Sturm
@alconlabs.com
| reply to Rick
Re: Complain about Comcast=Have your Reputation Scrutinized
said by Rick  :I don't see what comcast was doing as illegal anymore than I see a bank having the right to install a camera and dye trap in their money drawer as being illegal. The analogy is deeply flawed. The camera and dye does not impact your usage of the money you get from the bank. A proper analogy would be if the bank delays, diverts and plainly blocks transfers of your money just because some people use money to buy drugs and it "may" harm your "experience" in using your money. |
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inthepubliceye
@comcast.net
 from:
TKJunkMail
| reply to funchords
The arguments on both sides are fairly legitimate and can be argued effectively with "what if" doomsday scenarios.
If you are going to be very vocal about your beliefs with the FCC, press, etc, in a manor that has the potential to impact a multi-billion dollar business that provides services to multi-millions of customers, expect some reaction and questioning of you expertise, data, actions and motives. |
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funchords
Hello
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-11
Washington, DC
 ·Verizon Online DSL
 ·Skype
1 edit | reply to Rick
said by Rick :he rarely if ever offered up a better solution and he failed to talk at all about the need to have some controls in place for the benefit of the rest of the users. Rick,
Lest anyone confuse your support for Comcast for an attack on me, let me set the record straight. You've been decent with me. I don't see you as an attacker at all. (You're just wrong -- hahahah - just kidding.)     
That said, I have said the following pretty consistently, and would like to say it again as my solution for this problem:
1. Turning Sandvine off right now and replacing it with nothing would be an improvement. It does little good and does a lot of harm to innocent users. I have been asking for this all along.
2. Using DSCP (DiffServ, RFC 2474 ET AL) is a way to make VOIP applications more robust during moments of congestion. I have been talking about this for several months, but Comcast and I have two very different pictures of applicable Congestion. Healthy networks do not idle at "congested," and Comcast's view of the future is one of a Congestion Regime.
3. The only actual way to meet increasing demands for bandwidth is to meet those demands. You cannot "throttle the future" and for Comcast and other monopoly/duopoly ISPs to keep chanting "you can't build your way out of it" ignores 26 years of Internet history which shows that you can (and must). I have been saying the same thing for several months as well.
But as others have pointed out, it's not my job to fix Comcast's problems. It is Comcast's job to deal fairly with all of its customers (not just the "majority"), to speak honestly when speaking at all, to follow Internet Standards on the Internet, and to answer to the applicable authorities. They have failed to do these basic things.
Robb Topolski
--
Robb Topolski -= funchords.com =- Hillsboro, Oregon
Comcast: We never did anything wrong, and we'll never do it again...
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Dillz85
join:2008-07-04
united state
 ·Comcast
|  reply to funchords
This one is a little out there but this is too much...
Was there this much of a uproar when Top Speed Governors had began being implemented into US automobiles?
I mean, you buy a car with 160 on the dash and you can only go 120-130? Or, depending on the chip, not rev past say 6500rpm in 5th gear... Had there been NHSA hearings and public cry's of bloody murder.
Stepping out of the role as a "Company Man" and into the shoes of the "Consumer" I feel strongly that "Whats in the best interest of most" is what should stand.
Be it wrong that Comcast "withheld" or was not totally "forthright" with its network management policies or right, I think that the vast majority of those who use the internet as a source of information and entertainment appreciate the ability to use their service without a consistent degradation of quality.
Self admittedly, I am not what most here would consider a Power user. I download movies and music using ITUNES not Azerues/Limewire/Bittorrent, I occasionally stream videos over You-Tube, I may even listen to streaming radio over Rhapsody and play my online games both PC and over Xbox 360 and my PS3.
I am not running large servers, I don't swarm files 24/7 I don't run business critical operations over my connection; because If I were, I would look into Enterprise/Large business offerings from Comcast et/al.
I stand behind companies that deliver service in a way that benefits most because in ANY situation, the majority is what matters.
I mean honestly, get a petition started and grab a soap box and plead your case to 11.6 Million Comcast Internet subscribers [as of MAR 08']. Maybe they will feel the way that you do and cater to what a few power users need/demand. But I guarantee you that they will tell you to find a service that fits your needs instead of trying to change what works for the majority.
