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Comcast's New Throttling Plan Uses Trigger Conditions, Not Silent Blocking

Posted by timothy on from the sir-there's-some-whining-on-lines-1-through-57 dept.

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."

14 of 698 comments (clear)

  1. Laws by sopssa · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

    1. Re:Laws by pootypeople · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because our laws are written by corporate interests, not the people.

    2. Re:Laws by LordKazan · · Score: 5, Insightful

      which is the inevitable result of "private funding of campaigns"

      a more accurate term for "private funding of campaigns" is "buying votes of congresscritters".

      --
      If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
    3. Re:Laws by dwlovell · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because a T1 line is expensive and guarantees service 24/7. A residential cable/dsl service is far far cheaper and is contractually not obligated to provide consistent speeds, only burst speeds that can be affected by the traffic of other users of the system.

      Consumers went from only have only T1/ISDN as a high-speed option and few could afford it, to cable/dsl that almost anyone could afford and has the performance 99% can appreciate. The 1% that expect 24/7 full throughput should understand they never bought that guarantee of service. Just because their aggregation point wasn't previously saturated and they weren't previously throttled doesn't mean that was an entitlement to that level of service forever.

    4. Re:Laws by mcgrew · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because we're a plutocracy masquerading as a democratic republic.

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
    5. Re:Laws by commodore64_love · · Score: 5, Funny

      (blinks)

      (puts ice cream back in fridge)

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
    6. Re:Laws by itpr15061 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Amen, that was a breath of fresh air in a room full of "me-me's" instinctively chanting that Comcast is eating babies and setting villages on fire, and that anyone who disagrees is a corporate apologist.

      To agree further...

      If someone actually *needs* 250GB or more of data per month, and full-pipe speeds the entire time to boot, then as you said there is a plan available for that, called commercial or business class service. There *is* a distinction, and it's funny that they don't see the irony when they say "I want what I paid for."

      I dropped my landline and cable television both, everything comes through my cable modem (and I stream Netflix heavily as well as Plex) without issue.

      I don't think that Comcast implementing throttling is going to be like what Rome did to Carthage. The reality is that if you are downloading a massive multi-gig file it's going to take a while whether you are throttled or not. Any QoS or traffic management 101 class defines this as bulk or best effort traffic and puts it at the bottom - it's not interactive or particularly time sensitive. Why not make it livable for everyone else? And before everyone hits the reply button and complains that Comcast shouldn't have their upstream oversubscribed, please pause first to grab a clue and realize that every ISP oversubscribes. On top of that, cable plants were only really designed for one way downstream delivery of cable channels so upstream bandwidth will always be much more limited. The only way Comcast can make more upstream bandwidth available is by splitting a node, which means they are doubling their upstream bandwidth by doubling their cable plant. As you can imagine, this is very expensive and that cost ultimately gets passed along to the consumer.

      I'm sure someone in the comments has couched this as a net neutrality issue. I also don't buy that argument since it's not targeted at a specific person or application.

      So yeah, this sucks, but it was more or less inevitable.

  2. 250GB cap is meant to discourage competing service by zerofoo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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

  3. Re:So... by Znork · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ISP's should be legally obliged to advertise only what they actually offer. If you can only use half, then they can only advertise half with any burst capability added as a possible extra.

  4. News for nerds? by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 5, Funny

    This article is from January. Maybe it got throttled somewhere.

  5. I have an idea... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Funny

    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%..."

  6. Summary Backwards by HoboCop · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  7. Re:Actually, its not... by IgnoramusMaximus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

    Your "math" is full of unwarranted assumptions. Chief amongst them the mother's-basement-dwelling single nerd's view-point. Lets try this with a family of 4 using Hulu/Netflix/iTunes/what-not combo to watch TV, movies, sports, buy music, get Anime etc. That's slightly over 2 hours a day per person. Not so "unreasonable" anymore, is it now? And 2 hours a day for kids/teenagers is somewhat a conservative estimation (and am I not master of understatement or what?).

  8. Vote With My Dollar How? by Tony+Freakin+Twist · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Comcast is a monopoly in my area (Twin Cities). How exactly do I vote with my dollar?