Comcast Has 30 Days To 'Fess Up About P2P Throttling 262
negRo_slim writes with some welcome news from Ars Technica: "Comcast has 30 days to disclose the details of its 'unreasonable network management practices' to the Federal Communications Commission, the agency warned Wednesday morning as it released its full, 67-page Order. As FCC Chair Kevin Martin said it would, the Commission's Order rejects the ISP giant's insistence that its handling of peer-to-peer applications was necessary. 'We conclude that the company's discriminatory and arbitrary practice unduly squelches the dynamic benefits of an open and accessible Internet,' the agency declares." And from reader JagsLive comes news that Comcast has a different plan in place to deal with heavy bandwidth users: slow traffic for up to 20 minutes at a time to users who are grabbing the most bits.
Unix scheduling model for bandwidth? (Score:5, Insightful)
Comcast's problem has got me thinking, has anyone implemented a QOS mechanism that works like *nix CPU time allocation? In simple terms that's where a task's priority is determined as an inverse function of the amount of CPU time it wants. It seems to me the same thing should work just fine for bandwidth allocation. You just let interactive connections have as much as they want, and the continuous hogs get whatever is left - but you do this in a protocol-agnostic way that is based solely on demand.
But: this only would be appropriate if your goal is to deliver maximal performance under full link utilization. I don't know if this is a real problem for the cable providers - I doubt if last-mile congestion is as big an issue as people think. Probably they are more concerned about reducing their total cost for bandwidth to the internet. In that case the strategy of temporarily throttling the hogs seems reasonable and fair because it is protocol-agnostic, but ONLY if the specifics of this mechanism are disclosed to the customer, and this service is NOT advertised as "unlimited".
Re:Unix scheduling model for bandwidth? (Score:5, Interesting)
This type of throttling seems like it could be a real problem for Video On Demand applications, since suddenly slowing down your connection when you're streaming video could result in some pretty lousy viewing experiences.
Since Comcast itself seems like one of the companies poised to go into Video On Demand in a big way, this strategy seems like shooting themselves in the foot. Sure, they could have it throttle only if it's not Comcast's VOD, but then they run into the same issue with the FCC that they currently have with the P2P throttling.
I don't see how Comcast can do real content-agnostic throttling without screwing with its own content offerings. I guess that's the problem with being a bandwidth provider and a content provider at the same time.
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Possibly, but real-time video streaming only demands a limited amount of bandwidth (2 Mbps or so). It would not get throttled like an ordinary download, which consumes as much bandwidth as it can.
Re:Unix scheduling model for bandwidth? (Score:5, Insightful)
So set the limit at 6 Mbps. What, you mean Comcast can't deliver a continuous 5Mbps to all their customers? Are you telling me they oversold their bandwidth? Say it ain't so. :-D
But seriously, the right solution is to make VOD use multicast and treat multicast rates as the number of bytes streamed divided by the number of clients. Use the local hard drive as a very large cache, and by the end of the movie, you have the whole thing on your HD and aren't consuming any bandwidth. The notion of "live" streaming of movies off a hard drive in some server farm in a unicast client-server style is so 1985 (prior to RFC-966). After all, this is precisely what multicast was designed to do. If it doesn't get the job done, create a new RFC and a new underlying packet routing protocol that does, but could the cable companies PLEASE quit jerking everybody's chain and saying "Oh noes, VOD can haz mor bandwidth?" It got tiresome ten years ago. Now, it no longer qualifies as comedy and falls squarely into the bucket marked "that's just sad".
Re:Unix scheduling model for bandwidth? (Score:4, Informative)
But seriously, the right solution is to make VOD use multicast
How do you multicast when each household can decide to start, pause, stop, fast-forward and rewind the video whenever they want?
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How do you multicast when each household can decide to start, pause, stop, fast-forward and rewind the video whenever they want?
To quote my father: It uses this really cool new technology called "FM".
...the "M" stands for Magic.
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You broadcast stuff, like you do with TV. You broadcast movies or whatever content that then you can save and play at your leisure. Oh wait, isn't that kind of like TV? With a DVR?
Yeap, multi-cast was there to allow cheap broadcasting of thousands of channels to hundreds of millions of users, cheaply and effectively. But which telco/cable company would like that?
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If they throttle only users that aren't using Comcast VOD, it's going to be much harder to prove, since there aren't any fake packets being inserted in the stream. Also, since net neutrality is not the law, that sort of throttling might even be legal.
