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drsauced
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Re: Why I will downgrade my broadband.

Sat Jan 04, 2014 9:35 pm

superjawes wrote:
Concupiscence wrote:
This is beginning to sound like "write your congressman" territory. Comcast deserves to get called out on this in the most embarrassingly public way possible. And JustAnEngineer should probably recalibrate his expectations of how current home users actually use the internet - it's a rare person I run into who doesn't have some kind of basic Netflix streaming package in this day and age, even if it's just being used with a Blu-ray player with streaming video support.

It's called Net Neutrality. It basically requires ISPs to provide equal access to all content instead of favoring their own services or doing their own censorship.

It gets very R&P very quickly, but just know that it is "write you Congressman" territory and this is the issue to write about.


Yep, this is Net Neutrality, or lack there of. Well, Net Neutrality has been dead for a while, but as I understand it, the content isn't so much the concern, it's the connecting AS networks that Comcast is worrying about. Adding ports and bandwidth is cheap these days, even if Comcast owns the cabling and the poles (they don't in my municipality, they lease from AT&T), it's still pocket lint to them to add backend bandwidth.

Now then, the issue is that Comcast is probably charging those connecting networks, probably Level3, and I would assume that Level3 is also charging Comcast. Netflix also has to pay for its pipes (also probably Level3), so that $8 ain't so bad from the end user's point, and all this cost should be payed for by the customer. Or, as they say, pass the savings on to you, dear customer.

So, depending on where you live, I would not only write your congressman, but also contact the municipality. Comcast negotiates the monopoly deals every four or five years with the city, and city officials would certainly like to know how they're treating their voters.
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derFunkenstein
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Re: Why I will downgrade my broadband.

Sat Jan 04, 2014 9:53 pm

SpotTheCat wrote:
derFunkenstein wrote:
If Netflix gave me a little more control over what playback quality is used, I think we'd all be happier.

They do. Go to your account settings and there are four (on my account) options: low, med, high (3Mbps), and auto.

And that's all I have, too. There's nothing between the medium and high - which are around 2.3GB/hr apart. The first one is a low-low quality, the second is a pretty decent SD quality, and the top one is what stops and stutters. If I lock it to the middle one it looks OK, I guess, but it's obviously not HD. It doesn't have to be 7mbit/sec (which is what 3GB/hr works out to be, roughly) - it could be a 720p stream with around 3.5-4mbit/sec and my guess is it wouldn't hit the (unethical) throttling that Comcast appears to be doing to the service and it would look decent. Then once I can dump Comcast, I'll jump on the higher-quality feed.
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rwdim
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Re: Why I will downgrade my broadband.

Sat Jan 04, 2014 10:13 pm

Let's be clear here, the cost of the bandwidth to Comcast and other ISPs is negligible.

1 megabit of wholesale bandwidth is availaible (in 100-1000 qty) @ $2/mbit. In much larger quantities, I've seen the cost as low as $0.60 per megabit. Comcast is clearly getting a price lower or equal to this. I buy 800mbps of bandwidth for my company @ $2/mbps each month, so I'm well aware of the cost.

Each megabit of capacity is capable of moving 10 Gigabytes of data per day, or 324 Gigabytes of data per month, ((1,000,000/8) = (125000 bytes/sec * 86400) * 30). That means that Comcast giving you a 350GB limit per month is the equivalent of you paying $30 for about $1.00 worth of cost (of the bandwidth).

I move SD quality video in 1 megabit per second (mbps) all the time, and it looks quite good, but HD video is too complex and needs 3-5 mbps to look decent.

Anyone arguing on behalf of Comcast here is out of their mind. Why should Comcast be entitled to a portion of Netflix revenues, when they clearly are making a 97% profit on their users accounts. If I were Netflix, I'd be asking how many customers does Comcast have BECAUSE of Netflix, and asking them for their fair cut in the form of a commission.

Comcast will shoot themselves in the foot over this one, and will lose customers forever because they are still, and always will be, a cable company, and they see Netflix as a content producer who should be paying for airtime, instead of a popular destination site that they should be partnering with.
 
Ryu Connor
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Re: Why I will downgrade my broadband.

Sat Jan 04, 2014 11:12 pm

Glorious wrote:
SpotTheCat wrote:
However, Netflix stopped working about 2 weeks ago (or so). I cannot stream SD content, let alone the HD content that I want. When I contacted Comcast customer 'service' I was told that "Netflix is unsupported".


