Cox Communications and "Congestion Management" 282
imamac writes "It appears Cox Communications is the next in line for throttling internet traffic. But it's not throttling of course; Cox's euphemism is 'congestion management.' From Cox's explanation: 'In February, Cox will begin testing a new method of managing traffic on our high-speed Internet network in our Kansas and Arkansas markets. During the occasional times the network is congested, this new technology automatically ensures that all time-sensitive Internet traffic — such as web pages, voice calls, streaming videos and gaming — moves without delay. Less time-sensitive traffic, such as file uploads, peer-to-peer and Usenet newsgroups, may be delayed momentarily...' Sounds like throttling to me."
Well that... (Score:5, Funny)
...sucks Cox!
Re:Well that... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Well that... (Score:5, Insightful)
If by good you meant 'pathetically obvious', then perhaps yes.
Guess the name... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Guess the name... (Score:5, Funny)
So...I guess you work for Cox?
Does working for Cox pay well?
Do you enjoy working for Cox?
Is it hard when you work for Cox?
Do you pull a lot of cables working for Cox?
Do you bury a lot of cables working for Cox?
Re:Guess the name... (Score:4, Funny)
'scuze me, ma'am...we're taking a television provider survey today. Would you mind answering a question for us:
Are you happy with cox on the whole?
QOS (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like QOS to me.
Re:QOS (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, prioritizing some traffic isn't, in theory, the same thing as throttling other traffic. To me, "throttling" suggests that they're saying "traffic using protocol X cannot use more than Y kbps," whereas "prioritizing" would be ensuring that, "whenever we have to choose between delaying protocol X or protocol Y, we always delay protocol X."
Now there are still potential issues with implementation, which protocols you chose to prioritize, and outright abuse for other purposes (such as promoting your own services or degrading competing services). However, in abstract, I don't think it's an absolutely awful idea.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is they back into it and still end up with throttling.
1) We will allow full speed downloading except with a speed dependent service needs a little QOS luvin.
2) We fail to upgrade our system as the speed dependent services become more and more common (you tube for example, online games with more and more features as another example, voip and then voip + video messaging, and so on)
3) Now we are giving QOS luvin to 70% of our traffic and restricting your evil downloading (which was originally 99% o
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Why should they only prioritize known good traffic? Why not just throttle known bad traffic (when there's congestion)?
Did you read my post about how prioritizing one protocol isn't the same as throttling all other protocols? I don't want my ISP throttling any of my traffic. In my opinion, none of my traffic should be considered "known bad traffic" by my ISP. On the other hand, it makes a lot of sense to prioritize traffic that they *know* is sensitive to delays.
It is QOS but they better do it right (Score:5, Insightful)
If they don't want egg on their faces, they better do this right.
They better be completely transparent about what does and does not get priority.
They better be completely transparent about any "special rules" like "no more than 128kb/sec will get preferential treatment" - that's more than enough for 2 simultaneous 2-way audio channels.
They better be completely transparent if they make "additional priority traffic" a premium-charge option.
They better use common sense when determining what is and is not "priority." "If it looks like real-time, treat it like real-time unless the customer is above his real-time quota, then use more discerning measures" is a good rule of thumb. Another good rule of thumb is "only throttle as much as necessary, no more" so that bits fly without delay during times of no congestion.
They better listen to their customers and be willing to admit if they make a mistake.
If they fail do do all of these, they will get some major backlash.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess it depends on what you are used to. The Cox web page doesn't seem to want to tell me much. The highest speed I found mention of is 15Mbit so I'll go with that.
If that is the case, they *are* ripping people off from my perspective. Unless they're offering it for very cheap prices, of course. In which case "you get what you pay for" applies, obviously.
No provider where I live even mentions throttling. I've never in the years I've had my current 20Mbit (14-15 effectively as it's ADSL and I'm a bit far
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So you think that if young people had to live in their parents' basements in 2000, they won't have to now because the economy is so much better off?
