Comcast Plans to Slow Down Heavy Users During Congestion

Just because it's an all you can eat buffet doesn't mean they can afford to shovel food down your throat as you sit at the table 24/7.

Be realistic about this shit and turn off your fucking torrents once in a while :rolleyes:
 
Blazestorm said:
*that 130/160 was within 1 week

Damn lack of edit button...
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Is that good? I regularly download 100GB in a 24 hour period. Then again, I have Qwest 12MBit FTTN service, I'm cancelling my Comcast service too, when I actually use it, it is slow.
 
I HATE Comcast.

Instead of building a $750 million building in Philly, they should have used that $$$ to upgrade their stinkin' network.
 
-Dragon- said:
It's not comcast's fault [redacted]. Learn a thing or two about DOCSIS 1.1 thru 3.0 and check with the major cable modem terminating vendors and check what their equipment costs. Let me save you some time. DOCSIS downstreams are about 40Mbps max. You don't want them to oversell bandwidth? Then they can only put FOUR customers per downstream. Lets say 2 downstreams per card, give 12 cards per box and you've got 92 customers per terminator. How much do these boxes cost? Obviously varies but the range is $100,000-250,000.

Thank you for calling Comcast, you'd like to signup for our guaranteed bandwidth cable modem plan? That will be a $1500 installation charge.

Monthly fees would be equally inflated, not because they're greedy jerks but because there's a lot of things that go into maintaining the cable network, which would increase exponentially with all the additional required equipment. Equipment that would generally be idle 99% of the time.

What you say? $1500 installation and several hundred dollars a month would buy you a dedicated line? Weird...

The fact is you won't pay that much for internet, you want to pay less than you're paying now. One of those $250,000 terminators can support 10,000 customers "over subscribed", for $25/user... oddly close to what installation fees are if you even have to pay one... Again weird...

Yeah yeah FIOS is great and I'd probably have it if it was in my area but the fact is it's oversubscribed too just at a different point on the network. A 10Gbps link can only support 200 customers at 50Mbps guaranteed bandwidth, even if you go to a 40Gbps link that's only 800 guaranteed bandwidth customers. Let me give you another clue, a lot more than 800 customers will share a 40Gbps link.

The entire internet is oversubscribed. It would be a horrible waste of equipment, energy, and manpower if it was otherwise, and we wouldn't be having this conversation because neither of us could afford to. Yeah cable isn't perfect and yeah in places like Japan and Europe where population densities are MUCH higher than they are here they do have faster and cheaper connections. But we're Americans and we want our SUVs and big houses with big yards spread all over our big continent, and that means our broadband providers have to cover more area for less profit and something HAS to suffer. Guess which. (It's not profits, again, America)

P.S. Congress gave TELCO companies BILLIONS in the 90's to encourage broadband growth and they did NOTHING with it. Cable companies are the ones who brought broadband to the masses and they did it without any government subsidies.
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Wow, that sound pretty interesting but it is still not what we are talking about.
Cox says I can have 12Mb down and 2Mb up. Guess what? Thats what I get. All the time. Sometimes, late at night I get up to 16Mb down. It's all really irrelevant anyway considering there is no one that can provide you with that much sustained DL speed.
 
As a comcast user, I've was less than thrilled when they pulled the crap they did a year ago, but if this is implemented correctly, I have no problem with it. What bugged me before wasn't that my connection slowed down, it was that any torrents I had were essentially killed. I'd send packets for a few seconds and then it'd die for a minute, and it seemed to happen as often at non-peak times as at peak times

Slowing me down to a good DSL speed, doesn't bug me. In fact, if they put out the info correctly, it's exactly what I've argued we should get, which is a quote on the minimum level of service, as well as max.....I also think they should probably give you the median level of service.

This may actually turn out to be a step in the right direction. As others have said, if you want a guaranteed level of bandwidth, you'll need to get a T1 (which won't have nearly as large a download pipe as Cable or most DSL connections).
 
It could be worse.. with Rocky Mountain Cable.. they throttle the 1.5mb cable internet down to 1/3 of 1mb.. they do this for everyone because there is no competition. With pings as high as 800ms as well. Sometimes it's so frustrating, I purge all 30 gb of my downloaded games and then redownload them 24/7 for a week just to waste their bandwidth.
 
Thats scary thing that's is coming from ISPs , super high speeds and some lame limit...
 
