Interesting People mailing list archives
Comcast opens up about how it manages traffic
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 16:36:43 -0700
________________________________________ From: Henrik B [blondino () gmail com] Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 5:27 PM To: David Farber Subject: Re: [IP] Comcast opens up about how it manages traffic Dear Dave, Maybe for IP if you think it's appropriate I find this whole discussion amusing and troubling at the same time. Comcast is continuously telling us through TV commercials that they give you 12 Mbit/s and brags about their PowerBoost that makes running to Peru and back a matter of fractions of a second. And then Mr Bowling defines an excessive usage as "the equvalent of two T-1 lines". If I recall correctly a T-1 line has throughput of 1.544 Mbit/s, which means that if you use 3 Mbit/s, or 25% of the capacity that Comcast says that you have, then you are an excessive user. My opinion is taht if Comcast sells me TCP/IP based Internet connectivity, then that is what they should give me. If they are overselling their capacity, which I'm certain that they are, then that should not be my problem, should it? If they have a problem defining the product they are selling, it's no wonder that they have a problem putting a price on it. In addition, I think USA Today journalists should check what a T-1 line is, rather than just saying "big data lines used by large corporations." Henrik Brameus On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 8:28 AM, David Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:
________________________________________ From: Bob Rosenberg [bob.redmountain () gmail com] Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 5:18 AM To: David Farber Cc: Lauren Weinstein Subject: USA TODAY: Comcast opens up about how it manages traffic Dave Perhaps for I.P. Bob Rosenberg Comcast opens up about how it manages traffic By Leslie Cauley, USA TODAY Managing online traffic can be risky stuff. Just ask Comcast. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/services/2008-04-20-comcast-peer-to-peer_N.htm The cable TV giant came under fire recently when it slowed a "peer-to-peer" transmission of the King James Bible sent as a test by an Associated Press reporter. At two special hearings held by the Federal Communications Commission — one at Harvard and another last week at Stanford — the company was excoriated for delaying peer-to-peer traffic. Peer-to-peer transmissions, which account for more than half of all Web traffic, enable computers to snatch music, data and video files from other computers. To assemble one file, a peer-to-peer service can tap into dozens, or even hundreds, of computers around the world. Comcast (CMCSA)<http://stocks.usatoday.com/custom/usatoday-com/html-quote.asp?symb=cmcsa>, which has 13 million online customers, has been taking a low profile. Executives Tony Werner, Comcast's chief technology officer, and Mitch Bowling, senior vice president of online service, agreed to discuss the incident with USA TODAY. According to Werner, the transmission slowdown occurred automatically when network congestion started to build in the Boston area, affecting other customers. The King James transmission, which was small, didn't cause the slowdown, he says. Once traffic loads got too high, he says, Comcast's network automatically took steps to avoid further degradation. The result: Some peer-to-peer traffic, including the AP transmission, got delayed. But it was never blocked, he says. The transmission "showed up. It just took a little longer to get there." "The only reason you do something like that is to maintain consistent network performance," Werner says. At the FCC hearings, Comcast was criticized for throttling back peer-to-peer traffic as a network management technique. "The technique is not unique to Comcast," says Comcast's Bowling. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin says Comcast should be specific about its bandwidth limitations. "Consumers have to be informed about what they are buying," he says. Comcast service contracts say "excessive usage" is banned, but no cutoff point is specified. Bowling says there's a good reason for that: "There isn't a specific limit." Bowling says Comcast considers incidents case-by-case. Only a handful of people fall into the "excessive user" category, he says. Pressed to say how much bandwidth consumption is too much, Bowling offers this: People who use "the equivalent of two T-1 lines" — big data lines used by large corporations. "I don't think anybody could look at that as typical residential usage," he says. ------------------------------------------- Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
-- "If you're right 98% of the time, why quibble about the remaining 3%?" MSN: hbrameus () hotmail com ------------------------------------------- Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
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- Comcast opens up about how it manages traffic David Farber (Apr 21)
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- Re: Comcast opens up about how it manages traffic David Farber (Apr 21)
- Comcast opens up about how it manages traffic David Farber (Apr 21)
- Comcast opens up about how it manages traffic David Farber (Apr 22)