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Comcast's New Throttling Plan Uses Trigger Conditions, Not Silent Blocking
clang_jangle writes with this excerpt from The Inquirer outlining Comcast's new traffic-throttling scheme, based on information from Comcast's latest FCC filing. "Its network throttling implements a two-tier packet queueing system at the routers, driven by two trigger conditions. Comcast's first traffic throttling trigger is tripped by using more than 70 per cent of your maximum downstream or upstream bandwidth for more than 15 minutes. Its second traffic throttling trigger is tripped when the Cable Modem Termination System you're hooked-up to – along with up to 15,000 other Comcast subscribers – gets congested, and your traffic is somehow identified as being responsible. Tripping either of Comcast's high bandwidth usage rate triggers results in throttling for at least 15 minutes, or until your average bandwidth utilisation rate drops below 50 per cent for 15 minutes."
Comcast's first traffic throttling trigger is tripped by using more than 70 per cent of your maximum downstream or upstream bandwidth for more than 15 minutes.
Eh? In scandinavia countries new laws will state that "the speed of the line must be atleast 75% of the said one during 24 hour measurement period". And you get throttled with comcast if you're actually using more 70% of what you should have? Why do you put up with this shit?
I'm only allowed to use 70% of the bandwidth that I pay for... for less than 15 minutes? Otherwise I can use as much as I want as long as I stay below half?
How can they advertise xx mbps when you can only use said speed for 15 minutes? Shouldn't it be advertised as a burst speed with a real speed of 70% of burst speed.
so you sell me a package that advertises a maximum download speed of X, but if i use it for 15 minutes straight you will take it away for 15 minutes?
so i have to use less than 70% of X at all times or risk having my service interrupted. hmm, that seems like it is a little one-sided.
We apparently here don't believe in customer service, or quality of service, just monopolies.
How far down are they throttling? Down to 50% capacity? Or REALLY far down?
10 mbps on a 20 mbps line I can understand and live with
100kbps on a 20 mbps line I can't
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
What if you throttle your own connection for 5 seconds every 14 minutes? (No, I don't agree with the policy. At all.)
Error 001
Security Scan and Virus Detection do not work with your operating system.
In Soviet Russia, network throttling trigger trip YOU!
Falsely advertising. Isn't that what this really comes down to? It seems like Comcast is allowed to do what they want with the service they provide. But they need to advertise it correctly.
Not sure about the monopoly bits though.
Clearly the answer is to never go above 69% of your maximum upload speed. Too bad it is hard to manage all that when you are seeding 30 torrents at once that may have new leechers at any time. Good thing I download most things in less than 15 minutes though so I don't have to worry about that. Oh and I don't have Comcast.
I hope I will still be able to watch youtube and Netflix streaming. I only have the 768 kbit/s service, so streaming video really does use more than 70% of my bandwidth. Waiting another few minutes for an ISO to download is one thing, but losing streaming video would really stink.
So you've hit the 250GB cap, but you aren't a pirate. You pay for everything you consume - including bandwidth. Your only crime is that you went to another company for video service. You like your Apple TV and the iTunes store, or you like using a slingbox, or you like movies on demand from your Roku, or your DirecTV receiver.
All of these technologies may cause you to run over your cap, and they all have one thing in common - they directly compete with Comcast's video services.
Now Comcast appears to be using their broadband monopoly, in the form of transfer caps, to discourage the use of competing services.
If this isn't the very definition of an abusive monopoly, I don't know what is.
-ted
So if I'm watching video or using VoIP for more than 15 minutes I'll get put in the lower priority queue? And I'll lose frames or drop calls?
Oh wait, Comcast wants to sell me cable TV and VoIP that doesn't get messed up after 15 minutes, but asks a large fee for it? I think I see what's going on here.
//TODO: signature
From the company that brought you Power Boost. Introducing Power Drain!
What the hell is the point of having download/upload speeds if you can't utilize them.
This article is from January. Maybe it got throttled somewhere.
... or if you do and have a 10-minute power blip, expect to get throttled. Well, assuming Comcast's equipment actually stays up during the power blip. I've seen it go both ways depending on exactly where and how the power drop hits.
Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
That is the answer. You're only getting what you really payed for. FUCK the DMCA.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
I know there will be lots of complaints about throttling, and they are probably valid. But before that starts I'd like to point out that this kind of throttling actually makes sense! I just want to know why it never occurred to them before to implement these kind of simple rules before.
If they are going to "throttle" my service, it seems only fair for me to "throttle" my payments.
"Oh, you've been billing 100% of the advertised rate for the last 4 months? I'm going to have to cut you down to 50% until your annual average is under 75%..."
This just keeps getting worse and worse...surely there must be something we can do to end this. (not a comcast user)
Can anyone explain the difference between 'Priority Best Effort' (PBE) queueing and 'Best Effort' (BE) queueing? If a node isn't saturated, are the BE packets delayed and if it is saturated will they just not arrive?
>>>when the Cable Modem Termination System you're hooked-up to - along with up to 15,000 other Comcast subscribers - gets congested, and your traffic is somehow identified as being responsible.
>>>
What if it's prime-time and all 15000 people decided to watch Heroes at the same time. Why should I be targeted just because I decided to watch both Heroes and CSI on two separate windows? This is a case of everybody being at fault, not just one person.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
As worded we see "by using more than 70 per cent of your maximum downstream or upstream bandwidth for more than 15 minutes"
Which would imply that a few seconds gap of less than 70% traffic every 15 minutes would allow you to go at 100% for the rest of the time.
I bet it is actually done as "using more than 70 percent bandwidth averaged over 15 minutes". In which case 12 minutes of 100% followed by 3 minutes of silence is 12/15 -> 80% usage.
And also they don't mean a short burst that uses 100% of the load 5 sec out of every minute for 15 minutes.
So they are talking average bandwidth load vs short term load.
Typical non-technical notice not able to conceive the difference between throughput usage and bandwidth capacity. But then they want to sell you the capacity but not the usage.
This I don't like, but I understand. If this happens often Comcast should be upping capacity, but as a short-term solution the principle seems reasonable and fair (putting aside the filtering looking a bit extreme).
This however appears to be a solution without requiring there to be a problem. Being penalised regardless of whether there is congestion or not, simply for utilising three-quarters of what you paid for. The description in TFA does seem to imply that if there is no congestion the actual bandwidth won't change too much, but I guess it would significantly impact gaming lag (particularly if you're hosting).