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:"time sensitive"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
OK, so you would be happy paying the same price for a 128 Kbps connection or something? Then everyone could use their fully bandwidth all the time (and never any more than that).
Re:"time sensitive"? (Score:5, Insightful)
How many of your neighbors have to create ~96kbps VoIP stream to innundate the local uplink? It's probably not even possible. How many people using BitTorrent would it take to do the same? Not very many. If you're pulling 7Mbps from a torrent, isn't it reasonable that the ISP makes sure others still have bandwidth available to them? From their description, their prioritization is pointedly vendor-neutral, ie they aren't preferring their own video application over Hulu, or some such competitor. How is this unfair to you?
Re:"time sensitive"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Even big pipes can get congested. P2P programs can generate 100's of connections for each client. For VoIP, it is just a single connection. Why have the router process 2,000 packets of P2P for one connection of VoIP? The router should make sure time sensitive things like VoIP get the priority so people that use VoIP can use it without getting crammed out by P2P traffic
The people that browse and have Vonage expect the same level of service as someone that is running P2P 24-hours a day.
I think the discussion of net neutrality keeps getting confused. Maybe confused on purpose. For what reason I am not sure. It seems to me that making sure that, known, time sensitive traffice *should* get priority. Isn't that what TOS bits are for in the IP stack?
Re: (Score:2)
You're right, the network neutrality discussion is constantly confused. Packets have a QOS field for a reason, because some packets really are more time sensitive than others. Real network neutrality is neutral with respect to the source and destination of the packets, not their application.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I have QoS set up on my home router, and I love it. I do a lot of VoIP calling. When I do P2P, I always try to upload at least three times what I download. It feels like the moral thing to do. All this uploading used to interfere with my VoIP quality until I installed Tomato firmware on my Buffalo router and configured my QoS. Since then, I've been uploading at 80% of my bandwidth cap and VoIP sounds great.
The point is that I upload more since I installed QoS, and it annoys me less. I honestly wouldn't mind
Re: (Score:2)
Except for when I don't use VoIP but half my neighbors do, and I get less connection than my neighbors for the same price just because the company doesn't have the infrastructure to handle what they sold me.
Hasn't this myth been debunked a hundred times before? Namely that a single P2P user uses several magnitudes of bandwidth more than a single VoIP user.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:"time sensitive"? (Score:4, Interesting)
No way in hell should FTP or BitTorrent have the same priority as VoIP.
Yes because you calling your grandmother to chit chat using VoIP is far more important than me sending Magnetic Resonance Imaging files to India via FTP.
That is exactly the kind of argument you will be dragged into the minute you choose one thing over another. You just can't make generalizations over which type of traffic is more "important".
Re:"time sensitive"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes because you calling your grandmother to chit chat using VoIP is far more important than me sending Magnetic Resonance Imaging files to India via FTP.
If you need guaranteed bandwidth, you buy it. We receive hundreds of MRIs per months at work and we don't have a residential DSL. We have an optical fiber link (GigE) with an ultimate "Internet" (for what it's worth in a BGP world) link around 300mbps 95-percentile. Guess what, we get our contracted bandwidth... All the time. It's not exactly cheap though, but then we're not downloading porn torrents...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know about where you live, but in Phoenix they have these sensors above most traffic lights that are sensitive to emergency vehicle lights (or something.) Guess what they do? They change the light to allow emergency traffic through. I guess if you really want to get to your destination unimpeded by other traffic you could build your own road. Or you could just use emergency services in an emergency.
I realize that the internet isn't a society funded project but why is everyone so concerned with "gett
Re: (Score:2)
It's not about "importance", it's about sensitivity to latency. Interactive streams like VOIP require low latency and jitter to be usable. In exchange, they're limited to a very low bandwidth. Bulk transfers, like FTP or BitTorrent, aren't sensitive to a few tens (or hundreds) of milliseconds of jitter here and there; overall bandwidth is far more critical.
