Comcast Beginning 'Net Neutrality' Testing

So if this is the case when will we be able to download HD content through digital distribution instead of buying Blu-ray?
 
Killa_2327 said:
QFTMFT

:)
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You guys have GOT to be kidding with this union crap. Unions exist in 2008 to get the most money for the least amount of work. I have worked along side union workers for the last 15 years in three different states. The sense of entitlement is unbelievable.

The only place labor unions fit into this discussion is in understanding the reasons why customer service was shipped overseas. If you think for a second that this country could exist today with every product and service provided by a union worker making $20 / hr you are fooling yourself.

The only legitimate problem that is even at play here is that lack of competition. Comcast can get away with what they do because people (myself included) have no other choice for broadband internet access. Verizon FIOS is coming and Comcast will be filing for bankruptcy when all is said and done if they don't get their act together. The only thing unionizing labor at Comcast would do is drive up their price.
 
um, but this in itself sounds like a protocal, a blow job is a blowjob and right now comcast is forcing people yet again to get on their knees and pucker up.

Listen comcast, the internet is only going to become more and more content rich, between torrenting, pron, and video game consoles downlading demos a gigabyte at a time, why not give us our fucking fiberoptics like we asked for and stop being a bunch of bitchtards

/rant

oh well, i was pouty because the article [H] posted earlier about internet speed packages showed comcast as being shitier than timewarner, hsi, charter and cox speed wise, but at least Comcast isnt toying with the idea of charging a dollar per gig of overusage like TW is experimenting with.
 
Ive hated comcast since i learned what downloading movies was...

However in my area there is ONLY Comcast and DIalup. Both suck ass but I guess at least on dialup id get my full connection lol

I used to be able to download at 500kb/s on torrents and browse the internet, or play games now ive had to drop mine to 300kb/s just to not lag. I have to say this is GAY as fuck...

However comcasts speeds are rated at UP to 4Mbs not 4Mbs see the diffrnce?

Yeah so i was even getting all happy because Sacramento has Fiber turns out the area im moving into only get Comcast as well... So im just pissed now. I wanted to setup a web server for myself...
 
Oldie said:
If they're up front about what they're doing, then you know the facts and can decide whether or not you want to use their service. I'm perfectly fine if the company produces a few millionaires. You don't get a lot of innovative new technologies from companies that don't make any money.
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People and Corporations want to get rich overnight with the least amount of effort. They seem to side the step the honorable way of going about it. It seems that lying and cheating is the norm for these types.

As Oldie stated, companies like Comcast sell you a service, praising all the while the supposed pluses of speed and quality, but as soon as they get the money, all that goes out the window. All of a sudden it is about what they didn't tell you that counts.

Paying for an ISP account should be a simple thing. I pay xx amount, they provide xx amount of quality speed and performance 24/7. I shouldn't have to worry about other hidden rules that weren't made clear to me BEFORE I signed up.

I had a Comcast account for 2 months. At the end of the first month, they called me and said that I used it to much. I asked what constituted to much. They wouldn't tell me anything other than they monthly tagged users that were in the top 1% of usage. They told me I had to cut back. I asked how much. They said that they wouldn't tell me that.
I cut back by 50% usage, but the next month, they cut me off without contacting me and telling me their intentions.

Now, I hear others talking about this 5% that use most of the bandwidth. I find that hard to believe, but even if it's true, what is wrong with using what I pay for? There has never been anything in any contract with any ISP that I've been with that said I couldn't use my connection that I pay for to it's fullest extent, nor should there be. An Internet connection that you pay for should be for the specified speed, at 24/7. That's it, no hidden agenda.

Companies like Comcast probably spend more that a half billion dollars a year advertising, FALSE advertising. Here's a wild suggestion. What if they spent that money updating their network to handle the bandwidth usage rather than taking the money of customers, then giving them less than what they pay for.

No, companies like Comcast will never come clean and be honest. They will spend their dying breath squeezing the customer dry, all the while doing nothing to up the quality of their service to standards that match the customer base. They count on those that pay premium prices for speeds they will never use. That's why this problem exists. They want to weed out customers that ACTUALLY USE their accounts to the fullest for those that don't. Obviously easier money for them, but nothing to do with being honest or reputable. Just another large company that doesn't give a damn about anything but the almighty buck.

I like money just as much as the next. Where I draw the line is how much of my integrity and honor I am expected to give up for it. Unfortunately these days, there's not many that feel the same. I like sleeping at night with a clear conscience.
 