As they say, "One size fits most", for the rest, your in the wrong store.
::Re-Initiate "Company Man":: |
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Sturm
@alconlabs.com
from:
funchords
| said by Dillz85 :I feel strongly that "Whats in the best interest of most" is what should stand. ::Re-Initiate "Company Man":: That position would ensure that today we still would have a 286 with 640k of RAM and the Internet would still be only for a few universities' communications and the military.
It is the few demanding users that drive the technology push that in the long run benefits the large group and historically that few have always been critiqued by the large group that is unaware of the future posibilities and the greedy companies who's core belief that what is good enough for most users is and will be good enough for all. |
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funchords
Hello
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join:2001-03-11
Washington, DC
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·Skype
3 edits | reply to Dillz85
Hi Dillz85,
As far as uproars go, this is pretty tame. There have been zero stories on national television about this case. Yes, it has reached a status of some fame in the geekdom but, let's face it, P2P blocking has nothing on Paris Hilton.
Stepping out of the role as a "Company Man" and into the shoes of the "Consumer" I feel strongly that "Whats in the best interest of most" is what should stand.
Be it wrong that Comcast "withheld" or was not totally "forthright" with its network management policies or right, I think that the vast majority of those who use the internet as a source of information and entertainment appreciate the ability to use their service without a consistent degradation of quality. Absolutely. Another thing I have consistently said is that if someone is interfering with someone else on the Internet, they ought to be removed from the network. Not secretly blocked or passively throttled, but overtly and outright disconnected!
The Internet "interconnects" us all and while all of us will impact the other to some degree, none of us has the right to commandeer the net for ourselves and deny or significantly degrade service to another.
Back to your automobile metaphor: We all have to share the road in 3D-space or we lose our license.
I stand behind companies that deliver service in a way that benefits most because in ANY situation, the majority is what matters.
I mean honestly, get a petition started and grab a soap box and plead your case to 11.6 Million Comcast Internet subscribers [as of MAR 08']. Maybe they will feel the way that you do and cater to what a few power users need/demand. But I guarantee you that they will tell you to find a service that fits your needs instead of trying to change what works for the majority.
As they say, "One size fits most", for the rest, your in the wrong store. Imagine what the Internet would be today if the capability to innovate was cut off and only mainstream uses were allowed? We have examples of that today, one is Cable TV, and another is the wireless "cell" phone -- the number of ways a consumer can interact on it is limited, has a high cost, and grows slowly.
The Internet has become so successful because anyone can innovate on it. There is no secret handshake. The standards are open and accessible and free of cost, and the number of new sites and services appearing daily defy any ability to track all of it.
That wonderful chaotic freedom and the rapid growth it brings doesn't cancel innovators' responsibilities to behave responsible on it in ways that don't interfere. We all must share the road.
Yes, Comcast owes you a duty to deliver the Internet Access to You-Tube and iTunes you paid for. Sometimes this means they must be the policeman and cut-off the kid down the street who somehow has managed to saturate the neighborhood with whatever crap his modem will spew. I'm not against that kind of policing -- on the contrary, I'm for that.
But they cannot be allowed to dumb down the Internet by making it only suitable for mainstream uses. As the leading cable internet provider, such a prohibition again innovation would affect our nation's technology leadership in the world! It HAS to be open for legal, non-interfering innovations.
This is why I say that Sandvine isn't "Network Management," it's Application Management. It's an attack on a legitimate use and it attacked it whether or not that use was legal or interfering with anyone.
I appreciate your opinion, and thanks for hearing me out.
--
Robb Topolski -= funchords.com =- Hillsboro, Oregon
Comcast: We never did anything wrong, and we'll never do it again...
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funchords
Hello
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-11
Washington, DC
·Verizon Online DSL
·Skype
| reply to Sturm
Sturm, you're a great contributor. I sure wish you were a DSLReports member so I could give you thumbs-ups and send you PMs. So consider this as such -- and hopefully you'll be a member someday! |
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deblin
Dark Side of the Moon
Premium,MVM
join:2001-09-01
Middletown, DE
| reply to funchords
I'll keep this brief.
