FCC Chief Says Comcast Violated Internet Rules

Several readers sent in word that the FCC chairman, Kevin Martin, is calling for sanctions and enforcement actions against Comcast for resetting BitTorrent traffic. "Mr. Martin will circulate an order recommending enforcement action against the company on Friday among his fellow commissioners, who will vote on the measure at an open meeting on Aug. 1... Martin, a Republican, will likely get support from the two Democrats on the commission, who are both proponents of the network neutrality concept. Those three votes would be enough for a majority on the five-member commission."

Comments

BT Encryption

[rukkyg]

Since so many people enabled BT encryption, this whole idea of theirs has really backfired. Now, even if they were to shape some traffic to try to keep BT traffic in the network, so many people will now keep this encryption on that it won't work as well as it would have if they would have, in the first place, worked with the technology instead of against.

Re:BT Encryption

[Craig Ringer]

Such technology works even with encrypted BitTorrent. It doesn't need to know what's *in* the data streams, only that a given IP endpoint is communicating in patterns that match BitTorrent traffic. If such traffic is detected, spoofed RST packets can be sent to cause the host to treat the connection as half-open and respond with its own RST,ACK to close it completely.

Perhaps the particular implementation ComCast uses is easily tricked by encrypted payloads. Don't worry - even if that's so, it won't last.

Now, IP-level security like IPSec would do the trick, because you could identify fake RST packets by their lack of, or invalid, signatures. There is, however, no standard way to negotiate IPSec with a remote peer, despite the best efforts of the FreeS/WAN project.

Thus, in a world where the routers along the way are fundamentally trusted to do their job and route packets, you're not going to have much luck protecting yourself against this sort of attack by your provider.

Re:BT Encryption

[ArcherB]

Thus, in a world where the routers along the way are fundamentally trusted to do their job and route packets, you're not going to have much luck protecting yourself against this sort of attack by your provider.

That's why this is one of the few... VERY FEW cases where government is needed to step in and say, "you can't do that."

Re:BT Encryption

[computational super]

I don't know... as much as I agree with the actual decision, it sends a chill down my spine to hear the FCC start defining the "internet rules".

Re:BT Encryption

[tietack]

In this case, the FCC is saying that Comcast should not define the "Internet Rules" A case where they keep Comcast from regulating how their users communicate on the Internet.

Re:BT Encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

I gotta agree that the FCC is actually doing something it should do here. In this case Comcast was filtering there users and lying right to them about doing so. The users caught on and made a stink to the officials and they are doing as they have been asked.

Now about the telco's...

Re:BT Encryption

[MikeBabcock]

As someone who still runs opportunistic encryption, I wish it would have worked out. It would be nice to have secure P2P connections for all sorts of traffic, whether its E-mail, chat, video conference or file transfers.

Personally, I always thought an online registry system like dyndns would be an excellent way to distribute keys. Update your keying data to match your current IP address using a pre-negotiated certificate with a known entity or registrar. Its very similar to their registration of names to IP addresses.

It wouldn't exactly be military grade security, but it would be a lot better than what we have now.

Re:BT Encryption

[Jonah Hex]

I could not agree more, if they end up the defacto arbitrator over the internet, here in the US at least, I don't trust them not to fuck it up as badly as they have everything else in their purview. Well unless you can afford to pay them their lobbying dollars, then you get what your company wants.

Jonah HEX

Re:BT Encryption

[brother.sand]

How about if you set your iptables firewall to block the Comcast reset packet? From: http://www.zeropaid.com/news/9608/GUIDE%3A+Using+Linux+to+Beat+Comcast's+BitTorrent+Throttling If you are using Ubuntu or another non-Red Hat Linux derivative, then place the following in a file and execute that file as root. #!/bin/sh #Replace 6883 with you BT port BT_PORT=6883 #Flush the filters iptables -F #Apply new filters iptables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT #Comcast BitTorrent seeding block workaround iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport $BT_PORT --tcp-flags RST RST -j DROP iptables -A INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT #BitTorrent iptables -A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport $BT_PORT -j ACCEPT iptables -A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m udp -p udp --dport $BT_PORT -j ACCEPT iptables -A INPUT -j REJECT --reject-with icmp-host-prohibited Not so hard really. There's an iptables file on that page for the RedHat distros too.

Re:BT Encryption

[brother.sand]

Man, my formatting got all screwed up. Just follow the link.

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/9608/GUIDE%3A+Using+Linux+to+Beat+Comcast's+BitTorrent+Throttling

Re:BT Encryption

[davegravy]

The FCC shouldn't have to define internet rules but does due to lack of competition. If there was as much competition for ISPs as there is for most products/services then companies that pull stuff like Comcast would simply go out of business.

Re:BT Encryption

[stewbacca]

That's why this is one of the few... VERY FEW cases where government is needed to step in and say, "you can't do that."

I was thinking the same thing. My gut instinct was let a company impose whatever rules they want and leave it up to the consumer to choose. Then I remembered a time in our history where "companies" where allowed to not sell something to somebody because they were black, or jewish (for example only).

Re:BT Encryption

[stewbacca]

companies that pull stuff like Comcast would simply go out of business.

Not true at all. Tell Joe Q. Public that you offer high-speed Internet for $25 a month less than the competitor with the small detail like "we limit your P2P activity", Mr. Public takes the cheaper offer. Comcast can afford to offer the service for cheaper, because they are throttling the bandwidth (or whatever technical cost-cutting method they introduce). If anything, I could see how this could actually lead to MORE customers (just not savvy customers). Most Americans are cheap and there are more Internet users that have never even heard of P2P than users who actually use P2P.

Re:BT Encryption

[drinkypoo]

There is, however, no standard way to negotiate IPSec with a remote peer, despite the best efforts of the FreeS/WAN project.

I think you mean that there is no standard way to negotiate IPSec with a random remote peer. I'm pretty sure ISAKMP is fairly well-defined for other uses.

Re:BT Encryption

[Vancorps]

You land on a good point about traffic patterns, all efforts thus far result in breaking BT but also break apps like my VPN client, Lotus Notes has been another commonly hit application.

I have a standard way to negotiate IPSec across links, I have a slow private link and then a fast Internet link. OSPF can handle the rest.

Re:BT Encryption

[Craig Ringer]

Er, that blocks *all* TCP packets with the RST flag set that're destined to your BitTorrent port. That'll cause some interesting problems, though probably nothing worse than your tretcherous ISP is doing to you already.

In particular, you might have to increase kernel limits on open TCP/IP connections, decrease connection timeouts, etc.

Blocking RST packets with iptables is trivial, but an ugly hack at best. It also won't stop more thorough blocking methods like corrupting BT traffic (so your machine eventually blacklists the sender), injecting fake data packets, or simply dropping traffic.

Re:BT Encryption

[frieko]

Somewhat off-topic, but regardless of why they're doing it, why is Comcast allowed to send RST packets on your behalf? Isn't that basically impersonating you? Isn't that about as bad as FUCKinjecting random swearASSwords into my ./ posts?

Re:BT Encryption

[budgenator]

All the FCC has said is using arguably illegal techniques to send forged traffic to unsuspecting users and irregardless of existing network traffic fail to meet the standard of reasonable traffic management. This isn't that much different to a slum-lord committing arson by burning down his rat and cockroach infested buildings and claiming it's a reasonable pest control technique!

Re:BT Encryption

[Craig Ringer]

Yep. I have no idea why they're being permitted to get away with it. It's *way* more than "reasonable network management". Reasonable network management would include dropping packets, using ICMP destination host/port unreachable messages to ask the remote peer to terminate the connection, and many others things that are not forged RST packets.

I don't even understand why they chose this method. ICMP destination-port-unreachable would do the job just as well, and with way less legal ambiguity.

Re:BT Encryption

[grandbastard]

Comcast inherently regulates how their users communicate on the internet. Users pay for a service and that service is provided. As long as there is an understanding of what that service entails and any limits, they can do whatever they want.

What Comcast did wrong was to change the service and not inform their customers.

Re:BT Encryption

[osu-neko]

The level of faith Americans have in corporations is utterly astounding. I don't quite get why it's okay to have huge, powerful organizations dictate policy undemocratically merely because they're doing it to make a profit. How does making a profit make the unilateral actions of powerful entities so much more trustworthy? Why is government by corporate fiat so much better than government by elected representatives?

If the FCC tells you what you can or can't do on the Internet, people are up in arms. When Comcast does it, people only grudgingly admit it might be a good idea for the FCC to tell them "don't do that". The mind boggles...

Re:BT Encryption

[Khyber]

That doesn't work totally. It seems some RST packets work directly with the modem (at least with mine) and regardless of using iptables the modem itself will stop and reset.

Re:BT Encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

Their mistake was crushing/buying out all the competition, forming a monopoly, and then implementing draconian rules - all the while thinking that they could get away with it.

Re:BT Encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. The internet rules!!

Re:BT Encryption

[I cant believe its n]

What Comcast did wrong was to change the service and not inform their customers.

No, Comcast actively engaged in sabotageing their customers communications.

Re:BT Encryption

[Abcd1234]

then you get what your company wants.

You mean deregulation, which is basically what you guys have today?

Re:BT Encryption

[synaptic]

All the FCC has said is using arguably illegal techniques to send forged traffic to unsuspecting users and irregardless of existing network traffic fail to meet the standard of reasonable traffic management.

This is precedent setting. Never before has the FCC mandated traffic management practices for private networks. We're not talking about broadcast traffic on public spectrum anymore.

This isn't that much different to a slum-lord committing arson by burning down his rat and cockroach infested buildings and claiming it's a reasonable pest control technique!