I live in the SF Bay area, which is mostly Comcast country, but I'm really lucky to be in a city that has municipal cable. I have 12 mpbs down with no throttling. If there's a transfer cap, I've never run up against it.
I suspect what's going on with Comcast is their subscribers and bandwidth use are growing faster than they can (or at least want to) add capacity, so they're solving the problem with throttling. As a network engineer in a previous career life, I have a certain amount of sympathy for them in this case. Their bandwidth demands may be growing faster than they can add capacity while having their Internet business remain profitable. Throttling heavy users is one solution, and they are far from the first ISP to do so. The ISP I worked for 10 years ago did it in some cases. Our TOS allowed it in all cases, but it was usually only enforced in cases where a particular user was being regularly problematic.
Of course, my municipal cable provider seems to have no problem maintaining infrastructure, and IIRC they charge about the same as Comcast, so...
However, I do take issue with applying such a throttle after only 15 minutes. For most people, that's not long enough to download an install CD ISO (I can do it, since I usually see download speeds >= 1 megabyte/sec for ISOs) but I don't think most Comcast users get a connection as fast as mine; correct me if I'm wrong). Since I'm sort of a distro whore, I tend to download a lot of install ISOs. For distros that install from DVD, that 15 minutes is even worse. I think the throttling threshold should be at least 30 minutes.
I smell class action Sherman Antitrust suit. Or is this a violation of Clayton? I always forget what falls under which. Either way, this is most DEFINITELY a violation of one or both.
I read the FCC paper.. the summary is full of errors. The individual user does not get throttled until the entire CTMS port is in a congested state (that's 80% downstream, 70% upstream). And 'throttled' is a loose term.. if the bandwidth is available you get it. You are throttled if there are lower volume users on the shared pipe, and even then they just get a higher priority. Depending on how bad the congestion is, you might not even notice this.
If I torrent anything my cable modem will lose its connection. I can go for weeks at a time with no problem but if I decide to torrent a TV show I missed my connection will be dead within 20 minutes and I have to power cycle the modem. It is very annoying.
Comcast rolled this out nearly a year ago.
And its not throttling, its a fairness mechanism: It means that light users won't get outcompeted by heavy users, but heavy users shouldn't get starved out unless things are really REALLY bad.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Though you're right, Comcast will argue that it's only pirates that they're trying to limit. And since the people making the laws don't understand how computers work, they stand a good chance of winning. It will be interesting to see if the FCC's new net neutrality regulations will be applied here.
If you've got a big download going, you're screwed until it's done. It'd be faster to break the files up into chunks and really dance around the timing.
That's crap.
During the time that a subscriber's traffic is assigned the lower priority status, such traffic will not be delayed so long as the network segment is not actually congested. If, however, the network segment becomes congested, such traffic could be delayed.
So what they are really doing is lowering your priority. If there is no real congestion then you notice no difference. If things get saturated then your packets are delayed before other peoples.
Makes a lot of sense. You get burstable speed, and bursts are up to 15 minutes. I'm not on Comcast, but this would make me switch if comcast were in my area. Thatnks for 15 minute downloads at full speed.
It sounds reasonable to me. If it doesn't, you may need to accept the fact that you're not at all guaranteed that you can get your full 6Mb download bandwidth 24/7. If you thought you did, sorry; you misunderstood, possibly because of shady (but probably not illegal) advertising, in which case I don't blame you for being angry. But a reliably 6Mb connection is vastly more expensive than the $50/month you're paying, so your anger is akin to being disappointed that the 120 MPH car you bought isn't guaranteed to make your 10 mile commute in 5 minutes during rush hour.
Lets do a little math. Good video over the net is 2 Mbps for Netflix. At that rate, this is ~9 hours of video a DAY before you get to the 250 GB cap. Do you watch 9 hours of video a DAY over netflix's service?
Time/Warner's previous attempts to do a 50 GB cap? Thats anticompetitive.
But comcast's is sooo high that you basically have to be a massive Warez trader or doing something very stupid (offsite backup better handled by Sneakernet) to get to.
Test your net with Netalyzr
One might think this could even be written as a nice plug-in style setup for "traffic shaping" on your local linux box. Define 100%, and it figures out how to maximize use w/o triggering the ISP-side throttling.
You're argument is disingenuous because you moved the logical negation operator.
The issue is not that a subscriber is not guaranteed to get 100% throughput -- the issue is that subscibers are now guaranteed not to get 70% throughput.
The 250GB cap mentioned in the article does not affect business customers (I called to confirm it). I know I have a contract for 3 years (they were the only ones who could deliver service in my area), and was so floored by the assertion that all customers would be subject to bandwidth caps, I called about it. The rep informed me that there is no bandwidth cap for business customers, although if you do use a lot of bandwidth, they will let you know about it (I have no idea what limit would trigger that event or anything, but then again, neither did the rep I spoke with).
I got nuthin
Comcast is not a monopoly. They are pretty close, and they certainly operate like one in certain local areas, but on the whole there is competition nationwide. So trying to prosecute under monopoly statues is impossible.
If Comcast can afford NBC, they can afford the bandwidth being used by its subscribers. This is just a way to increase profits at the cost of service.
Any broadband provider that fails to understand that bandwidth usage ALWAYS increases... might as well start selling tomatoes.
Simply put, there are four steps to determining whether the traffic associated with a particular cable modem is designated as PBE or BE:
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
They advertise it as "up to" and not "at least". It is confusing, but it's not misleading. That's why I've proposed a better transparency standard http://www.digitalsociety.org/2009/09/the-need-for-a-broadband-transparency-standard/.
If I understand correctly:
Option 1
I buy service under certain conditions from Comcast.
I don't like those conditions.
Therefore the government forces Comcast to do things I do like.
Alternatively.
Option 2
I buy service under certain conditions from Comcast.
I don't like those conditions.
Therefore people laugh at me for buying thins I don't like.
Moderation : -1 Conservative Viewpoint
But it should go both ways. If I'm on hold for more than 15 minutes and because of the crappy on-hold music they play I don't have the mental bandwidth to do anything else, they owe me a month's free service. If we detect their lawyers consume more than a certain amount of their allocated air, another free month. Sounds fair to me.
Bark less. Wag more.
So how long til someone creates a workaround that maximizes net bandwidth (not just setting hard caps on your speeds) while avoiding tripping the triggers? First seems not too hard to avoid, but the 2nd...
