Comcast is fighting back against what it calls excessive bandwidth users. The company confirmed that it has successfully deployed throttling technology to all its markets. Comcast claims that the technology is to help make everyone get the same experience and have equal opportunity to the bandwidth. The throttling works in a manner that your data can be put in two classes; PBE (Priority Best-Effort) or BE (Best-Effort) with preference being PBE. This is determined by "sustained use of 70% of your up or downstream throughput triggers the BE state, at which point you'll find your traffic priority lowered until your usage drops to 50% of your provisioned upstream or downstream bandwidth for up to 15 minutes. A throttled Comcast user being placed in a BE state may or may not result in the user's traffic being delayed or, in extreme cases, dropped before PBE traffic is dropped." Essentially if your little brother decides to download the internet he will be placed into BE and experience much slower speeds to help spread the bandwidth out to other Comcast users.
On top of this throttling technology Comcast has also placed a 250 GB monthly cap for all users. If you exceed the 250 GB monthly cap your account can be terminated and you can be banned for using the Comcast service for up to one year.
Comcast is cracking down hard on heavy users of the internet. If you have Comcast and have experienced any of these barriers we would like to know your story!
i think a 250GB is 'reasonable' cause you can still download alot of 'stuff' and not go over the 250GB cap... if they put it to 100GB a month then it would be a major issue.
The article didn't say you could only use %70. It said you couldn't use over %70 for a prolonged period of time. The question is, what to they consider a prolonged period of time. This sort of trips me out though. First ComCast wanted to shape BT and P2P traffic which is primarily abused by pirates. It kind of made since. People bitch, FCC comes in and tells them they can't do it. So now we all get hit with shaping. Nice.
I suspect that what they call prolonged is something like 5 hours. That sounds reasonable to me. So if you doing something legit like downloading a Win7 iso from Microsoft, you wouldn't be effected because it would only use %100 of your bandwidth for about 1.3 hours. It is people that run BT clients 24/7 that they are looking for.
I would love to see all the details of this plan.
The article says "sustained," not "prolonged." Neither term has any legal meaning though. And when you undefined terms like that, it means that Comcast can put a connective choke hold on just about anybody who downloads large files. Just a couple nights ago, I downloaded a mod for rFactor which was over a gig. I didn't notice any slowdown, but it makes me wonder if somewhere in the dark caverns of Comcast there isn't a record saying that I was "bad" that night and should be watched more closely for actually using the services I'm paying for...
Exactly, what a rip off. I ditched Comcast becuase it was getting too Comcastic for me (Might get sued for using their term here
Cool, a fellow SimRacer.
Having to implement this, Comcast must be a weak provider with weak infrastructure and a weak income
F
T
W
If you can.
Uhm... doesn't Time Warner have the ridiculously low download caps though?
I wish I could get FiOS, but it's not available in my area yet.
Yeah,
I caught that too!!
Read George Orwell's 1984 for the answer ( "double think" ) Folks, "keep voting with your feet" churn costs them money. Select by personal recommendation and best price. Don't be fooled by empty promises - they cost nothing. Don't be locked in, by using the ISP email address, use one of the "free" Web-mail accounts, they all can be configured for POP etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron
Oh, and for those saying that Comcast sucks ... then just let me say that I consistently (speedtest.net) get 20Mbps downstream and 10Mbps upstream. Really, with those speeds, what could you possibly do with more bandwidth. I can easily pull down GB files in minutes. And again, being a gamer, since my connection is conistent, my online gaming experience is smooth (in other words, I pwn).
What if you're streaming video off of YouTube? The new "HD" content takes anywhere from 75 kb/s to near 300 kb/s, based off of the limited viewings I've done, and I'm sure that in some cases it either takes more or you can find a streaming application that takes more. Now suppose we have a household with a family, and there are multiple people who are streaming like crazy. Even with three people streaming at those speeds that's approaching 1 mb/s (or 8 mbps). 75% of Comcast's total, assuming you're on a 20 mbps down line, is 15 mbps. Based off of streaming alone (a legit application, mind you), you're already halfway toward hitting your cap limit. Throw in a few large attachments on an email, some videoconferencing, or perhaps browsing photos online (or any combination of those) and you've hit the peak.