Except we're only talking about the controlled fluctuations of light. No one dies if they can't pirate the latest tv show or download the latest WoW update. That is much different than burning down a multi-tenant dwelling.

I favor network neutrality but consumer-level Internet access has no guarantees. Comcast has every right to manage their private network the way they see fit. We've all seen the examples of Compuserve, Prodigy, AOL, and the others who tried to operate a closed network. The free market will select against them, given the opportunity.

This is Comcast's network. Comcast isn't the Internet at large. They should not be sanctioned and they should fight this. Otherwise, in time, the FCC will make more mandates about the operation of their private network (and ours!).

All traffic is not created equal.

Re:BT Encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

Competitor? What competitor, out here we have government-granted monopolies. I have but one choice... Comcast. Thanks for having my best interests at heart, local government... bunch of asshats.

Re:BT Encryption

[AllIGotWasThisNick]

If the FCC tells you what you can or can't do on the Internet, people are up in arms. When Comcast does it, people only grudgingly admit it might be a good idea for the FCC to tell them "don't do that". The mind boggles...

You seem to fail to differentiate between the government which has the genuine threat of force (aka coercion), and the company which does not. Why do you think the Constitution exists?

Re:BT Encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

I favor network neutrality but consumer-level Internet access has no guarantees. Comcast has every right to manage their private network the way they see fit. We've all seen the examples of Compuserve, Prodigy, AOL, and the others who tried to operate a closed network. The free market will select against them, given the opportunity.

I agree they have every right to do as they will where they are not a government sponsored monopoly. I am not free to lay down lines, the city granted comcast right of way they did not give that to me. I can't start a competing ISP. They also used forced citizens to allow comcast to run lines accross private property, so comcast is using a public goods. Personally I think government should have NO RIGHT OF EMINENT DOMAIN. Private property should be abosolote. Comcast would thefore be required to negociate an agreement with every property owner up and down the street they wish to run lines under. Had they done this I would agree that they would have every right to operate their network however they wish. They did not do this though so their network is not theirs at all its the public's and the public has the right to insist the FCC looks out for their interests and lays down some rules.

Again I would rather the government not be a party at all. I would love to send Comcast a monthy invoice for rent on a 1/4 in X 400 feet lease on some land but since I don't get to do that I think I do get to insist the same government that foced me to allow them to use my property make them play by some rules which are favorable to me in exchange.

Re:BT Encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

No it's not, because your post was much funnier than Comcast.

Re:BT Encryption

[denobug]

So you are saying that AT&T was correct also when they made a statement several years ago against the net neutrality principle and insists on having the right to charge both big content rich providers (Youtube, Google, etc.) as well as the content receivers (poor suckers using AT&T's service watching YouTube video) a premium charge simply because the contents are "bandwidth intensive"? I realize Comcast is the one in question here but AT&T was the first to brought it up. Comcast is simply the poor suckers that got caught without enough political clout to protect itself.

When I pay the service provider for Internet service I expect them to allow me to go to the site that I wanted, and download/view the contents from that website without my ISP telling me what I can or cannot see. Furthermore I want only ME be the only person deciding on the priority between watching a streaming baseball game or my sister's googy video on her website.

Re:BT Encryption

[budgenator]

This is precedent setting. Never before has the FCC mandated traffic management practices for private networks. We're not talking about broadcast traffic on public spectrum anymore.

my first objection is that comcast isn't just managing their network, they are sending forged packets not only to my computer attached to their network but also to other computers attached to non-comcast networks. My second objection is that the justification for the FCC's authority is that the frequency spectrum is a form of interstate commerce, the telephones are also a form of interstate commerce and although I'm basically libertarian I don't see why the same arguments don't equally apply to interstate computer networks and internetworks.

Re:BT Encryption

[brother.sand]

Blocking RST packets with iptables is trivial, but an ugly hack at best. It also won't stop more thorough blocking methods like corrupting BT traffic (so your machine eventually blacklists the sender), injecting fake data packets, or simply dropping traffic.

Is that what Comcast is doing? I was under the impression that their behavior was limited to the RST packets. I mean I realize that as people neutralize one method they will move on to another, but that is how the game is played.

Re:BT Encryption

[brother.sand]

That doesn't work totally. It seems some RST packets work directly with the modem (at least with mine) and regardless of using iptables the modem itself will stop and reset.

Good to know. That's a buyer beware situation, although often the modem comes from the cable company so it's difficult to get your own modem. That's why I went with an alternate cable provider. They're not everywhere, but if you have the option, take it.

Re:BT Encryption

[mindstrm]

But they didn't have every right.. they didn't just delay or drop some packets, which would seem more or less okay.

They actively forged packets in order to make your software believe the other end had hung up.

Then they lied about it. Publicly.

Re:BT Encryption

[synaptic]

I feel like I understand your perspective and you make some valid points, but I feel like arguing:

my first objection is that comcast isn't just managing their network, they are sending forged packets not only to my computer attached to their network but also to other computers attached to non-comcast networks.

Right, because sending forged packets is the current state of countermeasures in the arms race between ISPs and applications (using protocols like BitTorrent) that will consume all available bandwidth, if allowed.

Forging packets is only a violation of network policy if it is not your network. The fact that some of these injected packets reach computers attached to non-comcast networks is a secondary effect of the initial communications that transited or targeted Comcast's network. It is reactive and they have made a policy decision that this traffic is volatile in a pinch.

Clearly, there are ways to work around this, but then there will be new countermeasures, and so on. I think what you are saying is that we had a trust relationship with Comcast and feel betrayed that they interfered with some of our communications. However, the protocols can be re-engineered or secondary protocols defined that do not make these assumptions. This is a design flaw.

My second objection is that the justification for the FCC's authority is that the frequency spectrum is a form of interstate commerce, the telephones are also a form of interstate commerce and although I'm basically libertarian I don't see why the same arguments don't equally apply to interstate computer networks and internetworks.

The commerce clause is a hot potato. At what layer does the FCC's authority stop, in your opinion?

By this definition, does the FCC also then *not* have authority over intrastate communications? Would you leave it to the states to mandate intrastate network policy? Will we all need FCC and State callsigns to facilitate enforcement of this and face possible revocation of communications privileges? Will monitoring of traffic take place to facilitate enforcement or will they work on a complaint basis?

Comcast is a behemoth and I wonder if the right hand knew what the left hand was doing. The sky isn't falling yet but I'm wary of increasing FCC jurisdiction.

Re:BT Encryption

[b4upoo]

Does the public have any clue at all of the potential financial costs of trying to spy on Usenet? We already are drowning in criminals that we have no way of dealing with even after they are caught and convicted. Nobody that is sane is for child porn but in this mixed up world there are people who look very young who are not under age churning out porn every day. Trying to resolve the source, hunt down the involved parties, and provide arrests, trials and prison sentences is a really bad idea. We don't need a few million more convicts.

Interesting...

[CauseWithoutARebel]

Martin said Comcast has "arbitrarily" blocked Internet access, regardless of the level of traffic, and failed to disclose to consumers that it was doing so.

So, what sort of precedent might this set for other attempts to block access? Numerous states have attempted to block access, by law, to what they deem to be illegal content. Would a ruling like this tie the hands of companies like Comcast so that they're in a "damned if you do damned if you don't" position, or would one ruling likely supercede the other?

Martin's order would require Comcast to stop its practice of blocking; provide details to the commission on the extent and manner in which the practice has been used; and to disclose to consumers details on future plans for managing its network going forward.

I also find this amusing. Comcast is whining about it, but they're effectively been told off and punished for not disclosing to their customers what they were doing to paid services. It really says a lot about the company that they're complaining that they have to inform their customers before they make significant service changes.

Hell if customers should be informed and able to make competent purchasing decisions... informed and self-interested customers would utterly destroy Comcast's entire business model.

Re:Interesting...

[garcia]

Would a ruling like this tie the hands of companies like Comcast so that they're in a "damned if you do damned if you don't" position, or would one ruling likely supercede the other?

After all the government has given to the telecommunication companies, like Comcast, such as permitting monopolies (which Comcast is in many of its markets), I couldn't give a flying rats fucking ass what position they're in. As far as I'm concerned, they should be fined and then regulated to reduce cost to their subscribers (note: I'm not a Comcast subscriber but I have been one in the past and they are not in my market, we have Charter which is just as bad -- if not worse) for at least 15 years.

If they don't like it, they can sell off their shares and get out of the business. Make it a lose-lose-lose situation for the bastards. I'm glad that the FCC commission wasn't swayed by the money I'm sure Comcast was trying to bribe them with.

Re:Interesting...

[Docboy-J23]

I've noticed that Comcast's approach to advertising also indicates an assumption that their customers are dim bulbs and don't know what's good for them. There are at least these two types of TV commercials:

1) You, the customer, are a dim bulb and have no idea what our "Internet service" is. Just buy it. Whatever it is, we assure you that it's fast and you have no other choice.
2) Our competitors are hapless morons.

They may boil down to a couple more similar bases, but those two stand out in my mind. Moreover, telecommunications advertising is a dirty, competitive game.

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

informed and self-interested customers would utterly destroy Comcast's entire business model.

They've got a government-enforced monopoly in most areas they serve. This monopoly is in a necessity of modern life. What could customers possibly do about that in the short term? In the long term, it's pretty clear that their business model is as doomed as AOL's was.

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Which government? The cable companies are lightly managed by the federal goverment - if you don't like having only a single cable company in your community you need to go after your state and local governments. Oh, and if you are not in a tier 1 city good look trying to attract a new overbuilder. I know its not popular on this site but economics will win out - (1) companies need to make profits and (2)you ultimately decide - you can choose to not purchase from the monopolist - while I would hate life without a broadband connection I can still get food, water, air and shelter without it...

