Comcast Admits Delaying Some Traffic

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Comcast, after repeated denials and statements to the contrary, has finally admitted to filtering P2P traffic but said it was done to “improve” surfing for other users.

"During periods of heavy peer-to-peer congestion, which can degrade the experience for all customers, we use several network management technologies that, when necessary, enable us to delay — not block — some peer-to-peer traffic. However, the peer-to-peer transaction will eventually be completed as requested," Bowling said.
 
:eek:

^^ this is me pretending to be shocked and dismayed.

Now the question remains: are they going to do anything about this admission?
 
They lied before, how much you want to bet this comment is a bunch of PR Crap as well.
 
They lied before, how much you want to bet this comment is a bunch of PR Crap as well.

Exactly. What does it gain them to lie about it and piss people off when they have to know they'll be caught out eventually? Does it take that long to prepare a PR statement or something?

Companies (and politicians) think they can dissemble and make it right with meaningless fluff. Eventually we need to hold them responsible for it.
 
Anyone expecting a straight answer from a company that offers unlimited internet access with an invisible & variable download cap needs to be checked for sanity.



Thank god my DSL is rock steady and I don't need to rely on Comcast.
 
Anyone expecting a straight answer from a company that offers unlimited internet access with an invisible & variable download cap needs to be checked for sanity.



Thank god my DSL is rock steady and I don't need to rely on Comcast.

QFT!
 
I just got a 15% Internet rate increase from them also.

6Mbit just went to $50 in my area from $42, and 8Mbit just went to $67.95
 
But whatever they are using works.. my torrent program can't download or upload anything.. at least my surfing the internet doesn't suffer anymore.. yet im disappointed that my "unlimited internet access" limits me to just surfing the internet fast but not download or upload with the speed I am buying from them for 59 bucks a month....
If only dsl works in my area, id switch right away..
 
They're filtering traffic to make up for their shitty exchanges.

Not like my ISP doesn't. :(
 
I have a fantastic idea: instead of spending money on PR damage control and man-hours (and infrastructure) for P2P filtering, why don't they start building a higher bandwidth infrastructure so that it's no longer an issue.
 
yes thats an excellent idea. comcast should spend millions of dollars upgrading their network so that the 0.5% of their customer base can continue to be leeches. thats pure genius. :rolleyes:
 
yes thats an excellent idea. comcast should spend millions of dollars upgrading their network so that the 0.5% of their customer base can continue to be leeches. thats pure genius. :rolleyes:

Actually Comcast limit uploading/seeding therefore upgrading their exchanges will help to prevent leeching. :)

They could always charge more for unlimited.
 
yes thats an excellent idea. comcast should spend millions of dollars upgrading their network so that the 0.5% of their customer base can continue to be leeches. thats pure genius. :rolleyes:

comcast should upgrade there networks and matain them they are getting pissy atm casue they are reaching there limits maybe and loosing people to lower price isp's comcast has 3 packages 4/6/8 they need to addin a 2 and 1mbs package i am prolly jumping to wow or att very soon casue comcast is raking me over the coals
 
true but you see the point i hope? comcast isnt going to shell out a ton of money because a very small segment of their customer base can no longer use p2p.
 
God I'm so glad I'm not stuck with Comcast - what a bunch of assholes.

Does rhexis work for them? :rolleyes:
 
true but you see the point i hope? comcast isnt going to shell out a ton of money because a very small segment of their customer base can no longer use p2p.

Yes I see your valid point.

They should at least disable this "feature" during non-peak times so that torrenting can happen.
 
Want a real solution?

Do what other countries do: charge per unit of bandwidth. If they lower their base cost, then charge per unit over a certain quantity, this move would be seen as a positive to most, since their bills would be less, and to those that want more then they have to decide if it's worth the money to download.

It's already done with electricity, water, gas, etc. It makes sense here, but "unlimited" sounds better since most people wouldn't know what 100 gigabits of bandwidth per month meant. That can be fixed with an informative commercial instead of "comcastic" bullshit.

