Comcast is Now Throttling All It's Internet Traffic

am still here, smiles

Perhaps this explains why after one has been using the same program for over an hour sometimes less you get the slow or non responsive use of a web page, than after about five minutes you get the pop up message that says , "This tab has been recovered."

Which says ... What, Bill?

You are constantly making these comments that demonbstrate you do not understand the ocntent; the subject.

In case we need to spell it outr for you - T H I S IS P R O P O S E D;

T H I S I S N O T C U R R E N T L Y I N U S E

So you can't be throttling.

Further this has nothing to do with the legality of any material or whether it is being downloaded (in fact it would affect legally streamed media like Hulu more)

Please cease demonstrating ignorance, foolishness, as well as your IQ by these ridiculous comments and READ the article before making outright dumb comments

Not a very good argument Bill. What about those people who stream Netflix which is a subscription based service.

What about those people who have businesses that focus primarily online sales? With stuff like this they will need to pay more now.

What about people who online game? WoW, Lord of the Rings Online, etc. Multiplayer games on PSN or XBL.

Not all traffic on the net is illegal.

Hey Bill! All the following are on peer-to-peer sharing sites:

Open source software.

Linux operating systems.

Some mainstream hardware & software companies are seeing the benefits of P2P systems and releasing their patches and applications this way.

Independent (and mainstream!) artists routinely distribute via P2P.

Me - the problem with your analysis is that comcast has sold more internet than they have - they stole from their IP for their phone service.

Basically, this is a fraud, they sold internet pipe / time that does not exist

NO, when they sell unlimited access, unlimited means unlimited. This is like selling you a house with a two inch pipe and then a couple of years later installing a 1/2 inch "limiter" because you built too many other houses on that line.

NO throttling is NOT a necessary evil. Providing proper service is. NOTE also that Korea, Japan have much cheaper access, much faster, and with even more bandwidth available. This is typical corporate corruption, cheapening the product to make more money available for executive pay

Good comment, eriq, it goes to the heart of the matter.

You people bought their internet phone service? what if the electricity goes down?

Let me tell you, when Gustav hit New Orleans last year, the only phone service was LandLines. landlines without electric message machines. so keep a direct line phone available.

Cell phones didn't have the towers either, cuz electric was down.

Me

1) AT&T does NOT own the internet; and the definition of that service is access to all channels (just as your local phone service includes access to all long distance carriers, your TV includes access to all tv channels; etc.)

Clearly you do not understand what the Internet is, what AT&T "Owns" here or you would not have made silly comments

2) Here you contradict yourself in #1 but demonstrate more ignorance - "Despite appearances to the contrary, the internet is not unified. An internet connection may pass through the backbone of several internet providers before it reaches its’ final destination." - Well DUH! That is why this is NOT AT&T's property

"Do a trace route (tracert) sometime to see what I mean." - I do tracert's daily, I run web sites and I know how the Interne6t works; do you?

"Internet providers pay each other fees for this privilege. If a provider exceeds the maximum agreed upon limit a new fee is negotiated or the privilege is cutoff." - and here is the ignorance - NO; the FCC regulates these fees and NO they may NOT cut anyone off. The way the internet is set up no packet can choose which path to go down; each packet may travel different backbone providers (that nasty tracert only tracks it's own packet's travels)

"You ever have trouble reaching a website that you have been able to reach in the past? Sometimes that is just a failed router, but on occasion this is the result of a bandwidth dispute. " - Uh, NO, this is complete ignorance, this does not happen. The only way a filed router will affect you is if it is on either end, anywhere inbetween the packet simply goes down another path And, NO; There are NO bandwidth disputes, where you got this fantasy is beyond me but NO this is illegal and technologically impossible the way TCP / IP is set up

I have no idea where you got these ideas but you should read up on how IP works, how the Internet works. These ideas are just flat out impossible to implement; and, NO AT & T does not pay money to each infrastructure company, there is no real way to know what packet went through what infrastructure and bill for pico seconds of bandwidth

What is happening is they can tell the IP of origin and block or throttle that traffic only at the other end (it still goes through all the infrastructure) or block it at the sending server (the FIRST server you connect to) and that is what net neutrality is about - no blocking traffic

Just imagine this: How many companies might choose to block traffic to the republican (or democrat or green party or libertarian party or ...) site?

Illegal? YES!

Eriq

1) Yea, sorry I mistyped. AT&T should have read Comcast. Comcast does not own the internet but they do own a part of infrastructure makes up the internet. If they want to load balance their available bandwidth across multiple lines of business, what’s wrong with that? So I will stick to my silly comment. Clearly you do not understand that AT&T, Sprint, Comcast, Verizon, and many more companies all over the world interconnect their networks to make up the internet. The internet is not a single entity. Comcast does not own the internet, just many of the routers, switches, fiber optic cables, etc that allows the internet to exist. And this is about throttling your internet speed not blocking access, your examples don’t apply.

