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Comcast Outlines New Broadband Policy

Posted by timothy on from the knowledge-is-power dept.

Slatterz writes "US cable provider Comcast has presented its long-term solution for managing broadband traffic. The new system is set at putting to bed a minor scandal that erupted around the company when it was found that Comcast deliberately limited traffic for certain applications. The company said that under its new system, traffic will be analyzed every fifteen minutes. Users who are found to be occupying large amounts of bandwidth will be placed at a lower priority for network access behind users with less bandwidth-intensive traffic. The new system will not replace or be related to the company's earlier installment of bandwidth caps, which limited a user's data intake to 250GB per month."

93 of 350 comments (clear)

  1. Dang... by Kid+Zero · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There are only two games in town: ATT's DSL (slow) and Comcast (Fast, but with strings).

    What's the point of having the internet when you can't do anything on it?

    1. Re:Dang... by Ethanol-fueled · · Score: 2, Funny

      "...traffic will be analyzed every fifteen minutes."

      Then use trial-and-error to find the sweet spot in Comcast's polling interval and automatically throttle your own traffic every 15 minutes for 1 or 2 minutes at a time ;)

      Of course, that dosen't matter if comcast measures your traffic for 14 consecutive minutes out of the 15 minute polling interval :(

    2. Re:Dang... by MBCook · · Score: 4, Informative

      I don't know what you're talking about. Where I live, I have two options.

      1. ATT's DSL: Full rated 6Mbps speed
      2. Comcast: No matter what speed grade, almost never faster than 6Mbps, yet more expensive.

      Beats my old options: Comcast, unreliable ISDN, or 12.6Kbps dial-up.

      My take on this? It's a much better policy than just randomly killing connections that look like they might be doing something that may be using large amounts of bandwidth.

      --
      Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
    3. Re:Dang... by arbiter1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      the program might look at how much you downloaded in that 15 period and if that is the case that idea will be pointless

    4. Re:Dang... by lgw · · Score: 3, Insightful

      At&T's DSL gives me more performance than Comcast will allow you to sustain. Comcast offers a faster burst rate, but how useful is that really? If you're just dowloading a few K, 6M bps is fine.

      But personally I'll never do business with a cable company no matter how bad the alternatives are. The only thing worse than a big telco is a cable company!

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    5. Re:Dang... by Kadin2048 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I think what they're doing is averaging your traffic over 15 minute periods.

      At least that was the impression that I got from reading about it (not from TFA, but from the article on Ars a few days ago).

      --
      "Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
    6. Re:Dang... by peragrin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      right up until your skype or vonage sessions are interperted as too much bandwidth. Also video chat is the kind of thing that will probably set this off.

      lots of high bandwidth low latency connections are required by many programs to provide features that dial up couldn't.

      --
      i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
    7. Re:Dang... by Drakin020 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'm sorry, I didn't know limiting yourself to 250GB a month was "I can't do anything"

      Seriously?

      --
      The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
    8. Re:Dang... by Kadin2048 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The solution then is to rate-limit at the router or TCP stack, or for applications to start being more careful about how much bandwidth they use -- just because a user has 6.0Mbps available for peak speed, doesn't mean that applications should assume that they can or should use as much of it as possible, all the time.

      P2P applications have had rate-limiting controls for a long time; it's probably about time for Skype and video-chat applications to have them too. Skype is particularly bad in this regard because it automatically defaults to the highest-quality codec that a connection supports. While this might make sense on fixed-bandwidth connections, it's not great for the majority of broadband connections, which have the capability of pushing a high peak speed, but shouldn't be expected to sustain that peak for very long. (And this isn't a bad thing or rare, either; lots of "real" internet connections are the same way. You can buy a 100Mb pipe because you occasionally need the full 100 megabits, even though you can't afford to saturate it 24/7. I'd wager most SLAed connections at .coms and .edus are like this.)

      In general, it's a pretty fair policy, especially because it only goes into effect when a neighborhood node starts to become congested. (Unlike their 250GB/mo cap and their old policy, which didn't care whether you were actually competing for resources with anyone else.) If I'm using huge amounts of bandwidth for Skype or video-chat, to the point where my neighbors are being affected even though they're just trying to check their mail and log off, they're not going to care what application I'm using. It's fundamentally no different, to anyone else in my neighborhood, if I'm taking up all the bandwidth on the upstream node with VoIP calls, Linux ISOs, or midget porn. They all have the same effect on my network neighbors, and all should get me throttled.

      What needs to happen, is applications need to get smarter about their bandwidth consumption. If a VoIP program finds itself getting throttled (increased latency), it should try dialing down its bandwidth usage -- by choosing a tighter codec, perhaps -- and seeing if the situation improves.

      --
      "Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
    9. Re:Dang... by ivan256 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It would be really unfortunate if VoIP was considered "too much", considering that VoIP is a low-bandwidth application that depends on latency more than throughput.

      You can easily use more bandwidth casually surfing the web than you ever will talking on the phone using VoIP.

      There is a three orders of magnitude difference between a high-quality VoIP call and a BitTorrent download. It should be easier than trivial for them to configure this so the former doesn't get throttled, but the latter does.

    10. Re:Dang... by cmacb · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What's the point of having the internet when you can't do anything on it?

      The part of the system where you send them money every month is working just fine. I have inside information that they are not planning to disrupt that in any way.

    11. Re:Dang... by superpulpsicle · · Score: 4, Interesting

      So are the people using IPTV screwed? They will be queued worse due to their high bandwidth usage again and again if they watch a long IPTV show. What about households with multiple Youtube users streaming and watching different videos at the same time? Both are completely legal, but seems to something that occupies high bandwidth.