BallerX said:
Wow, that sound pretty interesting but it is still not what we are talking about.
Cox says I can have 12Mb down and 2Mb up. Guess what? Thats what I get. All the time. Sometimes, late at night I get up to 16Mb down. It's all really irrelevant anyway considering there is no one that can provide you with that much sustained DL speed.
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Then you're very lucky, because Cox is effectively guilty of the same practices as Comcast was (prior to losing the FCC ruling). And as a former Cox user, I can promise you that up/down streams changed and during peak times, I never EVER got the rated speeds.

If you always do, then you're very fortunate. With that said, Cox' customer satisfaction ratings tend to be among the best.

As a rule, I say Comcast sucks, but in the last few months, the service has improved quite a bit....so much so that I'm not longer thinking of moving to AT&T.
 
Joe Average said:
This will simply cause another class action lawsuit and Comcast will lose again. They must love paying lawyers just to plead it and know they're going to lose. I need to go to work for that lawfirm... it's guaranteed money.
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When did Comcast lose a class action suit?

If you're paying for a level of service you're entitled to it as defined in the contract or the TOS or user agreement or whatever the fuck the ISP calls it. If they decide to snip your bandwidth for whatever reason, and that wasn't expressly identified as a potential action in the contract/TOS then you've got ground to stand on.

A lot of ISPs use that wonderful broadly generalized type of wording like "<xxx> Mbps*" and then the disclaimer for the * is something like "Not a guaranteed level of service in any consistent manner" but those things have been shot down in courts before, or the infamous "Up to <xxx> Mbps" sort of wordplay.

They'll push, customers will complain, lawyers will file briefs, a gavel will drop, and Comcast will back down and lose again. Simple.

NEXT!!!
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In what cases were these shot down? This is the first I"ve heard of ISPs going to court on cases like this.
 
I tried comcast a few times, during the week days it was fast, at night or weekends my dial up was faster.

At least with DSL, my 6 MB is 6 MB no matter when I get online. I just wish they would go over 512 up...
 
MavMange said:
It could be worse.. with Rocky Mountain Cable.. they throttle the 1.5mb cable internet down to 1/3 of 1mb.. they do this for everyone because there is no competition. With pings as high as 800ms as well. Sometimes it's so frustrating, I purge all 30 gb of my downloaded games and then redownload them 24/7 for a week just to waste their bandwidth.
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That's exactly the same thing I experienced with my ISP. They are the only ISP provider here, and during peak hourse, they indiscrimately throttle everyone down to less than 1/3 of our bandwidth. Normal online activities such as watching youtube video or email attachment download becomes frustratingly slow during peak hours.

And the worst thing is, they keep introducing higher speed package with premium price despite having to throttle all internet traffic during peak hourse.:mad:
 
Seriously, I don't want my internet connection to slow down because of someone downloading torrents 24/7.

You have the right to download as much crap as you want, but once you start taking away from other peoples experiences, something needs to be done about it. As long as the policy is fairly implemented, then I think it is a good thing.
 
lol, you guys don't know how GOOD you have it... best we have here is a 10mbps/640kbps line with 60GB cap (downlaods & uploads, COMBINED...)

And there aren't any "silent" caps - when you go over 60gb, sorry no internet. period. That's all thats available, there are no alternatives.

All that said, it's still complete and utter bullshit, bandwidth simply is not expensive, and their networks are not overtaxed. They're just greedy and have access to a monopolized market, and theres just nothing anyone can do about it, for now.
 
I've had Comcast before. I've had DSL from a local company in Wyo. before, along with Qwest DSL, and CableOne.


After experiencing CableOne I will likely never complain about Comcast again. Yeah they throttled a little bit occasionally, pissing us all off. And it looks like they are finding a sneaky way to do it again. And I hate their marketing. They market the future availability of 150meg service even though that will likely have throttling as well.

But then I met the devil of ISP's - CableOne.

It's decent speed, low latency service, but like all companies they jack prices up after your initial contract is up, even if you threaten to leave. But when you threaten to leave comcast, they'll usually extend your "promotional price" to keep the customer. When CableOne jacked my prices up by an extra 40 bucks a month, just for Internet and TV, I threatened to leave and tried to do whatever I could to negotiate a better price. I even offered to add phone if they would keep me on the three service bundle promotion.