Just because someone does not have a degree in a particular field, or credentials to back something up, does not mean their findings are invalid or wrong.
We all know that what funchords found is in fact happening and has been well-documented. What does his other personal experience/etc have to do with what he found? Nothing.
Comcast is just pissed off that someone called them on their use of Sandvine. They thought they could just ignore it and deny it, and they got b*tch slapped with facts and hard evidence. They STILL did not back down.
Bottom line is - Comcast got caught, they're pissed, and they're going after someone to seek revenge. Tarnishing someone's personal or technical reputation serves only to mud sling and shows just how vehement their management is. Instead of admitting what they were doing and working with the consumer to find a better solution, they deny it and then when they get caught with their pants down, they try to make funchords look like some kind of 16 year old downloading things illegally. For shame Comcast, for shame.
Ok, not so brief, sorry
--
perl -le 'print $i=pack(c5,(8**2+3**2),42-10,sqrt(3600),oct(63),(unpack(c, "&")-6)),pack(c7, (70,114,101,101,66,83,68))' |
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sturmvogel
Obama '08
join:2008-02-07
Houston, TX
| reply to funchords
said by funchords :Sturm, you're a great contributor. I sure wish you were a DSLReports member so I could give you thumbs-ups and send you PMs. So consider this as such -- and hopefully you'll be a member someday! There you go. Thank you for your kind words. |
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jester121
Premium
join:2003-08-09
Lake Zurich, IL
 ·surpasshosting
·ViaTalk
| reply to funchords
If funchords is going to come out and make bold public editorial comments ...
- Is Sandvine "network management" or not
- Is the limited capacity argument valid
- Is congestion a serious problem
... mixed in with his technical analysis (and indeed he has, just reference the posting history as well as the original analysis docs) then Comcast is perfectly within their rights to question his credentials. In a thread last week I pointed out some (in my opinion) glaring flaws in Robb's statements, and mentioned that this helps his detractors in their efforts to discredit him. His response to Comcast's FCC filing was pretty much more of the same; it came across sounding whiny and not very impressive at all.
Robb, if you want to be a big shot and stand in the spotlight, you need to learn to take the big punches when the tables turn. |
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espaeth
Digital Plumber
Premium,MVM
join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN
·voip.ms
·Vitelity VOIP
·Callcentric
·VoiceStick
·ViaTalk
·Comcast
·Embarq
| reply to funchords
said by funchords :1. Turning Sandvine off right now and replacing it with nothing would be an improvement. It does little good and does a lot of harm to innocent users. I have been asking for this all along. I know you're a smart guy; you really need to stop making this ridiculously stupid statement. That's like saying "Rivers were fine for millions of years without dams, so let's just remove all the dams and things will be fine". Or better yet, it's like the idiots here in MN that lobbied to shut off the freeway ramp meters because people complained that they would sit on the on-ramp even when it looked like the freeway wasn't congested. During that test period I actually moved from the suburbs to an apartment downtown because my commute went from 30minutes to 60-70 minutes each way. See: »www.dot.state.mn.us/rampmeterstudy/
You spend money on congestion controls to solve congestion problems. (the spend money part is critical, because someone had to put together a proposal and get budget to purchase the solution. You don't get that funding unless you can at make a compelling internal case)
said by funchords :2. Using DSCP (DiffServ, RFC 2474 ET AL) is a way to make VOIP applications more robust during moments of congestion. Traffic classification has been around for a long, long time time. Frame-relay networks had CIR/Burst, ATM has various commit levels based on bit rate and class, and MPLS networks today offer at least 3 classes of traffic (gold/silver/bronze). When you start talking about classifying and reprioritizing traffic, then it really becomes a discussion about setting up different pricing structures based on network priority. If you and I pay for the same connection, it's not "fair" that your 512kbps flow takes priority over mine just because you marked your packets into a video class and I marked mine as standard delivery. Without different pricing between the traffic classes you're begging for abuse by application developers.