Re:Interesting...

[corbettw]

Would a ruling like this tie the hands of companies like Comcast so that they're in a "damned if you do damned if you don't" position, or would one ruling likely supercede the other?

No, because Federal law trumps State law. If the FCC rules that companies can't do this, then states can't force them to for other purposes. Of course, that's assuming the FCC neglects to include a provision that allows for state regulated blocking of services, which I doubt very much they'll leave out.

Re:Interesting...

[Yungoe]

Hell if customers should be informed and able to make competent purchasing decisions... informed and self-interested customers would utterly destroy Comcast's entire business model.

One of the traditional problems that has stopped self-interested customers from destroying Comcast's Business model has been the fact that they are the only high-speed service available. That is changing. The moment that Verizon offered Fios to my house, we switched. So far, I have yet to hear anyone say, "We are staying with Comcast." Further, I think that the blocking issue we are discussing here is only a symptom of the broader problem, that being deplorable customer service.

Customers need not be up to speed on this particular issue. All they have to do is call the customer service department.

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmmm,

Would this make "Firewalls and Proxy Servers" illegal?

Well I guess they really aren't of any use anyway.....

Re:Interesting...

[Fred_A]

Comcast is whining about it, but they're effectively been told off and punished for not disclosing to their customers what they were doing to paid services. It really says a lot about the company that they're complaining that they have to inform their customers before they make significant service changes.
Hell if customers should be informed and able to make competent purchasing decisions... informed and self-interested customers would utterly destroy Comcast's entire business model.

Isn't standard practice of "informing" customers to just add something in the sales contract to the effect of :

"This contract might be changed at any time by publishing addendums and corrections to http://www.exampleisp.invalid/salestermsN where N is a 128 bit integer that is randomised every half second"

Re:Interesting...

[yuna49]

Numerous states have attempted to block access, by law, to what they deem to be illegal content.

Are you talking about American states? Can you point me to a story that describes this practice? In general state governments have no jurisdiction over telecommunications traffic that crosses state lines; then it falls into the FCC's jurisdiction.

A state could pass a law that prohibits you from having child pornography on your computer, but I don't think it could pass a law prohibiting that traffic from entering the state.

I'm not saying you're wrong; I'd just like to see some examples.

Re:Interesting...

[Hatta]

Moreover, telecommunications advertising is a dirty, competitive game.

Just telecommunications?

Re:Interesting...

[danaris]

1) You, the customer, are a dim bulb and have no idea what our "Internet service" is. Just buy it. Whatever it is, we assure you that it's fast and you have no other choice. 2) Our competitors are hapless morons.

So far as I can tell, Time-Warner and Verizon (the duopoly around here) have pretty much exactly the same philosophy when it comes to their internet service ads...

The ads for satellite TV I've seen also follow the same pattern—particularly the latter.

Dan Aris

Re:Interesting...

[penguin_dance]

Yes, I think the real *crime* here is that Comcast is charging customers the same, but is not treating them the same.

Which leads to the next question: Is there a class action suit pending? Because this reminds me of the NetFlix lawsuit. It was found that Netflix (which charged a flat monthly rate for movie rentals) was purposely slowing the deliver of movies to customers who had a fast turnaround. Chavez, who filed the lawsuit claimed you really couldn't rent unlimited movies as NetFlix advertisment claims and that they purposely throttled customers back to 12 movies a month so light users got preference. NetFlix's TOS even stated this, but they lost the lawsuit anyway and the Chavez who filed got $2,000, his lawyers got $2.5 million. Customers got a 1 month free upgrade. (woo hoo)

Re:Interesting...

[CauseWithoutARebel]

A state could pass a law that prohibits you from having child pornography on your computer, but I don't think it could pass a law prohibiting that traffic from entering the state.

Pennsylvania is the most recent state I recall hearing about, but I know there have been others as well. So far, the attempts to initiate these blocks have been shut down in court battles, but if one should eventually stick, it could present some interesting challenges.

As a hypothetical, the mere existence of 4chan is not illegal, nor is it inherently illegal to access it, but it has been blocked before by ISPs - notably in Europe, but it's a potential here as well - on the grounds that the content on 4chan is not acceptable to the communities those ISPs serve.

A community or state may pass a law to block 4chan, deeming it inappropriate by the standards of the community, and this FCC ruling may wind up in contention with that blocking as the ISPs would need to notify their customers and ensure that complying with the community law wouldn't clash with the FCC's regulatory ruling.

I can see the ruling going different ways. Existing demands to block content have already been ruled on, and the ruling has been that ISPs cannot be held responsible for not delivering illicit content into a community when a member of that community is actively requesting it, but legislators are a tricky bunch and continue to try and press laws that circumvent the court's findings. This FCC ruling would seem to throw yet another wrench in the gears.

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I think there is pretty compelling evidence for #2. In the form of We are complete idiots, you haven't gone to the competition, therefore the competition must also be complete idiots.

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Rules 1 and 2, faggot.

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Epic flail!

Besides, 1 & 2 came from those habbo raiders. Nobody cares what they think.

Re:Interesting...

[Belial6]

Netflix did not throttle. What they did was send new movies to light users, and sent older movies to heavy users. This isn't throttling in any way. The only way that a heavy user would get fewer movies in a month is if they only had brand new releases in their queue. I have been a Netflix user since April of 2003, and during that time I have consistently gone through 20 - 30 movies a month. I would have definitely been a throttling candidate with if they had a policy of doing so. Just about the only time that I did not get one day mailing time each way was if there was a holiday, or I ordered something that was in very low supply like 'Kentucky Fried Movie'. The 'throttling' simply never existed. It is an urban myth. The proof always pointed to was the Netflix TOS. The TOS never said that they throttled. They always said that they would send a heavy user the older title if they had to choose between a heavy or a light user for a new release.

Re:Interesting...

[Khyber]

Actually, I like Comcast's advertising.

"Download movies and music faster than before!"

Oh, except when the RIAA bitches at you for giving us the capability to do so.

Someone sue Comcast for False or Misleading Advertising. They don't mention that the way they choose to download those movies or music might be illegal.

Re:Interesting...

[bughunter]

2) Our competitors are hapless morons.

From my perspective as a consumer, this holds true universally across all internet and cable/satellite TV providers.

Re:Interesting...

[nobodymk2]

Hell if customers should be informed and able to make competent purchasing decisions... informed and self-interested customers would utterly destroy Comcast's entire business model.

I think not. Townships rarely allow more than one cable / internet provider. Politicians prevent this from happening (they receive "incentives" from the cable provider currently in control) simply by overstating actual "TV Tax" increases that would happen with a second cable company coming into play...which are usually no more than 10 cents. Where I live there is only one candidate that runs, and let's remember that majority rules, and the majority of people that are registered voters here neither live here or work here (summer homes) and have no reason to have a fast internet or any cable (majority of the population is retired senior citizens). Perhaps it's not so much the "people's fault" that they choose comcast when it's a choice between AOL dialup and comcast's broadband (who's advertised speed changes every week or so, but is still several orders of magnitude higher); but more of the fault of the elected officials. If the majority of the population does not care, it will not change, and the US has an aging population, most of which does not currently care about internet or cable services or has even really heard about it. IT's always a big issue when they try to allow another cable company. The agony of small tax increases another cable company and adding to the already overly-stressed power infrastructure (i.e., wooden telephone poles). Not to mention whoever owns the cables gets 50% of whatever proceeds is made on them...power internet phone or cable, so whoever owns them in the current system has substantially more power.

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me guess... You're the guy who received disciplinary action for 'excessive tardiness', correct?

Re:Interesting...

[Obfuscant]

I think not. Townships rarely allow more than one cable / internet provider. Politicians prevent this from happening ...

I have been on two local cable television advisory boards in two very different parts of the country. We followed these kinds of things closely.

Every franchise agreement I've seen (and clearly, it isn't all of them) have been non-exclusive. There are technical and social standards that are set by the locality, and any company that wants to agree to meet those standards is free to sign the franchise agreement and start building.

What keeps multiple companies from competing is not the nasty government creating a monopoly, it is the simple cost of building a system versus the payout from customers. As soon as two companies compete for the same pot of customers, the payouts cut in half, but the costs of wiring stay the same. (You have to cover the same area as the other guy, but you only get half the customers -- he's got the other half.)

I think we can look at DSL/Cable as evidence of this. Once the telco's got the technology to use their existing wiring for phones as network (and even cable TV) pipes, they started offering that service. Their wiring was, for the most part, already in place. A few upgrades and bingo, they can access the same customers that cable has. If Verizon had to install all the wiring they are using to provide DSL, they simply could not compete.

The buildout cost/return ratio was used many times when we would get complaints from "less citified" areas (less densely populated) when the cable company wouldn't wire their area. The cable co would trot out their numbers showing the return on investment in building hit zero right around two houses per "block" (1/10th mile). That's only about 1/3 or 1/4 of normal city density (in suburbs/small cities).

simply by overstating actual "TV Tax" increases that would happen with a second cable company coming into play...

You lost me on this one. In the US there is no "TV Tax", so I'm assuming you're talking about England or someplace where they do tax TVs. The franchise fee would not go up when a second system comes to town. If you subscribe to two services, of course you pay two fees.

Re:Interesting...

[penguin_dance]

Except, that's not what the courts found. And the lawsuit wasn't an urban myth. I would have thought the fact that the TOS stated otherwise would have decided the case, but it didn't. I don't know if it ever got overturned on appeal or where the appellate case is at. But the plaintiff won his lawsuit (or should I say, the lawyers did.)