That's crazy! This needs to go on dslreports so that if other customers are having such a problem with such a ridiculous non-response it'll get more publicity.

If Comcast is really breaking netflix or deliberately ignoring it as part of some policy, there needs to be some pushback. And if they're just being idiotic or lazy in your case this kind of thing will still whip up an uproar and hopefully get your problem resolved.


I'm curious why he thinks some entry level technician reading from a script would give him any other answer? Or that he expects that answer to be some sort of company line. Of course a script reader is going to tell you any product not Comcast isn't supported.

superjawes wrote:
EDIT: number of users is how the engineers figure out how to service networks for phone calls as well. Land line telephone networks were set up to handle a high percentage of total users making calls during peak hours (they might still be, but I assume that most telephone companies just package calls as VOIP anyway).


No. The telephone system is not designed to handle a high percentage of total users making a call. The phone system is overprovisioned just like broadband communications.

You can learn more about Anger Erlangs formula that defines the size of a telephone trunk.

just brew it! wrote:
People are still using the same amount of bandwidth at the local level whether they stream from Netflix, Comcast, Hulu, or whatever; and bandwidth out "in the cloud" is cheap (as I've already pointed out I currently get 3TB of bandwidth on a VPS hosting package that only costs me $30/month).


Except their network is more complex than just peering to Tier1 backbone providers. They also have right of way expenses to drag fiber to their CMTS and the expense of upgrading and maintaining the CMTS and the associated last mile of cabling. Don't compare oranges to apples.

just brew it! wrote:
Artificially throttling service depending on what the other endpoint is sucks. You're paying them to provide you with a connection to the Internet. As long as you stay under the bandwidth cap for the plan you've paid for and aren't doing anything illegal, they shouldn't give a damn where that traffic is coming from (or going to).


Comcast doesn't throttle, but they will let a peering connection become saturated.

Link

This has very little to do with the end user or net neutrality, but with long term agreements between backbone providers. Peers don't exchange money when they exchange equal number of bits, but the argument is that Netflix is no longer a peer. Netflix does a lot more taking than giving. This as a technical discussion even extends outside of just Netflix, this is a very old gentlemen's agreement that exists at the backbone level.

It's a business disagreement, it's a legitimate disagreement that has always been part of the Internet, and it just happens to be one of those situations where the end user gets hosed.
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JustAnEngineer
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Re: Why I will downgrade my broadband.

Sat Jan 04, 2014 11:40 pm

Unless the policy has changed recently, using a VPN in that way is a violation of the acceptable use policy for residential service.

FYI:
http://www.comcast.com/policies
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just brew it!
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Re: Why I will downgrade my broadband.

Sun Jan 05, 2014 12:08 am

JustAnEngineer wrote:
Unless the policy has changed recently, using a VPN in that way is a violation of the acceptable use policy for residential service.

FYI:
http://www.comcast.com/policies

Unless I missed it (and that's certainly possible, it's a pretty long AUP), I don't think it says anything of the sort. They prohibit you from hosting a VPN or proxy on your residential connection, but AFAICT they do not prohibit you from using one that is hosted elsewhere.
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ludi
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Re: Why I will downgrade my broadband.

Sun Jan 05, 2014 1:28 am

rwdim wrote:
Let's be clear here, the cost of the bandwidth to Comcast and other ISPs is negligible....Each megabit of capacity is capable of moving 10 Gigabytes of data per day, or 324 Gigabytes of data per month, ((1,000,000/8) = (125000 bytes/sec * 86400) * 30). That means that Comcast giving you a 350GB limit per month is the equivalent of you paying $30 for about $1.00 worth of cost (of the bandwidth).Anyone arguing on behalf of Comcast here is out of their mind. Why should Comcast be entitled to a portion of Netflix revenues, when they clearly are making a 97% profit on their users accounts.

Thanks for putting hard numbers on the bandwidth, but one point of contention: you are referring to gross revenue per unit of raw bandwidth, not "profit," which requires first paying for infrastructure and maintenance costs for, among other things, a whole gaggle of last-mile residential accounts. Raw bandwidth costs, and the prices business pay to obtain large chunks from nearby trunk lines, are not directly comparable.
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puppetworx
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Re: Why I will downgrade my broadband.

