Comcast Accused of Congestion By Choice 434
An anonymous reader writes "A kind soul known as Backdoor Santa has posted graphs purportedly showing traffic through TATA, one of Comcast's transit providers. The graphs of throughput for a day and month, respectively, show that Comcast chooses to run congested links rather than buy more capacity. Keeping their links full may ensure that content providers must pay to colocate within Comcast's network. The graphs also show a traffic ratio far from 1:1, which has implications for the validity of its arguments with Level (3) last month."
The text in a readable format (Score:5, Informative)
Ever wonder what Comcast's connections to the Internet look like? In the tradition of WikiLeaks, someone stumbled upon these graphs of their TATA links. For reference, TATA is the only other IP transit provider to Comcast after Level (3). Comcast is a customer of TATA and pays them to provide them with access to the Internet.
1 day graphs:
Image #1: http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/78/ntoday.gif [imageshack.us]
Image #1 (Alternate Site): http://www.glowfoto.com/viewimage.php?img=13-224638L&rand=6673&t=gif&m=12&y=2010&srv=img4 [glowfoto.com]
Image #2: http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/749/sqnday.gif [imageshack.us]
Image #2 (Alternate Site): http://www.glowfoto.com/static_image/13-205526L/4331/gif/12/2010/img6/glowfoto [glowfoto.com]
Notice how those graphs flat-line at the top? That's because they're completely full for most of the day. If you were a Comcast customer attempting to stream Netflix via this connection, the movie would be completely unwatchable. This is how Comcast operates: They intentionally run their IP transit links so full that Content Providers have no other choice but to pay them (Comcast) for access. If you don't pay Comcast, your bits wont make it to their destination. Though they wont openly say that to anyone, the content providers who attempt to push bits towards their customers know it. Comcast customers however have no idea that they're being held hostage in order to extort money from content.
Another thing to notice is the ratio of inbound versus outbound. Since Comcast is primarily a broadband access network provider, they're going to have millions of eyeballs (users) downloading content. Comcast claims that a good network maintains a 1:1 with them, but that's simply not possible unless you had Comcast and another broadband access network talking to each other. In the attached graphs you can see the ratio is more along the lines of 5:1, which Comcast was complaining about with Level (3). The reality is that the ratio argument is bogus. Broadband access networks are naturally pull-heavy and it's being used as an excuse to call foul of Level (3) and other content heavy networks. But this shoulnd't surprise anyone, the ratio argument has been used for over a decade by many of the large telephone companies as an excuse to deny peering requests. Guess where most of Comcasts senior network executive people came from? Sprint and AT&T. Welcome to the new monopoly of the 21st century.
If you think the above graph is just a bad day or maybe a one off? Let us look at a 30 day graph...
Image #3: http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/8917/ntomonth.gif [imageshack.us]
Image #3 (Alternate Site): http://www.glowfoto.com/static_image/13-205958L/4767/gif/12/2010/img6/glowfoto [glowfoto.com]
Comcast needs to be truthful with its customers, regulators and the public in general. The Level (3) incident only highlights the fact that Comcast is pinching content and backbone providers to force them to pay for uncongested access to Comcast customers. Otherwise, there's no way to send traffic to Comcast customers via the other paths on the Internet without hitting congested links.
Remember that this is not TATA's fault, Comcast is a CUSTOMER of TATA. TATA cannot force Comcast to upgrade its links, Comcast elects to simply not purchase enough capacity and lets them run full. When Comcast demanded that Level (3) pay them, the only choice Level (3) had was to give in or have its traffic (such as Netflix) routed via the congested TATA links. If Level (3) didn't agree to pay, that means Netflix and large portions of the Internet
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Seems to me that if this is all true, there is certainly grounds for a class action suite here. After all, with them knowingly maxing their pipes, its impossible for them to ever argue good faith efforts of any kind. Its kind of like trying to deliver water past a sieve and arguing I'm working my best to deliver water. Its just not possible.
and what would be the point of class action? (Score:2)
And what would be the point of class action? Comcast will eventually settle for "undisclosed sum" with out "admitting wrong doing," Lawyers walk away with millions while the rest of Comcast customers gets a 5 dollar coupon off the next month.
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Re:The text in a readable format (Score:5, Informative)
Bad argument (Score:3)
Comcast claims that a good network maintains a 1:1 with them, but that's simply not possible unless you had Comcast and another broadband access network talking to each other. In the attached graphs you can see the ratio is more along the lines of 5:1, which Comcast was complaining about with Level (3). The reality is that the ratio argument is bogus.
