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Comcast Discloses Throttling Practices
Wired reports that Comcast finally provided information on its network management practices late Friday. In a report to the FCC (PDF), the cable company admitted to targeting P2P protocols Ares, BitTorrent, eDonkey, FasTrack, and Gnutella. Quoting:
"For each of the managed P2P protocols, the [Sandvine Policy Traffic Switch] monitors and identifies the number of simultaneous unidirectional uploads that are passed from the [Cable Modem Termination System] to the upstream router. Because of the prevalence of P2P traffic on the upstream portion of our network, the number of simultaneous unidirectional upload sessions of any particular P2P protocol at any given time serves as a useful proxy for determining the level of overall network congestion. For each of the protocols, a session threshold is in place that is intended to provide for equivalently fair access between the protocols, but still mitigate the likelihood of congestion that could cause service degradation for our customers."
That is better because now consumers can make an informed decision when choosing a internet provider.
An 'unlimited' internet connection at an affordable price may look like a good deal but if you knew in advance it was actually limited in some way you might have chosen another provider with a better offer. Now at least you know what you're getting for your money and you can make a fair comparison between different providers.
This improves transparency and thus competition and ultimately benefits the consumer.
Comcast will enforce bandwidth caps. How's that better than throttling?
Even if it turns out that 250 gig limits make for a shitty service, at least Comcast are honest about the limits they put on you, so you know what you're buying and you can take the limits placed on you into account when deciding what to download.
I wonder if this will cause Comcast to change their advertising practices? Or perhaps they'll offer a truly unlimited service for more money. I think people won't mind paying the extra money if they know what they are truly getting is unlimited service, as opposed to 'throttled' service.
You have to love how the text is carefully crafted to be virtually incomprehensible to the average person. Actually, check that - totally incomprehensible to the average person and virtually incomprehensible to all but the hardest core network tech geeks. Of course, it's intentional because saying, simply, "we slow down users who utilize programs we don't like" is too easy to understand and rally against, which, of course, is exactly the opposite of what Comcast wants. This Byzantine text just sounds like a lot of techno-mumbo-jumbo so it has to be ok, right? Thankfully, Slashdot is filled with hard core network tech geeks so I'll be reading comments with interest to get an informed synopsis rather than staring at Comcast's text and thinking "huh?"
our big fancy piece of software slows your download speed to a trickle if you use hardly any of your upload speed. so god forbid you try to ssh or rdesktop into your box
That's not really anti-competitive. It's progressive in fact.
The bottom line is that ISPs pay for out-of-network traffic and they can't expect to take that cost and not pass it on.
So, for an ISP to recognize that they are only out of pocket for traffic that goes outside their network and not limit your in-network traffic is actually good.
If P2P protocols were smart enough to recognize and use in-network peers (which could simply be a product of latency perhaps, but better methods are probably possible) before going out of network, think about how much more you could download without hitting your cap.
That is better because now consumers can make an informed decision when choosing a internet provider.
Only one high-speed Internet provider offers service in many areas of the United States (home of Slashdot). This means choosing a high-speed Internet provider is like choosing any other public utility such as your power or water provider. What recourse do people dissatisfied with a public utility have?
you can make a fair comparison between different providers.
You get this provider if you live here; you get that provider if you live there. Should people really be choosing where to live based on the only ISP that isn't dial-up?
I'm not an American - so my understanding may be off.
I thought "Free Speech" meant literally that you couldn't be arrested for saying "stuff".
Specifically it doesn't mean:
So, with that in mind. How is imposing a bandwidth cap in any way related to free speach?
Sure I could see if they didn't let you visit some, politically derived, blacklist of websites then you could argue they were suppressing some topics. But otherwise?
Hyperbole - and the more times you do that the less people pay attention. Cry Wolf, anybody?
The idea isn't to guarantee the service you would want to have in your wildest dreams. It is to receive all terms and conditions prior to sale so that you can make an informed decision. It is fraud prevention.
well, let them go home if they're not going to offer service like a big boy does. This is the Internet we're talking about. INTER being the key word. They're not being progressive here. They're being very regressive. Comcast wants to be the sole content provider to their subscribers like AOL did back in the 90's. Until AOL subscribers discovered the actual Internet.
This is what Comcast wants. They want their users to use their services. This is purely anti-competitive behavior. I say, if Comcast doesn't want to provide true undiscriminatory Internet access, get out of the damn business. They're already screwing their customers. Deregulation has allowed Comcast to act like this.
True competition would allow me to jump to an ISP who would provide the same level of service at the same cost without these BS tactics to force me to use their content.
Unfortunately, there's no other ISP here who provides cable. And no DSL providers want to provide me DSL despite having fibre to the curb. Since AT&T hasn't disclosed that I have fibre to the curb. Speakeasy thinks I can't only get 144k IDSL. AT&T knows I can get 100Mbit if they offered it. Comcast just wants me to stop using the service altogether. I hope the FCC really drops the hammer on these anti-competitive greedy bastards.