All that it means to give VOIP higher priority is that when there are both VOIP and FTP/BitTorrent packets in the transmit queue, the VOIP packets should
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes because you calling your grandmother to chit chat using VoIP is far more important than me sending Magnetic Resonance Imaging files to India via FTP.
Sure is. In fact, you are stating as much by choosing to use residential cable service to do it. If it's that important, pay for a guarantee.
Re: (Score:2)
why not? Somebody FTPing something is just as important to that customer as the VoIP data is the the customer using VoIP.
Re: (Score:2)
No, FTP, BitTorent, P2P, and web pages should have priority over VoIP! VoIP is f**king usless and needs to be killed off!
Um, and why is it useless? Let me guess - because it sucks with latency? :)
First Post! (Score:5, Funny)
Unless they've decide to throttle /. traffic too
The summary sounds fine (Score:3, Insightful)
The same technology may give them the capability to do all sorts of mischief, but I don't see a problem with prioritization based on application. If they prioritize their own VoIP but somehow keep dropping or delaying Vonage packets, that's a problem. That's just an example, of course.
Re:The summary sounds fine (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the problem. As soon as they start "managing congestion" with anything other than the bandwidth they sold us, it becomes an issue. When my Vonage VoIP packets are getting delayed, is it because of Cox or because of greedy bandwidth hogging porn downloaders and music file sharers? I'll wager that Cox says it's not because of them. There is no way to view why or when they "manage congestion" so users will never know, and the product and service sold to them is incapable of being verified as fit for purpose.
Something tells me that this is not right, and should be taken to court. I just can't figure out on my own how to win.
Don't confuse things! (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, the technology could be the same, but let's keep the issues separate. After reading about this stuff for a while now it hit me that there is confusion. I am starting to wonder if the confusion is on purpose.
One issue is over subscription. Unless a company is large enough to have lots and lots of peer connections, your ISP is probably over subscribes their upstream connections. This is fine, because on average traffic goes in bursts. The problem is that everything starts to break down once you have a small pool of people running P2P 24/7. These people are just as greedy as the ISP's they complain about. They want a huge "dedicated" pipe, but have others subsidize it. I have no issue with someone like Cox de-prioritizing their traffic so that the people that just want their Vonage to work don't get squashed out. This is a temporary solution because the ISP will eventually have to up their pipe speed.
The other issue is granting certain companies privileges on a network and penalizing other companies they don't like (e.g. penalize Vonage and prioritize a VoIP partner). This should be illegal. This is a clear case of violation of neutrality. At the same time, the company should be able to directly peer with a company (say a VoIP provider) without violating the law. This may seem unfair, but peering has been a perfectly valid way of reducing traffic on a transit connection.
The last issue is traffic caps. I don't think there should be a law against it as long as the company is upfront about it. Putting caps on traffic allows ISP's to maximize their over subscription and cater to people that want low cost Internet service. We *want* people to afford Internet services. The market chooses. If you are a big user of P2P, then you will have to go with another ISP that does not have caps. You may have to pay more for this privilege... sorry, but that is how things go. The market must have a way to manage scarcity of resources. If you want more of a resource, you will have to pay for it even it if looks the same (e.g. 5mbit from Cox versus 5mbit from FiOS).
Don't confuse QoS with net neutrality. As long as the QoS is applied equally, then it should be perfectly fine.
Re:Don't confuse things! (Score:5, Insightful)
The end game on that is a lose-lose proposition. When dial-up was still popular this over-subscribed broadband plan was workable. The traffic generated by file sharing, email, web browsing etc. could be handled in this manner. The trouble is that ISPs did not update or upgrade the 'tubes' to handle the traffic that they themselves intended on selling to users. All this crap about bundled services (triple-play and Quadruple-play) for the last 5 years is about ISP's selling you streaming content and high-bandwidth content. To claim that they need to 'manage congestion' while trying to sell data content is absolute BS. What they want is carte blanche to tell you what data you are allowed to send and receive. period. no arguing.
