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."
Then throttle yourself (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Then throttle yourself (Score:2, Interesting)
Internet packets to and from a specific subscriber are assigned 'Priority Best Effort' (PBE) queueing by default, and the traffic rate is throttled by switching packets to lower priority 'Best Effort' (BE) queueing.
So, throttling in this case simple means that your traffic is delivered after alle PBE traffic (all other customers) was dealt with in the router's queues.
That also means that you'll hardly notice the difference when there's no congestion, but it may also cause complete packet loss at busy times.
Something TFS fails to note is this, at the bottom of TFA:
Comcast has also imposed a monthly 250GB bandwidth usage cap on all of its customers, and it will, after one warning, terminate service for one year to those who exceed that cap twice within a six-month period.
Glad I have municipal cable (Score:2, Interesting)
I live in the SF Bay area, which is mostly Comcast country, but I'm really lucky to be in a city that has municipal cable. I have 12 mpbs down with no throttling. If there's a transfer cap, I've never run up against it.
I suspect what's going on with Comcast is their subscribers and bandwidth use are growing faster than they can (or at least want to) add capacity, so they're solving the problem with throttling. As a network engineer in a previous career life, I have a certain amount of sympathy for them in this case. Their bandwidth demands may be growing faster than they can add capacity while having their Internet business remain profitable. Throttling heavy users is one solution, and they are far from the first ISP to do so. The ISP I worked for 10 years ago did it in some cases. Our TOS allowed it in all cases, but it was usually only enforced in cases where a particular user was being regularly problematic.
Of course, my municipal cable provider seems to have no problem maintaining infrastructure, and IIRC they charge about the same as Comcast, so...
However, I do take issue with applying such a throttle after only 15 minutes. For most people, that's not long enough to download an install CD ISO (I can do it, since I usually see download speeds >= 1 megabyte/sec for ISOs) but I don't think most Comcast users get a connection as fast as mine; correct me if I'm wrong). Since I'm sort of a distro whore, I tend to download a lot of install ISOs. For distros that install from DVD, that 15 minutes is even worse. I think the throttling threshold should be at least 30 minutes.
Re:Laws (Score:2, Interesting)
>>>A residential cable/dsl service is far far cheaper and is contractually not obligated to provide consistent speeds, only burst speeds
This is why I only got the 750k service. I knew if I signed-up for 6,000k service I probably wouldn't get that speed most of the time, so why bother paying twice-as-much for little improvement?
The other thing we need in this country is A La Carte, where you can pay a base fee of $5 plus $1 for every extra channel you desire. (Or if you prefer, stick with the current package deal.)
One might think this could even be written... (Score:2, Interesting)
One might think this could even be written as a nice plug-in style setup for "traffic shaping" on your local linux box. Define 100%, and it figures out how to maximize use w/o triggering the ISP-side throttling.
Re:So... (Score:5, Interesting)
Business clas customers please note (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Laws (Score:5, Interesting)
I've long suggested the option to vote against a candidate instead of for one, that would be a variation on preferential voting.
Re:So... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd have to assume they're smart enough to avoid such trivial workarounds, and are using a sliding window to keep track of *average* bandwidth usage over the last 15min. If you run at 100% for 14.5min and 50% for 30sec, you'll be averaging 98.3% usage and you're hozed.
Re:Laws (Score:5, Interesting)
Amen, that was a breath of fresh air in a room full of "me-me's" instinctively chanting that Comcast is eating babies and setting villages on fire, and that anyone who disagrees is a corporate apologist.
To agree further...
If someone actually *needs* 250GB or more of data per month, and full-pipe speeds the entire time to boot, then as you said there is a plan available for that, called commercial or business class service. There *is* a distinction, and it's funny that they don't see the irony when they say "I want what I paid for."
I dropped my landline and cable television both, everything comes through my cable modem (and I stream Netflix heavily as well as Plex) without issue.
I don't think that Comcast implementing throttling is going to be like what Rome did to Carthage. The reality is that if you are downloading a massive multi-gig file it's going to take a while whether you are throttled or not. Any QoS or traffic management 101 class defines this as bulk or best effort traffic and puts it at the bottom - it's not interactive or particularly time sensitive. Why not make it livable for everyone else? And before everyone hits the reply button and complains that Comcast shouldn't have their upstream oversubscribed, please pause first to grab a clue and realize that every ISP oversubscribes. On top of that, cable plants were only really designed for one way downstream delivery of cable channels so upstream bandwidth will always be much more limited. The only way Comcast can make more upstream bandwidth available is by splitting a node, which means they are doubling their upstream bandwidth by doubling their cable plant. As you can imagine, this is very expensive and that cost ultimately gets passed along to the consumer.