Eh? In scandinavia countries new laws will state that "the speed of the line must be atleast 75% of the said one during 24 hour measurement period". And you get throttled with comcast if you're actually using more 70% of what you should have? Why do you put up with this shit
Because, we don't trust the government to measure that 75% without making a political issue of it. We think such an institution would ultimately wind up as another lever for government to get its hands into the people's business.
This is my sig.
In the uk, one of the fastest mainstream providers also uses a throttleing policy which can be viewed at http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html . The summary is that there is no bandwidth cap, but during certain periods of the day, if you download more than a set amount within that period (exact amount depends on package taken), you are throttled for 5 hours, usually to about 25%. It is quite annoying to loose so much for so long, but with a little planning, you can set any large download to run over night and avoid any throttleing since from 9PM to 10AM, nothing is counted against any limits for throttleing. I believe they are experimenting with small variations, such as upping the throttleing to a greater length, but removing any throttling after 11PM. Its obviously not quite ideal, but they dont try to hide it, and its more fair than some policies might be.
I'm only allowed to use 70% of the bandwidth that I pay for... for less than 15 minutes? Otherwise I can use as much as I want as long as I stay below half?
Now we will be seeing a new settings in P2P applications, called burst mode:
- maximum bandwidth for time period
- time period length, in seconds.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I downloaded an .iso image from Microsoft licensing last night and it took me about twenty two minutes to get the file. If I was on Comcast they'd throttle my connection for that?!
They need to adjust their filtering policies to allow legitimate traffic.
So instead of upgrading infrastructure and offering more bandwidth to customers like other civilized nations, comcast punishes customers by limiting throughput. As long as customers keep paying for their service, comcast can afford to do this. Customers need to stop acting like sheep and speak out against such ba-a-a-a-a-d service!
So, you start to watch a movie or TV show online. After 15 minutes, Comcast throttles you causing lower quality, stuttering, and/or buffering delays. They inflict this punishment even if they otherwise have plenty of bandwidth available.
Comcast wins in 2 ways: (1) they save a bunch of bandwidth by killing this emerging use and (2) they kill the threat this emerging use represents to their cable TV business.
Your options are (1) ditch Comcast and go with DSL if possible (noticeably - DSL rarely has the ongoing malarkey associated with cable ISPs) or (2) resort to Bit Torrents where it may not be streaming, but it is no cost, commercial free and immune to this particular harassment (Comcast will eventually "get you" with caps).
I believe Comcast may not enforce the 250gb limit in areas where they have direct competition. Every month this year I have passed the limit in upload and download combined and last month in download alone without ever receiving a warning. In my area we also have the option of AT&T U-Verse.
How does this affect gamers then, specifically MMOs? You are connected at a constant up/down stream connection that takes advantage of whatever available bandwidth you have as far as I know (unconfirmed). You are generally connected for a lot longer than 15 min. and you are not downloading anything p2p, yet your heavy usage is going to be punished now I assume. For those of us that purchase the higher bandwidth connections to begin with in order to game, this bytes :)
Can anyone confirm how they prioritize gaming traffic over their networks?
It addresses the problem not by cutting anyone off or otherwise doing any sort of denial of service, but rather, slows down ALL traffic exceeding certain parameters. I leave it as an exercise for others to find reasons to protest, but to me it is starting to sound more reasonable.
That works. If you do that, you won't get throttled at all. Though, if you don't do that, you won't get throttled either.
See, the network has to be congested AND you have to be a heavy user. Then, your connection just gets a lower priority then everyone else. NO THROTTLING EVER HAPPENS. Of course, you will get a slow down, since this happens when the network is congested. The article is wrong in saying that it is either/or.
Once in the low priority state, the situation is checked every 15 minutes. If your heavy usage has gone down OR the congestion has gone away, then your priority is restored.
Heavy users get lower priority during busy times. Seems fair to me.
Wow, so now I can update my firewall script and leave my connection pegged at 70% use 100% of the time. I don't have to do anything at all with my user applications on the LAN if I use my linux firewall.
Grab a copy here http://digitalsushi.com/midashi/inet/rc.firewall.txt
And then modify it. Or reply to my post with snarky comments on why something in the example is stupid. Then I'll update mine if they're also smart. (Been doing this for about 8 years with slashdot posts. My firewall keeps getting better|more complicated|worse).
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
Why should I be targeted just because I decided to watch both Heroes and CSI
Because of your poor choice of shows? It's really more about protecting you from yourself.
What happens when you send UDP packets to your enemies IP address, when there either sleeping, or not home? /Night first 8 nights=~ 250gb.
Assume your smart enough to not get throttled.
at 1MB/Sec you can eat 3.6GB/hr or 30GB
next 22 nights=~30GB/N*22N *$15/10GB=~ $999 in overage fees.
now that's what I call abuse...
Storm
So you Comcast subscribers, your bandwidth is 70% of maximum for sustained usage.
At least you know what you're buying.
Now to hear the reports of subscribers getting throttled at only 50%, or for only a few minutes' usage.
Evil documented is still Evil.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
But the point is, now you know the limit. To use their system means you will follow their usage terms.
That's somewhat better then before which was that they consider you an excessive user without knowing why.
This enables you to decide if another service (if available) offers a higher cap, or to negotiate with Comcast for a new service that allows a higher cap.
Before, you didn't know so there was no way to compare.
For me 250GB is well beyond my current access, and I play online games, watch netflix on demand, and TV shows online.
If their numbers are believable their info page says 125 standard definition movies (at ~2GB each) which is ~ 4 full movies per day every day for a month.
there is no functional in-market competition. that's the problem with cable and phone services - they're infrastructures, therefore natural monopolies. this encourages corporate abuse of the customer.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
You got like, chameleon eyes or something?
People are missing the point; it's easy enough to set the maximum upload/download speed in P2P applications. Their escape clause is the word "somehow" that in effect neither explain how you're identified (for a company that can't find its own ass to pull its own head out of, with both hands and a mirror, their ability to identify bandwidth hogs on their network is at best questionable) nor are you offer a way to defend yourself if they decided to finger you.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
I suspect this won't affect most people because I almost never get anywhere near the supposed 12Mb speeds Comcast promises, and neither does anyone else I know. If I got 9Mb speeds for 15 minutes straight I'd probably drop dead of shock.
Even wee hours of the morning, I rarely get much more than 60% of the advertised bandwidth that I pay for (and at peak times, it's usually more like 40-50%). I would be THRILLED if they "throttled" me to 70% of what they advertise that I'm getting.