"At the busiest times of the day on our network (which could occur at any time), those very few disproportionately heavy users, who are doing things like conducting numerous or continuous large file transfers, may experience slightly longer response times for some online activities, until the period of network congestion ends."
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Are they KIDDING? "may experience longer response times for some online activities" ... I live in Philly, about 5 blocks from a major university. For at least the the last 3 months starting around noonish Friday through Monday afternoon our internet is throttled bigtime. As in I've had it take almost 2-3 minutes for my homepage to open, let alone go to any other sites. Hell, AOL was faster than that and we all hate AOL.

And what does cc consider a "heavy user"? Someone who d/l idk, 200gigs in a weekend? 20 gigs? 10? They're not being transparent about what's "heavy". And if they're going to go forward with their 250gig/month thing, they better find a way to have something on your desktop so you can actually see how much you're using before you start getting hit with excess usage fees.

I don't do a ton of downloading (no torrents/p2p for music, etc.) or uploading - unless I know I need a reformat, something like that. Then I'll upload as much as I can to photobucket, etc. just to have a copy in case my external hd goes nuts.

And what is this going to do with things like Rhapsody, the Entertainment page (that has videos), Fancast (entire episodes of TV shows), etc., that are part OF Comcast? They're really shooting themselves in the foot. Not as bad as tw with that retarded 5gig a month thing, but still pretty pathetic.

What I do do on the weekends is internet dj'ing ... late friday night for 3 hours. Since we're already being throttled across the board there are times when I lose my connection to the database (dead air, big fun). And gods forbid I have more than, say, 3 FF tabs open along with the dj software. I've done speedtests and the numbers are like bad dsl (which I've already been through). If I wanted to deal with that I'd go back to dialup.

This is ridiculous, we're paying Comcrap a ton of money and for what ... for them to tell us what we're allowed and not allowed to use the service we're paying for or end up getting our hands slapped by slowing everything down? I'm truly sick and tired of the monopoly the cable companies have - only 1 cable company in an area. Where's the incentive for cc, rr, tw or any other cable company to actually give good service and maybe even at a decent monthly fee when they know there's no other choice.

FIOS for us is not an option - we don't have it, there's a good chance we're not going to get it, and if they have to dig up the yard, well, my roomie owns the house and has thousands invested in things like rare english roses, etc. No way she's going to allow her garden to be mauled. Plus FIOS is even more expensive - and I'm on a fixed income, so my cable is about as much as I can afford.

Verizon DSL I had for less than a month, constant fighting with them, speeds were nowhere near what was advertised and right now they're not even accepting customers. That leaves dialup *shudder* or deal with comcrap's bull. Not sure which is worse.

Personally, I see all this as a way for cc and all the other cable companies to find a way to make more money. Don't like that throttle or cap? Here, pay $100 a month and we'll give you "unlimited" ... still with the ambiguous "up to" crap of course.
 
It sounds to me like they are doing something simliar to that d-link gaming router. It gives gaming packets priority. If they are metering based on the type of packets rather then user, I don't have a problem. If my downloads take a bit longer but I have awesome ping times during peek periods, sounds like a win/win to me.
 
jdraughn said:
It sounds to me like they are doing something simliar to that d-link gaming router. It gives gaming packets priority. If they are metering based on the type of packets rather then user, I don't have a problem. If my downloads take a bit longer but I have awesome ping times during peek periods, sounds like a win/win to me.
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Give'em an inch, and they'll take your wallet and your daughter's virginity. Its all or nothing in the neutrality game. No joke.
 
I've seen 28mb down and 3mb up on my 16/2 comcast connection. I consistently see 16mb down and 2mb up with torrents and FTPs...

I've always gotten my advertised speed, I only got bitched at back in January for using 600+ GB of bandwidth (Got an invite to bit-hdtv >_< )

I haven't gotten any warnings as of late, so I'm assuming they a.) stopped checking or b.) I'm not hitting the limit.

The problem back in January is I was on the 4mb down/ .3 mb up service which was ungodly slow, and I still raped their bandwidth. I have 4x the speed down and 6-7x the speed up now, and they're lowering the limit even further?

Meh, as long as they TELL me what the limit is, and give me a realistic way to meter our entire household's bandwidth (5 Individuals, multiple computers for 3 of the Individuals, Xbox, Wii, Laptops, etc.)
 
If Verizon ever tries that crap with FIOS, I'm going back to bright house. That's all i have to say.
 
