Comcast Discloses Throttling Practices 206
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."
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.)
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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.
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".
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.
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Worrying about how *long* you're online is extremely irritating. Those are definitely "good old days" I wouldn't want to go back to.
That's the way wireless broadband works - if you exceed some large limit in your local region, or use your wireless modem while away from home (which is the whole point of going wireless in the first place) then you get bushwhacked for 10 pounds/megabyte. Not too fun when you are working at a remote site and need to download a PDF technical manual.
Basically because the wireless
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If they sell you "xMbps bandwith unlimited 24/7" and they plan to cap you then they have been committing at least misleading advertising. In my personal point of view this is more like a scam.
Want additional proof? Send comcast a letter that states "I am going to pay with "ulimited money transfers" and write in the small print underneath that the payment is capped to a maximum of 9.99$/month due to bank congestion. I guess they won't find it funny.
what about when speakeasy lies to you? (Score:4, Informative)
There ARE people lying out there. Plenty.
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If they say it's unlimited without telling you there are limits, and then they put a limit on anything , then they are ripping you off. It doesn't matter at all what limits there were 10 years ago, unlimited doesn't just mean one limit has been removed, it means all limits have been removed.
Sure. Post a copy of your service agreement that states your connection is "unlimited" or quit beating the old strawman to death. We're all pretty bored of it by now.
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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.
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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..."
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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
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It'll be entirely secret between you and their marketing department. Honest!
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Perhaps Google could develop a not evil telecoms company.
They did. [wikipedia.org] Kinda.
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I'd forgotten about that one :-D
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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.)
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.)
The only thing that would be different in a Google ISP is that they'd tie every website you visited to your permanent record.
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?
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Sorry, but thats just ignorance. Some state constitutions have affirmative protections of free speech that can and do limit private entities. See Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U.S. 74 (1980)
Private companies cannot "do whatever the heck they want." Private property is not absolute.
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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).
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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).
I do not know where you got the idea that an adult cannot be arrested for yelling fire in a crowded theater.
If you reasonably thought there was a fire, you have little to worry about. If you're doing it maliciously, your level of "I'm fucked" scales from not-fucked (just you in an empty theater) to semi-fucked (a misdemeanor charge) all the way up to totally-fucked (at least one person dies because you shouted fire).
There are catch-all laws against inciting a panic, disturbing the peace, etc. which is the m
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A person is presumed to intend the reasonably foreseeable consequences of his voluntary act.
Shouting "fire" in a crowded theater is going to produce panic, probably physical harm and possibly trampling deaths. Any sane person knows this. "Presumed" has a legal meaning: the court takes it as given unless you show otherwise. This is the same reasoning used to outlaw "fighting words" in a bar, inciting riot, and so forth; it's why you can be arrested for driving drunk without actually killing anybody. It's enough evidence
Schenck v. United States (Score:2, Insightful)
Oliver Wendell Holmes, the judge writing the Unaninous(sp) brief for the case
used the fire thing as an example.
The private entities in the US operate under the US Constitution. Therefore they
must obey the law as written or ajudicated through precedence. Failing to do
so would open them up to a ton of lawsuits.
The tail shall not wag the dog. We ALLOW these people to do business here, not the
other way around.
Yeah, that was a good one (Score:2)
The funniest part about people bring up ye olde crowded-theater-fire in support of limitations on free speech is that they rarely no the issue at hand in Schenk, viz.:
Prohibiting people from expressing opposition to the draft.
That's correct. Holmes et al (unanimous decision) felt that endangering hundreds of people's lives by causing a panic was morally equivalent (or at least morally relevant) to a guy handing out flyers saying that the draft is bad.
This is from the Woodrow Wilson era? (Score:2)
That sounds very much in line with the repression of free speech typical of the Wilson administration during the period that the US was involved in WW1. Didn't realize just how bad things were unitl reading Barrie's book on the Great Influenza (which he describes evidence as originating in western Kansas).
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That You have "free speech" does not mean you are free from the results of said speech.
The text in question in full
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
the problem here is any kind of focused drop in your bandwidth that you paid for gives them the right to drop your bandwidt
you SHOULD be able to yell fire in a theatre (Score:2)
If the idiots in the theatre trample each other in a mad rush from a fire that doesnâ(TM)t even exist, it was their own stupidity and lack of clearheadedness that killed them, not the person shouting fire. If your reaction to the mere threat of dan
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Anything an ISP limits - whether it be browsing certain sites, severely limiting upload speed, or throttling p2p - is limiting free speech
That's preposterous.
I agree not getting what you think you paid for is a crock of shit, but to say that this is "limiting free speech" is going a little too far.