We tend to forget that they have this plan to sell you streaming data that has to fit in the same damned pipes as the data you are using now, that they claim are not big enough to handle some file sharing. I call bullshit. The ISPs cannot force the Internet to be how it used to be. Rich Internet content, web 2.0, streaming content... all of this is ruining their original over-subscription network configuration plan. Now, the very same ISPs that are complaining about congestion are fully into planning and implementation of bandwidth intensive services they want to sell you. What they want is for you to only use bandwidth on data services that you have purchased from them. They are double dipping on this, and there is no other way to see it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The end game on that is a lose-lose proposition. When dial-up was still popular this over-subscribed broadband plan was workable.
It still is workable.
The traffic generated by file sharing, email, web browsing etc. could be handled in this manner. The trouble is that ISPs did not update or upgrade the 'tubes' to handle the traffic that they themselves intended on selling to users.
They have, maybe not as big an upgrade as you want, but they have had to compete with other ISP's offering 6Mbit, etc.
All this crap about bundled services (triple-play and Quadruple-play) for the last 5 years is about ISP's selling you streaming content and high-bandwidth content. To claim that they need to 'manage congestion' while trying to sell data content is absolute BS.
No it isn't. An ISP's VoIP and video is most likely going to stay inside their network where they can control the QoS and never touch their transit links where they cannot control the overall QoS. As long as the QoS is applied evenly, no problem. Don't confuse the issue!
P2P can also degrade cable networks where a neighborhood is contending for a small uplink speed.
What they want is carte blanche to tell you what data you are allowed to send and receive. period. no arguing.
Thi
Re:Don't confuse things! (Score:5, Informative)
You keep saying this. Why do you assume that most people even have the option to switch and even switch to an ISP with "bigger transit connections"? I live north of Atlanta, GA and I have two options: Bellsouth DSL and Comcast cable. The highest plan I can get with DSL is 1.5Mbps, Cable 12Mbps. Oh ya, I can also choose to get a phoneline with Bellsouth and pay some third party for DSL over Bellsouth's lines (none of the 3rd parties will do naked/dry DSL). Guess which one I go with.
Not only this, but you somehow expect other companies to decide to lay down some expensive fiber of their own to compete with these ISPs, when the current ISPs had taxpayer money to help them. This is why we, the people, should be able to have a say in this or the invisible hand of the market is gonna bitch slap us all. The ISPs need to upgrade their stuff, with the money that we are all giving them, and stop wasting money on finding out solutions on throttling people. It's possible, other countries have 100Mbps+ connections for their citizens.
Re: (Score:2)
You can get a T1 anywhere. You can have transit on the T1 from anyone you choose. Yes, it's expensive, but you do have that choice.
Keep a look out for 2Base-TL or "metro Ethernet over copper." The footprint is small right now, but it allows for reliable highspeed Internet anywhere DSL is offered. Unlike DSL, it is business class and is unlikely to have filtering or caps.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
When there's no congestion, allow everyone to soak up as much bandwidth as the pipes will allow, then when network load gets near to capacity, give every user a precisely equal share of the available bandwidth. That's only fair.
Allow each customer to set their own preferences about what kind of packets of theirs they'd like to have prioritised. Set sensible defaults for the tech-clueless and we're done.
That way, when bandwidth is plentiful, everyone can have plenty (hopefully finishing off that download
Re: (Score:2)
Either way, the effect is the same. If you make it per user, the only way to make that fair would be for each user's slice of the total bandwidth to be allowed to grow until it hits a point at which that user is using as much bandwidth as all of the other users. If you do that, however, the VoIP user starting a call still steals the exact same amount of bandwidth from each of the BitTorrent users as he/she would if prioritization were protocol-based (unless the VoIP app uses more bandwidth than the averag
Re: (Score:2)
As long as they prioritize World of Warcraft over everything else, I'm happy.
Isn't that your job?
umm.. Not Throttleing (Score:5, Insightful)
Umm.. thats not throttling, it applying QOS (Quality of service) Throttling would slow your traffic all the time, where as this applies prioritization to data that needs it. Packets have a qos field that says the priority they should be given..