said by funchords :3. The only actual way to meet increasing demands for bandwidth is to meet those demands. You cannot "throttle the future" and for Comcast and other monopoly/duopoly ISPs to keep chanting "you can't build your way out of it" ignores 26 years of Internet history which shows that you can (and must). I have been saying the same thing for several months as well. That's a great rant that doesn't address the actual limits of the technology. The effort involved in creating demand is highly disproportional to the effort involved to create capacity. For the long term, you are absolutely correct that you need to build your way out of congestion. The problem is that between now and when you can complete that buildout you need to do something. If my roof is leaking, the right way to fix it is to repair the roof and re-shingle to ensure water can't get in. If I can't get a roofing contractor out for 30 days, however, that doesn't mean I'm not going to throw a tarp over it to stop the damage in the short term. In terms of national network infrastructure, "short-term" tends to be months, not days/hour.
I don't agree with some of the personal attacks that Comcast has launched against you, but quite honestly I'm surprised more people haven't called you on some of your statements. You invested a lot of effort in identifying the Sandvine issue with Comcast, and many of your statements are technically accurate and valid -- but some of the statements you've made based on that research, while they may make logical sense, have significant flaws with respect to reality. |
|
funchords
Hello
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join:2001-03-11
Washington, DC
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·Skype
| I never said anything about pricing, although that's another alternative to consider in lieu of Sandvine. Wouldn't pricing be a lot more transparent and honest than Sandvine?
2. Using DSCP (DiffServ, RFC 2474 ET AL) is a way to make VOIP applications more robust during moments of congestion. If you and I pay for the same connection, it's not "fair" that your 512kbps flow takes priority over mine just because you marked your packets into a video class and I marked mine as standard delivery. Without different pricing between the traffic classes you're begging for abuse by application developers.
As it is we have the network abusing its role by deciding my traffic is expendable -- totally expendable as it turns out.
--
Robb Topolski -= funchords.com =- Hillsboro, Oregon
Comcast: We never did anything wrong, and we'll never do it again...
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espaeth
Digital Plumber
Premium,MVM
join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN
·voip.ms
·Vitelity VOIP
·Callcentric
·VoiceStick
·ViaTalk
·Comcast
·Embarq
| said by funchords :We've had this discussion before -- why ignore the obvious solution to the straw-man problem that you posit? Give each person an equal quota for highly-prioritized traffic -- enough to deal with VOIP but not enough to abuse with P2P. That way if someone chooses to burn it up on P2P, then that's a choice that they made. 1) More traffic classes means more queues for the queue manager on the CMTS to handle, which means upgrades would likely be necessary.
2) This would only benefit those users who setup their gear correctly. Look at all the people who come here just for SMTP port 25 issues even though 587 has been the chosen standard for client mail submission since it was defined in RFC 2476 nearly a decade ago. Sure, you and a handful of other folks on this forum would likely configure traffic classification correctly, but the average Joe is screwed unless his equipment vendor makes it the default config *AND* Joe actually updates his firmware.
said by funchords :Wouldn't pricing be a lot more transparent and honest than Sandvine? Sure, but to implement differential pricing you need a boatload of infrastructure, marketing, billing changes, etc to do that.
It's easy to look back retrospectively and say they should have done something different. The progression was likely a simple: 1) There are higher incidents of congestion on the network 2) The majority of the traffic on the congested links is P2P traffic 3) action needs to be taken to solve the P2P problem.
With regards to all of your arguments that Comcast should have informed their customers what was going on, I am in 100% agreement. Implementing network management without informing your customer base is reckless and I believe the FCC should indeed force Comcast to be open in disclosing their traffic management practices. What I don't believe is that Comcast (or any carrier) should be forced to "do nothing". Managing traffic (read: discarding some traffic) is an inherent function of operating a network, and that's why the features to do so are present in network devices from every vendor. |
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ztmike
Mark for moderation
Premium
join:2001-08-02
Michigan City, IN
·Comcast
1 edit | reply to funchords
I've been able to seed on torrents just fine..seems like they changed their ways for my area..
But still got that "invisible cap" and then the upcoming 250gb cap.  