Comcast claims that free peering arrangements should have close to 1:1 ratio. And if you don't maintain that ratio, then you should pay for transit, just like Comcast is doing with TATA. So this is entirely consistent with what Comcast is saying and if anything supports their argument, not undercut it like Backdoor Santa is claiming. His argument about saturating transit to force other to peer with Comcast is valid though.
I personally think it is garbage to apply Tier-1 peering standards to (what should be)
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Wait, what?
Some people have no choice but Comcast, however others have competition, allowing change to other providers.
Just because you live in the city, doesnt mean everyone does. (General statement, not directed soley at you. But it could be).
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Re: (Score:3)
Being as state and municipal governments are the ones giving Comcast the franchise agreements (read: protected monopoly status) in exchange for various benefits, it is dramatically unlikely they would do anything with regard to opening competition or regulating their practices.
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Re:Universal Health, I mean, Internet Care? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Besides, since when was it a businesses right to advertise one thing, take money for it and not provide it? If a restaurant fails to provide what you order do you go start a new restaurant? What a bunch of NeoCon bs!
Re:Universal Health, I mean, Internet Care? (Score:4, Insightful)
Everyone has a choice in the US.
Only if you're going to include alternatives that actually aren't alternatives, or aren't even in the same class of product as broadband, like dialup and satellite.
Over the last decade I've watched as the tide has swung from the "I'll work hard to get what I want in life" attitude to the "Society owes me something" attitude.
Apart from being a very shitty strawman that equates to "Get off my lawn" or "Back in my day...", you forget to mention that business attitudes have also swung from the "Let's produce a good product and compete on the means of that product and our customer service" to "Fuck the customer, we need more money" attitude.
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You could build your own infrastructure by using a collection of high power 802.11b/g modems to multiplex a small amount of bandwidth from every unsecured wireless connection in your neighborhood.
False advertising (Score:5, Insightful)
A 100 percent full pipe is an efficient use of their resource.
It also limits the ability of Comcast's customers to use the 6 Mbps downstream burst capacity that Comcast has advertised to them. When an oversold link flat-tops, it's been over-oversold. If Comcast is not capable of bursting at 6 Mbps for the majority of the day, it shouldn't even be advertising 6 Mbps, let alone "PowerBoost".
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Re:Universal Health, I mean, Internet Care? (Score:5, Insightful)
One way to make profit in business is to maximise the use of your resources - but another is to deliberatly restrict supply of your product, in order to maintain a high price. You may shift less volume, but you make more per unit.
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I guess that explains the low points in the graph....
Re:Universal Health, I mean, Internet Care? (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, the low points in the graph prove that users don’t “always” consume all of what is available. They only do when the demand is actually that high (wow, what a revelation).
Go look at that graph again (here it is [ompldr.org]) and instead of the flatline, imagine that curve extrapolated up to where it ought to be. Where does it peak, somewhere around 200%? So you could actually double that network’s capacity and still be thinking “oh my god they’re just using it all up!” No, that’s just the normal demand... triple the network’s capacity, and you’d likely find that you have excess capacity at all times.
So no, the users don’t just “ALWAYS consume what is available”. They consume all of what is available when what’s available is less than the normal demand ought to be.
You’re just stuck in the position of being so ridiculously over-sold that the demand is 2x what you can supply. And you really only have yourselves to blame for that.
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What Comcast is doing is overselling individuals at a rate so much higher that the *aggregate* use is oversold by a factor of 2x. That's an enormous problem.
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There's no reason one cannot provide for excessive users. However, it needs to be upfront and clearly seen what that means.
That said, bit torrent is not the bandwidth hog of today. It is everyday, common, and reasonable usage of services such as streaming video from the likes of Netflix, Hulu, etc.. If the network cannot support the everyday, common, and reasonable usage of the majority of its customers then they are not fulfilling their obligations.
Re:Universal Health, I mean, Internet Care? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Universal Health, I mean, Internet Care? (Score:4, Insightful)
Problem is the road is bumper-to-bumper for 18+ hours a day. Congestion is expected at rush hour, but if the road can't handle normal loads it's not performing to need and needs upgrading.
Re:Universal Health, I mean, Internet Care? (Score:4, Insightful)
Comcast is a business designed to make profit yes?