Im glad there is a telco that will respect QOS - I've wasted a week with a voip problem, only to learn that the telco was shaping traffic and discarding everything above 3mb without paying attention to QOS Flags.. Allstream charges more for this!
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with QOS flags is that the end-user can set them. There's nothing preventing me from marking every single packet I send as high-priority.
Ideally, if the network is congested than each user should be throttled, but low-priority packets should be throttled first.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
"The problem with QOS flags is that the end-user can set them. There's nothing preventing me from marking every single packet I send as high-priority."
Not a problem at all. Routers generally can be configured to pass Class of Service bits as received or rewrite them appropriately to fit one of the ISP's standard QoS profiles.
Re: (Score:2)
Weapons of mass destruction, anyone? (Score:2)
How is this bad? (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as the P2P apps and file transfers can run at full speed when nothing time sensitive is using the network, this is the RIGHT way to do things.
Re: (Score:2)
As long as the P2P apps and file transfers can run at full speed when nothing time sensitive is using the network, this is the RIGHT way to do things.
But it won't. Look at what's being throttled: decentralized services that are not controlled by a content provider. The point is not Web congestion, data flow, etc. The point is to centralize access to data by disadvantaging decentralized services, so that it's easier to wring more profit from the Internet. This is about nothing more than separating users from their money.
Fine with me * (Score:3, Insightful)
As long as they're using QOS techniques instead of throttling parts of the network that are not under duress, it's fine with me. As long as they're not prioritizing one party's packets over another's of the same protocol (Vonage vs Cox's self-branded VOIP) it's fine with me.
It seems foolish to expect a consumer ISP to provide 100% of the advertised bandwidth 100% of the time. If you need it, there's a certain expectation that you can get a professional line with some established guarantees there. It's widely known that the bandwidth is oversold, and while it's their responsibility to work out some of the congestion, it's not their responsibility to provide bandwidth for 100% of their customers to be uploading at 100% of their available bandwidth.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
As the airline industry is one of the most recognizable services that is also oversold, imagine if the above statement were true. Can you imagine how you would feel if you & your spouse/significant other were in a snowy airport waiting for the flight that was taking you
This has been envisioned for quite a while... (Score:3, Informative)
You're gonna flag me down anyways... (Score:4, Insightful)
NOT ALL TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT IS BAD YOU FUCKTARDS!
Why is it that every form of bandwidth throttling is seen as evil? There are some good, legitimate, reasons for managing traffic flow across a network. While most of the pukes on Slashdot may be hugely inconvenienced by having their latest pirated copy of software X, or DVD rip of 'I love it in the ass' over BitTorrent slowed down, there are people who are trying to use the same pipes for more normal activity. Who cares if it takes an extra five or ten minutes to download that file. I'm much more annoyed when a VoIP call, or streaming video gets choppy.
Whether you mod me -1 Troll or -1 Flamebait or not, you know you agree with me, at least in part.
Re: (Score:2)
Look, I will spend as much as it takes for me to get the broadband I want.
Problem is Cox is the only game in town, and if they start messing with me, I am hosed.
There is no place else to turn, other then move to a new city!
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Try this. Take a LARGE file, and transfer it locally across your LAN. While you're doing that, try your VoIP, WoW, whatever. You may find it's a bit difficult. Throwing a random 'Read more about X so I sound smart, as if I've read about it,' doesn't mean anything. If you look heavily into corporate network infrastructure, I think you'll find a lot more traffic shaping going on that you think.
For the record, it's FLAMEBAIT, not FLAMEBATE. Learn ho
So much... (Score:2)
Cox P2P auto blocking mechanism (Score:3, Interesting)
I tried to submit this here, but it's still pending after a week.
