New Comcast throttling plan: people, not protocols
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- Canadians are waiting to learn if the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) will finally order order Bell Canada to comply with the demands of 55 smaller ISPs and its own customers to halt its traffic throttling practices.
Across the border the Federal Communications Commission gave Comcast, Bell’s opposite number, 30 days to explain exactly how it organises its own P2P throttling activities.
Comcast has filed its response.
Now it’s going after people instead of protocols.
And it’ll be using systems supplied by Canadian DPI (deep packet inspection) enthusiasts Sandvine to do so.
‘Reasonable network management practices’
Both companies claim they’ve been compelled to shackle customer accounts because of a small number of people who use P2P file sharing applications.
“Comcast is committed to providing the best online experience possible for all of its customers,” it says with a straight face on its Comcast.net Network Management Policy site, also stating:
“The company uses reasonable network management practices that are consistent with industry standards. Managing the network is essential as Comcast works to promote the use and enjoyment of the Internet by all its customers.”
The problem is/was, as with Bell Canada, users, the people who keep corporate shareholders happy, were the last to know —- and even then they only found out because a handful of customers didn’t believe the corporate BS and did some digging.
Bell and Comcast were consequently caught with their pants around their respective ankles.
They used every spin in the book to make it look like they imposed so-called bandwidth management technologies because they had to: that the actions of a small number of their own users were responsible.
They may have gotten away with it two or three years ago, but sadly for both giant corporations, each the largest ISP in its own country, tech-savvy customers do their own thinking and research, using the Net to pass their findings on to other people around the world.
Instantly.
The result was a huge and ongoing outcry of public outrage on both sides of the border which is forcing companies to finally recognize they’re dealing with intelligent, and highly vocal, people, not compliant consumer cash cows who’ll put up with anything and everything without a murmur.
‘Contributing disproportionately’
The new Comcast approach will be “protocol-agnostic,” it says in Comcast Corporation network management transition compliance plan.
It’ll, “focus on managing the traffic of those individuals who are using the most bandwidth at times when network congestion threatens to degrade subscribers’ broadband experience and who are contributing disproportionately to such congestion at those points in time,” it says
And the company is already running trials, as users in Chambersburg, Pennsylvanian; Warrenton, Virginia; Lake City and East Orange, Florida; and, Colorado Springs, Colorado, will know since they’ve been chosen as the test beds.
“If Comcast management deems it necessary to conduct additional trials, they will be announced on Comcast’s Network Management Policy page,” it states.
Comcast says it’s aiming to have its new congestion management scheme up and running by December 31, 2008, and Ars Technica’s Nate Anderson and Eric Bangeman believe it’s a, “huge step forward from the previous system that relied on falsified TCP reset packets to interrupt P2P uploads. The company plans on rolling it out … despite its lawsuit against the FCC over the ruling that forced this new approach.”
Their post explains it like this »»»
Comcast’s new technique is based on a simple premise: during periods of congestion, heavy users of bandwidth on a local node ought to see speed reductions before light users. To make that happen, the system tracks each customer’s uploads and downloads separately using software from Sandvine that runs on Linux servers (Comcast stresses to us that this is not deep packet inspection software, but basic “shallow inspection” code that simply counts packets.)
[...] »»»
When any port (think neighborhood node) on the Cable Modem Termination System (CMTS) in the local cable company office enters a “near congestion” state, the system looks up the heaviest users of bandwidth during the preceding few minutes. Those users then have their traffic tagged as “Best Effort” rather than the default “Priority Best Effort.” At this point, nothing happens to anyone’s traffic.
When congestion actually occurs, the Priority Best Effort users should see no slowdown in their connections; all traffic will go through ahead of the Best Effort traffic. Best Effort folks may not notice any slowdown, either. They are not speed-limited, but they do go to the back of the quality of service (QoS) line. At this point, if traffic does in fact fill the pipe, users in the Best Effort category will experience delays in their connections, though their traffic will still be sent on whenever possible.
A CMTS has separate upload and download ports, and the new management system is port-specific. If congestion only appears on the upload link, no one’s download links will be affected. In addition, when the system begins to tag users as Best Effort, it only considers their traffic on the specific port being managed; heavy downloaders won’t be tagged if it is only the upload link that starts to have problems.