I see this argument way too much. It's very true, but it's entirely irrelevant. We don't CARE if they want to make profit. It's no excuse. It's like saying that it's run by a sociopath sadist that just wants to hurt you, so it's perfectly fine when he breaks your kneecaps. And that simile isn't that far off, "making profit" is at the expense of the customer.
What I care about is getting the damn thing I paid for.
And the false advertising, that bugs me too.
Re:Universal Health, I mean, Internet Care? (Score:4, Insightful)
The free market retort doesn't work because cable companies have a government-granted monopoly on that technology. Even if someone wanted to, in most areas, they can't legally start a competing cable service, it has to use a different technology, so you're not going to have real like-for-like competition, you're not going to have DSL-for-DSL or cable vs. cable competition in the same area in most places. Fiber is faster, but you're also starting out the gate with a much more expensive system to lay.
I, for one... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I, for one... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that comcast has a monopoly (or duopoly) with regard to internet service pretty much everywhere comcast offers service. Thus, there's no free market to drive prices down and quality up.
The only solution in these situations is government regulation. Either subsidize new providers, cap prices, mandate minimum quality of service, etc. Comcast argues that they don't need regulation because they're doing just fine and that they're serving the public good. These graphs show that this is clearly not the case.
Re:I, for one... (Score:5, Interesting)
Treat last-mile connectivity as a utility-style natural monopoly(which it essentially is, economically speaking). Have the municipality build out either fiber, or tubes for running fiber, to a peering point accessible under RAND conditions. Their responsibility would be to ensure that the pipe between you and the peering point is maintained(ie. this isn't a 'gummint internet'). At this point, anybody who wished to do so could set up shop at the peering point and offer services over the pipe, whether they be straight internet access, IP TV, VOIP, whatever.
Once you get beyond the last-mile, there is a much stronger case to be made that competition is both possible and actual; but the last mile is an oligopoly at best, monopoly at worst, and(like water, power, and roads) tends toward being a natural monopoly in the economic sense...
Re:I, for one... (Score:5, Informative)
I agree with you 100 percent.
And apparently, so did Monticello.
Unfortunately the incumbent provider TDS disagreed strongly enough to slug it out in court, and while the referee had the city in the corner, TDS sucker punched them during the bell by getting an injunction against the city and builing their own network while the city's hands were tied.
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Well our (read: my country's) solution was to force the companies owning the cables to split between ISP and "cable owner", and forcing the cable owner to rent out their cables and capacities to all ISPs for the same rate. Of course they tried to (and still try to) stall wherever they can, but we're getting somewhere.
Oh Comcrap! (Score:2)
Is their company run by an evil troll who punishes all those who implement innovation and progress?
I have never, EVER heard anything good about Comcrap.
I would submit to a full-time McDonald's wifi connection before I would subscribe to Comcrap.
Re:Oh Comcrap! (Score:5, Funny)
Is their company run by an evil troll who punishes all those who implement innovation and progress?
Yes, and MBA's don't appreciate being called names.
Re:Oh Comcrap! (Score:4, Interesting)
From what I've heard about their infrastructure staff at a few conferences, they seem somewhat competent as they've been into IPv6 and DNSSEC from an early stage (doesn't always mean anything though). It is 10Gbits which is impressive, but I can't believe thats their only link out. They have tens of millions using their internet service right? How can it only be 10Gbits?
For the record, I am a comcast customer now (for only 2 months now) and I do agree it sucks balls compared to the fiber to the house I had before. But I also deliberately chose to go with cable internet for the first time because I wanted my own real experience to back up my suspicions instead of just angry posts by random people on forums.
Re:Oh Comcrap! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds kinda like smacking yourself in the face with a frying pan to confirm it hurts. :-P
Re:Oh Comcrap! (Score:4, Interesting)
Not really. I used to work for an ISP for 7 years that dealt in both DSL and Cable (don't ask how). I know the technologies behind DSL and Cable modems and know that the design of DSL usually wins out in situations where lots of people are online in the same area. Most people don't understand this and only pay attention to the marketing and data rates. For many years I had either direct ethernet, high speed wireless link,DSL and fiber to the home. So I wanted to try cable out to see how it was because all the marketing and clueless people making claims can really confuse the issue. I'm just familiarizing myself with my industry so that I have first hand experience when I give others advice. There is nothing wrong or sadomasochistic about that.