Re:Unix scheduling model for bandwidth? (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, since net neutrality is not the law, that sort of throttling might even be legal.
Well I'm not a lawyer nor American...But due to their size, can't it be considered as unfair practices against the competition? (other VOD providers?)
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As if there were any competition to be unfair to...
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Why would that be bad? It is the selective disruption of "certain" protocols and sites that is the biggest problem with Comcast. If they implemented some sort of FWQ (Fair-Weight Queuing) system like the one that is built into IOS, then it wouldn't care what the traffic was, just that you had emptied your bucket, (sent your allotted amount of packets) and had to wait until everyone else got to do the same until you went again.. That strikes me as being about as fair as you could be. The problem Comcast i
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Did you reply to the wrong post? I agree that a fair queueing/throttling system is perfectly reasonable if the goal is to provide the best possible service.
However, if Comcast is favoring their own content over the content of others, AND there are little to no other options to turn to for broadband service, that is pretty much the definition of unfair.
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They're not just throttling P2P. At a company that will remain nameless, we caught Comcast RST-throttling HTTPS traffic generated by our business software.
Said company is nameless because management doesn't want to expose what Comcast is up to. Says it makes them look bad.
Re: I caught them throttling eBay web fetches (Score:3, Interesting)
So it is all well and good that people think this is about torrent and p2p, but I have seen the browser experience degraded also. And after enough resets, some things fail. I hate that. I have no other choice but to remain with comcast as the alternative to my 16Mb broadband is lousy DSL at 1.5M
Re:Unix scheduling model for bandwidth? (Score:4, Informative)
Hahahaha, that was priceless. You really think they'd throttle their own content? No, they're throttling Netflix and anyone else trying to do VOD.
Comcast offers VOD on their internal network, this costs them nothing. Netflix VOD comes over the Internet link they rent from another company, so they would rather make this unwatchable and continue to have a monopoly on content delivery.
They're preemptively trying to stamp out any competition but under the guise of "oh noes we're out of the bandwidths." Comcast charges plenty for the bandwidth you're using, but to push profits higher they need your Internet use to go down but your costs to go up. Just another instance where Wall St.'s "make more every year" mentality is going to hurt us more every year.
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Cable VOD doesn't run over IP and thus is automatically exempt from any IP traffic shaping.
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This type of throttling seems like it could be a real problem for Video On Demand applications, since suddenly slowing down your connection when you're streaming video could result in some pretty lousy viewing experiences. Since Comcast itself seems like one of the companies poised to go into Video On Demand in a big way, this strategy seems like shooting themselves in the foot. Sure, they could have it throttle only if it's not Comcast's VOD,
Why do you think they throttle bandwidth?
Its all about making their competitor look bad.
Re:Unix scheduling model for bandwidth? (Score:4, Insightful)
That is exactly how the default QOS on the Tomato firmware works:
As the amount of bandwidth a connection has used rises, it gets placed in lower categories for QOS. Along with prioritizing DNS and ACKs, that makes the most of a limited connection.
Re:Unix scheduling model for bandwidth? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Unix scheduling model for bandwidth? (Score:4, Insightful)
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indeed. lower cost for most people, an economic incentive not to throttle anything [good for the isp and us] and the more people use the more incentive there is for isps to expand the US's pathetic network strucutre [after all more bandwidth= more money for the isps] in addition to that, imagine the number of people who get throttled by comcast [probably over a million easy] even if that's a small percentage of those on t
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The majority who use the internet normally would have significantly lower cable bills.
I'm sorry, but WHAT?!!!!
When have monopolies ever lowered prices when their costs go down?
The only possible outcome for tiered pricing is the same screwed up system we have for cell phones, where you get a $200 bill one month if you go over.
The telcos/ISPs need to use some of the taxpayer money gifted to them and build the infrastructure they promised, then this wouldn't be an issue.
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it works for utilities like water, gas, electric etc why not here too?
I've been wondering that for quite some time, a little something like this [wikipedia.org], no?
Public utilities are subject to forms of public control and regulation ranging from local community-based groups to state-wide government monopolies.
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This is exactly the type of "harmful government interference" the small ISPs were all glad to have the big network players like AT&T and Verizon fight against.