Sun Jan 05, 2014 1:32 am

yokem55 wrote:
However, you do have a work around available. If you get a VPN (or set up a vpn on a VPS) that you get to via a different route than you would take to the Netflix CDN, you can route your Netflix traffic through the VPN and get a much better experience. Granted, you should not have to do this, but it gives you another option.


People here in the UK actually use proXPN (a commercial VPN) to access Hulu and Netflix content which is unavailable outside of the US. I've personally used the free version to buy Steam game keys more cheaply from US retailers (that's how cheap I am) but it's not at all fast for video content. I'm not sure how good the commercial version is from here in the UK but I know people do use it. I imagine it's just a matter of time until Netflix and Hulu will block proXPN's IP when they finally cotton on, might be worthy a try, though it would add more expense.
 
drsauced
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Re: Why I will downgrade my broadband.

Sun Jan 05, 2014 1:49 am

Ryu Connor wrote:

...
Except their network is more complex than just peering to Tier1 backbone providers. They also have right of way expenses to drag fiber to their CMTS and the expense of upgrading and maintaining the CMTS and the associated last mile of cabling. Don't compare oranges to apples.

just brew it! wrote:
Artificially throttling service depending on what the other endpoint is sucks. You're paying them to provide you with a connection to the Internet. As long as you stay under the bandwidth cap for the plan you've paid for and aren't doing anything illegal, they shouldn't give a damn where that traffic is coming from (or going to).


Comcast doesn't throttle, but they will let a peering connection become saturated.

Link

This has very little to do with the end user or net neutrality, but with long term agreements between backbone providers. Peers don't exchange money when they exchange equal number of bits, but the argument is that Netflix is no longer a peer. Netflix does a lot more taking than giving. This as a technical discussion even extends outside of just Netflix, this is a very old gentlemen's agreement that exists at the backbone level.

It's a business disagreement, it's a legitimate disagreement that has always been part of the Internet, and it just happens to be one of those situations where the end user gets hosed.


This. Let's get OP a towel.

Other thoughts, did anybody ask if OP is unintentionally hosting a spambot or something chewing bandwidth?
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NovusBogus
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Re: Why I will downgrade my broadband.

Sun Jan 05, 2014 3:55 am

I used to refurbish old PCs for a charity in California and the best stuff we got, by far, came from the local cable company. They were throwing out Core2Quads when the rest of the enterprise world was still clinging onto Pentium 4's. So no, I don't buy the excuse that Comcast and other ISPs are too poor to give users the bandwidth that they are paying for.

Perhaps Google will disrupt the dysfunctional US telecom oligarchy but I have a sneaking suspicion that Google internet will turn out like Gmail, i.e. "free" but they harvest everything and give it to who knows who. Thus far Google has given little indication that their vision accommodates products and services that aren't hooked up to the mothership.
 
clone
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Re: Why I will downgrade my broadband.

Sun Jan 05, 2014 4:01 am

dltd.
Last edited by clone on Tue Jan 14, 2014 1:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
neg
 
superjawes
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Re: Why I will downgrade my broadband.

Sun Jan 05, 2014 8:53 am

Ryu Connor wrote:
superjawes wrote:
EDIT: number of users is how the engineers figure out how to service networks for phone calls as well. Land line telephone networks were set up to handle a high percentage of total users making calls during peak hours (they might still be, but I assume that most telephone companies just package calls as VOIP anyway).


No. The telephone system is not designed to handle a high percentage of total users making a call. The phone system is overprovisioned just like broadband communications.

You can learn more about Anger Erlangs formula that defines the size of a telephone trunk.

Perhaps my explanation wasn't entirely eloquent, but that video essentially confirms what I was saying. You don't set up a system to handle 100% user capacity because it is expensive, but you still aim high so that such situations are rare. What the company is trying to avoid is having a user attempt to place a call and basically have that call fail. Phone calls aren't queued up so that a user can be connected when a trunk line is ready. If the system is already full, the call gets a busy signal (a different one than if the number you're calling is busy), and has to retry the call later.

And this is how internet traffic should roughly be designed for as well. If every user has 1Mbps, and there are 100 users, you don't necessarily need 100Mbps network capacity, but you need enough so that the network doesn't slow to a crawl during peak hours. Of course, the calculations get a little wacky because internet data is often delivered in bursts, but streaming is on the rise, and will likely become the primary source of media delivery in the foreseeable future.
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nanoflower
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Re: Why I will downgrade my broadband.

