Gizmodo
Okay, so Comcast and BitTorrent are finally making nice after being all Crips and Bloods, even rousing the FCC out of its slumber at one point, which Comcast fought with every trick in the book. It sounds awesome on paper: Your torrents are safe! More bandwidth! Torrents will work even better! Comcast is all for net neutrality! Not quite. You might actually even be worse off.
"Protocol agnostic" sounds a lot like net neutrality, treating all data equally, be it P2P or FTP. Except in this case, it means slowing all packets equally when traffic reaches an unacceptable volume. Under the current system, which was described as "surgical" in its precision when we talked to Comcast about it just a few days ago, only the torrent uploads of super traffic hogs (something like the 5 percent worst abusers, similar to Time Warner's estimation) are delayed, and only when and where there's heavy congestion. So, you could be hammering the shit out of your connection on FTP, and you wouldn't see the kind of management being applied to someone on the block using torrent if the network was congested.
Now, it doesn't matter how you're raping the connection—they slow your whole pipe down if you're "disproportionately" swallowing bandwidth when the network's congested (I'm repeating that phrase to emphasize that's the only time they hit the nuke button), whether it's BitTorrent or you have 100 YouTube vids running at once. It's a nice marketing move: Comcast actually gets to engage in stiffer throttling while gaining credit for easing off BitTorrent. What's good is that it's promising to be extremely upfront and transparent about how and why it manages traffic, which takes the evil bite out of the practice.
But it also makes it more acceptable to the average Joe, clearing the way for every ISP to do so: "Hey, we told you we might do it."
Another reason they made the switch? To try to keep the FCC from laying down net neutrality rules, which no ISP seems to want. Head honcho Kevin Martin has a huge hard-on for reaming the cable industry, in particular Comcast, and the recent dustup with BitTorrent had the FCC seriously considering laying down net neutrality rules for the first time. In my dealings, Comcast and BitTorrent execs actually seem pretty friendly toward one another; presumably they wanted to work it out without the government stepping in.
The people who want net-neutrality regulation may get their wish in the end, since Martin still isn't impressed with the show of friendship:
"While it may take time to implement its preferred new traffic management technique, it is not at all obvious why Comcast couldn't stop its current practice of arbitrarily blocking its broadband customers from using certain applications. Comcast should provide its broadband customers as well as the Commission with a commitment of a date certain by when it will stop this practice.At the same time, Comcast is upgrading its network and boosting its upstream capabilties, and you'll have much fatter pipes rolling out at the end of this year—combined with the work they're doing with BitTorrent to improve the protocol efficiency and their network's ability to deal with P2P, it's probable they'll actually be doing less throttling, at least if you're paying top dollar for bandwidth. But then again, the approaching HD video flood is going to be a traffic demon.
Comments
The phrase, "I'm not racist, I hate everyone equally" comes to mind.
Exactly at what level would they be monitoring the bandwidth? Building, local, regional, national?
"We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have you found? The same old fears.
Wish you were here."
In the end, as long as we are vigilant and vocal, these restrictions will go the way of Prohibition. Today it is P2P, down the line it will be something else. Eventually, either the telecoms will get tired or we will.
@tricky69: I was wondering the same thing... I just wonder if the cable modems they provide can act as meters.
Once again, as long as Comcast is open and honest about what they are doing, they can and should do whatever they want. It is the sneaking around cutting traffic that upsets me. You have to be honest with your customers, and then they can make up their mind whether they want to continue to be customers or not.
I just wish someone would force accurate advertising of internet speeds. That whole "up to 10Mb" is BS. If you offer a 5Mb service and a 10Mb service then the 10Mb should be guaranteed to be at least 5Mb most of the time.
/rant
@LastAndLeast:
I agree, mate. 100%.
as for the Giz Post: Ughh!! But as said before, at least they are honest and open about it.
The pic and caption are great. What movie or TV show is it from?
@AJ_Syrinx: That would be the cover of Pink Floyd's - Wish You Were Here.
These guys should just "Have a Cigar" and calm down/settle.
@tricky69:
I'm thinking that if you're one of the infringers they will have data linking superfluous amounts of data to your modem. I would imagine (hope?) that you would only be limited if somewhere up the pipes there was a clog. But I could just be completely full of it.
@BlindKarma: The cable modems act an meters only in the sense that they have a unique MAC address that identifies all traffic associated with your connection. Their switches are mostly likely programmed to track bandwidth consumption associated with each MAC address; not really hard to do with the industrial switches from Cisco, etc.
I love how "net neutrality" was termed to make it sound like something we should actually want. The only thing worse than businesses controlling the internet is the government controlling it. They'll step in under the auspices of "saving" us from those nasty corporate types, and then we'll begin to see indecency lawsuits, taxes, etc. Careful what you wish for when it comes to "net neutrality", particularly when that "neutrality" is government enforced.
I'm a comcast user and a heavy torrent user. I abuse the hell out of my 16/2 connection and have not experienced any throttling - I don't know if its because I use private sites, encrypt my connections, cuz im in the tristate (very competitive market), or what. I really hope they don't start throttling me...
FiOS is available in my area, and comcast discounts A LOT if you threaten to switch (they cut the monthly price by over 50% for me)
I love that picture, one of the best album cover ever!!!
is this web cite for people that are stuck in some best of their year era...hehehehe...troops move forward
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