Comcast Internet throttling is up and running

This is just another way for Comcast to NOT give you what your paying for. If they aren't allowing you to use your full bandwidth then they are not giving you the service your paying for. They should change there advertisements to "16mb/sec for up to 15 mintues, then you get whatever we give you" I had Comcast for a while and they are a bunch of scum bags, extremely hard to deal with and with 5 people in my house, many gaming and youtubeing, we easily go over the 250GB limit, we did it twice, 2 months in a row. I switched to Verizon and the HD quality is better too.

You have the order incorrect. The first step is to see if the CMTS is approaching a possible time of congestion. Only then do we scan for users that are exceeded certain traffic thresholds.

Good and bad - for me, anyways. I'm glad I'm not a Comca$t user. (does anyone know how to replace a 'C' with a 'cent' symbol?)

The good: why should my bandwith be hurt 'cuz someone is downloading another bootleg copy of Spore just to stick it to the man? Throttle those jerks.

The bad: If I'm working from home and need to download a big file, they might throttle me - even if it's 10 am and not many people are on the net, so I'm not tying up anyone else's traffic.

The ugly: Comcast can't tell the difference between me and the jerks pirating Spore. People with cheap plans may be throttled when watching online movies, etc. I would hope that Comcast sends people an email everytime they throttle them, so people know that Comcast is to blame. IMO it should be based on disrupting other people's traffic only.

I'm no fan of Comcast, but given the nature of cable networks, I'm not sure this is a horrible idea. Other providers have done something similar but with better marchitecture -- only the first 30 seconds or N bytes of an HTTP connection get through unthrottled, giving the fastest response for web browsers around the "background radiation" of large-file downloaders.

It would certainly be nice to see a cable company have the professionalism of a telecom and make guaranteed, no-questions no-bullshit bandwidth an option, but none seem interested in playing that game (or doing anything that would make them liable to provide some basic degree of reliability).

All this extra hardware is just something else that will break. Comcast needs to push for shear bandwidth and stop spending all its money on ways to forcibly reduce congestion. In the long run, what is cheaper, a crazy throttling scheme or a bunch of new WDM fiber? And which will make the customer happier?

Stuff like this really has me thinking about switching to FiOS in my neighborhood.. Vz appears to have gotten their CableCARD act together, and when my promotional price runs out (I got it after a move as a gift when my billing got screwed up royally), I shall have to give a good hard look at migrating off..

Then again, probably won't have a job in a few months, so it hardly matters :/

I loathe Comcast for a whole bunch of reasons. Unfortunately, in my area, internet connection choices boil down to Comcast or dialup. Comcast is a defacto monopoly.

If Comcast's description of what they're doing is accurate, then I suppose that I can live with it. It does, indeed, turn their advertised plan into a lie.

That's the least of Comcast's sins, though, and seems less corrosive to the internet than what they were doing before. So it's not so bad that I'm willing to forgo broadband altogether. Yet.

Thusly: ¢om¢ast

¢ is ALT+0162

not very impressive though

We are the The Inq. We hate Microsoft, Apple, NVIDIA, Comcast, Sun and everything under the sun

i agree with k2_ and not with those that think it is a GOOD thing. i'll bet if they went to the grocery store or the clothing store paid for the merchandise and only came out with a half gallon of milk or half a pair of pants they would not be so happy then. after learning of this i would like to know if a class action suit is forth coming. how long would any other business stay in business charging full price for a service but only providing half of what the customer is paying for?

Heavy use Comcast for years.
Download speed 25mbps and upload - 3mbps (just got from speedtest.net).
I pay for 8mbps down. Not bad? And they promised (in a year or so) ten times more 6 months ago and I see they already started to deliver. And you are saying trottling, twice less bandwidth... This called trolling.
Check the numbers, you may already have 3 times more bandwidth then you are paying for.

All this does is give us new incentive to defeat the system. Anyone know when http p2p is coming out?
They buid it...we kill it.

I noticed about six weeks ago my comcast internet connection would be dropped if there was heavy traffic ( 100k/sec downstream, 50 K/sec upstream.) So I have to limit my transfer speed if I want to dl while away. All this for $55/mo!

Unfortunately the author didn't understand what Comcast are doing.

Simply put when a port on a data node becomes “near congested” Comcast look for users on the port consuming higher rates of BW and put their traffic in a lower priority queue. If the port then becomes really congested these users will experience poorer quality of service.

Data node ports are directional and typically service 275 modems on an downstream port and 100 modem on a upstream port. The threshold for a “near congested” port is 70% of total available upstream capacity and 80% of the total available downstream capacity over a 15 min period.

On a congested port any subscribers using 70% of their provisioned upstream or downstream bandwidth within a 15 min periods will have their traffic put into a lower priority queue. Traffic in this queue will only get serviced when all other normal priority traffic has been processed.

Thus if the data port moves from “near congested” to actually congested these users packets will be delayed or even dropped. To get out of this state the subscribers BW utilization needs to fall back beneath 50% for a 15 min sample period.

Dollars...
"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."
This tells me the queuing is adjustable... what better way to bilk the sites on the internet whose internet infrastructure you don't own into ponying up some cash...
Wow users po'd they cant play... well, blizzard for a few million dollars we will place your traffic in the PBE...
Your Xbox360 not connecting? Well Microsoft.. how about 10 million.

It is a toll booth mentality, you suckers who dont pay more for the smart pass will get stuck looking for change in the slow lane...

swheatle, its sad that you complain about paying $55/mo for internet. Consider how much you save by not paying artists and programmers for their time. I mean come on. Its guys like you who put us in this position. it kills me that most people who pirate stuff have the audacity to complain about anyone trying to stop them. Lets be honest, who wants to go to work and not get paid?

this is the best news verizon's FIOS
ever had. Comcast is slower, more expensive and make speed upgrading ridiculous. I guess the suits running comcast have never used the newsgroups or knows what is going on on the web..

