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The Internet Network

Cox Slows Internet Speeds In Entire Neighborhoods To Punish Any Heavy Users (arstechnica.com) 252

Posted by BeauHD from the everyone's-punished dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Cox Communications is lowering Internet upload speeds in entire neighborhoods to stop what it considers "excessive usage," in a decision that punishes both heavy Internet users and their neighbors. Cox, a cable company with about 5.2 million broadband customers in the United States, has been sending notices to some heavy Internet users warning them to use less data and notifying them of neighborhood-wide speed decreases. In the case we will describe in this article, a gigabit customer who was paying $50 extra per month for unlimited data was flagged by Cox because he was using 8TB to 12TB a month. Cox responded by lowering the upload speeds on the gigabit-download plan from 35Mbps to 10Mbps for the customer's whole neighborhood. Cox confirmed to Ars that it has imposed neighborhood-wide slowdowns in multiple neighborhoods in cases like this one but didn't say how many excessive users are enough to trigger a speed decrease.
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Cox Slows Internet Speeds In Entire Neighborhoods To Punish Any Heavy Users More

Cox Slows Internet Speeds In Entire Neighborhoods To Punish Any Heavy Users

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  • Unlimited == ? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cmcqueen1975 ( 1224394 ) on Monday June 08, 2020 @05:07PM (#60161360) Homepage
    Is it legal in USA to advertise something as "unlimited" and then try to limit its usage?
    • Apparently, for ISPs. It's like the store that's open 24 hours, but not in a row.

      • That's not entirely fair. Many 24 hr establishments have reduced their hours to sanitize and hopefully reduce the transmission of COVID-19. Cox has no such figleaf.

      • More specifically, Cox is complaining that he's pegging the connection ALL THE TIME. So kinda like IHOP is ooen 24/7, then after you've been there for 20 hours nursing a cup of coffee they tell you that you need to either leave or buy something else.

        • It's nothing like that. "Open 24 hours" pertains to what time of day they will serve you, not the length of time you can sit. Burger stands with no dining area, no one sitting - ever - they still display a 24-hour sign, if they will serve you at any hour.

          Phone companies, on the other hand, sell "Limited, and we don't tell you the limit" as "Unlimited."

        • A better analogy would be if someone went to a 'all you can eat buffet' and was somehow physically able to actually eat 2 plates of food an hours for 24 hours a day for a week without leaving. The difference is that the physical limits of a human being prevent that kind of activity so the restaurant has some bounding guarantees.

          The problem is that COX KNOWS there are people who CAN and STILL sells them 'all you can eat' THEN punishes them for using what they were sold.
          Why , because 'All you can eat' is good

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by jonsmirl ( 114798 )

      If you do the math, this guy pegged 35Mb/s upstream 24/7 for months at a time. So what kind of home application generates a permanent upstream load of 35Mb/s? This is not intermittent use, he has 35Mb/s upload pegged 24/7 for the entire month. It is probably reasonable to classify this guy as a business user and push him into a business tier offering.

      • Re:Unlimited == ? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Monday June 08, 2020 @05:26PM (#60161430)
        So he's not entitled to the services he purchased?

        If they don't want to offer the ability for him to use what's he contractually owed then they should stop advertising it at those rates or put a cap in place and stop claiming to offer unlimited data.

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by jonsmirl ( 114798 )

          Home users typically sleep and do other things. Business users run 24/7. His profile fits business use, not home use. His TOS excludes running a business on the home plan.

          • Comment removed based on user account deletion

            • COVID-19 stay at home order should supersede the TOS, temporarily or even permanently.

              It has. I'm on Cox on a plan capped at 1 TB/mo. They removed the monthly cap from Mar-May. Later they extended that through June (and who knows, they might extend it through July).

          • Re:Unlimited == ? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Monday June 08, 2020 @05:56PM (#60161548)

            You say only business users actually need unlimited data, and anyone using data without limits must be a business, disqualifying them as a residential user.

            That would mean that using the term "unlimited" in marketing materials for home users is fraudulent.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by sjames ( 1099 )

            Unless the TOS requiters (and defines) 'typical', he is still just using what he was offered and paid for.