On another note, I don't know how you could even find 20-30 movies that you'd want to see per month. I'm lucky if I can find 2-3 a YEAR that I want to see. :P

Re:Interesting...

[stinerman]

That's exactly right.

Many jurisdictions only have one cable ISP because it simply isn't profitable for more than one to exist, not because the local government has granted them a monopoly.

The natural monopoly situation is why the government should own the infrastructure and different companies can provide service over that infrastructure. Congratulations, you've just created a free(er) market in Internet access overnight.

Re:Interesting...

[Belial6]

He did not win the lawsuit. It was settled. There is a huge difference. The courts did NOT find that Netflix was throttling. The fact that you think the lawsuit ended with a judgment shows that you have fallen for the urban myth. Check your own links.

To get 20 to 30 movies a month, you start by renting all of the movies that you ever wanted to see. Then you move into the movies that you haven't seen in years, but would be nice to see again. After that, you go through all of the old TV shows that you enjoyed. Finally, you start selecting movies that you would normally not consider. I have been pleasantly surprised many times by movies that I didn't expect to enjoy. Considering I have already paid for them, I'm not out if I get a stinker.

Re:Interesting...

[Atario]

You're forgetting the main option for these situations (meaning a service you want everyone to have, but which is not profitable enough to naturally come about): have the government provide it.

Re:Interesting...

[ffflala]

So, what sort of precedent might this set for other attempts to block access? Numerous states have attempted to block access, by law, to what they deem to be illegal content. Would a ruling like this tie the hands of companies like Comcast so that they're in a "damned if you do damned if you don't" position, or would one ruling likely supercede the other?

FCC rulings do not set strict precedent in the same way that judicial rulings do. The FCC is a regulatory agency, so they are part of the executive branch, not the judicial branch. So FCC rulings are on a case-by-case basis and more flexible. If a future "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation were to arise, the outcome would not be bound to the sort of contradiction in abstract that you anticipate.

Basically, the FCC does not have to develop and follow (or explicitly reject) guiding principles from specific past rulings. Regulatory rulings almost never refer to previous regulatory rulings. This is in contrast to judicial case law, which is almost always generously peppered with references and citations to previous cases.

Regulatory decisions set no binding precedent on future, sort-of-similar situations. Past rulings can be used for guidance, but a company can always ask a regulatory agency for a letter of clarification on unclear matters as they arise.

Note that TFA doesn't describe an actual FCC ruling, just speculation on how it might come down.

wow, a sudden outbreak of commonsense?

[Anonymous Coward]

What made these people suddenly behave 'consumer friendly'?
I'm completely stunned.

Re:wow, a sudden outbreak of commonsense?

[paroneayea]

I dunno, but let's throw a party! A Linux party!!!

(Yes, I'm as stunned and excited as you are.)

Re:wow, a sudden outbreak of commonsense?

[Gewalt]

Nothing. This is another example of the Bush administration supporting their loyal Ma Bells by acting in a hostile manner towards the telco's competitors, the cable companies. This is not sudden, and it is definitely not driven by common sense.

Re:wow, a sudden outbreak of commonsense?

[whoever57]

What made these people suddenly behave 'consumer friendly'?

Look at this, the FCC taking action --- don't look at the man behind the curtain listening to your phone calls, scanning your emails, etc. without a warrant.

Re:wow, a sudden outbreak of commonsense?

[bsDaemon]

Yes, because after all, this is clearly just an elaborate rouse to deflect the criticism of slashdot hoards and FCC /totally/ equals FBI+NSA.

Re:wow, a sudden outbreak of commonsense?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice to hear that the FCC is doing the consumers's bidding now rather than pandering these bog telcos. With the approval rating of the FCC so abysmally low and many critics calling for its abolishment, this will be seen as a very positive step in the right direction and will go along way to answer the critics who doubting the usefulness of the FCC: Abolish the FCC!(http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=466&doc_id=140252&F_src=flftwo)

Kevin Martin you rule.

[whtmarker]

Way to go k mart!

Re:Kevin Martin you rule.

[Gewalt]

You are wrong. Kevin Martin does not rule.

Kevin Martin is owned and operated by the big telcos. The only reason that he is railing against the cable companies is because they threaten the business models of his puppet masters. He proves this to be the case every time he opens his mouth.

Is Martin acting within his bounds?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

With Net Neutrality being a hotly debated issue at the moment, it seems a bit forward of Martin to act on either side of the issue. Comcast has not violated the law, and while it might be against Martin's view of the FCC's "principles", it cannot be held liable for actions that are not illegal.

If he goes ahead with this action and Net Neutrality is struck down, Comcast would have a good lawsuit to bring against the FCC and Martin personally.

Re:Is Martin acting within his bounds?

[nenya]

Comcast hasn't violated any federal statute per se, but the FCC enforces its regulations--and its interpretation of those regulations--just as vigorously. Your point would be better directed at the fact that the FCC hasn't done a rulemaking on net neutrality.

This, however, doesn't mean the FCC can't do this. Federal agencies frequently make rules through enforcement actions like this. The SEC does it all the time, and the FCC certainly has the ability to do so. Telling federal agencies they can't do something is largely a loser in court.

This is especially true in this case, because judges are all cable customers, and cable customers almost all hate their providers. Not the best legal reasoning, but it's served the FCC very well for the past decade. Almost every time the cable industry challenges an FCC it actions, it loses.

Re:Is Martin acting within his bounds?

[thrillseeker]

it cannot be held liable for actions that are not illegal.

I wouldn't recommend pulling the "no legal authority" act with the FCC. They have enjoyed significant autonomy from the Congress throughout their existence.

Re:Is Martin acting within his bounds?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

But could they enforce a policy retroactively? If the FCC has suddenly decided that "open access and unregulated packet flow" is their new rule, how can they apply it in this case, and how can they apply it in any case without fair notice?

Re:Is Martin acting within his bounds?

[Anonymous Coward]

... it cannot be held liable for actions that are not illegal.

Actions which are not illegal? Haven't you heard of 'breach of contract'? They can most certainly be held liable for that.

Re:Is Martin acting within his bounds?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

I'd be surprised if there were provisions in the contract that insinuated that Comcast wouldn't shape traffic.

Can you provide an excerpt that says as much?

Re:Is Martin acting within his bounds?

[daveatneowindotnet]

Yeah that'd be like a company changing their service agreement without notifying their customers.

Re:Is Martin acting within his bounds?

[jeiler]

This in and of itself could be a good foundational precedent towards net neutrality. Martin's recommendation is precedent--combine that with Comcast's statement that issues with P2P throttling have "been firmly placed within the jurisdiction of the Federal Communications Commission, an administrative agency whose authority to regulate Internet broadband access companies' services is well-established."

IANAL, but it looks like Comcast has hoisted itself on its own legal petard.

Re:Is Martin acting within his bounds?

[value_added]

Nicely done, but to elaborate further, the following excerpt from a better article on Ars Technica should help.

But the precedent this could set has ramifications far beyond the narrow matter of Comcast's particular throttling scheme. Should the order go through, it would send a strong signal that the "four freedoms" outlined in the policy statement have teeth behind them, that these are more than "suggestions," and that the principles of openness and consumer choice will guide the FCC's approach to broadband. In case you're one of the few who don't have the principles committed verbatim to memory, here's a recap (emphasis added):

• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice
• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement
• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network
• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers

Re:Is Martin acting within his bounds?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously? Sue the FCC? I doubt that. I'm no government fan, but I doubt Comcast or any other company that wishes to continue to do business unhindered will take up that fight. Microsoft tried... and lost.

Re:Is Martin acting within his bounds?

[nenya]

Yeah, they can do that. I hate to put it this way, but the best answer is "They just can." Agencies do this all the time. Adjudications of this sort are entirely retroactive, and there doesn't seem to be any legal problem with this. Federal agencies like the FCC and SEC have broad authority to promulgate regulations in the public interest, and the fact that industry comes up with new and clever ways of acting against the public interest does not mean that agencies have to have a rule on the books to whack evildoers. They just have to show that their actions are not arbitrary, capricious, or contrary to statute, and that they are in the public interest. As you might imagine, this isn't particularly difficult.

Article I, section 9 of the Constitution says that Congress shall pass no ex post facto laws, but this has been pretty narrowly construed to prohibit the imposition of criminal liability for acts committed in the past. Civil liability, such as the FCC would impose here, is largely permissible.

Re:Is Martin acting within his bounds?

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux distros?

Watch out for tiger woods

[whtmarker]

It's not bittorrent comcast needs to worry about. It's Tiger Woods

Yeah, right. Unless...

[straponego]

Perhaps, Comcast, you have heard from my friend, Mr. McBribe?

These days, any time the US govt. feints in the direction of possibly enforcing a law against a large corporation (energy, oil, telecom, software, any polluter)... it can safely be considered an RFB. Request for Bribe.

If Comcast's unethical behaviour is altered for the better as a result of this, or they are at least seriously penalized, I will eat these words, and a friggin' Comcast van to boot.

Remember Sony and the rootkit scandal?

[davegravy]

Don't get too excited yet. "Penalty" could be a slap-on-the-wrist drop-in-the-bucket fine per infraction... something small enough that could reasonably be passed on to the customer.

Re:Remember Sony and the rootkit scandal?

[urcreepyneighbor]

could reasonably be passed on to the customer.

Most people never read their bills, so it will slip by unnoticed. It'll be posted on Consumerist, eventually, but it'll be too late to do anything about it.

SSDD.

Re:Remember Sony and the rootkit scandal?

[riskeetee]

It's all Internet money. They'll fine them ten million "theoretical" dollars.

Re:Yeah, right. Unless...