    12. Re:Dang... by B'Trey · · Score: 5, Informative

      Here's an email from one of Comcast's engineers recently sent to Dave Farber's Interesting People mailing list. It clarifies the policy quite well:

      From: "Livingood, Jason"
      Subject: Clarifying Misconceptions of the New Comcast Congestion Mgmt Syste

      Hi Dave

      I wanted to try to clear up a misconception about how the new Comcast congestion management system works. I believe we have both heard people complain that they fear that they will be unable to use their provisioned speeds during off-peak hours, for example, or at all times of the day, or that users are somehow throttled to a set speed. Neither of these two things are correct. Part of the problem appears to be confusion over how a user's traffic enters a lower priority QoS state, so I hope to clarify that here

      In order for any traffic to be placed in a lower priority state, there must first be relatively high utilization on a given CMTS port. A CMTS port is an upstream or downstream link, or interface, on the CMTS in our network. The CMTS is basically an access network router, with HFC interfaces on the subscriber side, and GigE interfaces on the WAN/Internet side. Today, on average, about 275 cable modems share the same downstream port, and about 100 cable modems share the same upstream port (see page 5 of Attachment B of our Future Practices filing with the FCC, available at http://downloads.comcast.net/docs/Attachment_B_Future_Practices.pdf). We define a utilization threshold for downstream and upstream separately. For downstream traffic, a port must average over 80% utilization for 15 minutes or more. For upstream traffic, a port must average over 70% utilization for 15 minutes or more

      When one of these threshold conditions has been met, we consider that individual port (not all ports on the CMTS) to be in a so-called Near Congestion State. This simply means that the pattern of usage is predictive of that network port approaching a point of high utilization, where congestion could soon occur. Then, and only then, do we search the most recent 15 minutes of user traffic on that specific port, in order to determine if a user has consumed more that 70% of their provisioned speed for greater than 15 minutes. By provisioned speed, we mean the "up to" or "burst to" speed of their service tier. This is typically something like (1) 8Mbps downstream / 2Mbps upstream or (2) 6Mbps downstream / 1Mbps upstream

      So how does this work in action? Let's say that a downstream port has been at 85% utilization for more than 15 minutes. That specific downstream port is identified as being in a Near Congestion State since it exceeded an average of 80% over that time. We then look at the downstream usage of the ~275 cable modems using that downstream port. That port has a mix of users that have been provisioned either 8Mbps or 6Mbps, so 70% of their provisioned speed would be either 5.6Mbps or 4.2Mbps, respectively. So let's use the example of a user with 8Mbps/2Mbps service on this port. In order for their traffic to be marked with a lower priority on this downstream port, they must be consuming 5.6Mbps in the downstream direction for 15 minutes or more, while said port is highly utilized

      Once that condition has been met, that user's downstream traffic is now tagged with the lower priority QoS level. This will have *no* effect whatsoever on the traffic of that user, until such time as an actual congestion moment subsequently occurs (IF it even occurs). Should congestion subsequently occur, traffic with a higher priority is handled first, followed by lower priority (and this is not a throttle to X speed)

      I hope this helps. You can others can feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions
      Regards
      Jason Livingood
        - Engineering & Technical Operation

      For verification, you can find the original in the IP Archives. Date of the email is 2008-09-24 12:37:35

      --

      "The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.

    13. Re:Dang... by skroops · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So this only hurts the dumb.

      Every bittorrent client I've ever used has easy to set upstream and downstream limits. Simply set your upstream and downstream to 65% and 75% of you're max connection and you'll never be slowed down.

    14. Re:Dang... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      never? you'll be slowed down by 25-35%, all the time ^_^

    15. Re:Dang... by ChuBie · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I hate to say it, but the above email sounds fair.

      I just hope Comcast implements it as laid out in their email.

    16. Re:Dang... by ChuBie · · Score: 2, Insightful

      One question--when does the system remove that flag from your port.

      For example, is your port still marked with a low QoS value after the trunk/downstream connection is no longer congested?

      Is it removed after 15 minutes, hours, days?

    17. Re:Dang... by rawg · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Strange. My Skype calls only take about 19-30kbps, even with five people on the line. I have a 4.5mbps line. Is there something wrong with your Skype?

      --
      The above is not worth reading.
    18. Re:Dang... by stmfreak · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Not quite. If your QoS on your line is set to higher priority, then when a congestion event is reached, all your packets wait until lower priority packets clear the queue. That could be indefinitely... or at least until the congestion level clears.

      Given Comcast's reputation for overselling and under provisioning, this could be a death sentence for indiscriminate torrent users.

      --
      These opinions guaranteed or your money back.
    19. Re:Dang... by Carnildo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      "Too much bandwidth" is defined as a sustained download of more than 4Mbps or a sustained upload of more than 700kbps, over a period of 15 minutes. That works out to ten simultaneous VoIP calls; I don't know how many video chat streams you'd need to reach it.

      On the download side of things, that corresponds to downloading one CD image every 20 minutes.

      --
      "They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
    20. Re:Dang... by daedae · · Score: 2, Informative

      Let's see... Google calculator tells me my 4.2Mbps is roughly 525KB/s.

      Maybe it's because I only get files in serial, but in the year I've had Comcast I've pretty much never come anywhere near that, especially at a sustained speed.

      (s/I/my friend/g?)

    21. Re:Dang... by Kadin2048 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      In a word, yes.

      The nice thing about the new Comcast policy -- and I say that unsarcastically, because I think it is a good thing -- is that it doesn't care about the kind of traffic you're pushing. It doesn't try to separate out intent; it doesn't care whether what you're doing is "illegal".

      So yes, people watching a lot of YouTube will get throttled. It's even possible that people watching a lot of YouTube will even be throttled before people downloading warez, if the people downloading warez keep their bandwidth under control.

      This is exactly as it should be. It's no good for the ISPs to start turning into content police. For them to determine what content is legal and what's illegal would require intrusive deep-packet inspection, and maybe even blocking encrypted traffic or performing MITMs to get around it. It's far better not to go there and to just count packets.

      Plus, it doesn't matter to your neighbors what, exactly, you're doing with the bandwidth -- if you're hogging the upstream to the point where there's contention, it's irrelevant what happens to be inside your bits, just that there's too many of them.

      --
      "Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
    22. Re:Dang... by Kadin2048 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well, the interesting thing to consider is that there are situations where a node might get congested, but nobody would get throttled. I'd hope that if that situation occurs, Comcast will realize it's a sign that the node is oversubscribed and break it up.

