Comcast says that it will experiment with a new method of managing traffic to thousands of customers in Chambersburg, Pa., and Warrenton, Va. The new method will not target file-sharing, but would focus on individual heavy Internet users – no matter what they are doing, says the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Comcast is facing a potentially heavy fine from the FCC for (possibly) improperly interfering with Internet traffic, and they’re hoping that this new “protocol-agnostic” method will be more palatable.
It sounds like bad news for heavy users, however:
The new Internet traffic method will put the online traffic of ordinary Internet users ahead of heavy users at certain times to maintain overall Internet speeds, Douglas said. Thus, the Internet experience for heavy users – so-called Internet hogs – could slow during periods of Internet congestion.
If successful, Comcast will implement it throughout the system by the end of the year.
Comcast to test ‘Internet hog’ controls [Philly.com]
(Photo: cmorran123 )
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@linbey: Well, I’m all for reinvestment in infrastructure, and I am also not particularly a Comcast fan. But I am pretty sure that, short of (practically) infinite capacity, this sort of problem is always going to occur. I guess the question becomes ‘how much are they reinvesting’? It seems like it would be to their advantage to have the best, most robust, fastest network they could have.
@snazzycarrot:
I disagree. There is always a way to provide more bandwith. If there was always a limit then why does Verizon have no problem providing consistent high speed internet to EVERYONE with their FIOS connection regardless of when or how much everyone uses. I happen to have switched from Comcast to Verizon FIOS and I actually get the full 5MB down and 2MB up that I pay for. Its not “up to” like Comcast is and the service is the same no matter when I use it. On top of that it is actually cheaper than Comcast
What are they thinking? Is it their business plan to force everyone to a different provider? Do they think that slower Internet is the future?
@tehronin: I’ve been on the Internet back since the days when you paid a university by the minute to connect with a 2400 bps modem to a Unix shell, back before the WWW even existed. You won’t find a bigger pro-freedom advocate on the Internet than me. I’ve made it a point to contribute monthly to the EFF for some time now because we share largely the same vision of the Internet.
That being said, please go DIAF. I’ve got no use for kids (or morally stunted adults for that matter) downloading illegally copied movies over a shared broadband connection 24×7 and then complaining when somebody slaps their hand because they’re (a) disrespecting someone else’s artistic work and (b) tying up a resource that is used by everyone in their neighborhood.
Grabbing movies and music over a bittorrent connection running 24×7 without paying for them is basically like selling drugs out of a public park and chasing off anyone who wants to use the space for a legitimate purpose.
And before you trot out the tired old excuse that you’re just downloading Linux ISOs (which I highly doubt is true), please bear in mind that even if that’s true, you’re still the online equivalent of the fat slob who oozes into three seats on the airliner and only pays for one, making his neighbors’ lives miserable.
comcast – get bent. now that fios & uverse are biting at your heels, you have to do better than “oh, it’s just too hard for us to provide quality service to everybody”. you’re starting to sound (& act) like aol.
get your act together before verizon & at&t steal your most lucrative markets out from under you. or don’t. i don’t care. cablevision lets me use all the intertubes i want at blazing fast speeds. funny how you’re the only one bitching about customer usage…
@kylo4: if you can get DSL i suggest teksavvy, have 2 options one is a 200 GB cap and one is unlimited, both cheaper then rogers or bell
There may be a lot of hurdles involved with improving the infrastructure of their system – but based on all these other commenters it seems like the other developed countries have been able to do it, so why can’t we?
I’m just so glad I finally live in an area where comcast isn’t my only option. I had them in a few places I lived and they were always up and down.
That seems to be the biggest problem – Comcast is some people’s only option, so with a monopoly like that, they don’t really have to be innovative. They don’t even have to provide good service, and it seems like for the most part, they don’t.
comcast you cunts
Yes this sucks, not because of the method they are using which is probably the most net neutral way to manage limited bandwidth, but rather because that they continue to have limited bandwidth. I wonder if Comcast really is even trying to upgrade their infrastructure to keep up to demand, or just trying use less expensive throttling technologies to make it last longer.