[Anonymous Coward]

If Comcast's unethical behaviour is altered for the better as a result of this, or they are at least seriously penalized, I will eat these words, and a friggin' Comcast van to boot.

Oooh, oooh! Make sure you get a video of that, and distribute it by BitTorrent, please.

Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

If Comcast's unethical behaviour is altered for the better as a result of this, or they are at least seriously penalized, I will eat these words, and a friggin' Comcast van to boot.

"Taken with a grain of salt."

FCC v. FTC

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, this isn't entirely surprising. What we may be looking at here is less a fully-developed FCC position on net neutrality and more of a turf war between federal agencies.

Both the FCC and the FTC have expressed concern about Comcast's activities. The FCC is concerned as the federal telecommunications infrastructure regulator. The FTC is concerned as the chief consumer protection agency. The FCC really doesn't want the FTC getting in the way of regulating the Internet, which the FCC has been struggling with since the 1996 Act was first passed (you try applying what is essentially a voice communications act to any IP network, let alone all of them!). By acting now, even arguably prematurely, the FCC has essentially staked a claim to the issue, signaling to the FTC to keep away.

In your face Comcast!

[Cur8or]

I still believe the internet rules.

internet rules?

[crankshot999]

I never knew that there were "internet rules" I imagine something like this happening... "You weren't being nice to the macbook, go stand in the corner with windows vista!"

Re:internet rules?

[rob1980]

There are plenty of internet rules. Don't post goatse/tubgirl pictures, don't say "first post" on a thread, don't badmouth Ron Paul, etc etc etc

Re:internet rules?

[Anonymous Coward]

I never knew that there were "internet rules"

There's at least 34 of them, though rules 1-33 aren't well known.

Re:internet rules?

[BlackCobra43]

The first rule of the Internet is don't talk about the rules of the Internet.

Make Sure to Say Thanks!

[Waterppk]

Make sure you drop the commissioner a note to say thanks!

Hmmm

[Drakin020]

Sounds like it's fine for Comcast to start sending some money to the FCC.

*sigh*

There are internet rules?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there some other internet? That really doesn't sound like the one I'm using...

... except when you want it

[Craig Ringer]

Hmm. I'm not convinced. What about VoIP? I *like* my low-latency reliable VoIP, and I like the fact that my ISP is able to prioritize it over bulk traffic like BT. Ditto small HTTP traffic bursts, DNS requests, etc.

Rather than force all traffic to be treated equally, the more sensible approach would seem to be to provide incentives to flag bulk traffic as such.

Here in Australia, for example, we have small download quotas - often 5GB or less, but up to 40GB or so for "premium" connections. ISPs also generally offer extra download allowances during off-peak times to encourage file-sharers etc to mostly hammer the network when nobody else cares. Why not treat all IP traffic with the IP TOS throughput flag set as low-priority traffic to be sent only if nothing else of a higher priority is waiting, and charge it to the off-peak allowance at all times?

The only issue I really see with that is that ISPs might not feel the need to expand capacity when they're "only" dropping low priority traffic. However, that's when commercial incentives come into play - if they don't have the bandwidth, find a better one that does.

Legislation will be counterproductive in the long run and will impair services like VoIP - and even basics like ensuring that DNS responses are fast. If legislation tries to include exceptions then they'll always be 5 years out of date and will be inconsistent around the world, so they won't really be much good.

Making it in the end users' best interests to flag their bulk traffic as such just seems to make so much more sense. That's the direction where Internet QoS is headed already.

Re:... except when you want it

[imrehg]

Hmm. I'm not convinced. What about VoIP? I *like* my low-latency reliable VoIP, and I like the fact that my ISP is able to prioritize it over bulk traffic like BT. Ditto small HTTP traffic bursts, DNS requests, etc.

One solution would be per-user bandwidth allocation - as it has been on the proposed list for ages now... Then all you have to do, is you yourself decide not to run BT when you are making a VoIP call... How hard is that? Yours is the responsibility and yours is the power to decide what is important for you, and not the ISP, which has no business whatsoever, deciding your preferences for you...

Re:... except when you want it

[nabsltd]

Hmm. I'm not convinced. What about VoIP? I *like* my low-latency reliable VoIP, and I like the fact that my ISP is able to prioritize it over bulk traffic like BT. Ditto small HTTP traffic bursts, DNS requests, etc.

Prioritizing (i.e., QoS) is OK, but what Comcast did wasn't any sort of QoS...it was forging packets to say "please permanently disconnect". I know that some people may define cutting off connections as QoS, but it isn't. QoS implies that every connection gets to send all of its data, eventually.

Re:... except when you want it

[slimjim8094]

Or allow the user to define their QoS. Or let the user's equipment define the QoS. Or allow the option of turning it off.

If their network damages one set of users when another set is using BitTorrent, it's not set up right.

That and the fact that even if they did want to throttle BitTorrent to benefit VoIP, sending RSTs is not the way to do it. You just speed and queue-limit it like every other QoS implementation does

Re:... except when you want it

[deander2]

so who gets to choose which bits are "good" bits and which bits are limited to the slow lanes? if i invent super-mega-new-tech-protocol that needs low-latency, reliable communications, do i need to register that with the telco-what-we-think-are-worth-while-apps-dept? what happens if they don't like it?

because, you know, that's how cell phones work...

Re:... except when you want it

[slashgrim]

Hmm. I'm not convinced. What about VoIP? I *like* my low-latency reliable VoIP, and I like the fact that my ISP is able to prioritize it over bulk traffic like BT. Ditto small HTTP traffic bursts, DNS requests, etc.

This is not an issue of prioritization; this is a forced destruction of undesired (by ISP standards) streams.

Besides your ISP more than likely uses hot-potato routing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot-potato_routing which does its best to take the shortest path _out_ of their network regardless of increase in latency caused by taking a longer path once out of their network. Unless you have a SLA, you're getting the worst service available. Oddly, with hot-potato routing, you even have a chance of some streams taking a shorter path when the network gets more congested (depending on topology, of course).

Also, congestion is hardly an issue with modern ISPs (in the US, tax dollars funded development of new optical backbones): http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2004/09/65121

IMHO, if I purchase a "bulk" link, I expect all traffic to be treated equally and the ISP to not cancel streams. I do like you're idea of users flagging traffic as bulk but wonder about the implementation, incentive and enforcement details.

Re:... except when you want it

[Anonymous Coward]

QoS is about network traffic on a network you own, rent, manage, whatever. OoS should not be about prioritizing traffic across teh Intarwebz.

Re:... except when you want it

[joo110]

Then all you have to do, is you yourself decide not to run BT when you are making a VoIP call... How hard is that?

Impossible, because answering a VoIP call would then require going to the computer and clicking the pause button on the bittorent client.

Re:... except when you want it

[Craig Ringer]

Certainly what comcast is doing isn't QoS. It's network management, sure, but very much sledgehammer style. It's extremely dodgy.

QoS, however, does *not* imply that all traffic gets delivered eventually. In fact, the primary mechanism for QoS with TCP/IP is to drop packets when traffic flows are too fast. This causes the IP stack on the sender to throttle back the send rate when it notices that ACKs aren't coming back for those packets from the other end, so they're presumably getting lost along the way.

My QoS configuration on my work's network uses exactly this mechanism. It also drops packets to ensure that our ADSL links are never more than 90% utilized, which makes sure that I can keep the (deep) packet queue at my ISPs' routers empty and handle packet queuing with appropriate scheduling and priority on my router.

Re:... except when you want it

[Craig Ringer]

You identify what's important. You do so not by identifying what is particularly high priority, but by identifying what is *lower* priority than anything else. You get incentives, such as lower traffic costs, for doing so.

If you live somewhere where ISPs still don't limit your traffic then this won't mean much to you. I know they're starting to in the US though, so you'll probably soon be seeing monthly or daily traffic caps if you're not already.

If setting your bulk traffic to low priority means that you can use other services more, and can run your bulk downloading tools for longer (for more overall data transferred even if at a lower rate) then that's got to be a win, right?

Many bulk transfer apps already set TCP/IP ToS flags or let you configure them. I'm actually surprised that ISPs aren't already offering to let users count traffic with the throughput ToS flag set against their off-peak traffic allowances.

Re:... except when you want it

[Rob Riggs]

This seem like a logical approach.

Seems the thing to do it to have caps on low-latency and high-throughput QoS and no caps (or high caps) on bulk traffic with the acknowledgement that they will be dropped or de-prioritized.

The real problem here is that Comcast is doing this against one protocol, and is not basing it on IP TOS (or DS field). And this was being done on the sly, without informing its customers of the change.

The proper way to handle this is to move customers from a non-tiered plan to a tiered plan by creating an incentive for customers to move to the plan. Of course that's not the way a U.S. corporate exec thinks about customers and business any more -- especially not one in the U.S. telecom industry.

Re:... except when you want it

[Craig Ringer]

I agree that what Comcast is doing is unacceptable. It's deeply dodgy to go spoofing packets so traffic appears to come from someone else. It volates the trust the user has in the routers between them and the endpoint - the assumption that they'll carry the data and not mess with it.

As for user-flagged low priority traffic: Implementation is trivial. IP headers already contain ToS flags that're intended for exactly this sort of routing priority control. The "throughput" flag is ideally suited to bulk, lower priority traffic that's not sensitive to latency or occasional packet loss.

Routers can already prioritize based on ToS flags and intelligently queue traffic. The Linux router that runs my multihomed ADSL at work does it - it's really not difficult.

Incentives: If you live somewhere where your use of your connection is limited already and you have traffic allowances, then incentives aren't hard to come by. Australia, say. Or most of the rest of the world. An increased allowance for some classes of data in exchange for identifying that data as low priority (and letting the ISP drop it to preserve services for other traffic when load spikes) is an obvious first step.

