Comcast to throttle some customers' Web speeds
Comcast reportedly plans to reduce Internet service to customers it deems to be using too much bandwidth, a move that comes on the heels of federal regulators ruling that the Internet service provider violated the law by throttling BitTorrent transfers.
To keep service flowing to other customers, Comcast plans to impede Internet speeds to its heaviest users for up to 20 minutes, Mitch Bowling, Comcast's senior vice president and general manager of online services, told Bloomberg in an interview Tuesday.
Instead of focusing on specific applications that may be hogging traffic, Comcast plans to determine "in nearly real time" whether a heavy user is causing congestion, Bowling said.
"If in fact a person is generating enough packets that they're the ones creating that situation, we will manage that consumer for the overall good of all of our consumers,'' Bowling said.
The move follows the Federal Communications Commission's ruling on August 1 that Comcast's throttling of BitTorrent traffic last year was unlawful--the first time any U.S. broadband provider has ever been found to violate Net neutrality rules. (The FCC released the text of that ruling Wednesday.) The FCC issued a cease-and-desist order and required the company to disclose to subscribers in the future how it plans to manage traffic.
Comcast, the largest cable provider in the U.S., has been under fire for months after it was discovered the company had been slowing down peer-to-peer traffic on its network. Comcast had said that its measures to slow BitTorrent transfers, which it voluntarily ended in March, were necessary to prevent its network from being overrun. At a public hearing in February, Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen said, "Comcast may on a limited basis temporarily delay certain P2P traffic when that traffic has or is projected to have an adverse effect on other customers' use of the service."
Consumer groups were incensed by the tactic, and the FCC investigation ensued over whether Comcast had violated any of its Net neutrality principles.
Steven Musil is the night news editor at CNET News. Before joining CNET News in 2000, Steven spent 10 years at various Bay Area newspapers. E-mail Steven. 
Dont want to spend the money to improve your network, then you left me no choice. Paying more than $50 for internet is expensive at that, and showed me nothing but grief. So long Comcast, and rot in hell.
QoS (which is what this is) based on simple bandwidth usage is not a problem, so long as it is applied fairly and evenly, and is only a temporary fix (and, of course, not abused). The reason Comcast caught so much hell before is because:
* They were unfairly targeting a single protocol, and
* They were forging RST packets to do it.
If they decide to simply throttle based on how much bandwidth someone is using during times of heavy load, then no problem - most folks are smart enough (one would hope) to do their heavy downloading at night, or any other off-peak time.
If the throttling sucks too badly, the customers will start leaving for greener pastures, to whomever can deliver the best speeds.
Also, wherever there's a need, it can and will be filled. I remember when Comcast and Qwest told me in 2000 that, no, they couldn't/wouldn't run DSL or cable to my neighborhood. I went with Sprint Broadband and was so happy with it that I happily told both Qwest and Comcast to bugger off when they finally did move into my neighborhood (and promptly began advertising and telemarketing in the area heavily).
I can easily see such a plan with Comcast and every other ISP out there. Don't think Comcast is doing this in a vaccuum. If they get away with it, then every other ISP will do it too.
They need to push On-Demand over all others. They don't want people streaming Netflix or Hulu. They don't want to compete.
Didn't the CTO of Verizon just make the argument against Net Neutrality? Ha!
you net neutrality guys work against yourselves, and us all. guys who hog the network/internet are just bandwidth gluttons. the contract says what speed to expect, the fact is that Comcast usually over-delivers on that (in my case, it's about double tha dvertised speed). but as rcruesoe said, when the kiddies come back to school, they download so much nonsense that the leg of the network on which they (and you ) happen to be on slows to a crawl. Comcast's actions are a response to that.
seems to me, Comcast is trying to make things speedy for everyone. if you do bitTorrent and download many huge files, then maybe you *do* need a different kind of account.
But IMO, good riddance.
Net Neutrality means that no protocol or specific non-user destination (e.g. Google, Netflix, etc) is discriminated against or tiered, genius. It has nothing (read ZERO) to do with protocol-neutral QoS.
Additionally, if their network is taking such a hit from torrents, then they need to do some major upgrading anyways. Peer-2-Peer traffic isn't that demanding upon ones equipment. It's not as if the end-to-end network is congested but rather only the point-to-point network. In europe, they can have everyone running a BitTorrent client downloading from the opposite side of the planet, and still see no issue within their performance.
So they have more than enough freaking money to upgrade their systems, and they had better START DOING IT. Otherwise, we are going to start suing them and putting them out of business.
You are what I like to call..... a netiot, a net idiot, who doesn't know what he is talking about.
Comcast is advertising 10 mbps. But if you actually use that, you get throttled.
It's not a matter of being a bandwidth hog, it's a matter of getting what you pay for - Just because you're content to pay 50/month for high speeds a fraction of the time doesn't mean that people such as myself are content to not make full use of the resource we pay for.
I paid for a 6mbps connection - if I use my 6mbps only a few seconds of the day or all 24 hours of the day - I am using only what was advertised and what I am paying for - nothing more! How these companies can get around this is anybody's guess. If they can't support a FEW users maxing out their bandwith, how can they advertise it for EVERYONE?
It's just too bad American corporations no longer know how to give value.
As for those talking about bandwidth hog: are we not offered unlimited service at a certain speed? Do we not pay the amount the companies request? Are we not inhibited from shopping around for other services because the government gives near monopoly control?
Oh, right. We're consumers. We're not supposed to have any rights.
Please, go scam somewhere else.
Buying fiber is not that expensive but laying it and setting up the networks is a very, very expensive proposition.
I do wonder how/if they are utilizing WDM.
What part of SHARED network is difficult to understand?
"And no, I am not a comcast or any other cable network customer. I am not an idiot, thus don't waste time or money on shared networks."
Well,at least you admit you don't have any clue about what you are talking about as you are not a customer and not affected by this situation. That of course makes you the perfect expect to talk about it.
I don't use cable precisely because i know how it works and don't feel like having to deal with slowdowns if all my neighbors are online or watching on-demand or chatting via VOIP.
Do you really think the FCC is going to go "Hey we just told Comcast they can't mess around with BitTorrent traffic, but we will ignore them controlling "all" traffic less then a month later". Ya um... Good luck with that.
Seems to me the FCC has been going on hunts actively recently against companies that harm consumers. Comcast and bandwidth and cell phone companies and cancel fees.
I honestly don't think the FCC is going to to happy about this.
Limiting bandwidth on a PRIVATE SHARED network is necessary.
- by disco-legend-zeke August 21, 2008 5:15 AM PDT
- COX has come up with another strategy, they sell a "TURBO" mode which offers a speed burst for the occasional heavy download.
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- by bdobbes August 21, 2008 5:20 AM PDT
- Comcast offers this for free as part of their normal internet packages. They call it 'speed boost'
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (63 Comments)They also invest in very heavy backbone.
Internet 3... in which a wireless mesh provides a massively parallel signal path, could offer some help, but its primarily a "last mile" technology.