Then, towards the end of viability for most small ISPs, they realized that AT&T telecom division being guaranteed to have to charge the same rates to AT&T's internet service division for line access as what they'd charge a competitor didn't mean much when AT&T offered huge volume discounts -- but mostly on volumes only AT&T interne
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pay based on how much bandwidth you use- say 25 cents a gig + 10$/month for the connection its self- that way it regulates its self. you use more, you pay more and it doesn't matter what kind of data it is. the isps get more $ for more traffic they get and consumers don't get throttled nor do those who don't use much pay truckloads for the privilage of just getting online. [in fact data use would somewhat be encourageable by isps because they'd make more] it works for utilities like water, gas, electric etc why not here too?
Because every other ISP in the area is offering "UNLIMITED!" bandwidth - no one wants to be the one advertising limited, even if the unlimited really is limited.
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Billing per bandwidth (Score:3, Interesting)
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It would be just like years sgo in the days before DSL when a virus would hijack your PC and route all your internet through a premium rate phone number in jamaica or somewhere. You only found out when you got the phone bill. Usually the phone company made you pay it regardless.
Re:Unix scheduling model for bandwidth? (Score:5, Insightful)
Last mile congestion for comcast is not a problem. the problem is they only have t3 bandwidth where they should have oc12 bandwidth and dont want to upgrade their headend connections to internet backbones. I know of one market that was consolidated with a fiber backbone and they eliminated 4 headends into 1. they did NOT upgrade the connection in the main headend to take account for the added load from all the other communities rolled into it.
THAT is what is happening, they want to be an ISP but dont want to do any of the ISP things like upgrading your backend. Because that's expensive.
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Yes, this has been integrated into Cisco routers for quite some time. It's called Weighted Fair Queueing [wikipedia.org]. WFQ schedules high-bandwidth streams in a round-robin fashion, yielding bandwidth to low-bandwidth streams so applications that speak infrequently don't get starved out. i.e. The more you talk on the pipe, the lower your overall priority becomes.
Cisco also extends this concept with class-based Weighted Fair Queueing [cisco.com]. CBWFQ allows you to put traffic into buckets and each bucket can have different que
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Fuck you. I want all my traffic to be treated equally by the isp. NO MATTER WHAT THE FUCK I AM DOING!
If i need traffic managment. I'll do it my damm self.
Moron.
That's what T1s, T3s, Frame Relay, and the various grades of OC connections are for. You get guaranteed bandwidth, service-level agreements, and the ability to QOS your own data.
If places like Comcast, Qwest, etc... weren't overselling their lines, you would be required to pay full-price regardless of your actual use of the line.
It costs money for the ISPs to guarantee X Mb/sec bandwidth to you.
You can either join the 'collective' pool that Comcast has available for your neighborhood for a ch
Awesome (Score:5, Funny)
Awesome. So now I can stop my DOS attacks for 20 minutes at a time, and let comcast take over?
Or else what? (Score:5, Interesting)
What is the FCC going to do...Send another strongly worded letter?
Seriously, I want to see something actually happen for once.
Re:Or else what? (Score:5, Insightful)
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they can pull their rf license forcing comcast to shut down all RF operations.
You gotta have a FCC license to be a Cable company.
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Profits.
For instance, passing legislation that gives a tax break to "public internet service" but not "private internet service", and setting strict standards for what is allowed on a "public internet service". Then Comcast could choose to continue to discriminate against certain us
Re:Or else what? (Score:5, Informative)
The FCC has the regulatory power to revoke licenses and impose fines (Up to $325,000 per infraction, I believe).
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Re:Or else what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Or else what? (Score:4, Insightful)
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The FCC rejects Comcast's insistence that it does not have the authority to take these steps. The Commission notes that while the Supreme Court's Brand X decision classified cable ISPs as "information services" rather than "telecommunications services," it added that the FCC "has jurisdiction to impose additional regulatory obligations" on ISPs via its interstate commerce powers.
Re:Or else what? (Score:4, Insightful)
A significant point that often gets overlooked in this issue is that Cable companies and phone companies are generally government granted, government enforced monopolies. For example I personally am under the Cablevision monopoly. I couldn't have Comcast as my ISP even if (for some twisted reason) I did want to do business with them.
State, county, and/or local governments handle the access rights - running the Cable and Phone lines on public telephone poles or underground on public land. A company cannot simply come in and compete against the local Cable or Telephone monopoly. Most people face at best a duopoly, the very limited competition between Cable broadband monopoly vs the Telephone broadband monopoly.