Cox has an auto blocking mechanism for P2P.
http://videotechnology.blogspot.com/2009/01/cox-blocked.html [blogspot.com]
Re: (Score:2)
I have lived in Santa Barbara for the last 6 years and have Cox and my P2P works just fine, I have never had such a problem. Then again, I would never download "Hotel For Dogs".
Re: (Score:2)
I call crap. I have recieved one of those and all that bs about the file calling back and reporting you is total crap. What happened is that persons ip got noticed because they violated the copyrights owners rights. Cox was then issued a DMCA request against that user. Cox was following the law and not doing anything creepy or wrong. That is why your submission will never get posted.
It tells you in the notice why your DNS was rerouted and what you have to do to restore it.
Don't blame Cox for the users actio
Cox is generally "good" (Score:2)
I know it is not popular to post positives about an ISP, but...
As far as ISP's go, I must say that Cox is generally very "good". They don't use PPPOE, they don't redirect DNS, they don't lock the MAC address of your equipment to their modem, they don't require MS-Windows "stuff" to set up your account, they have not dropped/outsourced services like Email, they don't block "non-server" ports, they have not dropped USENET, they don't penalize non-Cox VOIP and such, and they have a very fast and robust setup.
Re: (Score:2)
SpeedBoost (Score:2)
I have Cox in Nebraska, and I have noticed P2P speeds steadily dropping the past few months. Cox does offer and promote their SpeedBoost service, which I have noticed when using direct downloads they give you a priority boost in bandwidth if it is available. I've noticed myself pulling speeds that are actually higher than my limit.
So they may not be throttling everything, merely what they perceive as illegal downloading via P2P traffic. Unfortunately for me, I often download Linux DVDs via P2P.
Doesn't sound like throttling to me (Score:2)
Not to me. What are the options for when a network is full? Randomly drop traffic to get it to fit? That will make anyone with sensitive material grumpy. The other option is to select something to drop based on intelligent factors. Now, if you knew that 10% of your packets had to be dropped, would you prefer that your FTP gets dropped, gets retransmitted, and you get the whole thing, but with a little delay, or would you like your voice call to be uninteliigible? I'd r
QoS? (Score:2)
Granted I did not read the article but from the blurb it sounds more like QoS than true throttling.
Its not completely unreasonable (Score:2, Informative)
Its not throttling. (Score:2)
Sounds more like prioritization to me. This can effect latency and jitter more than effective bandwidth. Of course latency can effect practical bandwidth of shorter TCP segments, and of course in the end, they will drop traffic. But thats not what they are talking about in the de
Less Time Sensitive?!? (Score:2)
Less time-sensitive traffic, such as file uploads
Ummm, when I'm pushing a properties file to production because part of the system is misbehaving, it's a helluva lot more important than stalling the video of Ninja Cat. OK - admittedly - even when I work from home I'm remoted in and pushing that file from the secure network over a leased line - but you get the idea, right?
Re:So.. (Score:5, Insightful)
It shouldn't.
They sold us both a product with a given set of expectations, in this case a reasonable amount of bandwidth. We should both be able to get what we paid for.
Or, put another way, why should my porn download suffer for your Warcrack addiction?
Or, put yet another way, why should either of us give a damn how over sold or under financed Cox is? They should give us both the product they advertised, sold, and (almost) delivered.
Re:So.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, put another way, why should my porn download suffer for your Warcrack addiction?
Because, done correctly, it provides a massive improvement in service for games and voice, with a small reduction in service for downloaders.
As for them overselling, if they had to be totally honest about how much bandwidth is available to each customer, they would have to say 'Total Bandwidth / Number of Customers = Your alotted bandwidth'. It would be next to nothing, and even more meaningless than the ideal maximums that they use for advertising now. That being said, perhaps they should be forced to make that data available to prospective customers, it would certainly influence my choice.
Re:So.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Time Warner has been able to provide me with consistent bandwidth that is not infringed upon by my neighbors downloading large files ( ok, so its usually me downloading large files not infringing on my neighbors bandwidth ).
So if Cox's competition can do it, why can't they?