I'd agree that your expectations are fair, in that the way US ISPs do their traffic management is deeply flawed. They sell you an "unlimited" service with small print that lets them disconnect heavy users, throttle traffic, etc. At least here (Australia) they're honest and specifically identify the limits on your service - and let you pay (lots) to increase them.

As ISPs here already meter traffic, enforcement is trivial. They already often have two meters per user - one "on peak" and one "off peak" - so all they need to do is class ToS=throughput traffic into the off peak class no matter when it occurs. If the user goes over their limit the usual action is to throttle all their traffic down to something miserly like 128kbps or 64kbps.

It's not my idea by the way. It's been around for quite some time, and looks like the way that Internet-wide QoS will probably land up working in the long run.

Re:... except when you want it

[illumin8]

One solution would be per-user bandwidth allocation - as it has been on the proposed list for ages now... Then all you have to do, is you yourself decide not to run BT when you are making a VoIP call... How hard is that? Yours is the responsibility and yours is the power to decide what is important for you, and not the ISP, which has no business whatsoever, deciding your preferences for you...

While that would work, I think a better solution to encourage responsible network use and make things better for both customers and ISPs would be to sell tiered service. Let me give you an example:

Monthly Cable internet package: $49
- 50GB of priority 1 traffic (high priority, such as VoIP, gaming, realtime apps)
- 100GB of priority 2 traffic (medium priority, such as web, email)
- unlimited priority 3 bulk traffic (BitTorrent, P2P, large downloads)

Now, the user purchases this package, and they have 2 options:

Option 1: If they are an unsophisticated user don't know how to properly "tag" their packets with a priority, the first 50GB of traffic a month are automatically high priority, then the next 100GB of traffic get medium priority. After they've used up all their high and medium priority quota, the rest of the month their packets are sent bulk, which is basically a "best effort" delivery. Any leftover bandwidth after all the other customers priority 1 and 2 traffic went through, is given to them. This way, people that abuse the system by using more than their fair share of bandwidth aren't going to impact the network adversely, because they'll be relegated to bulk status after they exceeded their quota.

Note: Billing cycles are staggered based on account activation time, to avoid having too much priority 1 BitTorrent traffic killing the network on the first few billing days of the month.

Option 2: Sophisticated users can tag their own packets with a priority 1, 2, or 3 so that they don't end up exceeding their high priority quota by using too much P2P. That way, sophisticated users are encouraged to be responsible network citizens by not abusing infrastructure. If they really, really need to get that World of Warcraft patch right away, they can tag it as priority 1, but for most uses, they can leave their BitTorrent client hammering away at priority 3 all day long, and be confident that it won't interfere with their important VoIP and gaming traffic that's priority 1.

I think this system would work very well, because users would be encouraged to become responsible network citizens on their own. It also doesn't rely on end users being computer savvy and knowing how to properly tag packets. If they are, that's great and they can take advantage of the quality of service and prioritization benefits of tagging their packets, but if they aren't, the quotas still apply. Also, most users that just use web and email would never exceed their priority 1 quota for the month, so they wouldn't notice a difference, other than a faster network because the bandwidth abusers are relegated to bulk status.

What do you think about this proposal?

Re:... except when you want it

[xiaomai]

Impossible? Going to the computer and hitting pause on the bittorrent client sounds *remarkably* possible. Convenient may be another story.

Re:... except when you want it

[Anonymous Coward]

Per-user bandwidth allocation is probably onerous to ISPs because it stops them from using the word "unlimited" everywhere in their advertising.

Re:... except when you want it

[nabsltd]

QoS, however, does *not* imply that all traffic gets delivered eventually. In fact, the primary mechanism for QoS with TCP/IP is to drop packets when traffic flows are too fast.

TCP is reliably delivery. By definition, those dropped packets will be resent at some future point.

It's possible that whatever higher-level protocol would treat this as some sort of "stop completely" command, but anything robust would keep retrying, and although it can eventually give up and time out, but I assume that such timeouts could be changed in such a way as to make sure that it never gives up.

Re:... except when you want it

[deander2]

so what are you "not convinced" about then? no one is suggesting banning user-defined (or contract-defined) QoS. the regulation the original post was referencing was to protect you from arbitrary, silent, secret, sneaky, non-optional ISP-defined QoS. (with the Q usually being *their* quality, not yours)

Re:... except when you want it

[Gewalt]

*whoosh*

Re:... except when you want it

[macdaddy]

Sorry but that's a very bad idea. Users can't be trusted to set QoS parameters themselves. We've already seen a plethora of hardware hit the shelves touted to accelerate the user's traffic. It does this mainly by setting the ToS bits in all packets to the max of 7 (or an adjustable value) hoping that the provider has loose or no edge re-coloring policies. In a perfect world the CE would take care of this for the provider but we don't live in a perfect world and users like our colleagues here on Slashdot are far from trustworthy. I wouldn't put it past any Slashdot reader to take advantage of the system if they were permitted to define their own QoS parameters. Then you get a user who thinks he knows what he's doing with regards to QoS but really has no clue (again the vast majority of Slashdot's dedicated followers). This user thinks that voice should be set to an absurdly-high value such as 7 instead of the accepted values of 3 or 5, depending on your design. "...but it's important; it's voice!" Let me tell you, this person is primed for management.

No, I'm afraid that users can not be trusted to set their own QoS parameters. Business customers could be more trustworthy in a controlled environment. For example you could accept prioritized packets from a business with values between 0 and 3. Those ToS settings you map to specific MPLS EXP bits based on where the packets originate. Transport that across you Ps and to your PEs before dropping the labels and sending the packet on its way to the next peer. Business have a higher level of accountability than residential customers. Violating a contract and being forced to switch providers is much more difficult for a business than an individual. Residential customer switch voice, video and data providers at the drop of a hat (if alternatives are available in their area). Violating the SP's TOS and being terminated is a minor inconvenience to them.

The best thing that we SPs can do is offer broadband packages with QoS built in. Do you want generic broadband with no services? QoS level of 0 (best effort, the default). Do you want a SOHO package? QoS on your voice (RTP, Skype, SIP, MGCP, H.323) with a setting of 3. Gamers? QoS match VoIP (like the SOHO) and as much of the FPS gaming traffic as possible (of which there is no standard so matching this traffic is very difficult and ever-changing). Set matching packets to 3 as well. You could elevate both SOHO and Gamers to 1 in general to give a higher priority to non-recognizable traffic patterns. Business customer with QoS? 4. SP-provided VoIP and video? 5. The SP's L3 routing protocols and other management traffic (BGP, IS-IS, LDP, FHRPs, SSH, etc) 6. L2 link-state status protocols like BFD and UDLD? 7. That's a very common arrangement. Map that into DiffServ and on into MPLS EXP bits and you have QoS-enabled SP network. If only it were really that easy.

Re:... except when you want it

[Gewalt]

Since when did whooshing someone for not noticing the obvious sarcasm in the parent they were replying to qualify for a troll moderation?

Re:... except when you want it

[slimjim8094]

A points system would make sense. You have 20 points, set them among gaming, websurfing, VoIP, email (bittorrent and FTP aren't interactive, so they always use idle bandwith)

But I'm not an ISP.

Re:... except when you want it

[mindstrm]

I think we could all agree, more or less what is right and wrong in most filtering situations - the problem is when we try to put it down on paper as a law - it's dangerous and open to severe abuse.

Your ISP *should* be able to offer latency gaurantees to voip (or any other traffic) as an added benefit to using their network - absolutely!

They should not be able to selectively delay competing provider traffic in order to force you to pay extra or use their services.

The problem is, at some point, when you start managing lots of traffic, these two areas overlap.

Whether I'm delaying other traffic, or just failing to prioritize it really depends on your point of view.

Providers should be able to enhance my service by managing their network and traffic flows.
They should not be able to make my experience WORSE by cherry-picking services they don't like me using and interfering with it.

The problem is not addressed

[MikeRT]

Increasingly, ISPs are getting weasely with their terms of service. "Unlimited access" that's not unlimited, shafting entire protocols, etc. How about changing fair advertising laws and such to make it so that you cannot hide behind the fine print, but that you must give your customer either a print out or a web page the describes, bluntly, in itemized terms, what all of that legal gobbledeegook really means?

Of course, if you had to publish a list that most high school graduates could grok in 10 minutes or less of reading, you'd undermine the position of the lawyer-as-secular-priest, and that's just unacceptable.

You want proof that societies don't evolve? Just look at the fact that the role priests used to play has been taken over by lawyers. Where people used to take every question to the priest for divination, now it's taken to lawyers.

Re:The problem is not addressed

[u-235-sentinel]

Increasingly, ISPs are getting weasely with their terms of service. "Unlimited access" that's not unlimited, shafting entire protocols, etc. How about changing fair advertising laws and such to make it so that you cannot hide behind the fine print, but that you must give your customer either a print out or a web page the describes, bluntly, in itemized terms, what all of that legal gobbledeegook really means?

At times the company will also terminate your internet because you used too much bandwidth without telling you how much is acceptable and how much is not.

They say only .001% of their customers are cut off.... so what are the odds of two people on the same block being terminated? how about three?

Within 4 months of my family's account being terminated there were other's on our street also terminated. I'd like to take those odds to Vegas personally :-)

Oh and all of us had signed up at the same time 5 years ago when it was advertised "Unlimited use for a flat monthly fee" not "Unlimited Access" which isn't the same thing.