Not all unions workers have that sense of entitlement. But I agree with you that possibly most have it. Understand that many jobs require Union membership. So it's damned if you do, damned if you don't.
I work for a Canadian Airline and our Union is constantly "in bed" with them. Union nowadays only care that you remain employeed so they continue receiving your dues. It's just another god damned racket. Hoffa is the number 1 thief IMO.
 
shagg said:
Not all unions workers have that sense of entitlement. But I agree with you that possibly most have it. Understand that many jobs require Union membership. So it's damned if you do, damned if you don't.
I work for a Canadian Airline and our Union is constantly "in bed" with them. Union nowadays only care that you remain employeed so they continue receiving your dues. It's just another god damned racket. Hoffa is the number 1 thief IMO.
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the previous in response to deadrody.
 
Comcast SUCKS. Period.

Instead of trying to cap people's online experience, they should be focusing of sinking some of their ENORMOUS PROFITS into improving their fucking network.

FUCK COMCAST.
 
I thought the U.S. government was going to get involved to stop ISP's from throttling connections? I know in Canada that the NDP party wants to see legislation to stop ISP's from doing it but unfortunately the NDP is not in power. Instead we have the wannabe Republican party in power, who, like the Republicans in the U.S., do whatever big business demands.

I don't use P2P anymore but if they started to throttle Steam etc. also I would be livid.
 
BTW, there is a very good reason we have unions in the first place. Look into the history of how they came about and you will see it was necessary. If all employers treated employees with respect and fairness then there would never had been a need for them in the first place.
 
Now where is that internet service that suppose to be able to use the electricy running from ur house?
 
Scroatdog said:
Comcast SUCKS. Period.

Instead of trying to cap people's online experience, they should be focusing of sinking some of their ENORMOUS PROFITS into improving their fucking network.

FUCK COMCAST.
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http://www.forbes.com/static/pvp2005/LIR1BLX.html

How will Brian Robers survive without all that money?

Answer? He can't he needs it all. Why would he spend money into R+D and implementing DOCSIS 3.0 when hes making all the money he needs right now fucking every single customer they have. It's easy when your on top. And it's even easier to stay on top when you have good lobbyists.

Comcast spends millions of dollars annually on government relationships. Regularly Comcast employs the spouses, sons and daughters of influential mayors, councilmen, commissioners, and other officials to assure its continued preferred market allocations.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comcast#Controversies
 
JimmiG said:
I honestly don't understand the point of "throttling". Why not offer only lower bandwidth options instead?

-Try out our new 24Mb option, it's blazing fast... Oh, unless you actually try to *use* all that bandwidth. Then we'll throttle you to an average of 2Mb.

What's the point of having a high-bandwidth option when they apparently don't have the capacity to support it? Sure, you get "bursts" of 24Mb, but if you were to download large files all day, the average would be much lower than 24Mb due to throttling
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The point is to let heavy users consume the available bandwidth during off-peak times, yet letting light users have a chance to use the connection they're paying for during peak times.

I have no problem with the concept, but the whole process needs to be more open. At the bare minimum, they need a status page where you can see the status of the network and determine if you're being throttled or not.
 
What comes to my mind is that Comcast commercial I keep seeing with the Baseball being thrown at ultra fast speeds. Their motto, and i quote, "Comcast, making fast, faster...." Those confused fucking monkeys.
 
milkweg said:
I thought the U.S. government was going to get involved to stop ISP's from throttling connections? I know in Canada that the NDP party wants to see legislation to stop ISP's from doing it but unfortunately the NDP is not in power. Instead we have the wannabe Republican party in power, who, like the Republicans in the U.S., do whatever big business demands.

I don't use P2P anymore but if they started to throttle Steam etc. also I would be livid.
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Well, we have a Democrat coming in to fix that.


:D:p;):rolleyes::eek:
 
WIthin this past week I've noticed the internet is slower. I was beginning to think it was just my computer or some of the servers I was connecting to... I'm wondering if it's comcast at it again...
 
All this talk about FiOS and comcrap is seriously about to make my cry.

Where i live i have 2 options for telcos. Comcast or AT&T. Basically it is a case of trying to choose the one that sucks less. My choices are to deal with this comcast BS or switch to DSL. Unfortunatly with my location from the DSLAM all i can get from AT&T is 768k DSL.

While all this is going on AT&T has basically given the state of CT the middle finger in terms of their commitment to the market because the state told them they will hold them to the same requirements of a cable company in terms of consumer protections if they offer TV service. So at this time AT&T has no plans to introduce lightspeed to the market.

At the same time i am dealing with the BS that is comcast customer service. At my house i am recieving a -4 signal at the drop and after the 3 way split none of the TVs in my house recieve reliable HD signals. It is constantly dropping and freezing and they have sent a tech out twice just to say that -4 is what they consider acceptable and by the way since there is no problem here is your bill for the service call.
 
balthan said:
I have no problem with the concept, but the whole process needs to be more open. At the bare minimum, they need a status page where you can see the status of the network and determine if you're being throttled or not.
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Good point.
 
Loki008 said:
All this talk about FiOS and comcrap is seriously about to make my cry.

Where i live i have 2 options for telcos. Comcast or AT&T. Basically it is a case of trying to choose the one that sucks less. My choices are to deal with this comcast BS or switch to DSL. Unfortunatly with my location from the DSLAM all i can get from AT&T is 768k DSL.

While all this is going on AT&T has basically given the state of CT the middle finger in terms of their commitment to the market because the state told them they will hold them to the same requirements of a cable company in terms of consumer protections if they offer TV service. So at this time AT&T has no plans to introduce lightspeed to the market.

At the same time i am dealing with the BS that is comcast customer service. At my house i am recieving a -4 signal at the drop and after the 3 way split none of the TVs in my house recieve reliable HD signals. It is constantly dropping and freezing and they have sent a tech out twice just to say that -4 is what they consider acceptable and by the way since there is no problem here is your bill for the service call.
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Time Warner tried to do that to me once when i had connection probs. They said" the modem looks fine" when it was dropping packets like crazy. I got a replacement modem and all was fine again. In my area my only choices are RR and AT&T dsl, with AT&T wanting to rape you on price if you don't want home phone service (double the quoted price easy). I have the 10/1 plan and i always get my speeds 24/7 not a problem. I really hope that the Beaumont experiment fails utterly so i don't see that BS here.
 
milkweg said:
I thought the U.S. government was going to get involved to stop ISP's from throttling connections?
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Here's my take on this:
Comcast was inspecting traffic packets. If they determined that a user was doing something such as a bit torrent or other P2P, then they would throttle back that user. But the government (or digital rights groups?) said "You can't do that. You have to treat all types of network traffic equally".
So Comcast's new approach is to throttle back heavy users (regardless of the type of traffic) that use too much network capacity in times of peak useage.

This seems reasonable to me, perhaps even necessary. If a network is operating at 100% of capacity, and say 5% of the users are responsible for 50% of the traffic, then throttling 5% of the users will improve perfomance for the other 95%.
The devil is in the details. i.e. at what threshold does throttling engage and how much is any one user throttled back.

Of course a preferred solution is to improve overall network capacity to avoid congestion so throttling isn't required. But with increased capacity comes increased useage and eventually you end up with a congested network again, and the same issue will resurface.
 
While its still pretty craptastic of Comcast... throttling is better than be completely shut off, which is what my ISP does without warning to you if you use excessive amounts of bandwidth. When this happened to my the rep told me that I couldn't download music at all.... I'm sure that was an exaggeration but thats what she told me. I have Ygnition at my apartments which is the only option beside ATT which is what I am switching to now unfortunately. Atleast they dont regulate the amount of bandwidth you use...because I am gonna need it now that got in on that sweet deal for MS Technet.
 
Kugar said:
But with increased capacity comes increased useage and eventually you end up with a congested network again, and the same issue will resurface.
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That doesn't really make any sense. If you pay for the advertiseed 7Mbit connection, or whaever it is. You should be getting that, at least most of the time. Increased capacity does not increase usage.

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).
 
Here fios has continually been raising their rates, so it's not much better of an option anymore.. I've now had it for 2 years since its been out, and it has gone from 34.99 to 39.99, and now from 39.99 to 47.99. I called and told them to disconnect me after they raised it to 47.99, hoping they would budge on their price in an attempt to keep me as a customer, but they did nothing. This is for their base 5mb/2mb service. Comcast has been advertising 6 months of their high speed service for 19.99, and I've kept thinking about switching. I don't do too much anymore in the form of downloading, or even heavy gaming, so any broadband connection is pretty reasonable for me. But comcast sneaks in a $80 installation fee, so at this point they can go f themselves for their shady advertisements.
 
You can always get 768 k dsl for $20, if they have it in your area. Should be ok for surfing
 
Scroatdog said:
Comcast SUCKS. Period.

Instead of trying to cap people's online experience, they should be focusing of sinking some of their ENORMOUS PROFITS into improving their fucking network.

FUCK COMCAST.
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Comcrap does suck ass. Yesterday they cut off my On Demand because I am not paying for the useless $45/mo expanded basic.. I only have Basic, Digital Preferred, HBO and Showtime. My cable bill between modem and cable service is $130/mo, and now I am required to pay nearly $180/mo if I want On Demand access, even for HBO and Showtime, which I already pay $17.95/mo each for.