--
WhY sO SeRiOUs!? |
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Bad analogys FTL
@mcleodusa.net
| reply to Dillz85
The steady stream of bad analogies just serves to expose those posters that don't understand what comcast's sandvine implementation is doing.
Cars with speed govenors? Well now that's a novel idea. And actually is the way that comcast SHOULD control congestion on the network. Don't sell what you cant provide. If you cannot reasonably provide the meager upstream bitrate that your current userbase is using, you do not offer more bitrate to customers in an attempt to appease investors and analysts anxious that the HFC network is getting its butt kicked by FTTH connections and then cripple those that actually use the bitrate you advertised and gave them.
The best analogy by far I have used is this. Comcast rolls out fancy new telephone service, but doesn't have the infrastructure to back it up. They offer this service in such a way that they cannot meet the demands that their userbase will use their product for. So instead of offering the service at a rate they can sustain, they add new technology that when certain phone calls are made comcast will simulate the voice of the other party with a "sorry gotta go" and hang up. And they do this to both parties.
They do this under the semantics of "not blocking phone calls" and being "phone call agnostic". OR "it's just delayed, they can call that person back if they want"
If our phone companies did this today, people would freak out.
But what's worse is that comcast didn't implement this (sandvine) to work based on congestion profiles or heavily burdened times of day, but rather a blanket manipulation of certain network protocols across the board.
What funcords did was expose this "packet fraud" and comcast says he has no credentials to do it? Uhh well he was smart enough to find it, and anyone who has "credentials" can list dozens of thier "expert" peers who know less than amateurs. Only an idiot would give creedence to the idea that because funcords doesn't have certain paperwork he doesn't know what he's talking about.
I don't work for comcast but I have a huge amount of knowledge of their HFC networks and DOCSIS implementations, probably more than all but a few dozen comcast employees. I certainly know more about it than a bunch of comcast execs, managers and lawyers and I'm pretty sure funcords is the same way.
No, i don't think that a network owner should not make steps to have network efficiency, but to commit packet fraud to do so is out of bounds. Kick off heavy users? sure. Drop users to lower speed tiers if they exceed certain thresholds? creepy, but Ok.
Now lets take away the unacceptable packet fraud practice and look at throttling in general. What will the users say if comcast throttles back uploading movies to youtube to such a point that it's painfully slow and it would make a competing site seem more attractive? Are you ok with this on the basis that they need to manage their network (even though as has been shown the throttling isnt done because of current congestion on the network)? Now imagine if that youtube competing site was owned by comcast and/or paid comcast for a "good user experience"? Now how would you feel? This is the big fat slippery slope that only leads to more money for the company and less service for the consumer.
The right answer is not packet fraud or throttling, but to not sell speeds your to your userbase that you cannot provide. They should upgrade to a technology that they can sell those speeds to and then offer them. |
|
funchords
Hello
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-11
Washington, DC
·Verizon Online DSL
·Skype
| reply to espaeth
Cool, we're left with this then...
said by espaeth :said by funchords :We've had this discussion before -- why ignore the obvious solution to the straw-man problem that you posit? Give each person an equal quota for highly-prioritized traffic -- enough to deal with VOIP but not enough to abuse with P2P. That way if someone chooses to burn it up on P2P, then that's a choice that they made. 1) More traffic classes means more queues for the queue manager on the CMTS to handle, which means upgrades would likely be necessary. 2) This would only benefit those users who setup their gear correctly. Look at all the people who come here just for SMTP port 25 issues even though 587 has been the chosen standard for client mail submission since it was defined in RFC 2476 nearly a decade ago. Sure, you and a handful of other folks on this forum would likely configure traffic classification correctly, but the average Joe is screwed unless his equipment vendor makes it the default config *AND* Joe actually updates his firmware. The good news here is that the users really won't have to do anything. The applications that they use will have to identify their DSCP correctly. It will involve getting users to upgrade, but after about a year or two (think the limited lifetime of technology), it'll be an 80%/20% problem.