They wouldn't. They also start throttling your bandwith after a 1.4 gig download!! They actually told me this over the phone when I called to complain about slow internet. So If I rent a movie on iTunes (Die hard for example - 1.4GB download) Once the movie is downloaded, my internet is castrated to less than 1.5 meg DSL speeds for TWENTY FOUR HOURS after that!!!! Even though you're paying for 5 meg internet. And up speeds are capped at 256 to 500 k up until you buy their SOHO ten meg connection for $100 a month. Then you get 10 down and 1 up. It's robbery. Not to mention their service is fairly crappy. They have local cable one commercials they put on all the time that compare them with cable to satellite providers. They brag about their same-day service and quick repairs, and excellent customer support.

Average hold time when I called them for tech support or if service was down:

45 min. I kept track. The longest was 1.5 hrs. and the shortest was 6 min.

Average response time for service call:

2-4 days. Even when I was going to be a new customer, they told me on Friday when I was signing up that it would be Thursday of the following week before they could come and connect me, even though all he had to do was pull the stupid trap out of the CableOne branded box on the side of the apartment. I told them to go to heck and I would get internet from someone else, so they came Tues.

Comcast treated me WAY better and gave me way faster service for less money. I would take them over CrapbullOne in a heartbeat if they were here.
 
RyanLucier said:
lol, you guys don't know how GOOD you have it... best we have here is a 10mbps/640kbps line with 60GB cap (downlaods & uploads, COMBINED...)

And there aren't any "silent" caps - when you go over 60gb, sorry no internet. period. That's all thats available, there are no alternatives.

All that said, it's still complete and utter bullshit, bandwidth simply is not expensive, and their networks are not overtaxed. They're just greedy and have access to a monopolized market, and theres just nothing anyone can do about it, for now.
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You posted this while I was typing. How about a 1.4GB cap per 24 hour period, and that's for $53 for the cable internet only.
 
gravity said:
Seriously, I don't want my internet connection to slow down because of someone downloading torrents 24/7.

You have the right to download as much crap as you want, but once you start taking away from other peoples experiences, something needs to be done about it. As long as the policy is fairly implemented, then I think it is a good thing.
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No, you don't have the right to download as much as you want, not if the contract/TOS with your ISP that you agree to when you sign up for service and actually begin using it specifically mentions a "cap" on how much you're entitled to. Most ISPs do, if you read the fine print and pay attention. Here's what Cox shows on their pricing page here in Las Vegas:

coxpricingmy8.png


I'm on the Preferred plan myself, which they recently bumped from 6 to 8 Mbps and they bumped the price from $51.95/month to $54.99 and this month's bill is the first to show the increase (just got it on Monday this week). Now, I'm not a massive "leech" by any means, but I do have periods when I'll acquire some stuff, suffice to say I have most definitely gone over that "40 GB" cap on downloads nearly every month.

Hell, here's a perfect example: I kept an eye on my bandwidth usage the past few days (I'm just using Task Manager's ability to log network usage in bytes sent/received) because I've been keeping tabs on the Olympics by using the features at NBCOlympics.com. Watching roughly 5 minutes of the "high definition" video from a recap video was 52MB, and I've been watching a lot of 'em.

40GB can disappear in a week of just watching YouTube and other types of video content these days, so it's very safe to say Cox publishes the "caps" but they don't actively enforce them. I know from looking at several bandwidth meters on some apps I have that over the course of a month I've crossed into the 220GB range at one point earlier this year, but that was a rare month involving a lot of ISO downloads for betas and other stuff I'm involved with - and yes, some other goodies as well but not that much of that going on.

Paying for the 8/768 package and I regularly get solid speeds like this:

312194255.png
and
312199629.png


So I've got no issues with the speed. I'm pretty sure there's several people in my apartment building on the node now, and for the longest time I was the only one, confirmed by the Cox tech that's assigned to our property. Haven't noticed anything considerable but there are times when it does seem to be a bit lacking in speed but it disappears quickly.

So, as for you having a right to download as much as you want, fat chance. If you're getting away with leeching 24/7 at your connection's max, consider yourself lucky - for now because those days are coming to an end sooner or later...
 
I think that's crap, but I'm stuck with comcrap so nothing I can do about it. They're ALL that's available where I'm at. What will piss me off is not the fact that I download or upload files a lot...but I work at home, and have 2 VPN connections to 2 companies up running 24x7, plus my phone lines are VOIP and I'm on a lot of conference calls. I haven't watched my usage, but a lot of my job involves transferring iso's of both CD's and DVD's both to and from my laptop for work over the vpn connections.

