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Comcast Puts a Chokehold On Bandwidth

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Comcast, the 2nd largest cable and Internet provider in the US, has released the details of their new "network management" system recently. The company came under fire last year when it was revealed that they were silently blocking some peer-to-peer network traffic, prompting a rebuke from the US Federal Communications Commission.

While Comcast is no longer targeting specific network protocols, they have essentially imposed a cap on the amount of bandwidth you can use before being throttled. This is in addition to the maximum of 250 GB of data you are allowed per month before they will warn and then terminate your service for a year.
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playstationlifestyle.net
decimalator - contributor
Published: 52 days 23 hours ago | News | Sony PSP | Gaming | Tech
 
 

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ftwrthtx - 53 days ago
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1 -
I remember when dial-up accounts that were supposed to be unlimited ended up being capped as well, but for time and not bandwidth.

What does it actually cost them, the ISP's of the world, to have users using too much bandwidth?
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T3mpr1x - 52 days 23 hours ago
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1.1 -
Nothing. Absofreakinglutely nothing. Well maybe a bit more power to send the bits, but I'd imagine that is next to nothing.
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decimalator - 52 days 23 hours ago
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1.2 -
Well, that's not entirely true. It's been awhile since I was in the telecom business (I used to work for a Tier 1 bandwidth provider), but there are "peering agreements" between each bandwidth provider. The peering agreements are dependent on the amount of traffic that gets pushed from the particular ISP across the other ISP's network. On top of that there are infrastructure costs.

But still, it's not like they are losing money on every bit that I send.

The issue that *I* have is that I paid for N Mbits per second, not N/2 or N*.7 or whatever fraction of my bandwidth that I'm allowed to use before they start killing my connection.

It is only a matter of time before they get sued, change their service terms or pricing or whatever, or change their new throttling thresholds. Any bets on which will happen first?
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CyberCam - 52 days 22 hours ago
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1.3 - But isn't digital downloads the way of the future?
This is the reason why disc based media is going nowhere, it'll be here for at lease another 10-15 years.

Imagine for a minute, purchasing & downloading the games & HD movies you've purchased this month alone. I personally bought 5 games and 6 Blu-ray movies this month alone!

Keeping up with the future of media content on demand, only to be penalized for going all digital, it's the price you'll have to pay!
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fear88 - 52 days 21 hours ago
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1.4 - The only people that see this as a good deal
Are the very same people that pay to play on Xbox Live year after year and still get shafted.
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Darkstorn - 52 days 21 hours ago
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1.5 -
We need net neutrality now. That is, if the legislation can get past Phil Gingrey, Lamar Smith, Joe Wilson, John McCain, and the rest of those anti-net neutrality, anti-regulation Republican numb skulls.
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IdleLeeSiuLung - 52 days 21 hours ago
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1.6 - I just switched to comcast and....
my speed is screaming compared to my DSL for less cost. Let's hope Comcast don't screw me over....
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Darkstorn - 52 days 21 hours ago
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1.7 -
@1.6-
'Screaming fast' and 'DSL' don't go together. DSL sucks compared to a cable broadband connection, and costs at least as much where I come from (Oregon...)
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Hutch2355 - 52 days 21 hours ago
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1.8 - The funny thing is...
with a super majority in the senate, that means 60 votes, a majority in the house where you only need 50% +1 votes and the messiah in office this should be a no brainer. Even the fcc chief is in favor of it. I guess the money the telecom lobby has, must have reached those great senator and representitives in the congress. hmmmm Maybe they all suck, not just the few you noted.
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Information Minister - 52 days 19 hours ago
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1.9 -
"Subscribers using over 70% of their allotted bandwidth for 15 minutes, will be “throttled”."

Wait... What?! So you basically can't use the service that you paid for? That sounds like extortion to me. It's like buying a car equipped with a powerful V8 and then when you go pick up your ride from the dealership, the guy tells you "Oh yeah... We disabled two of the cylinders so now it's a V6, but the good news is that the price is still the same".

Imagine the kind of problems this can cause when you're streaming an HD movie (And you're still nowhere near the bitrates of Blu-ray). And this is one of the reasons why digital downloads will co-exist with disc-based media instead of taking over the market as some predict.