Says the Comcast Corporation network management transition compliance plan, continuing from the sections quoted earlier »»»
Comcast expects to meet the following benchmarks in our transition to the new protocol-agnostic congestion management practices:
a. October 15, 2008. Comcast will have completed installation of the PacketCable Multimedia and Internet Protocol Detail Record servers, and will have begun installation of the Congestion Management Fairshare servers. These servers, and other hardware used for the new congestion management practices, are described in detail in Attachment B.
b. November 15, 2008. Comcast will have begun commercial (i.e., not trial) “cutovers” to the new congestion management practices on a market-by-market basis.
Once the equipment is in place in a particular area, this involves Comcast installing a software update to our customers’ cable modems in that area, launching the software for the new protocol-agnostic congestion management practices in that area, and disabling the current congestion management techniques in that area.
c. December 31, 2008. Comcast will have completed the deployment of all hardware and software needed to implement our new congestion management practices, and will have completed the “cut-overs” to the new, protocol-agnostic congestion management practices. We will also have discontinued the protocol-specific congestion management practices throughout our network.
d. January 5, 2009. Comcast will report to the FCC that we have discontinued our protocol-specific congestion management practices throughout our network, and that we have completed transitioning to the new congestion management practices.
4. Information Sharing. Comcast will take the following steps to provide timely information to our customers about the transition to our new congestion management practices. We intend for our disclosures to be clear, concise, and useful to the average consumer.
a. Congestion Management Trials. Comcast already provides information about the trials of our new congestion management practices on our Network Management Policy page. Information about any additional trials will be posted there.
b. Revision of Acceptable Use Policy. Comcast will take the following two steps with regard to revising our Acceptable Use Policy (”AUP”).
i. Comcast will revise our AUP to explain that our network congestion management practices may include temporarily lowering the priority of traffic
for users who are the top contributors to current network congestion. This new AUP will be published on October 1, 2008.
ii. By January 1, 2009, Comcast will publish an amended AUP to reflect the discontinuation of the current protocol-specific congestion management practices, as well as any other necessary and appropriate updates.
c. Customer Disclosures. Comcast will take the following steps to inform our customers of the new congestion management practices.
i. Attachment B, detailing Comcast’s planned network management practices, as filed with the Commission on September 19, 2008, will be posted by midnight on that date to Comcast’s Network Management Policy web page.
ii. Comcast will, by midnight on September 19, 2008, provide new Frequently Asked Questions that explain these developments clearly, and will continue to
post on our Network Management Policy web page updated information about the new congestion management practices.
iii. At least two weeks prior to the first commercial (i.e., not trial) deployment of the new congestion management practices, Comcast will send e-mail notifications to the primary Comcast.net e-mail address associated with each customer regarding the new congestion management practices, informing them of the AUP revisions, and directing them to Comcast’s Network Management Policy page for FAQs and other information. These developments will be further publicized through announcements at http://www.comcast.net.
d. Customer Support. Comcast will also answer customer questions on our Customer Support Forums page, located at http://forums.comcast.net/, which is available to all Comcast HSI customers. A link from the Network Management Policy page to the Customer Support Forums will also be provided.
5. Management Responsibility. The transition to these new practices and the discontinuation of the old practices is a high-priority effort. The project is being led and overseen at a senior executive level. The actual engineering and operations work is a joint project of the Office of the Chief Technology Officer and National Engineering & Technical Operations. In addition, regular customer communications and messaging are overseen by the company’s Online Services business unit representatives.
6. Employee Training. Educational materials about the new protocol-agnostic practices are being developed for broad distribution throughout the relevant business units in Comcast.
All affected employees in those business units will receive appropriate training about Comcast’s transition to the new protocol-agnostic congestion management practices.
Detailed technical customer inquiries about the new practices will be directed to the representatives in the Online Services business unit who will be trained to deal with such questions.
7. FCC Notification of Material Changes. Comcast will make supplementary filings with the Commission as necessary to keep the FCC (and the public) informed of any material changes in our plans before.