If Cox cannot deliver what they advertise why can't they be sued for false advertising?
If Cox would just upgrade their infrastructure they wouldn't have this problem, not only that but they would have happier customers and less upset former customers.
So the basic idea of business that Cox seems to be unable to comprehend is that if they invested in their business then they would actually get more customers.
Instead Cox is going the MBA route of if they f*ck the customers then the customers will bend over and take it or leave.
Re:So.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm no more interested in the quality of another customer's service with this product than any other -- when I go out to eat, I'm not going to let them overcook my steak to be sure they get your souffle just right. Why should this be different?
On the overselling, why should they be allowed to be anything less than totally honest? Again, just because its internet doesn't make it special.
As a further point, if you expect them to do it correctly you must have been dealing with some cable company other than mine.
Re:So.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm no more interested in the quality of another customer's service with this product than any other -- when I go out to eat, I'm not going to let them overcook my steak to be sure they get your souffle just right. Why should this be different?
They didn't sell you a steak and me a souffle. They sold us both a buffet. All of the other customers get their food as normal, but I'm a big fat guy. Instead of taking my plate, sitting down, and eating, I stay up at the buffet and eat there without even putting the food on my plate. I'm in the way of others trying to get food and eating most of it myself. Now the management is going to make me get in line to eat rather than stay at the buffet.
If you want your steak, you've got to get a dedicated line.
P.S. Hometown Buffet is gross.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
When the superbowl halftime show starts, there is a visible drain on water resources across the country. Due to these spikes, the water provider simply cannot maintain full water pressure, and overall water pressure suffers. If they were to maintain full pressure, they would need to greatly overbuild the system for normal usage, and everyone's water bills would double or more.
Same thing with the internet. Most people use network resources in random bursts (with certain trend-lines throughout the day). I
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
On the overselling, why should they be allowed to be anything less than totally honest?
I think it's you who's not being totally honest by pretending to be mislead about the overselling, and wishfully pretending your $40/month cable bill entitles you to saturate that connection 24/7.
I've read the Comcast agreement. I've skimmed the Cox agreement. I don't see anywhere where it says you can saturate that connection. I don't even see much advertising that would mislead a less-technical user into thinking that.
Can you cite any actual examples of dishonesty on the part of an ISP?
Re:So.. (Score:4, Insightful)
As for them overselling, if they had to be totally honest about how much bandwidth is available to each customer, they would have to say 'Total Bandwidth / Number of Customers = Your alotted bandwidth'.
Yeah, I think some of the complaints about "overselling bandwidth" can be slightly silly. It's as though people assume that ISPs are going to just drag a cable to your house that connects directly to "the Internet" without going through any switches or routers or anything else that could become a bottleneck at any point.
I do believe that when an ISP advertises a X Mbps connection, you should be able to test your connection to nearby servers and find that you're getting something very close to X Mbps almost all the time. If they say you have "unlimited" usage, then they shouldn't be allowed to turn around and say, "Well, you've gone over your 10 GB cap, so we're cutting you off." Expecting ISPs to guarantee a X Mbps connection to everything all the time as though you had a direct X Mbps connection to whatever server you want to connect to-- it's just not going to happen. That's not how this stuff works.
Choice (Score:5, Funny)
Your market has choice? Because my market has just Cox and AT&T/BellSouth. BellSouth offers underpowered, overpriced DSL service if you sign up for a one-year contract for an overpriced local phone line. As for Cox, this is a conversation I had with their salesperson:
Re: (Score:2)
Some companies / markets give you the choice of a "self install", but I don't know what it involves.
I know that when I switched from TimeWarner to AT&T Uverse, they sent a tech out who spent a few hours doing a lot of switching (moving me from the old network, basically) and they didn't charge for the install. I ended up getting the first two months almost free plus a $100 rebate. I think it depends a lot on the market and the provider. Uverse is new and AT&T is working hard to take away the esta
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah you have to pay for that self install with Cox. I believe that's the 80 bucks the GP was complaining about.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I came in here to make just this point. File sharing is rightly low priority traffic, and if their bandwidth is getting tight during internet rush hour, I'd expect them to prioritize accordingly.