      The QoS deprioritization only kicks in if the whole node is "Near Congestion" (to use their term), and if an individual user is close to pegging the needle for 15+ minutes. It's entirely possible that a node might become congested without meeting the second criteria.

      E.g.: Lets say a node has 300 users connected, and it has a 1Gb/s backhaul. (We'll imagine that all the traffic is either symmetric, or only deal with one direction, just for clarity.) Users only get throttled when they're at 70% of their allotted peak. If each of those 300 users has a 6Mb/s plan, they could all be holding steady just under 70% -- low enough to avoid throttling -- but still saturate the node. In fact, they only have to each be at around 56% utilization for full saturation of the upstream link.

      If Comcast sticks to its word about the throttling cutoffs -- and I admit that coming from Comcast that may be a bit too much to expect -- they won't be able to use it to stave off equipment upgrades forever, in the face of new services that cause large numbers of users to start sucking down bits. If everyone in the neighborhood decides to watch IPTV or do video chat at once, there's going to be contention, and the throttling setup they've created won't do a thing about it.

      --
      "Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
    23. Re:Dang... by Kadin2048 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      One user running Skype isn't that much of a problem -- as you point out, it's not that bandwidth-intensive -- but keep in mind that it's up to ~30kbps per user. (And the usage can go up by 40kbps beyond that if one of the users is a supernode, although admittedly only one user per IP address should do that.) It can pile up to a significant amount if you have a bunch of people using it at the same time.

      But really I was just using Skype as an example of an application that's particularly aggressive about using bandwidth, and doesn't give the user much of a say -- it grabs whatever it can, whenever it can. I'm not sure that's a great design, just fundamentally. But in reality, most of the problems with Skype and Comcast will be related to the overall amount of transfer it creates versus the 250GB limit; I don't think it'll really create that much of an issue with the bandwidth-based throttling. Video services are of a much greater concern. (Also, doesn't Skype do video? I bet that requires a lot more bandwidth.)

      --
      "Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
    24. Re:Dang... by Tacvek · · Score: 2, Insightful

      When it is not congested (congested means 100% utilization, so some packets from somebody must get dropped or delayed) the QOS system has no impact, all your packets are routed the moment they are received, regardless of your QOS low-priority flag.

      I'm pretty sure the QOS low priorty flag lasts only for the 15 minute interval, unless you stay above the thresh-hold and the port stays at near-congestion level, in which case the flag is extended for the next 15 minutes.

      --
      Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
    25. Re:Dang... by rtb61 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The only thing Comcast are trying to do with that policy is implement a masquerade behind which they can throttle a range of customers who refuse to pay extra for premium services. Network analysis which find the most intensive data traffic users (likely already has) and they will specifically be targeted, pay extra or have all your traffic shut down to a trickle every fifteen minutes for what, 2 minutes to start with and, then they will continually up that until, the customer leaves or pays the premium bandwidth fee, pays extra for the actual bandwidth, that Comcast B$ marketing claims to be selling.

      They are going to use that age old pathetic and immature excuse, don't blame us for the time outs, the computer did it. It is all just one B$ marketing campaign after another, all so they can claim to sell something they have no intention of providing all buried behind a maze of contract conditions, limitations, and lobbyists working to protect their ability to basically lie in their marketing.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    26. Re:Dang... by daveime · · Score: 2, Interesting

      but I think real-time streaming (like Youtube) ought to have priority over bulk downloads (like BitTorrent).

      Surely that is not the issue ... if you choose to watch YouTube all day, that is your right, and it is my same right to download the new distro of Redhat or even the latest cracked game from a P2P service.

      For once I think Comcast got something right ... if they have a problem with throughput, then the user who hogs the bandwidth the most gets penalised first - REGARDLESS of what they are using the bits for.

      You want to justify your excessive bandwidth usage by comparing apples and oranges i.e. legal vs "possibly" illegal in this case - but bear in mind NOT EVERYONE who uses P2P is automatically downloading warez / copyrighted stuff / pr0n ...

      Selfish person :-(

  2. Not such a bad idea by Aphoxema · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I can deal with that, it's fair and doesn't really stomp on anyone's feet. So what if users eat up all the available bandwidth? Just make it fair who eats up more than others.

    --
    "Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
    1. Re:Not such a bad idea by RabidMoose · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I agree. This way of load balancing seems incredibly fair. However, the first time I get close to the 250gb cap, I'm heading over to Qwest and finding out how much an FTTP install costs.

    2. Re:Not such a bad idea by BobMcD · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I agree. This way of load balancing seems incredibly fair. However, the first time I get close to the 250gb cap, I'm heading over to Qwest and finding out how much an FTTP install costs.

      Which is EXACTLY the way the free market is intended to work. Comcast gets the business they want, and Qwest gets to sell a service they offer.

      Free markets, FTW.

    3. Re:Not such a bad idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Free markets, you say? They get to use publicly funded infrastructure to rake us over the coals. They block competition. The broadband/telecom market is most decidedly not a free market.

      If you want to see what free market broadband looks like, look at Asian countries. They have 20+ megabit un-metered connections, at a fraction of the price our duopolies grant us. And that's the low end.

    4. Re:Not such a bad idea by LunaticTippy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I must not have read that properly. Did you just say that telcos and cable companies are free market?

      --
      Man, you really need that seminar!
    5. Re:Not such a bad idea by Wildclaw · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yup. As someone who usually complain about these companies not doing things neutrally, I don't really have anything to stand on this time. This is basically how it should work. It is the network neutral way of doing things. Don't analyze the type or destination, but instead just look at the traffic you are causing. If you are using more than your fair share, you get put behind the one who has used less.

      There only is so much bandwidth during primetime and to divide fairly among all users you have to do something. The system mentioned in the article is about as fair as you can get. It doesn't matter if it is video streaming or bittorrent, you shouldn't be able to use more than your fair share. Yes, high quality video streaming is probably hit, but that is because it is an incredibly wasteful type of technology, requiring high bandwidth during primetime when the user online.

      Of course, you can still complain about comcast not providing enough last mile bandwidth, having a too high oversubscription ratio, but that is a different matter. As an actual packet prioritizing scheme, this is a good one.

