Comcast's Throttling Plan Has 'Disconnect User' Option 299
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."
Chicken Little? Industry Propaganda! (Score:-1, Insightful)
There is very good evidence that ATT and every major ISP is moving to pay per byte models and per site discrimination. It comes from whistle blowers [ning.com]. Ignore it at your peril.
There is not any good evidence that wireless wiretaps and email filtering will be abandoned anytime soon.
The issue is neutrality and censorship [slashdot.org]. Moore's law also makes bad things easier too. We should fight them when we see them. Never accept "how things really work in technology" as an excuse to do nothing. Your freedom of press is too important to sacrifice to technical details and a false sense of "professionalism"
Comcast is just playing by the FCC's rules. (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't this what you guys wanted? Comcast is being told they're can't discrimate against so-called-p2p protocols... so they're just counting bits and if you use to many, you get a warning, then you're out. Only people who are using their Internet connection as their primary HDTV input will be affected at the proposed level.
There's enough room in 250 GB to watch what you want 16 hours a day... sleep the other eight or you'll go insane!
Or... (Score:3, Insightful)
Comcast could do what they should be doing. Number 1 is using the tax-payer money that they were given to upgrade their infrastructures. Number 2 being that they could give a quality service.
Just saying...
Re:Not much news. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, but the summary's links are the wrong people to make that point. They're saying "But that means we won't be able to steal movies anymore!" when the real problem is "That means we won't be able to download the legal content anymore!"
Re:Comcast is just playing by the FCC's rules. (Score:5, Insightful)
All of the major cell phone companies give you a free text message and/or wireless web page that tells you as best as they can how many minutes/bytes you've used this billing cycle and such. Why Comcast can't do the same for their bandwidth limit is beyond me.
Problem with caps (Score:5, Insightful)
IANAL but it seems to me that these caps are not because of P2P but put in place because of competition for the television audience. By capping the users Comcast seems to be trying to guarantee that their cable service is still viable.
Re:Question (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Comcast is just playing by the FCC's rules. (Score:5, Insightful)
All of the major cell phone companies give you a free text message and/or wireless web page that tells you as best as they can how many minutes/bytes you've used this billing cycle and such. Why Comcast can't do the same for their bandwidth limit is beyond me.
Then you haven't thought very hard about it from Comcast's point of view. It makes perfect business sense. Developing a customer-ready bandwidth usage meter has very real fixed and recurring costs to Comcast, costs which have no potential to increase profits now or in the future. If customers are going to switch to or from Comcast, it will be because of the cap, not because of the availability of a usage meter.
Additionally, an easily-viewable bandwidth meter would in all probability only encourage customers to get much closer to the limit than they would otherwise. It's fear-based policy. The more of their customers that decide "I'd better not download this movie/album/ISO/whatever, I might hit my bandwidth cap", the better. Comcast wants customers to stay in the dark regarding usage and be as conservative as possible in their internet activities, while still pretending to offer the full 250 GB.
Chill pill people (Score:5, Insightful)
250 GB is both transparent and a real shitload of bandwidth.
This is 7 hour a day, 7 days a week, of 720p HDTV video over Hulu. It takes a LOT to reach this point.
Additionally, beacuse any user who gets terminated will undoubtedly ALSO terminate their cable TV and phone services with Comcast, its something that a company would not want to do lightly.
Where's my measurement tool? (Score:3, Insightful)
That isn't so bad (Score:4, Insightful)
I have WildBlue Satellite for internet, as I live out in the boonies where there is no cable or DSL. I am restricted to 17 gigs download, 5 gigs upload, the least restrictive option available to me (Hughes Net and Starband are worse in that regard). At this point, I would fucking kill for a 250gig cap.
That said, most people won't ever come close to hitting it. I don't use P2P (it simply doesn't work on a satellite connection) but I do a reasonable amount of downloading, and I manage to keep around 11 gigs download.
That said, Comcast definitely needs to provide a bandwidth meter. They're obviously metering bandwidth to employ the cap, it would be a simple matter to provide a web interface for their customers. Hell, every satellite ISP does it. Comcast must just be lazy, incompetent, or both.
