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."
Laws (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Eh? In scandinavia countries new laws will state that "the speed of the line must be atleast 75% of the said one during 24 hour measurement period". And you get throttled with comcast if you're actually using more 70% of what you should have? Why do you put up with this shit?
Advertised Speed (Score:4, Insightful)
How can they advertise xx mbps when you can only use said speed for 15 minutes? Shouldn't it be advertised as a burst speed with a real speed of 70% of burst speed.
Re:Laws (Score:5, Insightful)
Because our laws are written by corporate interests, not the people.
Re:Laws (Score:5, Insightful)
which is the inevitable result of "private funding of campaigns"
a more accurate term for "private funding of campaigns" is "buying votes of congresscritters".
Re:Laws (Score:2, Insightful)
So Comcast is ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Falsely advertising. Isn't that what this really comes down to? It seems like Comcast is allowed to do what they want with the service they provide. But they need to advertise it correctly.
Not sure about the monopoly bits though.
Re:Laws (Score:5, Insightful)
Because a T1 line is expensive and guarantees service 24/7. A residential cable/dsl service is far far cheaper and is contractually not obligated to provide consistent speeds, only burst speeds that can be affected by the traffic of other users of the system.
Consumers went from only have only T1/ISDN as a high-speed option and few could afford it, to cable/dsl that almost anyone could afford and has the performance 99% can appreciate. The 1% that expect 24/7 full throughput should understand they never bought that guarantee of service. Just because their aggregation point wasn't previously saturated and they weren't previously throttled doesn't mean that was an entitlement to that level of service forever.
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
ISP's should be legally obliged to advertise only what they actually offer. If you can only use half, then they can only advertise half with any burst capability added as a possible extra.
Re:Laws (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you put up with this shit?
Because taking it up the ass from ISPs is more convenient than moving to another country.
Re:So... (Score:1, Insightful)
Even since cable/dsl was introduced it was made clear you didn't buy 24/7 full throughput, you bought burst speeds that were subject to the traffic of others on your aggregation point. So yes, you are getting to use exactly what you paid for.
The alternative if you wanted guaranteed 100% throughput 24/7 was and still is a dedicated line like a T1. There is a technological limitation to providing those burst speeds in a guaranteed way 24/7 to every subscriber on the network. They let power users get by when they aren't single-handedly affecting the performance of all of their neighbors, but you get throttled if it turns out you are.
If cable/dsl are forced to require 100% guaranteed speeds like a dedicated line, you will see the cost go way up, or the speeds go way down.
Re:Laws (Score:5, Insightful)
Because we're a plutocracy masquerading as a democratic republic.
Re:Laws (Score:4, Insightful)
The 1% that expect 24/7 full throughput should understand they never bought that guarantee of service. Just because their aggregation point wasn't previously saturated and they weren't previously throttled doesn't mean that was an entitlement to that level of service forever.
I don't expect 24/7 full throughput. How about 72% for 24/7?
I'd figure that a "C minus" is more than reasonable on my part, but apparantly it will get me throttled.
lag (Score:3, Insightful)
This I don't like, but I understand. If this happens often Comcast should be upping capacity, but as a short-term solution the principle seems reasonable and fair (putting aside the filtering looking a bit extreme).
This however appears to be a solution without requiring there to be a problem. Being penalised regardless of whether there is congestion or not, simply for utilising three-quarters of what you paid for. The description in TFA does seem to imply that if there is no congestion the actual bandwidth won't change too much, but I guess it would significantly impact gaming lag (particularly if you're hosting).
Re:Laws (Score:4, Insightful)
No because our fool politicians granted Comcast a monopoly.
That monopoly needs to be revoked so competitors like Cox, Time-Warner, AppleTV, Charter Cable, and so on can move in. When Comcast screws the customer, the customer can abandon ship to another provider..... precisely the way cellphones operate.
Re:Laws (Score:2, Insightful)
And yet it is advertised thusly.
Oh, and you're a mindless tool who'll be one of the first against the wall when the revolution comes.
