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Comcast Discloses Throttling Practices
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sat Sep 20, 2008 07:15 AM
from the only-took-a-year dept.
from the only-took-a-year dept.
Wired reports that Comcast finally provided information on its network management practices late Friday. In a report to the FCC (PDF), the cable company admitted to targeting P2P protocols Ares, BitTorrent, eDonkey, FasTrack, and Gnutella. Quoting:
"For each of the managed P2P protocols, the [Sandvine Policy Traffic Switch] monitors and identifies the number of simultaneous unidirectional uploads that are passed from the [Cable Modem Termination System] to the upstream router. Because of the prevalence of P2P traffic on the upstream portion of our network, the number of simultaneous unidirectional upload sessions of any particular P2P protocol at any given time serves as a useful proxy for determining the level of overall network congestion. For each of the protocols, a session threshold is in place that is intended to provide for equivalently fair access between the protocols, but still mitigate the likelihood of congestion that could cause service degradation for our customers."
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Comcast's Throttling Plan Has 'Disconnect User' Option 299 comments
newtley writes "Comcast's new people, not protocols scheme may mean high speed for some, but by no means all. It's also created a draconian 'disconnect' option for use against anyone who fails to toe the Comcast line. But, says Robb Topolski, the Net protocol expert who originally uncovered Comcast's blatant efforts to control its customers, the plan does offer key take-aways, telling P2P users on Comcast how to do what they do without the risk of corporate interference."
[+]
Comcast Outlines New Broadband Policy 350 comments
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."
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Evil from cable companies? Nevar. (Score:5, Funny)
Shocked, shocked I am! Evil in the telecoms industry? Never! Well, hardly ever.
Perhaps Google could develop a not evil telecoms company. (Or, as they did with the spectrum auction, play the evils off against each other and not actually spend ridiculous sums of their own money.)
I think we need a Microsoft telecoms company. Their evil has been slipping lately [today.com]. It's not good enough, Mr Ballmer!
(I'm picturing Steve Ballmer with his high-pressure used car salesman shout: "EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! EVIL!" Bouncing around the stage.)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Evil from cable companies? Nevar. (Score:5, Insightful)
People forget what "unlimited" Internet means when used in marketing access plans. Back in the "old" days, your connection to the Internet was metered by time since everyone pretty much got the maximum available and you didn't have bandwidth tiering you have with today's massive capacities. You usually had X hours of service per month in your plan. This is the "limited" part of the sales pitch. Eventually the ISPs were able to offer "Unlimited" access, meaning you could leave it on 24/7 all month and only pay the monthly fee.
Now some people are clamoring that they were sold "Unlimited" service and they are being cheated. Bullshit. Your still allowed to stay connected for an "unlimited" amount of time which is exactly what your paying for and my guess is that your service contract states this, you get X bandwidth available 24/7. Even then, that 24/7 isn't guaranteed but it's the exception not the rule when there's a problem with connectivity [Insert chosen ISP bashing here].
I'm not saying this is a Good Thing(TM), but it's not like anyone has been cheated. It's just been a case of very slimy marketing by the ISPs.
Parent
Re:Evil from cable companies? Nevar. (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, simple example.
Just like their "up to" line, they want to advertise more than they can do while lying, as many businesses do. This is like having a 160mph speedometer on a bicycle. Sure, you can do up to 160mph, or have unlimited usage, but they hid the reality, which is "no, you can't have what we promised or else we will disconnect you".
Parent
Re:Evil from cable companies? Never. (Score:3, Insightful)
The part I liked was how they are degrading customer service to prevent degradation of customer service. Orwell would have loved these guys.
Remember, Big Chimpy is watching you.
Re:Evil from cable companies? Nevar. (Score:5, Informative)
The thing is, time is no longer an issue in modern connections because they are packet-switched down to the bare wire.
In the old days you used a phone line, which was circuit switched, to call your ISP. They had a limited number of ports so they had to limit how long you could be online, otherwise folks would get a busy signal.
Since these days there is no customer-initiated circuit switching involved in cable and DSL links, the concept of "unlimited" can *only* apply to data transfer. There isn't anything else to limit.
Believe me, I remember the days of circuit switching and "hourly limits" quite well. I was on an ISDN connection from 2000 to 2004. Worrying about how *long* you're online is extremely irritating. Those are definitely "good old days" I wouldn't want to go back to.
