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 NormanSPremium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
kudos:9 | reply to FreakyOne
Re: Comcast is using Sandvine to manage P2P Connections said by FreakyOne:As for the ISp paying someone else for me to have internet connectivity i am not made aware of this in any of my agreements that i have read. If this is the case i am certain that there would be some sort of legal jargen regarding this. No more than there is legal jargon regarding the cost born by Ford Motor Company for the S.A.E. rated bolts holding their engines together. The cost of third party transit should be transparent to you; built into the price you pay for your connection.
What i want to know is how much Comcast is actually saving while i am limited with my broadband usage when they are not giving me at any time i can testanywhere close to my 8MB connection.
Say i have a land line phone with BellSouth/AT&T, they tell me i have connection 24/7 365 but i can not use that line for more than so many hours of use per day otherwise it ties up the lines for everyone else.
Well, I know for a fact that none the ILECs can't provide you with full access to the PSTN network when half the country is trying to call in to Los Angeles after an earthquake, New Orleans after a hurricane, or Pennsylvania after airing a radio show purporting to be reporting an invasion from Mars. There are PSTN bottlenecks which result in loss of service to saturated regions.
If the ISP can not afford to offer 8MB connection to its customers at full bore 24/7 365 than they shouldnt do it. Because some of us out here in this world will use what we pay for. It is your choice whether or not you wish to do so. If i didnt want or need the 8MB connection i certainly wouldnt have upgraded.
This is the part where the customer expectations are changing, and the ISPs need to adjust. I suspect that some percentage of the people using the Internet still use it in a limited sense; but more are finding ways to use their bandwidth than the ISPs have counted on. I suspect that it is time to start charging for a base amount of data moved; say, $42.95 per month for up to 150GBytes, and charge extra, in a metered fashion, for data volume in excess of the base rate. Just as you pay per kilowatt hour for electricity, or per gallon for gasoline.
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Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum | |
| If this is the case then i want my money back because i believe it is false advertising in every aspect. I cant place an ad in the newspaper/T.V/Radio stating i can offer a plane ride to Spain for 50 dollars and not give it because the demand is so high. I think its rather deceptive if what you are saying is the case. And i am certain that it will not take much time until most of the Customers that demand the most out of their bandwidth get fed up with the BS. Same as the government so i suppose they would agree with Comcast or any other ISP that uses the same tactics. This is my opinion and i am sticking to it. | | |
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NormanSPremium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
kudos:9 | said by FreakyOne:If this is the case then i want my money back because i believe it is false advertising in every aspect. I cant place an ad in the newspaper/T.V/Radio stating i can offer a plane ride to Spain for 50 dollars and not give it because the demand is so high. I take you have never been bumped from a flight.
I think its rather deceptive if what you are saying is the case. And i am certain that it will not take much time until most of the Customers that demand the most out of their bandwidth get fed up with the BS.
I honestly don't have a count on Comcast's high volume data movers; a Comcast insider seems to think it is on the order of 0.10%. That isn't enough to break any company.
Same as the government so i suppose they would agree with Comcast or any other ISP that uses the same tactics. This is my opinion and i am sticking to it.
As I have said, ISPs base their business on the assumption that normal users aren't using their computers 24/7; even though they can access the Internet 24/7. Most people I know don't spend more than a couple of hours per day online; most don't download a lot of movies, music, porn videos, anime, etc.
It may actually be time for the ISPs to move to metered Internet. You get your 8Mbps/768kbps package, or 10Mbps/1Mbps, or whatever, for a flat $50 per month for up to 150GBytes of data. You pay $1 per GB over that base amount. That would actually make it possible to plan for bandwidth availability for the network engineers; give the network additional revenue to apply towards bandwidth capacity, as well.
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Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum | |
| Apparently you would not say a word if bumped from a flight? It is not my responsibility to make sure my ISP can give me the service i am paying for, it is their responsibility. My responsibility as far as they are concerned is to pay my bill a month in advance for service i have not received and assume it will be as described. I am not going to put money out month after month while they are scratching their heads about my connection issues. | |
NormanSPremium,MVM
join:2001-02-14
San Jose, CA
kudos:9
1 edit | said by FreakyOne:Apparently you would not say a word if bumped from a flight? Depends upon the fine print on the ticket.
It is not my responsibility to make sure my ISP can give me the service i am paying for, it is their responsibility. My responsibility as far as they are concerned is to pay my bill a month in advance for service i have not received and assume it will be as described. I am not going to put money out month after month while they are scratching their heads about my connection issues.
