hosts within their own network for Bittorrent by messing with the packet latency. This will reduce traffic on their upstream pipes AND increase download rates for users, which is why they'll use the ports Comcast recommends rather than trying to bypass it. Hell, if they were willing I'd have them host there own trackers that only share within Comcast's network. They would be so much faster than most trackers I seriously doubt it would take much convincing to get users to use the Comcast trackers.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[ATMAvatar]

My understanding is that the difference between a business line and a consumer line is that the business line comes with an uptime agreement, whereas the consumer line doesn't.

My workplace's 2 T1 (1.5MBps) lines aren't supposed to get any more bandwidth than my 3.0MBps cable line at home. The difference is: when the T1s go down, we get an immediate response from the provider to get things fixed, and we get money back if they go down for too long. If my cable goes down, I can tell the cable company about it, but if it's down I'm simply out of luck.

Business lines get higher priority for maintenance/uptime, not bandwidth.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[ScreamingCactus]

Yeah that's been the whole issue they've been going on about over the past weeks. What annoys me the most about it (okay one of the many things that annoy me the most about it) is what else are we paying for 1mb/s for? I certainly don't need that for regular surfing. Even youtube can stream at 30k/s. Unless the file you're downloading is over 50mb, 100k/s max is just fine. The only time anyone needs that turbocharged speed is when they're downloading gigabyte-sized files. So aside from the whole legal issues, I don't think anyone should have to pay for 1mb/s that they don't get.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Some_Llama]

"What in this scenerio leads you to believe people won't use the rest of that seven hours and forty minutes to download other things?"

you ask like there is a never ending list of stuff people want to download and all that is limiting them is their bandwidth (and now the ISPs), i am a heavy user, i know heavy users but we are heavy users because it takes 8 hours at 1mb/sec to download a 5GB game file, if i got that in 20 min i would be done downloading.

Honestly, how many of us are downloading 20TB+ of data per month? the amount of stuff to download might be infinite but HD space isn't (as someone else said).

Because that is what would be needed to keep the bandwidth saturated if we all had 100MB pipes.

I think the complaint now i that 5% of users are downloading 50GB (give or take 10GB) a month, this would be done in 4 hours.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[SngBrdB]

I disagree with the analogy, and here's why. Comcast limits me to dl/ul speeds of 6Mbps down and 768Kbps up. In other words, Comcast has already put into place measures to prevent me from hogging the network, and these measures are built into the pricing scheme. Furthermore, Comcast has the ability to prioritize traffic to ensure each channel (user) is getting their fair share and not forced to wait for a "hog". In fact, if Comcast gave top priority to traffic on ports 80, 25, 110, and 443, there would be no need to limit p2p at all (imo). A more correct analogy would be an all-you-can-eat buffet where each diner gets one plate, and can't go back for a second plate until all other diners have gotten their equally-sized plates. Now before anyone jumps all over me about time-sharing, and how not everybody is expected to use their full allocation at once, I'd like to share some more information with you. Coax is typically quoted as having 30Mbps throughput. This is not correct. 30Mbps is a throughput per channel. From http://www.cable-modem.net/tt/primer.html:

A cable television system typically has 60 or more channels, and most of them are used for programming services like CNN, ESPN and HBO. These channels also can be used to offer high-speed Internet access. Each channel offers 27 mbps of downstream capacity and 10 mbps of upstream capacity, which is shared by a small cluster of homes. Because data traffic is bursty, several hundred cable modem users can surf at the same time without any loss of performance. If speeds begin to fall off due to heavy traffic, the cable operator can allocate more channel space to preserve high performance levels.

So guess what? At 6:00, when everyone turns their TV on to the nightly news at the same time? Same problem!! But you don't see your television signal heaving all over tuner... because Comcast knows they can't put more subscribers on a hub than will be simultaneously watching TV. ...See where I'm going with this? It's also very interesting that channel space is dynamic. If internet traffic is just another channel, can't it also be dynamic? A final bit of info, to give you perspective how much bandwidth coax really has: the Multimedia over Coax Alliance (members include Comcast, Cox, Verizon, and many others) looks to the capacities of existing and future technologies. They've done studies on HDTV and internet over coax, and results of these studies where presented at WinHEC 2007. http://mocalliance.org/en/index.asp From the site:

The Multimedia over Coax Alliance (known as MoCA(TM)) is an open, industry driven initiative promoting distribution of digital video and entertainment through existing coaxial cable in the home. MoCA's primary requirements are: * No new wires * No installation or truck roll * No interference with existing networks * If you have coax, it works. * Compliments [sic] any wireless network

At WinHEC 2007, MoCA presented the results of a field test performed using 250 homes. The PowerPoint presentation is available from Microsoft's download site: http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/f/d/afdfd50d-6eb9-425e-84e1-b4085a80e34e/CON-T477_WH07.pptx The goals of the field test were to use existing coax to provide simultaneous internet and stutter-free HDTV to multiple rooms of a house without impacting the other users on the network. This functionality has since been deployed to more than 200,000 homes. The results: * Speeds of >110Mbps net throughput in 97% of all outlets WITH NO CHANGES TO EXISTING SYSTEM! * Packet Error Rate less than 10-6 * Latency less than 5ms With "simple remediation", the results were 100% of homes achieved >95Mbps on *every* path in the home. Download the ppt, it's an

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[tepples]

If they were really serious about that part of the agreement, they wouldn't offer static IPs ever, for any reason, correct? They charge extra for the static IP, and they charge extra for taking that provision out of TOS.

The facts that static IPs are advertised as a part of various broadband plans, and that ports 80, 22, 25, etc. are all open for incoming connections lead me to believe that the no server rule has never been enforced. The rule has never been enforced until now.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[meimeiriver]

"If Comcast wants to throttle the bandwidth on my torrents, so be it. I can live with that. But ABORTING a torrent is just plain nasty on their part. Delay the packets, fine. Drop a few packets, fine. But to inject an abort signal, dirty trick."

Your cheerful readiness to accept a "Big Brother" society, in which ISPs monitor your every Internet action, is as mindblowing as it is disturbing.

Your complacent willingness to play along with it also displays a staggering ignorance. It's not at all about a company having the right to throttle bandwidth: it's about the monitoring of your traffic (!) that leads to them throttling your bandwidth, which is the real and grotesque infringement of privacy.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[aquila.solo]

...a big truck.

I thought we were done with the car analogies. :-)

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[LackThereof]

Business package ADSL or Cable never comes with a SLA and rarely comes with any other uptime agreement.

For your extra money compared to a residential plan you usually get

1) More upload bandwidth, usually 768kbps instead of the typical 256kbps

2) A TOS that doesn't explicitly disallow "running a server" and other such nonsense (Residential package TOS is usually incredibly restrictive, you're probably violating it right now and you don't even know it.)

3) A static IP.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[meimeiriver]

"This is kind of like an all-you-can-eat buffet having the local pro football team stopping by for supper after practice five times a week. After a while, the restaraunt starts to loose money. They then have three choices: 1) Raise prices. 2) Put limits on the service. 3) Go out of business."

Nope, you forgot the fourth, and most relevant option:

4) Don't lie about offering an "all-you-can-eat" buffet. THAT's the scam these companies are running: reeling you in with "unlimited" accounts, whereas they are, in fact, not unlimited. So be honest enough to say that. But they're not gonna do that, of course, because "unlimited" sells better than "limited". But it's still a scam.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Shakrai]

It boggles my mind that so many slashdotters can't understand this simple point: a single P2P file transfer will use as much bandwidth as possible. Therefore, if P2P is causing congestion problems, throwing more bandwidth at the problem solves nothing.

It does if you throw more bandwidth at your network but don't pass that onto your end users. We already have connections upwards of 15 - 20Mbits available in some areas. If you add more bandwidth to the network itself and keep your userbase at the same levels they are at right now then it would solve the problem.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Pharmboy]

Your 3mbit home bandwidth is theoretical BURST speed. The two T1s are guaranteed 1.54mbit each. Business DOES get more bandwidth, as in, 100% of what is promised, 99.99% of the time. If 6 people are downloading torrents on your block at the same time, you aren't going to be getting that 3mbit 50% of the time.

Also, T1s have 1.54mbit up AND 1.54mbit down, at the same time. Your cable has .25mbit up, or pay extra to get .5mbit up, max BURST speed. If you compare ping times (particularly how consistant the pings are) then you will also see a difference. 25ms vs 35ms-50ms doesn't sound like much, but it is still more consistant, and has less latency. It also means more headshots if you like gaming.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[harrkev]

Not really. They can prioritize packets based on port number. I would be very distrubed if they tried to determine the content. But, if they want to look at the packets just enough to throw them into broad bins, such as "FTP," "HTTP," "Torrent," "VOIP," "VPN," etc., then I can understand the practical reasons for doing so. This is generally known as QOS (Quality of Service). As long as they don't peek to see what's inside or try to record who I am talking to.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[wilder_card]

In my opinion, it's fine if they want to limit bandwidth. If I don't like it I'll go somewhere else. FiOS, anyone?

The reprehensible part is limiting bandwidth of _certain applications_. That's a whole different ball of wax (and I'm talking here about some real ugly/disgusting ear wax, like from a vagrant with ear mites).

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[billcopc]

The United Nations doesn't need to do squat. Free internet on a country-by-country would be a great start. We don't need a global economy to make these basic things work.

Who pays for what ? Whoever's land it is, that's who pays. If the router is on US soil, send the bill to GeeDub. What about those transcontinental rings ? Go dutch!

If every good idea has to be shot down by "how much does it cost?" then the human race will never evolve.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[billcopc]

Not so long ago, residential connections weren't filtered at all. You could run any app on any port, from that lowly Linux-driven 486 in your basement.

The filtering started when internet-borne viruses started crippling the networks, and people's Windows PCs got infested with spam repeaters. Back in the day, it was a security thing. This has led to all sorts of things being censored under guise of security.

The other thing to factor in, is that people today are as computer-illiterate as they were 10 years ago. Some people want BitTorrent and use decent client software, others install any damn software that pops up in their email and get rootkitted, then blame BitTorrent and complain loudly to the ISP's tech support drone.

With a corporate account comes a higher expectation of responsibility. You're supposed to have a tech guy, at the very least a reliable contractor, to handle your network security. You're probably going to run a mail server and try your best to lock it down properly (in theory). You'll run a VPN so your employees can telecommute, and you might use a lot of bandwidth for email and file transfers to/from your colocated servers.

Business internet access is _very_ different from residential service.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[More_Cowbell]

I see you have tons of replies and I did not read them all, but they seem to be discussing what you said. Not to take away from anything you said, but you missed entirely the point of the GP you replied to.

Then they should not be protected from legal action regarding what flows over the network.

Make that stipulation and they will stop in a heart beat.

He is saying if they are looking at all the packets then make them liable for things like child pr0n. Whereas now they are immune.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Anonymous Coward]

If their isn't enough bandwidth then maybe they should stop overselling their network. It was a good plan when most customers didn't use the bandwidth they were offered, but now that customers use the bandwidth they were offered Comcast gets mad.
 
I work in the ASP field so I know the practice of overselling a network, usually by about 500%, but if our customers started to use what we actually promised them we would have to enhance our network or lower their prices and promise them what we can actually provide.

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[warpuck]

so this is why bittorent is slower than repository or ftp feed for a linux distro ?

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Anonymous Coward]

based on it's type
perception of it's importance

"its".

Re:If comcast want'sto do this

[Anonymous Coward]

How about this analogy to airlines:

The carrier is overbooking the system, which seems fine all by itself.
But when it comes time to 'bump' somebody, that customer doesn't have any recourse for not getting the 'suggested' service, which also might be fine.
But it seems like what's going on is that they're trying to decide who they bump by 'shaping' out people whose traffic they don't seem to like.
Sort like noticing that you have a bunch of carry on luggage, or checked baggage and deciding that they're rather sell that storage space to somebody else.
To push things to the limit and engaging the box dumping and horse race ideas - they might bump someone so that another one of their divisions can ship freight.
[think delivering their own video-on-demand]

Slowdown

[Stanistani]

>Comcast... purposely slows down some traffic on its network, including some music and movie downloads...

Perhaps Comcast will experience a 'slowdown' in its profits...

At least it's all coming out in the open, instead of the issue being met with bland denials.

Re:Slowdown

[truthsearch]

It would be great if it hits their bottom line. Except for many people the choice is between Comcast broadband, AOL dialup, or no internet. Which do most people choose?

Re:Slowdown

[Pojut]

That's just the thing though...it's not coming out in the open. Numerous studies have shown that they are in fact BLOCKING some types of traffic, which is backed up by countless consumer complaints both online and in print.

Comcast seems to be hoping that your average everyday joe says "oh, they are just slowing it" and that be the end of it. Well, when downloading one version of Ubuntu was nearly 500k a second and then a few months later the next version downloaded at 2 KB per second from my house and roughly 400 KB from the same torrent at a friend's house that DIDN'T have comcast...yeah. I've seen it first hand. This isn't delaying or throttling...this is damn near blocking.

Besides, injecting their own packets into the communication between my computer and another computer...shit, if I did that to two random people, I would be brought up on criminal charges.

Re:Slowdown

[vertinox]

Perhaps Comcast will experience a 'slowdown' in its profits...

That said, FiOS can't be rolled out fast enough. Sadly, most people have either cable or DSL and sometimes only cable as a choice for broad band.

I'd love to vote with my wallet, but its either them or dial up.

Re:Slowdown

[garcia]

Perhaps Comcast will experience a 'slowdown' in its profits...

You're hysterical! When people don't have much of a choice about what provider to get they're going to choose what's available and unfortunately for about 25 million people (and ~8 million of those for broadband), that's Comcast.

Nothing will come of any of this and just like the telecom immunity bullshit, this too will pass over Comcast w/o much more than a few news articles and possibly a rebate for one month at $5/subscriber while they continue to control their network as they see fit.

Re:Slowdown

[fohat]

Perhaps people have more choices than they are aware. For example, my friend is in an area where comcast has not run their cables and he's too far from the Central Office for DSL. Therefore he called Sprint and obtained a broadband wireless card which is plugged directly into a router (no laptop required). Granted the speed isn't as fast as Comcast, however he gets about 1 Megabit down and 600 Kilobits per second upspeed regularly (with very few connection interruptions). There's also Satellite internet (which of course is a bit more restricted than most people like).
So there are viable alternatives to Cable Internet, although they can be slightly more expensive.

Re:Slowdown

[Bassman59]

Perhaps Comcast will experience a 'slowdown' in its profits...

That said, FiOS can't be rolled out fast enough. Sadly, most people have either cable or DSL and sometimes only cable as a choice for broad band.

What makes you think Verizon (or whomever) won't throttle traffic on a FiOS network in the same way?

-a

Re:Slowdown

[jessiej]

I for one wouldn't want to pay for "High Speed Internet" that advertises 8 Mbps "with an extra burst of speed up to 12 Mbps when you're downloading large files like videos and games" (taken directly from a price quote on comcast.com) only to find that when I download those large files, the 12Mbps ends up being 3Mbps.

Sounds like very misleading advertising to me.

Re:Slowdown

[whoever57]

A few years back, I could see that Comcast was blocking VPN traffic. The block was such that the VPN session would be set up, but then the actual traffic would be blocked (different protocols). I could be certain that that the traffic was blocked because I could use tcpdump at both ends. I called them and they denied the block, but a few days later, my VPN started working again.

Re:Slowdown

[kimvette]

Perhaps Comcast will experience a 'slowdown' in its profits...

That said, FiOS can't be rolled out fast enough. Sadly, most people have either cable or DSL and sometimes only cable as a choice for broad band.

One of my friends who works for Comcast tells me Comcast at large is terrified of FIOS because they are rapidly losing their local television monopolies and FIOS is simply a better product when it comes to bandwidth delivery.

I use Bittorrent a couple of times a month to download Linux distributions, and also use it to download things like Autopatcher (I know, the torrents are out of date and I need to look into building it myself but ANYHOW. . . ) -- you know, legitimate traffic. I don't even bother with downloading television episodes any more.

Re:Slowdown

[Jaysyn]

DSL isn't always that bad a choice. I'm getting 7Mb Down / 512 Kb up for cheap cheap thru my local phone company. Not too bad considering I live 50 miles away from the nearest large town.

Re:Slowdown

[TheWanderingHermit]

There are many places with no choices at all. I'm 10 minutes from the state capital in Richmond, VA. I had no possible choice for anything other than dial-up until Comcast finally offered broadband in 2001, a few years after all my friends had it. Due to the James River and whatever weirdnesses exist in the Verizon planning office, I'm too far from the CO for regular DSL and might have been able to get ADSL, but even with other companies that offered it, that was doubtful. For me, it was either Comcast or nothing until Verizon rolled out FiOS in this area in December and I switched immediately.

