Comcast Internet throttling is up and running

[SomethingFishy*]

Comcast Internet throttling is up and running-Cunning plan replaces P2P blocking

COMCAST, the second-largest US cable television and Internet communications service provider, has a new broadband traffic throttling scheme installed and operating in all of its markets.

The ISP's new regime for restricting its customers' bandwidth utilisation replaces its former stealthy practice of arbitrarily blocking subscribers' peer-to-peer (P2P) upload traffic, which was criticised by the FCC last year after it was exposed by the Associated Press and others.

Comcast's filing with FCC (PDF) says it has put in new hardware and software technology at its Regional Network Routers locations to effect this cunning traffic management plan.

Its network throttling implements a two-tier packet queueing system at the routers, driven by two trigger conditions.

Comcast's first traffic throttling trigger is tripped by using more than 70 per cent of your maximum downstream or upstream bandwidth for more than 15 minutes.

Its second traffic throttling trigger is tripped when the Cable Modem Termination System you're hooked-up to – along with up to 15,000 other Comcast subscribers – gets congested, and your traffic is somehow identified as being responsible.

Tripping either of Comcast's high bandwidth usage rate triggers results in throttling for at least 15 minutes, or until your average bandwidth utilisation rate drops below 50 per cent for 15 minutes.

The Comcast two-tier traffic throttling system enforces different quality-of-service levels. Internet packets to and from a specific subscriber are assigned 'Priority Best Effort' (PBE) queueing by default, and the traffic rate is throttled by switching packets to lower priority 'Best Effort' (BE) queueing.

Comcast uses a bus analogy to explain how its two-tier traffic throttling system works:

"If there is no congestion, packets from a user in a BE state should have little trouble getting on the bus when they arrive at the bus stop. If, on the other hand, there is congestion in a particular instance, the bus may become filled by packets in a PBE state before any BE packets can get on. In that situation, the BE packets would have to wait for the next bus that is not filled by PBE packets."

According to the company, upstream and downstream traffic is managed separately, and its router packet queueing increments - the waiting time between each 'bus' in its analogy - are two milliseconds, or 1/500th of a second.

Comcast says that a throttled subscriber's connection that is forced into the lower BE quality of service queue "may or may not result in the user's traffic being delayed or, in extreme cases, dropped before PBE traffic is dropped."

Thus, Comcast's latest traffic throttling method can lead to transfers being blocked, too. But only in 'extreme cases' it says, so that's alright then.

Comcast has also imposed a monthly 250GB bandwidth usage cap on all of its customers, and it will, after one warning, terminate service for one year to those who exceed that cap twice within a six-month period.

So customers who signed up with Comcast as your ISP can be assured that the company will deliver only about half of the maximum bandwidth it advertises, on a consistent basis.

[Windy City]

That is one of the reasons, along with jacking my monthly bill up $60, that I just switched to A T & T and their you-verse. I will let you know after Feb 11 how it goes. Bye Bye Comcast. I am no longer one of your hostages.

Windy

[Central Bassman]

What does this mean? I was thinking of getting comcast internet in my new house because they are the only ones that really cover my area??

[SomethingFishy*]

Short answer for what this means is that you will not always get the speeds you are paying for. If at their discretion they feeling you are using more Bandwith (70%) than they would like to see they will slow your connection down temporarily until you are using less than 50% of the bandwith that you are paying for.

Gamers and people that download or stream things often (movies etc.) should be the ones concerned. Your basic web surfer/e-mail user s hould be minimally affected at this time.

But the question is where does this kind of monitoring stop? What kind of ethics does this company have?

[pinkfloyd4ever]

As Mick Foley would say, I need to take a carp and wipe my comcast!

[Central Bassman]

WOW, i guess i need to re-think my internet thinking, I dont't know what im going to get now!!

[SomethingFishy*]

WOW, i guess i need to re-think my internet thinking, I dont't know what im going to get now!!

I belive Embarq is an option in Chaska, I just reffered a customer in Maple Grove to them as I couldn't provide them with service.

[Sandmannd]

I used to have DSL and switched to Comcast High Speed about six years ago. The only thing I've noticed is that they made it faster. I do some downloading but not a lot. Now if you are watching movies a lot and they throttle you back a little during peak times, I've not heard that. Shawny B would be a good one to answer that. Doesn't really matter it me, it's still fast as heck.

[Dave S]

All of the Telecom companies seem to be scaling back and taking measures such as this. It allows them to minimize their capital expenditures but service a larger customer base at the same time.

Slower bandwidth makes more room for other users. I have my Hi-Speed internet through a satellite provider and within 3 months of surfing the web, our performance has been drastically cut back. I was left with a flat out denial from our ISP that they throttled us back even though we're paying for unlimited service.

Being on the opposite side as Somethingfishy in Telecommunications, I can attest to the lack of spending. We haven't come close to the Telecom explosion in '99 (Y2K scare) and probably never will.

[Central Bassman]

Who do you work for SF?

Embarq does have service in this area but you have to have a land line and i don't want to waste my money on a land line!!

[SomethingFishy*]

I work for a "local" phone company in my area, none of the afformentioned companies.