Comcast internet throttling is up and running

[Josh]

COMCAST, the second-largest US cable television and Internet communications service provider, has a new broadband traffic throttling scheme installed and operating in all of its markets.

The ISP's new regime for restricting its customers' bandwidth utilisation replaces its former stealthy practice of arbitrarily blocking subscribers' peer-to-peer (P2P) upload traffic, which was criticised by the FCC last year after it was exposed by the Associated Press and others.

Comcast's filing with FCC (PDF) says it has put in new hardware and software technology at its Regional Network Routers locations to effect this cunning traffic management plan.

Its network throttling implements a two-tier packet queueing system at the routers, driven by two trigger conditions.

Comcast's first traffic throttling trigger is tripped by using more than 70 per cent of your maximum downstream or upstream bandwidth for more than 15 minutes.

More at source

[JavaJones]

Hmm, wonder if this affects the business users like me. Up until now I've been mercifully immune to most - if not all - of their restrictions. Sustained 20 mbit downloads for hours on end if I need. Hehe. I've been thinking of upgrading to the 50mbit package, mostly for the upstream...

- Oshyan

[mouser]

not cool. 

[Stoic Joker]

I thought the FCC Squashed this crap a while back - Now they're at it again?!?

[Josh]

They squashed comcast from arbitrarily throttling a specific protocol, in that case bittorrent, but did not forbid them from filtering traffic.

Source

[housetier]

Comcast apparently has too many customers, which is a good thing for "the market place". Or they have a monopoly in certain areas, which means there is no market place.

What are their competitors doing?

[Innuendo]

As an Insight customer I was a little scared a few months ago when a Comcast/Insight deal unwound & a lot of Insight customers were informed that they were going to become Comcast customers.

Fortunately for me I live in an area that got to stay with Insight. The poor souls who got converted to Comcast have nothing good to say about the change.

[40hz]

Amazing. Especially now that I just got off the phone with one of my clients.

AT&T is offering him a fixed-IP (/29 subnet) 768K DSL package for just $70/month - and that includes a 'business class' router (w/no installation charge) in exchange for a 1-year contract. And it comes with no bandwidth caps or restrictions on what it gets used for as long as it's legal.

Hey Comcast! Can you say "Oversubscribed?"

(Now if AT&T could just get their bloody 3G-Net/iPhone issues straightened out, all would be well with the world. )

[Innuendo]

AT&T is offering him a fixed-IP (/29 subnet) 768K DSL package for just $70/month - and that includes a 'business class' router (w/no installation charge) in exchange for a 1-year contract. And it comes with no bandwidth caps or restrictions on what it gets used for as long as it's legal.

-40hz (November 05, 2009, 02:02 PM)

I do truly hope AT&T DSL is better in your neck of the woods than it is around here. My brother has them & he's on the phone with them at least once a month because of service outages. Evidently the modems they send out are poo as well as he's gone through so many I can't count. I'd attribute to something about his location except everyone I talk to around here who has had AT&T DSL has similar stories.

(Now if AT&T could just get their bloody 3G-Net/iPhone issues straightened out, all would be well with the world. )

That would require them to open up their Scrooge McDuck-esque vault & actually build some cell towers on a large scale.

[40hz]

I do truly hope AT&T DSL is better in your neck of the woods than it is around here.

-Innuendo (November 05, 2009, 02:25 PM)

Don't know where you are, but where I am (SW CT) their DSL service is quite good. I've had no outages - or at least not any I was aware of for longer than I can remember.

And I can't say as I've had any problems with the routers they've supplied either. However, I might not be the best person to judge since I only use their box for the actual connection. All the other functions (DNS, NAT, firewall, PPoE client, etc.) get handled by my own homebrew network devices

That would require them to open up their Scrooge McDuck-esque vault & actually build some cell towers on a large scale.

-Innuendo (November 05, 2009, 02:25 PM)

Well yeah. But around where I live, people are getting pretty fed up with the towers - so you have the classic clash between the property owners and the digital nomads. AT&T is also sending out feelers to see how much 'customer interest'  (i.e. willingness to pay) there is for "in-home cell base stations" to cover people who live in dead spots, so I wouldn't hold my breath. Once they pay off enough legislators and get a bill passed to let them charge all their tower construction costs directly back to the consumer we'll have more cell towers than we know what to do with.

 

[Stoic Joker]

AT&T is also sending out feelers to see how much 'customer interest'  (i.e. willingness to pay) there is for "in-home cell base stations" to cover people who live in dead spots, so I wouldn't hold my breath.

-40hz (November 05, 2009, 06:33 PM)

That's one of those devices that's always bugged me, if the cell phone can't get signal...because it's too far from the tower. What good is a second device that's also equally too far from the same tower going to do?

[40hz]

AT&T is also sending out feelers to see how much 'customer interest'  (i.e. willingness to pay) there is for "in-home cell base stations" to cover people who live in dead spots, so I wouldn't hold my breath.

-40hz (November 05, 2009, 06:33 PM)

That's one of those devices that's always bugged me, if the cell phone can't get signal...because it's too far from the tower. What good is a second device that's also equally too far from the same tower going to do?

-Stoic Joker (November 06, 2009, 05:46 AM)

It works just like any other wireless access point.

The base station plugs into a phone line and provides wireless connections to any cellphones within range of its antenna. So if you frequent a fixed location (home/work/hangout) that gets poor cellphone reception, this little gadget should solve the problem.

Not a bad idea as far as it goes except for two issues:

• They want their customers to pay for the device
  
• It's one more source of RF

[Innuendo]

Don't know where you are, but where I am (SW CT) their DSL service is quite good. I've had no outages - or at least not any I was aware of for longer than I can remember.

-40hz (November 05, 2009, 06:33 PM)

I'm in SW IN. Looking at their coverage map for 3G it looks like AT&T is stuck in 1776. Great coverage in the original 13 colonies & crappy service everywhere else...except for CA when they sent some towers out with Lewis & Clark. 

Back to the original topic, at least we don't live in Canada. I think all the ISPs up there throttle.

[f0dder]

AT&T is offering him a fixed-IP (/29 subnet) 768K DSL package for just $70/month - and that includes a 'business class' router (w/no installation charge) in exchange for a 1-year contract. And it comes with no bandwidth caps or restrictions on what it gets used for as long as it's legal.

-40hz (November 05, 2009, 02:02 PM)

For $70/mo, I get 20/2 ADSL2+, fixed IP, and no throttling or caps in any way.

Comcast sucks - I hope it'll take a loooooong time before we see such nastzi practices in .dk