Comcast Beginning 'Net Neutrality' Testing

Shmuckety said:
Overselling to customers and then capping their bandwidth because you don't have the capacity is bullshit. Normally a customer would go elsewhere, but many people don't have a choice because Crapcast is the only provider in their area for "high speed" internet. (If you can call it that).
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If you want a dedicated line, you have to pay for a dedicated line. A dedicated T-1 costs more than cable internet, and it's limited to 1.544 Mbps.

Overselling makes sense, from an economic standpoint. Not everyone is going to be using 100% all the time, so building the infrastructure to support that is wasteful. Take telephones, if everyone tried to make a call at the same time, the lines get jammed. It makes no sense for telcos to buy, install, and maintain all the necessary equipment to allow everyone to makes calls simulatenously.

There are basically three options going forward:

1. Status quo. A very small segment using a disproportionately large ammount of available bandwidth and negatively impact the quality of service for a larger number users. To combat this, ISPs occasionally boot the biggest offenders.

2. Metered access. Pay for how much you use, like other utilities. I think this would have a "chilling" effect on progress and futher delay things such as digital distrubtion of movies (especially hi-def.)

3. Throttling. During periods of high traffic, heavy users are capped to allow other users to use the service they're paying for. During off-peak times, all users are allowed unfettered access.


Personally, I think number 3 is the best option as it still allows heavy users a chance to get good speeds during off-peak hours.
 
Or maybe they shouldn't offer 7Mbit speeds they can't deliver...

it's like a traffic cop telling you that you have to do 30mph because there's too many people doing 55mph in a 55mph zone.
 
Gambit said:
Or maybe they shouldn't offer 7Mbit speeds they can't deliver...

it's like a traffic cop telling you that you have to do 30mph because there's too many people doing 55mph in a 55mph zone.
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Or maybe they can deliver 7Mbits, but only for a brief time. In which case the ads should clearly say so. Heck, ISPs should be required to list (or at least make easily available) information pertaining to traffic management, bandwidth caps, and what speeds you are guaranteed for a particular plan (for example, guaranteeing 75% of the advertised bandwidth 90% of the time during peak business hours when you live 2000 meters or closer to the ISPs central office or network hub). Nowadays, any ISP will probably point to their fine print saying that their advertised speeds are not guarantees; so you can just get half of that and they're not obligated to change their marketing, fix your speed problem, or partially refund you for not being able to reach those speeds.
 
The government has spent hundreds of millions of our dollars to fund the internet backbone. These telco and major service providers are benefitting from that. They don't pay the $15,000 per month you would have to pay for a OC-3 line. We paid for the backbone and we will continue to pay for infrastructure in the future. This is then given away to companies for them to charge us more money to use it.

Don't try and tell me that comcast will go broke and its bad business for them to guarantee any acceptable level of service.
 
Sprkslfly said:
Ahh, but that's the 'beauty' of ISP's overselling a product that they can't provide!! :eek:
They *count on* people not doing that.
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Just like the airlines. they sell 115% of all flights, and it turns out, usually 15% of people usually don't make it... but when 101% make it to their flight... somebody gets fucked
 
Lets compare it to cell phones. If you have unlimited minutes and you are on the phone 16 hours a day, does the phone company start dropping your calls during peak hours or not allow you to make calls during peak hours?

All you can do is tell your customers what minimum bandwidth they can expect, not tell them every year that their service has become faster. The new advertising campaign can be "512Kbit, sort of high speed internet. Unless you are on between the times of 2am-6am then you get 4Mbit service, maybe"
 
I have a question. A friend of mine has Comcast but he also uses Vonage. Will he be considered a bandwidth hog for using his phone?? What would happen in that case? Lower phone quality? Dropped calls?
 
I already dropped their punk asses. The connection dropped all the time and I'm not even a bandwidth hog, so I went with Verizon FiOS.
 
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