Parent
what about when speakeasy lies to you? (Score:4, Informative)
There ARE people lying out there. Plenty.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If it says it in the advertising, and they don't do it, that is false advertising, which is illegal, REGARDLESS of what the agreement says.
Ok, show me some recent advertising that literally denotes that the service shall be without limitation.
In case you hadn't noticed, the theme here is "put up or shut up" because it's a windy day and that poor strawman is blown to tatters already.
Re:Evil from cable companies? Nevar. (Score:5, Informative)
Comcast hasn't advertised "unlimited internet" in many years. After a Google search, the only use of "unlimited" I could find in a current Comcast ad was associated with their phone service: "Make unlimited local and long distance calls with 12 popular features..."
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Google make one that's not evil? Judging from their other ventures, they'd make it free, but use it as a data mining and advertising platform (I know this has been tried before and failed) and you'd sign away all rights on your online activities to Google. They only keep that motto to distract people from the
Bullshit.. (Score:4, Interesting)
That is worded to basically say 'if the bandwidth is available, anyone can do anything' but from what I've been reading, those affected have been saying it's 'no p2p no matter what.'
They're lying.
But either way, the idea of throttling is bunk. If their networks cannot handle the service they sell, then they need to upgrade their networks.
Anything an ISP limits - whether it be browsing certain sites, severely limiting upload speed, or throttling p2p - is limiting free speech. They need to watch themselves. It's not hard to see that the 'big media' companies essentially want the Internet to turn into cable TV - where the customers are zombies that cannot contribute.
Re:Bullshit.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not an American - so my understanding may be off.
I thought "Free Speech" meant literally that you couldn't be arrested for saying "stuff".
Specifically it doesn't mean:
So, with that in mind. How is imposing a bandwidth cap in any way related to free speach?
Sure I could see if they didn't let you visit some, politically derived, blacklist of websites then you could argue they were suppressing some topics. But otherwise?
Hyperbole - and the more times you do that the less people pay attention. Cry Wolf, anybody?
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In fact, you can say "fire" in a crowded theater, especially if there actually is one. But even if there isn't, you can't be arrested for saying it. Although you do assume some liability for any damages that might result, which even if no one is injured will probably amount to thousands of dollars in re-issued tickets (it was a *crowded* theater, after all).
VOIP and anti-competitive practices (Score:4, Interesting)
Comcast offers a voip product. Would anyone like to guess how the throttling practice was applied to traffic that was catagorized as VOIP but was not associated with Comcast's subscription service? Can anyone out there say anti-competitive practice? Real easy for Comcast to put those copyright infringers out front as the rationale for this policy but when one reads between the lines..... things are not quite as pristine as outlined. Connect the dots and get a clue.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I have Comcast cable TV and Internet service. I have personal experience with them, and don't like 'em very much. It pains me to defend their sorry asses, but in the interest of intellectual honesty, I'll do it.
Comcast doesn't offer a "VOIP product" -- they offer phone service. The handoff to the consumer is an analog POTS connection. Using VOIP as the transport mechanism is an implementation detail. As a facilities-based carrier, they have every right to dedicate bandwidth on their network to carry th
Actually, this was put in place to HELP VoIP (Score:5, Insightful)
This was put in place per Comcast's talk at the IETF largely to IMPROVE VoIP service from Vonage et al. You look back to 2006, before this was deployed, and there were lots of complaints about "Comcast is disrupting Vonage and other voip services..."
Those complaints largely dissapeared after Comcast started policing P2P uploads.
Parent
Comcast blows (Score:4, Interesting)
Choice? I wish! In my area Comcast bought out everyone and now they are the only player in the game. Needless to say their service is horrible and their customer service is horrendous! Something really needs to be done about these ridiculous cable monopolies.
Almost Worse than Legalese (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Comcast claims they did this:
For each protocol and geographical area they said that they will allow X connections, for example they might have decided that bittorent is allowed 1 million connections in new york(made up numbers).
Then when someone tries to open connection one million and one comcast goes and says "No, we can't allow you to do that since we already have too many bittorrent connections in this area", they do this by sending fake reset messages (Which is arguably fraud).
They also claim they only
Re:Almost Worse than Legalese (Score:5, Informative)
"For each of the managed P2P protocols, the [Sandvine Policy Traffic Switch] monitors and identifies the number of simultaneous unidirectional uploads that are passed from the [Cable Modem Termination System] to the upstream router.