Sounds reasonable (Score:4, Insightful)
It sounds reasonable to me. If it doesn't, you may need to accept the fact that you're not at all guaranteed that you can get your full 6Mb download bandwidth 24/7. If you thought you did, sorry; you misunderstood, possibly because of shady (but probably not illegal) advertising, in which case I don't blame you for being angry. But a reliably 6Mb connection is vastly more expensive than the $50/month you're paying, so your anger is akin to being disappointed that the 120 MPH car you bought isn't guaranteed to make your 10 mile commute in 5 minutes during rush hour.
Re:let me get this straight... (Score:3, Insightful)
the delusion of choice and reality of choice are different things.
I have no choice of a provider that is competitive to comcast in my area, for example. So yes, I do have a choice, but it's not a competitive one, even at the 50% speed.
It also means that effectively, you may as well call the connection 50% of it's total speed. Thus, with a 22mb plan, I'm getting 11mb, effectively unless I throttle my own connection to 69%.
Re:Laws (Score:4, Insightful)
Cool. Well, I'm part Scandinavian if that counts for anything. Probably not. ;)
There are definite downsides to the way it is in America, heh. But I suppose most countries have downsides related to their governmental systems...
Unfortunately, we "put up" with stupid politicians and have decided to make "politics" a career choice, not a service to your country...
They have enough money. they want to buy NBC. (Score:3, Insightful)
If Comcast can afford NBC, they can afford the bandwidth being used by its subscribers. This is just a way to increase profits at the cost of service.
Any broadband provider that fails to understand that bandwidth usage ALWAYS increases... might as well start selling tomatoes.
Re:Advertised Speed (Score:4, Insightful)
All cable modem contracts have been written on the assumption that your bandwidth is shared between multiple users. You can burst up to the advertised rate, but you are never guaranteed to get it 100% of the time.
As much as I hate Comcast, this is in my opinion a pretty reasonable approach. You get throttled *only* if the network is congested (compared to Sandvining which was implemented no matter what the network state) and you get throttled only down to 50% of your maximum (which is a hell of a lot better than Cablevision OptimumOffline's stealthcapping, indefinately at 10% of your initial upstream without notification once you tripped the threshold.) It's a pretty fair scheme.
Of course the key is whether the throttling will be done in a normal traffic shaping manner, or Sandvine style with false RST injection. I am assuming false RST injection is out of the question since that got Comcast sued before.
Re:Actually, its not... (Score:4, Insightful)
Where in the world did you get that info? And define 'good'. Like VHS quality? Or YoTube video quality? Also, some of use (like those with large families) can easily go through double-digit hours of Netflix streaming daily (especially in the Winter when going outside is not really an option). It's not the 1960's anymore....whole families don't gather to all watch the same show at the same time.
Re:Throttled how far down? (Score:4, Insightful)
Basically Comcast has 2 levels in the tier (called PBE and BE)
Everyone starts out as PBE level.
To get moved from PBE to BE, all of the following have to occur
- That particular network segment needs to be 'nearing congestion' defined as 70% upstream limits or 80% downstream limits for 15 minutes.
- A particular user has to be 'significantly contributing' defined as 70% upstream or downstream limits for 15 minutes.
Being placed in BE means that if there is congestion (meaning priorities have to be determined) any delays will affect BE traffic before PBE traffic.
To be removed from BE status you have to drop below 50% for 15 minutes
I think it is good that these are coming out in the open and being shared, and I think it is a step in the right direction since they state they will no longer use a protocol based management method. If there is congestion on a network, someone has to suffer, and it seems reasonable that those placing the highest load should be the ones to feel the effects first.
I do think, however, they need to mention more explicitly that the speeds they market are theoretical maximum allotments, and to give a average attainable bandwidth if everyone in their (block, building, etc) were to maximize usage.
Re:Laws (Score:5, Insightful)
They advertise it as
"X down/Y Up"
not
"X down/Y up for part of the time, X1/Y1 the rest of the time".