    6. Re:Not such a bad idea by kefkahax · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I can deal with that, it's fair and doesn't really stomp on anyone's feet. So what if users eat up all the available bandwidth? Just make it fair who eats up more than others.

      It's not fair, because the problem is NOT the p2p users. The problem is the oversubscribed. It's their problem, not their users'. They're just pushing the charges to fix it onto you, by fucking with those of us that use the FULL service, that we pay for.

      I'm not that pissed about it, I'm an American. So, I'm used to getting pissed on and sometimes even shit on, by just about every single utility and government agency we have (DMV). And people call us capitalist [pssshh]. The average American wouldn't know capitalism from facism, and I bet certain people are counting on that. (No, not Comcast, they're probably impartial to capitalism and facism).

      In short: They didn't stop fucking you, they just applied some lube. But, only for certain customers, the rest of us will still be getting the "raw end" of the deal.

      --
      Easy BitCoins
    7. Re:Not such a bad idea by Carnildo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's not fair, because the problem is NOT the p2p users. The problem is the oversubscribed.

      Comcast internet is 6Mbps at $60 a month. A dedicated T1 line is 1.5Mbps at $700 a month. You know why the T1 costs ten times as much even though it's only a quarter as fast? It's not oversubscribed.

      --
      "They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
  3. Backwards? by businessnerd · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Users who are found to be occupying large amounts of bandwidth will be placed at a lower priority for network access behind users with less bandwidth-intensive traffic

    So they're saying that if I am doing something that requires more bandwidth, I will get less bandwidth; and when I don't need much bandwidth, they're going to give me more? I'm really confused by this. Can anyone make sense of this for me?

    --
    "It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
    1. Re:Backwards? by Fulcrum+of+Evil · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, it means that bulk transfers are lower priority than someone checking email, since that's fairly low load and interactive.

      --
      "We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
    2. Re:Backwards? by Count+Fenring · · Score: 2, Interesting

      But doesn't streaming video or audio fit the high-yield/bulk-transfer pattern as well?

      I'm just wondering what method they're using to separate high and low priority.

    3. Re:Backwards? by RobBebop · · Score: 4, Insightful

      when I don't need much bandwidth, they're going to give me more?

      Prioritization is not the same as giving you more bandwidth. You packets are just dispatched through their servers faster than the lower priority ones. The net effect is that you get less bandwidth when the routers are overloaded (which is VERY sensible), but when the routers are not overloaded then you will get the quicker speeds (at least, that would be a fair understanding of how it *should* work).

      The theory is that casual users are more deserving of the higher speeds and more appreciative of getting content quicker, whereas somebody who is spending 15+ minutes downloading a single thing is going to be more forgiving that it takes 4 hours instead of 2 hours to arrive.

      Personally, I think Comcast's goal is to degrade internet streaming video to the point where it matches their cable services with the "Occasional 5 Second Pause" (TM) where the service goes apeshit and becomes unusable.

      Full disclosure: I won't give Comcast a dime, and am waiting patiently for more capable internet to come to my neighborhood. Value = price + quality... and IMHO Comcast is simply a bad value.

      --
      Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
    4. Re:Backwards? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yes, but the FCC says that Comcast must be neutral with respect to application type, so Comcast is complying. If that means that high-bandwidth streaming media gets hosed, well, take that up with the FCC.

    5. Re:Backwards? by RobBebop · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Shouldn't that be more like:: Value = quality / price

      Value is quite obviously maximized when quality is high and price is low, and minimized when quality is low and price is high... so the ratio formula seems to be quite logical.

      However, normalization between quality and price is necessary to make complex decisions that are not mathematical in nature easier to solve. Quality can be measured in lifetime, image quality, speed, or ease-of-use. Price can be measured in fixed or variable costs, cost to repair, and cost to replace. All these factors evaluate together so individual consumers can decide value for themselves (and it varies widely from person to person).

      Thus, "price" and "quality" are reduced to numbers between 0.0 and 1.0 so that summing them together can produce a "value" measurement where a value > 1.0 would indicate a product which should be considered for purchase.

      For me, I don't think Comcast will ever get a 1.0 for value (on my arbitrary rating system).

      --
      Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
    6. Re:Backwards? by Wildclaw · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It is simple. The more bandwidth you use, the less priority you will get.

      Streaming audio, not so much. It doesn't use that much bandwidth.

      Streaming video will suffer. Really, those people who download huge files during primetime (mainly streaming that can't schedule downloads) are hurting the network far more than someone who download/upload large amounts of data during the night. The p2p bogeyman is getting tired of taking all the blame.

    7. Re:Backwards? by Skrapion · · Score: 2, Informative

      Clarification: when they say "lower priority", they mean "higher latency". It shouldn't noticeably affect streaming video or torrents, because those require high bandwidth, but not low latency. It's not the end of the world if you need to wait 5 seconds for your YouTube video to start streaming, as long as it doesn't pause to buffer while you're trying to watch the video.

      On the other hand, VOIP and online games -- which don't require high bandwidth -- will benefit from better latency than they currently get. (As I understand it, the telcos have already been doing this for VOIP, but not in an unbiased way.)

      This is actually a sudden outbreak of common sense. Of course, Comcast still has bandwidth caps, but that's nothing new if you were around in the days of dial-up. Dial-up was closer to a free market, though, which is how we ended up with unlimited bandwidth deals to begin with.

      Up here in Canada, Bell has been forced to lease their bandwidth to third-party ISPs, and that helps (we probably have two dozen options for ISPs in Toronto) but it's not quite ideal.

      --
      The details are trivial and useless; The reasons, as always, purely human ones.
    8. Re:Backwards? by ChrisA90278 · · Score: 2, Informative

      "So they're saying that if I am doing something that requires more bandwidth, I will get less bandwidth; and when I don't need much bandwidth, they're going to give me more? I'm really confused by this. Can anyone make sense of this for me?"

      You got it wrong. If you are using a lot of bandwidth you do NOT get throttled down. You are simply put at the end of the queue and a few shorter network packets are allowed to go to the front.