            And, if course, penalizing his NEIGHBORS is really out there.

            • Re:Unlimited == ? (Score:4, Insightful)

              by Randj Herdle ( 6067832 ) on Monday June 08, 2020 @08:24PM (#60162008)
              It sounds like Cox subscribers have signed away their right to launch a class action suit as part of the EULA. It's a corrupt legal system that allows ANYONE to sign away rights.

              • Re: (Score:3)

                by sjames ( 1099 )

                Fully agreed. In particular, the right to take legal disputes to a public court of law.

                Even moreso given the far too common situation where broadband providers have a monopoly in a given area.

                A big reason civil courts exist is to avoid having people settle disputes with violence. Arguably by blocking that, Cox should lose any protection from people solving disputes with violence that it may currently enjoy.

          • So what if someone is sleeping. The service isn't for just the 16 hours a day that they're awake. I set applications like Steam to put off updates for times when I'm not using my computer or internet connection for something else.

            If he's running a business then he's in violation of. his contract and would need to change. However, just because someone uses a lot of bandwidth doesn't mean that they're running a business. For all you know he could just be seeding a large number of torrents for open source s
          • Business users don't sleep? Home users have to turn off their machines when they go to bed? "Profiles" now identify whether you're a home user or not?

          • How can you be so off base with such a low-ish ID ? It is often used as a point of bragging, but this sort of thing should be a point of complete shame.

              There's at least one very obvious use case, which while can often be dubiously legal, is nonetheless very much "home" use.

            Now, with my ID, btw, I can say whatever.

      • Or just make his/her shit so unreliable that people leeching the data yell at him/her. Its most likely a pornhub cam and they were working for Tokens. Probably swapping out the /quote Talent /unquote.

        People working from home have a reasonable need to use zoom/skype.

      • That's absurd. I have a 100 MB/s upstream. Is Cox admitting that its upstream bandwidth is so strained that it can't handle a measly 35 Mb/s? What if a Cox user decides they want to create 4k streams? Are they out of luck?

      • Re:Unlimited == ? (Score:5, Informative)

        by caseih ( 160668 ) on Monday June 08, 2020 @07:35PM (#60161896)

        No where in the article does it say he saturates his 35 Mb/s uplink 24/7 for an entire month. Where are you reading that? In fact it specifically said he only utilizes the full bandwidth at night when his home serves back up to remote locations, and do other batch data transfers that he has set up. Nowhere is torrenting said or implied. No where does it say there's anything even remotely questionable in these uploads. Furthermore, during that time most people are asleep, including him. I daresay none of this neighbors even use any of the total bandwidth at that time. This is, in my opinion, completely justified and legitimate, and certainly is of no negative consequence to the rest of his neighbors who are sharing this apparently congested Cox network.

        As for the tier, he already pays to be in the highest tier. His monthly bill is $150 a month, both to pay for the bandwidth and the speed. That's pretty much business tier. If Cox cannot deliver this, then they need to refund him.

      • He pays an extra $50/month for "unlimited" data, which is absurdly high, but they specifically advertise it as you being able to use all of the data you want. Without that option, they charge you $10 per 50 gigs over 1TB. Cox doesn't have a leg to stand on here, and besides, even if he was a business customer they actually don't have the capacity to provide that service to him anyways, mainly because they've been relying on data caps as a means of forcing customers to limit their usage so that they can avoi

    • Re: Unlimited == ? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Ken_g6 ( 775014 )

      I think, technically, "unlimited" is measured in terms of connectivity time, not data. It's a holdover from the days of dialup.

    • Is it legal in USA to advertise something as "unlimited" and then try to limit its usage?

      I don't know, but this [youtube.com] is relevant.

    • Is it legal in USA to advertise something as "unlimited" and then try to limit its usage?

      Yes. For example I can rent a car with unlimited miles for a week, but they can still put a limiter on the engine to prevent me from driving faster than 85 miles per hour.