Honestly, would you rather your downloads slowed down fractionally, or your streaming music/video/phone getting unbearably choppy? Extra lag in your online games? Yuck.
Though yea, if they start throttling it all the time and just constantly saying, "Whoa boys that traffic is sure mighty high today HA HA HA," then yea, they need to pay.
(Disclaimer: I have only Cox and AT&T where I live, and I hate both of them for various reasons, but Cox is awesome compared to, for example, Comcast).
Re: (Score:2)
In my experience with consumer grade broadband, it's not a very slight slowdown.
Qwest, which I am currently on, has no such targeted throttling that I can see. However, the peak-hour slowdown is readily apparent. On my "5M/896k" line,I can download around 500kbps for about 2/3 of the day. But during peak hours, it drags way, way down. around 8 PM, things can slow down to around 100kbps - I've seen it go as low as 50 on particularly bad days.
My point here is that "downloads slowed down fractionally" doesn
Re: (Score:2)
Really? 40 GB downstream? That's nothing.
Something we should clarify: "streaming". (Score:2)
As in youtube streaming? Because youtube videos, compared to live TV, are not TRUE streaming. They're downloading + playing.
So this opens the question: What streaming applications are actually downloading (buffering...), and which ones are really time-sensitive streaming?
And doesn't the discrimination algorithm prevent P2P video streaming (not that there's a working algorithm right now, but there COULD be)?
Re: (Score:2)
The "up to" dodge has been used for too long, and people are starting to get pissed off. I know that here in the UK there's some action being taken by the regulatory types to force ISPs to be more up front about what kind of speed you can actually expect to get (given your distance from the exchange, amount of contention etc) rather than just the theoretical maximum they're selling.
To be fair to them, it doesn't make economic or technological sense to give every single customer a dedicated pipe fat enough
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
When Comcast did this, it didn't "slightly inconvenience" P2P, it made it take well over a year to download an Ubuntu image.
Of course, Cox's implementation may vary.
Re: (Score:2)
In this case the ISPs seem to be acting in the best interests of all involved and the only real argument is over semantics. If everybody in a town uses 100% of the electricity that they're capable of using the provider will throttle that as well (ie. you'll get brown-outs.) In this case, the problem is in PR, not technical.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
The converse (especially in light of what others have already said) is also true: why should my file transfers need to suffer because of your gaming or surfing?
First class / second class (Score:2)
As several people have responded to you, we are all paying the same price, we should get the same performance.
But there's a difference: downloading isn't as sensitive to slight irregularities in delay as gaming or VoIP. If the service you want requires more stringent standards, it would be fair that you should pay more to get the same level of service. Or get a lesser quality for the same price.
In a fair system, a price of $X should give you Y bytes/second within a Z latency range, no matter what kind of se
Re: (Score:2)
Explain to me why my surfing should suffer so your game has real time response?
Re: (Score:2)
Explain to me why my gaming or surfing should suffer because you want to download/upload XXX_Donkey_Love.WMV from thepiratebay, again?
Explain to me why my downloads should suffer because of your gaming? Are you more important than me?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No, I think most people on this side of the pond are becoming whiney little kids. As was said above (somewhere), everyone expects blazing speeds, all the time, for almost no money at all. We've all come to expect everything for free (or close to it).
Re: (Score:2)
Well, I believe most residential Portuguese ISPs use some form of throttling, but nothing that really bothers me (and I'm a P2P using networks engineer, so I'm more easily bothered than most people).
Most price plans have (clearly stated) traffic limits too, and the ones who don't are usually subject to an AUP traffic clause, though I've never met anyone who had problems with it - and I've come close to downloading 1TB in a month.
We have 100Mb/s consumer fiber (e.g. one isp charges 65 euro/month for 100Mbps
Re: (Score:2)