Bandwidth Caps

[Anonymous Coward]

Era of Bandwidth Caps to come, no one knows how to really solve the problem. Before people flame listen to the problem> http://www.technologyreview.com/player/audio/listennow.aspx?id=20919&url=http://www.audiodizer.com/technologyreview/specialreports/futurebiz/20919.mp3&dwnurl=http://www.audiodizer.com/technologyreview/specialreports/futurebiz/download.aspx?id=20919

oh that fucking tag

[The End Of Days]

Note to Slashdot taggers:

"Common sense" is not defined as "what nerds want things to be."

Thank you for understanding.

Monopaliztion At It's Best

[HEdwards2007]

This is just another case of the major companies trying to monopolize on the average American. They are simply using the BitTorrent limits as an excuse to be able to regulate all network traffic that goes through their servers. They remind me too much of the Geek Squad. All up in you business and no need to be there :)

Protocols not Illegal, Anti-competitiveness is

[bill_mcgonigle]

So, what sort of precedent might this set for other attempts to block access? Numerous states have attempted to block access, by law, to what they deem to be illegal content.

Comcast wasn't blocking illegal traffic - they were blocking traffic they felt was expensive to handle and a plausible threat to their video content business.

On the first point, I use BitTorrent every few weeks and it's always to download FLOSS. I set my upload ratio to 3 to be reasonable but helpful. There's nothing illegal about this - compare with doing a Google search for My_Favorite_Song.mp3 and downloading it over HTTP.

On the second point, the FCC has previously barred a DSL ISP (ILEC) from interfering with VOIP traffic as an anti-competitive measure.

Priests v2.0

[__aarcfd8085]

You want proof that societies don't evolve? Just look at the fact that the role priests used to play has been taken over by lawyers. Where people used to take every question to the priest for divination, now it's taken to lawyers.

Ah but you've forgotten our evolution is accelerating. All questions are directed to google.

Rules of the Internet

[xonar]

What are these "internet rules" you speak of. These are the only rules I know personally

How is this not a denial of service attack?

[ajrs]

I still can't figure out how sending a forged packet is not a denial of service attack. If I started putting forged packets on Comcast's network, wouldn't they treat it as a criminal matter? Why doesn't somebody report them to the FBI?

Re:How is this not a denial of service attack?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe because the network belongs to them? :-\

Now how about the hidden speed cap?

[SuperBanana]

Now, what about the hidden speed cap? They "upgraded" everyone to "1 Mbit", but you only get that for a few minutes before the connection is horribly, horribly degraded. When the hidden cap hits, ping times go from 30ms to sometimes 1000ms, 3000ms, or more, and it doesn't go away until you almost completely stop doing ANY uploading.

what is going on?

[joshtheitguy]

Legal sanction and proposed disbarring for Jack Thompson, then the FCC actually moves in the direction of net neutrality completely ignoring the ideals of a large corporation.

What is going on? Did I wake up in a parallel universe this week? Are we going to die?

Re:what is going on?

[Spatial]

Dear Josh,

We regret to inform you that you are, technically speaking, already dead. Congratulations and welcome to Heaven 2.0, now with seamless transitions! I think you'll find that things are about to get a whole lot better. :)

Release notes:
While reviewing the Heaven 1.0 source, we noticed that it was still dependent on Life 1.0 - it had been occasionally polling its database and importing users without notifying us! This caused some serious problems which Life 1.0 was not designed to tolerate, and we apologise profusely for the inconvenience. In an attempt to make amends, we have decided to merge the databases and deprecate Life 1.0, importing all Life users to Heaven 2.0.

As an additional gesture of good will, we invite former Life 1.0 users to suggest features and improvements to both the Diety Hypervisor System and the upcoming Heaven 3.0.


Regards,
Existence Development LLC

Won't work

[Craig Ringer]

That sounds nice, but it relies on ISPs not overselling capacity.

You can get service with ISPs that don't oversell, and actually have enough upstream bandwidth to service all their customers downloading and uploading at max speed all the time. It costs 20-30 times as much, but it's available. After all, most ISPs operate at a contention ratio of between 10:1 and 30:1, where they have enough bandwidth for 1 fully utilized connection for every 10-30 signed customers.

What might be a more reasonable compromise is for ISPs to reserve a fixed 64kbps or so per user. Even that, though, will quickly get expensive. They really need to be allowed to use QoS to provide acceptable performance for latency-sensitive applications while continuing to service bulk traffic - and doing it all cheaply.

Re:Won't work

[GalacticCmdr]

That sounds nice, but it relies on ISPs not overselling capacity.

You can get service with ISPs that don't oversell, and actually have enough upstream bandwidth to service all their customers downloading and uploading at max speed all the time. It costs 20-30 times as much, but it's available. After all, most ISPs operate at a contention ratio of between 10:1 and 30:1, where they have enough bandwidth for 1 fully utilized connection for every 10-30 signed customers.

What might be a more reasonable compromise is for ISPs to reserve a fixed 64kbps or so per user. Even that, though, will quickly get expensive. They really need to be allowed to use QoS to provide acceptable performance for latency-sensitive applications while continuing to service bulk traffic - and doing it all cheaply.

Actually it will still work with oversell. The ISP is simply taking a chance that the number of people currently pushing the envelope does not exceed their capacity. It is a simple SLA. They tell each customer they get x bandwidth at any given time where x is based upon how much they pay. The ISP can then make the determination by studying their load to see what percentage of x*sales they must actually have. So they can go around selling service to many people that will never use their bandwidth allotment, then balance that against those that will use their full allotment. Obviously an ISP will want many more of the former customers and as few as possible of the latter.

Re:Won't work

[drinkypoo]

What might be a more reasonable compromise is for ISPs to reserve a fixed 64kbps or so per user. Even that, though, will quickly get expensive. They really need to be allowed to use QoS to provide acceptable performance for latency-sensitive applications while continuing to service bulk traffic - and doing it all cheaply.

Is that really true? I think that what is needed is something more like a cooperative egress shaping system on the cable modems, coordinated by the head end. Something where the network agrees to act more like token ring :)

Re:Won't work

[Anonymous Psychopath]

What might be a more reasonable compromise is for ISPs to reserve a fixed 64kbps or so per user. Even that, though, will quickly get expensive. They really need to be allowed to use QoS to provide acceptable performance for latency-sensitive applications while continuing to service bulk traffic - and doing it all cheaply.

If they did that, VoIP becomes more expensive to provide than standard telephone lines.

Traditional telephone companies don't have a phone line reserved for every single customer. They know what their trunk usage patterns look like and provision accordingly. Very rarely, you might get an "all circuits are busy" message, when they have over-provisioned their trunks.

You save money on VoIP because the over-subscription capability increases, making the service cheaper to provide. Over-subscription is a Good Thing that saves money. Over-provisioning is not.

What we really need is an Internet-wide QoS policy. This could be implemented simultaneously with the transition to IPv6.

But assuming that happens, the ISPs still can't trust users to flag their own traffic, because all the l33t gamers would quickly realize that their pings are lower when they flag all their traffic for the high-priority queues. Or worse, the user flags all their BitTorrent traffic as high priority because they want more bandwidth for themselves and don't care if they are screwing their neighbors.

So that means that the ISPs have to put devices in place that they control that can effectively determine the traffic type and tag it accordingly. So they'd need either uber-fast deep inspection and packet modification engines ($$$) or they need the intelligence built into the devices installed at the customer premises ($$$). Both of these things are a lot more expensive than what's in use today.

And then there's the maintenance issue. What happens when a new real-time protocol rolls out (e.g. Skype)? All the ISPs would have to modify their infrastructure to identify and tag the traffic, and if one ISP in the middle failed to do so it breaks the whole end-to-end QoS model.

I've no doubt we'll get to a QoS-enabled Internet... one day. Might be a decade or two away though.

Re:Won't work

[sjames]

Actually, they can still oversell within reason (actually beyond reason). For example, they can allocate 130K/customer and make it borrowable. With that, each customer is assured that they can do 2 VoIP calls simultaneously while the connection is oversold by 10:1 - 60:1 depending on the speeds they offer.

The end user can then tag their packets as they see fit to decide which get dropped or delayed and which route right through.

They just don't want to because broadband marketing wants to advertise large numbers even if you won't see them often. They don't want the committed rate to become a point of competition because then they have to keep the oversell within reason.

In other words, they want to avoid a healthy market for broadband.

Re:Won't work

[N7DR]

What might be a more reasonable compromise is for ISPs to reserve a fixed 64kbps or so per user.

64kbps per customer is pretty close to what most cable companies are currently using as their "average long-term use per customer" in their network engineering.

So if they were to permanently keep this available for each customer, then there would be little or nothing left over for those customers to use for other purposes (and less than nothing for some cable operators).

Re:Won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

But assuming that happens, the ISPs still can't trust users to flag their own traffic

That's not really what GGP was suggesting. He suggested that customers throttle back their own torrenting when they want to speed up VIOP or gaming traffic. The only prioritisation is at the user end. I've got this going in-house already. When I try to run streaming video, my router delays my torrents to make up for it.

Re:Won't work

[Jawnn]

That sounds nice, but it relies on ISPs not overselling capacity.

No, it doesn't, because it doesn't make the assumption that you've made that every single user will constantly use all the bandwidth that they have (ostensibly) paid for.

They really need to be allowed to use QoS to provide acceptable performance for latency-sensitive applications while continuing to service bulk traffic - and doing it all cheaply.

There's a world of difference between prioritizing latency-sensitive packets and artificially squashing ALL throughput whenever a particular application is detected.

Delivering bandwidth reliably to customers, in the amount that was contracted for, does get more expensive as those customers use more of what they bought. But they did, in fact, buy it so the ISP has the responsibility under the terms of the sale to deliver it. If it costs more, fine. Raise your rates. Just don't bullshit me about what I'm actually getting, and then bullshit me and the government regulators about how you can't afford to do business on the terms you agreed to while negotiating from your monopoly position. Do try and at least act like you care about earning our business.