That's like saying a drunk driver is limiting free speech if they crash into someone, paralyzing them, and making it so that person has to communicate by blowing through a straw.
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.
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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
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[citation needed]
Look, I hate Comcast as much as the next guy and think this is all crap, but 'would anybody like to guess' what actually happens?
That's right, nothing. Vonage works fine over Comcast - Comcast isn't that stupid.
This is not official, only anecdotal, but from about 8 people scattered around the country with Comcast+Vonage... so it's a pretty fair statement.
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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?
I have never had any problems with my Vonage TA on Comcast. It just works.
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.
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Whenever there is a shortage of any resource — such as bandwidth — somebody is going to receive less of the resource, than they would like. It is inevitable. So, somehow a decision has to be made on how to divide, what's available. Other things being equal, giving a higher priority to one's own customers can hardly be illegal in suc
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)
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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
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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).
Tbh that doesnt sound too bad, i mean at least your web browsing isnt effective. Im on virgin and i think they use the same software, but its configured so that whenever im 'caught' (what i need to do get caught varies on time, upload speed, number of unencrypted bittorrent handshakes*) i either get slowed down (google ping goes from ~20 -> 200) which is annoying but useable for browsing or beaten with the slow stick (ping go to ~3000) which makes browsing impossible.
*is there any way to avoid these, all
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Except that it's nonsense. There's a decent analysis at http://torrentfreak.com/comcast-throttles-bittorrent-traffic-seeding-impossible/comment-page-20 [torrentfreak.com] . What they were actually doing was far more subtle than merely counting and blocking connections: they were forging packets to pretend the connection was there, but confusing the client about it so that it would keep trying the dead connection and not go on to another one. That's intentionally interfering with high-number-of-random-connection services such
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.
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I dont get what you want. You can either explain how it works, or explain it to the public: they start by explaining it to the public, then they tell you how they actually do it. The public facing stuff is mildly deceptive (doesnt mention their throttling severely breaks TCP) & the how they do it stuff is actually fairly acurate.
I just dont get what your ask is. To the average person TCP/IP doesnt mean a damned thing. How do you propose they discuss a TCP/IP centric topic in a way a "average person"
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
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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.
Yikes. Marketing speak (Score:2)
Sounds like the marketing guys got to answer to the FCC.
Cable (Score:4, Interesting)
Mod parent uip -- only insight shown in this topic (Score:2)
Cable companies are in a tight spot and they really do not want to sell us the rope (bandwidth) that we will hang them with (lost advertising dollars) by ultimately allowing other people to provide content and undermine their primary business model, infotainment content delivery.
I'm not sure they will "win" though in the long run. There will be too many other options for both data and content delivery --- even though the menu is small and the content kind of crappy, cell phones are already showing TV and p
If they can throttle bandwidth... (Score:2)
For that matter, isn't that was the "business-class" broadband does?
Maybe I'm just not angry about this enough yet. I use a cable modem (though not through comcast) and haven't really been found bandwid
What a joke FAP and caps. Other ISP do it in bette (Score:2)
What a joke FAP and caps. Other ISP do it in better way like have A download threshold when if you go over it you get slowed down for as long as it takes for you to Recover it but they also have FAP free times and / or a Pay for the data over the limit with no CAP. Some ISP do have FAP free zones but COMCARP dose not even want to do that.
Comcast problem in Denver (Score:2, Informative)
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.
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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
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And move the TCP part into the application. You can't break a session where there is none to break.
There's still a session. The fact that you have moved the session-state bits into a different part of the packet won't stop them for long. You can add encryption, but then key distribution becomes a problem -- without that, Comcast can just MITM everything.
It's an arms race, and Comcast will win it, simply because they can cancel the account whenever it discovers that it is losing to someone. There are two solutions: Real competition and government intervention. You probably don't get the first solution wit
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This is a bollocks suggestion.
UDP requires clients to know how to throttle. If your clients and the clients you are connected to do not throttle correctly you will overload your pipe and there is no long term recourse except to continually drop packets.
Admitantly usually incoming data is not where people have problems-- its outgoing where its your client thats in control-- but I really think UDP is a poor choice for P2P protocols based on its complete lack of bandwidth control.
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I never suggested that it's BETTER than TCP, but it would probably work better than TCP through a sandvine box.
And you completely ignored the first part of my post. You would still have to have some sort of TCP like mechanism higher in the application stack.
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.
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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.'"
They're not telling all (Score:2)
They throttled my iChat video conferences to less than dial-up speeds, effectively making it useless.
ECN: Not RST (Score:2)
When the number of unidirectional upload sessions for any of the managed P2P protocols
for a particular Sandvine PTS reaches the pre-determined session threshold, the Sandvine PTS
issues instructions called âoereset packetsâ that delay unidirectional uploads for that particular P2P
protocol in the geographic area managed by that Sandvine PTS. The âoeresetâ is a flag in the
packet header used to communicate an error condition in communication between two computers
on the Internet. As used in o
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.