So long as the government is involved in supporting and enforcing these monopoly market conditions it is entirely appropriate for the government to be deeply involved in the market conditions and business behavior. If a company wants monopoly usage of the public infrastructure like this it is entirely appropriate for the government to impose conditions on that usage.
It is appropriate for the government to manage the usage of public infrastructure for the public benefit. When the government meddles in a market to enable or impose a monopoly in that market, it is appropriate and necessary for the government to artificially impose conditions to replace the natural competitive forces that ensure a healthy beneficial marketplace. To replace the natural competitive market forces that are excluded by the artificial government sponsored monopoly.
For example if someone wants to go into business as an ISP that filters out porn and other arbitrary "objectionable" content, then sure, they are welcome to do so. *I* wouldn't want to use that ISP, but some people would want to do so. And that competing alternative is fine, so long as the government isn't handing them a monopoly on the market. If they were one of the Cable companies, and the government was handing them an effective monopoly position on broadband for a region, or even a duopoly position vs the phone company, then that would be a huge problem.
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If the Internet has seriously become a critical piece of government and commercial infrastructure, why doesn't it perform like one? Because it isn't one.
I cannot dignify this with a response as it doesn't even come close to making sense.
Look, regulation isn't all roses and rainbows. And it certainly isn't the answer to every problem. It s
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Fantastic! Let's go all the way with this idea! I'm going to create a new enterprise business network so that customers can vote for me with their wallets which means I'm going to have to install a lot of cable. Can I start by trenching down the middle of your street? We'll be there Tuesday. Between 8:00AM and 5:00PM.
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Also remember, this isn't a mom-and-pop ISP in the backwoods. Comcast is one of the largest ISPs in the nation, and holds a de facto monopoly on broadband Internet access in many areas.
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Really? So if you built a commercial network, you would want the FCC to dictate how you police your traffic and what QoS measures you implement? Sorry, but the less the goverment tells me how to run my business/network/enterprise, the better. If customers don't like it, they need to make it known via their wallets.
That's an interesting theory. Anyway, back here in reality, there isn't much practical competition for that sort of voting to work. That's how it ended up becoming an FCC problem.
Oh, and by the way, as a customer/consumer, I don't give a flying fuck about the success of your business. If you can't provide a good service at a fair price and make a profit, you don't deserve to be in business no matter how much you whine about how lousy your customers are.
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Re:Or else what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Really? So if you built a commercial network, you would want the FCC to dictate how you police your traffic and what QoS measures you implement?
Right. If you build your private commercial network then I agree with you.
Just so long as you don't do it via a government granted, government enforced effective monopoly.
If you expect to do it based on privileged monopoly access building it on top of public telephone poles and public underground lines and other public infrastructure and other governmental benefits and governmental assistance....
well... if that were the case... well then you would be wrong.
If customers don't like it, they need to make it known via their wallets.
No. The government prohibits that. The government granted Cablevision monopoly market rights over my region. In other regions the government has granted Comcast monopoly market rights. I cannot do business with Comcast even if I wanted to. People in other regions cannot do business with Cablevision if that were their preference. The government grants and enforces these regional monopolies.
It is impossible to suggest the government should not meddle when the government is already involved. It is absurd to suggest "natural free market competition" is the solution to market problems when the force of government is prohibiting market competition.
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a wild idea.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:a wild idea.. (Score:4, Insightful)
What competitors? Here in Springfield we have Comcast, DSL, dialup, and satellite. Not mush of a real choice, is it?
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Thats just it though isn't it? I gather in many places comcast have no direct competitors (Satellite doesn't cut it), hence no infrastructure development.
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That is a pretty wild idea. It's so wild I just might try it if there was another cable company in my area.
How? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How? (Score:4, Informative)
In the case of the BitTorrent Sandvine filtering incident, Wireshark logs could be taken at both ends of a connection (sync the captures over the phone or whatever).
Compare the logs - If RST packets are detected coming in at one end of the connection that were never sent at the other end, that's proof that someone (in this case the ISP) injected them into the connections to shut them down prematurely.
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Oh, and I should have also mentioned this:
Much of the throttling is protocol-specific and happens no matter what (peak time or not). Many ISPs explicitly target some protocols (BT being the primary and most common example). So if BT consistently slows to a crawl but downloading XP Service Pack 3 is consistently fast - something is potentially wonky.
