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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

“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?

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.