Until then, considering that I transferred data to my customers over Internet and did download a lot of Linux distro CDs and downloaded a lot of old time radio shows (and *never* allowed any file sharing or what could be called illegal traffic on my line), I stayed paranoid and alert so I didn't fall victim to Comcast's limited/unlimited cutoff notices. I've talked with the local Comcast office a number of times. Most of the people there have been there when it was AT&T and even before that. They're good people and want to do well, but a lot of what they'd like to do is blocked by Comcast and their policies. I told them they might want to let their mothership know they were losing a 21+ year customer (way back to Continental Cable in this area) because of their Internet policies like the bandwidth games. The local people wanted to do what they could to keep me, but couldn't stop Comcast's vague bandwidth and p2p interference games.

Oh, and I told them one small reason, but a contributing factor was that I had been asking for Boomerang on cable for years, but it wasn't on. Their response? "Yes, that is one of our most requested channels." I said, "If it's so requested, why don't you have it?"

Re:Slowdown

[Anonymous Coward]

I really wish I could switch, but there is no choice here. Comcast has a monopoly in my market, so it's either them, dialup, or satellite.

And be assured, they are screwing with traffic. I had left my Fedora 8 DVD at work on Friday, and I needed to play with it over the weekend. So, Saturday morning, I figured something as simple as downloading the DVD would be no issue. With so many peers in the network I was easily hitting 900KB/s downloading it... for about 10 minutes, and then all traffic stopped. My regular internet worked fine, but all torrent traffic was halted for an hour. I then had to manually restart it, and it would be killed again after a few minutes. It took about 6 hours of testing in throttling my traffic in uTorrent (note that there's an about hour of dead time each time you go too high) before I realized that I had to throttle it below 150KB/s to keep from having it stopped. The ultimate effect was that a download that should've taken only 3 hours at full speed instead took nearly two days. By the time it finished Sunday afternoon, it was basically useless to me. I would've been better off just downloading it through HTTP than BT.

I did put my contact information in to Verizon, so once their service becomes available I will be switching over. I can't really complain to Comcast officially, as I really needed Fedora for business I was doing (writing a book chapter). They would just state that if it was business, then I would need a business account - blah blah blah.

Please Verizon, step up and help us Comcast users out :)

Re:Slowdown

[Shakrai]

So there are viable alternatives to Cable Internet

Neither one of those options you provided is "viable" if you want to stream video or use VoIP. Streaming video will often require more then 1Mbit (Netflix goes up to 2.2Mbits for the highest quality -- just wait for HDTV and that will probably be 8Mbits or more) and the latency on either of those solutions is usually too high to work effectively for VoIP.

Re:Slowdown

[Stanistani]

The fact that your outcome is more likely than the one I hoped for is depressing.

Comcast subscribers, particularly the more technically-adept ones, should give the FCC more input. A letter to your local congressional representative wouldn't hurt, either.

Re:Slowdown

[Shakrai]

What makes you think Verizon (or whomever) won't throttle traffic on a FiOS network in the same way?

Because Verizon's main source of revenue isn't derived from video or intellectual property. Because they are losing POTS customers left and right and need SOMETHING to use as a contrast between themselves and the cable cos that are kicking their ass. And because they've come out and said that they don't think bandwidth caps are the "right direction for us".

I fucking loathe Verizon for some of their actions (especially those of Verizon Wireless) but they've been on the right side of this issue for as long as I can remember. If that changes they will deserve our scorn but I don't think it's fair to give it to them just yet.

Re:Slowdown

[fohat]

I'll give you the HD streaming, true. However Comcast has "allegedly" interfered with VoIP as well in the past http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/02/139241 So it really comes back to playing fair.
What's to stop them from screwing up the HD streaming also, and then denying that they are doing anything wrong?

Re:Slowdown

[YrWrstNtmr]

One of my friends who works for Comcast tells me Comcast at large is terrified of FIOS because they are rapidly losing their local television monopolies and FIOS is simply a better product when it comes to bandwidth delivery.

A couple of months ago I helped my ex switch from Cox cable to FIOS. When I went and turned the box in, there were 20 other people in line doing the same thing.

Re:Slowdown

[puppet10]

Rather than their profits directly it would be nice to see cities and towns start pulling their exclusivity arrangements for cable reclaiming the cable lines and giving short term arrangements to a different carrier and explicitly letting comcast know this is why they are losing the arrangement.

Re:Slowdown

[thrillseeker]

What's to stop them from screwing up the HD streaming also, and then denying that they are doing anything wrong?

As long as they are allowed to interfere with anything, then they will actively choose to interfere with that which affects their profit margin the most.

Re:Slowdown

[Svartalf]

Heh... They're against net-neutrality, just not stupid in the same way about it.

And, they're more than happy to allow you to use every drop of that peak bandwidth- you've just
got to have a business account and service with them; it's only double what they're charging
for the consumer service.

Re:Slowdown

[Wildclaw]

While streaming may be a little troublesome, if you are using download and watch instead, 1mbit/600kbit is far superior to a 20GB cap which is what the cable industry seems to be aiming for.

Really, the cable industry have an internet setup that is failing and they know it. Their last mile networks can't handle scaling up.

OK if they are up front about it

[2phar]

This seems reasonable in principle.. but it should be made clear in the contract exactly what you are paying for.

There could ultimately be different subscription rates for how fast you want different types of traffic to go.

The problem is the issue of snooping on traffic and comcast being able to reliably decide what traffic is what class.

Re:OK if they are up front about it

[tricorn]

Why should different types of traffic be charged different amounts or go different speeds? There are QOS solutions for low-latency requirements like VOIP/video chat, and it would certainly be reasonable to throttle bandwidth differently for such "high priority" packets, but there's no reason that they should even be trying to distinguish between a torrent of an illegal movie distribution and one of a legal open source program or whatever, nor any reason to distinguish between HTTP, FTP, SSH/SCP, VPN traffic, IMAP/SMTP or whatever. If they want to throttle based SOLELY on bandwidth usage, and do it in a fair manner, that's one thing. Do it by delaying packets (then dropping them if the underlying protocol doesn't throttle itself based on the delay, for example). Don't do it by injecting counterfeit packets into the stream.

Bandwidth throttling could be done using a quickly decaying average bandwidth usage figure, that could allow someone to quickly download a web page and not see any delay, yet slow down someone using a lot of bandwidth for more than a short period of time (but ONLY when the overall bandwidth demand requires it, it does not make sense to throttle traffic when there is plenty of spare available during non-peak times, and the throttle level should be the same for everyone, at whatever level is necessary to allow all the bandwidth to be used equally and fairly).

The sad state of things

[Aranykai]

The situation in most places is unfortunately this: There is ONE cable company offering high speed access, and perhaps ONE dsl company that servers your next door neighbor but not you. Theres not enough competition yet, so these idiotic companies stay in business simply because they have a monopoly.

So, until that changes, theres no point in bitching and moaning every time some company admits to doing what we all know they are doing. You can always go back to dial-up...

Re:The sad state of things

[Anonymous Coward]

theres no point in bitching and moaning

Of course there is! If no one complains then nothing will get better!

Before Comcast (or any business, for that matter) can respond to a problem, they must first know the problem exists. They must also be able to assess the severity of the problem and determine how it might impact their profits. Customer feedback is an important means for doing this.

So, we must bitch and moan. The more the better.

It would be *even better* if we could switch to another provider. That kind of impact would get an even faster response. But since, as you say, they are basically a monopoly, we have only two options: 1) bitch and moan, 2) pass laws to regulate their practices.

I, personally, would like to see more of both.

Re:The sad state of things

[Sfing_ter]

indeed, but a t1 could be shared via wireless or other means between a bunch of neighbors. Where i am i can get a t1 for around $250 per mo split 6 ways that's less than comcast charges for their "ultra superfast basic broadband" :D

Most people won't even think of looking into these things i realize, but there are other options out there.

Re:The sad state of things

[Vectronic]

Exactly, and furthermore the next time some third-world countries government (monopoly) opts for genocide, there's no point in bitching and moaning every time someone dies, you should just go live in a cave till its over...

Re:The sad state of things

[Mindwarp]

Exactly! I'm in the situation where I either have Comcast, AT&T DSL at 17,500 line feet from the DSLAM, or nothing.

Until there's decent deregulation of the local cable industries then companies like Comcast will do whatever they feel like with impunity.

Re:The sad state of things

[Anonymous Coward]

awesome suggestion. for only $42/mo, you get to share your blazing fast 1.5Mbit/s connection. of course, dsl will cost less (~$15) and gives you nearly the same speed...

Re:The sad state of things

[Anonymous Coward]

I beg to differ. I have Bellsouth DSL and have yet to see any type of limiting or blocking being done. I have had 4-10 Linux distros seeding for the past year and have yet to see the upload (or download, when I do) rates sink below what I subscribed to. Same goes for all other traffic that I've watched.

Re:The sad state of things

[celle]

Some of us can't as we don't have dial anything or even the wiring running to the property.

Re:The sad state of things

[Blakey Rat]

You're comparing a $250/month, 1.5mbit connection to:

1) A $25/month, 3mbit steady DSL connection
2) A $35/month, 5mbit shared Cable connection

And saying that it's viable competition? When shared with 5 other people? You're crazy. My dirt-cheap DSL is much faster than a T1 will ever be. And you're crazy.

Here we go again

[Trailer Trash]

There's a world of difference between "slowing traffic down" and spoofing rst packets. I don't mind them slowing down huge downloads or whatever to allow faster web browsing. That's not the issue at hand. I can't use bittorrent to download legal torrents. *That* is the issue at hand.

Trying to change the subject isn't going to help them.

Re:Here we go again

[Andy Dodd]

I agree. I fully support anything that does QoS and packet prioritization (by protocol, NOT by source/destination - I even do it on my own personal network to improve usability so I can leave BT running while I play games), but what Comcast is doing is NOT that.

QoS means that stuff like BitTorrent is last priority during heavy usage periods compared to more latency-sensitive protocols. Fine.

The problem is that Comcast is actively *killing* connections that meet certain criteria (not just BitTorrent - Sending attachments larger than 500k-1M in Lotus Notes is also broken) rather than slowing them down or altering their priority. They are doing this regardless of what other network load conditions may exist. i.e. they interfere with users' upstream connections regardless of time of day, whether or not it's 6 PM when the network is at peak usage, or 3 AM when a few people using BT is the only load present on the network.

Re:Here we go again

[tepples]

I can't use bittorrent to download legal torrents. I've addressed this in another comment.

FAIL

[Anonymous Coward]

http://wwwfail.com/?url=comcast.com

Anology

[arizwebfoot]

Okay so using their logic, Bar owners can sell you half a beer and fill the rest with water because it "flows better"?

Other analogies, mine probably didn't work right, I'd still have beer farts in the morning?

Re:Anology

[techpawn]

Beer? The only beer analogy I want to see is a free one...

Now, can we make a car analogy? Like there are too many cars on the highway so we're going to send cops out at certain times to try to reduce traffic, but since there is only 1 highway all it does it slow traffic more...

Re:Anology

[wattrlz]

I liken this to a cell phone company which, when it is running low on capacity, listens in on calls and randomly drops conversations in languages other than english since they're probably discussing something illegal anyway.

Re:Anology

[Anonymous Coward]

It's more like if cops started shooting random people at peak times, on the fastest lane.

Re:Anology

[erroneus]

Let me fix that for you:

"There's too much congestion on the road, so we're sending out cops to stop only the black people from driving on it." See? It's inflammatory, describes what they are doing (which is presuming some form of guilt based on stereotypes), and should hit pretty close to what the public views as "wrong." The only thing missing for accuracy's sake is to have the police stop all the black people, take them to jail and then call their friends and family on their behalf that they are "taking a vacation...forever..."

Re:Anology

[hal9000(jr)]

"There's too much congestion on the road, so we're sending out cops to stop only the black people from driving on it."

A better analogy and not as inflammatory is to stop old drivers, grey and blue hairs during rush hour because they putz along at 45 MPH in the fast lane which in turn causes other drivers either driving at exceeding the speed limit to change lanes and pass on the right, which in turn causes people drivings slow in the slow lane to brake for ass-hats passing in the right, which causes the blue hairs (remember them) to break because someone in the other lane hit their brakes which leads too ...

Well, you get the point.

Re:Anology

[techpawn]

Original Revised:
Okay, put the cops out at rush hour to stop all the RED car. Because we have statistics that show red cars cause the most accidents and speed the most. No matter if that car is a sports car or a minivan. It's red, so it's stopped.

Re:Anology

[arizwebfoot]

Okay, how about, during rush hour, you stop all the chick drivers and teenage boy drivers, put them in a tent and let the teenage boys strip search the women.
The excitement of all the teenage boys ought to take just enough time to let all the traffic go buy

The devil is in the details

[TripMaster Monkey]

From TFA:

The FCC prohibits network operators from blocking applications but opens the door to interpretation with a footnote in a policy statement that provides for an exemption for "reasonable management."

So who determines what measures fall under the vague umbrella of "reasonable management"? Sure, Comcast can't block applications, but if they slow throughput from said applications down to a crawl, it constitutes a de facto block.

This should be interesting to watch unfold, especially since I myself use Charter. ^_^

Re:The devil is in the details

[dissy]

So who determines what measures fall under the vague umbrella of "reasonable management"? Sure, Comcast can't block applications, but if they slow throughput from said applications down to a crawl, it constitutes a de facto block. To be a true BOFH they should limit the traffic to about 50 bytes a second.

Slow enough to make it useless, but not so slow as it appears totally 100% broken

>:)

Re:The devil is in the details

[blitzkrieg3]

So who determines what measures fall under the vague umbrella of "reasonable management"?

Whatever "reasonable management" is, it shouldn't be: "Sending forged RST packets to force a connection closed between two peers." That kind of behavior is illegal and should remain so. This is also exactly what Comcast is doing.

If You Advertise and Sell...

[Anonymous Coward]

a specific bandwidth, them you damned well better be able to support it. Otherwise, that is fraud. Further, I should be able to do whatever the hell I want with it. If I pay for a certain bandwidth, then I should be able to use all that I pay for, 24/7.

Re:If You Advertise and Sell...

[The Analog Kid]

They advertise *up to* a certain rate, they don't guarantee that you will get that rate, nor could they, transfer speed depends on things that are not all in their control, like the upload speed of the server your computer is downloading from.

Re:If You Advertise and Sell...

[dasbush]

If Comcast states in the agreement that they monitor what the bandwidth is used for and that they throttle down whenever they deem it appropriate, it would not be fraud. It's only fraud if they mis-represent the truth in the contract, which they probably will not because they are coming clean.

Re:If You Advertise and Sell...

[Anonymous Coward]

They advertise *up to* a certain rate, they don't guarantee that you will get that rate, nor could they, transfer speed depends on things that are not all in their control, like the upload speed of the server your computer is downloading from.

But if I told you I'll give you up to a hundred dollars, and then give you a nickel, a bus token and some pocket lint because that's all I ever actually had in the first place, I'm sure you'd be sore. It's the things that ARE in their control that are the problem here, such as bothering to spend their profits on upgrading their infrastructure instead of ale and whores.

Re:If You Advertise and Sell...

[Anonymous Coward]

Comcast is welcome to throttle, but when it comes to the data stream being interrupted by stopping and restarting, then Comcast is actually distrubting services.

The right approach would be to punish the 5%-10% of people that abuse the bandwidth by charging an arm and leg and or shut them down. This way the remainder of us, 90%-95%, aren't being punished in the process.

Personally, I would like to see the FCC tell Comcast they need to implement Multi ISP services. Earthlink would jump on this in heartbeat, and for cheaper monthly cost. At this point Comcast wouldn't be able to block Earthlink traffic patterns. If they did, then it brings up additional legal issues.

Re:If You Advertise and Sell...

[shentino]

weasel words like "up to" rob any quoted figures of meaning.

Re:If You Advertise and Sell...

[Intron]

Then their story has changed, hasn't it?
http://www.telegeography.com/cu/article.php?article_id=21206/

Re:If You Advertise and Sell...

[Anonymous Coward]

What I mean is that if there is a server on the internet that has the bandwidth available to saturate my max speed, and it is attached to comcast or to a service that will pass the data through at a sufficient speed to max out my connection, then I should be able to download anything/everything all day long at the max speed.

there is the weasel word "up to", but I bet a dollar that the original contact did not say that.

Re:If You Advertise and Sell...

[thrillseeker]

Then their story has changed, hasn't it?

Yes, and as a publicly traded company, making false public statements should have the securities regulators involved in this debacle too ...

WSJ doesn't get it.

[robkill]

It's distortions, statements, and mindsets like this that have to be refuted.

From the editorial:

Big broadband companies are headed for a clash with Washington over whether consumers have a right to get as much as they want from the Internet, as fast as they want it, without paying extra for the privilege. The editorial goes on to conflate neutral treatment of packets with "neutral pricing" (their term for flat rate).

Re:WSJ doesn't get it.

[Xelios]

Big broadband companies are headed for a clash with Washington over whether consumers have a right to get as much as they want from the Internet, as fast as they want it, without paying extra for the privilege.

I didn't realize this was a "privilege". I'm pretty sure when I signed up for internet I was told I would be getting a very fast connection (16 Mbps) with unlimited usage. Let me just check my ISP's website.... yup, that's what it says here. I did pay extra for my fast, unlimited connection. Basic dial-up is $5 a month, this is $35 a month. Where's the problem?

