Comcast’s BitTorrent Throttling Acceptable? Not Quite!
Written by Ernesto on January 24, 2008Today, Richard Bennett from the Register wrote an article in which he argues that Comcast’s BitTorrent interference is reasonable. Not only does this alleged expert make absurd claims, he also thinks it’s necessary to take on the EFF. Time for a rebuttal.
Last year, we were the first to report that Comcast was actively disconnecting BitTorrent seeds. Comcast of course denied our allegations, and ever since there has been a lot of debate about the rights and wrongs of Comcast’s actions. Today the Register published an article that begs for a reply.
Here’s one of Bennett’s conclusions taken from the article: “It’s acceptable for Comcast, as a matter of reasonable network management, to employ TCP Resets to prevent BitTorrent doing harm to the web browsing, standard file downloading, and VoIP sessions that are the typical behavior of the Comcast customer.”
This is of course a non-argument. The fundamental problem is that Internet providers offered flat-rate all-you-can-eat broadband access without considering that some users would actually use the offered product at full capacity. The providers’ tradition of selling a product at a ten-fold, known as overbooking, is starting to cause them trouble now companies, artists and their consumers start to utilize the benefits BitTorrent offers. But, is that the consumers’ fault?
Comcast, and other ISPs advertise with certain upload and download rates, conforming to simple DOCSIS capacity numbers. However, they miscalculated and found that there is more to the Internet than browsing, gopher, and email. Heavy-users broke their excel return-on-investment predictions and marketing campaign promises. Their flat-rate offers simply became too popular for the capacity that was bought and installed.
Maybe Comcast should start 2-new services “newb Internet”, designed only for emails, and “regular Internet” aimed at every single other person in the world who used the net for more than sending a text-only emails. That should make things more transparent.
Now they are whining and manipulating heavy users to undo the flat-rate contracts, instead of investing in more Internet gateway capacity, 10Gbps interconnect ports, and peering agreements. BitTorrent users do not slow down the Internet experience of others. They simply use the capacity they bought and show that the network capacity planning department screwed up.
There is one quote from the Register article that I agree with though: “Everyone who’s argued with religious fanatics has seen them dig in their heels and flail when confronted with challenges to their belief systems.” But the ISPs are the fanatics here, not the EFF who stands up for network neutrality.
Why?
I see a parallel with the entertainment industry here, clinging to business models that are outdated. Comcast should move on and invest in the future instead of throttling and interfering with the traffic their customers paid for. BitTorrent is here to stay, the files and the number of heavy users will only grow. Don’t fight your customers, think ahead and adapt!
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[quote comment="271175"]@seems strange
The problem is that anti-religious fanatics are just as bad. Ever heard of communist Russia? An official atheist state that killed at least 20 million of it’s people (and would routinely torture and kill people for their religious beliefs). I’m afraid people kill whether they are religious or non-religious. The first and second world wars were certainly not fought or started by religious fanatics (though there were surely fanatics of some kind involved).[/quote]
Russia may have been officially atheist but that doesn’t mean anything really. They advocated atheism because it’s a lot harder to organize and motivate a group whose only commonality is the absence of a belief. The reason for all the torture and killing was institutionalized paranoia. They were afraid of a revolution.
In Canada, Shaw Cable has been advertising “Unlimited Internet” but routinely disconnects service to anyone with the audancity to actually use the bandwidth and capacity for which they have paid. I’ve never known anyone to last on Shaw for more than 3 months with any kind of torrent activity, if the warnings and harassment doesn’t deture you the astronomical bill with the attached “high usage fee” will have you laughing all the way to another provider.
So they’re not as big of dicks as Comcast, but almost. We all need some REAL net neutrality laws to protect us as consumers and providers of information in an emerging age of true freedom of information.
My town has its own local Fiber Optic internet. It blows comcast out of the water and so far they do not give a crap what you do with the connection.
[quote comment="270673"]Ernesto… the real Demosthenes. Well written, sir.[/quote]
Locke
The backbone bandwidth of the internet is not unlimited. Comcast has so much bandwidth, and so many customers. BitTorrent (unless specifically configured otherwise) does screw over all of your fellow bandwidth-users.
It is totally within the rights of the bandwidth provider to say “Hey! You! Everybody else has to wait ten seconds for a webpage to load just so you can download your movie 10% faster?!? Like hell! You share with your brothers!”.
I mean, it is completely moral and technologically possible to ensure that everyone has at least 50+ kbs download, 25 kbs upload [so that everybody can do the "newb-net" mail/stock/news checking], while the remaining stockpile of bandwidth is doled out on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Completely blocking bitTorrent? That’s not cool.
Making sure all your customers get at LEAST a minimum of bandwidth/service quality? That is cool.
Peace.
[quote comment="270689"]
I’m afraid they are pushing for it and getting there. :( this companies dont care about anything but MONEY.[/quote]
No, all they care about is EASY money; they COULD make heaps more money by boosting bandwidth/capacity so they can sell way higher speeds to way more people; once its paid off (won’t take too long) its just pure profit.
But no, that’s the idealistic, long-sighted greed that capitalism is SUPPOSED to be based on.
These guys are just in it for a “quick” (/quicker) buck.
(societally destructive jerks, grumble grumble grumble)
Look I hate Comcast as much as the next person but really what the situation is that Comcast should be forced to say what their monthly cap is. They stopped premonition of unlimited usage and switched to unlimited access.
They over sell I would imagine by more then 10x and then just banish the high usage people (welcome to the blacklist 650GB/month got me banned for a year).
Like Cox cable did years ago they were forced to provide a monthly cap and did. But Cox actually can provide each customer with this cap and Comcast cannot. Comcast is in a situation where if they tell the cap we the customer would use every inch and they know they could not even handle this value.
Ultimately Comcast is horrible at customer service. The legal department knows there is a cap but ask a service person and they dont know shit. Face it if you get blacklisted you have no recourse but argue that AUP and EULA are unfair to usages that would be considered normal operation over a ISP connection.
You all must be patient. thats it fios is quickly becoming the dominant isp and will soon spread to your area, so until the keep ruining comcasts bandwith while u wait, maybe if you do it enough theyll go out of buisiness
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