Under the setup, Comcast claims it will figure out "in nearly real time'' who's causing congestion and 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,'' says Mitch Bowling, Comcast's senior vice president and general manager of online services.

The real time comment is interesting, because Comcast said the same thing about their targeted P2P slowdown technique, calling it "surgical" in its precision, but FCC Chair Kevin Martin said that wasn't true and that their system was "not even capable of knowing when an individual ... segment of the network is congested." So let's hope they've upgraded.

Either way, all indications show that this is likely just a first step toward overall usage caps, which appear to be an inevitability. What that means for the future of the internet is still unclear, but for now, heavy downloaders or people living in crowded houses might wanna look at alternate ISPs (if they're even able to). [Bloomberg via All Things D, Image via Biscuitsmlp]

Kinda interesting, since their own metered broadband plan is rumored to run up to 250GB (read why metered broadband is bad). Has anyone else gotten hit with the hammer at a lower rate of usage like Ace here? Tell us, we wanna know (or any other Comcast dirt, please send it to tips@gizmodo.com)! [Thanks Ace! - Giz's Comcast Coverage]