Throttling is a violation of your customer agreement and false advertising.
The "1%" (it's more than that) that expect 24/7 full throughput ARE THE CUSTOMERS WHO WANT TO USE WHAT THEY PAID FOR.
You sir, are what is wrong with american commerce. you'll take it up the arse from the corporate overloads all day long.
Re:Laws (Score:3, Insightful)
I've long suggested sortition as an alternative to elections.
Re:Laws (Score:4, Insightful)
That's rectal prolapse, you asshole. The anus cannot prolapse.
And if you want to search around for more info, beware! There be dragons [wikipedia.org]:
Re:Actually, its not... (Score:1, Insightful)
Six People in my house. Four Adults, Two Kids.
Everyone has a slightly different schedule.
We use more than twenty hours of internet a day between us, much of which is video.
Yes, some people do actually use that bandwidth.
Re:Laws (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's unlikely that a bunch of local monopolists are going to start poaching on each other's territory. What I suspect would happen, even if the official monopoly (which should never've been granted) were revoked, is that they'd be perfectly happy to continue with spheres of influence in which they can each gouge their own customer bases.
The real issue here is that building infrastructure like this requires such a huge amount of capital that it's a natural monopoly. There's really no way for competitors to come in without a huge investment in laying their own lines that is very much at risk and only serves to lessen their own profit margins. The real government fail here isn't recognizing a monopolist (since the nature of the business is such that one is bound to emerge) -- it's not making sure to regulate that monopolist effectively.
Re:Actually, its not... (Score:5, Insightful)
Your "math" is full of unwarranted assumptions. Chief amongst them the mother's-basement-dwelling single nerd's view-point. Lets try this with a family of 4 using Hulu/Netflix/iTunes/what-not combo to watch TV, movies, sports, buy music, get Anime etc. That's slightly over 2 hours a day per person. Not so "unreasonable" anymore, is it now? And 2 hours a day for kids/teenagers is somewhat a conservative estimation (and am I not master of understatement or what?).
Re:Laws (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Laws (Score:5, Insightful)
Comcast main service description if you search by your zipcode and look at the "Performance" plan:
"Get download speeds up to 12 Mbps and uploads up to 2 Mbps with PowerBoost® for only $19.99 a month for 6 months!"
Click to immediate link in the summary "Terms and Conditions", in the first paragraph:
"Actual speeds vary and are not guaranteed. PowerBoost provides bursts of download and upload speeds for the first 10 MB and 5 MB of a file, respectively."
You will find similar clauses in any service description for residential cable/dsl.
I am all for pushing the companies to get the best service for the cheapest price, but you do that by voting with your dollar. It is not reasonable or effective to agree to a service contract, then demonize the business for living up to their end of the bargain as they said they would.
The bottom line is you didn't pay for those speeds for any guaranteed amount of time. Techincally those speeds aren't guaranteed at all if your line quality isn't good enough to support the transmission. The only way to get guaranteed service is to pay for a dedicated line, ie: T1.
Go look at the cost of a T1 and realize it is only 1.5 Mbps, now look at the cost of that 12 Mbps residential cable. Why do you think the T1 is so much more expensive for almost 1/10th the speed? Technology may change, bandwidth may get so cheap it doesn't matter, but right now, guaranteeing 100% throughput at residential service prices simply wont work.
Re:Laws (Score:3, Insightful)
What we really need are stronger advertising laws. Force them to simplify the advertisement so they can't give you X when they say "We'll give you X*5". If they can't provide 12Mbps, then DON'T ADVERTISE IT... and putting some stupid cop out clause in small print doesn't count. The only reason they are in this spot is they were allowed to get away with boasting about these high download speeds that they couldn't actually deliver. If they had to compete with real numbers we would all be better off, even the providers.
Re:Laws (Score:2, Insightful)
Voting for an ISP with my dollars is like voting in a general election. Either way I only get a Democrat or Republican. Both have all the same problems.