Re:Won't work

[Anonymous Psychopath]

Yes, I do this to, and it helps quite a bit. pfSense has a decent traffic shaper. But this doesn't help as much when my voice/video/high priority traffic is competing with everyone else's bulk traffic out in the cloud.

Re:Won't work

[jonwil]

What Comcast is doing is NOT QoS. QoS is like having a 5 lane highway and giving ambulances first priority and then giving cars and then cargo trucks. Traffic shaping of BitTorrent is like restricting the cargo trucks to one lane only and not allowing them to use the other lanes no matter if there is or isn't traffic in those lanes.

Re:Won't work

[mindstrm]

I'll admit I might be out to lunch or overlooking something, but that's just total nonsense - ISPs, far and wide "oversell" as you call it.

That's the whole POINT of packet switching.

The reality is, we, as customers, only care when the ISP fails to manage things correctly, and our service levels drop well below what we expected, regardless of what's in the contract.

Certainly, dedicated bandwidth through a network is available on most, if not all, carriers, at a large premium.. but in that case, you might as well be purchasing a leased line to a big connectoin point.

Re:Won't work

[mindstrm]

Then what happens when people start abusing the QoS facilities to download stuff faster?

Re:Won't work

[CTachyon]

What I can't understand for the life of me is why ISPs don't sell QoS as a metered service. "Hello, ma'am, you want this SSH connection to run at AF2? Sure thing, the fee comes to $0.0X per thousand packets. Pleasure doing business. Oh, good day sir, you say you want to run that BitTorrent at EF? Wow, are you sure? The fee is $0.YY per thousand packets, so for 4.5GB and a 1:1 upload ratio, that adds up to $ZZZ.ZZ. Sir? Sir? Are you okay, sir?"

Even if QoS never comes to the Internet backbone at large, just having it within the ISP network would be a vast improvement for things that need better latency guarantees. The downside would be that you can't really trust the QoS bits coming off the end user's computer, since they're set deep in the bowels of applications and not user selectable -- to say nothing of the problem of malware racking up an unexpected bill -- so you'd have to come up with some other mechanism for users to choose and consent.

Likely to be disappointing

[nenya]

If the FCC does move forward with this, Comcast is going to sue. Obviously.

What's likely to make this disappointing is that if the case does get to court, it is almost certainly not going to be decided on substantive grounds. The real question is one of administrative law: does the FCC's "statement of principles" constitute a legally enforcable document? The FCC can't point to a specific statutory provision that gives it what it wants. And as it classified cable modem service as an "information service"--a classification which was upheld in 2005 in the Brand-X case--Comcast is exempt from all of the Title II provisions in the Telecommunications Act, including the common carrier requirements. The FCC is going to have to rely upon its "ancillary authority" under Title I, and the question to be resolved is not whether net neutrality is a good idea but whether the FCC has the authority to do this under the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946.

Needless to say, unless you're an administrative law geek like me, this isn't going to be a very interesting case. But the FCC has largely trounced the cable industry in almost every conflict in the past ten years, so I'm optimistic.

Re:Likely to be disappointing

[Todd Knarr]

Or the FCC could point to Comcast themselves to support the FCC's position. According to this report at DSLReports, Comcast is arguing before a Federal judge that plaintiffs in California don't have standing to sue Comcast over the throttling because the FCC has sole authority over matters like that. If Comcast does win that argument, then all the FCC has to do is point to Comcast's successful argument and say "They've won the argument that we do have authority over this, they don't get to argue otherwise now.".

Re:Likely to be disappointing

[ShadowsHawk]

I wish I hadn't used all my mod points.

Re:Likely to be disappointing

[ffflala]

Why would Comcast's "information services" exemption from the common carrier requirements of the Telecommunications Act, T2, free it from the FCC's Sept 2005 policy statement? My understanding is that Comcast could only (successfully) argue against the validity of the policy statement itself, not that the policy statement is inapplicable to them.

Sanctions and Enforcement Actions = higher bills

[Larry Lightbulb]

Want to bet that any fines Comcast get are passed on to consumers as "FCC compliance operating fees"?

Whats Next

[little_hate_machine]

Whats next, Comcast will shape traffic going to the NAACP. Maybe they will priortize traffice going to 'creationism' websites. Could be somthing simple like gateway.com will get priority over dell.com. I understand that it is their network im using, but I should be informed (at least able to look it up myself) if my communications are being altered in any way.

Re:Whats Next

[Anonymous Coward]

before you know it we'll have a nice "page could not be displayed" for www.kubuntu.com but any connections will go right to www.microsoft.com

Man behind the curtain

[Mariner28]

Don't you think the "man behind the curtaion" had a problem with this?

We can't have Comcast resetting P2P sessions between terrorists! How can we catch them if you guys keep mucking with our covert surveillance efforts?

I am curious, how long before unlimited plans go

[Shivetya]

away?

I saw references to it going away on some blogs and even one or two news sites.

think about it, the more restrictions that are placed on their being able to QOS types of traffic or such the more likely they will introduce hard caps by simple removing the unlimited as an option.

I look at it this way, if I can get cheaper access with caps I will take it. I don't care to subsidize anyone. This isn't the government holding a gun to my head and as such if someone comes along as says "rate X for price Y" and its cheaper I'm there.

It will be curious what happens in the market

question for the group

[spidercoz]

Has anyone noticed an apparent network throttling issue with roadrunner when running a bittorrent client? I noticed it started a few months ago, whenever azureus is running, web pages take retardedly long times to load, if at all, usually they just time out. As soon as I shut down azureus, everything comes up fine. I've noticed TW seems to be keeping pretty quiet about the issue, I'm wondering if this decision will make my page loads return to normal.

YES!

[kellyb9]

Now thats would I call COMCASTIC!

Comcast abused their power and the trust of Intern

[funchords]

When Comcast bought up large systems to become the largest Cable MSO, it did not buy the Internet. Comcast has no right to change how the Internet works -- not one byte of it.

How the world-wide Internet works is defined by all of us, through our participation and trust in the Internet Society and the Internet Engineering Task Force. To ensure interoperability and access for all, changes must be carefully deliberated and standardized there. The responsibility of operating the Internet in accordance with those standards is entrusted to companies providing access to it. It's not Comcast's job to change how the Internet works nor can it decide who or what gets preference upon it.

I haven't seen anything other than the press reports about something to be circulated around the FCC. I am hopeful that when the details are released that it serves to preserve and protect the Internet from those who would abuse their power and change it.

The Rules

[not_hylas( )]

The Rules: (or DA RULZ)

http://www.isoc.org/internet/conduct/cerf-Aug-draft.shtml

http://www.dei.isep.ipp.pt/~acc/docs/arpa--1.html

http://www.ietf.org/rfc.html

http://rfc.net/rfc2430.html

Traffic Shaping Example:

http://rfc.net/rfc3514.html

Didn't Kevin Martin get the memo?

[Anonymous Coward]

He must not have heard about Telecom Immunity--as in, the Telcos can do whatever they want, without oversight.

Maybe he's just waiting for Comcast's 'campaign donation.'

ViolatED?

[Kelz]

I'm fairly sure they haven't stopped yet...

*opens Utorrent, starts seeding @10KB/s up, google homepage times out* Yup.

They're Safe

[DeanFox]

Comcast has nothing to fear. They have more than enough friends in Congress that absolutely nothing will happen to them. If some token fine is levied it will be refunded with an apology.

After writing my state's (Georgia) Senators both their replies read like a Comcast PR marketing campaign. My local Representative website reads like a FOX News fear banner. He doesn't even bother replying to my letters any more. Comcast is safe.

In all honestly I'm a bit suspicious. At this point in my life I am not trusting anything connected to corporations or government. With this guy attacking it affords Comcast the opportunity to get laws passed specifically protecting them by allowing and sanctioning what they're doing. Whats to say this isn't some ploy by Comcast to drum up sympathy? Yes, I believe they are that calculating and evil.

-[d]-

Good

[SilverBlade2k]

I hope this will make Comcast stop being greedy little bitches...

Refreshing

[dreamchaser]

I am just happy to see some bipartisan cooperation in Washington for a change.

Re:Refreshing

[Culture20]

I am just happy to see some bipartisan cooperation in Washington for a change.

Huh? We see that every time there's a House or Senate pay-raise vote. ;-)

Re:I am curious, how long before unlimited plans g

[ShadowsHawk]

Why would they give you a cheaper price? In all likely hood, they will install a 'reasonable' cap at the same price.

It will be curious what happens in the market

Answer: Ma Bell continues to screw the customer with a government granted monopoly.

Forget the Sanctions

[Nom du Keyboard]

Forget the sanctions, I want money in my pocket from Comca$t. I want them to cough over some cash for their lies, misrepresentations, fraud, double-dealing, and false advertising. And yes, I am a Comca$t subscriber so I am entitled to damages!

Resp: Comcast is acting legally.

[alphasynaptic]

I just had to create a /. account just to point out some of the ignorance shown in comments on this story. Some people have claimed that Comcast has not broken any laws. I am sorry but you are sadly mistaken if you believe that. What they are doing is sending RST flags inside TCP/IP packets that are spoofed to appear to come from the peers you are connecting to through torrent. This is a crime we like to call fraud due to the fact that they are impersonating the peer you are communicating with. This makes the act 100% illegal. Please people do your research before you defend such a crap company. /. itself hosted a story that pointed out the fact the reason Comcast is legally culpable is because of this fraud. /claps for the ignorant fools