Comcast's New Throttling Plan Uses Trigger Conditions, Not Silent Blocking 698
clang_jangle writes with this excerpt from The Inquirer outlining Comcast's new traffic-throttling scheme, based on information from Comcast's latest FCC filing. "Its network throttling implements a two-tier packet queueing system at the routers, driven by two trigger conditions. Comcast's first traffic throttling trigger is tripped by using more than 70 per cent of your maximum downstream or upstream bandwidth for more than 15 minutes. Its second traffic throttling trigger is tripped when the Cable Modem Termination System you're hooked-up to – along with up to 15,000 other Comcast subscribers – gets congested, and your traffic is somehow identified as being responsible. Tripping either of Comcast's high bandwidth usage rate triggers results in throttling for at least 15 minutes, or until your average bandwidth utilisation rate drops below 50 per cent for 15 minutes."
Re:Laws (Score:4, Informative)
Re:So... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Laws (Score:2, Informative)
Summary Backwards (Score:5, Informative)
I read the FCC paper.. the summary is full of errors. The individual user does not get throttled until the entire CTMS port is in a congested state (that's 80% downstream, 70% upstream). And 'throttled' is a loose term.. if the bandwidth is available you get it. You are throttled if there are lower volume users on the shared pipe, and even then they just get a higher priority. Depending on how bad the congestion is, you might not even notice this.
this is VERY old news, and its fairness (Score:4, Informative)
Comcast rolled this out nearly a year ago.
And its not throttling, its a fairness mechanism: It means that light users won't get outcompeted by heavy users, but heavy users shouldn't get starved out unless things are really REALLY bad.
Oops, left something out (Score:5, Informative)
During the time that a subscriber's traffic is assigned the lower priority status, such traffic will not be delayed so long as the network segment is not actually congested. If, however, the network segment becomes congested, such traffic could be delayed.
So what they are really doing is lowering your priority. If there is no real congestion then you notice no difference. If things get saturated then your packets are delayed before other peoples.
Actually, its not... (Score:3, Informative)
Lets do a little math. Good video over the net is 2 Mbps for Netflix. At that rate, this is ~9 hours of video a DAY before you get to the 250 GB cap. Do you watch 9 hours of video a DAY over netflix's service?
Time/Warner's previous attempts to do a 50 GB cap? Thats anticompetitive.
But comcast's is sooo high that you basically have to be a massive Warez trader or doing something very stupid (offsite backup better handled by Sneakernet) to get to.
Re:So... (Score:4, Informative)
comcast can suck it. maybe off topic, but i just ditched them.
* they advertise how customers will need to do nothing for the digital conversion. then we get boxes
* they've lied to my mom about prices, she called up before she had somethign done, they insisted it was free of charge, then she got a bill with.. charges on it, now it's of course it's not free.
* internet sucks, last few months during the evenings i had lag spikes all the time.
i've switched to verizon fios and so far i like it better, plus it's a few bucks cheaper. hoepfully i'll continue to liek it
Just to be clear... (Score:5, Informative)
Simply put, there are four steps to determining whether the traffic associated with a particular cable modem is designated as PBE or BE:
Re:this is VERY old news, and its fairness (Score:1, Informative)
From the summary, it says if you trip either you get throttled, not if you trip both. I think it would go over better if it was written as "If your usage is higher than 70% AND the network is congested, your usage will be cut back" rather than OR.
Re:How do you put up with yours? (Score:4, Informative)
that's YOU. that's not why we as a country don't have it this way.
btw: we already have government standards on what can be legally called broadband. they're quite clear, and completely apolitical (beyond being unreasonably low.. pretty much everthing DSL or cable qualifies)
Re:Actually, its not... (Score:4, Informative)
Good video over the net is 2 Mbps for Netflix.
MAYBE that's true for netflix. It isn't true for other services.
I'm looking at season 1 of "Parks and Recreation" from Itunes at 720p.