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?
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.
Last-mile natural monopoly (Score:2)
The US is a capitalist economy, right ? Isn't the market supposed to fix this ?
How does the market provide for digging under a non-subscriber's real estate to pull cables in order to reach a subscriber?
Also, it's always possible to move to an area where there are more or better ISP's to choose from.
Part of my point is that moving every time an ISP noticeably changes its policy for the worse would be a drastic and expensive measure, involving finding employment for you and your SO and a school for your kids.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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.
...
And moving to an area with faster internet??? That is rather a ridiculously expensive solution.
Free markets are also about the mobility of labor.
Admittedly, labor is not as mobile as cash, but if people could not go to where the jobs are, you would never have had the railroads built, or silicon valley spring up or even the Gold Rush of [insert year here].
My point is that for many people, moving is not "a ridiculously expensive solution", it actually makes perfect sense for them.
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Free markets are also about the mobility of labor.
Admittedly, labor is not as mobile as cash, but if people could not go to where the jobs are, you would never have had the railroads built, or silicon valley spring up or even the Gold Rush of [insert year here].
My point is that for many people, moving is not "a ridiculously expensive solution", it actually makes perfect sense for them.
The topic isn't labor moving, it's the consumer moving.
If you have to move to make a living, that's entirely different from having to move to get faster internet.
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.
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
If they are never going to pay that money back, the mortgage companies should have never made the loans. When you make a loan, you take a risk. If it is, as you say, the rich just paying back the rich, it serves them right.
But that's not what it's going to be. The rich don't pay taxes like you or I.
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.
Had the mortgage companies not engaged in such underhanded practices, none of this would have been needed. It's they who broke Capitalism such that (temporary) Socialism is needed to fix it. This is exactly what
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: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.
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)
That is, by far, the most useful explanation of what's wrong with the American economy I have EVER seen.
Re: (Score:2)
The US is a capitalist economy, right ? Isn't the market supposed to fix this ?
Wrong. The US is a monopolist economy. Big difference.
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: (Score:2)
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?
I did. When I was looking for the home I am in now, I did remove a few places from my list because of limited internet access. It may not make you move, but it can make you "not" move.
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.
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.
Re: (Score:2)
You're being sold a product at a price where both are known in advance. Competition and lack of government established monopoly would be nice, but this is a better solution.
Now if only we had net neturaility laws to ensure that Comcast OnDemand counts toward the limit...
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not discriminating against any application, not even the legal ones.
I hope by "application" you mean "use" (noun), as opposed to "software product".
BitTorrent, for example, isn't illegal (I hope). Using it to distribute some specific content might be.
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."
Re: (Score:2)
I do tend to agree at least its upfront and not some back room shenanigans of arbitrary packet shaping ( or like i got once, ' you have exceeded the limits ', when there is no posted limit in the contract anywhere.. after asking for this new mythical limit so i could comply they finally backed down ' there really isn't a limit, but yo used too much, so use your own judgment and be reasonable' -- wtf? )
Now that said, I disagree with 250g being the limit, and i'm 100% against them canceling your service if yo
Re: (Score:2)
250 gigs lets you download at 0.77878308 megabit/s 24/7 (thanks, GNU units), or 8 gig per day. Plenty enough for a few aptitude full-upgrades, some online gaming and downloading a new distro to try out, plus some video to watch.
For now. Just wait for the next YouTube-like bandwidth hog to come around.
Re: (Score:2)
It makes alot of sense from a business perspective. Think about it:
Sorry if I ruined one of those steps for you... but this scheme might just work out alot better for them in the end by giving them more business from the moderate-use crowd
Re: (Score:2)
Number 2 doesn't exist. There are no competing ISPs in most areas. Wake up and smell the socialism.
Does anyone have any non-biased proof that BT is the main reason for congestion? I thought that was just marketing fud, it seems like digital cable and such is going to be a much larger slice of the pie. Still, I'm willing to believe it's BT.
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry if I ruined one of those steps for you...
Don't worry. In most places, there isn't any competition other than DSL, which is often more than 10-20x slower than cable (such that 250GB isn't an arbitrary limit, but a physical impossibility.
So, removing all the switching to other ISPs from your list, you get:
1. Comcast discloses policy of capping your bandwidth
2. ???
3. Profit!
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.
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].
Re: (Score:2)
yeah but i download the distros from my ISP's mirror, and then torrent them.
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.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure there's such a thing as protocol neutral. Different shaping tactics are going to affect different protocol's performance characteristics in different ways.