    • Re:Unlimited == ? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Hognoxious ( 631665 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @07:38AM (#60163120) Homepage Journal

      Of course. Any interference that prevents businesses doing whatever the fuck they want is nanny-state communism and will turn us into Venezuela.

  • what about rebuilding the node for better upload? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Monday June 08, 2020 @05:08PM (#60161366)

    what about rebuilding the node for better upload?

  • This is not surprising (Score:5, Informative)

    by arctother ( 2983491 ) on Monday June 08, 2020 @05:13PM (#60161390)
    We have Cox and it is ridiculously bad. But there is no competition here, so they get away with it.

    • We have Cox and it is ridiculously bad. But there is no competition here, so they get away with it.

      I've had Cox here in Virginia Beach since 1985 for TV, later adding Internet and then adding phone service a few years ago, when Verizon stopped maintenance on its POTS lines and switching to FiOS would have been a hassle wiring-wise, and haven't had any problems other than the occasional, usually short-lived, outage during a sever storm. Then again, there's competition in my area from, at least, Verizon/FiOS. Unfortunately, I'm not a big Verizon fan. I did, however, actually like having my POTS line as (

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by fred911 ( 83970 )

        ''if I still had my MythTV system. ''

        GB Fios service is symmetrical. With my FIOS I normally have a faster upstream than downstream. But, I've never had a problem except for the one time I was assigned an IP that Cloudflare flagged. I called the tech and he acted like I was speaking greek, and asked ''tell me how to fix this''. 2 minutes later with a fresh IP, I was back in proper service. The call to 5 minutes, no jumping through hoops [have you rebooted your router/have you rebooted your computer], just q

  • So they punsh entire (Score:4, Insightful)

    by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Monday June 08, 2020 @05:14PM (#60161394)
    neighborhoods by denying them what they purchased because individual users are using what they bought!

    Wow, Cox is run by real Dicks!
    Seems like no one is getting what they bought! Might be bad for Cox being the only one in the wrong.
    Interesting a real class action, where are the trial lawyers when you need one!

    Just my 2 cents ;)

    • Interesting a real class action...

      It's shame that's the only tool available to stop companies like Cox, because it is not a very good tool.

      Cox will drag the process out for years while they continue to behave in this fashion, then if it looks like things might not go their way they will settle, and the lawyers will get paid, but no-one else will and they will continue as before.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by taustin ( 171655 )

      Seems like no one is getting what they bought! Might be bad for Cox being the only one in the wrong.

      That's who cable internet works. The bandwidth they advertise is shared by the entire neighborhood, and any restrictions they put in place apply to the entire circuit. It doesn't, technically speaking, have to be that way, but that's how pretty much all cable companies have set things up.

      Interesting a real class action, where are the trial lawyers when you need one!

      Waiting for that big, fat retainer to get things started.

      • With the usual DOCSIS modems, they can easily limit individual customers. If they are unable to do that, it suggests they are using ridiculously outdated modems or management software, or perhaps some weird proprietary modem technology.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kjella ( 173770 )

        That's who cable internet works. The bandwidth they advertise is shared by the entire neighborhood, and any restrictions they put in place apply to the entire circuit. It doesn't, technically speaking, have to be that way, but that's how pretty much all cable companies have set things up.

        Sounds like a crappy excuse to me, don't the US have speed tiers on cable? They could just give this guy a new, slower tier but is instead trying to create a neighborhood mob to find the guilty one.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by taustin ( 171655 )

          Never attribute to malice what can easily be explained by incompetence. And few people in the world of internet access are more incompetent than Cox (though one company whose name start with an "F" and ends when an "r", and what's in between isn't "ucke" but should be, does come to mind).

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday June 08, 2020 @05:29PM (#60161444)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Holi ( 250190 )
        " if my circuit is 400/20 unlimited, i should be able to consume that, right? "
        No, the difference between the dedicated circuit a researcher probably has and your cable modem is this, A dedicated circuit is exactly what it sounds like, a dedicated direct line to outside their network. With your cable modem, you have purchased access to their network which you share with all their other customers. Their requirement is to make sure it can handle the greatest number of users at lowest cost while keeping fro

    • Re:So they punsh entire (Score:5, Insightful)

      by StormReaver ( 59959 ) on Monday June 08, 2020 @05:47PM (#60161516)

      Wow, Cox is run by real Dicks!

