Comcast's Throttling Plan Has 'Disconnect User' Option

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."

Slow News Day

[LostCluster]

Excuse me? Where's the news here? We already knew that Comcast's bandwidth cap will be (starting next month) 250 GB... break it once and you're warned, break it twice your service address is cut off for a year.

Re:Question

[LostCluster]

That's the solution to the old model of blocking you... under the new plan that'll just put you deeper in the whole because adding all of TOR's routing information just makes your packets bigger. And bigger packets mean more bits against the 250 GB.

Re:Question

[Cyberax]

PLEASE! DON'T USE TOR FOR TORRENT!

Really, you're abusing the system. It's NOT designed to carry such high loads.

Re:Heh heh heh...

[LostCluster]

Similar systems already exist overseas and with the US satellite Internet providers.

Re:Question

[hax0r_this]

Torrenting over TOR is incredibly slow, I typically get maybe 3-5kbps, as opposed to 150-800 without it.

Re:They are lying to you.

[inTheLoo]

Google cache of network scandal article [64.233.169.104]

And

[Sycraft-fu]

If you want/need more, you can get a business class account. I've had business class Internet for many years now. Currently it's with Cox cable, but I've used Speakeasy and Qwest in the past. Business class accounts get you a number of things, like static IPs and such, but one of them is no bandwidth cap. Whatever speed you pay for, you are free to use as much as you like and you'll hear not a peep out of them.

However, you are going to pay more for it. Where a normal cable account might be $50/month, expect to pay over $100/month for a business account. However, if you are the kind of person who needs lots and lots of bandwidth, it seems only fair you should pay more for it.

You have to remember that consumer connections are something like a big LAN. Everyone gets to have nice fast access, but only if people are nice and share it. You use your fast speed when you need it, let others have it. For example I work for a university. We have a nice fast network, I've got gig to my desktop. We've got plenty of upstream too. I've gotten things like 100+mbit download speeds on Linux ISOs and so on. Wonderful, however everyone on campus can't do that 24/7 full bore. If we did, well there's be maybe 300kbps of bandwidth for each of us. It is fast and cheap because we all share.

Same deal on your consumer grade cable modem. If you want a nice cheap price and a fast link, you need to be willing to share with others and that means not running it at full capacity all the time. Otherwise you either have to settle for less bandwidth, or greater costs. Me, I choose the greater cost option and then do as I please.

Re:Question

[Free the Cowards]

It really depends on how much you give back.

Remember, Tor uses onion routing which means that every packet you send or receive goes through many nodes to get to you. This effectively multiplies your bandwidth usage by a factor of perhaps 5-10, depending on how many hops your packets travel. (I don't really know what a typical number would be.)

So, you run a node. Do you process 5-10x as much traffic as you torrent? If so, great. If you're only passing an amount of traffic equal to what you torrent, or worse less, then you are definitely abusing the system.

Re:And

[aztektum]

My Comcast business account is only $5/mo more than my "home" service. And for 10 bucks on top of that I get 5 IPs. Sure only the upstream is a boost over my residential (384Kbps to 1Mbps) but I don't pay for satellite or cable TV, which is how I justified the extra cost.

Although I note my torrent speeds are still poo (I'm trying to download Intrepid Ibex Alpha 6 and I'm gettin' 25-30K). I have Googled around and found nothing about if they're screwing with P2P on their biz accounts.

Re:Question

[ogl_codemonkey]

I don't really know what a typical number would be.

3.

You to an intermediary.
Intermediary to exit node.
Exit node to destination.

There's been a great deal of discussion over the possibility of any further benefit to anonymity by adding more than one intermediary hop, but no significant evidence has been put forward that it would (any attack that would disclose the origin through one intermediary would work through many); so in the meantime we conserve the bandwidth of all those other nodes.

Monopoly here

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Atlanta and Comcast is it for High Speed Internet. There is no one else for cable. There's no fiber. And DSL is still a joke in my torrenting, usenetting, multitasking opinion. How can they get away with something like this when they have such an obvious monopoly? Say I wanted to seed a linux distro 24/7 with my account or some popular torrent. Looks like that would get me banned. Wow, I am pissed and I do no like Comcast.

Holy exaggeration Batman!

