Comcast’s BitTorrent Throttling Acceptable? Not Quite!

[Bolt_Gundam510]

by Ernesto

Today, 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!

Source: Torrent Freak

[myidisbb]

everyone remember when aol went to an unlimited monthly rate? (thanks to evil microsofts win 95 unlimited rate that cause it all) they got their azzes used for not being able to provide the services. (back then there was a lot of lawyers using aol)

then about year later jackazz at&t did a study claiming that avg user only did 7 hours monly online. so the evil 5 % of the users where the problem they said. so for $19.95 insted of unlimeted they change it to 150 hours. well, that didnt fly for most and they told at&t to go to h... then mci was going to use that study and they went to hell too. this all happen 11-12 years ago in dial up land.

back then at&t allow you to see how many hours you did. a month before that shitty study they stop showing your usage. (i know i was 500 hours. God this was before online gaming took over)

comcast's REAL reason is to force their users to get movies from their pay as you go services. not the other online legal companies and sources. remember cable companies want to give you a multi package of phone , tv, movie renting with dvr that you cant transfer to your own computer. looks like an illegal monopoly to me.

[LoKz]

i dint know comcast had a pay as you go service?... and yeah companies do mest up things for there convenience....