Re:How? (Score:4, Insightful)
Take a look at CAIP's filings before the CRTC- here [crtc.gc.ca]
Screenshots, affidavits, letters to the commission. Depends on how the throttling works, but if it really is as simple as "After twenty minutes of heavy use the connection is throttled", that should be relatively easy to show in screenshots, as CAIP did.
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By logging the injection of forged RST packets for one.
http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/ISP_Network_Monitor [azureuswiki.com]
Or by using your eyeballs to watch your torrents drop to spittle while your OS updates continue at full speed.
Don't start celebrating (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Don't start celebrating (Score:5, Insightful)
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Except the IETF also has no authority - I'm sure Comcasts' actions aren't IETF sanctioned either.
And in this case, the FCC is asserting authority over a government sanctioned (but regulated) monopoly on service through cable television infrastructure, NOT over the Internet itself.
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no-- that's ok too now.. (Score:2)
Boobs at least
http://www.npr.org/blogs/visibleman/2008/07/closing_the_books_on_janets_wa.html [npr.org]
"So, a Philly appeals court has tossed out the $550,000 indecency fine the FCC hit up CBS with after Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" during the halftime of the 2004 Super Bowl."
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The internet was never 'run' by the IETF, and the IETF never really claimed to run it- they're the Internet Engineering Task Force, not ISOC (The Internet Society, which probably has a better claim to 'running' the Internet, as it oversees the IETF through the Internet Architecture Board, the IAB).
Really, nobody 'runs' the Internet, but the FCC does basically control communications carriers in the United States.
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These are, after all, the same people who license our TV/radio stations. Are we to anticipate a future "internet broadcast" license?
Will we have to pay fines for indecency if we upload dirty pictures to our blog?
The enemy of your enemy
What happens after 30 days? (Score:4, Insightful)
The article says nothing about the consequences. This is just another bullshit "warning" to Comcast with ZERO to back it up.
If I'm late with a child support payment, my license gets suspended. Meanwhile, if a corporate entity is late with some sort of government demand, jack shit happens. Fucking great.
Re:What happens after 30 days? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh- I pay all my child support on time or in advance, I'm just using that as an example of uneven punishments via the govt.
Why single them out? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the internet is to be free of this sort of tainted service, the protocols that the internet was built on need to be followed and implemented in good faith. Any deviations need to be made crystal clear so we consumers and businesses can make informed decisions about the tradeoffs. Comcast, I'm not just looking at you.
Re:Why single them out? (Score:4, Informative)
Is there some reason why they aren't asking Time Warner, Cox, AT&T and others each about their practices?
Because it is easy to get around the blocks that they have, however Comcast uses Sandvine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandvine#Controversy) to throttle the BT packets and inject false information. The rest basically just block or slow down traffic to certain ports. The reason injecting packets is so big of a deal is that where does it stop? Can I inject false information into an e-mail that is being sent? IM message? Etc?
Use more, pay more (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Use more, pay more (Score:4, Insightful)
Now ya done it. (Score:5, Funny)
Want to royally piss off any governmental agency? Tell them they don't have the authority to do what they're doing. They'll find SOME way to get you.
Take starbucks (Score:4, Interesting)
New Comcast ToC (Score:5, Funny)
You can pay for all the bandwidth that you want
as long as you don't use it.
Why can't locals deal with this? (Score:2)
Comcast cannot exist without the deals it makes with local governments for their monopoly. Can't we just make sure our local franchise agreements include fairness and net neutrality, the next time we negotiate? Then if they default on that agreement, they lose their access (or whatever else the contract specifies).
That sounds a lot teethier than anything FCC could do.
What's wrong with this idea? All I can think of is that it would be slow to implement (I think my city's current Comcast franchise last
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I'm not sure, but I don't think cable TV franchise agreements cover the ISP business, or that local cable TV councils have any authority over the ISP.
Also, local cable TV councils are severely limited in what they can do by federal regulations. And even though they could theoretically take away a cable franchise (and thus the ISP business), I can't imagine a better way to piss off the public than to take away their TV!
perfectly reasonable... (Score:4, Funny)
"Comcast has 30 days to disclose the details of its 'unreasonable network management practices'
I can hear it now... "But our practices are all perfectly reasonable, your Honor, we do not practice unreasonable practices here at Comcast."