2) By not unified I mean (as stated above) there are many companies and governments that own and maintain the infrastructure that internet traffic rides on. its’ infrastructure is not owned or run by one entity.

I get my ideas from 30+ years as an employee of AT&T. Many of those years were spent helping to install and maintain the DARPAnet (Arpanet) for the federal government. And in case you don’t know, that’s what they called the internet before it was the internet.

Do ISP’s pay other ISP’s for the privilege of passing internet traffic across their backbone? Yes they do, it’s outlined in what’s called reciprocal agreements. True, in some cases no monies change hands, it’s called peering. In other cases transit fees are paid by one ISP to another.

Yes, the FCC and states PUC regulate these rates, but a provider can choose to cut off the route from a specific source anytime they choose. These are considered a local dispute; the FCC and PUC only get involved when they are asked, and it’s a regulation and not a LAW, so it can’t be illegal. Also, the DC courts have yet to decide if the FCC has the legal authority to regulate ISP’s. Comcast is suing the FCC, stating that the Telecommunication Act of 1996 gives them no such authority. The hearings do not start until January.

Now to your assertion that there is no way to know what packet went through what infrastructure, here you are mistaken. ISP’s monitor all traffic that passes through their networks. They certainly can tell you exactly where each packet has come from, that info is contained in the routing information attached to each packet.

Let’s talk routing. Yes you are right, if the routing tables are setup correctly in all of the routers along the path to a remote address, the packet should find an alternate route to its’ destination (another reason the FCC doesn’t get involved). But if there is a bad routing table along the way or the destination address resides on a network that has cutoff the routing privileges of another provider then forget about the packet making it to its’ destination. Usually this doesn’t happen because an alternate route exist, so the packet makes its’ way to its’ destination by way of another providers backbone. I know this from firsthand experience. Cutting off another provider is a stupid practice but it does happen.

I really love this one… “Just imagine this: How many companies might choose to block traffic to the republican (or democrat or green party or libertarian party or ...) site?” Think China, Iran and North Korea. How do you think they are able to bock specific news feeds and social networking sites? These goverements run their portion of the internet and they do just what you describe. Companies don’t do this because it would be corporate suicide, look what happened when users figured out what was happening to their bit torrent traffic.

Me - 1) NO Comcast does not own any infrastructure; they own the TV CABLES and related equipment that gets the internet from the infrastructure to you (called "the final mile" or last mile, this is the distance from you to the comcast server-farm at which point the signal hits the infrastructure - which is NOT owned by comcast) This is the same for verizon, AT&T, etc, they only own up to those first servers and then pass the packets into the internet itself - each packet may find it's own way to the destination server-farm

Throttling internet access in any way IS blocking - unless they do itr to all traffic (which is not called throttling). Anything they do discriminates in some way against a class of users, and / or sites. This is where they get into trouble; the discrimination -- they are not entitled to throttle for any reason AND call it internet service

This is all about money, Comcast has to make Billions just to pay trheir executives and Billions more to service the debt of buying AT&T Broadband; They do NOT want to upgrade their lines / servers to handle the traffic sold so they want to reduce traffic that they have sold

In other words this is a FRAUD - selling bandwidth that you do not have, service that you won't upgrade your equipment to perform.

2) Yes I did know, I was near the first part of Darpanet back in the day, and knew people involved in it (I worked in another part of government)

NO providers can NOT choose to cut off a route (there is no real way to tell a route - you are putting too much info into a packet header - all it knows is point of origin and it's destination and nothing else (here is a good page outlining the packet). You are confusing this with something else; there is no way to cut off a "route"

What some providers do (and China, etc) is block a SOURCE (for example, the republican site) - not the infrastructure. When Comcast started blocking Bit Torrents they went to the IP of bit torrent and blocked access from that source IP

There ARE ways to "anonymize" the IP by having it travel to another site which simply retransmits in both directions substituting one of it's own IP's (here is an article on web anonymizers)

I think that should help you, you have the basics down but are confused on some of the specifics, NO much of what you think is happening is not true as above

Eriq,

Ok you win... (Not really)

Thanks for the interesting conversation.

Hope you enjoy spinning in your conspiracy.

Everyone, let’s all lean out our windows and shout…

I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.

Or better yet….