Sandvine checks uploads without downloads. It does this 'above' (in the hierarchy) from the head-end of the cable network (neighborhood box).
Because of the prevalence of P2P traffic on the upstream portion of our network, the number of simultaneous unidirectional upload sessions of any particular P2P protocol at any given time serves as a useful proxy for determining the level of overall network congestion.
P2P is used a lot, and fairly consistently. Therefore, the number of one-way uploads (not SSH or rdesktop like somebody else said) can be used to extrapolate the total congestion for much less 'thought' (for Sandvine)
For each of the protocols, a session threshold is in place that is intended to provide for equivalently fair access between the protocols, but still mitigate the likelihood of congestion that could cause service degradation for our customers."
We count the number (like, only 500 BitTorrent sessions) and cut off after that.
--
My thoughts: I don't think this helps anything. I doubt anybody has much of a problem with them legitimately throttling P2P protocols, as long as it's done consistently and fairly (no need to throttle with plenty of upstream, right?). The real problem are the RSTs which impersonate each side of the connection to the other, saying that the other closed the connection. That's like Bob passing messages between Alice and Candice, and telling Candice that Alice called her a bitch, and telling Alice that Candice called her a bitch.
QoS isn't that hard, and I'm sure they know how. It's fairly easy to throttle back without sending RSTs, and allows for the full utilization of 'open' bandwidth.
This statement explains the rationale, but not the choice of methods.
Parent
interpreted to mean (Score:3, Insightful)
our big fancy piece of software slows your download speed to a trickle if you use hardly any of your upload speed. so god forbid you try to ssh or rdesktop into your box
I Hope My Service Improves (Score:3, Funny)
For well over a year I have had intermittent but persistent dropouts during primetime (Comcast). I've put in about a dozen service calls and had a tech at my house just the other day. I've had two new cable modems and the tech confirmed that the signal is fine.
I used tcpdump to show him the traffic scroll by at a nearly constant rate (I have a very active home network) and then *bam* it's dead. He looked at the lights and from his point of view says "the signal is fine". It's not my network because I see the same dropouts when connected directly to the cable modem, and it's apparently not the signal.
So that leaves the network. I think it's saturated. I can see 30+ ARPs per second immediately after service comes back up. And if this new policy helps that, then I'm all for it.
Cable (Score:4, Interesting)
Which is why p2p should move to UDP (Score:4, Insightful)
And move the TCP part into the application. You can't break a session where there is none to break.
Azureus already has UDP support, but it very rarely falls back to UDP unfortunately.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
very good observation!
in fact, in my world (snmp) its ALL udp for this very reason. as I explain it, the same 'work' is done by tcp or udp based apps by the time the top 'layer' edge is reached; but the diff is WHO does the work - the app or the stack. in snmp, its the app since the app 'knows better' how to manage its segmentation, retries and timeouts. letting tcp do that is convenient but rarely optimal. that's why a lot of protocols run on udp - they want more control over the aspects of their comms
They don't Throttle, they Forge Reset Packets (Score:5, Insightful)
Per that PDF, on page 10 Comcast described how they "delay" the packets, using "reset packets." Stop letting them get away with calling forging reset packets "throttling". Instead, they are blocking connections via forgery.
Except, they admit that packets with the reset header are only supposed to be used by the two end computers, and not by any of the routers in between, which should be handled by ICMP [wikipedia.org].
They say, in that pdf, "As used in our current congestion management practices, the reset packet is used to convey that the system cannot, at that moment, process additional high-resource demands without creating risk of congestion.", which is just crazy.
Reset isn't a "slow down" message, it is a "stop sending me any kind of data on this connection" message.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That's Comcast old (current) policy. Their new policy is documented in this page [comcast.net] on their web site.
On page 11:
"As described above, the new approach will not manage congestion by focusing on managing the use of specific protocols. Nor will this approach use 'reset packets.'"
Re:Now what will happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
That is better because now consumers can make an informed decision when choosing a internet provider.
An 'unlimited' internet connection at an affordable price may look like a good deal but if you knew in advance it was actually limited in some way you might have chosen another provider with a better offer. Now at least you know what you're getting for your money and you can make a fair comparison between different providers.
This improves transparency and thus competition and ultimately benefits the consumer.
Parent
Take it, leave it, or leave it (Score:5, Insightful)
That is better because now consumers can make an informed decision when choosing a internet provider.