      What they have is a fixed size pipe. When they see more demend for bandwidth then they have tey go into "rationing mode". In this mode they let the user with the lowest bandwidth requirements in front. This is a very old idea and comes from the scheduling algorithms used on operating systems from about the 1960's called "shortest job first" doing this can be shown to make the entire system seem more responsive to the greatest number of users. What they are doing is maximizing the amount of customer satisfaction.

  4. OK, but can we help? by SleptThroughClass · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Low priority for large transfers is fine with me, but can we mark which data should be high priority? So we can download a movie from Comcast-Buy-A-Movie-Service in the background while online with Halo 3?

    1. Re:OK, but can we help? by Pathwalker · · Score: 4, Informative
      RFC 1349 describes how you can specify priority for IP packets:

      The types defined in the RFC are:
      • minimize delay
      • maximize throughput
      • maximize reliability
      • minimize monetary cost
      • normal service

      I believe an extension also had a "maximize security" option as well.

      Alas, almost nothing supports these flags, and I believe a later RFC has proposed reusing the QOS bits in the IP header for an incompatible use.

    2. Re:OK, but can we help? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Unfortunately, I believe they are more interested in forcing you to buy movies from their OnDemand cable TV system or watch TV over their digital TV, rather than using the internet to get movies and TV which may, or more likely may not be from their service.

      This, I believe, is why they are limiting downloads to 250G a month. So you don't go online to watch your TV shows and movies and not need their 65+ a month digital TV. They want to charge you lots for cable TV.

      Why increase capacity when you can charge more money instead?! That's what they think.

      Anyone else agree? Disagree?

  5. What...? by MikeRT · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What's the point of having the internet when you can't do anything on it?

    What legal activity are you doing from home that takes over 250GB of data and requires that you always have a blazing fast connection? Sheesh, give them a chance to balance this out so that a few miscreants can't ruin it for everyone else.

    1. Re:What...? by Fulcrum+of+Evil · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So suddenly any large use of BW is illegal? Way to distract from the point.

      --
      "We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
    2. Re:What...? by ajparr · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If you must know, I'm jerking off to time-delayed video of myself jerking off sent to my server on the other side of the world and back. I do this for 8-12 hours each day. ...then again... What business is it of ANYONE's what I'm doing with my bandwidth? What ever happend to innocent until proven guilty? Sheesh!

    3. Re:What...? by Pathwalker · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Offsite backups.

      My disk array syncs to a disk array about 2000 miles away, and that one syncs to mine.

      I used about 230G last month, and that was the largest part.

      The next largest component was torrents of lectures (such as this machine learning class offered by Stanford).

    4. Re:What...? by HiVizDiver · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm not sure why this was modded -1, Flamebait. The parent makes a good point - as I posted in a semi-related thread a couple of days ago, I rented a movie from the Playstation store as an HD rental. The filesize was 6275 MB (around 6 GB). This download definitely saturated my connection, as I had the whole thing in around 2 hours. I realize that Comcast has a way of telling (or maybe they don't, who knows) P2P traffic from a straight download, but ultimately the question is the same - if I'm blasting a 6 GB file download in an hour or two, does that piss them off? Because I'm going to be mad if it does, since it was a perfectly legitimate use of the service that I'm paying for (vs. some "gray area" activities).

    5. Re:What...? by vux984 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You could always upgrade to a class of service that doesn't have the caps, or has caps in line with what you require.

      A system in which people like you who use 100s or thousands of gigabytes per month pay more than people who use 10 or 15 a year seems entirely fair to me.

    6. Re:What...? by c0d3g33k · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I can't speak for everyone, but I do bioinformatics/computational biology and often telecommute when consulting or to continue the days work at home when deadlines are tight. Depending on the project or analysis task, having local copies of public scientific databases is very useful (eg. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Database/). These databases are rather large and are growing rapidly. Since terabyte drives have become affordable, it's become feasible to maintain up-to-date personal copies at home rather than accessing them via NFS at work or working with representative subsets.

      Perfectly legal, legitimate and probably more useful to society than streaming HD content. This is the kind of stuff we used the internet for back before it hit the bigtime, so as legitimate a use of the internet as what people now consider "normal use" (web browsing, shopping, watching video, streaming music, and yes I do those too).

    7. Re:What...? by kimvette · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Uh, let's see:

        - Downloading F/OSS software?
        - hulu.com?
        - Various TV networks?
        - Netflix?
        - VOIP?

      Face it: (IMHO) Comcast is afraid of streaming video sites, and are using P2P as an excuse to curb competition. They do not want to happen to them what happened to land line telephone companies when cellular and VOIP took off.

      --
      The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
    8. Re:What...? by Wildclaw · · Score: 2, Insightful

      if I'm blasting a 6 GB file download in an hour or two, does that piss them off? Because I'm going to be mad if it does, since it was a perfectly legitimate use of the service that I'm paying for (vs. some "gray area" activities).

      If you do it during primetime when everyone else is on and the bandwidth is saturated, Yes. And by pissed off, I mean that your traffic will get less priority and slow down to avoid you hogging all the availible bandwidth.

      If you are doing it during the night when there is plenty of availible bandwidth, No. Sure, you will still get deprioritized, but it doesn't matter as the bandwidth isn't saturated and you will be just another bulk downloader making use of the less "crowdy" nights.

    9. Re:What...? by Skye16 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Then shouldn't the people who use 10 or 15 a year pay considerably less than they are now?

      After all, the only reason pricing is at this point is because they reasoned that the people using the service at only 5% capacity would effectively subsidized the others who use it at 100% capacity.

      If you're now making those who would use it at 100% capacity pay more for service, shouldn't those who are only using a fraction of the network capacity get a major discount to their connectivity?

    10. Re:What...? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Making backups is hardly a "business class task"...

    11. Re:What...? by UncleTogie · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You are the reason these policies have been put into place. By using consumer internet for business class tasks, you have screwed us all.

      Yes, how DARE he use a resource that was underspec'd and oversold! It's all his fault that Comcast uses shady business practices!

      ...now get off our lawn...

