Yesterday I
broke the news that Comcast will begin testing their new "protocol agnostic" throttling approach in two markets (Chambersburg, Pennsylvania and Warrenton, Virginia) starting Thursday. After my story was published, Comcast
updated their website with information on the trials. As I've already covered, the new approach, to be implemented at year's end, only targets high-consumption users. Comcast's existing system uses forged TCP packets to disrupt BitTorrent communication for
all users, 24/7, regardless of consumption. Says Comcast of the new system:
The new network management technique will result in delayed response times for Internet traffic only for those customers who are using more than their fair share of available Internet resources at the time. The network management technique manages those customers' Internet traffic until their usage falls below established bandwidth usage thresholds or until network congestion ends.
I'm hoping that whatever triggers the throttling is made completely transparent to end users. By combining this throttling with new, transparent
250GB caps, a planned crackdown on piracy, and DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades, Comcast hopes to tackle present and future congestion issues. That's in contrast to Time Warner Cable, whom I've noted has taken a wait and see approach to DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades, and this week
confirmed plans to test caps ranging from 5-40GB per month.
Meanwhile,
IP Democracy has copies of the alerts Comcast will send to customers in the impacted areas.