I have comcast, 12mb downstream after powerboost. We've been paying for a 2mb line for a few years now and they just keep increasing the speed for free.

Friend showed me this article and I put it to the test.

Started downloading a 2.44GB file using a download manager called Orbit from 6 differen't mirrors. I stayed at an average 1.48MB/S the entire time. The download completed successfully within 28 minutes.

The file, which you can find on findfiles dot com, is called 7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULFRE_EN_DVD.iso

This 250GB per 3 months limit is unrealistic as well. I don't see how anyone would break this. Thats downloading 3GB per day, EVERY day. Thats 650 different songs (MP3's) daily. Even if you do pirate music, thats an incredible amount of pirated media. Otherwise, you're spending a fortune on the files anyway.

To everyone who does NOT have comcast, and says how crappy it must be, you should hold your tongue. I have not had any problems that was directly comcast's fault. I've had a couple modems go bad, a few days where we lost connection. EVERY service has these problems from time to time.

I have Roadrunner and they have this "short burst" (name?) upgrade for $10/month that essentially allows you to get above and beyond what they normally provide for short times (~15 minutes). Essentially this is the opposite of the 15-minute timer. The rate is something like 3 times the speed of the highest residential plan. It's a tacit admission that some people need more speed for offsite backups and the like but don't need commercial service levels.

When downloading/uploading at full tilt for more than 30 seconds, the rate drops to about 2/3rds of the maximum speed. This means that I get nearly 8Mb/sec downloads on an 8mbit DL/512kbit UL connection. Uploads go down to about 320Kb/sec when uploading for more than 30 seconds. Compare this to people griping because their 2Mb/sec service barely hits 300Kb/sec. What I should mention is that the technician says that only one other person has Internet service in my building (8 units) and that it's for a phone. I just got lucky.

If the 15-minute thing is accurate, then it's not so bad. It's insane to use more than 70% of your bandwidth around the clock anyways - the congestion would exist at your modem, not the gateway! 25% constant usage with 50% at offpeek hours would be less likely to upset your ISP. The 100% rate is meant for bursts since it's an "upto" service. Too bad that Comcast and all have to be so unclear in their advertisements and TOS. If they just had clear terms written in english, then most of the ISPs would not be having this problem.

The 250GB/month thing is funny. Some ISPs are so crooked that they charge $10/GB for overage. If you compare the price of say, a Usenet account for 100GB, then you see how this is way out of hand. Even taking into account the added price for the last mile compared to Level 3's raw prices, this is way unfair. This is like the cell phone $xx/MB or $x/minute roaming scams.

You don't understand ONLY one service is directly being throttled by them.....World of Warcraft and P2P programs.....Now all you little fruit cakes saying I have a 2mb line form them and did a speed test and got blah blah blah download and install world of warcraft and try playing....It's near impossible with an 1800ms ping to the server. Just like you can throttle any port or program you want....But whatever let them do it....Kiss that top 10 ISP slot goodbye cause you're about to lose a loooooot of customers comcast.... I myself am now a former comcast customer I'm changing ISP's first thing in the morning and urge all comcast users to teach these throttling bastards a lesson and leave too!!! Hopefully the FCC just shuts them down this time!!!

Everyone who says they are getting a higher speed even though they've been paying for 2 megs or whatever, it doesn't really matter. What matters is what you paid for. If you are being lead to believe that you are going to get 4 megs down and 2 megs up and you attempt to download data for 15 minutes or more at 2.89 or up to and including 4 megs and you are throttled, then it is a fact you have been cheated. That is wrong. So why should you be paying 100% for 70% of goods and services? That is so obviously wrong and if asked anyone explained in more basic terms such as the grocery store example above it’s a no brainer. If Comcast can't handle delivering bandwidth they advertise and contract with customers then they shouldn't be over selling it. But they realized they can make more money by over selling it based on the probability that customers will not all use it at once. It’s not the customers fault that Comcast or some ISP knowingly can't deliver what they are advertising and selling to the customers. This is a case of breach of contract. But here is the kicker .. how would 99% of the customers know they are being throttled (ripped off), the amount of packets sent/received, and bytes used per minute. Comcast should post this in the users account with detailed explanations understandable to the common knowledge of their customers. If a customer doesn’t get what they’ve paid for then Comcast should reduce their bill by the percentage they’ve not delivered to the customer. i.e. if I tried to use 100% of my download bandwidth 100% of the time and Comcast throttled me (by whatever managing methods) then I should have a reduction by on my bill by the cumulative percentage I was throttled (denied services). I call games ISP's play over selling their bandwidth a case of bullcrap. If I plan to use 100% of my bandwidth 100% of the time what I can actually do is use 100% half the time and 50% the other half, what the heck is that? Is that me getting ripped off half the time or all the time?

first they sell you 6meg for $50 a month that they say is 8x faster than dsl (which is a lie, because 6mb dsl is common and $15/month CHEAPER!); second, they try to tell you that it's actually twice as fast as what they're selling you (powerboost! up to 12mbps!!); third, if you actually try to use what you're paying for, then you're stuck at a quarter of the advertised rate (throttled down to 3mb).
lastly, they can't even give you an honest pricing.. they have to rely on specials for the first three months before jacking the price up over $50.

the phone company is slowly catching up on speeds and technologies, but they're playing an honest game. they give you a fair price up front that stays the same, no speed boost and no throttling, just honest-to-goodness what you're paying for. so simple!

and i also wonder.. if the phone company has a decent enough backbone not to have to throttle, maybe they're not as far behind as we think??