I won't venture into the debate about whether filesharing automatically incriminates you as doing something illegal, because we all know that there are valid uses for it. However, as I've tried to explain above, it's quite possible to saturate your line for "long" (as defined by Comcast) periods of time without doing anything illegal. If Comcast is really facing issues then this current measure should be temporary at best, and they should aggressively be expanding their network to accommodate more traffic.
What if you're streaming video off of YouTube? The new "HD" content takes anywhere from 75 kb/s to near 300 kb/s, based off of the limited viewings I've done, and I'm sure that in some cases it either takes more or you can find a streaming application that takes more. Now suppose we have a household with a family, and there are multiple people who are streaming like crazy. Even with three people streaming at those speeds that's approaching 1 mb/s (or 8 mbps). 75% of Comcast's total, assuming you're on a 20 mbps down line, is 15 mbps. Based off of streaming alone (a legit application, mind you), you're already halfway toward hitting your cap limit. Throw in a few large attachments on an email, some videoconferencing, or perhaps browsing photos online (or any combination of those) and you've hit the peak.
I won't venture into the debate about whether filesharing automatically incriminates you as doing something illegal, because we all know that there are valid uses for it. However, as I've tried to explain above, it's quite possible to saturate your line for "long" (as defined by Comcast) periods of time without doing anything illegal. If Comcast is really facing issues then this current measure should be temporary at best, and they should aggressively be expanding their network to accommodate more traffic.
Yes gaming is more dependent on latency which I have found to be very good with ComCast. I am into SimRacing and connect to servers all over the world and never have problems with disconnects, warping or anything like that. This is an impressive quality to have in addition to raw bandwidth. Not all providers can deliver low latency. Every DSL provider I have ever dealt with has 100 - 124ms pings yet ComCast typically ranges from 30 - 80ms. FiOS sounds interesting but I isn't available in my area and will not be anytime soon. FiOS may be great now but I am sure they will have their growing pains too.
It is quite possible that ComCast is monitoring upstream and not downstream. If you tie up all the outgoing bandwidth then you have nothing left to send out new requests. ComCast biases their network to give more downstream then upstream because most people will be downloading and not uploading. People who run BT clients all day can easily tie up %100 of their upstream. You get enough people in a node doing this then you have problems. But still, who knows what they are up to without seeing all the details. We probably never will see what they are really up to.
I've always disliked Verizon for some reason, but I might just suggest my dad switches to them, even though all he uses the internet for is email and bbc.
I've always disliked Verizon for some reason, but I might just suggest my dad switches to them, even though all he uses the internet for is email and bbc.
They will not loose customers because they throttle .01% of there customer base. But then again they may **** that .01% off and loose those subs but that is sort of the point. Loose the very small quantity of abusive customers and in turn improve the service of the rest, then pick up replacement customers.
They surely will not lose my sub. They provide by far the best service in my area. I have been with ComCast (well, it has changed names 20 times) for about 15 years. All the way back to the old hybrid cable/dial up days. I have always been impressed.
I've always disliked Verizon for some reason, but I might just suggest my dad switches to them, even though all he uses the internet for is email and bbc.
Living in the UK, I'm with talk talk (I don't really have much choice in what our internet provider is as I'm living in a shared house), but the throttling is absolutely stupid. During peak hours, connection is throttled every 7 or so seconds. Resulting in my pings going from 50 to about 800, making online games unplayable for me.
To be honest, if companies can't handle the traffic they get, they should:
-Put a cap on the amount of customers they can have from a specific area
-Upgrade their networks to accommodate
-Continue their co-operation with the RIAA or FBI or whomever, and terminate any users for are found using bittorent to download illegal files. Not just warn them.
Connection?
And Verizon is stealing a lot of money, even in my poor country, i can get 100 Mbps for 60 € + unlimited calls to the world's most popular countries landlines.
ON FIBER OPTICS
I'm pretty much waiting for a reason to cancel Comcast though and this may be it. When paying for services in addition to the ISP for HD movies and the like, there shouldn't be limits on what you can do, as long as it is considered legal.
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