Sun Jan 05, 2014 9:06 am

Captain Ned wrote:
Savyg wrote:
If that is true which seems horrendously unlikely, Comcast can put a freakin cap on their users. Otherwise all they're doing is denying a competing service to sell their own crap.

Hello?

Currently suspended, raised from 250 GB to 300 GB, but it's still out there. It's amazing how much bandwidth a teenager with a love for old Doctor Who can suck up in the 2 1/2 hours between her coming home from school and parental arrival. And yes, I've used the tools within Netflix to crank data rate down to the minimum.


You are lucky if you are in an area that currently only has the 300GB Comcast limit. I'm in one of the test areas that now the the 300GB monthly limit with a $10/50GB overcharge. So if you use 300.1GB one month you get to pay $10 extra.
 
just brew it!
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Re: Why I will downgrade my broadband.

Sun Jan 05, 2014 10:00 am

clone wrote:
is it the content creators or the providers that are the problem..... a little blame goes to both but mainly it's the providers that are the problem and I don't really consider the disagreements legitimate so much as a demonstration of the flaws in the mechanics of a web that's growing faster than the providers want it too.

Actually, I'm convinced that the issue is ISPs who are *also* in the content business. Comcast would have a lot less incentive to mess with Netflix if they didn't compete with them in the content business.
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derFunkenstein
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Re: Why I will downgrade my broadband.

Sun Jan 05, 2014 10:04 am

just brew it! wrote:
Actually, I'm convinced that the issue is ISPs who are *also* in the content business. Comcast would have a lot less incentive to mess with Netflix if they didn't compete with them in the content business.

+1
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Diplomacy42
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Re: Why I will downgrade my broadband.

Sun Jan 05, 2014 10:20 am

net neutrality is important, in the sense that it should be frigging illegal to specifically target your competitor's business with actions like this which are purely anti-competitive, however its just a symptom. the root cause is the fact that every carrier in practically every market operates in a defacto monopoly. if comcast were competing against TWC, Verizon FIOS, ATT fiber, etc you would see a lot of the practices mentioned here dry up. why would anyone go with comcast if one of their most-used services was "unsupported?" currently the answer is because "the next best thing" is 3mb DSL.
 
clone
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Re: Why I will downgrade my broadband.

Sun Jan 05, 2014 12:01 pm

dltd.
Last edited by clone on Tue Jan 14, 2014 1:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
neg
 
JustAnEngineer
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Re: Why I will downgrade my broadband.

Sun Jan 05, 2014 12:05 pm

http://customer.comcast.com/Pages/FAQVi ... #technique
Comcast FAQ wrote:
The technique does not manage congestion based on the online activities, protocols or applications a customer uses; it only focuses on the heaviest users in real time, so the periods of congestion typically tend to be very fleeting and sporadic.

It is important to note that the effect of this technique is temporary and it has nothing to do with a customer’s aggregate monthly data usage. Rather, it is dynamic and based on prevailing network conditions as well as a customer’s data usage over a very recent period of time.

Our congestion management system was disclosed in detail in 2008 to the Federal Communications Commission in http://downloads.comcast.net/docs/Attac ... ctices.pdf and this filing has since been disclosed in an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) document in RFC 6057.

Does the congestion management technique target peer-to-peer ("P2P") or other applications, or make decisions about the content of my traffic?

No. The technique is "protocol-agnostic," which means that the system does not manage congestion based on the applications being used by customers. It is also content neutral, so it does not depend on the type of content that is generating traffic congestion. Said another way, customer traffic is congestion-managed not based on the applications or content being used, but based on current network conditions and recent amounts of data transferred by users.
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just brew it!
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Re: Why I will downgrade my broadband.

Sun Jan 05, 2014 1:01 pm

Well, at least that's something. But the fact remains that if "network conditions" happen to be causing problems for people who want to stream their competitors' content, they have very little incentive (well, a disincentive...) to address the situation. This is the problem with content provider and content delivery being merged together into a single entity, and with lack of choices for high-speed residential broadband service.
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drsauced
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Re: Why I will downgrade my broadband.

Sun Jan 05, 2014 1:19 pm

Here's something interesting, linked in the Ars link above (thanks Ryu, I was looking for that article earlier):

http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comm ... ly_stream/

Basically, content might just be coming from a slow link, so blocking that link will cause the browser/app to look elsewhere (and hopefully from a faster source).
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just brew it!
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Re: Why I will downgrade my broadband.