      --
      Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
    12. Re:What...? by vux984 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Then shouldn't the people who use 10 or 15 a year pay considerably less than they are now?

      Perhaps a bit less, but not necessarily considerably less. (After all, there is considerable fixed overhead to a DSL line on top of the bandwidth, those 5% bandwidth users consume telephone support, need their "modems" fixed, have line trouble, etc at the same rate as the 100% users.)

      After all, the only reason pricing is at this point is because they reasoned that the people using the service at only 5% capacity would effectively subsidized the others who use it at 100% capacity.

      That's true to a point, but its a gross oversimplification.

      If you're now making those who would use it at 100% capacity pay more for service, shouldn't those who are only using a fraction of the network capacity get a major discount to their connectivity?

      Let me give you an example to illustrate my point.

      Lets say we have a service that costs $20 for the average person. But instead we charge $21. So if 1000 people pay 21$ instead of 20$ for a service, that subsidizes the 1% of people who uses $120 worth of service. Are you with me?

      So costs are: 990 people use $20 worth of service ($19800) plus 10 people use $120 worth of service ($1200) = $21000.
      While revenue is: 1000 people * $21 = $21000.

      So the low end users are subsidizing the high end users, and we 'break even'.
      That's more or less how the subsidy works in reality.

      So if we start charging those 10 people $120 directly. We can afford to knock a whole dollar off everyone else's plan? Big flipping deal. That gets lost in the noise.

      (The "noise" being price increases due to inflation, cost decreases due to modern technology, it gets used to cover some new 'feature' like anti-spam on the server, or free antivirus for subscribers, etc, etc).

    13. Re:What...? by bucky0 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      He's not talking about syncing up a 15gig home directory. He's talking about producing 230gigs of data per month in deltas to whatever he's generating (I hope he's using rsync and not something naive).

      Backing up 230 gigs/month is certainly business class usage. If "business" isn't a good adjective use "large" if you want. You don't have to be making money to need "business" features.

      --

      -Bucky
    14. Re:What...? by cawpin · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Do you fucking work for Comcast? That's exactly what they'll tell him. "Oh, off site backups are considered a business function. You'll have to upgrade to our business service to eliminate the interruptions."

      It has nothing to do with what "function" off site backups are. It has to do with raw bandwidth and resource usage.

      And forget whether its called 'home' or 'business' that's just marketing and branding. Think of home as 'small' and 'business' as medium and 'enterprise' as large if it makes you feel better. If you are moving 100's of GB per month then you aren't 'small' anymore, get over it.

      So they should be able to slow my traffic down because I'm trying to actually use their advertised bandwidth? How is me wanting what I was sold unreasonable?

    15. Re:What...? by Albanach · · Score: 3, Insightful

      How is me wanting what I was sold unreasonable?

      You were sold a resedential service with residential terms and conditions.

      Your terms include:

      • The Service is for personal and non-commercial residential use only. Therefore, Comcast reserves the right to suspend or terminate Service accounts where bandwidth consumption is not characteristic of a typical residential user of the Service as determined by the company in its sole discretion. Common activities that may cause excessive bandwidth consumption in violation of this Policy include, but are not limited to, numerous or continuous bulk transfers of files and other high capacity traffic

      So you bought a product that bulk transfers of files may be restricted. Why are you complaining when Comcast are giving you exactly what you bought? As others have said, they probably also sell products more suited to your needs.

    16. Re:What...? by Kadin2048 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The system (based on everything I've read) does not care, or try to detect, the contents of your packets.* It doesn't care whether what you're downloading is legal or not.

      This is exactly as it should be, since it doesn't matter to other people on the local node what you're doing, only that you're hogging bandwidth. Legal movies, illegal movies, videoconferencing, a totally opaque VPN connection ... it doesn't matter. They all have the same effect on other users of the network, and should all be treated exactly the same way.

      * Or so they claim. Some people have noted that the hardware they're using comes from a company most noted for its sophisticated and purpose-built DPI products, which seems like a bit of an odd choice of vendor for something that's really quite simple. I don't have a dog in that fight, but I'm taking them at face value for now.

      --
      "Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
    17. Re:What...? by Kadin2048 · · Score: 2, Informative

      So they should be able to slow my traffic down because I'm trying to actually use their advertised bandwidth? How is me wanting what I was sold unreasonable?

      This is a little unreasonable, yeah, because they don't advertise anything that ought to make an intelligent person instantly assume that they can run their 6 or 8Mb connection all-out, 24/7. It's been a very long time since I've seen them advertise "unlimited" anything. There might have been a point, a few years back, when you could make an argument that they'd advertised unlimited service and ought to deliver on that, but it hasn't been the case for a while.

      They are very careful, at least in every ad I've seen, about only advertising peak speeds as being "up to" or "burst." The connection is capable of it, in other words, but it's not meant to be used that way continuously. If this offends you, that's fine, but it shouldn't be any more offensive than a car manufacturer printing up the power generated by an engine while at redline, or a CD/DVD drive manufacturer highlighting their burst speed while burying their sustained speed in the small print. If your problem is with advertising as it is carried out in the U.S. today generally, than I'm all with you. But Comcast isn't that much worse than the norm.

      While I wouldn't mind if some states' Departments of Consumer Protection mandated that ISPs display their continuous, sustainable transfer rates alongside and in the same size/typeface as their burst speeds, there's no requirement for them to do anything like that right now. (It'd be amusing to see them advertising "101kB/s" internet, since that's what the 250GB cap works out to be.) It's up to consumer to read the small print and know what they're buying.

      --
      "Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
  6. Re:250GB by Fulcrum+of+Evil · · Score: 3, Informative

    set up mrtg to poll your router and make your own graphs.

    --
    "We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
  7. Legal use of big bandwidth paying the price... by eepok · · Score: 5, Insightful

    1) User pays for their own broadband access (cost of bandwidth). $$
    2) User pay for Netflix a service contract (which includes more bandwidth costs). $$
    3) User uses the bandwidth for which he paid by watching streaming movies and suddenly the movies don't load anymore... because it takes a bit of bandwidth to download movies.
    4) User buys digital movies from Amazon et al? $$
    5) User gets kicked from ISP because he paid enough to use what bandwidth he used.

