Nonsense. If I eat all the egg roles at a chinese buffet, then nobody else gets any…they need to make more egg roles, or dont advertise its all you can eat egg rolls. The staff cant just look at me and say "well, fat people tend to eat all the egg roles, so your not allowed in.
Remember, were not talking about about limit the people who do p2p all the time, were talking about screwing up ANYONE who uses bittorrent…including those of us who use it maybe once a moth or so.
Comcast is not always messing with P2P. Bittorrent can still get through – only some connections are terminated.
Thats not what the article says. Its blocking all bittorents of completed files.
The article claims that it’s “blocking or delaying” all uploads. Technically, acting as a server and uploading files is against the Terms of Service, although I am a bit skeptical that Comcast truly is blocking all uploads. The article is very scant of real data about their tests.
My roommate & I got in trouble with Comcast one month for “network abuse.” The guy I spoke with of course refused to tell me how much usage is too much, but after speaking with him awhile, I got the impression that 200GBs was around the point they got pissed, and we’d used 230GBs.
I downloaded a bandwidth monitor and put us on a daily allowance of around 2-3GBs/day, which works out to around 90GBs/month, and we haven’t had any problems. I haven’t tried testing that 200GB limit I’m guessing at though, because they said the next time they decide it cut us off, it will be permanent.
I also think what news articles say Comcast does, and what your local Comcast provider is actually doing is worth checking out. I read an article recently stating that Comcast limits bitorrent sharing only to other Comcast customers but after testing that, it simply wasn’t true.
It doesn’t cite the source. And I still can’t find it in their policy/contract/whatever.
I actually got disconnected once. I asked them what the limit is, so I can be careful not to exceed it in the future. The rep on the phone said to go to comcast.com and look up the acceptable use policy. I called back to say I couldn’t find the info, and asked to clarify; they said they’d call back, but never did.
Um… If I’m careful not to exceed the limit, how is that “abuse”?
This is unethical on Comcast’s part. They are trying to have their cake and eat it too, by giving the impression of unlimited connections and throughput while quietly and backhandedly shutting down some of the traffic.
It’s easy to solve the problem - announce daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly traffic limits. Either cut the user off entirely if they exceed it, or throttle them way back, or start charging them extra.
But that requires more work, spending money for more infrastructure, and more complicated billing on their part. So instead, they play stupid, refuse to tell you exactly what your limits are so they can let occasional high traffic through, and then use underhanded methods to maintain some control of throughput. I’d call that deceptive business practice.
And since they seem to be striking only bittorent traffic and not other high-usage traffic such as streaming video or http downloads, they are not being neutral, either.
The thing is:
P2P file downloads are a very different class of application from the others, which is why it gets treated separately.
Uhh, yes it does. Right below the article is source’s title and a link; in this case, GameDaily.
"Charlie Douglas, a spokesperson for Comcast Corporation, called back to clarify what “excessive usage” means and why the company’s actions to end its relationship with these customers is good for gamers. First, Douglas defines Comcast’s “excessive use” as any customer who downloads the equivalent of 30,000 songs, 250,000 pictures or 13 million emails in a month. "
Comcast is a business. They have the right to establish the terms of the service they provide. But the customers are paying for their service (directly or indirectly) and have a right to know what those terms are. If Comcast wants to cut off a connection because it’s exceeding a bandwidth limit, it can do so. But it shouldn’t conceal what it’s doing and pretend somebody else is ending the connection. The customer should be aware of why his connection was cut off so he can decide whether this is an acceptable limit to the service being provided or whether he should look for another provider.
The acceptable use policy is totally separate from the technology in question. If you go over the monthly limit you’ll get a letter informing you that you’re being cut off.
The technology in question is triggered by totally different criteria.
Once again, its The Man versus The Underground. The Man works for eight hours, and goes home. The Underground never sleeps.
“We can’t tell you the rules because then you’d just follow them.”
Look, I understand that ISPs have a business interest in throttling people who use way more than average resources. But the problem here is not that they’re imposing a limit, it’s that they’re using fraud and deception to accomplish it. Yes, I realize that I’m not going to really get “Unlimited” bandwidth. There are obviously business and technological limitations. But failing to state what they are ought to be prosecuted as false advertising. If the rules of the contract are enumerated, I can choose to pay more, or to limit my use, or to go to a competitor. If they’re not, I have an arbitrary and unknown set of standards to meet, and they have all the power.
Someone above mentioned that what I’m really paying for is a “reasonable, best effort” service, not a guaranteed link. So, what’s the argument for screwing with standards and impersonating users? “We really tried not to have our servers terminate that connection, but it just wasn’t possible.”
I’ve responded to this several times already. If you allow unrestricted P2P, congestion goes way up, latency goes to hell and consequently the internet service is only useful for P2P and low bandwidth applications. People are paying to be able to play online games, use VoIP and watch streaming video – the ISP has a responsibility to ensure that these applications can work reasonably, too.
Bandwidth shaping. You limit the amount of your bandwidth that can be used for P2P connections. You don’t impersonate another person.
That is yet another reason to condemn Comcast – instead of cracking down on people who they have a right to crack down on (spamming is expressly prohibited by user contracts) in a way that would improve service for their paying customers, they cheat their paying customers of the use of the bandwidth they’ve bought and paid for, for no reason other than that the latter is easier.
Do you really, really want your ISP to drop emails that it thinks are spam into the bit bucket? Classifying email as spam is a very difficult problem and people would go nuts when an ISP dropped valid emails.
I’m not sure why you don’t see that as unfair. If they advertise to you an unlimited connection at a certain speed, they have to deliver that. If they can’t deliver it, tough shit to them, they can upgrade their capabilities or buckle under the companies that can deliver what they promise.
I view dishonest activities like this as out and out fraud and breach of contract. I don’t pay money every month on my unlimited connection to be limited when I’ve hit and un-agreed to invisible wall.
If they flat out stated that they would be doing bandwidth throttling or had download caps before I sent them a check, you would have a very valid point. But they pull this shit as invisibly as they can so they can keep overselling the bandwidth they actually have available.
Airlines do the same thing by overbooking flights. If you were told “we sold your seat twice, we thought you wouldn’t show up”, would you shrug your shoulders and say well, they’ve got to make a profit. I’ll fly tomorrow.
Absolutely not. You would be pissed off that you paid for a service they knew they could not deliver.
Fun thing: They’re also blocking Lotus Notes. They say that was a glitch, but can you trust 'em?
I’d like someone to defend that.