      So close...

      Interesting a real class action, where are the trial lawyers when you need one!

      By far the better punishment is for the city to build its own network, then let anyone who can run an ISP off of that network to do so, then fine Cox for anti-competitive behavior. If they don't pay, kick them out of the city.

    • The user agreement with Cox almost definitely includes a clause where you waive your right to join any class action case against the company. Such contracts have become very common in tech, and I know other ISPs that have them. It would not surprise me if Cox has such protections.

  • Rogers, Canada (Score:3)

    by SirDrinksAlot ( 226001 ) on Monday June 08, 2020 @05:22PM (#60161410) Journal
    Could be worse, they could be Rogers. Rogers used to base their "Unlimited" plan on a neighborhood average and would kick you off if you used "Significantly more" than the average and they wouldn't tell you what that was. I'm assuming it was based on a percentage disregarding any logic at all. I lived in an area that was largely a geriatric demographic... One month about half way through I apparently "abused" the network after 20GB of usage (total up to that point) and got kicked off.

    • Could be worse, they could be Rogers. Rogers used to base their "Unlimited" plan on a neighborhood average and would kick you off if you used "Significantly more" than the average and they wouldn't tell you what that was.

      I imagine talking with *all* your neighbors about bumping their internet porn usage would have been awkward. :-)

      • I hadn't thought of that. I'm sure if I told them porn was on the internet the old people would learn to use it fast.

  • This simply can't be legal (Score:3, Insightful)

    by thegriebels ( 6462708 ) on Monday June 08, 2020 @05:22PM (#60161412)
    They may put in vague terms about fair-use into a contract, and they might even be legal, but if I get a service from them and I'm getting punished because my neighbor tripped their counters of for they're calling fair-use, why should I be a victim of this too? Is it because they're too incompetent to throttle individual subscribers? Bad for them, but then either improve your infrastructure so this fair-use thing isn't necessary anymore or at least make sure you can punish only those who actually hit your imaginary limits.

  • Consider community broadband as an altnerative (Score:5, Informative)

    by Lorien_the_first_one ( 1178397 ) on Monday June 08, 2020 @05:23PM (#60161414)

    Sure, community broadband requires political will, but once its done, those customers never go back.

    I have Utopia here in Utah and it's kind of an internet heaven.

    https://www.muninetworks.org/ [muninetworks.org]

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Internet access in the US is shit (Score:3)

    by Doub ( 784854 ) on Monday June 08, 2020 @05:38PM (#60161482)
    In other news, water is wet and fire is hot.
    • Speak for yourself, never had a problem in FIOS country. Plus it is symmetrical now, those asymmetrical numbers look worse than old DSL ratios, which was painful.

  • Sounds like Cox knows customers have no choice, so they are not pitting one customer against the other, trying to use peer pressure to get customers to use less data. Maybe they'll start including in their invoices which customer is responsible for everyone's slowdown?

    If customers had a choice, lowering the speeds like this would be a great reason to end the contract without any penalties - Cox effectively released their customers from their term commitments by changing the terms of the contract. Unfortunat

  • I simply do not believe that Cox has no control over individuals' upload speeds and has to resort to entire node throttling. They ABSOLUTELY have control over individuals' download speeds, they sell different plans and enforce those limits. I was hoping someone knowledgeable about this stuff could post if there really is a technological limitations that prevents Cox from taking action to control upload speeds ONLY against those who are "abusing" uploading.

    Even if they had no technological control over upl

    • Re:Hard to believe (Score:4, Insightful)

      by The New Guy 2.0 ( 3497907 ) on Monday June 08, 2020 @07:06PM (#60161806)

      Mike says his bandwdith is being used by "peer-to-peer", TOS 8c(x) says prohibited uses include "using automated connections that allow web broadcasts, automatic data feeds, automated machine-to-machine connections or peer-to-peer file sharing; "

      Sorry, Mike, no leg to stand on.

