Comcast's Congestion Catch-22 177
An anonymous reader sends us to Telephony Online for a story about Comcast's second attempt at traffic management (free registration may be required). After the heavy criticism they received from customers and the FCC about their first system, they've adopted a more even-handed "protocol agnostic" approach. Nevertheless, they're once again under scrutiny from the FCC, this time for the way their system interacts with VOIP traffic. By ignoring specific protocols, the occasional bandwidth limits on high-usage customers interferes with those customers' VOIP, yet Comcast's own Digital Voice is unaffected. Quoting:
"The shocking thing is just how big a Pandora's box the FCC has appeared to open — and it just keeps getting bigger. When the FCC first started addressing bandwidth usage and DPI issues, it quickly found itself up to its knees in network management minutia. Not long after that, it followed another logical path of the DPI question and asked service providers and Web companies about their use of DPI for behavioral targeting. Now it seemingly has opened up huge questions about what it means to be a voice carrier in the age of IP. It's not hard to imagine the next step: What about video? Telco IPTV services are delivered in roughly the same way as carrier VoIP services — via packets running on the same physical network but a prioritized logical signaling stream. Is that fair to over-the-top video service providers?"
Congestion? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Congestion? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Congestion? (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt the problem is up at that level anyways. The price per byte on the backbone is so cheap it hardly matters. It's the few miles nearest end users - where most of the network actually is - that matters.
I wish they (all ISPs) would start honoring TOS flags and then start selling packages like X gigabytes of 1st class traffice, Y gigabytes of 2nd class traffic, and Z gigabytes of 3rd class traffic. Presumably people would use 1st for VOIP, 2nd for ssh or websurfing, and 3rd for bittorrent. But if somebody configures bittorrent to use 1st class, it's not the ISPs problem.
All that said, I have comcast's very slowest "broadband" - 768kbps (i.e. under 1 mbit), and vonage always works fine. I haven't noticed any congestion problems on their network.
Finally, why the submitter thinks video is such a dilemma is a bit of a mystery to me. 99.9% of video is download - not interactive video phones and such - so having some jitter isn't really a problem, easily solved with buffering. It doesn't need to compete on the millisecond scale with voice traffic.
I don't know (Score:5, Insightful)
Why don't they just UPGRADE THE PIPES.
My god every other first world country has huge bandwidth where these types of things aren't even a consideration. Yet comcast just whines because you can't run everything and be fair on tiny pipes.
Re:To pipe or not to pipe. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do ISPs insist on being more than just a pipe? It's so dumb no one wants them to be anything else. Do they just not feel useful when they are a pipe?
Because there isn't a lot of profit growth in being "just a pipe", and like all businesses, they would like to make more money.
Not a "Catch-22" (Score:5, Insightful)
"Catch-22" implies a no-win situation. Comcast (and the other ISPs) have done this to themselves. They advertise unlimited Internet access (or make it seem like they're offering unlimited access) and then get upset when someone tries to use it.
The ISPs should start advertising their download speed, upload speed, and bandwidth caps openly. Offer additional speed and bandwidth for a reasonable price. And if your infrastructure is such that sometimes you'll need to throttle someone, make it clear upfront how and when such throttling will happen.
Right now, on Comcast's sale page, they only list the download speed of their connections. I couldn't find their upload speeds or the bandwidth caps (which I know to be 250GB). As far as I know, Comcast customers have no way to check to see if their being throttled or if they're near the bandwidth cap.
It's really no surprise then that customers are upset.
Not agnostic (Score:5, Insightful)
If they are treating their own VOIP differently than other traffic then it isn't "protocol agnostic" at all.
Re:How much is self intereference? (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you read the part in the summary which said that Comcast VOIP was unaffected by this problem?
Re:Congestion? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that why they instituted download caps?
Re:Congestion? (Score:4, Insightful)
start selling packages like X gigabytes of 1st class traffice, Y gigabytes of 2nd class traffic, and Z gigabytes of 3rd class traffic.
That seems like it would be a bit complex, and also problematic if they did not ship their own routers and instructions for configuring it.