You see, if you pay for an unlimited internet plan, you should be able to use your maximum bandwidth as much as you want. You paid for it, right?
Comcast, throtting someone's internet connection is considered limiting it, and if you are limiting something that is suppose to be unlimited, you are not giving your customers what they are paying for, thus, the customer shouldn't even pay you for the crappy service then.
Then people should be paying 70% or 50%. Or they should be required to advertise as 70% or 50%. You know, a disclaimer. "Warning: You are not allowed to actually use your 5 megabit Cable connection, doing so will cause us to automatically screw you over in a way that would do the Insurance Industry Proud."
Of course, it's even better -- I'm sure that it's written vaguely enough that the total amount of changes the guys on the Comcast servers will need to do to implement this change is nill.
ProTip and important reminder: Comcast has been overselling their network for years now, and EVERY area is in a "Near Congestion State" at all times by design.
This changes nothing.
> Comcast is not a monopoly.
Close enough. If you live in a Comcast area you probably have at most two viable choices for broadband.
Option 1: The government controlled monopoly telco. Government sets the rates, availibility and specifies reliability requirements. Government grants your RBOC an absolute monopoly on the right to string phone wires. Muddied recently by the cable co's new ability to offer dialtone.
Option 2: The government controlled monopoly cable co. Government grants regional monopolies on running CATV wires, sets rates, etc. If they were government owned outright the service wouldn't be much worse.
And in 90% of the country you have those two choices and no others. Broadband by wireless (ground or geosync) is only viable for people who can't get one of the others. Slow, laggy and heavily capped sum up all wireless offerings.
All you guys whinging about the invasive effects of government with network neutrality missed the boat, it sailed already. If you want to fix the problem, get to the root cause. Break the monopolies one more time, but this time break them along the natural faultline. Two government regulated utilities that owns the physical plant (the building, head end or switch and the wires, poles, boxes, etc) and two more unregulated companies that supplies dialtone, IP or TV programming by buying carriage rights from the monopolies on a 100% non-discriminatory basis with anyone else who wants to compete.
Democrat delenda est
Didn't anyone notice the date on the article? It's 10 months old. So this throttling policy isn't "new" at all, it's supposedly been in effect already for almost a year.
I've been a Comcast customer the entire time. I frequently exceed the stated limits and have never noticed any throttling.
I read Usenet for the articles.
If this isn't the very definition of an abusive monopoly, I don't know what is.
I agree, but good luck getting the case heard. The laws have been bought and paid for
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So then, to stay under the radar you could set your router's traffic shaping to allow only 69% of your bandwidth at all times, right?
Of course, that's assuming you are given 100% of what you are actually paying for, which is almost never the case.
Loading...
Actually, preferential voting (where you rank canidates) still keeps one big problem from our current system: the possibility of "throwing away your vote." You'd have to decide who to rank first: the candidate you really like, or the one you think can win. You don't want your vote for The Ideal Party to take votes away from The Tolerable Party and throw the election to The Horrid Party.
Range voting, on the other hand, lets you say "here's how much I like each candidate on a numerical scale." The "practical" candidate isn't hurt at all by your preference for an idealistic one.
This site gives a lot of info on why range voting tends to give the best outcome for the largest number of voters. They advocate for range voting to be used in any election - even school elections. I'd love to see it "trickle up," since it's clearly a better system.
By negotiating, you mean users agreeing not to cry if Comcast promises to use lube next time, right?
If you actually read the filing with the FCC, you'd find that so long as the overall bandwidth limit at the the CMTS are not exceeded, a user can use 100% of his provisioned bandwidth indefinitely. It is ONLY after network congestion reaches its limit that the system searches for high-usage users and moves them to a lower priority.
The summary and TFA incorrectly state that when EITHER condition is met, a user's connection will be throttled, when actually BOTH conditions need to be true.
Also, TFA is from January 2009...
Your typical MMO is only synchronizing mobile object state between the server and client, plus handling text-chat and such. It's a constant stream, but it's low bandwidth.
I doubt Comcast does anything to prioritize that sort of traffic as it would be very hard to determine what's game traffic and what's not, as there's no standard. Some use UDP, some TCP, some both, on a variety of ports in a variety of directions with no standard headers.... The only thing they could look at is the prioritization flags in the IP header, but I don't think anybody sets or uses those...
does the cap also apply to Comcasts video services?
I'm guessing, no.
What we need a law that bans ISP from media affiliation in every way shape and form. If you own shares in a media company you cannot own shares in an ISP ect.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Why are Comcast and other ISPs playing this trottling game anyhow? It is not like internet access speed is a limited resource. Gold, oil and water are limited resources, but bandwidth is not! It appears that this is more a marketing ploy worse than the artificial scarcity of diamonds created by De Beers.
Let's look at the different parts:
==Backbone==
A fiberoptic cable in the backbone may consist of 1000 fibers. The cable is cheap compared to the cost of digging and terminating. Each fiber can carry 100 colors of 10Gb/s each. That is a whopping 1 Petabit/s. It is about 1 million houses in the SF bay area (5 million people), so one cable can give each house 1Gb/s.
==Metro==
A single router (In actual installs probably more) can tie the backbone to multiple metro fiber nets. Cost is $100 for 1Gb/s. Biggest cost is laying fiber.
==Last mile==
Many have fibers. 1Gb/s is cheap. With CATV distribution, you get 30Mb/s, and with DSl, 6Mb/s. Cheap mass produced ISP side equipment will trunk this into 10GB
Bottom line is that incremental capital costs to give a customer 1Gb/s is $200 in many of the more densely populated areas. This should cost the user $20/ month with both a good ROI on investments and a decent operational margin for the ISP.
Start demanding that.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
If they would advertise honestly and have a means to measure traffic people would complain less.
After all, when I'm downloading the latest Linux distro I want to know how long it will take, not wait not knowing if it will ever complete.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Here's my story.
I had AT&T's craptastic service. After around ten years, I still couldn't get more than 1.5 Mbps downlink speed maximum. Apparently, my neighborhood is on some kind of special loop that's not like everyone else in Atlanta, and there are no plans to upgrade it anytime soon. So yeah, 1.5 Mbps maximum, no matter how much you're willing to pay.