FREE THE INTERNET!!!!! FREE THE INTERNET!!!!! (Eriq actually believes that no one owns the internet (or its’ infrastructure), and of course it costs nothing at all to run and maintain.

And don’t forget…

Down with money… Down with money….

After all, we wouldn’t want the businesses of the world to make any money. We should all work for free like Eriq.

Eriq, you make a good argument however you really don’t know much of what you are talking about.

The internet, or at least its’ infrastructure is owned. The Backbone networks are usually commercial, educational, or government owned, such as military networks. Comcast used its’ cable network to piggyback internet traffic, or didn’t you know that? And yes… it does cost really money, not the stuff you get on Farmville, to operate and maintain the infrastructure. By the way… what do you call the router, switches, cables, racks, and buildings that house this stuff?4 It’s called an infrastructure. Here’s a definition, it should help.

Internet Infrastructure: 1. The physical hardware, transmission media, and software used to interconnect computers and users on the Internet. Includes Internet Servers, Web Servers, Internet Storage, Internet Network Equipment, and Infrastructure Software.

And guess what Eriq??? Someone owns this stuff..

The ISP’s do pay other providers for the use of their bandwidth. A local ISP may provide service to individual homes or business using bandwidth that it purchases from another company with a backbone network.

So if you have trouble with the fact that a business and its’ executives actually try to make a profit by selling a portion of their bandwidth to others, and you don’t want them to be able to load balance their available bandwidth among their customers, you should get into another line of business, or move to another country.

And it’s not blocking when you are still able to receive a packet of data just because it was received just a little slower than you expected. If it’s blocked… you don’t receive ANYTHING. Or is that difficult too for you to understand?

You still do not understand - Comcast does NOT own any infrastructure - they own city-based networks (which actually exist on public rights of way and - in theory more than practice, but also by LAW - are regulated by those cities (see Comcast being bigger than most city governments simply bullies its way)

Infrastructure companies do NOT discriminate based on content or IP origination - only the start and endpoints are in the packets and only those two points can discriminate - the endpoint usually on charging for access but the startpoint should only discriminate by user opt-in (adult screening) and then it must be careful - the original screening was based on words in the content and screening on the word "sex" also takes out essex, wessex, and sussex counties in several New England states, etc.

You keep with this conspiracy theory stuff that backbone / infrastructure providers can and do discriminate but they may not by law - most if not all of them got government grants to build their services (and in many areas, i.e. Oregon, the state built infrastructure itself)

NO, a local ISP does not use bandwidth it purchases; other than POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service - i.e. modem) and then you are using the telephone to call that ISP NOT over the internet - you don't hit the net until you pass your ISP's server (think AOL).

You really demonstrate here that you do not understand either the technologies involved nor the busuiness structure

NO, businesses may NOT load balance by selling bandwidth they have already sold to their customers to anyone else -- that is a fraud

YES it is blocking when you either steal bandwidth you have already sold (remember all those 100 MBS, etc. claims in their ads), or otherwise throttle it to sell it a second time to someone else -- its a FRAUD

You are condoning criminal actions and claiming that they are already committing crimes as a justification? You still just don't understand the subject

Sigh.......

Eriq, actually I do understand. You simply want to be right and/or you are too obtuse to know when you are wrong, misinformed or you are just plain stupid.

I do understand the internets’ infrastructure and the business practices that surround it. I don’t agree with everything they do but so far they have not violated any regulations (Except maybe for that bit torrent thing, and the jury is still out on that one).

We’ve wasted enough of our time on this subject, I’m sorry you didn’t learn anything here.

But here is one more lesson, companies sell more “bandwidth” than the actually “own” all the time. The telephone and cell phone companies sell more capacity than they have everyday. If every cell phone or land line owner picked up their phones and placed a call at the very same time it would overload the respective systems and many would not go through. The telco’s and cell phone service providers know this, it’s built into their business models, ISP’s know this as well. Even your local health club sells more memberships then they have available equipment and space should all of the members choose to workout at exactly the same time. All of these companies know they have a greater chance of winning the lottery than to have an instance where all of their available “bandwidth” might be used up all at one time. But I guess we should put them all in jail for fraud, because you might just have to wait until that treadmill is free before you can go for your daily run.

You see, the FCC and PUC's all know this, with regard to the ISP's, Telco's and Cell Phone Service providers, I don't think they care much about what the health Club's do, and they don't seem to have a problem with it. And in case you are wondering how the FCC and PUC's would know, it's part of the filings these companies must present to the FCC and local PUC before they are allowed to go into operation.

Anyway, it’s been interesting. Keep up the spin, but try not to get too dizzy.

Me, signing out.

Sorry - epic fail on your part - but see ya in a later life (or article)