Cue The Laugh Track

[TheHawke]

These guys are killing me with their excuses as they do not want to scale up- or outward with their networks, instead staying oversold and overcapacity just to make their quarterlies.

For sheer PROFIT! They are willing to sacrifice QOS and customers just to make that little bar on their gross profit margins tick that much higher.

What kind of business are they in? One guess; SERVICE. In operating a customer service company, one always keeps in mind that you need to commit back into infrastructure and upgrades at least 3/4 of your monies and budgets to keep ahead of the curve. Comcast has not done so and now it's gotten them into hot water with both their custies and the fed, with this, Band-Aid they call "traffic management".

Re:Cue The Laugh Track

[sm62704]

I looked up Comcast in the uncyclopedia. It says:

Comcast
From Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia.
Jump to: navigation, search
    This article may be Overly American. Brits may not understand humor, only humour. Don't change a thing to remedy this.

The red C of Comcast, along with the name of both the religion and the god, Comcast

"No block sync? No problem!"
~ The Comcast.net AI Chatbot on Home Networking

Comcast (formely Comca$$$t)is a monotheistic religion in which the only god is Comcast. A company that has a name rhyming with Comcast is known for its game show Jack My Price Up.

There is, of course, more there. Or maybe less if somebody's edited it.

Re:Cue The Laugh Track

[strikeleader]

Comcast is getting its cue from the oil industry. There is no need to update its infrastructure and improve its service when they can just keep using to same old stuff (as in oil refineries) and charge more because they say that the demand is larger than the supply that they can provide. And because of the high demand they "must" throttle the band with to the evil file sharers.

Re:Cue The Laugh Track

[p0tat03]

When you're a monopoly, you don't have to EARN your customers. You just have them, period.

Here in Ontario, Canada, we have pro-competition laws on DSL (though sadly not cable), where the last-mile carrier (Bell Canada) is required to lease lines at regulated wholesale rates to resellers. This has worked out beautifully.

I'm with a small ISP that serves only a few cities in the province, but their customer support is excellent, the usage terms fair, and the price low. This is capitalism at its best.

Now, if only our politicians will get a clue and do the same thing with wireless. Canada's wireless infrastructure is among the worst in the world (third world even), and it's all due to the monopoly run by Rogers. Service is expensive ($200 for 500MB data/month!), the network drops calls like hot potatos, and customer service is miserably horrible, with insane contract lengths (you think you Americans have it bad with 2 years? Think 3!). Heck, our ONLY GSM 3G network is in Toronto, a SINGLE CITY! And only in the downtown core of the city!

As a hacked iPhone user, it makes me sad when I look at the state of Canadian wireless. There is so much potential, so many new business opportunities to be had by building a proper communication infrastructure. Our government has failed us, and despite write-ins to our MPs, NOBODY has tabled ANY bill to change this.

What is the web?

[ScentCone]

consumer groups and some Internet companies argue that the networks should not be permitted to block or slow users' access to the Web

It's precisely so that what most users ARE trying to do (access "the web") will continuie to work that some giant, bandwidth-hogging apps are throttled. A crush of bittorrent traffic isn't, for most people, "the web." They want their mail to flow, and their CNN.com and facebook etc to work. The audience here on this message board are way, way outside the norm in terms of the type of traffic they'd rather burn bandwidth on. But here in my town yesterday and this morning, we had a nasty ice storm. I'm sure a lot of people were very glad to have a workable RDP session, and would certainly prefer that the chunk of router they're sharing with their fellow neighborhood broadband users didn't dry up because one kid three doors down is busy "sharing" his anime collection.

Re:What is the web?

[crakbone]

I have comcast. I've seen my google page slow on loading while another site is super fast. I dont get those slow downs at work or at clients when I work at their houses. Comcast is not just slowing down bit torrents but are slowing down lots of other things as well. Would you like the idea that Comcast can slow down your access to yahoo because they made a deal with Microsoft to make the service look weak and drive the cost of stock down? I'm not saying this is going on, but is a possibility. I think if you paid for service you should get the service. I don't want my google slowed down so that I will use another search engine. I dont want my torrents slowed down. I like getting the latest linux releases quickly. And yes I'm going to be leaving Comcast in the next month. Id rather have the choice of what I get out of the internet rather than what others think I should have.

Re:What is the web?

[tricorn]

So slow down the kid when the bandwidth usage requires it (but based on his bandwidth, available bandwidth, and current total demand, rather than how important you think his network activity is). Argue about legality somewhere else. If what you're doing is more "important", then pay more for your connection.

The only exception I could see is for emergency services, and for that you BOOST the emergency service packet priority, not drop everyone else. Of course, you need to figure out a way to reliably determine what legitimately should have priority boosted, probably based on IP address of one end of the exchange).

Re:What is the web?

[ScentCone]

So slow down the kid when the bandwidth usage requires it (but based on his bandwidth, available bandwidth, and current total demand, rather than how important you think his network activity is).

Much, much harder to compare that particular user's account, history, and moment-to-moment usage to the overall flow of things, relative to other people's more legit-smelling traffic. Easier, at this stage of the game, to think about protocols, as understood by a long-term, net-wide observed general pattern. I can't blame the carriers for saying, "In general, moving movie torrents around is looking less important to most of our customers than being able to check mail, connect to work, and handle normal surfing." That's easy/ier to shape on the routing side. Handling the analytics needed to do what you're saying involves way more horsepower and moving parts.

Re:What is the web?

[tricorn]

Seems to me to be easier to calculate a moving/decaying average than it is to examine packets to determine that there is an illegal movie in it. If all you do is look at port numbers, then it is obvious that the way around all of this is for everyone to just use port 80, so to be effective you need to track connections, see how long a connection is active and how much traffic has been transferred (which can be defeated by closing and re-opening connections on a regular basis, and causes problems for persistent HTTP connections anyway if you just look at how long a connection has been open), look at HTTP headers to verify that it is actually using HTTP over port 80 (which also isn't of much use), etc. To be effective, analyzing traffic content/protocol in order to determine how "important" it is will either be very expensive or very ineffective.

Calculating a decaying average can be done by storing only a couple of variables per IP address, and doing a simple calculation each time a packet is sent on. Send packets on when they've been waiting for a time based on their average and the current throttle level. Adjust the current throttle level once a second (many ways to do that, simply moving it up or down so that when a packet is ready to be sent (per the above), it can be sent with no waiting, with a bit of fiddling to add some hysteresis). Note that the averaging should be done based on the subscriber's IP address, not on a per-connection basis, which makes it even easier to do, and a heck of a lot easier than tracking each connection's state. It also directly addresses the issue, which is excessive demand on bandwidth, gives very fast response for even very high bandwidth demands as long as they are short bursts, fairly throttles down bandwidth hogs so that the only people they affect are other bandwidth hogs, and can be tweaked to allow people to pay more for higher priority. It can also be tweaked to support QOS, so that a high-priority packet is sent on faster, but counts more against your average.

Re:What is the web?

[evil_aar0n]

You could look at it the other way 'round: those people reading CNN, Facebook, etc., are getting in the way of the kid sharing his anime collection. Who's to say what the Internet's "purpose" is? Comcast says "unlimited." If it's not, in fact, unlimited, then it's false advertising.

Re:What is the web?

[ScentCone]

Who's to say what the Internet's "purpose" is?

Who cares? The only thing that matters is that a service provider is providing a service to its customers. It has to do so within the bounds of what it can do and still stay in business doing so (which includes actually showing a profit). The use of their network is going to be constantly evolving, but it's certain that the vast majority of the bandwidth used by their customers is going to continue to lean towards streaming media and big binaries moving around. They have to decide how to reasonably provide what their customers - as a group - can and should get at the prices they charge. I use a different carrier, and don't care about Comcast, per se (except for the fact that their users tend to be a big source bot-powered spam). The use of the word "unlimited" is pretty much always a bad idea, I think, because no one can actually provide it - not in literal terms.

Games vs. Downloads

[sneakyimp]

All the shrill and panicky anger I hear about this seems a bit suspect to me. Anyone who has studied operating system code should know that trade-offs are always required in the design of systems that manage a limited resource. If you are coding a scheduler to manage access to the cpu, there is no perfect solution. You have to make decisions about when to run BIG jobs (like computing PI to the 6-millionth decimal place) and when to run small jobs (like responding to a keystroke).

Handling network traffic is an analogous situation. There are big jobs (e.g., transferring that multi-GB collection of secret MySpace photos) and there are small jobs (e.g., signalling a head-shot in a game of Counterstrike). In order to make room for the applications that need immediate response and low latency, you have to limit the big jobs so you have some overhead in which to move.

I hate my cable company as much as anybody does, but let's not fly off the handle until there is more damning evidence.

Re:Games vs. Downloads

[Anonymous Coward]

so... you're saying that the kernel should SIGKILL your pi calculations as soon as you hit a key or move your mouse?

Re:Games vs. Downloads

[Jaysyn]

Please don't be obtuse. They are sending *RESET* packets. Sending a RST is *not* the same as bandwidth shaping.

Re:Games vs. Downloads

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, just because you're taking your 4th semester CS midterm next week doesn't mean you have to regurgitate it verbatim on Slashdot. It doesn't apply to the entire world.

Re:Games vs. Downloads

[shentino]

Actually most contention cases result in priority decreases, where whoever plays the nicest gets kudos from the kernel in the form of being left alone.

"punishing processes which try to use more CPU than is available" -- Ingo Molnar, designer of the O(1) scheduler.

You get SIGKILLed if you hog all the memory.

Re:Games vs. Downloads

[evil_aar0n]

It were simple scheduler issues - the normal management of processes endemic to every OS - then, Ok. But if Windows' scheduler specifically blocked, say, Firefox, or iTunes, then that would be a whole 'nother matter. And that's what Comcast is doing with it's "man in the middle" attack, altering torrent packets to prevent their transmission.

Re:Games vs. Downloads

[sneakyimp]

The referenced article says nothing like that.

Re:Games vs. Downloads

[sneakyimp]

The referenced article says nothing about packet resets. Perhaps you could point me to the article which provides proof that packets are being reset by comcast?

Re:Games vs. Downloads

[Jaysyn]

Sure

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r18323368-Comcast-is-using-Sandvine-to-manage-P2P-Connections

http://www.secguru.com/link/comcast_forging_packets_filter_torrents_using_rst_packets

http://www.vgamin.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=279987&sid=39c4843f2be3b4bb0aded7164eed6cab

http://www.eff.org/wp/packet-forgery-isps-report-comcast-affair

I don't get it...

[wattrlz]

Isn't this a form of unauthorized wiretapping?

I suppose it depends...

[moore.dustin]

I will not fault a company that throttles some of its users in order to maintain the integrity of their service for all their customers. Provided that the contract/agreement states something about it and it is done blindy, not targeting specific users, then fine. The second they pick and choose who gets what and when(or what and at whos expense), then it becomes a real issue.

If you look at it from the point of view of the customer that got the bandwidth at the expense of the guy that got throttled, they are probably pretty happy about it. Again, provided it is permitted and a blind process which does not target individual users unfairly.

Because you're still sharing with others

[smooth wombat]

It didn't appear in the linked article but in this AP news article from Excite, the following comment by Comcast stood out in my mind:

Comcast says it must curb some file-sharing traffic because some subscribers would otherwise hog the cables with their uploads and slow traffic in their neighborhood.

In other words, despite what Comcast and every other cable provider who offers high-speed access to the Net will have you believe, you are still sharing one line with all your neighbors. This is different than FiOS or other non-cable connections where you have your own line.

They'll never admit to it but their own comments prove otherwise.

Re:Because you're still sharing with others

[techpawn]

This is different than FiOS or other non-cable connections where you have your own line.

The way this was explained to me and I say it to other (and PLEASE correct me if I am wrong).
A cable modem, is a large pipe for a section and everyone in an area plugs into it and opens up as much as they use. So the up side is that you can get a very large amount at one time if you don't mind screwing everyone else. The downside is that you might be the one getting screwed. DSL on the other hand, you are given a much smaller pipe that is definite, but you're not effected by anyone else in the area with DSL taking up large amounts. Up side, you're golden for usage, downside, if you DO need large bursts you can't get it....

about right?

Re:Because you're still sharing with others

[smooth wombat]

That's my understanding as well. Cable = sharing a big pipe with others, fiber et al = smaller pipe dedicated to you.

Both have their merits but Comcast and others don't tell you that so you can get inconsistent speeds whereas with fiber and others, your speed is pretty much constant. They will claim this is no longer true but obviously it is.

Re:Because you're still sharing with others

[hal9000(jr)]

At some point there is going to be a bottle neck. There is an aggregation point. Whether that is in the field or at the central office makes no difference. I have a 20MB down/5MB Up FiOS connection. Let's say my CO has a single GB connection to the "cloud", that means at most 50 similar users could suck down 20 MB/s traffic before impacting others. It's a simple and largely inaccurate illustration, but the point is there will always be a bottle neck.

I haven't experience a particular performance hit because 1) rarely do I ever even get to 20Mb/s *ever* and two, there aren't that many people in the 'hood using FiOS. But if uptake increases, then aggregated performance will become a factor.

Re:Because you're still sharing with others

[Anonymous Coward]

This is different than FiOS or other non-cable connections where you have your own line. Bzzt. You're the one falling for false advertising. If you're not sharing a connection, you're not on the internet.

Re:Because you're still sharing with others

[tepples]

DSL on the other hand, you are given a much smaller pipe that is definite, but you're not effected by anyone else in the area So there's no bottleneck, even at the DSLAM's upstream connection? I find that hard to believe.

Re:Because you're still sharing with others

[techpawn]

The difference is where the bottleneck happens, as someone so nicely pointed out. Is it in the field or in the office. It's a difference of amount out in the field. As much as I hate the plumbing analogies...

Cable is a large pipe send to the town with everyone taped directly in
DSL is a water plant that sends smaller pipes to each house.

Re:Because you're still sharing with others

[2short]

But whether you share a very large pipe with some of your neighbors, or have a smaller pipe all to yourself, both those pipes lead quite quickly to a junction, and from there out you're sharing a bigger pipe with a much bigger number of people. The size vs user population of that upstream pipe is almost certainly a much bigger deal during peak times than the size of your last mile pipe. All the discussion of trade-offs between cable/dsl is mostly irrelevant, and driven by DSL salespeople. Because "Not as good as cable, but good enough for you!" is a crappy slogan, no matter how accurate.

The amount of bandwidth a providers has further upstream is generally a much bigger deal than any differences between cable/dsl. I'd also coinsider whether your cable provider does sucky stuff like that discussed in the article. Sadly, my possible dsl provider does different sucky stuff; sigh. To the limited extent that the differences between cable and DSL matter at all, cable pretty much just wins.

Hrm... how come everyone's after Comcast...

[tlhIngan]

But not Time-Warner for doing similar things? And shouldn't things be worse when you hobble competition to promote your own services?

What Comcast is doing is bad. But if they're injecting RST packets indiscriminately (i.e., on long-lived connections, be them VPN, SSH, long downloads, etc), that's far less offensive than what TW is doing. Yet the FCC is only going after Comcast?

Fuck You, Comcast.

[EveryNickIsTaken]

No, really. Suck my fucking balls.

Re:Fuck You, Comcast.

[MooseMuffin]

I actually say that outloud every month when I get my bill. And then I pay them because there are no other options in my area.

Re:Fuck You, Comcast.

[arizwebfoot]

So if you use your balls for that endeavor, what do you do with your prick?

Re:Fuck You, Comcast.

[coffee412]

Evidently you have never dealt alot with comcast. The last thing I want them doing is touching something personal of mine. Famous bullshit comast support lie of the month: "Im sorry, I cannot do that for you right now. Our computer is down". Eat Shit Comcast!

Re:Fuck You, Comcast.

[ShaunC]

My wireless AP has been named "Comcast Sucks Donkey Balls" for the better part of a year now. I guess it's no wonder my neighbors never wave... :)

First post

[Goffee71]

First post man, woot, woot, wo**** *** Post intercepted by Comcast bandwidth preservation system! ACK*Metacheck - Checking for music, video, first post messages... DELAY*Post... 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... Service now resuming

By all means...

[ProteusQ]

Let's convert our interstate system over to a system of privately owned roads, and let middle managers decide on the speed limit and tolls as they see fit. Better yet, we'll let all of the road providers merge into two or three corporations so we can be gouged more easily. And if we have non-authorized purchases in our trunk (say, from the Pirate States of Canada), the corporate cops will have the right to confiscate our vehicle.

And then we hit the sidewalk fees....

"Sorry, all bandwidth used up"

[Hoplite3]

Comcast: Sorry, our video-on-demand has used up all of the bandwidth. You can't watch that video-over-ip site now. Have you thought about getting a digital dvr from comcast? And while you're at it, why not a digital phone? We know you've been having problems with Skype...

Re:"Sorry, all bandwidth used up"

[tepples]

Have you thought about getting a digital dvr from comcast? It depends. If I rent your DVR, can I watch viral videos from YouTube and its major competitors on my TV?