Re:Chill pill people (Score:2, Insightful)
250 GB is both transparent and a real shitload of bandwidth.
When a legitimate torrent of [insert your Linux distro of choice here] can run 700MB? I think not. What has been noted ad nauseum in threads all over is that the real problem is lack of investment in bandwidth - "Hey! the suckers have no choice but to accept it, and we make money hand-over-fist."
Re:"without the risk of corporate interference" (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you really that fucking stupid?
To put it as plain as day: If the corp is making a decision to maximize value, by denying or restricting your access to something, you are going to want to find a way around it. None of this is good or bad in any general sense, just rational behavior.
A better question may be, why don't we give credit to corporations when they do good? Well, we do give credit, in the form of $$$. Complaining, boycotting, &c. is the socially acceptable form of "negative money" (the unacceptable form is vandalism, robbery, kidnapping, &c.).
I think the problem is that Americans (I am one) tend to pay far too much respect to the rich and corporations. I can and do complain legitimately about Microsoft, but I still oppose most uses of anti-trust against them. Nonetheless, people look at me like I'm a communist, when I suggest that Bill Gates isn't wonderful. Even an atheist can appreciate the sense of the phrase "Render unto God what is God's and unto Caesar what is Caesar's."
Re:Slow News Day (Score:5, Insightful)
there's more to it than the cumulative cap. they also have an elaborate throttling scheme based on how much you're currently downloading:
The issue will be their strange throttling scheme, which puts users in a "penalty box" for using more than 70% of available bandwidth in any 15 minute window and releases them from the box when their activity drops below 50%.
It has the net effect of decreasing the effective sustained bandwidth. I don't have Comcast, and I think the cumulative limits are fair, but this strikes me as unfair. What if I don't come close to the monthly limits, but I'm streaming/DLing something that will take longer than 15min? If congestion isn't an issue, why not let someone DL at the capabilities of their connection?
One and the same voice. (Score:2, Insightful)
Your ability to share with your neighbor is intimately linked to your free press and "legitimate" content. When you surrender your right to share and give control to some third party, you will lose your free press. The ability to censor you is what this is all about. Big publishers want all the control they have become accustom to with broadcast and then some. If you buy into the line, "these people are pirates who want nothing more than to steal" you have lost all faith in your neighbors and might as well disconnect your internet connection now. It always has been your neighbors who create your culture.
The beginning of the end for cable modems (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not that Comcast is setting bandwidth caps. It's that they have no choice. Now that you can get high-speed internet service via the cellphone network, AND Verizon is rolling out FiOS everywhere, how can they compete?
Remember, the internet runs over the *phone* network. The big cellphone/telecommunications providers own most of that. AT&T and Verizon are both Tier 1 providers with huge networks. It's almost *guaranteed* the Comcast is paying AT&T and/or Verizon for bandwidth and/or transit. And yet, Verizon and AT&T are competing with them.
And the same is true for most of the other cable TV providers in the United States. They have been offering phone and internet service for the past 5 years or so, but only because the telcos weren't doing it. They are now. The cable companies are FUCKED.
Re:"/." is just playing by the it's rules. (Score:3, Insightful)
Gee! What you all say to get in a political dig. Keeping track of your bits is a solved problem for the customer. You all just have to use them. As for "pretending"? Well if you can go up to your limit? Then there's no "pretend", any more than there's "pretend" in your checking account.
Um, excuse you! In this case we get a "checking account" with NO available statements or receipts to track the balance. Its just the customer's word against the bank's.
They are setting up their operations managers for an opportunity to fraudulently keep trimming the higher-usage customers off their bell curve.
Re:And (Score:2, Insightful)
In my area, comcast is the only non-dialup option. Business class is not available. The best I can get is 8 d / 1 up for $60 a month, but the best I have ever seen is about 300 kb down / 70 kb up ( i get about 700 kb d / 200 kb u for 10 seconds, then it falls quickly to 10 kb for both and slowly goes up to 2-300 kb). I am sure that many people (probably a material percentage of comcast users) are in the same boat.
