Last month, the FCC officially ruled that Comcast acted unlawfully and dishonestly when they decided to throttle peer-to-peer traffic from applications such as BitTorrent. The giant Internet provider was then ordered to amend its network management and disclose any future plans on this matter.While Comcast is currently appealing that ruling, they sill decided to come clean over the weekend, detailing how it targeted peer-to-peer traffic (despite repeatedly denying it) and unveiling their new “fair share” plan to ensure the equal distribution of bandwidth to all subscribers.
According to the company, their new method of managing traffic does not block applications and it is instead based on customer priority. In a nutshell, during high volume traffic periods, the software will determine which subscribers are using the most bandwidth and temporarily slow down their connections. Comcast says that, on average, less than 1 percent of its high speed Internet subscribers will be affected by this protocol-agnostic congestion management technique.
View: techspot.com
Actually that's more like 99% will be affected in total however in any given moment only 1% will be affected. Considering the fact that only about 5% of all subscribers are probably online during peak times then that is a considerable amount.
I've pulled these figures from the air so obviously it's only a guess but I would say this is how it actually is rather than the rose-tinted blabber from thier PR department. Could be wrong though.
So, what this is telling me, is if I am streaming a legit HD video stream during their "peak" times, I have the risk of getting my speed throttled back, which in effect would affect the viewing of the stream? I believe that would make me very unhappy.
That is the problem with their "throttling" procedures. In an effort to stop those that are abusing the system, they are going to also affect those that are legitimately using their bandwidth.
Its going to be interesting times coming for the internet industry if this is the tactics they are putting in place.
So it's OK for you to make stuff up, but not Comcast? Doesn't seem fair.
Only if you are using a p2p protocol to stream it, other traffic was not throttled, well according to them.
I can't really understand how Comcast is arguing for slowing down anyones traffic... If they can't afford to actually sell you X megabits a second then they shouldn't sell you X megabits a second. It isn't a complex setup. You sell what you can deliver.
If Comcast chooses to oversell they should bear the consequences of that not their customer...
I find it funny how they argue they have no choice but to do this while I don't get the same treatment from Verizon on FIOS and they effectively offer me a few times the actual bandwidth of Comcast...
I've never had Comcast and don't think I'd take that pill ever.
Only option here in Morgantown, WV. I can get Verizon DSL, but it isn't nearly as fast.
I laugh at the 1% affected bit too. While BT works now, my browsing speeds plummet to <14.4k speeds when I turn it on.. regardless of dl/ul speeds.
DirecPC Satellite Internet did the same crap years ago. They had a Fair Access Policy that said once you hit your cap (200 MBs in one day), they could throttle your speed down to something significantly lower, which ended up being 56k. I would have to wait 12 hours for the speed to go back up.
I'm tired of Comcast's malarky and will be changing to Wow cable soon.
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Comcast...p-Service-97785
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