I'll be putting a sniffer on the port tonight and start looking for them! If I see them (I don't use P2P apps), they will be hearing from me.
Net neutrality, net neutrality....
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Let me know how that goes.
Let me know how that goes. I'm always looking for more user experiences for these sorts of stories. Thanks :-)
COMCAST
COMCAST's COMCASTIC is nothing more than scum cheating their own customers to make more money. This seems to be very typical of many, if not most, American businesses these days. COMCAST's TV service consists of at least one, perhaps two of their own adds during every commercial break, delayed digital data causing picture breakup and audio losses. Pathetic. This is what happens when you allow agglomeration of companies as the Republican business ethic seems to want to foster. Good luck to future generations, America.
Scum cheating their own customers?
Scum cheating their own customers? My goodness. You'd think there was a law mandating that you sign up for their services and provide no competitive alternatives. This is a free enterprise economy in case you hadn't noticed. You are always free to take your business elsewhere. Also, in case you hadn't noticed, the Democrats have been running Congress for some time. If you want to live in a socialist state where everything is mediocre, please leave America where innovation and profit motive improve our quality of life and standard of living. Your argument is "minimally exceptional." Please see George Carlin for a definition of that euphemism.
I'm neutral regarding the issue of how Comcast manages P2P and other bandwidth hogging traffic on their network, but I believe they have the right to do so. People forget that the "S" in ISP stands for "service." An ISP should be permitted to define their service any way they want to. If you as a customer don't like their service offering, you are free to take your business elsewhere. If enough customers don't like a given "service" model, then competition is sure to spring up and offer an alternative.
You are whining about Comcast's video services when the article is actually about their broadband Internet services. What you fail to realize is that most of the TV signals retransmitted by cable companies are first delivered to the "head end" by satellite. Satellite signals are susceptible to rain fade and that can affect signal quality, just as it can when delivered to individual users such as Dish Networks and DirecTV. You are blaming Comcast for video quality issues that are very likely beyond their control.
Back to the bandwidth management of broadband services... "Net neutrality" requirements are a severe impediment to expanding broadband services to underserved locations. If a service provider is not permitted to manage the traffic on their own network, then a few users or applications can eat up all the bandwidth, making service quality suffer such that there is no valid business model for expansion. People who act as though they have a god-given right to put whatever they want on a broadband service without paying extra when they hog bandwidth forget that this is not an unlimited government-provided service or a public utility. It's free enterprise and the government should stay the heck out of it and let the market decide what's best.
If service providers are permitted to define for themselves what their service offerings will be, and are permitted to limit bandwidth hogging users and applications as they see fit, then the business model to expand services into new areas is enhanced to benefit everyone.
I sell broadband satellite services primarily in the eastern hemisphere where we are not burdened with ridiculous rules requiring that we pass everything customers want to put on our circuits. If customers abuse our service we make them buy more bandwidth or we throttle their access. Otherwise our services would bog down and nobody would want to buy them, meaning that vast areas of the world where there is no broadband would remain that way.
I do believe that ISPs need to do a better job of educating customers with regard to the effects of certain applications on bandwidth. VoIP and webcams are streaming applications that generate a steady flow of traffic, unlike browsing that is intermittent and bursty. P2P applications turn your PC into a server and use it to send files all over the Internet even when you aren't actively using the PC. If you had to pay for what you used, I guarantee you'd be a lot more concerned about P2P applications.
Patrick Gannon
Business Satellite Solutions, LLC
www.bsatellite.com
Not to completely blast your
Not to completely blast your post Patrick as you had some very valid points that were made, but please do consider the fact that in most states (I can only speak for my area of course) we only have one cable provider per a given area. If you wish to utilize internet services, you're pretty much stuck with that one company.
We used to have Insight Broadband where I live and now Comcast has bought them out. I'm too far from the nearest telco service to have DSL service that's even remotely comparable to most ISDN speeds.
Again... I agree with your points about how it's their company and they can run it however they wish, but you can't just use the argument that people should switch if they don't like it. Some of us are forced to pay them each month to keep our little connection to the world wide web.
"Forced"?
CodeZero you aren't "forced" to do anything. You always have broadband satellite as an option. Sure it's more expensive, but it is an alternative. Dial up is also an alternative. Nobody said the alternatives were always better.
The key is to let the market drive expansion. Wireless providers would pop up all over if they could define their service offerings as they see fit. Comcast and other cable companies would expand into more rural areas if the business model reduced the number of homes per mile of cable that they must have in order to cost justify expansion. As long as the government forces them to pass everything customers put on their network they can't justify reducing the number of homes it takes to recoup their investment, and in fact that number is likely to increase as more and more P2P applications change the nature of broadband. Take Vonage for example. Snappy little commercials, but they run a G.711 codec in their service that requires almost 90 Kbps per call. If you run a wireless service that delivers let's say 1024 x 512 Kbps service, it only takes 5 or 6 Vonage calls to kill service for everyone. Even a couple calls seriously degrades browsing. A typical webcam generates 80 to 120 Kbps of steady traffic in both directions. Four webcam sessions and the upload circuit is saturated so browsers can't even send web requests. How does the wireless provider deliver a quality service and get new customers to sign up if 5 Vonage calls or four webcams can kill his service? He must be permitted to block or limit that traffic for the greater good of bringing broadband to underserved markets.
