Comcast Appeals FCC's Net Neutrality Ruling

Ian Lamont writes "Comcast has filed a court appeal of an FCC ruling that says the company can't delay peer-to-peer traffic on its network because it violates FCC net neutrality principles. A Comcast VP said the FCC ruling is 'legally inappropriate,' but said it will abide by the order during the appeal while moving forward with its plan to cap data transfers at 250 GB per month."

Comments

D'oh!

[Skye16]

Watch them win and maintain the 250gb cap.

Comcast subscribers = butt pwnt.

Re:D'oh!

[palegray.net]

I have no problem with the 250 GB cap. I'd much prefer ISPs clearly state their actual usage limits, as opposed to the current widespread practice of selling "unlimited" bandwidth plans that are anything but unlimited.

If consumers dislike a particular ISPs plan, they can voice their opinions and vote with their wallets. Yes, I understand this comment is probably going to generate dozens of "but I can't get another ISP!" replies, and I preemptively dispute the validity of most of them. I'm living on a Naval installation, and I could drop my current cable provider for a number of DSL providers. Would I have the the same download speeds? Probably not, but the option is still there.

We make tradeoffs when buying services from various vendors. With respect to ISPs, some offer higher speeds but have crappy terms of service. Other providers offer "business" level accounts that don't have any caps aside from throughput, and offer static IPs and unblocked ports. You get what you pay for, and the market as a whole decides what's worth offering.

Re:D'oh!

[Actually, I do RTFA]

I'm living on a Naval installation, and I could drop my current cable provider for a number of DSL providers.

We all know how bad internet connectivity is on/around Naval institutions.

Leaving that aside, your dismissal of others' claims because they don't happen to apply to you and thus everyone is the height of egocentric thinking.

Re:D'oh!

[geekoid]

In my area I have a number of DSL ISPs..but they ALL go through the same TELCO, so there really isn't much of a market there is they all do what the telco tells them. If the telco puts a cap, that all do.

Fortunately I also have FIOS as an option. An option I readily use.

I have lived in communities with only one option.

Re:D'oh!

[mrsbrisby]

Our township has a municipality which provides electric, sewer, cable, and (you guessed it!) Internet.

In order to "vote" against this municipality, you also need to go "off grid" because they jack up utilities to help monopolize the local Internet service.

Additionally, we're still 1954-style copper and so the only fiber loops are from: the municipality. Hauling a DS3 from the next-nearest site would be tens of thousands of dollars for the install (Verizon tenatively quoted us 56K$USD).

There was a big project called "Network Maryland" where the whole state was supposed to get fiber construction- but they stopped just a mere 25 miles away. We paid taxes, so that the rest of Maryland could get high-speed internet, and the freedom of choice, and we just got screwed out of it.

No other ISP can compete with them here- so we don't have any others.

Here: You have to vote with your vote, and that means going door-to-door, and convincing locals to vote for something that frankly, they just don't care very much about.

Please stop telling people how content you are. You're contributing to the controversy which helps companies like Comcast, and makes things much harder for people actually trying to "vote".

Re:D'oh!

[spence2680]

Parent does not take this far enough!

Consider this: What's point of a $150/mo 50/5 service if a 250gb bandwidth cap could conceivably be consumed in a little over 48 hours?

If ISPs are going to cap bandwidth consumption then ISPs should be regulated to review relevent bandwidth caps adjacent to speed considerations.

Not doing so is akin to selling awesome quality cell phone service without revealing the number of minutes in your monthly plan.

Ideally, ISPs would be mandated to communicate speed as a factor of bandwidth divided by cap. This would empower the consumer to more easily compare the total value of competing ISPs. Spence

Re:D'oh!

[Grimbleton]

there is a distinct lack of competition for family housing at each facility, with a "preferred provider" pretty much owning the area in many cases.

So what you're basically saying is you live in an average market. Gotcha.

Re:D'oh!

[The_Wilschon]

For a huge percentage of the population, moving to another area is not a legitimate solution to the problem of internet service provision. Reasons for this are legion; among them are ties to the locality (family, job, etc), inability to afford the move (moving is expensive!), preference for services or conditions only available there (including school systems, local laws, etc; often another source of "well, if you don't like it, just move!" responses to similar complaints), etc. Quality of internet service provision is not a sufficiently large factor to cause people to move. In short, internet connectivity is not sufficiently important to the majority of people's livelihood or way of life.

Also, many people cannot afford to purchase business class internet service without sacrificing some other portion of their way of life which is more important to them.

These are both very effective barriers to competition in the ISP market. In conclusion, neither the availability of different ISP options in different localities nor the availability of a higher level of service at a higher price are sufficient to ensure competitiveness or the proper functioning of the free market.

Re:D'oh!