I guess worse case scenario is that they slow my speeds down and I get to take a break while the stuff takes a week and a half to transfer :p
 
nst6563 said:
I think that's crap, but I'm stuck with comcrap so nothing I can do about it. They're ALL that's available where I'm at. What will piss me off is not the fact that I download or upload files a lot...but I work at home, and have 2 VPN connections to 2 companies up running 24x7, plus my phone lines are VOIP and I'm on a lot of conference calls. I haven't watched my usage, but a lot of my job involves transferring iso's of both CD's and DVD's both to and from my laptop for work over the vpn connections.

I guess worse case scenario is that they slow my speeds down and I get to take a break while the stuff takes a week and a half to transfer :p
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ok...wtf happened to the edit buttons???? could have swore they were there the last time I posted ...

anyway...I made no sense about downloading/uploading files alot...as I guess I do but over the VPN connection for work. Not personal dl/ul stuff.
 
This subforum doesn't allow editing your posts, so make sure you get it right the first time. :)
 
You know, every since comcast reopened the doors to P2P (and I never really felt the burden when it was shut) every night, about an hour after I get home, my pings across the map shoot from about 25ms to 185. I have called in just about every week and had them credit me for a few days, or even the whole week of service. It wasnt until this week that i put it together and figured maybe this was all due to a bunch of pirate kiddies with unfettered access to their p2p networks now crushing my connection.

My evening online consists of three things in the following order:

1) Read a few forums/blogs - easy enough even for a dialup user
2) Play some internet poker - again totally not bandwidth demanding
3) play some BF2 or CSS to relieve stress if I had a bad day - completely impossible these days with my new pings

It's all coming out of some overloaded high end AT&T backbone router in Georgia, which is where my pings go from 7ms within the comcast local routing to 180 or so as soon as it branches out. Just wish they'd invest more in their infrastructure to allow all of their users running at peak performance. I might seriously have to downgrade to some crappy 1.5mb DSL service because quite honestly, 1.5m DSL would probably perform better than my 6mb cable connect.
 
My particular issue isn't with Comcast's decision to throttle heavy-users - it's with the fact that until competition begins to threaten their profits, Comcast will do next-to-nothing to upgrade and improve their infrastructure. The biggest example of this is their HDTV service.

Because of the limitations of copper, they will often use compression or similar techniques to offer "HD" or "enhanced (e.g. widescreen) SD." The only issue is that their workarounds provide sub-par results at best when compared to dish or fiber services, especially with displays over 40". I've submitted multiple complaints on behalf of clients and, time-and-time again all I get back is, "our quality is comparable to other services." Technically they are right, since FiOS isn't offered in those areas and dish isn't an option for historic properties. So again instead of addressing the issue correctly, Comcast attempts to "short-cut" and slap the customer in the face.

On a final semi-related note, I have to say that Comcast really does have some balls:

I'll never forget the year Verizon finally received permission to lay their network and began working on new fiber and dish networks in our state. Mind you, that particular year I had logged over 50 individual service calls to Comcast both for my own home and on behalf of clients, and all for some REALLY frustratingly simple issues they refused to fix like a junction box that leaked, or a 78 year-old client who was without VoIP phone service for five days straight because they refused to send a technician to investigate what turned out to be a tech "accidentally" disabling her service from the box.

So Verizon threatens to compete with Comcast, consumers are rejoicing they'll finally have a choice, and Comcast launches an ad campaign requesting their customers to petition legislators to STOP Verizon from offering TV and fiber service! That day was the day I finally realized that Comcast honestly and sincerely does not care about the customer. Don't get me wrong; every company is ultimately about the bottom-line - but to me, Comcast has proven their complete disregard for the paying customer.

Needless-to-say; we switched to FiOS and couldn't be happier with fiber optic service (true HD, 1000+ channels, 20mbp/s down, 5mbp/s up, plus VoIP phone service with hard-wired battery backup (something I've never seen Comcast do) - all for $20 less a month than what I was paying Comcast). Verizon are no saints either and they are indeed experiencing major growing pains in our area as demand is quickly overwhelming supply (in the form of support); however, they are a million times better than Comcast ever was and they are bringing some much-needed competition. Good riddance Comcast...

Now that I'm filled with angst thinking about those horrible years with no choice save dial-up or over-the-air TV, I must share a classic story of which I'm sure will get a chuckle from all but the most die-hard Comcast fan-boyz (if there even is such a beast): http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15445805.

- James
 
How does beating up the market leader encourage competition?

