Yay, Comcast back new throttling scheme

[xanis]

Luckily im in the burbs of philly and i got FIOS. It has it's pro's and cons though.

for one, customer service is actually worse than comcrap. FIOS only open 9-5 while comcast is 24/7

fios is fracking expensive, but alot more stable than cable internet.
i think the TV part though is the most expensive part of my package.

My parents live in the burbs and they've got the FiOS triple-package (phone/TV/internet). My dad admits that it's pricey, but he strongly feels that he's getting a lot more bang for the buck. Compared to Comcrap and the DirecTV/Verizon DSL services he's had in the past, I believe him. Oh, and the internet is BLAZING fast.

 

[spidey07]

Why do the Comcast apologists never respond to #2?

It's an accounting thing. It takes capital to get the gear That is cheaper to provide the same link speeds. Many times gear isn't fully depreciated so on your books you'd be paying still on equipment you've replaced

every ISP relies on a careful analysis of capital expenitures an operational expense. The model is industry wide

 

[NFS4]

Engadget effed up

http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/05/comcast-announces-new-bandwidth-throttling-scheme-update-old-n/

 

[FelixDeCat]

It doesn't lower their cost in anyway shape or form. Network traffic always increases and it's increasing at a rate of about 75% a year. Total traffic more than doubles in 18 months. You try dealing with that kind of growth.

*cough*bullshit

 

[spidey07]

Engadget effed up

http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/05/comcast-announces-new-bandwidth-throttling-scheme-update-old-n/

So no more rabble rabble then. This their protocol agnostic reasonable network management

 

[spidey07]

*cough*bullshit

Then explain how it is bullshit.

 

[Double Trouble]

what are you talking about. There are many upgrades being done with docsis 3.0 it's massive the amount of capital being spent is insane.

Hmmmm... funny, a quick look at their financial statements to the street seem to indicate otherwise. Their bandwidth costs have actually been decreasing in both absolute terms and as a percentage of income, and their amortization of capital assets has been dropping, I see no signs of any massive infrastucture expenditures on docsis 3.0 or anything else for that matter. They are just sitting back and figuring out how to get more money from their customers without providing any better product.

And that is exactly what providers are doing but every network experiences congestion that needs to be managed properly and that's all comcast is doing

Sorry, but that's plain bullshit. Comcast is simply trying to figure out how to get the internet genie back in the bottle because it threatens their very existence. They know that if they allow customers to use the internet any way they want, they won't be able to sell TV, Voip and other such services where their revenue really comes from. This is all part of their strategy to prevent users from using the 'net the way they want.

This guy hit's the nail on the head: http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=397

 

[xanis]

This guy hit's the nail on the head: http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=397

That was actually a pretty good article. While the things that Comcast are doing makes me pretty damn angry, I can't hold it against them. They're a company, and their business is to make money.

 

[thomsbrain]

Did ANYONE actually READ the posted information?

They put this in place over a YEAR ago. So you've already been experiencing it for a long time. I'd consider our household to be "heavy users" but we have yet to run into anything that appeared to be throttled speed, with the exception of the regular caps and temporary power-burst caps.

 

[TridenT]

Did ANYONE actually READ the posted information?

They put this in place over a YEAR ago. So you've already been experiencing it for a long time. I'd consider our household to be "heavy users" but we have yet to run into anything that appeared to be throttled speed, with the exception of the regular caps and temporary power-burst caps.

I can't tell if there are caps or not. I don't usually download 1GB+ files and if I do I just assume the other end is lacking when it starts to crap out.

 

[spidey07]

Meh. Me and others like me control your tubes. Get Over it

 

[Parasitic]

Maybe it's time we have a state-run solution.

 

[SunnyD]

Hey, as long as they're providing 100Mbps bi-directional... I'm good with this policy.

 

[Gunslinger08]

Doesn't really affect me. The most data I send/receive in a day is probably when I play TF2 or work from home on a few remote desktop connections for 8-10 hours. I don't foresee most people having legitimate reasons for constantly hogging all of the intertubes.

 

[thegimp03]

Hmm, they said at the bottom that this policy has been in effect for more than a year, even though I've downloaded stuff without issue for more than 15 minutes on various occasions.

 

[zanejohnson]

i love my cable company... small town provider, not a big corp.. i pay 90 a month for basic cable which is like 80 channels so it's not bad, and 10/10 cable internet.. it's a business internet plan, but i've been with them since they first rolled out cable internet, i was actually a beta tester..so i get a bit of a discount on the internet part of the bill..

 

[theevilsharpie]

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

Don't you mean good service for all, except the people actually using the service? BTW, when there's traffic congestion, all of the traffic flowing over the cable is contributing to the congestion. Who gets to decide whose traffic is valid and whose isn't?

Sorry, this isn't reasonable network management. Gotchas like this throttling scheme and gimmicks like PowerBoost are Comcast's way selling high-speed broadband without actually having the infrastructure to provide the service.

"Reasonable" network management would be reducing speeds offered in their various tiers to a speed that Comcast can realistically provide. Of course, by doing so, they'll be admitting that their products can't compete with FTTP, and we can't have that

If you were managing a LAN you'd probably do something similar.

On the LANs I managed, I implemented QoS to give priority to latency sensitive traffic or other traffic necessary for the business to function, while bulk traffic just got best effort. No one ever complained.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

let's say i'm doing 1mbps off newsgroups right now and another 600kbps off other sources. /shrug. i'm not complaining

 

[mugs]

On the LANs I managed, I implemented QoS to give priority to latency sensitive traffic or other traffic necessary for the business to function, while bulk traffic just got best effort. No one ever complained.

Comcast tried to do exactly that by throttling bittorrent specifically, and the FCC smacked them down. I think it would be ideal to throttle bulk traffic so that high-bandwidth latency sensitive traffic (i.e. streaming video) isn't affected by congestion, but that would run afoul of "net neutrality."

 

[Pepsei]

Yay fiber

love my fios at home, and sprint HTC touch-pro "router" at work.

 

[Ausm]

That would really fuck up high def pr0n downloads.

 

[SunSamurai]

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.

Wake up.

 

[oogabooga]

Meh. Me and others like me control your tubes. Get Over it

OH REALLY? Well then, now that you put it that way...




Yes sir. :\

 

[CountZero]

15 minutes, just long enough for anyone to start watching some streaming TV show only to have it crap out 2/3 of the way through. The average user isn't going to bother worrying about why it happened they'll just regret not getting the DVR package from comcast.

 

[0roo0roo]

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.

its not reasonable when they offer lousy bandwidth compared to other countries. i'd almost understand if they were standing on a firehose, but they offer americans broadband through straws while raking in record profits and still complain. so really its about pure greed. the more you squeeze the less you have to upgrade and offer.