And you would be right to say, at this point, that I'm admitting that DSCP isn't a short-term fix. I'm not sure it's really a fix that Comcast wants at all because it doesn't support their always-under-congestion view -- they're looking for robustness in a continuously congested network, a situation made because they're not upgrading the underlying network as fast as user demand in a competitive environment would normally drive it. I don't think that expecting Internet applications to work well in a chronically congested network is a reasonable goal or even doable goal.
The result of congestion is delayed and dropped packets and the more congested it is, the more delayed and dropped packets that you have. Ultimately, some applications will become severely degraded and fall out of favor. Coincidentally -- or perhaps not -- these include bandwidth heavy video transfers that compete with Comcast's Cable-TV and OnDemand services.
--
Robb Topolski -= funchords.com =- Hillsboro, Oregon
Comcast: We never did anything wrong, and we'll never do it again...
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sturmvogel
Obama '08
join:2008-02-07
Houston, TX
| reply to Bad analogys FTL
said by Bad analogys FTL :
Cars with speed govenors? Well now that's a novel idea. There are TWO governors in this analogy to have it correct. The speed governor is the cap speed set in your modem. Nothing really wrong with that, you pay for a 6 or 8 Mb download speed (we will not realy focus on the scarce upload speed inherent to the shared cable topology here). The questionable one is the USAGE governor, where you can transfer through the network only 250-400 GB before apparently attracting their wrath. So then the car analogy is more like a leased car with undisclosed contractual usage terms. How would you like to rent a car and suddenly be left in the middle of Sahara with a dead car since you have to "drastically alter your" driving habits ? No odometer provided, you kind of just have to have adhoc meetings with fellow drivers on the road and figure out if you stand out of the crowd. Can't really see them either to figure out how much they drive, because you cannot see their network traffic on the node. |
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Bad analogys FTL
@mcleodusa.net
| said by sturmvogel :said by Bad analogys FTL :
Cars with speed govenors? Well now that's a novel idea. There are TWO governors in this analogy to have it correct. The speed governor is the cap speed set in your modem. Nothing really wrong with that, you pay for a 6 or 8 Mb download speed (we will not realy focus on the scarce upload speed inherent to the shared cable topology here). The questionable one is the USAGE governor, where you can transfer through the network only 250-400 GB before apparently attracting their wrath. So then the car analogy is more like a leased car with undisclosed contractual usage terms. How would you like to rent a car and suddenly be left in the middle of Sahara with a dead car since you have to "drastically alter your" driving habits ? No odometer provided, you kind of just have to have adhoc meetings with fellow drivers on the road and figure out if you stand out of the crowd. Can't really see them either to figure out how much they drive, because you cannot see their network traffic on the node. Way to twist the car analogy to make it semi-work. I like it But remember that the car would be rented or used under the assumption that you can drive it anywhere nearly as much as you want. Only to find that if you drive it certain places or with certain items in it, the car will behave erratically (like stranding you).
It's important to note that comcast's sandvine makes no distinction between heavy users and those that are light users. It doesn't matter if you use less than 1GB a month. It doesn't matter if the torrent you are participating in has illicit content or not. Your upstream torrent traffic is going to get defrauded. |
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sturmvogel
Obama '08
join:2008-02-07
Houston, TX | Many people got disconnected based on usage, so the second governor analogy seems valid to me. |
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Bad analogys FTL
@mcleodusa.net
| said by sturmvogel :Many people got disconnected based on usage, so the second governor analogy seems valid to me. Yes but comcast's sandvine implementation (which is the topic of funchords issue) does not disconnect or ban users for excessive downstream bandwidth consumption (or upstream consumption for that matter). Although it probably could if configured to do so. Instead they use weekly/monthly network usage reports and their abuse department for that purpose.
Just for comparison (HFC vs Fiber). You can get a 50/50 FTTH connection here (Utah) for about 50-60 dollars a month with a 500GB transfer limit. And if you go over, you don't get kicked, you simply have to pay for the extra. As an additional bonus, you can run servers (web, ftp) as long as it's not for a business. Although you can get a business account if you want. Now lets see... How much does comcast want to charge for their 50/5 with sandvine and hidden caps and TOS\AUP against servers? $150???
You would not believe how much money comcast has spent to try and get this network to go away. |
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