    Sounds like a scam to me!

    Why offer high speed internet if you're not going to provide high speed internet?

    1. Re:Legal use of big bandwidth paying the price... by hurfy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Silly user...

      Comcast users are supposed to have cable TV and use pay-per-view from them...

      If they cripple your speed as a heavy user does it go back up after 15 minutes of being a crippled light user? Rinse and Repeat?

      So a 6MB Comcast tier provides 12MB for 1 min, 6MB for 14 min, and then 1MB(or whatever it is) for 15 min ???

  8. Cool! by BigBlueOx · · Score: 5, Funny

    So when NBC or ABC/ESPN/Disney or CBS/Viacom or Sony Pictures or Time Warner comes to me and says "Look at our really great new streaming movie/TV/video service! Pay only $29.95/mo and you can watch anything anyTIME ALL THE TIME!!!", I'll say "Sorry. Can't do streaming video. It puts me in the Comcast doghouse. I just play Nethack."?

    Ok

  9. Sold Vs Delivered by WTSane · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I am upset by the fact that they have now told their users that if they try and use the bandwidth that they were sold for too long a period of time, thier service will be degraded until they fall in to the 50% bracket as compared to all other users. If they can not support speeds that they are advertizing, they should not be selling them. If you have a 250GB a month limit, you should be able to use the speeds you are paying for until you reach that limit.

  10. Just got Netflix.. by Duncan+Blackthorne · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ..and I guess I won't make any plans to watch streaming movies through them, even if I have the bandwidth to do so in high quality BECAUSE 15 minutes into the movie they'll cut the speed back (to WHAT, by the way?) and there goes my movie. Not acceptable. I'd recommend everyone with Comcast get a Netflix subscription, and watch movies online. Then if and when it gets screwed up, complain to Netflix AND Comcast about it. Hopefully they'll eventually get tired of the complaints from customers AND from Netflix, and cut this nonsense out, too.

  11. You mean proper QoS? by Abcd1234 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Wow, what a crazy idea. If only they could have deployed this sooner! Pity the technology has only been available for far longer than bittorrent has been a problem...

  12. Now THATS a winning business strategy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    You mean I can get bandwidth caps AND high latency in one premium priced package requiring up-front install fees and a complex long-term commitment that can change at any time?

    What a great deal! Where do I sign up?!?

  13. So they are saying... by HerculesMO · · Score: 2, Informative

    That all the World of Warcraft players, when installing the new patch for the Lich King, will now be subject to slower download rates cuz they need a 1GB patch?

    Woo hoo!?!

    --
    The price is always right if someone else is paying.
  14. Re:Pretty sure this was in place for a while now by Z34107 · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...As my cable modem service slows to a CRAWL if I have a torrent open for more than 20-25 minutes. Once you terminate the d/l, it stays that way for 20-25 minutes or so... The throttling is so severe that DNS requests time-out... Not really that awesome of a solution, IMO.

    That's probably not throttling. Same thing happens to my cousin, and the same thing happens to me (though not as bad.) Every seed and leech in that torrent is still hammering your connection and timing out, requesting what parts you're advertising. At least that's what my firewall logs seem to suggest.

    Power cycle your cable modem and get a new IP address. Your former cloud will no longer be DDoSing your connection.

    --
    DATABASE WOW WOW
  15. This Statement Is False by DynaSoar · · Score: 2, Informative

    "Comcast deliberately limited traffic for certain applications."

    That's wrong. It shouldn't be in past tense. Some IPs on Comcast space still drop p2p connection after 30 seconds. Dropping is common. Dropping consistently at 30 +/- 5 seconds from those IP blocks is too much coincidence to bear.

    "The new system will not replace or be related to the company's earlier installment of bandwidth caps, which limited a user's data intake to 250GB per month."

    Of course it won't replace their previous 'solution'. It will apply to uploading, as does their connection dropping, not to downloads.

    If they can get their quotas to fly, they'll next offer to keep users off their slowdown list for a fee. That way they can charge users more without having to up their bandwidth.

    --
    "I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
  16. Look. by Drakin020 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If you seriously think you are going to exceed 250GB a month, spend the extra money and get a business account. If you are that heavy of an internet user, moving to 70 bucks a month or so shouldn't be that big of a deal.

    --
    The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
    1. Re:Look. by BulletMagnet · · Score: 3, Informative

      If you seriously think you are going to exceed 250GB a month, spend the extra money and get a business account. If you are that heavy of an internet user, moving to 70 bucks a month or so shouldn't be that big of a deal.

      Guess what, I have the Comcast Business 16/2 Account at home - and we got the "You now get 250GB of monthly bandwidth " e-mail just like everyone else....

  17. One thing to consider by Allnighterking · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Cable Internet, as configured by Comcast (bombast) has a fixed ceiling for how much traffic can flow through it's network without interfering with TV/phone. More people can watch a pseudo HD TV show, on the cable than can fairly share the bandwidth. So in the case of Comcast they are pulling an airline trick. In order to ensure max revenue they also "over book" the line. Problem is as time goes on more an more people are using their internet connection for more than e-mail.

    Now on a airplane you can "bump" passengers. However in the case of bandwidth there is no bump available. The only options they have are to either put in more lines/equipment (quite often impossible due to community regulations and available space in underground cable easements) or drop customers. Both a and b won't sit well with the board. The only remaining options are to not renew customers who leave. (difficult since it also cuts into TV/phone revenues) or they can do what they are doing and refuse to service properly existing customers.

    Problem for many is that it comes down to a choice between Darth and Adolf. Chose your darkside. But at least on ADSL you know that the bandwidth you use has little affect on anyone but people in your household.

    --

    I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.

  18. I know a fix for this by unity100 · · Score: 3, Informative

    its called "class action lawsuit" - it works !

    --
    Read radical news here
  19. short version: by Tumbleweed · · Score: 3, Funny

    "Broadband: You can't have any(tm)."