I don't have a problem with paying a higher cost, I will just offset it by canceling my comcast cable, but what I want isnt available. Moving to an apartment where it is available means moving to an apartment that costs 2-3 times as much rent (and higher utilities, pet fees, etc). In order to afford that, I would have to stop investing in my 401k, savings accounts, stock portfolio, and stop visiting bars. That would give me the extra $1500 a month I would need to put myself in the position of being able to purchase a business class internet connection.
While I dont mind paying for services that I value, I have a serious problem with a change to service when other options are not available. An arbitrary bandwidth cap with no method of determining when I am approaching it other than losing my only affordable form of internet access is absolutely not acceptable.
Re:Easy solution: don't do business with Comcast (Score:3, Insightful)
Hopefully you're right.
I have no CLUE how much bandwidth our household of three uses.
AFAIK, we don't do P2P. (I say AFAIK because of the 18-yo.)
We do have Second Life, streaming video, WoW, streaming audio, iTunes, VPNs for work, and near constant web browsing.
I emailed Concast asking for my usage figures. They replied that I should call them and they could "help me to examine my system." WTF? If they can monitor they can tell me.
I don't have any real problem with a bandwidth cap, so long as they 1) tell me what it is, and 2) give me an easy mechanism to monitor it. Comcast is failing on #2. If nothing else, print it on the darn bill.
Plant (Score:4, Insightful)
I find it really funny how every time this comes up, rather than fulfill the contractual obligations they originally signed with people, Comcrap has a bunch of its plants hop onto Slashdot screaming "pay us more money."
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.
I'm not the person who needs "lots and lots of bandwidth." I expect that, rather than be let get away with this crap, Comcrap and the other telcos be required to live up to their contractual obligations.
They've screwed the customer, committed an amazing number of breaches of contract, and now want to have a do-over and get off scot free. I don't think we, the people, should let them.
Re:"/." is just playing by the it's rules. (Score:4, Insightful)
First: My bank displays the amount avbl. in my checking account 24/7, I don't have to keep track.
Second: Even if I had to keep track (which I happen to do anyway), it's not like I make as many payments as I do online interactions.
Third: This is more akin to a cell provider threatening to cut off service if you go over on your minutes and not providing you access to how many you used - you could, of course, keep track yourself, but who does?
Fourth: it's == it is, not possessive it.
Re:Slow News Day (Score:3, Insightful)
There is no way they should be allowed to cut anyone off or ban anyone for a year. In some areas they are a monopoly. And they advertised high speed internet service and have never, at any time, provided true high speed service. It's time for them to spend some time in prison which in my case would mean that they would follow the former owner of local cable service named Adelphia. It's time to cut the nonsense and have a real, legal, definition of high speed internet service and require Comcast to provide it or get out of town, country, universe, etc..
Stop it with the thruthout FUD (Score:4, Insightful)
The issue is neutrality and censorship
While I don't necessarily doubt that ISPs are salivating at the pay-per-byte thing, the whole truthout.org thing is a figment of your feverish imagination, fueled mostly by your insane hatred [slashdot.org] of Microsoft. At the very least you should research your claims [slashdot.org] before using them in any sort of cuasi-authoritative way.
Go ahead and read through these and then come back and tell me that "M$" or Google or Yahoo or any ISPs are blocking *anything* related to truthout.org at all. And please don't reply to me with your name trolls or sockpuppets.
http://directmag.com/disciplines/email/truthout_blocked_censorship/ [directmag.com]
http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss@isoc-ny.org/msg00354.html [mail-archive.com]
http://mainsleazespam.com/collateral/truthout_org.html [mainsleazespam.com]
http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/archives/001260.html [sethf.com]
Re:Slow News Day (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Comcast is just playing by the FCC's rules. (Score:3, Insightful)
If my neighbor's use is so legitimate then he can very well pay for it. If I use 10-100x less than him, why should I still have to pay the same amount of money? The Slashdot population's insistence that everyone pay exactly the same amount no matter how much they use makes no sense to me.