What does the Comcast fine print say?
quote:
Prohibited uses include, but are not limited to, using the Service, Customer Equipment, or the Comcast Equipment to:
...
vii. restrict, inhibit, interfere with, or otherwise disrupt or cause a performance degradation, regardless of intent, purpose or knowledge, to the Service or any Comcast (or Comcast supplier) host, server, backbone network, node or service, or otherwise cause a performance degradation to any Comcast (or Comcast supplier) facilities used to deliver the Service;
The whole shebang is here.
To the best of my knowledge, no ISP, not even mine, expects the customer to keep his computer sucking bandwidth 24/7. Hey, we all have to eat, sleep, shower, work, etc. sometime during the day. Lately I've been spending extra time reworking a brick sidewalk that had to be pulled up for removal of a hedge, and replacing of a fence.
If Comcast deems P2P to be a drag on their network, they have the obligation to their customers feeling the drag to manage the network in a manner which mitigates that drag.
Now, if Comcast needs to add capacity to support those 24/7 downloaders, maybe it is time to implement a "Pay-per-Byte" system. Say, $50 per month for 150GBytes, and pay an additional $1 per GByte over that. Metered service, as it were. Those who choose to download 600GB per month can pony up an extra $450 per month toward alleviating bandwidth bottlenecks.
--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum | |
| Your suggestion is actually quite good as far as the bandwidth hogs are concerned... it would certainly make up for the loss of Recording Industry, Gaming and Movie Industries as well. Maybe they should band together and develop their own Broadband company and make a system like this so they wont care if movies or CD's or Games are transferred via the net .. they would be making too much dough to worry about that. It would also save on attorney fees. I dont believe in the agreement that is posted on that link so i am certain i wont be a customer of Comcast for long. It would make a difference if the Customer Service dept. actually admitted to something along the terms of this topic but they dont admit nor do they have to admit to this or any other kind of filtering of "Comcast" bandwidth. If i were to operate my business like this on a retail level i wouldn't last long. First rule of thumb is "The Customer Is Always Right". For those businesses that don't buy into this philosophy they wont last very long. Or maybe they are just too big for their own good and don't care about their customers. At least individually. | |
2 edits | As an entrepreneur as well as someone who has a lot of experience in the Computer Services industry I must say the customer is not always right.
That's a very common saying among customers, especially difficult ones, but it just wouldn't make sense to do business with that assumption.
Its easy to say that a big company should bend down towards the customer and satisfy them no matter the cost, but we are not given access to their cost structure or network limitations so we don't know how big their sacrifices would be if they did give unlimited bandwidth.
I am sure Comcast would rather piss off the top 1% of its bandwidth hogs or even bully them into downloading less than risk losing 25% or 50% of its less consuming customers to competing services because their connections are running too slow because of the bandwidth hogs (afterall, they all pay the same monthly bill so its easier to rid of 1% of your customers than 50%).
The point is the customer is not always right and in my field (computer repair) the customer is very seldom right (If I could have a nickel for every customer who insisted the problem is the hard drive or motherboard when it was just a case of limewire downloaded spyware or for every customer who insists that their hardware warranty should cover virus removal I'd have my own OC3 line by now).
With that said, I agree that bandwidth limits should be posted so that people don't live in fear of the dreaded letter or phone call. The bandwidth limits should also be high enough so that casual users who like YouTube and download some movies (Amazon.com's Unbox service movies are as much as 2GB each) don't come dangerously close to or over the limit on a consistent basis. I myself fear getting into trouble with Comcast in the future even though I am a new subscriber and don't have the service hooked up yet which would be alleviated if I just knew the limit.
With the internet increasingly being multimedia I am in shock that bandwidth limits or caps today are the same as they appear to have been in 2002 or 2003 when posts online first started appearing about them since SO MUCH has changed since then on the internet especially in the direction of everything taking up more bandwidth.
As far as people always downloading just under their cap to avoid being terminated while it is a valid concern there are work arounds.
They could introduce what some universities do for their access as in the first 100GB are your regular speed and the more you download after that the slower your speed gradually gets which minimizes the impact your downloads after that speed have on other users.
(Ex. first 100GB are downloaded at rated speed of 8mbps, the next 25GB are 4mbps, the next 25 are 1.5mbps, and everything after that is 768kbps - a speed which should not dent users around you).
This would be favorable to just terminating users. | |
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