Stay tuned.
(Thanks, Luvvie)
===============
UPDATE – September 21
Click here for New Comcast plan has ‘disconnect user option
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September 20th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
To be honest the new approach sounds ok. Only the realy hevy users affected and only when bandwidth actually runs out locally not natinal speed limets bettween a specified time.
Then again they will still probably use the deceptive “unlimited bandwidth” when marketing
If one really wants to run a server you can get a dedicated 10MB connection(~10x advertised home upload speed) for under $100 a month.
September 20th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Really, throttling the most passionate users is not a good idea….if you want to stay in business anyways.
September 20th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Chambersburg, Pennsylvania pop 17,940
Warrenton, Virginia pop 6,670
Lake City, Florida pop 11,953
“Colorado Springs, Colorado pop 372,437
In the city the population was spread out with 26.5% under the age of 18, 10.3% from 18 to 24 , 32.8% from 25 to 44, 20.8% from 45 to 64, and 9.6% who were 65 years of age or older (your major internet users being from 15-35 correct?)” so half their maybe half their population counts in this whatsoever
so we have one city that is a decent population but not even a half way decent test bed their data for their testing is very much useless
then we have other places that if they tried something like this they would be beheaded
new york city pop 8,274,527
they only tested in places where nobody would notice anything for a reason
where is the fiber network we should have had years ago?
September 20th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
I think Comcast customers were better off when it was only the Bittorrent protocol being throttled. True, it is unfair to single out any one protocol for any reason. After all, blaming internet protocols for piracy is like blaming weapons or vehicles for the number of people who fall victim to those types of things every year. Technology isn’t to blame though, it’s the people that abuse it who are. The logic is inescapable and wishful thinking won’t ever change that fact. Comcast has obviously taken this to heart and now because of a small handful, everyone will get to suffer for it, not just p2p users. It’s sad, but you just can’t change human behavior no matter how hard you try or how many new laws you make. We are what we are and have been since the dawn of time, greedy and selfish. Nobody is immune and it applies to everyone regardless of which side of piracy issue they’re on.
I’m pretty sure that in the long run decisions such as what we’re seeing from Comcast will stifle innovation, just like we’re seeing with frivolous litigation. Right now a lot of the bandwidth is being used for illegitimate purposes (which is arguable) and that clearly bothers some ISP’s. They want to pocket their profits, not reinvest them into their networks. It’s all about making as much money as possible, I get that. But what happens as time goes by and high bandwidth usage becomes commonplace for perfectly legitimate practices? For example, I for one love the idea that some day I may be able to subscribe to a high-def entertainment service instead of Shaw, which is whom I am currently limited to due to where I live. Their service sucks really REALLY bad and costs a small fortune every month. I like to imagine a world where there are many such services available via the internet, all of which are reasonably priced due to the inevitable competition they would all face from one another, always a good thing for the consumer. I’m sure my idea barely scratches the surface when it comes to all the entertainment venues we could eventually see some day. The internet first started out with text. Audio was inevitable. Video was inevitable too. Who knows what will be next.
Actually, it’s not hard to see why a cable company would take the kinds of measures we’ve been seeing lately when you think about it. They hope to prevent a conflict of interest (with monopolies, net neutrality, etc) before it’s too late. They’ve looked into their crystal ball and saw the writing on the wall so to speak. It will certainly be interesting to see where these odd (many would say unfair) business practices from ISP’s such as Comcast lead us to in the future.
September 20th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
“Reader’s Write” was concerned at the choice of markets, concerned that they were not representative….
The area of Colorado Springs we tested in had heavy P2P use before the trial, so we were interested in seeing how the new technique worked there. Chambersburg has a university in town, so it presented interesting demographics, again making it an interesting place to trial this. And the other locations were either representative of an “average” looking market, or were at the high end of utilization, which made the remaining markets good locations to test as well.
Regards
Jason
Comcast
National Engineering & Technical Operations
September 20th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
to the person above , yes good idea screw people that PAY for a connection
NO MATTER what they say its all about greed and getitng away with as much as they can out of OUR WALLETS.