Re:And (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that Comcast is overselling their network in some areas. It would prefer to attack it's own customers (sound familiar RIAA) than upgrade the product.
That's the crux of the issue, and the problem. Comcast, like ALL ISP's, does not have the network capacity to serve EVERY user going at full blast all the time. And you know what? Most people, even on Slashdot, don't really expect them to.
The issue is though, that if you do this you HAVE to build enough capacity so that when normal usage as a CUMULATIVE value across your subscribers is taken into account, you still have sufficient bandwidth. Comcast and most ISP's are NOT doing this, and that's the problem.
Essentially, (numbers for example and not accurate), they have a network that is cable of serving each customer at say, 1Mbps constantly, but their average (mean) constant use per customer is closer to 3Mbps. They're selling the service with a claimed speed of 20Mbps. The solution here is NOT to cripple progress and drag usage back down to 1Mbps so your outdated hardware can handle it. The solution is to improve the network so that you can handle an average usage of 10Mbps constant per user. Take care of the problem at hand and leave yourself some growing room for the future. That's the only long term solution.
I really don't think many people have a problem with overselling when the math behind it works. It's just that they're overselling with insufficient capacity.
It'd be as if I charged people for access to drinking fountains at a concert, and said you could go as often as you like. Naturally there needn't be a drinking fountain for every single patron at a concert with attendance of 200,000, but if I put out 2 fountains for 200,000 people and call it a day that excuse just isn't going to fly. If you undersell you HAVE to still allocate sufficient capacity - not some arbitrary number and then tell your customers to bugger off if they don't meet your self-defined criteria of what "normal" usage is. Particularly in ANYTHING dealing with computers where "normal" describes an ever increasing number.
Re:Slow News Day (Score:3, Insightful)
It has the net effect of decreasing the effective sustained bandwidth. I don't have Comcast, and I think the cumulative limits are fair, but this strikes me as unfair. What if I don't come close to the monthly limits, but I'm streaming/DLing something that will take longer than 15min? If congestion isn't an issue, why not let someone DL at the capabilities of their connection?
to make it even more interesting, since Concast doesn't tell us how much we're using (it's up to us they say), what if our metering tools show we're in compliance and Concast says we're using too much?
Which do they go with?
You guessed it. You are screwed and terminated for a year. It doesn't matter that you only used 30 or 50 gigs a month, you are gone.
And there is no escalation process either. You can't complain or contest it.
Sounds Concastic doesn't it
Re:Stop it with the thruthout FUD (Score:3, Insightful)
Please don't use that "if you're not with us you're against us" line with me. I'm not young enough to be impressed by that kind of dumbness.
The issue here is not censorship, which is real enough, the insistence on using the same incorrect arguments to support a point. Surely even you see the value in making a valid case if you're arguing about a topic like that. So many of his so-called arguments have been debunked and invalidated time and again, and he just keeps trotting them out even though he knows he's wrong. And besides, I'm just returning the favor [slashdot.org].
His use of truthout.org as supporting argument on 'net censorship is wrong, period. Wrong example, wrong test case, wrong everything. He just likes it because he gets to do the "M$" dance along with it, since he's sure it involves some alleged Microsoft shenanigans. Just like his "Microsoft sabotaged ACPI" line, and just about everything else.
He posts something I think is wrong, I post a response. That's how it works. So, feel free to point out where I said censorship is not a problem, where I'm "soiling" my hands or where I'm waging any kind of war. Feel free to point out how his cesspool link farm of a journal is somehow imbued with more validity than the proof I provided in my post. I can't believe with any amount of intelligence and self-respect would reduce themselves to the "OMG twitter said so-and-so got censored by M$, therefore it must be true" level.
Otherwise, please run along. Maybe you should splurge and buy subscriptions for *all* his accounts. You know, to fight the "M$ injustice". I hope you don't have to take another job just for that *grin*