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Yay, Comcast back new throttling scheme

What the hell is the point of 2MB if I can't download for more than 15 minutes at a time?
 
So are they going to bill you at a rate of 70% of normal price ?
On a 10MB connection that means you can download a whopping 900MB before they cut your speed. Thank God I got DSL.
 
Modelworks said:
So are they going to bill you at a rate of 70% of normal price ?
Click to expand...

BA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHHAAAA!

Fucking hilarious man!

No, the way their math works, they'll bill you 110% if you ever actually use your ISP, and 150% if you use it more than an hour a day.
Check the agreement carefully, its in there, I promise.
 
That's how most burstable services work and are billed and your home broadband is a burstable service, you don't get to use the whole pipe all the time.

Also OP left this out, probably on purpose - "If there is no congestion, however, you shouldn't notice any difference whatsoever "

It's nothing more than reasonable network management to ensure good service for all.
 
It doesn't say how much they'll slow you down. Throttling heavy users is not entirely unreasonable; residential Internet packages are sold at a price that is based on the assumption that you won't use 100% of the available bandwidth 100% of the time. Throttling you down to 50% wouldn't be so bad; throttling you down to 10% would suck.
 
spidey07 said:
"If there is no congestion, however, you shouldn't notice any difference whatsoever "
Click to expand...

I was going to say this too. So basically, you can do whatever you want till you start messing with other people's service. That's about the most legitimate scheme anyone has come up with.
 
Good thing I pay for Comcast's 22/5 ultra tier; now I can't even fully utilize it. I was fine with the whole 250GB Cap thing, but this is just ridiculous.
 
drinkmorejava said:
I was going to say this too. So basically, you can do whatever you want till you start messing with other people's service. That's about the most legitimate scheme anyone has come up with.
Click to expand...

In before "Comcast purposely chooses not to upgrade their network so it is always congested!!!!"

Personally, I've never had a problem maxing out my cable modem in two different towns with Comcast Internet (I hate it and them for other reasons).
 
drinkmorejava said:
I was going to say this too. So basically, you can do whatever you want till you start messing with other people's service. That's about the most legitimate scheme anyone has come up with.
Click to expand...

Yea, but it's my service too and I pay a lot for it. I already abide with the cap limits and now they're just adding more restrictions. If they're going to downgrade the service they provide, then also downgrade their prices.
 
Look, if congestion = 80% of the day then I'd be pissed. If it means that you can't torrent for like 2 hours a day, then that's fine. They better make sure they define congestion well so it's not just a "we are restricting you just because we can" deal.
 
spidey07 said:
That's how most burstable services work and are billed and your home broadband is a burstable service, you don't get to use the whole pipe all the time.

Also OP left this out, probably on purpose - "If there is no congestion, however, you shouldn't notice any difference whatsoever "

It's nothing more than reasonable network management to ensure good service for all.
Click to expand...

Spidey is pretty much dead on when he comes into these threads as they pop up. I'm a power user, and yeah, I love using up a huge pipe and DLing all day long.. but I UNDERSTAND why ISPs are instituting such policies. A double edged sword exists .. broadband is becoming more and more ubiquitous and so is digital (online) distribution of media (games/movies/music via the net) but because of this congestion is growing exponentially.

The problem is, consumers (power users like us) are used to how things HAVE been for years now - get a solid pipe for 50-60/mo (I pay 50/mo for 2mbytes down) and DL all you want. That was viable when the percentage of heavy users was still very low. Now that percentage has risen significantly and as such the Internet bill is going to start looking more and more like a normal utility bill.

If you turned all the facets in your house on full blast and let them run for a few days, would you not expect your water bill to increase?

If you turned every light in your house on, and then left them on for a week, would you not expect an increase in your electric bill?

The bottom line is that as more people sign onto broadband the more demand is being put on networks.. Throttling/caps was an inevitability.
 
TheVrolok said:
Spidey is pretty much dead on when he comes into these threads as they pop up. I'm a power user, and yeah, I love using up a huge pipe and DLing all day long.. but I UNDERSTAND why ISPs are instituting such policies. A double edged sword exists .. broadband is becoming more and more ubiquitous and so is digital (online) distribution of media (games/movies/music via the net) but because of this congestion is growing exponentially.