[glwtta]

A draconian option for those who don't toe the line? Blatant efforts to control their customers? Corporate interference? Are you sure you aren't being just a teensy wee bit melodramatic about this?

I recently got Comcast (they are the only provider available at my new place), I routinely get download speeds around 1-2MB/s (with a 'bytes', not a 'bits'), including torrents, and the price is more or less reasonable. By my calculations I am damn unlikely to ever hit the 250GB cap (I may use 8GB in day from time to time, but far from most days), and even if I do, I was aware of this limitation of the service before signing up.

So remind me, why am I so damn outraged about this? Is it because someone would dare to suggest that there be some kind of limit to the amount of porn and movies I can download for 60 bucks a month?

I used to pay through the nose for Speakeasy, so far I'm getting a better service from Comcast.

Weird Behavior with Bittorent.

[Nester-San]

My Comcast Exp: Florida/Fort Lauderdale: I have always left by total upload speed capped at 24 Kb, so the excuse that I am seeding is rubbish. As soon as I load a torrent my download bandwidth drops to 10Kb. I cannot resolve pages, my browser gets timeouts. Email cannot connect, even the Comcast email, Yahoo and MSN Clients both disconnect. Within ten minutes of closing the bittorrent app, my connection speeds up again. Of course the self-proclaimed "Engineer" from Comcast told me my computer is not compatible with Comcast, despite it working great until bittorent opens. I informed her that I was aware of the bandwidth throttling, but she was telling me that "Bittorent, or whatever it is, is not compatible with Comcast at this time, please call Microsoft for help. Is there anything else I can help you with" Last night I decided to play hard and leave my bittorent client open chugging along at 4Kb. This morning no internet, not even tracert to www.cnn.com or www.comcast.net would work. I went out and came back at night about 9:30 Pm Eastern, my internet is back to normal speed. WTF..they are surely laying the smacketh down on me :-(

Business Class service depends...

[3count]

The difference between residential service and business class must depend on where you are in the country. I switched from standard residential service to business class with a fixed IP address and my download speed went from about 2 Mbps to over 20 Mbps. You also get different support staff that, in my case, actually knew what they were doing. Again, in my case, the additional $10/mo was well worth it. Unfortunately, based on other posts, your mileage may vary considerably.

Re:And

[compro01]

That's presuming they'll sell you a business account in a residential area, which they won't always do.

This is NOT new.

[the_greywolf]

Last month, I got a little carried away with binary newsgroups.

I got a phone call from Comcast. They informed me that I had managed to suck 450GB of data over my connection that month.

They said that if I didn't immediately curtail my traffic, I would not only be disconnected, but my service would be terminated for twelve months with no option for reactivation.

I really should have called up Qwest and gotten DSL and cancel my cable. A threat like that, to me, is unacceptable. If I actually had an option for a decent connection, I'd have jumped ship over a year ago.

Re:"/." is just playing by the it's rules.

[Ostracus]

"They are setting up their operations managers for an opportunity to fraudulently keep trimming the higher-usage customers off their bell curve."

http://help.comcast.net/content/faq/Frequently-Asked-Questions-about-Excessive-Use#tracking [comcast.net]

How does Comcast help its customers track their usage so they can avoid exceeding the limit?

We are in the process of creating a usage meter that will measure consumption for the Comcast account which will be available in the coming months. In the meantime, we offer a meter for free with our McAfee security suite available at http://security.comcast.net/ [comcast.net]

There are many online tools customers can download and use to measure their consumption. Customers can find such tools by simply doing a Web search - for example, a search for "bandwidth meter" will provide some options. Customers using multiple PCs should just be aware that they will need to measure and combine their total monthly usage in order to identify the data usage for their entire account. Comcast cannot verify that any tools customers may find themselves and use to measure data usage are accurate or without other flaws. Comcast's determination of each customer account's data usage is final.

It's important to note that when our new threshold goes into effect on October 1,2008 it will not change our practice around excessive use. We will continue to call only the top users who consume the most data each month, which is usually well over 250GB, which is the same practice we've had in place for several years.

250Gb/Month should be interpreted as start of a billing cycle to end of a billing cycle. Just call and ask at the first day of a billing cycle and set your meter appropriately. You can figure out the rest.