If I pay for 20 Mbps, I expect 20 Mbps... at all times!
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The Great Melon - 52 days 18 hours ago
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1.10 -
You may pay for N Mbps, but you also have to abide by that stuff burried deep in that small fine print.
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facepalm - 52 days 15 hours ago
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1.11 -
It's ComCastic!!

::hugs FiOS box::
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Hutch2355 - 52 days 3 hours ago
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1.12 - You are paying for "up to" x amount of mb/sec
They never guarentee it, it always says up to. Mine is a 16mb/sec cable plan, I pay 10 bucks more for 16 compared to 8, it makes a dif too. When I was on the 8 I would usually run about 3-5 during busy times, so my netflix would not do full quality, now that I am 16mb/sec I am always around 15-17 wehn i do speedtest.net helps alot. I don't mind paying for it since it actually performs. But if it was still in the 3-5 at times, I would be p!ssed.
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DoucheVader - 53 days ago
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2 - Bandwidth
Who knows its a nebulous mystery. It's all just infrastructure costs, electricity and the supply of people who want access. Everything gets smaller, cheaper and faster year by year.
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T3mpr1x - 52 days 23 hours ago
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3 -
Wow this pisses me off to no end. I rarely ever use that much bandwidth, but I am SOO glad Time Warner isn't doing this...yet.
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decimalator - 52 days 23 hours ago
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3.1 -
Last night I was downloading some stuff from the PSN, sure enough after awhile my download slowed to a crawl.
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ballsofsteel - 52 days 23 hours ago
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4 -
damn i'm a Comcast customer and i download a lot of PC games of steam and such along with downloading stuff of PSN
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cyclindk - 52 days 15 hours ago
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4.1 -
Yep, way to slow down THAT market huh. If there's a disc alternative, in the future I'll just have to go back to THAT 'ancient' technology. Especially with the ever-increasing size of video games.
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truehunter - 52 days 23 hours ago
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5 -
250gb divid by 30 days = 8.33GB per day. I doubt thats a problem unless u do alot of movie steaming,Dling alot of etc.
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Pandamobile - 52 days 23 hours ago
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5.1 -
Unless you torrent like 10 DVD movies a day, this shouldn't be a problem for anyone.
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Gish - 52 days 21 hours ago
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5.2 -
How much bandwidth does normal online gaming take per hour roughly? I have no clue.
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Darkeyes - 52 days 20 hours ago
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5.3 -
@Above... Around 60-80 (I usually monitor since I have a 30GB cap/month and while playing KZ2, 1 hour results to around 60MB). I guess that is if you don't host the game as hosting on P2P means your bandwidth get hogged.
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The Great Melon - 52 days 18 hours ago
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5.4 -
Yeah its not much at all. I remember my roommate in college was really worried about not being able to play halo if he ran out. It was fun to watch him realize that it wasn't even physically possible to run out of bandwidth if he played 24 hours a day. Now streaming or downloading videos on the other hand can kill you far more quickly.
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El_Colombiano - 52 days 18 hours ago
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5.5 -
Panda I am downloading more than half the day, every day. I do not torrent so this will be a problem for me. Arrrrrgh!
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Pandamobile - 52 days 17 hours ago
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5.6 -
But are you really going to near 250 GB? :o
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cyclindk - 52 days 8 hours ago
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5.7 -
Multiply that number by more than one person in your household that uses the internet everyday, 365 days a year.
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DoucheVader - 52 days 6 hours ago
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5.8 - You didn't read...
You get throttled for 15 minutes of 70% or more bandwidth use man. This will effect anyone that does any downloading for more then 15 minutes.
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Nuri - 52 days 23 hours ago
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6 -
Oh man this is going to suck especially since I do stream a lot of anime. All I can say is so it's finally starting over here now huh..?
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sidar - 52 days 23 hours ago
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7 -
And internet was meant to be free for everyone in its original concept and ongoing to its philosophy, thank you who ever ruined it for all of us D=
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Cregan4584 - 52 days 23 hours ago
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8 -
According to my router, I've used 18.5 gigs on a currently 18 hour old lease. If they ever "warned me", they'd lose a customer and i'll figure out some other way to download what I want.

It's starts out nice, but watch over time how that cap limit grows smaller and smaller.
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Reshun - 52 days 22 hours ago
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9 - Wonderful
As if America's ISPs weren't loaded with crap already.