Sun Jan 05, 2014 1:43 pm

drsauced wrote:
Here's something interesting, linked in the Ars link above (thanks Ryu, I was looking for that article earlier):

http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comm ... ly_stream/

Basically, content might just be coming from a slow link, so blocking that link will cause the browser/app to look elsewhere (and hopefully from a faster source).

The proxy/VPN approach has the potential to help with that as well since the connection from the content provider to the proxy may use different links than the connection from the content provider to you.
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Ryu Connor
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Re: Why I will downgrade my broadband.

Sun Jan 05, 2014 2:02 pm

superjawes wrote:
You don't set up a system to handle 100% user capacity because it is expensive, but you still aim high so that such situations are rare.


No, you don't aim high. You aim for the bare minimum you need to support the area (another way to phrase it is average use). You're not fully grasping the intent behind Mr. Erlangs formula.

You need only experience the phone system spitting out an all circuits are busy messages in the aftermath of some local incident to grasp that "aiming high" was never part of the equation.

Once you grasp the situation is based on bare minimum expected use, you start to see the problem that video services are starting to create for the last mile providers.
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marraco
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Re: Why I will downgrade my broadband.

Sun Jan 05, 2014 2:02 pm

SpotTheCat wrote:
I want to dump Comcast. Comcast in my area is very fast for most things... However, Netflix stopped working about 2 weeks ago (or so). I cannot stream SD content, let alone the HD content that I want. When I contacted Comcast customer 'service' I was told that "Netflix is unsupported". That's odd, Netflix is part of the internet. Part of the internet is unsupported? I have been streaming HD content as long as Netflix has offered it, and I've been streaming their "dvd quality" content for several years. According to a bandwidth meter on my computer, I currently get get about 0.5Mbps streaming from Netflix. Netflix claims they are set up to stream 3Mbps (or more for "super HD" content), and that they have traced an intermittent connection to Comcast. I reliably get 22Mb/s when accessing services that don't compete with Comcast products.

My alternative is 3Mbps DSL which, obviously, is a lot slower than Comcast's claimed speeds. However, the prime reason I want fast internet is to stream high quality content of my choice. This switch will save me a lot of money ($35/month or more if I can find an intro rate), but I will lose Netflix anyways (saving another $8/month). Maybe in another couple of months somebody in my area will offer me internet service that works for the whole internet. I'll be waiting.

edit: typo


Welcome to the privatization of censorship.

Really, Comcast is not "unsupporting" Netflix. Comcast is "not supporting" YOU.
YOU paid good money to Comcast to get a 22Mb/s service, and YOU are not getting what Comcast CHARGED you.

You didn't paid to be censored, and to be told what to read, what to view, what to buy, or what to think.

If YOU charge money to another person for something that you know you will not provide, that's FRAUD. Plain fraud, a CRIME.

Comcast already gets the money from YOU to cover his costs. He can't charge the other side. He can't claim he not getting paid. It does not cost more to provide you 22 Mb/s from Netflix or from Youtube.
 
marraco
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Re: Why I will downgrade my broadband.

Sun Jan 05, 2014 2:07 pm

JustAnEngineer wrote:
Netflix puts out more than half of all of the non-SPAM traffic (and one third of all traffic) on the entire North American internet. Netflix pays the ISPs nothing for the traffic load that they create that overtaxes billions of dollars worth of Comcast's network infrastructure.
http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/01/22/ ... pert-says/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-576048 ... o-for-all/


That's ****. The USER paid for the trafic. If Comcast charges for the trafic to the user, and refuses to give what he sold, that's robbery.

If Comcast can't provide what Comcast sold, then Comcast is commiting FRAUD.
 
marraco
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Re: Why I will downgrade my broadband.

Sun Jan 05, 2014 2:11 pm

JustAnEngineer wrote:
You pay Netflix $8/month, then you use $500+/month worth of Comcast's bandwidth to stream your HD videos. However, Comcast charges the same fee to all of its customers, whether we use Netflix or not, so the rest of us have to foot the bill for the bandwidth that you and Netflix consume.


if Comcast agreed to charge less that his costs, then Comcast commited another crime, unfair competition.

That's Comcast problem. He should respect contracts, and charge the right prices. This is not about costs. This is about censorship.
 
drsauced
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Re: Why I will downgrade my broadband.

Sun Jan 05, 2014 2:38 pm

Ryu Connor wrote:
superjawes wrote:
You don't set up a system to handle 100% user capacity because it is expensive, but you still aim high so that such situations are rare.