They're using their grammar skills there.
I have Comcast cable TV and Internet service. I have personal experience with them, and don't like 'em very much. It pains me to defend their sorry asses, but in the interest of intellectual honesty, I'll do it.
Comcast doesn't offer a "VOIP product" -- they offer phone service. The handoff to the consumer is an analog POTS connection. Using VOIP as the transport mechanism is an implementation detail. As a facilities-based carrier, they have every right to dedicate bandwidth on their network to carry this phone traffic. It's no different than AT&T dedicating bandwidth on their networks to carry traditional circuit switched voice traffic.
The key sequence to access my Slashdot bookmark in Firefox is Alt-B-S. I don't believe this is a coincidence.
It's not discriminating against any application, not even the legal ones.
I hope by "application" you mean "use" (noun), as opposed to "software product".
BitTorrent, for example, isn't illegal (I hope). Using it to distribute some specific content might be.
People forget what "unlimited" Internet means when used in marketing access plans. Back in the "old" days, your connection to the Internet was metered by time since everyone pretty much got the maximum available and you didn't have bandwidth tiering you have with today's massive capacities. You usually had X hours of service per month in your plan. This is the "limited" part of the sales pitch. Eventually the ISPs were able to offer "Unlimited" access, meaning you could leave it on 24/7 all month and only pay the monthly fee.
Now some people are clamoring that they were sold "Unlimited" service and they are being cheated. Bullshit. Your still allowed to stay connected for an "unlimited" amount of time which is exactly what your paying for and my guess is that your service contract states this, you get X bandwidth available 24/7. Even then, that 24/7 isn't guaranteed but it's the exception not the rule when there's a problem with connectivity [Insert chosen ISP bashing here].
I'm not saying this is a Good Thing(TM), but it's not like anyone has been cheated. It's just been a case of very slimy marketing by the ISPs.
This was put in place per Comcast's talk at the IETF largely to IMPROVE VoIP service from Vonage et al. You look back to 2006, before this was deployed, and there were lots of complaints about "Comcast is disrupting Vonage and other voip services..."
Those complaints largely dissapeared after Comcast started policing P2P uploads.
Test your net with Netalyzr
In fact, you can say "fire" in a crowded theater, especially if there actually is one. But even if there isn't, you can't be arrested for saying it. Although you do assume some liability for any damages that might result, which even if no one is injured will probably amount to thousands of dollars in re-issued tickets (it was a *crowded* theater, after all).
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
The problem isn't logistics, it's political. ISP's cut deals with local government to ensure they keep their monopoly and eat the whole cake.
Okay, simple example.
Just like their "up to" line, they want to advertise more than they can do while lying, as many businesses do. This is like having a 160mph speedometer on a bicycle. Sure, you can do up to 160mph, or have unlimited usage, but they hid the reality, which is "no, you can't have what we promised or else we will disconnect you".
Oliver Wendell Holmes, the judge writing the Unaninous(sp) brief for the case
used the fire thing as an example.
The private entities in the US operate under the US Constitution. Therefore they
must obey the law as written or ajudicated through precedence. Failing to do
so would open them up to a ton of lawsuits.
The tail shall not wag the dog. We ALLOW these people to do business here, not the
other way around.
And move the TCP part into the application. You can't break a session where there is none to break.
Azureus already has UDP support, but it very rarely falls back to UDP unfortunately.
If they say it's unlimited without telling you there are limits, and then they put a limit on anything , then they are ripping you off. It doesn't matter at all what limits there were 10 years ago, unlimited doesn't just mean one limit has been removed, it means all limits have been removed.
Sure. Post a copy of your service agreement that states your connection is "unlimited" or quit beating the old strawman to death. We're all pretty bored of it by now.
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
Per that PDF, on page 10 Comcast described how they "delay" the packets, using "reset packets." Stop letting them get away with calling forging reset packets "throttling". Instead, they are blocking connections via forgery.
Except, they admit that packets with the reset header are only supposed to be used by the two end computers, and not by any of the routers in between, which should be handled by ICMP.
They say, in that pdf, "As used in our current congestion management practices, the reset packet is used to convey that the system cannot, at that moment, process additional high-resource demands without creating risk of congestion.", which is just crazy.
Reset isn't a "slow down" message, it is a "stop sending me any kind of data on this connection" message.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
If it says it in the advertising, and they don't do it, that is false advertising, which is illegal, REGARDLESS of what the agreement says.
Ok, show me some recent advertising that literally denotes that the service shall be without limitation.
In case you hadn't noticed, the theme here is "put up or shut up" because it's a windy day and that poor strawman is blown to tatters already.
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
The part I liked was how they are degrading customer service to prevent degradation of customer service. Orwell would have loved these guys.
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