  20. Give me what I want by Mizchief · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I want my 10Mbs when I want it and for as long as I want it. If the $77 I pay per month isn't enough to build the infrastructure to handle that then charge more and I will pay it untill another company offers me something better. Don't offer me 10mbs which I pay $30 extra a month for, then try to shame me accepting anything less because i'm a "greedy bandwidth hog". I want what you sell and i'm willing to pay for it. If your supply can't meet my demands then prepair to be replaced.

  21. Re:Upgrade so they can throttle? by beowulfy · · Score: 2, Funny

    OK good point. Then can I get a 20% reduction in my bill? That would be too fair I suppose.....

    --
    "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -Hunter S. Thompson
  22. Class Action by jmichaelg · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm thinking the same thing and am not laughing - don't know why your post was moderated as 'funny.'

    Comcast is selling bandwidth and, because they can't deliver what they've sold, is resorting to prioritization algorithms. If Comcast's problem is some users are using what they've been sold and that's overloading Comcast's ability to deliver, Comcast needs to either increase their ability to deliver or admit they can't deliver what they've sold.

    Admitting the later is tantamount to admitting to fraud.

  23. unlimited usage. that was my contract. by DragonTHC · · Score: 2, Informative

    That was their selling point.

    I want a lower price. What makes ISPs so brash that they can just alter the terms of an agreement to suit them and we're expected to pay the same price.

    --
    They're using their grammar skills there.
  24. Re:Pretty sure this was in place for a while now by burning-toast · · Score: 2, Informative

    Check your outbound usage.

    Considering cable connections are asynchronous if your outbound pipe fills up your whole connection will slow to a crawl since the acknowledgment packets will be unable to be delivered outbound in a timely manner to tell the nodes you are downloading from to send more data.

    Basically if you have 500KB/s inbound and 100KB/s outbound, if you saturate all 100KB/s outbound you can expect your inbound traffic to drop to 100KB/s or less as well as increasing the latency over the connection to 2 seconds or more (on some connections).

    The way to fix this is to throttle your outbound maximum traffic in your BT client to less than 80% of your maximum cap as tested through sites like speedtest.tds.net or whatever your favorite site is. This should allow for overhead traffic like ACK packets to leave your network in a timely manner.

  25. Will they fix oversaturation? by GoodNicksAreTaken · · Score: 2, Informative

    Having worked for a cable MSO I know that oversaturation of a node is a huge issue. Comcast as well as the MSO I worked for refused to do anything about it. Bresnan's NOCs were always complaining about this to the higher ups. Now that they are going to apply QoS to those using large amounts of bandwidth, are they going to install more equipment or are they going to continue to put 5 times the number of subscribers on a CMTS by the formula that Cisco provides? Or are they just going to have everyone permanently at lowest priority because they are always "congested" because they screw the customer by saturating nodes even when customers constantly complain.

  26. Re:ENCRYT, ENCRYPT, ENCRYPT by gatkinso · · Score: 2, Informative

    All they need to know is that there is alot of it - they don't care what it is.

    --
    I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
  27. Just another reason.. by __aahurc460 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Why I want FiOS. Verizon when are you coming?!

  28. Re:Why by Tacvek · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If you had read the other messages you would find out that this has absolutely no impact to any user except when the comcast router port (sevicing ~250 modems) reaches 100% utilization. When that happens some of somebody's packets must be delayed (or if the router runs out of memory dropped).

    Those who have been using a sustained (average) of over 75% of their advertised peak bandwidth for the 15 minute window get lower priority, meaning the other packets get routed first. This means your latency increases, although your bandwidth does not necessarily decrease unless the router runs out of memory and starts dropping packets, or the delays cause your packets to time-out. In any event, this is just applying a well known process scheduling technique to packet scheduling.

    This is in fact a far more fair system than having no such system, because the least number of people are affected when congestion occurs, unless the non-flagged uses combined bandwidth exceeds the total node bandwidth. In that case, the flagged users might be starved for bandwidth (depending on the system used, Comcast is not clear about that), and the non-flagged users would begin to have increased latency. Comcast's analysis of bandwidth utilization show that that scenario virtually never occurs in reality.

    --
    Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
  29. Re:Comcast, UPDATE YOUR SHITTY NETWORK by Tacvek · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Fuck comcast. Every 15 minutes its going to check to see who is using the bandwidth and then limit that person? What if no one else is using that bandwidth? Can that person who is using it without being limited?

    Yes. The limits only apply when congestion occursm which is to say the port in comcast's router reaches 100 percent, requiring at least some of the packets received to be delayed. This is in no way throttling, as the impact is based on total network utilization. In non-peak hours, this policy has EXACTLY ZERO IMPACT.

    --
    Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
  30. Re:In other words - we still oversell our bandwidt by Tacvek · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I really don't see the problem, as long one is made aware of this fact, and realize that they are buying oversubscribed bandwidth. But please realize that the internet backbones are oversubscribed, so there is no way to truly get bandwidth that is not oversubscribed at some level. This packet prioritizing scheme is entirely reasonable, and similar systems are in place on the internet backbones, and other high level routers. Comcast's real problem is the transfer cap, which is completely absurd.

    --
    Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
  31. yes they are limiting it to 250GB by Douglas+Goodall · · Score: 2, Informative

    Dear Comcast High-Speed Internet Customer, We appreciate your business and strive to provide you with the best online experience possible. One of the ways we do this is through our Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). The AUP outlines acceptable use of our service as well as steps we take to protect our customers from things that can negatively impact their experience online. This policy has been in place for many years and we update it periodically to keep it current with our customers' use of our service. On October 1, 2008, we will post an updated AUP that will go into effect at that time. In the updated AUP, we clarify that monthly data (or bandwidth) usage of more than 250 Gigabytes (GB) is the specific threshold that defines excessive use of our service. We have an excessive use policy because a fraction of one percent of our customers use such a disproportionate amount of bandwidth every month that they may degrade the online experience of other customers. 250 GB/month is an extremely large amount of bandwidth and it's very likely that your monthly data usage doesn't even come close to that amount. In fact, the threshold is approximately 100 times greater than the typical or median residential customer usage, which is 2 to 3 GB/month. To put it in perspective, to reach 250 GB of data usage in one month a customer would have to do any one of the following: