- Saturday, 11 July 2009
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Comcast could be punished for throttling
THE US FEDERAL Communications Commission is likely to punish Comcast for breaking net neutrality laws.
Comcast got into trouble for blocking Internet traffic among users of a certain type of "file sharing" software.
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told AP that the commission had adopted a set of principles that protects consumers' access to the Internet and Comcast's actions violated them.
He said that Comcast "arbitrarily" blocked Internet access, regardless of the level of traffic, and failed to tell anyone it was doing it.
Comcast denied it blocked Internet content or services and that the " carefully limited measures" it did run were all about sensible network management.
Martin will order Comcast to stop its practice of blocking, provide details to the extent and manner in which the practice has been used and to disclose to consumers details on future plans for managing its network going forward.
If the commission backs him, and it is very likely to do so, then Comcast will be fined. µ
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AP
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YES!! in your face! you better think twice before you block my traffic again.
Since then, they've already tested bandwidth limiting to (x)gigabytes/month. From what I've gathered, they've already implemented this in Cali.
`Comcast got into trouble for blocking Internet traffic among users of a certain type of "file sharing" software.'

Perhaps FCC Chairman Kevin Martin could also look into the common practice of blocking ALL inbound traffic? The fact that ISPs like Comcast are preventing their customers from running their own services, such as a web server, on their own computers at home via their "Internet connection" is far more serious than the tampering with torrent traffic (not that I would approve any manipulation by an ISP). How long is it going to take the FCC to address the most basic problem with today's Internet?

ISPs in Europe are no better. Any word from the pussies in the European Parliament? Can we have true net neutrality by law, without any interference by the ISPs? Or do the pussies have to bow to their masters in Hollywood?

Right on
Great news! Telcos like comcast should not be allow to dictate how the internet runs. Hope the FCC will reign down on them heavily and not give them a punishment that will make a mockery of the situation.It's high time the FCC prove to us its usefulness because it seems the critics who are calling for it to be dismantle seems to be growing in numbers daily: Abolish the FCC!(http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=466&doc_id=140252&F_src=flftwo)
The problem here is P2P applications tend to suck all available bandwidth. If you have a 1mb connection, it gets it all. If you have a 100mb connection, the same holds true.

The customer is paying, in my case, $50 for their portion of a $650 connection. If they just use it for browsing, email, games, etc, I never have problems.

Just starting up, I have 2 customers that will shut down the network for everyone else with BitTorrent. There is no way, financially, to support these two customers paying $50 to saturate a $650 connection, aside from billing them both half of my backbone cost. Traffic shaping must happen, even *for* them, or they'll complain they can't browse the net because their connection is slow, despite the fact that their single BT client is hogging all the bandwidth. Its a lose/lose situation.

If the *torrent program writers would work with the ISP's rather than try to circumvent them, we'd all be in better shape. I cannot service a rural area and have 2 out of 10 customers use my full bandwidth 24/7.

Furthermore, paperwork has just crossed my desk from the Feds looking into illegal movie downloads. Our service is damned by the kids downloading movies, the Feds are trying to find and stop them, but we're not allowed to limit they're impact on the rest of the system?
I see this example as big corporations' these days look more like cartels (99c per song) are trying to build communism for them selves and to protect their income forever and leave us in harsh capitalist environment with minimal pay. WHy the hell I am paid once being an engineer and they like to be paid every time somebody turns radio ON????
The FCC isn't saying you can't regulate users to the bandwidth they PAY for! I.E..If I pay $60 for 15mb down/2mb up. then you should be able to limit me to that...on the other hand YOU SHOULDN'T LIMIT ME TO LESS THAN THAT!! P2P does not equal pirate or give you the right to throttle me to less bandwidth than I pay for in my contract!!
This controversy is only going to move in the time when we pay for internet service by usage tiers (like cell phones). Depending on where you are a full T1 service costs between $400 and $1000 per month. and there isn't that much discount at higher rates. This kind of commercial service asssumes 100% usage and translates to a real cost in the $1.00 to $2.00 per Gigbyte downloaded. If a typical DSL customer is paying $30 per month and typically uses 5GB per month, the ISP makes money. If a customer downloads two HD movies (say 25GB each) per month, the ISP looses money on that customer. Both Time Warner and Comcast have already proposed structured plans with a flat rate for usage up to a certain level (say 15 GB) and a price per GB over that of something like $1per GB. Be prepared for a tiered system like cell phones with the "unlimited" service still costing around $1 per GB at full utulization (read very expensive service). Also, forget about downloading movies. It will be cheaper to buy the DVD or BluRay. Real Internet backbone bandwidth is expensive and is going to stay that way.