So I switched to Comcast's plan where I get 12 Mbps downlink. Do I actually get 12 Mbps downlink? Nah, I don't. Still, it's a hell of a lot faster than what I was getting from AT&T, so relative to how I was feeling before, I'm happy. Besides, it's not like I was really getting 1.5 Mbps from AT&T.
If I decided that I hated Comcast, you know who I'd go with? No one. That's it, those are my choices. 1.5 Mbps from AT&T, or however close Comcast can get me to 12 Mbps.
I'd kill to get FiOS where I live. Everyone I've talked to about it says they have no short- or long-term plans to roll out FiOS here. That makes me sad. So very, very sad. I have said for years that if I ever move, that is going to be a very important deciding factor in where I move to. Can I get FiOS there? If not, I'll pick somewhere else.
That's great. So, I should just set it to 69% of my plan to be sure that my streaming is never interrupted?
I really see this being a problem only for economy plan users who are streaming video.
It's just a smart thing for them to do from a business side. They are going to be losing a ton of customers to online video (Hulu, Netflix, even Apple, Blockbuster, etc) on the cable side....I ditched them already. This will force their Internet customers to at least pay them about the same....instead of the lower $25/mo plan.
Smart, fair, that's good enough. The fact is a long haul fiber uplink, while down a lot, is still going to cost the ISP dearly. Far more than $7.50/Mbit/mo (assuming $45 line 6Mbit down which seems like what it is...)...I doubt if even Comcast could do it for less.
Why speculate based on the FCC filings? The entire scheme is described right here: http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-livingood-woundy-congestion-mgmt
Meaning if there is demand for a service with higher caps that people are willing to pay extra for, there will likely be a supplier. If Comcast doesn't provide it, they'll lose customers to those that do.
So you pay to have a certain amount of bandwidth each month.. Then you make use of part of that bandwidth and they throttle you?
Am I understanding this correctly?
Sounds like they have heavily oversold themselves and are now screwing customers so they don't have to fork out the money for upgrades...
Someone gets a new Windows system, and starts downloading the latest security updates from Microsoft.
God help the owner of that system, if the Internet connection is from Comcast. Instead of taking 15 minutes, will it take 45 to get those updates? Will that be triple the window of opportunity for a worm to find the new, unprotected system, and take it over before the patches are applied?
I totally agree. This is all about the video services they want to sell. I've noticed in the past month that my connection to Hulu has become extremely slow. On another point, I actually talked to the comcast people about my connection slowing down, and the comcast customer care center told me that my connection speed was due to my cookies -- I could pay to have someone come over and clean out my cookies for me, and that would make my connection faster....
Dude, why don't the just cut everyone's available bandwidth in half if their going to do this?
The problem is between the backbone and the house you have a "neighborhood node" which (for cable) translates between the fiber connected to the head end and the actual coax for the neighborhood. It would be possible to run fiber from that node to each house - but each house is limited by the total bandwidth of the fiber to the head end, which isn't much more than 10Gb/sec. Say, there are 1000 houses in the neighborhood - that means you divide 10Gb/sec by 1000 and have 1Mb/sec for every house (dedicated) and without any TV channels.
And that is assuming a generous 10Gb/sec for the head end connection fiber. It might be much less than that.
The TV channels I believe run around 1Gb/sec total. So now everyone is fighting over the remaining 9Gb/sec, assuming we started with 10.
Well, that is too low, so we aren't playing the dedicated game. Since most of the users aren't using anywhere near even 900K/sec all the time there is in fact plenty of bandwidth to go around. Except when more than a couple of houses in this 1000 house neighborhood are using 10Mb/sec or more. The system wasn't designed for that, so it starts to fall apart.
You can say the system should be redesigned, and fiber run individually to every house instead of through a neighborhood concentrator. But given the costs of running the fiber to the head end and the fact it has been done already, this is probably not an argument that carries much weight.
Is there any info on how Comcast plans to actually measure bandwidth usage? There's so many potential loopholes to their proposed plan which would make it no better than it is now, hardly.
Say they sample your bandwidth usage at specific intervals. Well, if you're browsing the web, maybe doing homework or research or just Youtubing or whatever, then you might very well be at "peak usage" each time it samples. Though your bandwidth isn't in constant use, it's just periodic. But if it happens to sample you each time you're active, then after 15 minutes, bam. Throttled. Consistently.
FCC should just knock this bullshit out totally. Comcast seems to be the only ISP adamantly saying this is "necessary" enough to be implementing anyway.
The 1% that expect 24/7 full throughput should understand they never bought that guarantee of service.
No, but to Expect 71% for more than 15 minutes at a time does not seem unreasonable. Mostly of which that it's easier for someone to break that expectation when being online in NON-Peak hours, which is when they shouldn't NEED to be throttled. I bet you they are going to throttle you far below 70%. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they throttled you down to 55%, and you'll only get it back to full once you throttle yourself below 50%.
Simply put - they shouldn't advertise a speed that they are NOT going to give to you when you use it.
Simple Car Analogy:
Your car Automatically applies the breaks when you do the legal speed limit, and won't stop until you drop below half the speed limit.
We have quotas, but then again so do you- our ISPs are just honest about it. And no shaping going on here folks (At least with the major reputable ISPs like iiNet and Internode). I can happily pull down 24mbits of not stop goodness till the cows come home. Or the quota runs out, whichever comes first.
I'm actually mostly satisfied with this, because:
1) They're being transparent about it. Using this information, the end user can figure out how to configure stuff on their end to get the maximum total download, if they need it. I wonder if you can download more by downloading at max speed and taking the throttling or by staying just below the trigger that throttles you?
2) It sounds like there is no deep packet inspection going on at all to decide traffic prioritization. This means services that run over the internet like VoIP can compete based on price and quality of service, things the consumer likes, not based on who has a better relationship with the ISP that the consumer is paying to transfer the traffic.
The things I am worried about are:
1) If they advertise using maximum available bandwidth only, that is misleading advertising. They should advertise the speed that you can download at without threat of throttling and mention that you can achieve higher speeds than that for limited periods of time.
2) If the cap applies to third party services but not to the ISP's services, like high definition television, this is anti-competitive and shows a desire to limit consumer choice. Third-party internet television providers won't be able to compete because their customers will constantly be hitting that cap, so the cable companies will fulfill their own prophecy that consumers want their television service and not a third-party's.