Some of you people are living in a fantasy world.
 
If you are referring to the hammer story: completely unrelated to competition my friend... it's one of those feel good stories when we realize, just like she, that a company has only become the market leader because they are the default service in that particular area, often leaving many consumers with few attractive choices. My apologies, as I would have gathered one could make that distinction without need for clarification; clearly I was wrong.

If you were not referring to the linked story, then please disregard my comments altogether. Thank you.

- James
 
Comcast sucks, they just killed my connection for around 30 min. Missed the end of the semi-finals usa vs argentina, I hate comcast. Might even consider getting Qwest :eek:
 
MaStaFLaSH said:
Comcast sucks, they just killed my connection for around 30 min. Missed the end of the semi-finals usa vs argentina, I hate comcast. Might even consider getting Qwest :eek:
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Qwest sucks, but less than Comcast, and both comcast and qwest suck less than CableOne,

That's the problem with only one real choice. I'm stuck with 1.5 Qwest, because their infrastructure is older in my neighborhood. I would move, but we're in a house we're actually buying. I have to switch back to CrapbullOne now because 1.5 is just way too slow. When I had 7 meg Qwest (in the much smaller town I lived in right before buying this house) I was a cappy hamper! :p It was great. Latency was low, service was freaking fast, they had 898 up which was three times as fast as CrapbullOne's 256k up (at that time all they offered), and my DSL never slowed down with heavy traffic, and I got personal testimony from several that they would never throttle my bandwidth, even if I downloaded 15 gigs a day. And you know what? They never once throttled my bandwidth! I was happy.

Now I'm crabby again because 1.5 sux and Qwest has informed me that they have no intentions in the near future of upgrading this area, even though it is the heart of one of the larger cities in the state.

:mad:

that's why they ALL suck. Just in a certain order. I wish we had verizon fiber here....
 
I wish they would allow multiple providers in the same service area so we could choose what one we want :(.
 
Big Deal. When my Intel processor gets all worked up, it throttles back too.

So, spending all of this big money on a fast machine to be throttled back by Intel and now to be throttled back by Comcast really adds up to SLOW for my investment.

I'd be better off with a faster AMD and Verizon!
 
BBA said:
I tried comcast a few times, during the week days it was fast, at night or weekends my dial up was faster.

At least with DSL, my 6 MB is 6 MB no matter when I get online. I just wish they would go over 512 up...
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I'm sure it's a YMMV situation with any carrier. If I could have gotten AT&T a year ago, I would have, but it wasn't available. At this point, I'm satisfied with Comcast, which is more than I thought I'd ever say about them. I had them in Dallas, and the service went down several times/day. Here they started out OK, and went to hell last summer through sometime this year....and then recently the level of service went up dramatically.

It's not as good as I'd get in Dallas, Houston, or any other major city, at the same price point, but at least I don't feel like they're fucking with me whenever I seed something.....that and upstream is now between 800 and 1200kb/s
 
Heard this week that the courts ruled that none of them can throttle back your connection. :)
 
bmaverick said:
Heard this week that the courts ruled that none of them can throttle back your connection. :)
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Another comcraptic "customer" here. Options? dial-up or verizon DSL. Which you can only sign up for maybe once a year cause they're so oversold and the speeds are astoundingly bad - I tried it, oy ... and went back to dial up until I could get cable.

Started with Roadrunner and they were great. Almost never had downtime, got credit when we did or even a slow-down.

Then Comcast moves in and pushes RR west so there's no cable competition. And I live near a major university.

Know what, we get throttled ALL THE TIME, almost every night and definitely on weekends. There are times when it's not just a throttle, but I lose my internet for like a minute, then it comes back. Just about every weekend. Have had techs out, have had things re-wired, new modem, the works.

This has been happening for about a year, so courts saying no you can't notwithstanding, they are throttling.

I do not use p2p or torrents - ever. The only thing I do is internet dj'ing maybe 2 nights a week for an hour or 2. It is so embarrassing and frustrating to be "on the air" and suddenly see the panel showing as "off air" cause my internet just got cut for a minute ... cycled, whatever you want to call it. And no, I'm not using vast amounts of bandwidth, I have a desktop monitor and I think the most I've used in a night is about 15mb (up and down combined) - and that was last xmas eve when I was just streaming holiday music overnight.

They keep upping the monthly cost while giving less. I'm so sick of their crap in so many ways. But there's no real choice and they know it.
 
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