If it was about piracy they lower prices and watch how that affects it.
IF it was about piracy embrace my plan to add to remove Microsoft form govt computers , put half the cash saved to govt programs and the other have to pay for FREE lisecned p2p.
The capacity problem gets solved by a small amount being given to ISPs that build capacity.
http://www.new.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=6315846683&topic=6146
and trust me i have worked out all the whiney lil issues morons will try and say.
I know warner brotehrs wants this just i nor does anyone trust them to admin it THEMSELVES and honeslty
so the approach of a citizen council with some of the stake holders is most welcomed
September 21st, 2008 at 12:51 am
Reader’s Write needs to check his facts before making accusations. Comcast does not use the term “unlimited” to describe their cable broadband offering and haven’t for many years.
September 21st, 2008 at 9:13 am
for the life of me i cannot figure out what this is all about
Comcast has publicly complained that p2p is largerly used for trading in pirated content. that is a violation of their AUP. why don’t they just work within their own AUP instead of getting in hot water with the FCC
i don’t get it
September 21st, 2008 at 12:42 pm
@mike
Because not all P2P is pirated content as comcast wants you to believe. Also, comcast over-sells what it can actually handle. Lets touch on both of these… and how it affects you.
p2p has made its way into mainstream functions used every day that you may not even be aware of. Comcast may even be involved in new research/innotavie technologies where they can profit from P2P. P2P is even used to stream youtube now. This is very legit.
P2P has now become a very legitmate alternative in Content Delivery. Its a low cost competitive alternative which some of the “big boys” don’t like.
Case in point:
Bell Canada, like Comcast, throttles P2P. Right after Bell Canada throttled P2P they unveiled their “DRM-infected” mOvie download service. Why is this significant?
Some content providers who don’t have the big budget like the Bell’s and Comcast’s utilize P2P in their content delivery system to deleiver their content to the user. Bell, like comcast, in one swoop just eliminated all rival content delivery providers who use technology based on P2P. In effect Bell advertizes that the speed at which people can download their movies is FAST. This is true becuase Bell just eliminated over 50% of the competition. Just like comcast.
Now this also affects the emerging trend of Web-TV. Bell and Comcast just killed this in favor for their own pay for use TV. Refer to http://p2peducation.pbwiki.com/ in the area titled “Content Distribution” for just a few examples of what competition these companies killed off. Is this competitive? Or is this removing the potential of rival competition that will affect these companies margins?
So back to your question, if they have an AUP that states p2p is in violation of this or that, then it’s a load of rubbish (they know this) that holds no weight and serves ONLY to stiffle competition and innovation to their own benifit and profit.
Whose the pirate now? Do you get it yet? Who wants content slowed to a useless level in favor of their own content which is not slowed? Its a much bigger war being wage than just some kids pirating some music. It a war on content control, especially since when it hits their TV revenue.
(Ref: http://p2peducation.pbwiki.com/ put out by CIPPIC, http://www.cippic.ca worth reading)
What comcast is doing now is also just as bad if not worse… lets look at their “DESCRIPTION OF PLANNED NETWORK MANAGEMENTPRACTICES TO BE DEPLOYED FOLLOWING THE TERMINATION OF CURRENT PRACTICES” http://www.networkjournalism.com/misc/Attachment_B_Future_Practices.pdf
I see this:
1. Software installed in the Comcast network continuously examines aggregate traffic
usage data for individual segments of Comcast’s HSI network. If overall upstream or
downstream usage on a particular segment of Comcast’s HSI network reaches a predetermined
level, the software moves on to step two.
oh? And what does this predetermined level take into account?
You see, the likes of Bell and Comcast “over-provision” their network. Meaning, they “over-sell” what it can actually handle in the hope that not everyone will be online at the same time watching youtube, downloading updates, watching web-tv and so forth.
So lets say Comcast has a “node” that can actually handle 100 internet connections. What they do is sell 200 internet connections.
Some neiborhoods will have 75 people on it, others will have 150 on it.