3) What does this mean: "your traffic is somehow identified as being responsible [for congestion]"? This does not sound transparent. I didn't read the full FCC filing, but if someone has an answer as to how they figure out which user's traffic is causing the congestion, it'd be appreciated. If they're looking at the kind of data you are transferring to decide whether to throttle you or not, that's not acceptable. ISPs should not be digging around in our packages to decide what to do with the data we pay them to transfer. Throttle the heaviest user of the CMTS, the one that's been using it the longest, whatever, as long as you're not looking to see what kind of data we are transferring.
Comcast is a monopoly in my area (Twin Cities). How exactly do I vote with my dollar?
So can I only pay them 70% of my bill?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
How does this affect me and my illegal torrent activity?
Stop overselling like its the 1990s
O.o
This is BS. If we pay for x download and x upload we should be allowed to use that. Not have it throttled down when we use to be slower.
I live in Finland and have never had problems with not reaching the speeds I have paid for when it comes to my broadband. I am not aware of the new laws the GP mentioned but I guess it might have something to do with the laws that make broadband access a legal right...
However, here the cosumer protection officials have just began investigating ISPs who sell mobile broadband. They have said that it is illegal (false advertising) to advertise theoretical maxium speeds of the connections if users are unlikely to reach them. They certainly would never - even under current laws - put up with ISPs who throttle your traffic if you use more than 70% of the speeds you were advertised to reach.
So I can't use the advertised speed Im paying for, for more than a 15 minute period without it getting throttled down. So I'm assuming this also means while I'm being throttled Im being charged a lower price for my new lower speed right?
Oh, no?
No, no, its okay I WANTED to pay you more money for less product just because I'm good like that
mmm so what's this mean about VOIP? and phone service that Comcast might sell you vs Vonage or MagicJack?
so the kids view tons of videos, etc and all of a sudden you can't make usage phone calls? and will Comcast-supplied VOIP phone service work but Vonage or MJ fail?
How about:
Instead of offering 12Mbps, offer 9Mbps instead and drop the 70% trigger?
So you get throttled for using what you're paying for, ISP providers are awesome these days.
First of all. This argument is not about bandwidth. Comcast is deathly afraid that IPTV is going to kill their ability to sell you TV at their premium prices. No more $175 a month revenues from subscribers if it gets popular. So they whine about the bandwidth and throttle customers so you have to pay them for their overpriced content since you can't download or watch video streams with their throttling.
If this was really about the technology they would be looking into local caching like many other ISP's have already. Technologies like bit torrent and P2P look for local users with content first before going to slower external sources anyway so their transit costs are essentially non exisistant.
This is just another business looking to limit consumer choices so they can profit. And they are using bandwidth as a diversion to prevent people from looking at the real issues. How many DSL providers throttle and use Sandvine to kill their customers downloads? And how many of those DSL providers are also content providers as their primary business?
America has the largest backbone network in the world yet we have the slowest and most expensive internet access because of companies like Comcast. There's plenty of bandwidth out there and miles and miles of unused dark fibre. Companies like Comcast are toll trolls on the information superhighway.
You know who else used a similar throttling scheme?
Nazi Germany.
Residential ISPs provide connections that are designed for households where relatively short bursts of high activity alternate with longer periods of very low activity. It is correctly designed for that sort of application. Although more infrastructure would sure be good to increase the average speed everybody's getting, too much of it would just make the service too expensive for people who are not benefitting from the extra throughput.
If what you expect of residential ISP service is a guaranteed bandwidth level that you will saturate 24/7, you have bought the wrong service. You can buy something that provides that sort of service--but you're going to pay more.
Are you adequate?
Sigh, I don't get this world anymore, you get people dying because of starvation and people paying for weight loss; now, you have people dying for a broadband connection and people being throttled using their bandwidth they paid for. Can I just donate my other 30% download and 50% upload I paid for to developing countries please!
But it doesn't work that way. Comcast has exclusive coverage in some areas. There is no one to lose customers to in many cases, so there are no negotiations. It is either get it the way Comcast says, or don't get it at all.
Wait for 4G to roll out Nation wide. SCREW the cable companies. 100MB/s+ everywhere I go? Count me in! I'll watch TV on the internet!
Lol, the party you refer to was actually called the "Bull Moose" party, not the "Bull" party. Although I can't blame you for getting confused, because we have a couple of parties today that could easily be called the "Bull" party as well, because everything that comes out of their mouths is Bull.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
I'm looking for software that can trottle bandwidth based on time. Say 100% for 15 minutes, then 49% for 15 minutes then back to 100%. Or am I going to have to write a 5 line perl script to circumvent this?
But nobody's saying that you can only use half. Everybody can get 100% in bursts, as long as the bursts are short and infrequent enough.
It comes down to the ratio of consumer last-mile bandwidth to ISP uplink bandwidth. So, for example, if the ISP sells 100 10Mbps connections to its customers apiece, and connects them to a 100Mbps uplink to the Internet, then they're running a 10:1 ratio. In that case, everybody can get the full 10Mbps in their peak bursts as long as those bursts don't add up to more than 10% of the time, and the customer's bursts don't overlap too much with others. In the worst case, however, where everybody tried to use the connection continuously 24/7, everybody would only get 10% of the peak ratio.
IMO, advertising the peak rate and a minimum guaranteed customers-to-uplink ratio would be a better description of what you're getting. It's not too difficult to explain to laypeople either: "This line provides the equivalent of a 10Mbps connection shared between 10 households."
Are you adequate?
I dunno about two shows at once, but I regularly watch Netflix/Hulu on one monitor and play a game on the other...
No streaming video service I'm aware of will give you video faster than the 70% limit...
My connection is a 12Mbps connection. 70% of that is 8Mbps. Neither Hulu nor Netflix go near that.
If they can't provide 12Mbps, then DON'T ADVERTISE IT
As I understand it, "up to" in commercials for home high-speed Internet access means something along similar lines to burstable billing.
Not happy with the choices you have in the primaries, run yourself.
By the time one waits 12 years from becoming eligible to vote at 18 to being eligible to run at 30, the issue about which one plans to run will have become moot. Besides, not everybody has, or has the time and money to acquire, the skills to run for public office.
Not happy with the options with your local ISPs? Start your own!
If I were to start my own ISP, I would have to run cable over non-subscribers' land to reach subscribers. How would I convince non-subscribers to let me do that?
> ...cable modem contracts [assume] that your bandwidth is shared... You can burst up to the
> advertised rate, but you are never guaranteed to get it 100% of the time.