Only one high-speed Internet provider offers service in many areas of the United States (home of Slashdot). This means choosing a high-speed Internet provider is like choosing any other public utility such as your power or water provider. What recourse do people dissatisfied with a public utility have?
you can make a fair comparison between different providers.
You get this provider if you live here; you get that provider if you live there. Should people really be choosing where to live based on the only ISP that isn't dial-up?
Parent
Re:Take it, leave it, or leave it (Score:4, Interesting)
The US is a capitalist economy, right ? Isn't the market supposed to fix this ?
Where I live (small city in the Netherlands), I can choose from dozens of ISP's, there's also at least 10 different power companies to choose from. Also, it's always possible to move to an area where there are more or better ISP's to choose from.
Parent
Re:Take it, leave it, or leave it (Score:5, Insightful)
The US is a capitalist economy, right ? Isn't the market supposed to fix this ?
Free markets do not work like that. Free markets fix things when there is an substantial economic incentive. Broadband infrastructure is expensive, time-consuming to lay down, dominated by strong players with political capital and related technology changes rapidly. Given those, why would the free market invest (tens of) billions of dollars in a long term, difficult and risky project? If you have billions of dollars, there are many many more ways to make more money in much less time. Free markets don't magically fix things for consumers. Free markets are about providing the opportunity for capital to move freely and as a result, make the best use of said capital. That's it. The issue is that people apply all kinds of benefits to "best use", as in no monopolies, cheap products, etc., which just isn't how it works. Especially not in the short term.
I also live in a small city in the Netherlands btw. I can choose dozen of ISP's, but only one which is faster than 8 Mbps. Not sure about the figures, but despite what the OPTA (Dutch Telecom Watchdog) says, there does exist a monopoly for "fast" internet in a considerable part of the Netherlands (wet finger approach: 25-35%). And moving to an area with faster internet??? That is rather a ridiculously expensive solution.
Parent
Re:Take it, leave it, or leave it (Score:5, Insightful)
"The US is a capitalist economy"
Oh my god, that's *so *CUTE !!!!
The US, if you hadn't heard, is what we call a "mixed economy" -- with an interesting mix:
Profits are held by private individuals, and losses are distributed among the general public via bailouts, etc.
Parent
Re:Take it, leave it, or leave it (Score:5, Insightful)
Profits are held by private individuals, and losses are distributed among the general public via bailouts, etc.
Oh bullshit.
Profits are divided between the individual and the state. Losses are almost always suffered by the individual. How often does the state step in to help bailout any business? You think AMD is going to get a helping hand if they go under? Did Pets.com get any help? Mostly the government says "suck it" if you fail and "gimme" when you succeed.
As for the recent "bailouts", it's going to be the profitable and well-off being taxed to bailout institutions that gave money away (rich people's money, mostly) to that part of the general public that is never going to pay that money back.
Fuck. The might as well have just increased income taxes and handed the money directly to those with bad credit. They could have avoided the charade of mortgages, etc, and just called it welfare and subsidized housing.
Parent
Re:Take it, leave it, or leave it (Score:4, Interesting)
As for the recent "bailouts", it's going to be the profitable and well-off being taxed to bailout institutions that gave money away (rich people's money, mostly) to that part of the general public that is never going to pay that money back.
It's NOT "rich people's money, mostly". The bulk of investments made on our (US) stock exchanges - and I'd guess world-wide as well - is institutional. Some of that is money-market funds bought by the middle class and above; but the majority, I believe, is retirement money. This affects a very large number of Americans (and yeah, I'm one of them).
At this point the problem doesn't really have much to do with bailing out those people who bought houses that were way out of their price range - those people have largely been foreclosed on already.
If you can take an hour to learn quite a bit about what led to all this, listen to the "This American Life" episode 'The Giant Pool of Money' [thisamericanlife.org]. The way this crisis came to be is breathtaking in terms of the greed, arrogance, and stupidity involved.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"How often does the state step in to help bailout any business?"
Um... half a dozen times a week, give or take.
Okay, maybe that's a recent trend. How about farm and energy subsidies?
"As for the recent "bailouts", it's going to be the profitable and well-off being taxed to bailout institutions that gave money away"
Sorry, but when the dollar tanks it tanks for everyone, not just the profitable and well-off
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I can never understand the cadre of poor and middle class who feel the need to defend the rich. Do you think defending the rich will make you rich? Do you think the rich will accept you as anything but a quaint and loyal pet? Or maybe you feel the tax burden, and are just pissed off about taxes? If that's the case, don't you realize that you, the poor or middle class, are paying an unfair burden at the expense of the wealthy?