And while you're at it, why not a digital phone? Will this phone allow me to call my contacts who 1. use services that do not connect to POTS and 2. are not physically located in an area served by Comcast?

Re:"Sorry, all bandwidth used up"

[celle]

Simple fix, it's called a "class action". Or better Monopoly busting. Then "class action".

Just Another Symptom...

[morari]

Just another symptom of the internet becoming popular and any moron being able to download anything they want. I remember when finding a pirate download source took a little effort and know-how. Now anyone can find just about anything they want, and because of this they take and take without contributing whatsoever, all the while complaining that the product "wont work 4 me!!!11".

Thanks torrents!

Re:Just Another Symptom...

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations on the most puerile piece of writing in this thread!

Don't have Comcast

[Bazards]

Everyday Comcast does something to make me happy that I don't use them.

But what about the premise

[2phar]

If there isn't really a bandwidth problem though..

then this is just a fabricated excuse to encourage the idea that some types of 'usage' are most expensive to provide than others... which then ends up with an internet equivalent of long-distance phone charges. And look what a profit center that has been for the telcos, even though there is really no such a thing as long distance any more.

The Slippery Slope

[Timinithis]

I have used torrents, both for legit and gray-area use, I use the oldest "usernet" for things, and I spend my time watching Netflix on demand on my second monitor.

I noticed that as I was watching one tv series, that I could watch 1 or 2 episodes, then I would start getting "Your internet connection has slowed" and Netflix would start taking 2+ hours to buffer a 24 minute tv episode. Nothing else was affected, I could yank a 300MB Service Pack from M$, use a direct link to pull down a distro (can't use a torrent or P2P for that), and my speed tests showed I Was getting the 16MB down that I am paying for, but I could not get another tv episode to download/stream.

My first reaction was that it was Comcast, since they are throttling P2P traffic, but I found threads online where other people that were non-comcast users had the same problem and they attributed it to the "opening of the doors" on the in-demand video.

Comcast has crossed the line, and if I had another choice -- I call Verizon once a week, and now I am going to call them once a day -- I would leave them immediately. I need the bandwidth for remote desktop/VPN connections to our offices in other parts of the country; I could care less for the TV programming, I can grab the episodes time-shifted from online. Currently I don't feel guilty for that since I am paying the cable bill for TV.

I hope that the FCC is watching this, and since I am in DC, if I find out when the hearings are, I will take a day off and go down to try and voice my displeasure at the way things are being handled by Comcast.

I am paying for bandwidth, and I expect to have it. If you don't have enough to meet the demand, ADD MORE -- it is what the stores do on hot items..they get more in of what people want. Is that a hard concept? I know you can't "make" more bandwidth, but you can start cutting the ratio of customers to available bandwidth and certainyl stop over selling. What this tells me is that there is enough demand that they can move to a more reasonable ratio (1:15 ain't it) and still make money. What they are going to have happen now, is folks will leave and they will be out that revenue..they will get the bandwidth back, but what good is product that stays on the shelf? If it doesn't sell, it isn't making you money.

Comcast want's to be the net police, then the FCC should let them, and arrest every executive the minute someone on the Comcast network is charged with something illegal like child pornography -- you wanted to filter your traffic, and you failed to catch this, so you are charged as an accessory! I bet their lawyers will be all over "Net Neutrality" then. Until something affects the company/executives' money/livelihood, they will try and take as much liberty with their revenue stream as possible.

I say let them "filter", adjust bandwidth, or what ever "friendly" term they want to use;but also make them liable for any illegal activity that occurs on their network.

Re:The Slippery Slope

[mungtor]

I am paying for bandwidth, and I expect to have it. If you don't have enough to meet the demand, ADD MORE -- it is what the stores do on hot items..they get more in of what people want. Is that a hard concept? I know you can't "make" more bandwidth, but you can start cutting the ratio of customers to available bandwidth and certainyl stop over selling.

Actually, what stores do when something is in high demand and limited supply (like bandwidth) is charge more money. You are paying very little money for download speeds of "up to X". Try pricing out Comcast cable vs a dedicated 10Mb line some day. Would you be willing to pay $2000/mo for internet access? No? Then you get a lower QoS and have to deal with some other issues.

Re:The Slippery Slope

[Anonymous Coward]

I have also noticed that comcast will limit bandwidth to netflix.com watch now movie service. I can watch the first 20-30mins fine and boom. My bandwidth gets lowered and the movie says wait 20min while I buffer. But its not local problems its comcast doing the limiting. I can start a movie on anothe rcable modem and again fine for first 20mins and next rate limits kick in.

I know, reading the article is bad, BUT

[eclectic_hermit]

The bill that is being introduce by Rep. Edward J. Markey will not accomplish a lot and seems redundant at this point. Even sadder (IMHO)is the fact that in the article these two paragraphs were in consecutive order. Here they are (ephemisis mine):

.

The FCC prohibits network operators from blocking applications but opens the door to interpretation with a footnote in a policy statement that provides for an exemption for "reasonable management."

.

and

.

Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's subcommittee on telecommunications and the Internet, plans to introduce a bill today calling for an Internet policy that would prohibit network operators from unreasonably interfering with consumers' right to access and use content over broadband networks.

.

So, what exactly will this bill acomplish. And, if this bill is introduced, would it not (likely) conflict with the anti-piracy initiatives that are being proposed?

.

I have no problem at all with the ISP's blocking and/or managing traffic. However, in doing so they should no longer be granted the immunities that the (*) "common carrier status" provides.

.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Act_of_1934 (amended in 1996)

Re:I know, reading the article is bad, BUT

[Intron]

The problem is that when Markey introduced a strong net neutrality bill in 2006 it was defeated by pro-business Republicans and pro-Hollywood Democrats. This is the best he can do. The goal of this bill is to make it clear that Comcast should not be blocking competing VOIP services, private VPN use, or any of the other things that they are doing to promote their own premium offerings. The Telcos do not want to get on the bad side of government. Look what happend to Qwest when they refused to go along with warrantless wiretaps.

Violates net neutrality?

[Random BedHead Ed]

I'm not sure that traffic shaping like this violates network neutrality. It would be different if they were to throttle iTunes and favor some Comcast music service, but this is more targeted at high-bandwidth traffic that could make it hard for some subscribers (like me) to VPN into work and do some casual surfing.

Of course it might be better if they had clear bandwidth/month caps and charged a bit more for higher bandwidth usage, then used the profits from the beefed-up service plans to expand their infrastructure. But this is less bad than, say, throttling YouTube because it competes with cable programming.

Re:Violates net neutrality?

[Timinithis]

You, of course, are assuming that they would use the additional profits from the tiered plans to actually beef up the infrastructure, rather than their bank accounts.

Re:Violates net neutrality?

[Random BedHead Ed]

Actually when I said "Of course it might be better" I wasn't assuming anything. If I had to assume something, I'd assume they'd try very hard not to spend money on anything, regardless of profits. That's been the pattern so far.

Lost it

[dippitydoo]

I lost my internet and cable TV because I was "Downloading" too much. They wouldn't tell me how much. They just cut off my service. So now, I don't have internet or tv. And I'm happy with that. I spend more time with the family now. I thought I bought an "Unlimited" service. They told me the INTERNET was unlimited, but NOT THE BANDWIDTH. Not sure what that means. I'm boycotting those bastards. I tell everyone not to use them. Why should I pay 55 bucks a month if I can't do what I want on the net? The USofA is free-falling. I'm saving the money I WOULD be spending on TV and INTERNET and buying stuff to stay afloat when the economy finally dies. It's not IF, it's WHEN. Our rights are gone...

Slowing down traffic

[CopaceticOpus]

Comcast is taking over my current cable provider, which is a less than pleasing fact given all the news about them lately. Still, I don't have a problem with them slowing down certain traffic, so long as certain conditions are met:

1. They clearly disclose their policies about slowing traffic.
2. They don't discriminate by specific domains, IPs, or traffic content. They should only discriminate by broad categories, such as prioritizing all http traffic over all p2p traffic.
3. They don't interfere with packets, drop them, or modify them. They don't force connections to end as they have been accused of lately. They apply a speed limit and that is it.
4. They only limit speeds when necessary based on network traffic. If the network can handle the current traffic load, don't slow anything down.

It makes sense that perhaps my p2p download (of linux isos of course) shouldn't slow my neighbors' web surfing to a crawl. But it shouldn't be restricted if there is plenty of bandwidth available. And the Comcast Sports website definitely should have no advantage over espn.com.

Re:Slowing down traffic

[dr_d_19]

...or perhaps they should just stop selling 10Mb services to 672 people when they are all connected through a single T3 or so, which is actually what got them into this mess in the first place.

You neighbours internet connecting is coming to a crawl because they sell bandwith they don't have. To compare: you are essentially saying that it would be OK for an airline carrier to overbook 99% of the seats in every flight as long as they disclose that they "might be overbooked on certain flights". I can really say that I agree with you.

Re:Slowing down traffic

[CopaceticOpus]

To actually provide everyone the ability to download at max speed 24/7 would raise the prices from 45 bucks a month into the hundreds. That's not very realistic. They just need to be more upfront about the limitations of a shared connection.

The trouble with your airplane analogy is that airplane seats are all or nothing, not to mention that missing a flight typically has far greater consequences than a slow downloading email. I'd say a better analogy would be a restaurant that advertises fast service. They try to maintain a level of service, but when three buses full of people pull into the parking lot, there's going to be a slowdown. They could avoid this problem by purchasing a larger building and keeping two dozen extra staff on hand at all times, but then they would have to charge $75 for a hamburger to cover expenses.

Yet another reason...

[Teflon_Jeff]

And this is Why I use a DSL line. Dedicated connection, and no one trying to screw with my traffic. (at least, not yet)

Re:Yet another reason...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bull... AT&T does play with the lines, or will be soon....http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:QncFEl_qgkIJ:www.downloadsquad.com/2008/01/09/atandt-openly-says-it-may-filter-internet-content/+at%26t+filter+content&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us

Re:Yet another reason...

[cdrguru]

DSL differs from cable systems only slightly.

With DSL you have copper to a DSLAM which connects to a ATM connection. The DSLAM is shared by all users in the area, as is the ATM connection.

With cable you have copper to a node which connects to an ATM connection. The node is shared by all users in the area, as is the ATM connection.

So the big difference with DSL is what exactly?

Comcast is 20% okay

[jeffmock]

Comcast probably should be allowed to sell whatever product they think will do well in the market (provided that they adhere to whatever consent decree they signed to get the geographic monopoly). On the other hand, they shouldn't be a mysterious black box that sometimes passes packets unmolested.

If you ask me, the essence of net neutrality should be that an IP provider precisely document what they do to their traffic, and provide a mechanism for users to easily understand when traffic is blocked, altered, or re-prioritized.

Other than that, I'm basically okay with cable companies offering screwed up IP products, it's all part of the big Darwinian product stew and the free market will take care of it. The place for public policy is making sure there's no big mystery about what they do to my packets.

jeff

They have a responsibility as a monopoly to

[TXISDude]

provide acceptable levels of service for all of their customers. Yes, they are a monoploy, because Cable franchises are awarded by area and for the vast majority of customers there are no real alternatives. I live in a major city (Houston) and because of where I live, I have 1 choice for high speed internet - cable. DSL is "coming soon", as is fiber and other options, but right now - if I want high speed internet I have cable. And there the city/state has decided who my provider is going to be. It used to be Time Warner, but they swapped turfs with Comcast recently in Texas and I became a Comcast customer - not by choice, but by governmental decision. Just like the old days of the regulated telephone monopoly, the customer is not free to choose, and hence to maintain some level of accountability in a closed market - regulation is required. If it were a free market, different rules could apply, but it is not a free market, and the cable companies know that. They will try to do whatever they can to maximize profits in their closed markets, and it is up to government regulators to look out for customer interests. Unfortunately, this isn't happening. Two real choices: 1) open cable up to complete free and open competition - each consumer can choose their own provider. Unfortunately for technical reasons, this really isn't very easy, or possible to do. 2) Regulate the monopoly, with appropriate rules on service, pricing, availability. The problem here is one of who decides the "appropriate" aspect, and on that issue our government regulators have been woefully inadequate. Time for public utility boards to stand up and do their jobs.

Re:They have a responsibility as a monopoly to

[bhtooefr]

Technically, satellite counts as high speed internet, and I'm sure you can get a T1 for somewhere in the ballpark of $250/mo...

Also, there may be EvDO in your area.

It's a sad day when wireless is a better transmission medium than copper, due to the market.

Re:They have a responsibility as a monopoly to

[dennypayne]

I was affected by the "turf swap" in the opposite direction; I ended up as a Time Warner customer, and they were in my mind worse than Comcast.

I was actually pretty happy with the 8mb down that I was getting from Comcast, it was rarely down and I didn't notice much in the way of slowdowns (I also wasn't torrenting much back then).

When TW took over it was promised on flyers that nothing would change with the service. OK great. Oh guess what, my bill jumped $10 on the 2nd TW bill I got. I grumbled a bit but didn't do anything. Then on the 3rd bill it went up ANOTHER $10. No explanation, just $20 extra for the service over 2 months.

So I called TW and complained and the rep told me "Well just so you understand, we didn't raise your rate (emphasis mine). It's just that the package deal you had with Comcast expired and our package is different now." !!??! Nice script they provided for the rep to try and deflect these complaints, eh? "We're not raising your rate" but you have to pay us more because the package is different.

Lo and behold, I was mowing the lawn the next day and who should walk up but a Verizon FIOS rep going through the neighborhood. He got an easy sale that day. :-)

Denny

Re:They have a responsibility as a monopoly to

[TXISDude]

There are alternatives - EvDO, leased lines, etc. But they are not economically viable alternatives. Most are well over $100 a month or more, and their speeds are not cable speeds - kudos to Comcast - I do get 8 mb download speed. This is an economic game, and just like the person who lived way out in the country in the middle of the last century and wanted phone service - universal internet service is the same issue - if monopolies are going to be granted by the government, then they need to be economically regulated with respect to unversal service levels.

Re:They have a responsibility as a monopoly to

[bhtooefr]

Then again, generally, you can share a T1 with your neighbors without breaking the terms of the contract...

QoS is a lie.

[A beautiful mind]

I think there were studies done to show that using QoS on an ISP level is not cost effective compared to just upgrading to more capacity. On an ISP level, you just got to have the equipment necessary to handle the traffic on your network, there is no working around of that. Comcast must know this, so they have an ulterior motive in pushing QoS and differentiationg content from content. They might use this as a prelude to introduce tiered pricing. This just goes to show why net neutrality is necessary.

Traffic Lights on the Information Superhighway?

[HTH NE1]

Comcast argues that it should be able to direct traffic I like traffic lights
I like traffic lights
I like traffic lights
No matter where they've been
I like traffic lights
I like traffic lights
I like traffic lights
I like traffic lights
I like traffic lights
But only when they're green

Re:Traffic Lights on the Information Superhighway?

[Anonymous Coward]

He likes traffic lights
He likes traffic lights
(He--) That is what he said (he said)
He likes traffic lights
He likes traffic lights
He likes traffic lights...
He likes traffic lights
He likes traffic lights
But not when they are red

I like traffic lights
I like traffic lights
I like traffic lights
Although my name's not Bamber
I like traffic lights
I like traffic lights
I like traffic lights
I-- Oh, God!...

  Monty Python
  I Like Traffic Lights
  Monty Python's Contractual Obligation Album

Interesting

[whisper_jeff]

I would find it very interesting to see a major digital content provider sue Comcast for interfering with their ability to conduct business with the end consumer. If Comcast is degrading consumers' ability to enjoy digital content, much of which is surely provided legally and via commercial transaction, I would think that would be viewed as illegal. Of course, I am not a student of business nor law so I could well be wrong, but it would certainly be interesting to see some major content providers take exception to Comcast messing with their bottom line.

Not traffic shaping

[Akaihiryuu]

For the trillionth time...what Comcast SAYS they are doing is NOT what they are doing. Traffic shaping is fine, as long as it does not differentiate by source. Even if they were just throttling or "slowing down" bittorrent, it wouldn't be nearly as bad as what they are doing. They are doing man-in-the-middle attacks on bittorrent connections, and actively impersonating one of the parties in the connection. This is actually illegal.

Re:Not traffic shaping

[harrkev]

For the trillionth time...what Comcast SAYS they are doing is NOT what they are doing. Traffic shaping is fine, as long as it does not differentiate by source. Even if they were just throttling or "slowing down" bittorrent, it wouldn't be nearly as bad as what they are doing. They are doing man-in-the-middle attacks on bittorrent connections, and actively impersonating one of the parties in the connection. This is actually illegal.

For the trillionth time? Please note in the post that you replied to where I said:

If Comcast wants to throttle the bandwidth on my torrents, so be it. I can live with that. But ABORTING a torrent is just plain nasty on their part. Delay the packets, fine. Drop a few packets, fine. But to inject an abort signal, dirty trick.

Preaching to the chior, brother.