No, you don't aim high. You aim for the bare minimum you need to support the area (another way to phrase it is average use). You're not fully grasping the intent behind Mr. Erlangs formula.

You need only experience the phone system spitting out an all circuits are busy messages in the aftermath of some local incident to grasp that "aiming high" was never part of the equation.

Once you grasp the situation is based on bare minimum expected use, you start to see the problem that video services are starting to create for the last mile providers.


Yay, more numbers. I had heard that at least DSL is overprovisioned in SF Bay Area about 20:1. Comcast residential service is probably about the same, but I did get a confirmation from a Comcast tech that business customers are treated a bit differently, about 5:1.

just brew it! wrote:
drsauced wrote:
Here's something interesting, linked in the Ars link above (thanks Ryu, I was looking for that article earlier):

http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comm ... ly_stream/

Basically, content might just be coming from a slow link, so blocking that link will cause the browser/app to look elsewhere (and hopefully from a faster source).

The proxy/VPN approach has the potential to help with that as well since the connection from the content provider to the proxy may use different links than the connection from the content provider to you.


Yes. I VPN to work to troubleshoot my DSL occasionally. It appears to me that both Comcast and ATT are using the same Akamai cluster for youtube/netflix/stream, since both have similar performance. I haven't verified this, just off the tip of my tinfoil hat.
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travbrad
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Re: Why I will downgrade my broadband.

Sun Jan 05, 2014 3:21 pm

JustAnEngineer wrote:
Netflix puts out more than half of all of the non-SPAM traffic (and one third of all traffic) on the entire North American internet. Netflix pays the ISPs nothing for the traffic load that they create that overtaxes billions of dollars worth of Comcast's network infrastructure.


If one of the primary uses for broadband internet is streaming then an ISP should expect people to use the broadband they are paying for to stream. I know Comcast would rather everyone just pay them monthly fees and not use the services at all, but that's not exactly realistic. If Comcast infrastructure can't handle the demand then they should upgrade it and raise their rates (or charge based on GB downloaded), but don't complain that people are actually using the service they paid for. I have a hard time feeling sorry for poor old Comcast raking in several billion dollars per year in profits.

It's funny how these sorts of problems don't happen in countries where the ISPs don't also own a huge cable/media empire too, and there is real competition between ISPs. That is the real problem Comcast/TW/etc have with Netflix. It offers a better service than their cable packages do for a fraction of the cost. Using a lot of bandwidth is just icing on the cake.
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wierdo
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Re: Why I will downgrade my broadband.

Sun Jan 05, 2014 3:48 pm

You pay Netflix $8/month, then you use $500+/month worth of Comcast's bandwidth to stream your HD videos. However, Comcast charges the same fee to all of its customers, whether we use Netflix or not, so the rest of us have to foot the bill for the bandwidth that you and Netflix consume.


Uhh...last I read from academia, 1tb costs Comcast a fraction of a penny, and that figure keeps going down every year. The companies charge so much because they can, this is a non-issue in most of the developed world.
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Kougar
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Re: Why I will downgrade my broadband.

Sun Jan 05, 2014 4:04 pm

JustAnEngineer wrote:
Netflix puts out more than half of all of the non-SPAM traffic (and one third of all traffic) on the entire North American internet. Netflix pays the ISPs nothing for the traffic load that they create that overtaxes billions of dollars worth of Comcast's network infrastructure.
http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/01/22/ ... pert-says/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-576048 ... o-for-all/


Seriously? They have bandwidth caps first off, and according to Comcast very few of their users actually hit the 300GB caps to begin with. So Netflix users aren't squashing their network into the ground at all, it just happens to be the most widely prevalent site load outside of perhaps Youtube. If $65-100 per month isn't enough to allow customers to use even <100GB or <50GB a month for Netflix , then Comcast clearly isn't spending the money on their own infrastructure.

$80 a month is more than sufficient for an ISP to provide 300GB of data traffic... Keep in mind most of their costs are fixed, so it matters less how much traffic they push and more about how many lines and fixed substations they maintain. TWC clearly isn't having the same $$$ trouble, and they've been busy upgrading backbone lines and substations to fibre...
 
clone
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Re: Why I will downgrade my broadband.

Mon Jan 06, 2014 2:27 am

dltd.
Last edited by clone on Tue Jan 14, 2014 1:52 am, edited 1 time in total.
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