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Indeed, no, based on your supporting reasons I won't disagree with you.
I'm just not sure I'd subject myself to worse internet service than I already had to gain some better empirical knowledge.
I applaud you for doing it though.
Cheers
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From my experience of living in 2 different areas of the country, Comcast is second only to fiber in speed. Now, of course my sample size is small, but when I read about the horrors of other cables cos or DSL I'm happy to have Comcast. I think it just shows how crappy the other broadband companies are.
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It's the company that destroyed TechTV [wikipedia.org]. Nuff said.
Comcast needs to be stoped befor NBC goes cable on (Score:3)
Comcast needs to be stopped before NBC goes cable only and maybe even comcast only in area with more then one cable system.
I don't want to lose CSN CHICAGO on Dish / Directv / WOW cable / RCN cable and ATT uverse
Stop The Cap (Score:4, Interesting)
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If it is futile, how is it better than whining?
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Makes it quieter for the rest of us.
Current Comcast customer... (Score:3, Interesting)
Please someone tell me that Verizon is better, because I really want to switch to FIOS when it's available.
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Re:Current Comcast customer... (Score:5, Informative)
Verizon is much better. I am very happy with my 35/35 mbit symmetric fiber connection. Almost no outages at all. Way less than comcrap which used to drop out on a weekly basis for me. If you don't live in a state/city with FIOS, move.
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it won't be (Score:2)
fios is not expanding into any new areas for the forseeable future.
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As for Verizon FiOS welcoming, it was a little over the top to the point of a
Lowest customer satisfaction rankings (Score:2)
Re:Lowest customer satisfaction rankings (Score:5, Interesting)
Arguably, no, they don't care.
Most monopolies don't. Even in areas where they have to compete against DSL, there's only a small segment of the population that can purchase service that rivals theirs in terms of advertised speed / service. And even then ... who are they competing against? Well ... the phone company, which has a stellar reputation when it comes to customer service ...
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XOXOXO Ma Bell
Re:Lowest customer satisfaction rankings (Score:5, Interesting)
Arguably, no, they don't care.
Most monopolies don't. Even in areas where they have to compete against DSL, there's only a small segment of the population that can purchase service that rivals theirs in terms of advertised speed / service. And even then ... who are they competing against? Well ... the phone company, which has a stellar reputation when it comes to customer service ...
The phone company's 100-year reputation isn't always a reliable predictor: I recently had an excellent experience with the local phone company. My Comcast download speed, advertised as “up to” 12 million bits per second, was actually between 6 and 7. I had been waiting for DSL to be available for years, and when it finally was, I invited Fairpoint, the local telco, to install it on 30 days approval.
They sent me a DSL modem, which I hooked up, and then waited for the service to be switched on. To my surprise, they dispatched a technician. I walked him around the property, showing him where the wires were buried, and he then followed the pair of wires that connected me to the neighborhood fibre termination point, making sure I had a straight run. When he was done I had an excellent signal to noise ratio, and was able to actually get the advertised 15 million bits per second of download speed.
The technician told me that mine was the first 15 million bits per second installation he had done, so that might be why he went the extra mile (literally—the neighborhood fibre termination point is a mile away) to make sure I got good service. Nevertheless, it shows that when you get down to the level of individuals, the reputation of the organization doesn't tell you much.
Re:Lowest customer satisfaction rankings (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, in the past, lots of people have pointed out that Comcast is essentially a monopoly in places, so, it's not like they're competing with anybody.
They simply have no incentive to spend money. They've got all of these customers now, and spending money on infrastructure isn't going to make them any more money, so why do it? Upgrading is just straight cost, and without a benefit to them, why do it?
The very cynical answer is that until they're more or less forced to upgrade, they have no incentive to. They make money by overselling a service -- the closer to maxed out the service is, the more money they make. They don't really care about you, they care about their profits -- they're not gonna spend profits just so some people have a faster connection.
And, they're not going to give up on the revenue of having people co-locate with them, so they're doubly uninterested in fixing their capacity issues.
Welcome to the "free" market, it isn't really about customer choice and value -- it's abut maximizing profits and giving you the least amount of service they can get away with. This is a perfectly logical situation when you look at it from their point of view.
Net neutrality (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you could prove somehow that they are causing the congestion and it's not the customers, THEN you are totally on to something. But look at the graph, it didn't spend much time at 100% before the Thanksgiving (US) holiday. At that point, a lot of people (mostly college students) just got a whole lot more bored with their lives and are no doubt watching youtube/netflix/hulu at a greatly increased rate.
