{"id":1363,"date":"2008-09-26T08:36:10","date_gmt":"2008-09-26T12:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/?p=1363"},"modified":"2008-09-26T08:36:10","modified_gmt":"2008-09-26T12:36:10","slug":"more-foolishness-from-comcast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/09\/26\/more-foolishness-from-comcast\/","title":{"rendered":"More Foolishness from Comcast"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Slashdot<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“US cable provider Comcast has presented its long-term solution for managing broadband traffic<\/a>. The new system is set at putting to bed a minor scandal that erupted around the company when it was found that Comcast deliberately limited traffic for certain applications<\/a>. The company said that under its new system, traffic will be analyzed every fifteen minutes. Users who are found to be occupying large amounts of bandwidth will be placed at a lower priority for network access behind users with less bandwidth-intensive traffic. The new system will not replace or be related to the company’s earlier installment of bandwidth caps, which limited a user’s data intake to 250GB per month<\/a>.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A commenter on Slashdot<\/a> asked the obvious question:<\/p>\n

“What’s the point of having the internet when you can’t do anything on it?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Which just about sums up my feelings on the matter. Comcast advertises quite heavily for their “high speed” and “powerboost” services… but if you actually try to use<\/em> those services, you might get cut off!<\/p>\n

This latest policy affects even those people who don’t go anywhere near the bandwidth cap – if you’re found to be using a lot of bandwidth in a short period of time (downloading one very large file, for example, or maybe watching a bunch of videos or flash games) you’ll get bumped to the back of a queue (basically) and your Internet will slow down.<\/p>\n

Now, I know that Comcast is doing a lot of this to help manage their network – but really, it seems like a lack of planning to me. You roll out this super-high speed network, and then when people actually start to use it, you realize you don’t have enough capacity for it and you have to start throttling people back just to keep basic quality of service!<\/p>\n

The right<\/em> answer is to enlarge your network to handle the demands placed upon it – that way you can still advertise yourself as being the fastest, without all the negative publicity of limits and caps and so forth. You’ll come out on top by (surprise, surprise) doing the right thing and treating your customers with respect<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Instead, Comcast has elected to try and throttle people back so they don’t have to invest money into their infrastructure – so that they can continue to sqeeze money out of you for their services. They’re also probably going to continue to push hard to get people to switch to their own services (which do not count towards the bandwidth cap or other limits). And that’s just unfair and against the spirit of the Internet (that “net neutrality” thing again).<\/p>\n

Now is the time for some other company to start offering high-speed broadband service to compete with Comcast – because I’m willing to bet you’d get a lot of customers to jump ship right about now. I know I’d be one – if only there were a comparable service to jump to!<\/p>\n

Of course, Comcast may come to their senses and change their policies and do what is right – but I wouldn’t hold my breath for that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Slashdot: “US cable provider Comcast has presented its long-term solution for managing broadband traffic. The new system is set at putting to bed a minor scandal that erupted around the company when it was found that Comcast deliberately limited traffic for certain applications. The company said that under its new system, traffic will be… Continue reading More Foolishness from Comcast<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[155,35,172],"class_list":["post-1363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-companies","tag-internet","tag-net-neutrality","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pimUj-lZ","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1322,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/08\/29\/comcasts-bandwidth-usage-caps-a-bad-idea\/","url_meta":{"origin":1363,"position":0},"title":"Comcast’s Bandwidth Usage Caps – A Bad Idea","author":"Keith Survell","date":"August 29, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"You might have heard this already, but Comcast is rolling out bandwith usage caps - specifically, 250 GB per month for all residential Internet customers. Their policy is also \"two strikes and you're out,\" meaning that after your first infraction, you get a call. After the second one, you lose\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "tech"","block_context":{"text":"tech","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1168,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/06\/09\/follow-up-on-comcastic-support\/","url_meta":{"origin":1363,"position":1},"title":"Follow-Up on “Comcastic Support”","author":"Keith Survell","date":"June 9, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"In a follow up to this post on my experience with Comcast Support, I have... good news! I wrote in to Comcast this morning via their website because I was having some Internet trouble - it was being a bit flakey. 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They aren't hosting the game that they have on their high-traffic website; they've \"hotlinked\" to his game on his site, using his\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "fun stuff"","block_context":{"text":"fun stuff","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/fun-stuff\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1083,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2008\/04\/24\/comcastic-support\/","url_meta":{"origin":1363,"position":3},"title":"Comcastic “Support?”","author":"Keith Survell","date":"April 24, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Earlier this week, on Monday, I had some Internet trouble. My ISP, Patriot Media, was recently bought out by that cable company everyone loves to hate, Comcast. On Monday, my Internet stopped working, and so I set about trying to figure out what went wrong. I saw right away that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Rants"","block_context":{"text":"Rants","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/rants\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3364,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2011\/02\/16\/confusion-misunderstandings-and-net-neutrality\/","url_meta":{"origin":1363,"position":4},"title":"Confusion, Misunderstandings, and Net Neutrality","author":"Keith Survell","date":"February 16, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Trying to clear up some of the confusion and common misunderstandings regarding the concept commonly named as \"Net Neutrality.\"","rel":"","context":"In "Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Internet","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/technology\/internet-technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":960,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2007\/10\/30\/hot-linking\/","url_meta":{"origin":1363,"position":5},"title":"Hot linking","author":"Keith Survell","date":"October 30, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"LEARN HOW TO UPLOAD IMAGES TO YOUR OWN SITE, GODDAMMIT.","rel":"","context":"In "personal"","block_context":{"text":"personal","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/personal\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}