Re:Laws (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree with you fully. But where's my in-between? Residential internet services are quickly becoming a race to the bottom scenario. Sure I could haul off and spend the multiple thousands of dollars it would cost to install a T1 line. But I don't need a T1 because if my internet goes down for an hour or so every few weeks or my IP address changes from time to time my world doesn't end. So my question is, where's my middle ground? Where's the plan for someone who wants to watch TV shows online, play some games and download big files here and there?
Re:Laws (Score:2, Insightful)
Then get more directly involved.
Don't like the candidates who end up on the general election? Work to campaign for some leading up to the primaries. Not happy with the choices you have in the primaries, run yourself.
Not happy with the options with your local ISPs? Start your own!
Quit crying that you don't like the outcome when you don't try to change it legitimately within the system while not forcing people to do what you want with the authority of law.
Re:Laws (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to vote for republicans and against democrats because republicans were thrifty and for small government.
I used to vote for democrats and for republicans because republicans were religious extremists forcing me to live by their religious rules.
So if the position was city controller, it'd be republican. If it was city council, it'd be democratic.
I'd also mix up the council vs the mayor, and so on.
Now the republicans are still religious extremists AND they also spend like drunken sailors AND they sell out my interests and freedom to corporations.
Now the democrats spend like drunken sailors AND they sell out my interests and freedom to corporations.
I tried voting for Ron Paul (religiously extreme but at least a certified small government type).
I'm really at a loss tho. It looks like we are hell bound for a corporofascist oligarchy.
Re:Laws (Score:3, Insightful)
> a more accurate term for "private funding of campaigns" is "buying votes of congresscritters".
The two do not actually have to be connected. All we really need is good disclosure laws.
And then we need to forbid laundering contributions through fronts. I.e. people can give to a PAC which gives to candidates. But one incorporated entity should not be allowed to give money to another organization that contributes more than a trivial (under 10% of budget) to political activity. That would stop the Soros' empire of incest where nobody can figure out what money ended up where between Tides, ACORN, WFP, SEIU, Free Press, CAP, etc. all passing sacks of cash around until they blur out the original contributor and then funneling it to candidates or into the GOTV effort on election day.
You, like most progressives, believe (when it isn't YOUR guys doing it) that all campaign contributions are evidence of corruption. Not true. There are two reasons to give money to a political organization or politician.
Reason one is because you agree with their position. If I agree with a politician and give him money to help him fight the good fight that isn't corrupting. That doesn't change if I'm the CEO of Exxon.
The other reason is when you pay a politician to agree with you. That one is wrong. Of course it can be pretty hard to prove which came first, the agreement or the sack 'o cash.
Which is why it is best to simply ignore the issue with full disclosure. Because then it really doesn't matter which comes first. Remember that while money is important, votes are what matter. If most of the people who vote for a candidate know they are taking sacks of cash from Exxon, the NRA, George Soros, SEIU, whatever and vote for them then they are also cool with the alliance.
Re:Sounds reasonable (Score:3, Insightful)
I live in a rural area serviced by a telephone coop. I am about 1.8 miles from the phone company. I have fiber to the house. My download is 20mps, my upload is 5mps. Last I checked my download was actually 23 mps. So what do I pay? $80/month. This does not seem to me to vastly more expensive than $50/month. If I have an issue, in my experience, they come out the same day, even Sunday. I guess they put their first fiber in 20 years ago, to a neighboring telco. 18 years ago they started conduiting their copper. Four years ago they started doing fiber to the home. Now this is not one big massive rollout, Maybe what comcast would do if they had to do it was do a massive rollout. The coop just keeps working on it as they can.
Everyone here knows that new tech devalues old tech. This is true whether it is your cell phone or an income producing capital item. But as long as the capital item produces the necessary revenue stream, monetarist economic policy supports maintaining the devalued capital asset on the balance sheet at the original value. Sure, accounting depreciation reduces the original value over time, but there is some room there for error. For instance, maybe the depreciation period is unreasonably long for reality. Setting it long helps your income statement. I guess Bell Telephone used to have a depreciation period set at maybe 50 years and look at all the new tech you got from them.
