Comments on: Cable chief: Let us 'experiment' with our networks

In light of Comcast-BitTorrent controversy, trade group head says engineers need freedom to manage file-sharing traffic--and combat piracy--without regulators getting in the way.

[sismoc]

Liars and Thieves

The broadband providers do not want their customers to utilize the bandwidth they have been promised. Why, you may ask? Because they oversold their bandwidth. And if people actually use the bandwidth they have been promised the whole house of cards comes crumbling down.

Today P2P. Tomorrow video downloads from Amazon. After that who knows?

[Mister Winky]

EXACTLY

Agreed. While companies of all shapes and sizes overrepresent their capabilities, I think cable companies do it best with their false promises of 3-6MB/s download speeds across the board.

Cable companies brag that their home broadband plans are faster than DSL plans, but they completely oversell their aggregate bandwidth. Either they should fix the upstream bandwidth issue or they should promise people what they can deliver instead of trying to throttle back individual users to hide the ball from consumers.

-Mister Winky

[dragonbite]

Cannot 100% trust

"Cable companies will never block their customers access to "lawful" content and applications"

Sounds great, but how far of a stretch is it for flagging something as questionably-lawful at the beckon of some large, deep pocketed business that has something to gain if this content was blocked (such as Microsoft greasing the Cable company's palm to slow, drop packets or otherwise cripple Linux downloads?)

May be far fetched, but stranger things have happened.

[umbrae]

I bet the Mafia said the same thing...

Leave us alone. Its a shame that we have these big cable monopolies so there is little the consumer can do. I have DSL because I hate cable; however, my choices are very limited. If I am not happy with this type of behavior I cannot talk with my pocket book. It is either pay them or go without internet entirely.

They are going to get regulated eventually, and they need to get used to it. Laughing in the face of the FCC and law-makers about it is not a good strategy.

[lleather]

what an idiot

I pay the bill and want unfiltered access to what I'm paying for. Between them and the FBI setting up honey buckets on the web....this is getting ridiculous.

[allen b--2008]

So we should sue the Highway Department because I can't go 65?

Wake up people. They are not overselling, everyone is under reading. No network provider sells you a guaranteed bandwidth unless you purchase a dedicated T1, T3, etc. You are sold a maximum upload and download speed. I also paid my bill, should I have to suffer with poor performance from my application because of Torrents, or because P2P applications have built in ways to maximize bandwidth usage by creating multiple pipes? I think not. I think that the internet providers should be able to manage their networks during peek demand. Just like Metered onramps in congested cities. Or toll roads.

Now don't get me wrong, I think that if they are going to do this they should be monitored so that they don't inappropriately target competitive applications. But lets be honest here, you have purchased a service, not a product. It is the ISP's job to make sure that the service is acceptable to everyone, not just the bandwidth hogs. I would expect that most of the readers here are against those big SUV's, and the gas that they guzzle. Yet heaven forbid somebody should slow down their guzzling of internet bandwith.

You do have a choice, you don't have to use the internet. I don't believe that it says anywhere in the Constitution that we have the unalienable right to high-speed internet access. And until it does, stop whining about it.

[funchords]

"Technology is agnostic, but... [some] p2p traffic is pirated material."

"Technology is agnostic, but it is plainly the case that some significant percentage of the peer-to-peer traffic is pirated material."

AND WITH THAT LINE, he adds another reason that Cable TV companies should NOT be allowed to inspect and then discriminate on traffic at their whim.

The ISP is supposed to connect the end-user to the Internet Cloud and charge for said transit. If the ISP decides to inspect your packets to ensure you're not violating the copyrights and distribution rights of his Cable TV or its media partners, then your right to privacy is infringed.

Furthermore, we've already seen the collateral damage -- due to such inspection and "management," the Associated Press could not upload the King James Version of the Holy Bible (which has no copyright interest as it is in the Public Domain).

Way to go, NCTA! Thank you for making our point for us!

Robb Topolski

[Mister Winky]

Terrible Comparison

What a terrible comparison:

1) Take a close look at what cable vendors like Comcast are PROMOTING. Sure, the fine print is the fine print, but their promotional materials are intentionally deceiving when it comes to their high speed networks. My in-laws' cable connection, advertised as 1.5MB/s, maxes out around 700kB/s and often (for several hours each afternoon and evening) dips below 128kB/s. My DSL bandwidth speed never varies more than 10% from peak. If you'd rather read the fine print, goody for you, but what matters is performance in the real world, and the cable companies are over selling and under delivering.

2) If you think it's acceptable that cable networks perform as well as our underfunded, overburdened freeway systems, your expectations are set far too low. Given the right prioritization and investment, the bandwidth issues can be addressed upstream, even if it means higher rates for consumers. The problem is that vendors like Comcast have boxed themselves in with false advertising for too long. They can't say "our $19.95 plan offers 3.0mB/s, but our new $29.95 actually delivers 3.0mB/s 90% of the time." Being disingenuous for so long will come back to bite them.

Funny that you mention the Constitution (which does guarantee free speech), then tell everyone to shut up. Nice.

-Mister Winky

[zanzzz]

Build It And They Will Come

If only Comcast would spend its energy to increase the throughput of its network rather than underhanded methods to degrade service to heavy users. The future of the Internet will involve massive bandwidth use with HDTV on demand, streaming high quality video, and numerous other applications. Rather than facing this reality Comcast is interested in filtering and degrading as a means to keep an antiquated network creaking along. Just look at the vastly asymmetrical bandwidth packages they offer. A typical one is 6mb down, 384k up! The presumption is that customers are merely "consumers" so why bother to give them much upload bandwidth. This miscalculation is central to its problems with network congestion.
One fact they choose to overlook is that the best solution to network congestion is to provide more bandwidth. All other efforts are mere fudges that degrade the network quality. Their response is that increasing bandwidth merely enables heavy users to further dominate the network which is not true! If a customer who was using "excessive" bandwidth suddenly upgrades to a business package the problem goes away!
After Comcast has lied repeatedly about their network "management" can we believe anything they say?

[Dalkorian]

whoa

I need to lay down, all that spin has made me dizzy.

Why do all these discussions repeatedly make the FALSE claim
that con-cast was "throttling" P2P traffic? The reality is they
were FORGING TCP reset packets to DISRUPT P2P traffic. They
weren't "slowing it down", they were forcefully terminating it. Big
difference here people. If this wasn't considered a big deal to
them, why do they threaten to FIRE any employee that reveals
this FACT?

Quoted from another C|Net article:

"So what is Comcast doing? It is letting BitTorrent traffic flow
across its network, and thus is not technically "blocking"
anything. Instead, it is forging TCP reset packets that are
misleadingingly labeled as being sent by one of the two ends of
the BitTorrent connection. That is, Comcast is masquerading as
its customers, and sending out data with false sender
information. When the BitTorrent clients receive the false reset
packets, they themselves terminate the connection, as they think
the other host has told them to go away. Thus, through sneaky
techniques and network-level false statements, Comcast is able
to trick users' software into terminating their own transfers."

Maybe if you make people dizzy enough with the spin you can
fool them into believing your lies. For a while at least.

Sources:

http://www.cnet.com/8301-13739_1-9802410-46.html

http://news.digitaltrends.com/news/story/15732/comcast_defe
nds_blocking_p2p_traffic

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071028-comcast-to-
employees-talking-about-blocking-p2p-can-get-you-
fired.html

[Mathea Shane]

Comcast is too arrogant for their services

Arrogance will come back to haunt you Comcast. Your services are not that great and there are numerous interruptions to service not to mention that technical service is non-responsive to Internet interruptions. I have no respect for any company that thinks it is above the law!