Should Comcast be persecuted because there is a holiday rush on internet video? Probably not. Come on,
Re:Net neutrality (Score:5, Insightful)
Should Comcast be persecuted because there is a holiday rush on internet video?
Yes. ISPs should be prepared for peak usage.
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Be careful of the spin machine.
It might be argued that net neutrality principles should not and can not compel an ISP to buy bigger pipes. If their "limitation" is uniform and across the board, then they are being network neutral. So, if ALL incoming traffic is similarly impeded (which would seem to be the case) then there is no case to claim network neutrality being compromised here.
And this isn't about forcing content providers to pay for prioritization either. It is about Comcast offering to host the
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Seems like they are intentionally congesting their links to force content providers to pay them extra for prioritisation. Ground rules for net neutrality are needed.. badly.
How will net neutrality force Comcast to buy more bandwidth and uncongest their links?
This strikes me as the type of problem meant for States' Attorney Generals and not Net Neutrality.
Re:Net neutrality (Score:4, Informative)
In theory, by disallowing them to charge content-providers extra to deliver the content in a timely manner, and forcing them to address the root problem of simply not having enough capacity compared to what they sell.
This will never happen in America ... once they make the argument that spending their profits to improve service without getting any more money is tantamount to communism, then they'll continue with the way things are now.
From their perspective, if they actually had to have the service they advertise, they'd be losing money. This is a shell game that relies on overselling what you have (by several times) in order to make as much money as possible. End-user satisfaction would just eat into profits -- never mind the fact that they basically have a monopoly paid for by the tax payers in terms of right of way and the ability to lay cables that only they can use.
1:x ratio because of plan design? (Score:2)
I find it interesting that they could increase their upload speeds with minimal performance hit, or would that take away their argument against level 3?
MRTG, seriously? (Score:2)
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MRTG is good enough for carrier-class deployment, and has been since 1993 or so. I relied on it to keep track of various metrics for our ISP business back then, everything from link utilization to Usenet volume to disk free space to modem utilization. (Side note, that #3 modem that had WAY more connection attempts than all the rest? That's a defective mode, boss, let's move the blade to the end of the pool until we get a replacement, ok? Just a thought...)
But damn, our first T-1 never looked like that.
100% utilization between mid-night and 7am? (Score:2)
Re:100% utilization between mid-night and 7am? (Score:5, Informative)
Multi-national providers are likely to be running their graphs in UTC - reading the graph that way makes a lot more sense.
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most traffic spikes after the workday is over. people come home from work, pick up kids, eat dinner and then stream netflix or youtube. and if you are a steam customer or downloading a new game purchase to your x-box or PS3 it will probably download during the night
Nobody has a peering agreement with Comcast (Score:5, Insightful)
TFP (The Fucking Post) points out that Comcast runs its terminations with TATA at full capacity for most of the day and concludes that they do so on purpose to force services like Netflix to co-locate with them (= $$$ for Comcast.)
So L3 says to Netflix.. "Hey.. you dont need to be a slave to the Comcast overlord" and Comcasts reponse is to re-brand its business relationship with L3 as a "Peering Agreement."
Many slashdotters bought this bullshit hook, line, and sinker on the last Comcast vs L3 article. They did so because they learned about peering relationships at some point in other slashdot stories and took their 1:1 free peering knowledge and incorrectly applied it to the L3 and Comcast relationship.
L3 is Comcast's internet provider. Comcast's claim is like you claiming that you can charge your ISP because more stuff comes downstream to your LAN than goes upstream from it.
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I actually found Comcasts extensive Q&A's on this subject very informative - and its surprising how much you sound like a Level 3 shill...
Translation: Comcast says that they are a saint and you believe them.
Can't This Backfire? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's only meaningful if there are alternatives/competition in the area, and there might be an argument that Comcast wants to push it's own video streaming service (which wouldn't crap out).
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Re:Can't This Backfire? (Score:4, Interesting)
You would think so, but the average user does not think that. The average user thinks "My YouTube videos of cats stream just fine, but Netflix does not. It must be Netflix's fault."
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the user isn't going to think "Netflix is crappy"
care back that up?