When I think about the whole bandwidth issue coming up, I have to wonder about the fundamental protocols used on the internet. I would imagine that duplicate data is often much of the problem. If multicasting was more widespread, such an issue would be widely eliminated. Just imagine one torrent seed able to upload to all peers at his maximum connection speed, rather than a much larger collective bandwidth speed with identical data flowing all over the place. I know the successor of bittorrent is looking at implementing multicasting support, but the much of the rest of internet traffic could also benefit.
suburbancowboy: I’ve been saying this for years, but no one seems to listen. It’s the heaviest users who are most likely to evangelize your service.
johnva: Comcast throttling online video? Surely they wouldn’t do that!
@nweaver: But there is tiered pricing, and people who pay more should get more. I’m willing to be they’re not even capping within tiers, but overall, so all the people who are getting capped are the ones paying the most.
I recently downgraded from the top of the line plan to the economy plan, haven’t noticed a big difference, but I haven’t been streaming much lately, so maybe I’ll have to go back up a notch.
ogremustcrush: Tell that to my idiot friends whose idea of photo sharing is emailing them out to everybody instead of just sending a link to your photo page.
My hosue has subscribe to Comcast’s new 150 megabit service for about a month and a half. Comcast called us today to say that we are using too much bandwidth. They wouldn’t tell us how much was too much but said we used over 500 gigs of traffic the month previous, so I guess that’s above their upper limit. Now… that is a fair amount, but with our connection, we could download that in 7-8 hours. I think as speeds increase, their expectations of acceptable use also have to increase.
I’m a heavy user, but this really doesn’t sound like a bad idea. Most likely what would happen is they would throttle me down during peak hours (afternoons, whatever). What they are trying to do is level QOS. During low usage times (night, midday) my torrents, news, etc. could go nuts. Even as a heavy user I expect that I wouldn’t notice too much of a difference. Where this might become a problem is in real-time streaming. A Netflix style service would be out the window as prime watching time would also be prime surfing time.
I don’t know if I’m a heavy user or not. I have several computers, a couple Tivos, like to download stuff. However, I don’t run a P2P program like BitTorrent, LimeWire, etc. They say that 10% of users use a majority of the bandwidth. And if that degrades performance for the 90%, then that is a bad thing.
However, with Sprint limiting their unlimited data plan to 5 GB/mo and an ISP in Texas limiting customers to 5 GB/mo, that seems a bit extreme. For all I know, I use more than 5 GB in a month. It would really piss me off if I got cut off if I went over 5 GB a month, or got hit with huge fees.
Then again, if I knew that my sluggish throughput was a result of my neighbor’s P2P hogging the bandwidth, I’d be pissed off too. I’m using less network resources as them but I’m paying the same price.
I do agree that if a customer is using excessive bandwidth and they are degrading their neighbors’ throughput yet paying the same amount per month, that is not fair to the ISP or to their neighbors.
Maybe a solution is along the likes of a car extended warranty. For the same price, you can have higher speed but lower limit or slower speed and higher limit. If you want to run P2P 24/7, you can choose to run at a lower speed. But if someone doesn’t run P2P and doesn’t consume as many resources, they can get a higher speed and snappier performance.
Or maybe if you use enough bandwidth to be part of the top 10% in bandwidth users, they let you continue, but throttle your speed. That way, you aren’t cut off, but give your neighbors a chance to have improved service.
@Corydon: Yeah, sure, if the airline said “hey, take as many seats up as you want, no extra charge!”
Of course, they don’t, and your analogy is purposely insulting just to be insulting.
@Lambasted: Just because Comcast is the only service in the news doing this does not mean that is the only company researching the throttling of internet services. It means that they are the only ones being honest enough to come out and say it.