So whats happening and whats going to happen is this, based on #1:
#1. Software installed in the Comcast network continuously examines aggregate traffic
usage data for individual segments of Comcast’s HSI network. If overall upstream or
downstream usage on a particular segment of Comcast’s HSI network reaches a predetermined
level, WHICH MAY BE BECAUSE WE OVER-SOLD A GIVEN AREA, the software moves on to step two.
2. At step two, the software examines bandwidth usage data for subscribers in the
affected network segment to determine which subscribers are using a disproportionate
share of the bandwidth (ie. using what they paid for for 15-minutes, refer to the edit below). If the software determines that a particular subscriber or subscribers have been the source of high volumes of network traffic during a recent period of minutes, traffic originating from that subscriber or those subscribers temporarily will be assigned a lower priority status.
Step 2 Broken down:
At step two, the software examines bandwidth usage data for subscribers in the
affected network segment to determine which subscribers are using a disproportionate
share of the bandwidth.
However, because Comcast (and Bell Canada) over-provisions (over-sells) the “network segment”, certain area’s will tend to always be high because of this.
The “affected network segment” is directly proprtional to how much they have over-sold the “network segment”.
Has comcast released the data on what area’s are over-provisioned and under provisioned? Has Comcast released the data on how these over-sold area’s are affected by their proposed new implimentation?
“If the software determines that a particular subscriber or subscribers have been the source of high volumes of network traffic during a recent period of minutes, traffic originating from that subscriber or those subscribers temporarily will be assigned a lower priority status.”
So now its time to target the paying people. Since your area is now being “monitored” anything you do in any given time frame (”matter of minutes”) will cause their DPI/throttle technology to kick in.
Hey why install new equipment to keep up with demand and new customers when we can just over-sell the current ones and then blame the people and punish them for using the service they bought! (NAILED)
3. During the time that a subscriber’s traffic is assigned the lower priority status, such
traffic will not be delayed so long as the network segment is not actually congested.
If, however, the network segment becomes congested, such traffic could be delayed.
Step 3 broken down:
When the subscriber gets nailed, you may or may not get throttled, This will depend on how many people are online in your over-subscribed (over-sold) area. But if congestion increases, you get throttled. So sad, too bad. This is what you pay for.
4. The subscriber’s traffic returns to normal priority status once his or her bandwidth
usage drops below a set threshold over a particular time interval.
Step 4 broken down:
What is this threshold? Is it another magic invisible number?
What is the (yet again) magic invisible time interval?
There are two sets of conflicting data here:
Step 2 A: “At step two, the software examines bandwidth usage data for subscribers in the
affected network segment to determine which subscribers are using a disproportionate
share of the bandwidth.”
Step 2 B: “If the software determines that a particular subscriber or subscribers have been the source of high volumes of network traffic during a recent period of minutes”
These are VERY different things here that can cause the throttle to kick in.
In step “2A” they state by “bandwidth usage data”.
In step “2B” they state by “source of high volumes during a recent period of minutes”
In 2B this can nail anyone at all for anything. Since this DPI technology is Looking at volumes for a given period of minutes, this can in effect nail you if you just downloaded a nix distro while you were online. Since this would be a high volume of traffic in a period of “minutes”.
EDIT:
Just saw this in the Comcast PDF:
“when a subscriber uses an average of 70 percent or more of his
or her provisioned upstream or downstream bandwidth over a particular 15-minute period, that
user will be in an Extended High Consumption State.”
So what they are saying here is:
If you actually use what you bought for 15 minutes straight you will be a target and likely nailed.
Think about that for a minute…
You bought (and pay for) an 8-meg service and actually use the 8-meg service that you pay for for 15-minutes, then you are “an Extended High Consumption user”.
Looks like comcast only wants its users looking at Email and some non-graphic intensive web sites.
September 21st, 2008 at 8:09 pm
@longreply -
Do you not think all networks of all kinds are oversubscribed? This is the way to make such things economically feasible. If everyone tried to make a cell phone call at the same time, what would happen? If everyone tried to make a land line phone call at the same time, what would happen? If everyone tried to drive on the highway at the same time, what would happen? If everyone tried to turn on their faucet at the same time, what would happen? You get the idea. Contention for resources – also known as congestion. This is also known as accepting reality.