The offensive part of this is not that there is no guarantee of availability, but that there is a guarantee that it will -not- be available for more than 15 minute increments.
> You get throttled *only* if the network is congested...
That's not what I saw in the summary. The summary states that you will be throttled if the network becomes congested -or- if you use more than 70% for 15 minutes. I would agree that throttling if the network becomes congested is reasonable, and scaling back the peak users at those times is the obvious measure.
But the "70% for 15 minutes" cap, when there is no congestion seems to be unsupportable. I can imagine thousands of legitimate scenarios where home users would use 70% plus for longer than 15 minute increments; not 24/7, but for longer periods than 15 minutes. If no other users are competing for the bandwidth, what is the justification for throttling?
The USA is, at least historically, a free country. That means people are free to buy the service they will and providers are free to provide the service they will. As long as the agreement is entered into freely by both parties and as long as the service is offered and paid according to the that agreement, no one has cause to bring the government into the transaction to force one party or the other to act against their free will.
As the idea of freedom fades from memories in favor of force and coercion to benefit interests with political power, you may wish to remember the post that you made and the discussion here. There was a day when everyone didn't have to bow to a government overlord for the permission to take every action. That day still dawns in the US, for some, in some cases, for at least a short while longer.
You would build a device which automatically throttles customer's bandwidth to just below the Comcast threshold.
The bottom line is you didn't pay for those speeds for any guaranteed amount of time.
I don't expect guaranteed speeds, because I realize the reality of overselling means that a full 12 Mbps won't be available at all times. But what I do expect is that I won't be punished for using whatever bandwidth is available. I paid for "up to 12 Mbps" and I expect to be able to use "up to 12 Mbps" if it's there.
If too many people are using too much of the bandwidth they're paying for, it's time for Comcast to upgrade their network.
What do cell phone companies do when their phones get too popular? Do they kick out customers who make too many calls? No, they build more towers. Cellular airtime is oversold just like cable bandwidth; the capacity is built out to handle average use, not maximum use. But cell phone companies understand that it's their responsibility to build more capacity when "average use" goes up. Why doesn't Comcast?
Technology may change, bandwidth may get so cheap it doesn't matter, but right now, guaranteeing 100% throughput at residential service prices simply wont work.
Fallacy of the excluded middle. There's a huge gap between "guaranteeing 100% throughput" and "throttling anyone who uses more than 70% throughput for 15 minutes".
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Shouldn't Comcast measure their speed in Mbph (Megabits per hour)?
The more I drive my car, the more I pay--gas, service, maintenance, upkeep, etc... The more I use appliances, the more I pay--TVs, heating/cooling, cooking, lighting, etc... The more I use my phone, the more I pay--Minutes, texts, data usage, etc... The more I use water, the more I pay--watering the lawn, showering, peeing, etc... The more I eat, the more I pay...get the picture? Why is bandwidth treated differently? Stupid marketing sets up stupid expectations.
. Eventually the northern, industrialized portion of the party split off over issues like slavery and representation in congress, while the deep south Democrats consolidated their base.
You mean there was a Republican party that once stood up for civil rights and ended slavery?"
And the Democrats had a strong hold in the southern states and were pro-slavery?
In the past decade, we have already seen Republican party deeply erode civil rights.
And the Republicans are very strong in the southern states [Texas, Louisiana, etc].
What the hell has happened?
F you comcast. I pay for service, not dis-service. You can give me a faster cap, no total download limit, treat all traffic the neutrally and none of this 'throttling because you are using it' crap, for less money. Other ISP's can, time for you to cut off the top... and I mean your management.
There is one benefit to ISPs abusing their monopolies like this: It will help inspire people to seek alternatives, such as forming co-op ISPs to compete with the big bullies. I've been interested in doing this for years, but never thought it'd be feasible after seeing how others got steamrolled. Lately, though, it looks like those who never gave up are seeing positive results, either by being able to sustain a business and provide faster/cheaper service, or by forcing their local provider to compete with them and provide the same. I for one am embarrassed to hear about how so many other countries are way ahead of us in terms of networking, and I've decided to do something about it. Either I'm going to actually try starting a co-op ISP here, or I'll just throw a drunken hissy-fit in the parking lot of my local cable ISP and probably get arrested. Keep an eye on the Montana news to see which path I take.
In Soviet Russia, dot slashes YOU!
I is no genius, but if they throttle you for using more then 70% of your (payed for) bandwidth to keep the network running, shouldn't they just sell you 70% of that amount to begin with?
It's no shocker that Comcast is trying to rip us off. Some people think the government will save us... whatever. They want their power control of the internet as well and we've seen enough evidence of that. Just look at the laws they passed and the new laws they want to pass.
Let's just own up and face it, the democans and the republicrats are all the same garbage. Seriously? We can wrap all of the peoples' needs into two "parties" when they are more loyal to the party than the public?
We don't have freedom of voting. lol What a joke. You know what we have? "Here's a couple of people the Counsel of Foreign Relations and the Federal Reserve picked. Choose one." People wind up voting for the lesser of 2 evils.
Ya, so much for freedom. It's all rigged. We lost most of our rights a long time ago but now they are just being more obvious about it.
People who defend Obama are seriously deluded... just as deluded as the people who defend Bush. When are people gonna wake up and realize that this whole Republican and Democrat scam is a distraction and the clowns all work together, eat together, and make deals behind closed doors together?
Let's just hope people realize before it's too late and we wind up like China.
I FUCKIN PAY for the bandwith I BOUGHT!
And you openly add a function that makes it impossible for you to fulfill your FUCKIN' CONTRACT??
YOU BREAK THE CONTRACT FUCKIN' ASSHOLES!
Someone is getting sued to hell and back! I expect at least a trillion dollars damage. Plus assrape in PMITA prison for the bosses by next Monday!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Comcast recently upgrades my area to Docsis 3.0, giving me double the speed I previously had for the same price. For the last few months I have been getting a consistent 9-12mbps instead of the 4-6 I previously had.
Last night, after watching a movie on netflix, however, I checked my bandwidth, and I was getting only 5-6mbps. As it appears, they've lowered my speeds after 15 minutes of usage. While I did enjoy the 9-12 mbps, getting a consistent 5+mbps means that with a good QOS policy on my router I can stream from netflix in hd without any interrupts, so I am satisfied.
When I get home tonight, I am going to set my router to throttle at 8.3 mbps, that should put me just under the limit, so I can get a consistent speed instead of dropping to 5. If that works I'll still be getting a 50% boost in speed, which is not too bad considering I'm still paying the same amount, though I do wish they were a little more honest about "doubling" my speed.