Next Step... (Score:5, Insightful)
Since the FCC has made it clear that ISPs shouldn't be allowed to discriminate against users based on the apps they choose to use, and they're already pissed at Comcast, now is the time to kick it up a notch and use the same argument to demand the opening of blocked web/e-mail ports and an invalidation of TOS terms that ban servers. Bandwidth is bandwidth, if I want to run a web server or my own e-mail server then no one should be able to stop me. The system of traffic management they claim to be moving to in the article should work just as well for users running servers. Of course, they falsely advertise it as unlimited usage at a certain bandwidth and, thus, shouldn't be allowed to throttle traffic in the first place but that's a whole other battle in the war against corrupt telecomm companies.
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Unfortunately, the cable company systems do not work that way. Their upload bandwidth is severely constricted and if you or your neighbor is running a server it could easily be sending "up" data in all of the available slots. My understanding is that for cable systems it is 10-20 to 1 for download vs. upload.
So how do you get equality here? I'd say the first step would be to eliminate cable TV wiring as an Internet provider. DSL unbalanced for upload vs. download speeds as well, so there will be no equa
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I think the idea is you pay for the bandwidth used. So if you set up a popular web server, you will get a bigger bill for how much data it sends. And uploaded bandwidth probably costs more than downloaded, since there is less of it available, like you say.
Time Warner (Score:5, Interesting)
How can I put Time Warner in their place? What data do I need to collect? Are there law firms I should contact with the data who would be likely to pursue a class action lawsuit? Paying to be abused like this is outrageous.
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>How can I put Time Warner in their place? What data do I need to collect? Are there law firms I should contact with the data who would be likely to pursue a class action lawsuit? Paying to be abused like this is outrageous.
The only people who would gain anything substantial from this approach would be the lawyers. Your best bet is probably to just cancel your subscription and choose a less evil ISP.
This is about maximizing profit (Score:4, Informative)
Sources I know inside Comcast say the Sandvine throttling has Greatly reduced their peering costs with AT&T and increased profits. The terms of the AT&T-Comcast broadband merger locked Comcast into using AT&T transit for a lot of their traffic.
This is about their desire to purchase as little bandwidth as possible and nothing else. They can easily justify this by creating "congestion" on their network but it is all about profit (duh).
Wrong Agency (Score:2)
"And from reader JagsLive comes news that Comcast has a different plan in place to deal with heavy bandwidth users: slow traffic for up to 20 minutes at a time to users who are grabbing the most bits."
But they'll continue to sell it as though this weren't so. They intend to continue perpetrating the fraud they've come to enjoy. While some aspects of this fall under FCC jurisdiction, the fraudulent action of refusing -- not merely failing -- to provide the service they've sold falls under FTC jurisdiction. T
they're doing it do this day. (Score:2)
whenever I even download a torrent, regardless of whether I'm seeding or not, they completely choke my http.
I'd say it sounds like a connection limit they're imposing.
a few minutes after I shut down all active torrents, web pages start loading again with no delay.
This is not cool at all. I hope the FCC drops the hammer on comcast.
ReadyBoost (Score:2)
I wonder if Comcast will call this technology ReadyRetard.
What?
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I want better high-speed internet. But if Concast's infrastructure can't provide it, what choice do they have but to limit some of the traffic? At least their new solution is independent of the type of traffic, which is fair, IMO, and in keeping with the concept of net neutrality.
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I think this is partly due to who my neighbors are now (average age much younger than before, turnover is pretty high where I live), but I'm not sure.
When I was looking into high-speed internet for the first time 6-7 years ago, I recall being informed that while cable whipped the pants off DSL at that time
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Martin: Will you pretty please stop throttling packets?(invester get concerned)
Comcast: NO
Martin: 325,000 fine.(stick dips)
Comcast: NO
Martin: License revoked. kthxbye
Re:Comcast "warning letter" snippets (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless FCC suspends the operating license of Comcast until comcast changes its policy, nothing is going to change.
Unfortunately this FCC does not have even one ball to do that.
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Comcast have already been proved to be blatant liars that deserve no trustworthiness to be left alone to do the right thing. Consequently I'm guessing that the FCC now are looking to oversee exactly what Comcast plan to do next, in order to ensure that their service really can't throttle traffic in any way in future.
>> Because it definitely isn't fighting for net neutrality.
I totally disagree. This seems to be an excellent indicator that they are doing all they can to protect it.
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Well, if the G-Man is local, then he's not really "stepping in" since he has been part of the arrangement all along. In fact, it was Comcast who asked him to step in, when they said, "Can I have a government-granted monopoly in your city?" How do you think Comcast got all those poles and wires that are on private property -- do you really think they negotiated with every home owner and boug