I can understand if the User was using netflix and it was working fine then due to congestion it started to lag and skip they might blame Comcast..
but at the same time a user who has never seen it work correctly doesn't know who to blame for the problem and is more likely to just top using it.
but if they stop using it they will still want their content - the next best service that "doesn't lag out" is video on demand..
the average joe doesn't know anything about how an ISP works or over sel
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ClearWire WiMax service is $50 a month for unlimited 4G internet. 3G is 5GB max per month. that's your competition
Comcast: The Enron of Data Delivery? (Score:2)
That's all I got, the abuses of corporate owned government are too pervasive to list again. Until YOU stop giving them your money, it will only get worse.
Lyrics for a Tuesday (Score:2)
C'mon, yeah
Yeah, c'mon, yeah
Yeah, c'mon
Oh, yeah, ma
Yeah, I'm a back door Santa
I'm a back door Santa
The public don't know
But Comcast understands
Hey, all you people that tryin' to sleep
I'm out to make it with my midnight leak, yeah
'Cause I'm a back door Santa
The public don't know
But Comcast understands
All right, yeah
You routers eat your dinner
Eat your pork and beans
I eat more bandwidth
Than any man ever seen, yeah, yeah
I'm a back door Santa, wha
The public don't know
But Comcast un
Comcast Over-reaches: Ma Bell all over again. (Score:3)
I think it would be a delicious irony if as result of the scrutiny Comcast is receiving due to their proposed acquisition of NBC regulators not only to denied the acquisition but further split the company in half. One half would be Comcast cable and the other half would be Xfinity broadband. Comcast cable would be forced to lease the last mile lines to Xfinity as well as any other broadband provider that is interested. That would be justice and therefore it will never happen. We're just going to see a ban on charging for traffic that terminates in their network.
Re:Does it have to be a conspiracy? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is _ONE_ ten gig link. Lets assume they have another 10 gig to level3.
His point is pretty clear: ten gig links are NOT THAT EXPENSIVE. We're not talking about a 100 million dollar expense here, we're talking probably an extra 200k per month per link.
They're intentionally bandwidth starving themselves. I can't see any other explanation, and Backdoor Santa is right.
Re:Does it have to be a conspiracy? (Score:5, Informative)
we're talking probably an extra 200k per month per link.
ps. I'm rounding _way_ up.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's simple economics. If the cost of problems with annoyed customers remains below the cost of upgrading the system, then they won't upgrade.
Comcast makes no money on the traffic that traverses their network, and has nothing to gain by upgrading except their customers' good will. Since every third post here begins with "Comcrap" or ends with "sucks", I don't think they're too worried about their quality of service image.
Here's the deal breaker for Santa's conspiracy theory: what kind of idiot would locat
Re:Does it have to be a conspiracy? (Score:4, Informative)
Both in and out. Large sites like netflix or youtube use a CDN - servers placed all over the world, because no one place could be optimal in providing service to all customers.
Re:Does it have to be a conspiracy? (Score:5, Informative)
According to this article [wired.com], Comcast's public image is about the same as Halliburton or ExxonMobil. They're one of the most despised companies in America and they really don't give a shit.
Re:Does it have to be a conspiracy? (Score:4, Informative)
They're certainly not made up numbers. That said, transit costs vary greatly by location and business negotiations. Getting a 10 gig link out of 60 Hudson when you have presence there is totally different than getting fiber run out to some middle-of-nowhere location.
I'm assuming we're talking about the opex cost of 10 gigs worth of transit from a fairly central hub. Capex to provide infrastructure to back that cost is not included. If we take the premise that Comcast's internal network isn't congested and only its transit links (which the graphs suggest is the major bottleneck), then there probably isn't significant capex cost in bringing online another link.
Of course I'm making huge assumptions. I'm on slashdot. Duh.
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What if this is their lowest cost/most popular link? You know these newfangled routers these days can use more than 1 link at a time and unless they have identical start/end points they won't carry a synchronous amount of traffic. They may be falling back on another peer when this link hits 100%
Just playing devil's advocate. Anyone on comcast care to comment on if "netflix is unwatchable" from noon to midnight?
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Yes, as a Comcast customer, I can confirm this.
90% of the time we watch Netflix between 12 PM and 12 AM, we end up getting very low quality video (1 'bar'). I pay for the mid-tier service (not the "super-fast" gaming connection, but not basic either). Nothing else at the time is using the internet, other than maybe a bit of Stumbleupon on 1 PC.