What they need to not do is charge up the ass for that unit over the base, because then they will drive that consumer base to other ISPs. But a reasonable (as compared to the base) price would allow people to truly think about how they want to use their internet.

In addition to this, they need to get rid of the "8 megabit/s bandwidth" bullshit too. We all know that when it comes down to it, it has to be balanced, so if you're charging by the unit, it only makes economical sense to allow maximal bandwidth usage. Use a load balancer and this is all peachy. Now they could still have a lower/capped bandwidth (maybe 2mb/s) with unlimited usage option, and this would allow them to segment the market pretty well.

Now if only companies made sense.
 
While I'm not a Comcast subscriber juarez p2p user, I do have to admit that Comcast basically lying about filtering p2p is shady and this admission points out that their capability to deliver bandwidth to their customers regardless of usage is a lie.
 
Good thing I have a choice of 2 cable internet providers in my neighborhood. I used to have Commiecast, but their service was terrible, and it still is from what my neighbors tell me. The internet would go down at least 2 or 3 times a day, DNS servers would always have trouble, etc. But they admit their networks are having slowdowns.. well, I guess they are unable to provide the capacity they advertise so they must slow down, stop, or throttle their subscribers. That's terrible. I know they haven't updated their network in years.. at least in my area. Customers paying $50 per month or more for their internet are really getting screwed. At least they could maintain their network and scale the speeds as time goes on without raising prices to $100+ per month.
 
1. How about investing in better infrastructure instead of paying some PR team 60K/year per head to come up with this BS.
2. We pay $42 a month for 10Mbit internet - this is the standard cable package from my ISP, there's also a pro package that costs $72 that gets you 16Mbit and a higher bandwidth bracket. P2P traffic on my ISP's network is shaped, but ONLY after you've gone past the 60Gb bandwidth mark. This has allowed my ISP to offer mostly 'net neutral' service to everyone, and still manage heavy users.

PS - I'm in Canada. I can't believe the Monopolistic broadband market in the US has persisted for this long. We have a ton of competition here due to regulations that require the big telecos to lease their lines.
 
My ISP throttles bandwith during the hours of 4pm and 11pm from 20/1 to 5/0.25 when you transfer 3gb of data. Sure that means I can reach the cap really easy but hey, IMO for £35 it's good value.
 
true but you see the point i hope? comcast isnt going to shell out a ton of money because a very small segment of their customer base can no longer use p2p.
They will when the negative publicity starts cutting into their bottom line. A lot more than 1% use P2P applications at least once a month, and they'd give their business to someone who isn't jacking with their connection.
 
Want a real solution?

Do what other countries do: charge per unit of bandwidth.

<Envisions comcast charging $5.00 per megabit of bandwidth over the allocated 20MB monthly limit> The thing with comcast... Their networks are crap, at least from the way im looking at it. Each coax cable network has what... 30Mb of down bandwidth? Wiki is saying 38 for DOCSIS 2.0, and 152 for DOCSIS 3.0... The unknown variable in this is how many "High speed internet" customers they have on each network. Though, simple math says 40 divided by 8 = 5... And at my apartment complex, just this unit im in has about 30 people, with comcast wiring running to one single box... assuming all of these units are on the same coax network, I cant imagine how comcast could provide adequate internet service AND allow anyone to actually use their connection for anything that eats bandwidth, like torrenting.

Yeah... Of course not everyone here has internet, and not everyone will be using it at the same moment, and not everyone will be downloading a file at the same moment in time... but my point is, it will only take 5 people *using* their connection before the entire network is brought down to a pace which would make dialup seem impressive. Doesn't comcast offer 16Mb Cable internet, in areas competing with FIOS? Or was it 12Mb?

Either way, comcast (or any other cable internet provider for that matter) isnt going to be able to provide internet service worth the customers money, if people actually use it. Im paying nearly $60.00 a month for their basic plan (just internet), and I expect to be able to use $60.00 worth of it. Im not exactly sure how much bandwidth would fit in under that, but considering I used about

DSL providers might be able to adjust to it, but comcast cant run out and dig up coax and "add" more bandwidth magically, without it costing money... Lots of money. One might think that one of the wealthiest nations in the world, would be a place to find recent advancements in technology, such as with internet... No, I suppose not. Though I suppose that is more of a political issue than an actual arguable issue.