Re:Not traffic shaping

[flynn23]

I'll add to that. Because of their duopoly status, there's little or no incentive to upgrade plant beyond what it is because of the obscene profit margin that HSI is bringing to their bottom lines. Consider the history here. High speed cable internet was built out by @Home, an independent company that was only partly financed by cable cos. When Excite@Home had financial trouble (just like every internet company in 2000), the cable co's seized it's assets and essentially stole that product line for their own. Now Comcast makes $38B a year in revenue JUST from HSI products. That number dwarfs their other services revenue. You can't live high on the hog forever. Customers are demanding higher speeds and new services. If you can't compete to deliver those, then you should not have regulated protection of your monopoly status. Open up the plant and let others who know what they're doing provide services in a competitive market.

Re:Not traffic shaping

[umbrellasd]

We have stop lights and HOV (carpool) lanes for a good reason. The question isn't whether we should differentiate traffic or meter it--we must. The question is who will do it and what type of oversight will be present. Currently, we have limited legislation for this, and providers like Comcast can do it, so they do it.

What's absent is legislation to hold Comcast to ethical standards.

Re:Not traffic shaping

[BitterOak]

They are doing man-in-the-middle attacks on bittorrent connections, and actively impersonating one of the parties in the connection. This is actually illegal. I hear this a lot. Can you provide a reference to a statute or some case law?

Re:Not traffic shaping

[Anonymous Coward]

We have stop lights and HOV (carpool) lanes for a good reason. And cops don't stop your car, peer under the hood, then place restrictions on your driver's license and force you to stay on the shoulder idling indefinitely based on what they see. Also for a good reason.

Comcast is not just "directing traffic". They are intercepting packets mid-transit, opening them up and reading them, and then withholding them from their network indefinitely based on whether they appear to be "legit".

Sue.

[leftie]

Google "class action comcast." There's 260,000 hits. Everyone and their brother is filing class action suits against comcast. Bound to be one you can add your name to.

Statement invalid.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Comcast argues that it should be able to direct traffic so networks don't get clogged;"

The users pay for bandwith, and they state that by using this bandwidth they're clogging the networks? What are the users paying for, then?

They should stop overselling their capacity...

[Lonewolf666]

...and otherwise refrain from censoring the internet activities of their users. Acceptable ways to achieve this:

2) Change the terms of service so they clearly state a guaranteed minimum throughput. Do not sell more connections than you can provide with the minimum throughput.

2) Change the terms of service to some model with limited volume, charge those who exceed it per gigabyte. This does not absolutely prevent network congestion, but cost considerations will make most high volume users back off. In areas where people are not deterred (rich filesharers?) use the extra income to upgrade the network.

Comcast brand band-aids

[Karl Cocknozzle]

Comcast is making the mistake that many companies managers make: Not scaling up infrastructure. My company is recovering from this sort of shortsightedness right now... We added 35% more employees but didn't grown bandwidth on the WAN even one iota... Now everything is slow and voice-calls are starting to drop (despite fairly aggressive compression and QoS) and they're looking at band-aids like the Riverbed Steelhead, which does TCP optimization and "accelerates" your WAN... Because its cheaper to buy a dozen of those appliances today and appear to be "solving the problem" than to ask their superiors, up front, for tens (possibly hundreds) of thousands more dollars per year in recurring bandwidth charges. This way they can appear to be exploring the more "economical" solution and if they end up having to do the build-out anyway, so what? They'll just make sure the build-outs go on their employee goals/perf review and rake in lucrative, monstrous bonuses for completing them.

Re:Comcast brand band-aids

[hal9000(jr)]

The WAN optimization you describe does work for certain kinds of file transfers like pushing docs, spread, preso's, files, etc around a network. If you have peered appliances, you can see a significant reduction in WAN bandwisth utilization within a few weeks.

It's just compression with a big, honking dictionary built from the bits that have been sent before. Random data, network traffic that is encrypted before hitting the WAN optimizer, and real-time media can't be optimized in the same way (as much as you want your boss to talk faster, you can't make it happen. lol).

The result is that more WAN bandwidth is made available to other traffic. That means real-time media isn't competing for space.

Re:Comcast brand band-aids

[Karl Cocknozzle]

The WAN optimization you describe does work for certain kinds of file transfers like pushing docs, spread, preso's, files, etc around a network. If you have peered appliances, you can see a significant reduction in WAN bandwith utilization within a few weeks.

It's just compression with a big, honking dictionary built from the bits that have been sent before. Random data, network traffic that is encrypted before hitting the WAN optimizer, and real-time media can't be optimized in the same way (as much as you want your boss to talk faster, you can't make it happen. lol).

The result is that more WAN bandwidth is made available to other traffic. That means real-time media isn't competing for space.

Yeah, its definitely effective for some traffic, most notably HTTP and File Sharing--convenient ... Jury is still out on whether it will be enough to save us the cost of buying more bandwidth... By my estimate most of our sites are well over the number of users/machines that I would consider their "max," so we may still end up buying more bandwidth, but possibly less than we would have without the Steelheads. As far as HTTP is concerned, we saw some pretty drastic improvements in the first few days, so I'm eager to see how the next couple weeks play out with other protocols...

I mean, they're band-aids, yes, to be sure. However, I would point out that in the IT World we are too quick to condemn band-aids... For small wounds, they're just what the doctor ordered.

Re:Comcast brand band-aids

[Karl Cocknozzle]

As an addendum, I spoke to the vendor today about a different subject and they mentioned the next version will accelerate HTTPS too! I pee with joy.

Dear Comcast

[Anonymous Coward]

I have dial-up at $7/month and high-speed access at work if ever a large file needs downloading. How do you plan to win my business? It only takes a little "know how" to make dial-up more than sufficiently speed for email and web browsing. I don't care much for watching videos and audio will actually download fast enough. Since you block anything that a premium subscriber might have interest in, what is the appeal of your service?

IT BITS VS BYTES MY MAN

[Anonymous Coward]

Next Headline....

[zappepcs]

Comcast defends role in Internet based copyright theft: legal team claiming common carrier status not revoked by packet based filtering.

Film at eleven (if we get rebroadcast rights)

Sane traffic shaping for cable

[Animats]

Yes, they have to do some traffic shaping, but it can be done better.

If the problem is bandwidth hogging by individual residential users, the answer is probably some variation on fair queuing. There's class-based fair queueing in most Cisco edge routers; it just has to be used correctly.

I'd argue that, for residential connections, you need only two basic classes of service - high bandwidth, high latency, and low-bandwidth, low latency. VoIP and real-time game transactions should be low-bandwidth, low-latency; everything else should be high-bandwidth, high latency.

For the low-bandwidth, low-latency streams, the per-IP-address queue should have priority, but the maximum number of buffers on the queue should be deliberately limited. If you try to send too much too fast with low latency, you lose packets. The high-bandwidth, high-latency streams have lower priority but can buffer up to available router memory. That works for streaming video, music piracy, and similar non-time-critical loads.

Note that putting a high precedence on a high-bandwidth stream increases the packet loss rate, so there's no win in doing that. VoIP should request high precedence, but video should not. Clever game developers should put a high precedence on the traffic that needs it, while letting the background traffic that loads assets run at a lower precedence.

High-bandwidth, low-latency is really needed only for real-time interactive video, and that's a premium service, because it really does need more capacity behind it.

Multiple consumers on the same cable segment contend for upstream bandwidth at the router that connects the cable segment to the larger network. That's where fair queuing has to be applied. Similarly, it has to be applied at the router that connects the backbone to the downlink to the cable segment. Fair queuing is only useful at choke points where the number of streams is limited, but the cable modem industry has exactly that situation.

The cable industry problem, I suspect, is that many of the routers out on the pole are still too dumb to do this. This is a killer for P2P traffic, which saturates upstream bandwidth. Upstream bandwidth has to be properly queued at the router on the pole; it can't be managed from the head end of the cable system. The Comcast "fake RST" interference with connections was an attempt to deal with the problem from the head end, which is the wrong answer.

If the players in cable and DSL would agree on policy in this area, or the FCC mandated a standard, cable performance would degrade gracefully under heavy load. Without idiocy like faking connection resets.

A standard on residential IP precedence handling would be a big help. If application developers could rely on the rules, VoIP traffic would work better. Games could get better latency; only some game traffic, the actual user action traffic, needs high precedence. The background loading of game assets should be running at lower priority. When there's a penalty for requesting too much bandwidth at high precedence, it gets used properly.

From a technical perspective, that's how to do "network neutrality".

Re:Sane traffic shaping for cable

[Statecraftsman]

Nice post. That should be required reading in internet class. So the question arises, how much does a pole router upgrade cost for Comcast on a per subscriber basis?

Re:Sane traffic shaping for cable

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no router on the pole. The cable modems communicate directly with the head end. The functionality would need to be in the cable modem.

Re:Sane traffic shaping for cable

[Animats]

There is no router on the pole.

This depends on the cable system. Some systems backhaul each cable segment to the headend and use a centralized "cable modem termination system", a rack of routers in one place. Some install routers in apartment buildings and street-side pedestals. True pole-mounted routers are used in some applications. As the hardware becomes smaller and more rugged, more smarts are moving to the node on the pole, because this reduces backhaul bandwidth requirements. Of course, it's harder to maintain and upgrade out there. There's a tradeoff between fibre/wire cost and outside plant cost.

Re:Sane traffic shaping for cable

[Mezoth]

While everything you said is absolutely correct for an IP, packet based environment, I would suggest that you read up on DOCSIS (and more generally TDM based transport protocols).

  You cannot do "per packet" queuing in DOCSIS, because you are using a time divided protocol. The only way to prioritize bandwidth to an application in an shared TDM environment is to guarantee "slices" of the time to that particular modem that has an active flow for that application. Those slices are reserved for that node regardless of if they use it or not, so everybody else using that particular cable segment suffer.

  It is not the upstream router segment where bandwidth contention generally occurs on a cable network. It is on the actual cable segments themselves, which are also the most expensive and hardest part of the network to upgrade. Even protocol upgrades (docsis 1.0 -> 1.1) are huge investments in money and equipment, because you have to upgrade every end user to a new cable modem if their current one does not support the new protocol.

  Also, last monkey wrench to throw at you:

  If you trust what a specific application is sending to give it higher priority, what is to say that another application will not use that precedence value even when it is not that type of service? It is trivial for me to mark all bittorrent traffic leaving my home router as precedence type EF!

Re:Sane traffic shaping for cable

[Animats]

I know a little about DOCSIS. DOCSIS 1.0 treats all IP traffic from a given host as one "flow", with one QoS. In DOCSIS 1.0, carrier-provided telephony might have a better QOS, but all IP traffic was treated as one flow.

DOCSIS 1.1 and 2.0 were supposed to have more QOS capability, and Microsoft put support in Windows 2000 and later that was supposed to use it, but I don't think it was really deployed at a level such that IPv4 precedence fields did anything useful.

DOCSIS 3.0 is supposed to know more about IPv6 QOS, according to this 750-page specification. Data is assigned to preconfigured "flows" using a matching system with rules for IP precedence, IP address, TCP/UDP source/destination port, etc. (See section C2, page 552.) Downstream queuing seems to be pure preemptive (see section 7.6, page 240), based on "priority". The spec seems to be kind of vague about when to queue and when to drop packets, but it kind of looks like you could configure a stock DOCSIS 3.0 system to do fair queueing. In U.S. Patent #7161945, Broadcom suggests such an implementation, using "leaky bucket" fair queueing.

The way to prevent abuse of the priority system is to traffic-limit the high priority traffic. DOCSIS 3.0 has support for that sort of thing; you could configure a flow with a low maximum latency and and a low downstream peak traffic rate, plus a "best effort" flow. If you send too much stuff on the low-latency flow, some of it is dropped. That sets up the right incentives to play nice.

The classification of DOCSIS flows into priority groups is entirely at the whim of the cable operator, and there's no way, apparently, for the customer to even read it. Which would be useful. "Net neutrality" is defined by those settings.

Re:Sane traffic shaping for cable

[Mezoth]

And yes, when DOCSIS 3.0 gets here, it will be amazing. However, I would not expect widespread deployments before Q3, if not longer - the cable modems for DOCSIS 3.0 are still really new and the rest of the support is still immature. That is not to mention that you need to upgrade every modem on a segment before you can use many of those new QOS features, otherwise you cause the older modems to go offline. :\

  Logistics is the enemy in a highly distributed environment, and slows everything down.

  Still, even if you do put "limits" on your traffic for high priority, people will find those exact limits and ride them. This destroys the actual use of the high priority as eventually (when enough bit-torrent clients implement it with it on by default) all traffic is high priority and nothing else is.

  What I am saying is: if there is a way for people to abuse the system, they will. It is the tragedy of the commons, over and over again.

Too bad I don't have a choice.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an even better fix. Allow multiple ISP's in more markets. I know, if I had a choice, I'd drop Comcast in a heartbeat. Sadly, I have no choice and this allows them to get away with bad behavior. True market dynamics, and consumer choice, would quickly put an end to such nonsense.

VPN Encryption

[TheNinjaroach]

VPN tunnels are encrypted, Comcast or anyone else cannot selectively filter content out of an encrypted stream.

I think you are blaming Comcast for a problem they did not (and could not) have created.

Re:VPN Encryption

[whoever57]

VPN tunnels are encrypted, Comcast or anyone else cannot selectively filter content out of an encrypted stream.

I think you are blaming Comcast for a problem they did not (and could not) have created.

Perhaps I was not clear. The AH (protocol 51) and ESP (protocol 50) traffic made it through. In this way, the tunnel was established. The isakmp (udp/500) packets (which carry the actual data) did not make it through. In other words, the encrypted stream was blocked.

Re:VPN Encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

VPN tunnels are encrypted, Comcast or anyone else cannot selectively filter content out of an encrypted stream.

I think you are blaming Comcast for a problem they did not (and could not) have created. You are trying to tell us they did not and could not block UDP port 500?
And that noone could possibly do that?

*laugh*

no slashdot for you! come back one year!

Re:VPN Encryption

[Briden]

i doubt they created it on purpose. but it's very possible the connection was blocked for other reasons. heh, just my 0.02 from up here in canada, here i am on shaw cable. fast sweet torrents, no blocking, vpn works, $24.95 a month i am paying. they are about to bring in DCMA style stuff here though, then i run. when is the class action lawsuit against comcast going to start? maybe a mob with flaming torches is more appropriate in this case.

Re:VPN Encryption

[TheNinjaroach]

You are trying to tell us they did not and could not block UDP port 500? And that noone could possibly do that? Where did I say anything about port blocking?

I know slashdot doesn't often RTFA and on occasion doesn't even read the summary, but you've hit a new low by not even reading the post you reply to!

Re:VPN Encryption

[whoever57]

You are trying to tell us they did not and could not block UDP port 500? And that noone could possibly do that?

Where did I say anything about port blocking?

What were you saying with your comment that Comcast "could not have created" the problem I described?

You assert that Comcast would be unable to block a VPN in such a way that the connection was established but the traffic was denied. As the other poster pointed out, this can easily be achieved with IPSEC VPNs (such as FreeS/WAN, OpenS/WAN) by blocking udp/500, while allowing the AH and ESP traffic (protocols -- not ports -- 50 and 51).

Please explain in detail why Comcast "could not have created" the problem.

Re:VPN Encryption

[TheNinjaroach]

I caught your other post where the problem was described a bit more clearly and now I understand what was going on. The way I understood your original post was different from what you experienced, as in "FTP tunneled through VPN but HTTP would not."

I still assert that Comcast is unable to selectively filter content from an encrypted stream without destroying it, but in your case they were preventing one from ever being established. Just a misunderstanding that you already cleared up in another post, but I could have done without the troll's reply.

Re:VPN Encryption

[whoever57]

I still assert that Comcast is unable to selectively filter content from an encrypted stream without destroying it, but in your case they were preventing one from ever being established.

Yes, I see the misunderstanding now. Clearly, Comcast cannot block different types of traffic within the tunnel, but your second comment suggests that you still don't get what I am trying to say:

The way that Comcast chose to block the VPN traffic resulted in both ends of the tunnel successfully negotiating a tunnel -- but when one tried to actually pass data down the tunnel, it did not arrive. The tunnel was "established", but non-functional.

Re:VPN Encryption

[Nefarious Wheel]

i doubt they created it on purpose

Some Slashdotter (or Slashsson) said "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice". Don't remember who, but ./salute .

Re:If comcast wants to do this

[Inner_Child]

Yes, there *are* legitimate uses for p2p. I find it funny that you're willfully ignoring the fact that a much larger majority consists of material that does infringe on copyrights. The fact that there are legitimate uses doesn't mean there are no illegitimate uses.

PS - fixed the title, that was bothering me to no end.

If the network is being an ass

[tepples]

but a contributing factor [in my dropping Comcast service] was that I had been asking for Boomerang on cable for years, but it wasn't on. Their response? "Yes, that is one of our most requested channels." I said, "If it's so requested, why don't you have it?" Because the company that offers that channel is fucking with them. For example, the Big Ten Conference and Fox won't let Comcast put the Big Ten Network in a sports package. Nobody gets it unless everyone pays, including "expanded basic" (analog) subscribers.