Heck, even trying to stream Youtube at 720p requires a several minute wait as the video buffers.
It is unacceptable. If I actually thought it would accomplish somet
Re:Does it have to be a conspiracy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Comcast is a cable company. Their pre-internet business was realtime video delivery. This remains one of their more lucrative segments. As such, they have a built in conflict of interest when it comes to providing high quality internet service. They sure don't mind if you pay them to get your email really fast, or play video games with low ping, or download "linux ISOs"; but if youtube+netflix means that you cut the cord on your cable video, that is Bad News from their perspective. Thus, anything they do that would impact the reasonable performance of streaming video, online video downloads/rentals, etc. should be viewed as malice first and incompetence second.
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What makes Backdoor Santa think this is done to drive service providers to Comcast? Occam's razor has a much simpler explanation: Comcast doesn't want to spend more money upgrading their capacity.
That makes sense.
Their users don't necessarily have it that bad anyways. So Comcasts' links are just congested -- that means their users have some packet loss. Unfortunately, those graphs don't show discard rates, so it's not really known from those graphs just how badly things are congested.
It could be a lo
Re:Does it have to be a conspiracy? (Score:4, Interesting)
AFAIK bittorrent has better-than-normal conjestion management, not "very crappy congestion management".
It uses either TCP (almost the definition of bog-standard) or uTP (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Transport_Protocol [wikipedia.org]); designed for the express purpose to improve upon TCP traffic management.
Perhaps the uTP devs failed; but there's no evidence for that that I can see.
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Comcast doesn't give SLA's, even on business class. There SLA is "We're awesome, we'll keep everything running, trust us. And if it goes down, we'll get it back up soon. We promise"
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Because, Duh, conspiracy's are fun. People like hearing conspiracies. Conspiracies are news. Knowing it's all conspiracy makes you the smart one when all others are blind.
Conversely, boring old facts such as companies don't like spending money, if they can avoid it, are dull and nothing we didn't already know. News that some companies also are a bit rubbish is not news. No-one wants to read that.
Unless, of course, that's what they want you to think...
Re:A provider that uses close to 100% of capacity! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's more like the construction company is taking forever to finish the road, and by happy chance they also operate the toll booth on the only alternate road.
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The road construction employees are demanding bribes from motorists to allow them access to finished lanes which were already paid for by taxes on the motorists. Those unwilling to pay the bribe are routed to lanes still under construction that are populated by workers who do nothing but hold flags and scratch their butts. In other words, Comcast is full of useless butt scratchers who are trying to scam yo
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Unlike a spare part you don't pay for extra capacity. Transit billing is generally 95th percentile you throw out the top 5% of samples and bill on the remaining peek. From a design standpoint if you had two links you would not want to see either running over 50% from a billing standpoint you pay about the same for two links 50% used as you do one link at 100% so there is little reason to max out links unless there is a failure and it's picking up the slack.
Re:Content providers must pay (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Content providers must pay (Score:4, Informative)
They're double dipping -- they charge you to deliver the bandwidth to you, and they charge the content providers to co-lo with them so that their users have a faster service experience.
So, the gouge you for shoddy service, and they gouge the content providers extortion-style so their content arrives in a timely manner.
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They deliberately use inadequate links to the outside world so you (e.g. netflix or any other service that requires substantial sustained bandwidth) have to pay them to put your servers inside their network so your customers can get adequate service.
Or they can refuse to allow you to place your servers in their network and cut you out of the market in their areas, which in netflix's case, they also compete in with their own video-on-demand service.
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I'd be amazed if Comcast had only one 10Gbit/sec transit interface to one of their two upstreams: it's likely they take several at multiple different TATA POPs.
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Yup, I noticed that too.
Looking at the graphs, it shows failure to do good capacity planning. But, it's pretty clear that we aren't looking at the big picture. We're provided a few graphs, where there should be others to show the whole story. I seriously doubt that Comcast aggregates all of their connectivity out to one pipe, from all the cities that they service.
We had a graph that looked very similar to that one once. I had GigE circuits in several cities w
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do you know how long it takes to upgrade something like this? it costs tens of thousands of $$$ just to buy the hardware which must be approved by management only after evidence is collected that it's needed. then you have to add the new hardware to maintenance contracts. and provisioning new circuits takes months of waiting while it's installed and tested. and then you have to schedule maintenance to add it to your network, routing tables, etc. it's not like buying a new home wifi router or asking mommy to