The bitrate of these episodes is roughly 4.5Mbps and it is just at the bare minimum of what I consider acceptable. They are going to need to more than double that for good quality 1080p, say at least 13Mbps for broadcast-quality (not blu-ray) 1080p. For example, NBC's nationwide 1080i backhaul is 15Mbps h264 and they are the lowest bitrate of all the major networks, ABC is roughly 35Mbps h264 for their 720p backhaul.
So, 13Mbps for decent 1080p material - that works out to:
~4.0GB at good 1080p
~1.5GB at itunes quality 720p
for typical 42 minute show with no commercials.
That puts comcast's cap at about 2 hours a day for good 1080p or 5.5 hours at itunes quality.
For an entire family, with no commercials.
The average television is on for more than 8 hours a day [usatoday.com] in the US.
That puts comcast's 250GB cap at about half of the necessary level for itunes quality television, and a quarter for good quality 1080p. For the AVERAGE family. It doesn't account for the bell-curve at all. The cap needs to be more like 2TB to cover the average household video consumption out to the 1st standard deviation.
Re:Actually, its not... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:So... (Score:3, Informative)
* they advertise how customers will need to do nothing for the digital conversion. then we get boxes
Not that I love Comcast or anything, but they advertised that in my area as well, and it was the truth. The digital switch came and went, I received no box to install or hook up, I literally did nothing. My cable TV still works fine.
It's possible that in some areas, a conversion box was required. Maybe you saw an advertisement intended for a different zone of customers. It's still false advertising, but don't ascribe to malice what can be easily explained by incompetence.
Re:So... (Score:3, Informative)
I find it funny that people assume that they are going to get full peek bandwidth at all, let alone 24/7. ISPs obviously can't provide full bandwidth 100% of the time so they have to throttle the power users. The Internet couldn't handle such traffic let alone most switches and routers
Actually, I get exactly the bandwidth I pay for - just as often I get too much as too little. My broadband provider - BeUnlimited, in the UK - actually seems to try to give customers the speed that they were sold the connection at. Not only that, but I get that speed at my house, not at an exchange two miles away. Of course, Be is at the expensive end of competitive pricing, but I'm willing to pay extra for good service and a lack of lies.
If just feels to me like people are complaining about the quality of their $.99 cheeseburgers. They want real beef, but they won't pay for it.
Really? It sounds to me like people are complaining because they only have one restaurant in town, by civil statute, and that restaurant advertises its cheeseburgers as top quality, good value, 100% beef, when actually they aren't beef and are more expensive than pretty much anywhere else in the world, bar places that need satellite links.
Re:this is VERY old news, and its fairness (Score:3, Informative)
Re:So... (Score:2, Informative)
but don't ascribe to malice what can be easily explained by incompetence.
There were two "digital transitions". The first was the federally mandated change from analog broadcast TV to digital - and this was the only one that Comcast spoke of when discussing (advertising) digital transition. No boxes required for anyone except rabbit-ears users, because everyone else had a cable, or satellite, or coconut-powered video coming into their house.
HOWEVER, Comcast used this period to "enhance" their service with some buzz-word compliant digital protocol. This change just started up in my area a few weeks ago. They conflated these changes with each other, and then told everyone that they wouldn't need extra equipment for the "digital transition". Super!
Whoa whoa whoa... but they were talking about the federal transition! For their stealth transition, we all need a central box, and then a box for every TV in the house! They are "giving" people enough for 2 TVs per house... for the first year. Then you'll be getting a rental charge.
Oh, and if you want more than 2 TVs to work, you'll have to fork over rental for those now. Did I mention they also decided to drop several (more) stations from their extended cable service? (that's the one with local channels plus the "basic" cable channels like comedy central, syphi, TNT, etc)
Same price (for now - until our year of "free" rental runs out) - fewer channels - fewer TVs.
Never forget the corollary to your quoted reference: Sufficient levels of incompetence are indistinguishable from malice.
Re:Actually, its not... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Laws (Score:4, Informative)
The electric company isn't always a monopoly. In Texas, the electric company can't own lines or power generation equipment. They buy electricity wholesale and sell it retail. The Transmission and Distribution Service Provider is a natural monopoly, however. This means that your choice of electric company can be boiled down to what sources your electricity comes from.