Why not just sell pure bandwidth, and if people want to prioritize things, let them do it within their own networks? If I'm saturating my connection with BitTorrent, it's really up to me to QoS it down until Skype works. But, if I'm saturating my connection with BitTorrent, and someone else is having problems with Skype, that suggests they should buy more bandwidth.
I can see where TOS might be easier for the ISPs, let them squeeze a bit more out of their networks, maybe oversell a bit more and acknowledge that your torrent will slow to a crawl (but your voice will still work) during "peak" hours.
On the other hand, Amazon seems to be able to put a relatively cheap, relatively constant price on all network traffic to Amazon Web Services. I don't know if my bill is typical, but I pay $65 for fiber -- split evenly, that would be 300 gigs upload and 176 gigs download, or 150 gigs up and 265 gigs down... per month. I mean, I might do more than that torrenting, but not much, and I imagine that's a good deal more than Comcast currently provides.
Re:To pipe or not to pipe. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly with regards to Comcast, it's because they don't consider themselves primarily an ISP.
It's not that they are an ISP and they want to be something else. It's that they are "SOMETHING ELSE" and DOCSIS came around and they looked and said "Hey. While we're at it we could charge folk a few extra bucks a month and give them Internet too." So it's very easy to understand how they wish to ensure you use THEM for your VoIP and video-on-demand needs.
Seriously. Call their help line. Listen to their canned message while you're on hold. Does it say anything remotely close to "we want to be your ISP"? Nope. It says something like "we're happy to be your ENTERTAINMENT company".
Nothing really surprises me anymore about their horribly pathetic reliability once you realize their idea of what they are.
Because then their service would be a commodity (Score:5, Insightful)
Bandwidth is a commodity. As such is interchangeable: the provider of a commodity is in competition with everyone else providing the same commodity. They have to differentiate themselves based on price, which they can only do by cutting costs and increasing efficiency. Though market competition is in our best interests as consumers, it isn't in theirs. The last thing a company wants is for market competition to work efficiently to drive down their margins. That's why they will do everything they can to avoid selling a commodity: product differentiation, branding, and so on - strategies that effectively create mini monopolies (you don't buy an MP3 player, you buy an iPod; you don't buy shoes, you buy Nike).
That's the main reason. Another, which applies especially to monopolies (hello telecoms!), is price discrimination. A company would like to charge each customer as much as that customer can afford to pay, but they don't want to lose business with a price that's too high. By developing different classes of service they can coax more money from those able to pay more. The classic example is first-class seating on flights. How much a customer is able to pay may also depend on how much the service is worth to them. It may not cost the telecom company any more to provide bandwidth for, say, VoIP users than for WoW players, but VoIP customers may be able to pay more because it saves them money elsewhere.
It is the role of good market regulation to ensure competition works effectively to drive prices down towards costs. That is broadly good for consumers and for the economy as a whole. Companies - especially incumbent companies - should be expected to do everything in their power to fight to break the market. And they do.
You should know... (Score:5, Insightful)
Every other first world country has immensely higher population density.
Wrong, unless you're saying that Finland, Sweden, and Norway are not in the first world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_density [wikipedia.org]
I live in Finland which has about 5 million persons at a population density of 15.6 per sq.km, while the US has about 300 million at 31 per sq.km, or double Finland's population density. Actually, about half of Finland's population is near the south coast (especially around Helsinki and Turku), while I'm in a rural area 300km north of Helsinki, so our regional population density is a bit lower. The largest town within 200km has about 80,000 people.
I have fiber to the house with 100/10 service available. The service is eur55 per month, including IP TV. If it's possible in the countryside in Finland, then it should be possible in most of US, where local populations and population densities are higher.
In fact, there are substantial areas of the U.S. with quite high population densities and local populations greater than all of Finland. Example: New Jersey, with 8 million persons at 438 per sq.km, and many millions more in adjacent areas. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_jersey [wikipedia.org]
Your argument based on population density is a load of bollocks. You're just screwed by your ISPs.
Comcast's own Digital Voice is unaffected (Score:3, Insightful)
Well of course.
If they offer a netflix alternative expect that to be a better performer due to shaping as well.
Most people will just think the alternatives suck and choose comcast's service instead, never the wiser.
Re:To pipe or not to pipe. (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, I can't seem to find the "+1 Off-topic" option.