The problem is, consumers (power users like us) are used to how things HAVE been for years now - get a solid pipe for 50-60/mo (I pay 50/mo for 2mbytes down) and DL all you want. That was viable when the percentage of heavy users was still very low. Now that percentage has risen significantly and as such the Internet bill is going to start looking more and more like a normal utility bill.

If you turned all the facets in your house on full blast and let them run for a few days, would you not expect your water bill to increase?

If you turned every light in your house on, and then left them on for a week, would you not expect an increase in your electric bill?

The bottom line is that as more people sign onto broadband the more demand is being put on networks.. Throttling/caps was an inevitability.
Click to expand...

Necessity vs luxury, not a great comparison.
 
spidey07 said:
That's how most burstable services work and are billed and your home broadband is a burstable service, you don't get to use the whole pipe all the time.

Also OP left this out, probably on purpose - "If there is no congestion, however, you shouldn't notice any difference whatsoever "

It's nothing more than reasonable network management to ensure good service for all.
Click to expand...


Yup, it allows them to oversell the bandwidth, and evenly distribute it.
 
TheVrolok said:
Now that percentage has risen significantly and as such the Internet bill is going to start looking more and more like a normal utility bill.

If you turned all the facets in your house on full blast and let them run for a few days, would you not expect your water bill to increase?

If you turned every light in your house on, and then left them on for a week, would you not expect an increase in your electric bill?
Click to expand...

not if my water or power is sold to me as unlimited use up to 250gb cap. and this would be more akin to leaving a faucet on to fill a pool and after a time period the pressure/ volume available is cut in half, causing twice the time spent on the task.
 
joesmoke said:
i fucking hate comcast
Click to expand...

you know, i started liking them. in my previous house, comcast service was crap (as usual) and they used to throttle the hell out of my bittorrent. I, like many others, hated comcast.

Then, back in Nov 2008, I moved to my new house, which is in an area that used to be serviced by Patriot Media. But comcast recently took them over. Since they were still in the transitional period, I was getting 15-18 Mbps from Comcast. And on top of that, I didnt notice my web slow down to a crawl every time I decided to torrent something. Life (and comcast) was good...for a while. I even started liking them.

But I guess they have finally completed the transition fully to Comcast now, since I hardly get 5 Mbps and every time I turn on utorrent, it takes me literally 20 seconds to load cnn. Many times, ffx cant even resolve domain names on the first try. But miraculously, everything works just fine the moment I close utorrent.

Just utter complete crap. I fucking hate comcrap. I see verizon laying fiber cables about a mile away from me. I welcome the day i can bid comcast adieu.

edit: and no, Im not a power user. I dont download tons of stuff. Just a tv show here and there that I might have missed. And now my bittorrent (along with my internet) is throttled 24/7
 
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hanoverphist said:
not if my water or power is sold to me as unlimited use up to 250gb cap. and this would be more akin to leaving a faucet on to fill a pool and after a time period the pressure/ volume available is cut in half, causing twice the time spent on the task.
Click to expand...

If you read the fine print you will discover that you are paying for a burst service, not sustained max downstream up to the 250 cap. BURST, not sustained pipe which is why they always advertise it as "speeds UP to XXX." Sure, the analogy clearly isn't 1:1, but it gives you the premise; Internet has NOT been billed by usage in the past and now that it's starting to be, people are becoming upset.
 
hanoverphist said:
not if my water or power is sold to me as unlimited use up to 250gb cap. and this would be more akin to leaving a faucet on to fill a pool and after a time period the pressure/ volume available is cut in half, causing twice the time spent on the task.
Click to expand...

As far as I can tell Comcast hasn't advertised their Internet as "unlimited" for a while now... probably a couple of years.

When they're at 100% capacity someone's service is going to be degraded. It could be everyone, it could be just one guy. All they're doing is targeting the guy who is using the most to have his service degraded. If you were managing a LAN you'd probably do something similar.
 
All you people who have a problem with Comcast "managing" their network are going to look really bad when Comcast lowers prices because their new throttling scheme lowers their costs.









Wow. Where does that fit on a scale of 1 to metaphysical absurdity?
 
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