Re:If comcast wants to do this

[Moofie]

There are lots of "illegitemate uses" for just about anything you can think of. What's your point?

Doing illegitimate things may indeed be illegal, immoral, and fattening. Using tools that may be used for illegitimate things are nobody's business but the tool user's.

Censorship!

[shentino]

True traffic shaping shouldn't care about what IP ports are being used or the content of the traffic itself.

The fact that both encryption and port switching actually work is itself evidence of content-based preferential treatment.

I call bullshit!

Not just P2P

[Kickersny.com]

I'm on Comcast and over the last two days or so, all of my SSH sessions have been terminated after a few minutes, regardless of the server I'm connected to or how long I've been idle. I can SSH into the same servers from work and leave an idle session open all day, no problems.

Very annoying, to say the least, when a long-running job gets aborted because Comcast just wants to "slow (not block!)" my encrypted traffic.

Verizon, hurry up and roll out FIOS the last few miles to me; I'm waiting to give you boxes of money as soon as it gets here.

What do I pay for?

[adameros]

I'm of the mindset that when I buy bandwidth I should be able to use that bandwidth as I see fit.

The problem is that Comcast has over sold their bandwidth by too large of a margin, and rather than owning up to their own failure to plan for the future they are restricting how people use the bandwidth they bought.

The most disturbing thing, to me, is when Comcast forged packets to terminate file transfers. It's one thing to use QoS to massage the network flow, it is another thing all together to pretend to be a client or server and send bogus packets in someone else's name.

QoS is mildly bad. Forging packets is just plain wrong.

Comcast's doesn't get it...

[FataL187]

I have Comcast internet and I use bittorrent quite a bit. Recently I have been downloading a 1.8GB linux distro that I have been wanting to play around with. Shortly after starting the download I started getting corrupt packets causing my client to restart that section. Now if you look at my download stats I have downloaded 5.6GB of data for a 1.6GB file. This is now happening with every torrent I try to download. When I take my laptop to work (not comcast) I do not recieve these errors, when I take it to my friends (comcast) the errors instantly start up again. So it's not my laptop, it's not my router, it has to be comcast. That being said it seems they are screwing themselves if they are trying to save bandwith. Downloading 3.1 times the ammount I normally would have doesn't seem like much of a savings to me. Maybe they are trying to frustrate me enough to quit using BT. That is not going to happen. -FataL

Re:If comcast wants to do this

[Shakrai]

I find it funny that you're willfully ignoring the fact that a much larger majority consists of material that does infringe on copyrights.

I'm not "willfully ignoring" it, I just don't see how it changes anything. If Comcast can't handle a minority of their users running bittorrent then how are they going to handle internet video becoming mainstream?

One of the reasons that innovation on the internet has been so successful is that we've had a level playing field. The ISPs kept up with demand by investing in infrastructure upgrades and new technologies. What happens to that level playing field when the ISPs see no reason to invest in upgrades and instead opt to restrict the activity of their users? Is the internet still going to look like it does today in 20 years?

Mod Parent Funny

[MrMacman2u]

It's the first time I made half the office jump by very literally "laughing out loud"... Back to looking busy before I get fired!

Re:If comcast wants to do this

[Thansal]

The argument here is this:

ISPs are currently not liable for what illegal things their customers do with the service provided.
One of the reasonings behind this is that they should not be mining traffic enough to know wth is going on. (IANAL, this is a bad explanation)
Comcast says that they SHOULD be mining traffic to shape it and see wth is going on.
Comcast should then be held liable for any illegal activities that they 'know' about because of this monitoring.

get it now?

Personally, I don't know if I agree or disagree. Mostly because I don't really understand how much monitoring they are doing, and just what the legal grounds are that protect the ISPs currently.

On the note of them shaping traffic? I have not much of problem with Comcast shaping traffic as they see fit, well, at least now that they admit it. They are a company and can do what ever the hell they want so long as it is with in the law, and does not defraud/mislead customers/potential customers. I will never use their service, but I still think they are allowed to do what they want. Only problem is that many people have no choice, and there it IS a problem.

Port 25 egress

[nsayer]

Here's the issue. I'm all for net neutrality, myself. But a legitimate argument against it is that it would eliminate the ability of ISPs to block port 25 egress, which would lead to a multiplication of the number of spam bots out there. So do we say that ISPs must be net-neutral except for TCP port 25? It's the camel's nose.

Re:Port 25 egress

[crabpeople]

Banning ports and making you buy business class services should definitely be outlawed. As for spam zombies, it should be a trivial matter to simply disconnect them and forward all traffic to a static page until they are repaired. Smaller ISPs regularly do this.

Re:Port 25 egress

[shentino]

I agree with this as well.

Port 25 deals with email, an official internet standard with a buttload of RFC's that define how it should operate. In fact, one of an ISP's jobs is to stop protocol violations, which is exactly what spam would be, since email is a "well defined standard".

Bittorrent, however, is a custom protocol that an ISP has no business meddling in.

Re:Port 25 egress

[grcumb]

Here's the issue. I'm all for net neutrality, myself. But a legitimate argument against it is that it would eliminate the ability of ISPs to block port 25 egress, which would lead to a multiplication of the number of spam bots out there. So do we say that ISPs must be net-neutral except for TCP port 25? It's the camel's nose.

Net Neutrality has exactly nothing to do with port blocking.

Net Neutrality does not stop a carrier from blocking certain traffic. It only says that traffic rules cannot be applied with prejudice i.e. You can't single out individual sites/customers for 'special treatment'.

Everybody does QoS and transparent proxying, and the Net is better for it.

We need to be clear about the problem, and we're not being. So let's try to keep this topic simple:

The Net Neutrality Debate [sic] is about letting carriers decide which sites and services get preferential service, based either on corporate allegiance or on the service's ability to pay whatever the extortion rate du jour is.

The Traffic Light Defense

[CodeBuster]

From TFA: "Comcast compared its practices to a traffic-ramp control light that regulates the entry of additional vehicles onto a freeway during rush hour. One would not claim that the car is 'blocked' or 'prevented from entering the freeway; rather it is briefly delayed,' the company's statement said."

The problem with their implementation does not match their argument. They are discriminating based upon the type of the traffic (i.e. a bittorrent packet has to wait at the stop light while an http packet on port 80 goes right through). To use their analogy this would be like insisting that all SUVs and trucks must stop at the light and be delayed before entering the freeway while all four door sedans can go right through. Whenever they cease to treat all traffic equally, or at least all traffic from a particular user equally, then they should lose common carrier protections. The ability to filter implies responsibility for content. They can say whatever they want in the media, but it seems that anyone with cause to bring an action against Comcast involving the traffic that flows over their network, the MAFIAA perhaps, would have a strong case that Comcast abandoned their common carrier immunities when they began using packet shaping to route traffic preferentially. What does the MAFIAA get these days for vicarious copyright infringement and how much does Comcast have in the bank? Comcast would be wise to give up the small benefits of their filtering scheme (i.e. more customers on less bandwidth) against the threat of losing common carrier status and opening themselves up to massive liability lawsuits.

DPI is an invasion of privacy

[thoughtlover]

I have a huge problem with Comcast using DPI to sniff what apps I'm using for whatever reason. Whether I am seeding a 0-day movie or a Linux distro, they have no right to peer into the application layer of my packets to determine I'm using some bittorrent client. That is almost like using their train/bus, but before I can go anywhere, they ask to look in my pockets. Unless there's a reason to suspect I'm up to some illegal activity, slowing traffic should not not an option for them. And even if I was up to something bad (copyright infringement seems to be the worst offense in the media's eyes) then I'm sure the FBI would be knocking on my door.

Bandwidth metering isn't something they should be doing since they can control in/outbound speeds via the cable modem. If the modem has a cap, I should be able to use any and all of what I pay for (which already costs too much for what I get.) Now, if they are claiming that a few people in a neighborhood are slowing the experience of the other neighbors, then they clearly oversold the available bandwidth in that area. And, if that's true, maybe someone hacked their modem for faster speed? --I'd figure they'd be found faster and cut off, though. I do agree with harrkev that injecting forged RST packets is wrong, but I also think that should be illegal. If I inhibited traffic of any kind (internet, mail, vehicles) I would probably be sent to jail.

The truth is that we have almost no consumer choice for ISPs --this country has been called the world's 'Broadband Backwater' for a reason. Capitalism isn't working with internet access compared to other market forces that eventually give consumers more choice than they can fathom. For too long ISPs have relied on the current infrastructure to deliver the profits they needed to recoup the installation costs. It would seem they have been taking too many profits and not investing in their future by upgrading to a newer technology. I'm not talking about just Comcast. One notable company that seemingly wants to get ahead of the competition is Verizon. I hear more and more about FIOS reaching more communities.

As for now, Colorado basically sucks for broadband access (FYI, I am on the extremely crowded Front Range, not in the mountains.)

Re:DPI is an invasion of privacy

[harrkev]

As for now, Colorado basically sucks for broadband access (FYI, I am on the extremely crowded Front Range, not in the mountains.)

Yup. Colorado Springs only has two choices:
1) Comcast. Decent speeds for the money, crappy company.
2) Qwest. Slow service, and crappy hardware that throws noise on my POTS line.

No great choices here.

Re:DPI is an invasion of privacy

[lobosrul]

QWEST & Comcast are my only two choices as well. And I have to say: thank god for QWEST! Sometimes I hate them. I feel $40/month for a 1.5mbps line is a bit steep, but compared to Comcast they're practically saints. My roommate and I typically download around 100GB a month. I really don't feel like that is all that much, as this is 2008 and everyone was promised 100mbs pipes years ago. Comcast would've terminated our contract months ago I'm sure. Its obvious Comcast wants to reserve their bandwidth for their own VOD services. I will never ever be a Comcast Cable subscriber again. Paying $100/month for a few HD channels and then they went and 5C encrypted everything so nothing worked with my HPTC, guess I'm getting OT.

Re:DPI is an invasion of privacy

[bryce1012]

Just FYI, they can't (legally speaking) encrypt everything. FCC regulations require that local, over-the-air channels (including the hi-def stuff) be carried in the clear. If your HTPC doesn't support QAM, that's one thing... but if you had a capable digital tuner, and still couldn't get local channels, a little note to the Feds might not be a bad idea.

Re:DPI is an invasion of privacy

[lobosrul]

Sorry, I meant everything but the locals. I have an ATSC OTA tuner for locals anyways. I wasn't using QAM but rather a firewire connection from the cable box.

Temporarily?

[Cyric]

I can see a network provider temporarily blocking traffic of specific kinds while the network is upgraded (or situation resolved) to handle the loads.

If they simply don't want tremendous amounts of traffic ... they can raise the prices of their service to individuals. The people that don't like the higher rates can go to a competitor. A spot of regulation would have to go into effect to ensure they aren't simply raising prices where there are no competitors ... but this isn't rocket science.

Either dump customers that aren't profitable, or make them profitable. Don't jerk them around.

Re:Temporarily?

[cdrguru]

Nice idea, but unfortunately cable and DSL systems do not work that way. You can't "upgrade" one user's connection - at any price. Nor is it really feasible to upgrade a network node. Today, new nodes are connected via fiber but older ones are using other technology.

Sure, as part of a system-wide upgrade plan you can get higher speeds to the nodes and then - eventually - higher speeds to the individual customers. But without that system-wide upgrade what you have is what you have. If one user is hogging the bandwidth there are few controls that can limit that one user at the network node.

You might say that a better all-around solution would be rate-limiting individual users at the network node to insure an even distribution of service. That would certainly be the effective way to do it and would prevent all of this nonsense about what is and is not possible. I do not believe the processing power exists at the network nodes to do this, or someone would be doing it. Today, the rate-limiting occurs as a blanket cap at the node - all users get to share X bandwidth, however unfairly that is happening.

Of course, what high-use users want is their own dedicated bandwidth to do with as they please. That isn't how the networks are constructed today and isn't likely to be the way networks are constructed in the future. Even with fiber to the home you are going to have nodes and concentrators where the bandwidth is shared on a common connection. Sure, there will be more aggregate bandwidth but there will still be the possibility of some users getting less than their fair share because of how the node is operating. Should the nodes be upgraded to ensure fair distribution of bandwidth? I suspect not - there are a lot of them and that kind of upgrade wouldn't be cheap.

Re:If comcast wants to do this

[arth1]

On the note of them shaping traffic? I have not much of problem with Comcast shaping traffic as they see fit, well, at least now that they admit it. They are a company and can do what ever the hell they want so long as it is with in the law, and does not defraud/mislead customers/potential customers. I will never use their service, but I still think they are allowed to do what they want. Only problem is that many people have no choice, and there it IS a problem.

Indeed -- in much of the area where I live, you live too far away from a telco repeater, and have the choice between Comcast and Dialup.
What I have a real problem with is that the customers don't get the information on how the traffic is "shaped". What exactly causes this to kick in? Without telling the customer, I think they are engaging in a deceptive practice, and should be fined, hard.

Bottom Line - They MUST disclose!

[warmbowski]

Exactly. Comcast is doing this without disclosing it. It is selling a product and not disclosing it's limitations to the buyer, while still claiming it is 'unlimited'. As a Comcast customer (no other viable choice), I feel that they can throttle all they want, but MUST tell me exactly what is limited (BT, FTP?, Netflix?, iTunes?) so that I can make an informed decision if I want to keep this service. Right now I can only speculate what is limited.

Who knows, maybe they are selectively limiting bandwidth to particular sites, thus making them look bad. Maybe it's other on demand movie sites, which would be a REALLY shifty competitive practice, as they cant seem to offer a decent on demand movie product themselves.

Bottom line, they must disclose the particulars of their filtering/shaping to their customers.

Just charge per GB and call it a day

[davidwr]

What's the difference between someone saturating the link 24/7 using WGET vs. someone using FTP? As far as Comcast and the FCC are concerned, zero.

Ditto someone hosting a wildly popular web site while at the same time WGET-screenscraping vs. running BitTorrent.

The solution:
Charge per GB and call it a day.
Just to be clear: Charge reasonable and actual cost per GB + small profit and call it a day.

This way if I want to torrent for an hour at a time 10 times a month there's no problem, but if I want to WGET-screeenscrape the entire web 24/7 then I get to pay for my excess usage, at reasonable and actual rates + a small profit for the ISP.

Re:Just charge per GB and call it a day

[thrillseeker]

Charge per GB and call it a day.

Err, no - charge per minimum guaranteed GB/s. This forces the ISPs to actually provide what they advertise as selling.

Do I need to show you my contract,

[Anonymous Coward]

where it clearly shows "T3"? Moron...

This is not about bandwidth management

[Anonymous Coward]

All of you, stop being stupid, right now! This has very little to do with bandwidth management. What comcast is most interested in is making sure that you get your content from them, through cable subscriptions, premium channels, and most importantly pay-per-view. By making the user experience for other media outlets annoyingly slow, they hope to discourage use. It is a nearly perfect plan and will work on most "average" users.

Oops

[arth1]

Urgle. I need to start using a spell checker on the tags too. (I'd use the preview, but it takes forever -- usually far longer than to post.) In this case, good people, please mentally insert my missing Q in the "\BLOCKUOTE" tag before "I agree".

In other news

[Monoman]

You local power company said they are going to decide how much power will be allocated to each device in your house.

Re:If comcast wants to do this

[thrillseeker]

If Comcast can't handle a minority of their users running bittorrent then how are they going to handle internet video becoming mainstream?

They will handle it just fine - once they have sufficiently induced legislators to write laws which creates a situation in which the ISP has the advantage in being the video (or any other high-profit data product) provider.

Traffic Shaping

[kellyb9]

Traffic shaping is legitmate and probably necessary over their networks, but how do they determine which traffic should be throttled? Just because it's torrent traffic doesn't mean its not something necessary.

isn't that what routers are supposed to do?

[DragonTHC]

speaking solely as devil's advocate here, why would such technologies be built into most routers if it's not supposed to be used?

why stateful inspection if you shouldn't use it?

here's MY point, traffic management should never be a "business decision"
It should be left entirely unto an experienced admin who knows how and why to manage traffic.

Comcast is "managing" traffic it shouldn't be managing. I pay my comcast bill every month for the service. I use my cable modem for downloading stuff. Comcast tries to block and slow my traffic. That isn't right. I pay my bill.

Comcast gambled on not everyone using their bandwidth and lost sorely.

I don't believe it's right to let them "manage" traffic because we're using the bandwidth that they are contracted for.

They offered a certain speed. They offered unlimited usage.

Why do they just get to change their mind? Where's the risk in that for them?

Censorship is NEVER the answer!