In fact, "broadband" is becoming a misnomer. The whole concept of broadband was based on statistical multiplexing - the idea that every single PC wasn't busy at the exact same time. Browsing is ideal for broadband. When you browse, your PC transmits a short web address in less than a second, then the transmitter is idle. You receive the web page in a few seconds and then the receiver is idle. During all those idle periods, many PCs can share bandwidth for surfing the web.
When you crank up a VoIP call or a webcam or a streaming YouTube or MySpace video, you are turning on a faucet. A steady, continuous stream of data bits are being transmitted and they don't stop till you disconnect. That does away with a lot of the "idle" time. The shared bandwidth concept stops working because there's nothing left to statistically multiplex. When your PC with P2P server software constantly sends out music files all over the world, even when you aren't using it, again you are eating up a limited resource. If you don't let the service provider manage that valuable resource, then their business models for expansion don't work. It's as simple as that.
Now if you want to increase everyone's taxes and nationalize the broadband networks, you can take that proposal to your elected representative. Of course, you'll end up with a mediocre service because the government can't run anything as efficiently as private industry, but given that "broadband" is becoming more and more of a utility here in the USA - maybe this is the next step. I hope not. I think free enterprise will provide the best solutions and services in the long run as long as the government can restrain itself from messing with it; but it's a fact of life that many people are satisfied with mediocrity. (After all, look at our elected representatives!)
When some governmental authority tells me that I have to give my Nigerian Cyber Cafes unrestricted access to send as much spam and 411 scams as they want, then I'll know it's time to get out of this business, and it will be the end of broadband expansion in 3rd world countries.
Patrick Gannon
Business Satellite Solutions, LLC
www.bsatellite.com
Stop using the FCC's definition of "broadband"
Blah, blah, blah...
I see your lips moving but I don't hear anything useful.
You need to stop equating a SHARED 1000x500k connection as anything remotely approaching broadband. That is a minimal connection for a SINGLE user. All of these companies (the ISP's AND the content providers) advertise their service as unlimited entertainment on tap. They have streaming movies (cinemanow, et. al.) youtube, music sales (amazon, itunes), software sales (steam, direct to drive) and many other new services that all use huge bandwidth. And THEN when you use the services they sell you are cut off or throttled? WTF?
All of the services you whined about are part of the new economy. If you don't adapt to serve that then YOUR company will be the one left behind. There are too many companies at the head end with services to sell for all of this to be more than a speed bump in the history of the internet. Either start delivering real broadband or step aside.
This is a real issue because as previous posters have pointed out there may NOT be an alternate ISP for them; and you have shown by your comments that it is better to stay with the cable devils you know than try the satellite devils that will capriciously cut your service without notice.
Against bandwidth Hogs but against Comcast as well
As long as I am using the capacity that I have paid for, comcast or anyone else has not authority to limit my connection. If I try to go over what I have purchased then go ahead. How are the bandwith hogs getting more bandwith then they have paid for. That is the only limit that comcast or any ISP should be able to limit.
You Said It
You're right in principle. However, as reported, Comcast is targeting a specific application with devious methodology, and then lying about doing it until someone forces the knowledge out. If I buy bandwidth, I expect to get what I buy. As long as I am not using more bandwidth than I have purchased, then I am not in violation of my agreement.
While the over-subscription of bandwidth is a valid business practice, it isn't part of my contract. And there is no basis for actively (and secretly) interfering with a specific application in order to reduce traffic. If I appear to be a "hog" (i.e., using all the bandwidth I have purchased all the time), then my traffic can be shaped during peak hours to reduce the load. Arbitrarily refusing to carry my type of traffic is definitely against the spirit of neutrality, if not the law itself.
Consumers do have rights in the U.S., where they might not elsewhere.
Truth in advertising
With DSL service, your packets are transmitted on a dedicated connection to the DSLAM. The link from DSLAM to ISP is SONET and not typically a bottleneck. DSL offerings, where available, are comptetitive in pricing with cable internet. Other cable companies are doing just fine without tampering with traffic. Comcast has made the choice to advertise one thing and sell another.
Comcast should be barred from forcing a contract upon a customer in any market where they tamper with traffic, and barred from tampering with traffic to customers who cannot obtain DSL, FiOS or terrestrial wireless(WiMAX, 802.11,etc) at their specific location within 30 days. They should also be required to offer the same equipment subsidies to a non-contract customer as one who agrees to sign a contract. The market, where a choice is available, will decide whether to punish them if they can't make people stay or force them to with equipment costs. They should not be allowed to consider satellite based wireless or dialup "competition". Because of the latencies involved, neither are direct competition.
These specific suggestions, taken as a group, force an open market. The proposed no-contract rule should be applied to all access media in general. Investors could punish poor ethics with refusal to supply capital to build in a market where there is no guarantee of customer retention other than reputation.
Free Market
What does Comcast advertise?
Is there any type of disclaimer that addresses this issue; either in their advertising, or when you "sign up"?
If so, then no one has a reason to complain when they enforce those provisions, tho doing it thru spoofed TCP RST packets and lying about it is (insert bad word here)
If not, then it's not a legitimate "Service" that they're performing for their customers, but a deliberate refusal to deliver service as promised or as reasonably expected.
The free market is really only free if all involved "Do what they say" or are held accountable when they do not.