The main point of my rambling is change : Comcast - Either keep up with it, or get run over by it. Cable internet providers, at the rate they are moving, will not be able to compete with much of anything. As ive said before, unfortunatly, what comcast is doing is probably a sign of things to come.
 
They will when the negative publicity starts cutting into their bottom line. A lot more than 1% use P2P applications at least once a month, and they'd give their business to someone who isn't jacking with their connection.

seriously the only thing that will make comcast upgrade their infrastructure is verizon fios. that is the driver for network upgrading right there. also when i say 1% p2p users im talking about the heavy downloaders not the occasional wow patchers but the people who spend everyday downloading/uploading gig upon gig of porn, movies, and warez. thats the 1%.
comcast, if they wanted to, could terminate them all and it wouldnt make a difference to their bottom line.
of all the people that got the too much bandwidth letters and were disconnected how many of them were heavy bittorrent users? i would say most if not all of them. of course this is only my opinion and i could be wrong but its highly unlikely that i am :)
 
<Envisions comcast charging $5.00 per megabit of bandwidth over the allocated 20MB monthly limit> The thing with comcast... Their networks are crap, at least from the way im looking at it. Each coax cable network has what... 30Mb of down bandwidth? Wiki is saying 38 for DOCSIS 2.0, and 152 for DOCSIS 3.0... The unknown variable in this is how many "High speed internet" customers they have on each network. Though, simple math says 40 divided by 8 = 5... And at my apartment complex, just this unit im in has about 30 people, with comcast wiring running to one single box... assuming all of these units are on the same coax network, I cant imagine how comcast could provide adequate internet service AND allow anyone to actually use their connection for anything that eats bandwidth, like torrenting.

Yeah... Of course not everyone here has internet, and not everyone will be using it at the same moment, and not everyone will be downloading a file at the same moment in time... but my point is, it will only take 5 people *using* their connection before the entire network is brought down to a pace which would make dialup seem impressive. Doesn't comcast offer 16Mb Cable internet, in areas competing with FIOS? Or was it 12Mb?

Either way, comcast (or any other cable internet provider for that matter) isnt going to be able to provide internet service worth the customers money, if people actually use it. Im paying nearly $60.00 a month for their basic plan (just internet), and I expect to be able to use $60.00 worth of it. Im not exactly sure how much bandwidth would fit in under that, but considering I used about

DSL providers might be able to adjust to it, but comcast cant run out and dig up coax and "add" more bandwidth magically, without it costing money... Lots of money. One might think that one of the wealthiest nations in the world, would be a place to find recent advancements in technology, such as with internet... No, I suppose not. Though I suppose that is more of a political issue than an actual arguable issue.

The main point of my rambling is change : Comcast - Either keep up with it, or get run over by it. Cable internet providers, at the rate they are moving, will not be able to compete with much of anything. As ive said before, unfortunatly, what comcast is doing is probably a sign of things to come.

Comcast does compete with FIOS when FIOS penetrates the market for that area, but not before. The second Verizon goes live, they send out complimentary notices to you saying congratulations we have just upgraded your service for free, to like 8 or 10mbit. They have the network installed to give you higher speeds. However you will pay what you are now for as slow as it is, why bother increasing total bandwidth to everyone.
 
what i don't get is, there is fios available in newport news, i can see city hall outside of my window (about 1000 ft) and i can't get fios. :(. oh well, cox is better than comcast any day :D
 
yes thats an excellent idea. comcast should spend millions of dollars upgrading their network so that the 0.5% of their customer base can continue to be leeches. thats pure genius. :rolleyes:
Hmmm..... I must have fallen asleep and missed the part where the 0.5% of their customer base held down the ceo, fingered him in the anus and made him lie (repeatedly, even after they were busted they still lied like a child) about their glorious unlimitedness while they roll in million after million. Pure genius indeed :rolleyes:
 
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