[Doug52392]

I haven't been able to download Linux distros from BitTorrent on my Comcast line. I've been getting tired of this disgraceful excuse for censorship ever since this shit began a year ago. This censorship will NEVER work because to a computer, a download, no matter if it's a legal download (eg open-source software or nonprofit films and movies), or illegal to download, that DOES NOT MATTER! The filter DOES NOT SEE what they're downloading. All that matters if it's using BitTorrent. Anything using BitTorrent is blocked. In the past few weeks, the telecom companies are now protected from infringing our privacy, and are allowed to CENSOR the Internet? This has to stop now. If no one stops this now, what will stop the telecom companies from taking this to the next level: turning the Internet into what TV, radio, and newspapers have become, a censored, regulated, and controlled medium of information control. The second Verizon becomes available in my area, I'm canceling the "Internet" Comcast provides and getting Verizon!

Department of Improper Metaphors

[Anonymous Coward]

But what if you offered two guys a ride, and one gave the other something to drink, which just happened to be a slow-acting poison? Just because they know that something is P2P doesn't mean they can tell if it's bad or not.

Personally I don't see anything wrong with Comcast limiting traffic in this way. The government has no business saying what services you must offer your customers. The only problem I see is if they claim that they're selling "unlimited" or "full" internet -- that would clearly be fraud.

Re:Department of Improper Metaphors

[Curunir_wolf]

Personally I don't see anything wrong with Comcast limiting traffic in this way. The government has no business saying what services you must offer your customers. The only problem I see is if they claim that they're selling "unlimited" or "full" internet -- that would clearly be fraud.

No, the problem is that they are limiting traffic based on content, rather than something more deterministic like sustained bandwidth demand, protocol, etc. ISPs must be content agnostic - anything else is unacceptable. I note in their statement that they are purposefully trying to confuse the issue, by talking about bandwidth and traffic shaping on one hand, then turning around and admitting that the type of traffic they target "includes music and video".

Worse, they talk about traffic between their users - so they even admit to using prejudicial shaping based on the source and destination, which is even more egregious.

There are many ways to manage network traffic that do not discriminate against users and content, but Comcast is not interested in QOS or other acceptable control measures. And they are intentionally blurring the line between these things. From the article:

Comcast compared its practices to a traffic-ramp control light that regulates the entry of additional vehicles onto a freeway during rush hour. "One would not claim that the car is 'blocked' or 'prevented from entering the freeway; rather it is briefly delayed," the company's statement said.

Of course this doesn't really wash, because while the control light stops everyone. But while they are there the Comcast cops have each one roll down their window and present their papers, and they check around in the car with their flashlight. And if they don't like what they see, some cars are sent to a siding and made to wait further while the rest of the traffic slides through. They have absolutely no right to do that and remain immune from liability. If they want to be the content cops, then they should be liable for the accident that occurred 50 miles up the road because they let somebody through with a bottle of vodka under the seat.

Re:Department of Improper Metaphors

[talukk]

This is exactly what QoS is though. You cannot prioritize one type of traffic without unfairly delaying another kind. It's a basic basic principle of providing quality of service. How would you expect a service provider's core is prioritized? Would you expect that RTP traffic would have the same priority as an FTP download? The fact of the matter is that no matter what provider you are with, your traffic is being queued and prioritized in the manner the provider sees fit. How do you think it is possible for providers to provide SLAs to their business customers without buying dedicated equipment for each customer? All the customers use the same equipment, and they are all queued. Fact of life. And why should they be liable for illegal activity just because they inspect to see if traffic is bittorrent? As everyone keeps saying, it's just an application which has many legal uses, right?

Re:Department of Improper Metaphors

[Curunir_wolf]

Sorry, but in this case Comcast's actions aren't defensible as QoS. They aren't queuing the bittorrent traffic giving it a lower priority - they are killing the connections entirely, and they are forging packets to do it. Not ok.

You and your neighbors go in on a T1

[tepples]

I have 1 choice for high speed internet - cable. DSL is "coming soon", as is fiber and other options, but right now - if I want high speed internet I have cable. Is there a reason why you can't get a T1 and share it wirelessly with any neighbor who will chip in, as Sfing_ter suggested?

Exactly

[alandd]

The parent expresses exactly the single biggest reason that ISP should not be allowed to do this sort of thing. The conflict of interest is huge!

Thanks for expressing it so well.

Re:If comcast wants to do this

[tepples]

The fact that there are legitimate uses doesn't mean there are no illegitimate uses. The fact that there are legitimate uses of a video cassette recorder doesn't mean there are no illegitimate uses. Yet Sony v. Universal is case law throughout the United States, where Comcast is headquartered.

It is not 'new' Comcast just got caught and said

[Nichole_knc]

"We do it" So having a break from coding to give this a quick read.. I am sure that their example is one and saw a few others.. You can bet your bytes that they throttle line speeds.. I am fiber, had once upon a few two years ago reached T1.5-2 speeds.. One day it went crash... When it came back up.. IT was at the lowest DSL speeds.. Two calls, two different Technicians, both did the same test.. Both told me the same thing.. That the new company had throttled it back on purpose.. A complaint got me back up to mid dsl/half of what I had.. I think if you pay attention to your surfing watch your load speeds.. Think in context to a competitor site of your ISP provider.. Then make a compare to their own sites.. This is if you are using their DNS... Does not apply to OpenDNS... Ping theses site with a load and watch the difference in packet drops.. I am nothing saying that a company 'would' degrade routing by DNS... But since I got off 'their' DNS and on OpenDNS those issues went bye - bye... Then again "closed" corporates think they have the rights to do as they please and in most cases do.. Just food for the brain..

Get a qlueue . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

. . . it's queues, not cues.

Re:Get a qlueue . . .

[russ1337]

. . it's queues, not cues.

As an Engineer, it is my right to have bad English skills.

tubes clogged

[Nar Matteru]

Stop clogging the damn tubes and they wouldn't need to resort such measures.

Easy solution

[C10H14N2]

Upgrading their network isn't an option?

Sure it is, which they will do by tiering service, just like every other industry on the planet.

If they can't handle either of the above then how the hell are they going to handle HD video streams?

They already handle HD video streams. Press the "On Demand" button on your Comcast remote, then click "HD Movies."

Even with fiber, there is a limit to how much you can shove down a single pipe. When you're getting your TV, Telephone and Internet on one wire, something's gotta give. You've cut a compromising deal with them in order to share the wire at a dramatically reduced price. My office has a dozen or so T1s--roughly 15Mb/s available. It costs about $150k per year. Your Comcast connection offers up to 4Mb/s for, what, fifty bucks per month? So, you're expecting the equivalent of our 15 T1's that cost $18k/month for $187. Suffice it to say, you just are not going to receive the same 24/7 guaranteed uptime and unrestricted service that comes with paying the other $17,813 per month for service. Since you're on /., it comes off as a little juvenile to not understand that.

Re:If comcast wants to do this

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of the problem with their slowing of network traffic is that I hosted a legal torrent for a short time and now my bandwidth seems to be perma-capped. Even other computers on my personal LAN suffer because they capped it based on the MAC of the modem. I know it is easy to get around but I can't afford to buy another modem at the moment.

It seems to me

[log0n]

that if Comcast is filtering bandwidth heavy traffic (which they aren't, Comcast is resetting packets dropping the connection entirely) they really don't have a leg to stand on to move to tiered pricing to generate more revenue.

Slow my downloads AND charge me more? Corporate greed is just staggering.. anything for the almighty coin.

Hello Fios (which thankfully just became available)!

Re:If comcast wants to do this

[jweller]

Never thought I'd defend Comcast, but here goes....

Even if Comcast knows I'm sharing mp3s, how on earth can they know if it's illegal or not. It could just as easily be a home recording of my garage band playing an original piece of music as it could be Britney Spears. Again are they my boring vacation photos or kiddie porn. I still don't see how they can be held responsible for the content

Re:If Comcast wants to do this

[geekoid]

a title like that is a great way to get people to read it.

PS - fixed the title, that was bothering me to no end.

Share an OC3

[Anonymous Coward]

100x the bandwidth, 12x the cost.

Oh, that makes your argument worthless.

Forget I said anything. You can only get T1 lines....

Re:If comcast wants to do this

[Xtravar]

What I have a real problem with is that the customers don't get the information on how the traffic is "shaped". What exactly causes this to kick in? Without telling the customer, I think they are engaging in a deceptive practice, and should be fined, hard. Excuse me if I don't hold my breath. Regardless of what point(s) are argued in court, I have a feeling that the ruling will not be in the consumers' favor.

Comcast has a conflict of interest

[Cajun Hell]

There's an ad that's been running lately. Comcast says they're willing to sell internet access, phone service, and digital TV for $33 apiece, per month. I am pretty good at math, so I quickly figured out that they're really selling a service for $99 per month, and the $33/month figure borders on fraudulent advertising (there is no service that they're actually willing to sell me for $33/month). It doesn't sound a like a good deal when I look at it that way: $99/month is way too expensive.

But let's say someone just gets their IP service. The conflict of interest is that if someone has that, then they automatically have access to services equivalent to Comcast's other services (phone and TV). A personal computer's OS can mux/demux packets to the relevant applications just fine. But if lots of people actually do that, then Comcast runs into two problems:

1. Their business model fails, because few are willing to pay the extra $66/month (phone+TV) for something superfluous. Their own IP service essentially competes with the other parts of their business.
2. It's massively less efficient in the case of TV. When you and your neighbor receive the same TV show in the "conventional" way, the video is just transmitted once over Comcast's wires. When you and your neighbor receive a show by http or bittorrent, the video is transmitted twice over Comcast's wires. It doesn't scale.

The second problem is very fixable. We need a multicast protocol for receiving huge video files, it needs to get popular so that most people will use it, and people need to get back into the habit of time-shifting like they did 8-9 years ago when stuff like Tivo was popular. "On demand" kills scalability. Oh wait -- "on demand" happens to be one of Comcast's products. That's both inefficient, and also a reason for Comcast to oppose technological development in TV delivery.

Comcast's desire to inhibit customers using their IP service for video, is a direct result of all this.

I think it may be appropriate for government to acknowledge this conflict of interest, and split the company. (Especially since Comcast's wire monopoly is something that is created by government, and continued through local government franchises. It doesn't make sense to bitch about socialism or ask for laissez faire in this case, because the the government is already heavily involved.) Let one company be a government-sanctioned (because of the wires) network provider. Let another company be a file server that multicasts TV shows to subscribers.

Re:If comcast wants to do this

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

They are a company and can do what ever the hell they want so long as it is with in the law, and does not defraud/mislead customers/potential customers. In a free market that would be a valid position to take. But comcast depends on state-granted monopolies in many cases they have franchise agreements with the towns that prevent any other CATV systems from being installed in the town. But even when they have not been able to exclude other CATV operators, the state still grants them right-of-way over private property to run their lines.

By accepting those state-granted monopoly privileges, they've opened the door to the state regulating their operation. In my opinion, it is in the state's best interest to impose some minimum requirements on comcast (and all the other similarly monopoly-based ISPs) that address such discriminatory network traffic handling practices.

Is this a joke?

[Sir_Eptishous]

"whether there is enough competition among network providers"

Let's see, I can choose from my local cable company, or my local phone company (with the ability to pay a little extra and have one of the few remaining independent ISP's as my ISP).

No, there is not enough competition.
DUH?!?

Constant downloading = avoid filter?

[Golgafrinchan]

CNET reports that Comcast's filing indicates that they 'only manage uploads when the customer is not simultaneously downloading (i.e., when the customer's computer is most likely unattended) ("unidirectional sessions" or "unidirectional uploads")'.

To me, this implies that as long as you're downloading something at some nominal speed, Comcast won't filter. If true, this is great info. All one needs to do is find a site somewhere that will let you download constantly at a very slow speed, and then your uploads should be unimpeded.

Has anyone verified this?

Port filtering is intermitant ....

[tinkerghost]

Several of the telcos add & drop port filtering depending on the current virus situation. A lot of companies shut down port 80 incomming when Code Red was infecting every Windows install w/ IIS running. Some of them are blocking outgoing port 25 other than to the corporate servers.

RCN offered both residential & commercial cable modem service. The price difference was $30-50 vs $300. What did you get for that difference? - pushed to the head of the repair and call center queues.

Any active younger folks...

[blueZ3]

When I was in the Army, I weighed significantly less than I do right now (180~ then, 220 now) and on field exercises we would sometimes eat three MREs a day for a good number of days straight. Each MRE has 2000 calories (or thereabouts)--so 6,000 calories a day--and we still carried pougue-bait and were hungry most of the time. No I eat ~1800 calories a day and I'm 20 pounds overweight for my 6'2" height.

There's no way physical fit and active folks are going to be out-eaten by (us) oldsters.

Why limit free trade?

[@madeus]

You don't have to buy a contended or reduced service, those who want the Quality of Service say a bank or ISP might buy you can. Of course it's not going to be anything like as cheap as the contended services typically sold to consumers or small businesses, because it's not possible to offer that same level of service for 10-20 USD a month.

So called "net neutrality" crusaders evidently want 1:1 contention, guaranteed high QoS with no packet loss or rate limiting, even on external networks, beyond the borders of their providers and to not have to pay any more than they are now (or, if possible, less). They want the moon on the stick and the idea of a fair price for a fair service has gone out the window (even though they are plenty of good providers to choose from, many people - as is the case with other products - will choose go with the cheapest and then wonder why their service is below average).

"Net neutrality" advocates seem to expect all the network capacity to handle this to magically appear from nowhere, as if the switch capacity and network management required to implement what they are demanding would all be take care of by fairies, they very notion of capacity being a limited resource on a network seems to have escaped them.

If people don't want a shitty contended service, they shouldn't buy it. Operators should not be obliged to run their network at a loss in order to provide people with a better level of service than they are reasonably entitled to. There are plenty of operators to choose from in most urban areas, and many different types of service.

The only instance where I can see that a case can reasonably be made for regulation to guarantee a minimum level of service for consumers is when dealing with incumbent telco's - or when competition in a specific region is weak and where enabling greater competitiveness is prohibitively costly or simply likely to take an extended period of time to achieve.

Re:If comcast wants to do this

[TubeSteak]

If Comcast can't handle a minority of their users running bittorrent then how are they going to handle internet video becoming mainstream? Would anyone notice if YouTube or ABC's streaming TV loaded a bit slower?

Bittorrent isn't in the vanguard solely because gobbles up huge amounts of bandwidth...
IMHO, Bittorrent is at the vanguard because it's obvious to the avg BT user that their download is being degraded.

Why not intelligently throttle the bandwidth?

[mikeinwa]

So they say it is to keep their network from getting clogged... Ok, that makes sense. Like everyone else in the industry they oversell their speeds based on the assumption that not everyone is using the maximum amount of bandwidth all at the same time. So why throttle these particular things then? Leave them wide open. If the network in that area starts to bog down, throttle them slightly to keep things flowing smoothly. Best of both worlds?

Re:If comcast wants to do this

[DigitalSkyline]

This PRIVACY INVASION. Plain and simple. It should not be allowed without a warrant under the law. It's the same as wire tapping, could possibly argued as violation of the first amendment "freedom of speech", not to mention the 4th amendment protections against illegal "search and seizure". If Intellectual Property is indeed property, then we OWN the packets we transmit (until proved otherwise). Monitoring bandwidth is one thing, but opening packets to determine their contents should *NOT* be lawful without a warrant. I suppose if you agree to them listening in on your phone calls (VOIP, etc.) in their small print, then its the consumers fault(?) But also taking in to consideration they have virtual monopolies over certain juridictions, there really needs to be legal recourse for consumers against this practice.

that too

[davidwr]

I meant, everything else being equal, charge per GB.

If I have a "1Mbps guaranteed plan" I pay less per GB than if I have a "10Mbps guaranteed" plan.

But in either case, if I use 2000GB in a month, I pay about twice as much as if I use only 1000GB and about 10 times as much as if I only use 200GB, down to some minimum monthly payment needed to recoup the costs of maintaining the account.

Re:If comcast wants to do this

[Shakrai]

Would anyone notice if YouTube or ABC's streaming TV loaded a bit slower?

Yeah, they kinda would if they were watching it in real time and exhausted the buffer.

because it's obvious to the avg BT user that their download is being degraded.

I don't really care much about the download speed on my torrents. Most of the "gray area" torrents don't get blazing speeds anyway because they usually have unfavorable seeder/leecher ratios. The only time I've ever come close to pegging my downstream with a torrent is when downloading Linux distros. They tend to be very well seeded -- usually three or four times as many seeders as leechers, unless you jump into the swarm right after it's released.

Re:If comcast wants to do this

[ThePromenader]

"In dreaded car analogy terms, widening a road doesn't necessarily reduce congestion because the number of cars on the road will increase."

You've obviously never been to Canada.

Their own analogy

[techpawn]

This action is nothing more than the system saying that it cannot, at that moment, process additional high-resource demands without becoming overwhelmed, just as a traffic ramp control light regulates the entry of additional vehicles onto a freeway during rush hour. One would not claim that the car is "blocked" or "prevented" from entering the freeway; rather, it is briefly delayed, then permitted onto the freeway in its turn while all other traffic is kept moving as expeditiously as possible, thereby ensuring order and averting chaos. -Comcast Filing

We can't escape the car analogy...

When 95% of users use Internet video

[davidwr]

If it happens before you've upgraded your system, quality will drop. The early adopters will yell and scream "gack what happened to our nice Internet video it's all crappy now."