I'm suspecting that Comcast is doing more than just throttling connections, but they may be outright interrupting data streams they don't like. No clear-cut evidence, but we use a Comcast link to rsync files from a local server to/from our main web server out on the internet every night, in the wee hours of the AM (so I don't think we'd be dealing with node congestion, or inconveniencing any significant number of other users). Total transfers vary, but can get moderately large: A really big xfer might be 2-3 GB, and that amount might move both upstream and downstream over the course of a night's syncs.
After years of pretty much flawless operation, in the last few months we've seen the rsyncs fail fairly frequently. It's clearly not been an issue with the server on either end of the connection, and the connection itself seems to stay active. - Just relaunching the rsync a little while later usually gets everything across that we need to. Running sample rsyncs manually shows that what seems to be happening is that just the particular rsync link seems to go dead for a few minutes at a time, while the rest of the connection stays alive. (Eg, we can still browse, check email, etc over our Comcast link.) Rsync is pretty robust, but if the connection is interrupted long enough, it'll time out. Simply relaunching the rsync once it times out lets everything start back up again just fine.
I'm no network engineer, but it sure looks to me like Comcast is deliberately glitching specific traffic streams it doesn't like, in this case the rsync stream, after "x" amount of data has transferred. It's not a matter of throttling, because (a) the link just goes dead, rather than simply slowing down, and (b) other services over the same Comcast connection seem to continue working just fine.
For this particular application, I'd be perfectly fine if they cut our bandwidth to 1/2 or 1/3 of normal, as the syncs aren't time-critical; we just need them to be done by the next AM. But I'd *really* like them to tell us in detail what the actual terms of service are.
I could just switch our servers' connections over to the redundant AT&T DSL connection we maintain, but Comcast's higher speed (in bursts) is very handy during the day when we want to move smaller chunks of data quickly. So I do have an alternative available, it's just less attractive for various reasons. I do think they should disclose fully what it is their customers are buying, though, and should be required to disclose changes in their bandwidth-management practices. We didn't actually lose any data here, but the consequences could have been severe if we'd had a device failure and needed to call on our "backup".
Has anyone else seen what looks like deliberate interruption of specific data streams like this?
whereas they allow you to utilize 50% of your bandwidth at all times ?
Read radical news here
What is also missing from the discussion is that many small businesses and NGO's buy cheap services to provide public Internet access. Many of these agencies may "peak" during certain times of the day or consume an exaggerated amount of bandwidth during lab hours. Sure you can make the argument that they consume much and should have to pay more, but you also have to realize you are adding a huge cost and burden to them as well. Can you imagine the small local community organization having to cap what you can view during open lab hours? Can you imagine an after school program having to restrict children from viewing video tutorials or accessing certain websites because they are consuming bandwidth needed for daily operations? Also understand many who operate these organizations are not tech savvy at all. I can't imagine what a nightmare it will be to have to determine how much bandwidth should be allocated between staff usage and lab time. I can see how many will just opt out of providing open services as it will just be too costly.
There is no reason the management of the networks couldn't involve multiple parties. DSL in many places is required to allow competing ISPs over the same connection. Then there wouldn't be the usual contract temporary monopoly corruption process. Or, the government could provide cheap/free business access-- then have those run the last mile in a more conventional setup. (still more competition since the geek on the block would incorporate and become an isp just for their own internet and have to offer it to others.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
why don't comcast users protest this nonsense? If I am paying for a line with given speed, I should be able to use that speed! It's like telling someone they bought an unlimited plan with their cell phone, but if you use it for 15 minutes straight, they're going to shut off your connection. What the heck man!? A simple download for a DVD can go longer than 15 minutes. So users cannot even download a DVD?
Give people what they pay for! Start the protest already and stop these ridiculous companies from making horrible practices that only cost consumers!!!
Implementing such throttling mechanism must be expensive: development, QA, deployment, maintenance, support staff,... If you disconnect your users because of a bug in the throttling system, that would be counter productive.
But it is still cheaper and less risky than improving the network? Is that really an investment in the right direction?
There is not enough discussion about the network usage projection for the next few years. If throttling is already needed today, what about in 5 years?
Today, from home (2 adults, 2 kids) we have hard time staying under the 5gb Verizon limit (wireless broadband):
- Running OS updates (the last linux-loaded laptop update took 500mb) and all the app updates;
- Watching your friends pictures, videos (I have to tell my wife to restrain YouTube usage to just few clip a month);
- Watching/Reading the news (more and more multimedia stuff on the different sites);
- Gaming (My kids love Webkinz that seems to draw quite some bandwith);
- Weekend Skype video conf with remote relatives (I have to enforce a 15 minute limit);
- Downloading Podcasts;
- And simply working from home (exchanging docs, files, web search...).
I monitor our network usage such that we stay under 5gb. But that's tight. We were in the 2 to 3 gb a month a year ago. We are now near 4gb. But we are not even streaming music (Pandora, Last.fm) or using systems like Hulu. We might be an above average consumer type today, but that's just going to continue growing. What about Video on demand (Netflix, AppleTV)?
If throttling is needed today, that's scary for the near term future.
TT
I'm going to start up a new ISP: 1 terabit/second speeds!*
*speeds may vary for transfers greater than one bit
This article was posted in January on The Inquirer, how exactly is this news NOW, 11 months later?
I've had more than one Friday or Saturday night where my Comcast internet has just SHUT OFF for anywhere between 30 minutes and 2 or 3 hours. And, usually, when I'm right in the middle of a long download running at like 30kbps. And that kills the download.
One time, my service was down for over a day. I called and the rep said, we'll have to send a technician over, let's schedule a time, blah blah blah.
I said, whoa, wait a minute. It could be something else.
I called another rep who said, they turned off your service to do an upgrade and forgot to turn you back on.
Where do they FIND these people?
So, if Comcast throttles your service, do they cut back on your bill, since you're not getting what you paid for?
Yeah, right...
If I can't control this myself to avoid hitting the trigger how is this fair?
open source sub sim. I might start coding again for this. http://dangerdeep.sourceforge.net/contribute/
first, this isn't new. this is "news" from 1/09. second, this is an IMPROVEMENT that comcast made, imnsho. good story about it here:
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Comcast-Slammed-For-NonExistent-Throttling-Changes-105380