I'm sure someone in the comments has couched this as a net neutrality issue. I also don't buy that argument since it's not targeted at a specific person or application.
So yeah, this sucks, but it was more or less inevitable.
Re:Laws (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Laws (Score:5, Interesting)
(1) The price goes up because the cable channels keep demanding more money. At one time channels asked for about 25 cents per home, and collected that money from Comcast, Dish, Directv, and so on. In today's world some channels like CNN or FOX News still only ask for 25 cents, but other channels like Sci-Fi, TNT, ABCfamily, and Disney are demanding 90 cents per subscriber, with the most-expensive channel ESPN charging $3/subscriber.
Therefore since these cable channels are demanding more fees, our monthly bills also go up.
(2) I'd say Dish and Directv are competing more with cable than one another. Dish now offers service for a mere $20 a month, plus $5 if you want locals, which is a darn good deal. Certainly better than what Comcast would charge me (~$65).
(3) I actually have neither of these. I get my TV for free via antenna (about 45 channels total), plus $15 internet for video-on-demand.
Re:Laws (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
And it's one of those things that makes no sense. Not at all.
There are two basic types of expenses: running expenses, and overhead expenses. Overhead expenses tend to be relatively fixed. EG: your mortgage payment will stay the same even if you have a friend move in. Running expenses are, by definition, unit-based. If you buy another gallon of milk, you'll pay for another gallon of milk.
It's OK that milk is a unit-cost, because there's a directly attributable cost per gallon of milk sold. More gallons means more cows and more feed, and more water, and more shipping costs, all the way down the line.
But bandwidth has no meaningful unit cost. None. A Gb switch uses about the same ammount of power as a 10 Mb switch. They even both use the same cables. The only difference is the switch itself, and the network adapters for the equipment. Sure, there's the one-time expense of the switch, but that's ridiculously cheap.
Given this, and the stupidly cheap, low (and dropping) cost of fiber, why are we dealing with artificially inflated prices? Comcast could 10x the bandwidth available, become the high-end seller, and make a mint for another 25% hike in fees, at virtually 100% profit after one-time capital expenses are paid.
Why don't they do this? Why are they so fixated on reducing costs in the one area that has no essential cost at all? They're idiots - cutting off their nose to spite their face, missing the whole point of "buy low, sell high".
One of those times when it's clear that private industry isn't intrinsically any more efficient than public agencies...
Re:Laws (Score:5, Interesting)
You do realize we have gone through many political parties in the US, right? The reason parties die out is because more people "throw their vote away" than vote for the original primary party. For example, the Whig party is gone. They are no more. The current two parties, Democrat and Republican, actually started out as one party. Back then, the major polarizing issues were completely different, and the current polarizing issues were little more than minor philosophical differences among party members. Eventually the northern, industrialized portion of the party split off over issues like slavery and representation in congress, while the deep south Democrats consolidated their base. The Republican party has since gone through a number of near-deaths and re-births since then, while the Democrats have changed slowly and steadily since then.
One particular election that nearly saw the death of the Republican party in somewhat recent history was Theodor Roosavelt's second term - he became angry with the Republican party and ran under the Bull party. He took around 20% of the vote, while the republican candidate took around 30% of the vote giving the Democrat candidate the victory. Had his party been a little more established it might have overtaken the Republican party and we'd have the Democrats and Bulls today.
So, while it may seem like voting 3rd party is throwing your vote away, it isn't. You can think of it as voting against both parties, and if enough people agree with you a new party may rise to dominance. The mere fact that you voted has an effect on the election. No candidate can win by less than 50% of the electoral votes, so a strong enough third party siphoning votes from both sides can really shake up the political system. That isn't possible when nobody votes third party. For example, if the Green Party managed to take California and (inexplicably) Texas, both major parties would be screwed. Basically whichever party is dominant in the House of Reps chooses the president (effectively, it is run like another election), and the Senate elects the VP. Just imagine the message that would be sent to both parties and the grass-roots political efforts that would be generated. It would almost be a given that a new party will rise to dominance.
Honestly, I think if more people voted for the candidate that actually represented what what they believed instead of saying "well, it's better than the other guy" we would be in a lot better shape today.