Latecomers who aren't "in the know" will say "this Internet video thing is crap, I want no part of it."

On the other hand if you've been charging heavy users a premium, you might have enough extra cash to upgrade your system before the latecomers discover Internet Video. Then you will actually be able to deliver Internet video without anyone complaining.

just for longer

[davidwr]

Someone downloading at max-rate 24/7 for a month who gets his speed cut in half will keep downloading for ... 2 months???

"Just for longer" only works for people whose total bandwidth/month usage fits within the lower speed.

more pipes This is the Interweb we are talking about. Methinks you mean tubes :).

You don't really encourage participation when...

[thermowax]

...you do this:

Comcast Defends Role As Internet Traffic Cop
Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday February 13, @11:00AM

vs. (as of 1900 2/13)

        * 2008-02-13 05:14:36 Comcast admits traffic shaping (IT,Communications) (pending)

Summary:

        * pending (1)

Fine, as long as I get to determine the priority

[davidwr]

I have no problem with prioritizing bits, as long as the customer gets to set the priority and is given meaningful information with with to set them.

For example, you can have different pricing tiers for a given bit or set of bits:

REALTIME - highest priority for normal traffic. Streaming audio and video goes here. Other traffic can be put here if the customer wants to pay for it.
1 second deferred - all bits must arrive within 1 second of the last bit's REALTIME-estimated arrival. Web browsing and high-priority file transfers goes here. This is so web traffic can move out of the way of streams. Most people won't notice a 1-second delay on a web page load.
Half-speed deferred - all bits must arrive within 2x the time of the last bit's REALTIME-estimated arrival, or 12 seconds, whichever is longer. Most file transfers go here.
1/10th-speed deferred - all bits must arrive within 10x the time of the last bit's REALTIME-estimated arrival, or 60 seconds, whichever is longer. Overnight and other low-priority file transfers go here.

To encourage low-priority traffic, bits delivered at low priority would only be charged a fraction of the price of bits delivered as high-priority.

This scheme assumes a per-GB pricing model.

A similar pricing model would be dynamic bandwidth pricing.
Instead of paying $50/month for a 6Mbps/connection that is available 24/7, you can pay less if you throttle down to 256Kbps during peak hours or during periods of high network congestion, such as right after 9/11 or after a nearby fiber cut.

By Neruos

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't like what your ISP is doing? Move to another ISP, find a new way of doing it or stop what you're doing. Stop trying to tell ISP's what they can and can not do with something that belongs to THEM.

deregulating the last mile has downsides

[davidwr]

If you deregulate completely, you'll have cherry-picking:

New wealthy neighborhoods will get fiber laid by a handful of providers, providing real competition.

Cities that make it easy to dig up streets or string poles will get their high-value neighborhoods cherry-picked by several companies.

With no regulation, poor neighborhoods and cities that don't make it easy to string new wire will be abandoned. Existing carriers will stay on because they've already got a physical plant but there will be no new competition and little incentive to upgrade the plant.

If you require last-mile owners to share their wires at wholesale rates, you might get some competition like you did with phone companies for awhile in the '90s. However, that's regulation and you don't want regulation.

Someone in related story suggested making the last mile a government-owned monopoly. While this will guarantee ISP-level competition, it will be similar to the competition among dialup ISPs: You will still be beholden to your local (government) monopoly to maintain and upgrade the last mile. Governments go real slow and you can forget about getting that new fiber line to your house any time soon.

Re:deregulating the last mile has downsides

[Moonpie Madness]

yeah, that's the real trick, isn't it?

But the rest of the world is doing a terrific job getting this stuff to work precesily because you (no offense intended) are wrong.

There won't be cherry picking because even poorest neighborhoods are extremely profitable for cable companies. Deregulating would mean businesses would track consumer desire. Why invest in the infrastructure to support the wealthy only? Poor folks like internet, tv, phone, etc. Hell, the probably like it more!

My in-laws are extremely wealthy, and they use far fewer entertainment services than my family, who are pretty freaking poor.

think about it. Why are monopolies needed here and not there? Perhaps you are right with regards to rural lands, but even there I think you are wrong, and urban competition lead to better 3g style services that can help in a wider area.

I mind unadvertised slowdowns

[davidwr]

I don't mind them slowing down huge downloads or whatever to allow faster web browsing. I do. If they are hurting me to help my neighbor, I expect something in return, like a price break.

Now, what would be good is having the technology so I could limit my own downloading to 80% of my bandwidth cap to reserve the rest for my browsing.

brownouts should be allowed

[davidwr]

Here's what should be allowed:

Full neighborhood brownout: If neighborhood is saturated, temporarily reduce everyone's bandwidth by the same percentage until the crisis is over.

Neighborhood customer bandwidth cap: If neighborhood is saturated, temporarily lower the bandwidth of bigger-pipe customers until it is the size of the next-smallest-pipe customer, repeat as necessary.

Throttle hogs: If neighborhood is saturated, temporarily throttle users who have used a lot of traffic in the last [insert period of time here].

What should not be allowed except for limited circumstances:
Treating bits differently. A bit is a bit is a bit.

Limited purposes include:
Health and safety, such as medical equipment monitors, burglar alarms, etc.
Infrastructure packets, such as ICMP.
Bits that the customer has paid extra to protect from throttling, such as guaranteed-bandwidth-contract customers.
Bits that the customer has explicitly marked as lower priority, probably in exchange for a lower price or other concession: Throttle these first.
Bits that the customer has explicitly marked as high priority, probably in exchange for a higher price or other concession: Throttle these last.

What should automatically happen if a neighborhood has many such bandwidth crunches: Automatically move the neighborhood up on the priority list for improved infrastructure.

for most people is irrelevant

[davidwr]

A crush of bittorrent traffic isn't, for most people, "the web." That torrent is the X-Ray I need to plan this afternoon's operation on a cancer patient, you insensitive clod!

*joke*

Re:If comcast wants to do this

[kailoran]

You must be talking public trackers... I find some private trackers are great bandwidth testing tools. A not-so-fresh but recently popular torrent with a couple hundred seed (many of them sitting 24/7 on many-megabits-of-upload shells) will saturate pretty much any consumer dsl, and is better than a website-based test since there are many sources from many strange places all over the Net.

That explains Slashdot's slow load times lately

[davidwr]

I was wondering about that.

theres no reason

[Anonymous Coward]

for home users to run linux, every computer sold comes preinstalled with windows or os x so theres no real reason to run linux. If we eliminated "linux iso's" as a legitimate download, people wouldn't be able to hide behind this "legitimate use" just so they can steal music and movies. Really, bit torrent is just for piracy and if we eliminated this fake "legitimate use" and simply required linux to be sold for a few thousand dollars in shrink wrapped boxes, then we could settle this once and for all and return the bandwidth to the content production industries and allow them to distribute properly protected media to authorized subscribers.

Oh yeah.

[imric]

Because we all know how monopoly-busting works in the US. The Feds will just end up not only legitimizing, but requiring the practices that got them in 'trouble' in the first place.

Money talks. I'd say bullshit walks, but here in the US, the bullshitters are the ones with the money.

Off by default but free turn-ons

[davidwr]

The answer is to turn off all ports incoming and outgoing that are not used by most customers, but give customers an easy way to turn them on and off at will. You don't use IRC? IRC and identd are off. You don't run a mail server? Inbound 25 is off. You don't use outbound SMTP except to the ISP? Outbound port 25 is restricted to the walled off garden. And so on. Outbound ports 80, 443, and a few others would be left on for everyone.

If your computer TRIED to make an outbound connection that got blocked, you would be given an email with instructions on how to unblock it and, for special cases like ftp and IRC, how to unblock related incoming ports.

Couple this with making customers sign an "I know what I'm doing, you can suspend my service if anything bad happens" waiver will discourage people from turning on ports like outbound 25 unless they really need them.

Price Fixing / Market Manipulation.....

[IHC Navistar]

This is Comcasts standard argument to defend/obfuscate its brainless prioritizing practices.

If Comcast would stop advertising for more customers than its netwrk could handle, and spend that mone on upgrading its infrastructure like it should be, they wouldn't have a need for traffic shaping. Here is a simple analogy:

You are the mayor of a town. You (effectively the CEO), and your city council (effectively the Board Of Directors), want to increase revenue to your town, so you advertise all over the state, asking people to visit your businesses, golf courses, schools, niversities, buy houses. and start business there. However, you only have two roads the lead in and out of your town. Instead of spending money upgrading your roads and by-ways, you spend money on more advertising. Plus, you complain about the massive traffic problems that continue to mount. Your idea to improve traffic is to punish drivers who drive in/through your town if they don't have a reason that you feel is valid, instead of upgrading roads. Meanwhile, you continue to advertise for more people.

Comcast is essentially manipulating/fixing the market by artificailly creating a shortage of of bandwidth, therefore allowing them to "generate" revenue for and from advertising instead of providing resonable service by not upgrading their infrastructure. Comcast can then claim that their is a shortage of bandwidth and throttle traffic, giving them an "excuse" to spend the money on more profitable advertising. Advertising generates more customers, thus, increased revenue. Upgrading infrastructure does not (or very few customers) compared to advertising.

Last time I checked, price fixing and market manipulation are both illegal.

Comcast Used Policy to Track Pirates

[neo34350]

Comcast sent me an email regarding copyrighted content transferred via bittorrent. It looks like they're doing more than managing traffic- they are flat out wiretapping it.

From the Email:

Dear Comcast High-Speed Internet Subscriber:

Comcast has received a notification by a copyright owner, or its authorized agent, reporting an alleged infringement of one or more copyrighted works made on or over Comcast's High-Speed Internet service (the 'Service'). The copyright owner has identified the Internet Protocol ('IP') address associated with your Service account at the time as the source of the infringing works. The works identified by the copyright owner in its notification are listed below. Comcast reminds you that use of the Service (or any part of the Service) in any manner that constitutes an infringement of any copyrighted work is a violation of Comcast's Acceptable Use Policy and may result in the suspension or termination of your Service account.

If you have any questions regarding this notice, you may direct them to Comcast in writing by sending a letter or e-mail to:

              Comcast Legal Response Center
              Comcast Cable Communications, LLC
              650 Centerton Road
              Moorestown, NJ 08057 U.S.A.
              Phone: (856) 317-7272
              Fax: (856) 317-7319
              E-mail: dmca@comcast.net

For more information regarding Comcast's copyright infringement policy, procedures, and contact information, please read our Acceptable Use Policy by clicking on the Terms of Service link at http://www.comcast.net./

Sincerely,
Comcast Legal Response Center

Copyright work(s) identified in the notification of claimed infringement:

Title: Heroes (TV)

Infringement Source: BitTorrent
Initial Infringement Timestamp: 22 Jan 2008 23:48:05 GMT
Recent Infringement Timestamp: 22 Jan 2008 23:48:05 GMT
Infringing Filename: heroes.208.hdtv-lol.[VTV].avi
Infringing File size: 366694400
Infringers IP Address:
Infringers DNS Name:
Infringing URL: http://85.17.42.17:7001/announce

Re:Comcast Used Policy to Track Pirates

[Mezoth]

Note this line: Comcast has received a notification by a copyright owner, or its authorized agent, reporting an alleged infringement of one or more copyrighted works made on or over Comcast's High-Speed Internet service (the 'Service'). Comcast did not wiretap you, or generate this themselves. They got a legal notice from somebody else that this happened and passed it on to you. If you will note that they did not even give your physical address and information back to the company that filed the complaint for infringement. This is also a notification that a subpoena may be filed against Comcast to retrieve this information as part of the standard discovery process in a copyright infringement case. That is at the discretion of the company that filed the initial complaint, however.

We have to call them on this one

[WizADSL]

I remember when Comcast introduced their first "bandwidth" limit where they started sending letters to customers that were downloading too much in one month (never mind that they will not admit there is a limit). Those that defended this action would say "Comcast isn't limiting how FAST you can download, just how much". It seems that with this newer (I know it's been going on for a while) throttling they are now also limiting how FAST I can download something too. If I have and 8 meg connection with no advertised usage cap and I can't download over a certain amount without getting a nasty letter and I can't actually download at 8 megs if they don't approve of the content then what the hell are they selling and what am I paying for?

Under wire tapping

[Tetsujin]

Isn't this a form of unauthorized wiretapping? No, you're confused...

"Wiretapping" is when you use access to the physical layer to eavesdrop on telephone service, which is of course private.

When you're providing a data network, the data you'd be "tapping into" is actually sent to your computers. It's given to you. So of course it's a whole different deal. If it was something private, they shouldn't have sent it to your internet gateway! You don't use a dirty word like "wiretapping" to describe that...

Shared bandwidth... They NEED the rate limits

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that cable is still reliant on sharing access for customers (think glorified hub infrastructure), they absolutely need to limit traffic patterns.

DSL, on the other hand... doesn't seem to have such issues :-) (think switched infrastructure)

I wouldn't call them ...

[ScrewMaster]

an "Internet Cop" exactly. I'd say Comcast has become more of an Internet Roadblock than anything else.

Sorry, but I think this is reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

On any other day I would be ashamed to write this, but I think this is reasonable. Big downloads clog my own 'net connection. I use wget --limit-rate=xx so that downloads don't make my own browsing feel like I'm on a 2400 baud modem. I do NOT think Comca$t should be allowed to hide or lie about doing this, but I would prefer if the ISP's would somewhat limit traffic on downloads, .exe, .zip, etc., to keep normal html and txt flowing.

Of course there has to be a limit when/where they must increase network bandwidth.

World of Warcraft

[Satanboy]

Since WoW uses torrents to update subscribers, are wow users being affected by this slow down?

I would assume they would have to be as Comcast is stating they are slowing the packets, not blocking specific locations. If this is the case, maybe all the WoW subscribers should just swap services. I wonder what kind of impact that would cause.

Re:If comcast wants to do this

[Anonymous Coward]

On the note of them shaping traffic? I have not much of problem with Comcast shaping traffic as they see fit, well, at least now that they admit it. They are a company and can do what ever the hell they want so long as it is with in the law, and does not defraud/mislead customers/potential customers. I will never use their service, but I still think they are allowed to do what they want. Only problem is that many people have no choice, and there it IS a problem.

Comcast is a typical sleazebag corporation, anything for a buck. Remember that they routinely sell "Unlimited" service accounts, and then drop users who actually use it. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/27/0040220

Re:If comcast wants to do this

[budgenator]

I would not have a problem with real traffic shaping, but that's not what they are doing. If they were really just shaping traffic then there would be "prime-times" when the traffic is adjusted down so www and pop travel easier, then at might things would open up so the cron and scheduled tasks could download updates and running BitTorrent full-bore would be over-looked. Instead if you open a BitTorrent client your throttled, period, the whole IP is throttled. If you run encrypted BitTorrent they send resets to any connection open too long, that means if your playing an online game your going to get random freezes and your IM program is going to get kicked off because they are sending out RST packets shotgun style.

p2p

[ezwip]

I use comcast and if I so much as open software such as bit torrent my internet browsing grinds to a complete halt. It may take 10 to 15 minutes for a jpeg to load. I kid you not. Close the program and you are back to normal.

Hate to be the Horde

[Anonymous Coward]

I just laugh at all those suckers with Comcast who say it's Blizzard's fault they can't download the patch (which is distributed over bittorrent) on Patch Tuesdays...

The real issue isn't traffic shaping

[seeks2know]

The real issue with Comcast is not traffic shaping.

ISPs need to be able to manage traffic during peak load times so that high priority packets get through quickly while low priority packets wait a little longer.

The issue with Comcast is that they are intercepting the packets, masquerading as the destination server and terminating streams. This is clearly improper behavior.

Here is the core issue:

In normal circumstances, if customers experienced this type of behavior from their ISP, they would simply take their business elsewhere. For example, in the days when dial-up access was in vogue, if your ISP did this, you would drop them in a heartbeat.

The problem is that cable TV operators are granted regulated monopolies within specific geographic areas. While that concept works OK for cable TV, it does not work well when these companies play ISP. Comcast customers are bitching because they can't easily switch to another ISP.

The real solution we need is to deregulate cable TV, just like we did for telephones. This will force broadband ISPs to *SERVE* their customers or die. And then, this type of behavior would cease immediately.

We wouldn't need to talk about "net neutrality", We would not waste our time trying to find the right set of words by which to regulate ISPs.

Those companies whose actions harmed their customers would either: (1) go out of business; or (2) wake up and quickly change their ways.

That is the power of a free market. Things get much better when the government just gets out of the way.

Re:If comcast wants to do this

[hummassa]

They can't have their cake and eat it, too.
Scenario A:
    * Comcast does not look at what I'm doing, so if I'm doing something wrong they did not see it.
Scenario B:
    * Comcast looks at what I'm doing, so if I'm doing something wrong they are _assumed_ to know what I did.

Bypass the screening

[Anonymous Coward]

Just use a VPN like SurfBouncer (www.surfbouncer.com) to encrypt all the traffic and blind them.

http://www.surfbouncer.com/