[erroneus]

I really hate it when people start off with their typical captialistic ideology when it doesn't apply. In the case of communications, capitalism has never existed. It has always been about a company buying rights to install infrastructure from a local government with which they could exclusively have access to customers without competition. In some cases, deals have been [quietly] made that prevents competing technologies from existing simultaneously which explains why DSL will exist where Cable internet doesn't (while, oddly enough, cable TV exists so you would think that was a no-brainer..?) and vice versa, and of course FiOS doesn't yet reach.

With the paid-for lack of competition and regulation, they have seen fit to raise prices in areas without competition and lower them where there is competition. They dink with the quality of service instead of reinvesting their [enormous -- read their SEC filings] profits to keep up with the trends and future of the world-wide internet. They lie to customers, which is actually in violation of various consumer laws in fact and in spirit, by using words like "Unlimited" to describe their service and then charge people extra for actually believing them.

What we have here is anything BUT capitalism. Capitalism can't exist where monopolies are permitted to exist.

Re:D'oh!

[jlarocco]

Oh wow. That's ironic. An anti-capitalism whiner complaining about the ISP market.

Just to clarify, the ISP market sucks because local governments sell exclusive franchises and forbid competition. The problem is precisely the lack of competition, free markets and capitalism that you rail against in the linked to journal entry. If anybody is screwing the consumers in this case, it's the government, not the ISPs.

Spinning it as a failure of capitalism is either ignorant or just plain malicious. It's a perfect example of why too much government regulation is a bad thing.

Re:D'oh!

[Ironchew]

Spinning it as a failure of capitalism is either ignorant or just plain malicious. It's a perfect example of why too much government regulation is a bad thing.

Spinning it as a "tyrannical government oppressing the innocent, scientific free market!" is either ignorant or just plain malicious. Just as a large corporation systematically concentrates wealth, it will also use the powers that be (the government, usually) to maintain its firmly anti-competitive market. The government does things like this because corporate lobbyists draft bills and get them passed.

FCC: Stop the forgery by Comcast

[corsec67]

Slowing or delaying p2p is one thing, but actively forging packets, for any reason, should be punished severely.

Forging reset packets does not equal "throttling", even if it does reduce the load on the network.

Re:FCC: Stop the forgery by Comcast

[corsec67]

So, you are in favor of ISPs forging traffic to prevent people from using bandwidth they paid for?

p2p, like Bittorrent are frequently used to transfer large files legally.

Re:FCC: Stop the forgery by Comcast

[plasmacutter]

it's not "your bandwidth", it's theirs too. they want to use p2p.

want "your bandwidth"? start an ISP.

Sounds like Comcast's death-knell...

[GuyverDH]

Switch from Comcast's cable to Dish Network / DirecTV, or a competing Cable company's product.
Switch from Comcast's internet to DSL, FIOS or even Satellite or Cellular internet provider.

Vote with your wallet....

Once enough subscribers cancel Comcast, maybe they'll finally pull their collective heads out of their collective asses...

Until then, they will continue to do whatever they want to try and maximize profit and to hell with their customers...

Re:Sounds like Comcast's death-knell...

[MorderVonAllem]

I'm so sick of this argument. There is no valid alternative where a lot of people live. Where I live we are too far away for DSL. Satellite is *not* an option and FIOS isn't even a gleam in someone's eye. As for TV I don't watch TV anymore so that doesn't affect me.

Re:Sounds like Comcast's death-knell...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, geez, here we go. As soon as there is *viable* competition in the market, this will work. But not now.

Re:Sounds like Comcast's death-knell...

[palegray.net]

I don't disagree with you in principle. However, the practical truth of the matter is that Comcast's customer base is largly comprised of people that wouldn't know a TCP/IP packet from a hand grenade, and largely don't care about these issues.

As long as Dad can browse CNN.com (or other, shall we say, less savory sites), Mom can check her email, and little Joey can play his flash games, there will be no mass uprising.

Again, I'm not trying the minimize the fact that voting with your wallet is a good answer, just reminding everyone that the number of wallets involved is statistically small.

Re:Sounds like Comcast's death-knell...

[linzeal]

I can get 768k DSL from Speakeasy for the same price and 90% of the time I wouldn't notice; but, it is those times I need something quickly like a 30-40 MB PDF to read before I jet off for the light rail that I can't get rid of Comcast's almost 8x speed advantage. I miss Charter cable's 16 meg business class cable internet, that was a great connection and a good company. We need to start talking about the cable companies that are better with their TOS so we can encourage the lesser of two evils to not go in whole hog.

look for a new isp

[BlackSnake112]

From the article: "Comcast announced it would put a 250-gigabyte-per-month bandwidth cap on residential customers. Customers may get a warning if they go over the monthly cap, and after their first warning, Comcast will suspend their service for a year if they go over the cap a second time."