Re:Laws (Score:5, Interesting)
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. Traffic management is a must for a smooth running network. For the 5% who use 90% of the bandwidth and demand no throttling it just makes life miserable to the 95% who aren't abusing the bandwidth. If you want non-throttled bandwidth, get a business account.
I myself have a Comcast business account and am quite pleased with it. The level of service is much better and the customer service is night and day compared to residential, but then again, I'm paying $90/month for my connection. Then again, I never really had much of a problem with my residential account for the most part, I mostly wanted a static IP and the ability to run servers.
All ISPs oversubscribe their networks because otherwise it would cost far too much for them to be competitive. If there's congestion, which packets should be dropped? The casual user or the user running huge bittorrents? Bandwidth is a limited resource.
The best solution would be if applications properly marked the packets as bulk, time sensitive, etc, but that isn't the case, and instead other less optimal methods must be used.
DOCSIS 3 will hopefully help, but it will be a while before it's available everywhere.
VOIP/phone service? net neutrality/conflict ? (Score:3, Interesting)
mmm so what's this mean about VOIP? and phone service that Comcast might sell you vs Vonage or MagicJack?
so the kids view tons of videos, etc and all of a sudden you can't make usage phone calls? and will Comcast-supplied VOIP phone service work but Vonage or MJ fail?
Re:Laws (Score:4, Interesting)
Honestly, I think if more people voted for the candidate that actually represented what what they believed instead of saying "well, it's better than the other guy" we would be in a lot better shape today.
Maybe if we actually knew what the candidates believed. What about people who voted for Obama because of DADT or closing Guantanimo?
Any software suggestions? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Laws (Score:3, Interesting)
> Politicians should not be getting money directly from the public, period.
So we either get government financed elections, i.e. the politicians voting themselves taxpayer money (taxes money extracted by force) for their own use, or we have a world where only the idle rich can hold public office. Either way the 1st Amendment goes in the trashcan in your perverted world. Screw that. Listen up hippie, cash == speech, outlaw one you outlaw both. Don't like that? Tough, reality isn't required to conform to your Marxist professor's zany notions. Or you can explain how outlawing one doesn't end up outlawing the other?
> It's a conflict of interest with the ideals of democracy (1 person = 1 vote, but 1 vote + money > 1 vote).
Well lets start your political education with informing you we are not and were never intended to be a Democracy. Calling a Founding Father a Democrat would have required him to punch you in the face for such a dreadful insult.
But anyway.... In theory you have a point, rich people can afford a bigger megaphone. In reality it isn't as bad as you probably think it is. Look at NJ where the rich guy used his own checkbook to outspend the guy who ended up winning by over 3-1. Ok, when you get to Mayor Bloomberg's level of throwing money at an election it made a difference but again, just how do you propose to stop it? They guy is a media baron after all, so how do you plan on shutting him up? Even if you somehow stopped him buying ads on other outlets, just his own media empire sucking up to the boss would be a heck of an advantage. Or do you plan to ban private ownership of media also? See what I meant earlier about your road leading to a repeal of the 1st Amendment when it gets in the way?
And remember, while one rich guy can throw his money around, we small people have numbers on our side and the best way to leverage that is through a PAC. When a couple million or so folks send in a check to the NRA[1] it becomes a force every politician ignores at their peril. Because beyond the money they can wield as a weapon they have something a billionaire doesn't have, a couple million registered voters standing behind the money.
And on the gripping hand perhaps it isn't a problem with money buying a bigger voice in modern society anyway since so much of government's plans these days is seizing that money from the rich, who are few in actual votes, with the intention of 'spreading it around' to the masses of voters. More bluntly, buying people's votes with other people's money. One could make a good argument for self defense.
[1] If you don't approve of the 2nd Amendment substitute another civil rights organization, enviro group, etc.
Re:Laws (Score:4, Interesting)
Well said.
The natural gas company or electric company or water company are natural monopolies because it isn't practical to run 3 or 4 foot-wide pipes to every home. But cable TV isn't a natural monopoly. Neither is internet. You can easily bundle 10 companies/cables into less than half-a-foot diameter.
the can do better, without money grubbers (Score:0, Interesting)
F you comcast. I pay for service, not dis-service. You can give me a faster cap, no total download limit, treat all traffic the neutrally and none of this 'throttling because you are using it' crap, for less money. Other ISP's can, time for you to cut off the top... and I mean your management.