      • Those terms are insane. In a just world, they should be liable for falsely implying fitness for purpose of a home internet connection.

      • Re:Hard to believe (Score:4)

        by The MAZZTer ( 911996 ) <megazzt@nospAm.gmail.com> on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @09:05AM (#60163414) Homepage
        That clause could cover a lot of common internet usage. Web Broadcasts: Using Steam Remote Play? Whoops you're in violation. Using Chrome Remote Desktop/VNC/Windows Remote Desktop? Violation. "Data feeds" could mean most any type of upload. Machine-to-machine connection is literally the entire internet. And as for "automatic", either you could say anything a computer does over the internet is automatic to some degree since the low-level details have been abstracted away so much from the end user, or everything the computer does is not automatic since it's ultimately done at the direction of the user. That just feels like a garbage clause to me.

    • >"3) Severely throttle the UPLOAD speed of the offender in the hopes it will get their attention"

      That was a typo, I meant "DOWNLOAD"

  • For those who didn't RTFM:

    "Update: Cox provided a little more detail after this story published, saying that the neighborhood-wide slowdowns and disconnection threats sent to individual customers "are two separate initiatives that could cross over in some cases," and that "We will continue to work with anyone who is violating our Acceptable Use Policy with excessive use to help ensure everyone can have a positive Internet experience." "

    Thus, the headline "Cox Slows Internet Speeds In Entire Neighborhoods To

  • Yawn (Score:2, Informative)

    by viperidaenz ( 2515578 )

    Everyone is going on about not getting what this guy paid for.

    Read https://www.cox.com/aboutus/po... [cox.com] and you'll find he's getting exactly what he agreed to.

    The ones not getting what they paid for are the other customers in his neighbourhood. I assume this is a limitation of their systems

  • So let me see if I understand this correctly. The customer purchased what he was told was "unlimited" internet usage. And he coughed up an extra $50 per month on top of what he was already paying them, with mistaken belief that unlimited meant that he could use as much data as he wanted. But once he exceeded unlimited (just ponder that for a moment) Cox not only throttled his speed but the speed of every customer in his neighborhood.

    I don't even know where to begin on this one. How do these companies get aw

    • They're not utilities (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Monday June 08, 2020 @09:32PM (#60162184)
      They can get away with it because they're NOT utilities. They're private, for-profit companies that have a monopoly on service. If they were utilities, we'd all have much better service. Most people don't have big problems with electrical or water or sewer utilities. They largely work well, and are priced appropriately. But, the Republican controlled federal government worships at the Altar of Capitalism, so instead of having Internet service as a real utility, it's a a for-profit fuckfest that shovels money at the Congresscritters.

  • Didn't spend enough on the network (Score:3)

    by NuttyBee ( 90438 ) on Monday June 08, 2020 @10:36PM (#60162336)

    Cox's bigger problem is that their service groups are too large to support sub split upstream that they advertise. You can get away with selling 100 Mbps up, if your service group is 8 homes. Cox is slowly moving to mid-split 5-85 MHz and that will buy them a good 300 Mbps more on the upstream. However, they've moved far too slowly. They needed to convert over to mid-split years ago. They've known about capacity problems for a long time. At this point, 5-204 Mhz high split is looking smart to me. Anything on their network that can't deal with it should be scrapped anyway.

    DOCSIS is a double edged sword, it delivers Internet cheaply using existing infrastructure. The problem is that everything is an upgrade to the plant, taps, or CPE. The only real solution is fiber. Staying on the DOCSIS train only ensures that equipment vendors will have a lot of upgrades to sell.

    I'm a big believer in NG-PON2 and operators that bite the bullet and trench the fiber will be rewarded by not have to rebuild for a capacity upgrade - ever. They will also be rewarded by decreased maintenance costs, labor costs, and improved system reliability. But, when you're primary focus is making billions of dollars a year, it's hard to find money for DOCSIS upgrades.

    Stop laughing.

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