Now if there is competition, real competition, your competitor may be able to eat your lunch with new tech. So the old tech capitalist tends to upgrade the tech, at least if the banks are making loans for such things. And government economic policy can have a big effect on the decision. And some capitalists for whatever reason do the right thing anyway. Some of these people can get very rich, which is certainly a motivation.
So is it really the right thing. I know most of the readers like new tech, but is it really important? I think it is very clear that is important. Look at it this way. Humans have always been overpopulated, from the very beginning. For instance, the mastadons ran out. Resource are always finite, given a fixed level of tech. New tech in the productive process creates new resources. This is how we have traditionally avoided malthusian processes for the most part. But we have screwed up. The human population now exceeds the carrying power of the planet, given our tech level. A good way to look at the problem is as caused by monetarist economic policy. I guess some people are already floating the idea of solving the problem by killing 5 billion people. This is not just some sort of abstract third-world problem. They are talking about you also.
Vote With My Dollar How? (Score:5, Insightful)
better solution comcast (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Laws (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Laws (Score:1, Insightful)
I totally agree. If I'm gaming and my connection slows to a crawl because my neighbor decides to bittorrent 50GB of data I would be pretty pissed.
What if you're gaming and your round lasts longer than 15 minutes and your average up/down goes over 70% of your limit? Would you want your ISP to throttle you for at least 15 minutes - until you essentially stop playing since if you keep playing you won't be throttling yourself down. Games are pretty network intensive, can be just as much as torrenting, especially the larger rounds of FPS's (Halo 3, Big Social match, 32 people... gets taxing)
Re:Laws (Score:3, Insightful)
LOL. Most games come on a DVD. Let's say 8GB of content. A figure mentioned was 250GB/month. You might buy a lot of games. I doubt you buy a game a day.
Let's face it, the vast majority of people doing 200GB+/month down are not getting all their content legitimately. Acknowledge it, move on, the issue can still be discussed, but the endless charade, "But I buy lots of games online", "But I download about 20 Linux distros a month" is disingenuous at best.
Wrong service for 24/7 load. (Score:2, Insightful)
Residential ISPs provide connections that are designed for households where relatively short bursts of high activity alternate with longer periods of very low activity. It is correctly designed for that sort of application. Although more infrastructure would sure be good to increase the average speed everybody's getting, too much of it would just make the service too expensive for people who are not benefitting from the extra throughput.
If what you expect of residential ISP service is a guaranteed bandwidth level that you will saturate 24/7, you have bought the wrong service. You can buy something that provides that sort of service--but you're going to pay more.
Re:Laws (Score:5, Insightful)
Because our laws are written by corporate interests, not the people.
Oh, this is bullshit. We put up with it because we're conditioned to put up with all manner of mediocrity, lies, and incompetence in this country. This is only one example of it. Our leaders are another, but WE voted for them.
People always want to put the blame on someone other than themselves. But the people who are responsible for this kind of crap in this country are US. We are responsible because we expect it and we do nothing about it.
If we don't want to put up with shit like this, then we should be electing people based on how they specifically say they're going to respond to these kinds of shenanigans. But we don't. Instead, we vote for people because it looks like they have a nice family in TV commercials, or because they're against teh gays, or because they claim to adhere to some poorly defined set of values (ie. "family values", "conservative principles", etc.).
THAT IS OUR FAULT.
When you see 6-10% of people undecided in the final days of a national election (as was the case in 2008), what does that tell you? It doesn't tell you that we have a bunch of independent thinkers, as those people and the media will claim, it tells you that we have a bunch of people in this country who aren't paying any attention at all. Not only do they not understand the candidates' stances on the issues they care about, they don't even know the broad ideologies of the parties they belong to - they can't even make an assumption based on party affiliation or label. These are the people that often decide our elections.
And when you couple this lack of paying attention with the ridiculously low voting rates we have in this country compared with other democracies, then we have nobody to blame but ourselves.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)