Lose you internet connect for a year! I do not have HD TV but how big are those HD movies that people are downloading? How many people have more then one computer on the internet in their home? Take a family of 4 (mom,dad, two teenagers) There are at least 3 computers in the house (4 most likely). If a movie is download by each computer, 250GB will be eaten up really fast. I know people with netflix who download 5-6 HD movies a week on one computer. I think they will run out of HD movies soon, but 250GB will be eaten up fast if one is downloading HD movies.

I didn't even go to the P2P stuff. This is a move to slow down P2P. Comcast should just come out and say it (if they haven't already). Maybe Comcast should work on improving the bandwidth of it's network instead of spending the time and money on restrictions. I really feel for those who have no other choice.

Re:look for a new isp

[palegray.net]

This is a move to slow down P2P.

I disagree. The more likely option is that this is a move to discourage the use of Internet-based movie services. Such services directly affect Comcast's advertising and on-demand revenue in a negative manner.

Re:look for a new isp

[geekoid]

Well if it's worse there, then clearly we shouldn't complain that it's getting bad here~

Re:look for a new isp

[AeroIllini]

Oh, boo hoo, here come the comments from Australians saying "I only get 1KBps download speed with a 2MB cap for $100 a month!"

We know your internet sucks. We feel for you, we really do.

Just because yours is worse doesn't mean we can't fight to make ours better.

Re:look for a new isp

[yoshi_mon]

Just because AU has it bad does that mean that everyone else should too? Should the Japanese scale down their inet infrastructure to match yours?

Yes, as has been said your inet needs work there. Don't blame us thou for wanting to make sure ours is getting better, not worse.

Re:commiecast doesn't get the law

[palegray.net]

... inserting forged protocol packets ...

I consider content the TCP stream that delivers my (X)HTML, CSS, binary data, etc. How, exactly, is inserting additional data into the stream not modifying the content?

To: MODS -- Comcast is NOT a common carrier!

[whoever57]

they have gone past the 1949 definition of a cable company as a protected common carrier..

Mods, please wise up: Comcast is not a common carrier

(I'll probably be downmodded to hell for pointing out the truth here, but what the heck!)

Re:To: MODS -- Comcast is NOT a common carrier!

[Mister Whirly]

If that is true, they are responsible for the content they serve up. They should be nailed by the RIAA, MPAA, and FBI for child porn if they are exempt from Common Carrier status.

Re:To: MODS -- Comcast is NOT a common carrier!

[mrchaotica]

Read the DMCA "safe harbor" provisions. It gives these assholes all the privileges of being a common carrier, without any of the responsibilities. It's yet another reason why the DMCA is a fucked up law and should be repealed.

volume caps: yes, traffic preferences: no

[speedtux]

I think having volume caps and network neutrality is a good compromise. Once there are volume caps, however, there shouldn't be an preferential treatment to one kind of traffic or another. ISPs simply aren't in a position to decide which network traffic is important and which network traffic is not. For example, I'd like my VNC-over-SSH to be treated as just as important and real-time as someone's VoIP traffic.

All Comcast needs to do is ...

[Skapare]

... delay the traffic of the highest bandwidth (ab)users. By doing this without regard to the content of the traffic, or its TCP port numbers, etc., then they are in a neutral position. How to do this delaying is another matter. They need to avoid focusing on peer-to-peer file sharing just because it happens to be the activity of the biggest users. As long as that is true, focusing on the actual bandwidth hogging will effectively slow down whatever usage is involved.

How to slow down users needs to do something other than forged RST packets. Aside from the legal issues, protocol developers will figure out ways to become RST immune. One simple way is to carry on as of there was no RST and see if a normal packet comes along within a certain time frame (a couple seconds). If not, then the RST is considered real. If there is a normal packet soon enough, then the RST is forged. Comcast is using this technique because it is NOT practical for them to selective drop individual packets in transit; RST forgery is a lower cost injection method. But if they continue this method, geeks will figure out ways around it (plural ... there's more than one way to do this).

Ultimately they will have to make it dynamically adjust the bandwidth rate on the customer attachment equipment. If a customer bursts traffic at high rates too much, gradually lower their bandwidth burst rate limit until it reaches the level where continuous traffic solidly for a month equals 250GB.

Re:All Comcast needs to do is ...

[MobyDisk]

Why are the obvious, easy to implement, perfectly legal solutions not implemented? What you propose is the perfect solution as far as I can tell, and instead they did something complicated and illegal that doesn't actually solve the problem anyway. I just don't get it.

Give them the finger and walk away.

[zerofoo]

The download cap is a poorly disguised attempt to head-off video downloads via the internet.

And I'm referring to the legal ones - like iTunes+Apple TV and Netflix's Roku player.

You can get video and voice from many other companies. These services require bandwidth. Buy these services from companies other than your cable company, and you will find yourself potentially hitting the cap. Buy these services from the cable company (delivered digitally) and the caps disappear.

This is a classic case of monopoly abuse.

-ted