Soon we'll have ostriches on wheels powering up our internet connections.
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Soldier one - 52 days 22 hours ago
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10 - kinda sad
you go around the world to Japan and the have 250gbps connections, yes thats right, they can download the ENTIRE comcrap bandwith in one second. Guess what they also have NO caps.

Comcast is either lagging WAY behind other providers, and need to step it up, or are completely lying to their customers for some extra money. I take option number two because no other providers are doing this at all. People need to cancel their comcast service and go elsewhere, you all stay with them and guess what....nothing changes!

edit @below I always thought these numbers meant general area's anyways lol, my bad
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TheIneffableBob - 52 days 22 hours ago
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10.1 -
250gbps? lol, no. Connections that fast costs tens of thousands of dollars per month, even in Japan, as they're meant for large businesses. If you had a connection that fast, you'd be able to service the entire Steam network from your home computer (they hit a peak of 150gbps a couple days ago). ;)

In Japan, you can get around a 100mbps (that's megabits, not megabytes) for fairly cheap compared to the US.

But yes, I agree with you. Comcast sucks.
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El_Colombiano - 52 days 18 hours ago
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10.2 -
Whats the rate?

8 Megabits = 1 Megabyte right?

So them Japanese download at about 12.5 megabytes a second!? I am ecstatic to see me going 1 megabyte a second!
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FinalFantasyFanatic - 52 days 14 hours ago
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10.3 - Japan can get 1GB connections for roughly $150AUD for home users.
But apparently 100MB connections are very common over there and very cheap. Although I'm pretty sure there is a datacap on your upload (30GBs).
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Scott667 - 52 days 22 hours ago
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11 - Wait, What?
I can't believe how much my country is getting ripped of in terms of internet. I have one of the more expensive connections out of everyone that I know and I can only get 12GB a month. I would literarily club a seal to death for 'only' 250GB a month.

PS: 'Club a baby seal to death' is not what I would literarily do.
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STONEY4 - 52 days 22 hours ago
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11.1 -
Where do you live that they have caps that small?
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Darkstorn - 52 days 21 hours ago
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11.2 -
I think it may be satellite internet.
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Knightrid808 - 52 days 20 hours ago
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11.3 -
My guess is Australia but to be honest, it could be a lot of countries.
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FinalFantasyFanatic - 52 days 14 hours ago
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11.4 - I'm 99% sure it's Australia since that's a common download cap here (Bigpond Internet?).
And no, that probably wouldn't be satellite broadband because that would cost over $100 a month for that huge amount of data. Australia really does suck when it comes to internet, low availability, speed, data caps.
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NecrumSlavery - 52 days 22 hours ago
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12 -
Time Warner pulled this Sh!t on us. We all called in and threatened them. The cut that off quick. Bandwidth limits will kill gaming. Don't put up with it. Voice in. And take control!
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That_Whore - 52 days 21 hours ago
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12.1 - ^^^^^^^
This. Take your bandwidth cap and SHOVE IT.
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Hate_my_neighbors - 52 days 21 hours ago
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13 - I have 958 kbps
that supports 2 computer and my PlayStation, Im pretty sure that uses up 70 percent of my internet speed; lets see if the throttle me lol.
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FantasyStar - 52 days 21 hours ago
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14 -
Wait, this story isn't right.

http://www.dslreports.com/s...
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IdleLeeSiuLung - 52 days 21 hours ago
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14.1 -
That explains why I kept trying to measure my speed several times and my speed kept going down.

Especially my upstream speed went from 2mbps to 500kbps within several tries. I just had Comcast installed two days ago!
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NecrumSlavery - 52 days 21 hours ago
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15 -
Verizon Fios! My wife's mom has it. Fiber Internet is where it's at. I wish they had that whereby live.
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Tw1st3d Fate - 52 days 20 hours ago
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15.1 -
I wish they would provide that around my area. :(
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TheIneffableBob - 52 days 19 hours ago
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15.2 -
My area has AT&T U-Verse (also fiber), but I'd rather have Verizon FIOS.
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rpgenius420 - 52 days 16 hours ago
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15.3 - FIOS is the BEST!
It's what I got. 50 mbps roughly 5.5 megabytes a second! :p

~Peace
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jerethdagryphon - 52 days 21 hours ago
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16 -
othere then browins webiste and suchi dl like 300 mega a week i strem maybe 500 and if im playing hawx,,, i play hawk for 10 hours
fortuirntly i have no vcap yet

sorry for english taken sleeping tablets
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