Christ. That and my internet is all sluggish now. I wish I could fucking get something other than Comcrap where I live. But here it's Comcrap or nothing, so I get mercilessly fisted.
 
Oh4Sh0 said:
Here fios has continually been raising their rates, so it's not much better of an option anymore.. I've now had it for 2 years since its been out, and it has gone from 34.99 to 39.99, and now from 39.99 to 47.99. I called and told them to disconnect me after they raised it to 47.99, hoping they would budge on their price in an attempt to keep me as a customer, but they did nothing. This is for their base 5mb/2mb service. Comcast has been advertising 6 months of their high speed service for 19.99, and I've kept thinking about switching. I don't do too much anymore in the form of downloading, or even heavy gaming, so any broadband connection is pretty reasonable for me. But comcast sneaks in a $80 installation fee, so at this point they can go f themselves for their shady advertisements.
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I thought FIOS there was a way to have a "lifetime" contract (which may or may not be a good thing in the long haul) ... but if you have that contract your monthly fee is locked in.

I'd heard FIOS was more waaaay more expensive that cable - but I gotta tell you, even with your price increases? you're still paying less than I am for 6/1 cable. AND you're not being across the board throttled. I do NOT use torrents or p2p for music/movies, etc. (I don't even know how - and don't want to). But everyone in my neighborhood IS and has been throttled for the last few months. I'm guessing cause there's alot of students in the 'hood. Easier to just cut everyone back than take a closer look at who truly is the "heavy user" - and I still want to know what their definition of "heavy" is.

As a test, I'm d/l an 8.3 mb mp3 - from a friend for my own personal use. 124kb/sec right now. Now if I d/l that same mp3 tomorrow night (friday) it would probably be more around 60kb/sec - I've gone as low as 35kb/sec on a small d/l (like a legal free utility ... think spywareblaster) on weekends.


The comcast install fee is insane, they totally hose you for every penny they can get out of you - and that $80 installation? that for us at least was PER TV. If you do end up getting comcast? get the $3 and something monthly service plan - that covers anything wiring wise from I think? it's either 6 or 12 feet from you house to inside the house. Anything further away is basically on them - their wiring, their problem. The $10 a month modem rental per box is a treat if you have cable TV (gods I wish we could have dish!), then the $3 a month rental fee for internet modem, then 15 kinds of taxes on everything. Oh, and we don't even have HD yet - we're using perfectly well working 26" analog tvs.

Yeah, I'm paying like $130 for cable tv and internet.
 
ditzilla said:
Yeah, I'm paying like $130 for cable tv and internet.
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I have been with comcast for like 8 years. I always keep my eyes open for a different ISP, but they always have large $200.00+ setup fees and contracts, and they aren't even faster, or are about the same speed as comcast.

For the last two years I have been paying 55.00 for basic cable and 8mb/s internet from comcast. My internet is great. it is never slow or laggy, I get 1MB/s downloads, never less. I like comcast. It's fast and cheap.

I can't wait for 50mb/s speeds. I don't think I would pay the 150.00 they will supposidly charge for it, but i will have to wait and see.
 
This was in reply to my statement
"But with increased capacity comes increased useage and eventually you end up with a congested network again, and the same issue will resurface."

Shmuckety said:
That doesn't really make any sense. If you pay for the advertiseed 7Mbit connection, or whaever it is. You should be getting that, at least most of the time. Increased capacity does not increase usage.
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Of course it is true. Maybe you just aren't old enough to remember when PC's and the Internet were in its infancy.
My first modem was 300 Baud. Later I got 2400 baud, then 14.4k, then 56k, and finally a cable modem in 1998.
How much music and movie downloading do you think was going on in the 80's and early 90's? It was a trickle compared to today. Why? Largely because the dialup networks were too slow to support that. How many people today download movies or HDTV via a 56k modem? Probably not too many because it takes forever. Its only feasible large scale with broadband connections. Faster speeds led to more bandwidth hungry downloads.

The future of TV is IPTV. Usage of DVD and Blu-Ray will decrease, along with watching/Tivoing cable and satelite. We'll get our content directly from the internet. People will be able to stream high-def TV and movies to their HDTVs and PC's. It is possible today. But imagine if EVERYONE today tried to do that. The networks would collapse under the strain. A lot more network capacity is required to support that kind of usage model by the masses.

Do you really think that our network usage won't increase in the future when networks are far faster that they are today?
 
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