Nor can I ever understand people who divide other people into Manichaean classes li
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Nice talking point. However, the current economic crisis has nothing to do with mandated lending. It's entirely caused by voluntary risks and outright fraud.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That is, by far, the most useful explanation of what's wrong with the American economy I have EVER seen.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
>The US is a capitalist economy, right ?
Not for long. With the government owning companies, we are fast headed to becoming the USSA (United Socialist States of America)
In a truly capitalist economy the market would have crashed and hit rock bottom by now and we'd have a lot less airlines. However it might be sustainable by now, if the depression were over and it had run it's course. We have become experts at delaying the inevitable.
>Isn't the market supposed to fix this ?
In a market where tax dollars
Re:Last-mile natural monopoly (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem isn't logistics, it's political. ISP's cut deals with local government to ensure they keep their monopoly and eat the whole cake.
Parent
Re:Now what will happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
Comcast will enforce bandwidth caps. How's that better than throttling?
Even if it turns out that 250 gig limits make for a shitty service, at least Comcast are honest about the limits they put on you, so you know what you're buying and you can take the limits placed on you into account when deciding what to download.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
so to sum it up, you are getting up the behind but at least you know how far itll go
Re:Now what will happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea isn't to guarantee the service you would want to have in your wildest dreams. It is to receive all terms and conditions prior to sale so that you can make an informed decision. It is fraud prevention.
Parent
Re:Now what will happen? (Score:5, Informative)
How is this announcement related to the recent 250 GB monthly usage threshold?
The two are completely separate and distinct. The new congestion management technique is based on real-time Internet activity. The goal is to avoid congestion on our network that is being caused by the heaviest users. The technique is different from the recent announcement that 250 GB/month is the aggregate monthly usage threshold that defines excessive use.
Gizmodo's take on the thing [gizmodo.com] is much easier to read.
Going over the 250GB cap will get you disconnected, but your bandwidth will get throttled long, long before that if you do anything their software deems "excessive."
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not really anti-competitive. It's progressive in fact.
The bottom line is that ISPs pay for out-of-network traffic and they can't expect to take that cost and not pass it on.
So, for an ISP to recognize that they are only out of pocket for traffic that goes outside their network and not limit your in-network traffic is actually good.
If P2P protocols were smart enough to recognize and use in-network peers (which could simply be a product of latency perhaps, but better methods are probably possible) bef
Re:I have a sneaking suspicion (Score:4, Insightful)
well, let them go home if they're not going to offer service like a big boy does. This is the Internet we're talking about. INTER being the key word. They're not being progressive here. They're being very regressive. Comcast wants to be the sole content provider to their subscribers like AOL did back in the 90's. Until AOL subscribers discovered the actual Internet.
This is what Comcast wants. They want their users to use their services. This is purely anti-competitive behavior. I say, if Comcast doesn't want to provide true undiscriminatory Internet access, get out of the damn business. They're already screwing their customers. Deregulation has allowed Comcast to act like this.
True competition would allow me to jump to an ISP who would provide the same level of service at the same cost without these BS tactics to force me to use their content.
Unfortunately, there's no other ISP here who provides cable. And no DSL providers want to provide me DSL despite having fibre to the curb. Since AT&T hasn't disclosed that I have fibre to the curb. Speakeasy thinks I can't only get 144k IDSL. AT&T knows I can get 100Mbit if they offered it. Comcast just wants me to stop using the service altogether. I hope the FCC really drops the hammer on these anti-competitive greedy bastards.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
No.
Its more like they're saying "traffic outside our network will cost you; internal stuff is free".
In other words it is no different to the way many ISPs behave in the UK. They have mirrors of things people might want to use - so that their customers don't use more external bandwidth than they need to.
For example Virgin Media's Debian mirror [virginmedia.com].
Compare to AU/NZ cap policies (Score:3, Informative)
That the 250GB limit will not be applied to traffic within Comcast's own network. Can you say anticompetitive?
As I understand it, it's fairly commonplace in the Internet access industry not to charge end users for traffic that doesn't cross the ISP's upstream connection. For example, ISPs in Australia and New Zealand, two countries that have a slow, expensive pipe to other anglophone countries (USA, Canada, Ireland, UK), follow this policy of not counting accesses to, say, Linux distro mirrors on the ISP's network against the user's cap.