p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:-  “Comcast Submits Plans to Manage Broadband,” says a Wall Street Journal headline on Comcast’s just-released response to Federal Communications Commission demands that it explain in detail how its traffic throttling scheme works.

“Comcast details changes for managing Web traffic,” says Reuters, continuing Comcast has, “provided US regulators details of how it plans to change the way it manages Web traffic over its high speed Internet”.

The company’s new people, not protocols scheme may mean high speed for some, but it won’t work for a chosen few.

And Comcast has also created a draconian ‘disconnect them’ option for use against anyone who fails to toe the Comcast corporate line.

But, emails Robb Topolski (right), the Net protocol expert who originally uncovered Comcast’s blatant efforts to control its customers, the new scheme does offer key take-aways telling P2P users on Comcast how to do what they do without the risk of corporate interference.

Loathed and detested

There’ve been “No complaints on new Internet management,” says the Associated Press, referring to an apparent lack of negative feedback from users in Comcast’s tiny ‘focus group’ trial areas.

There is, however, a qualification to the AP statement.

Comcast’s, “new method of managing Internet traffic may sometimes result in slower Web surfing who use their cable modem the most,” admits AP, alluding to the people who use P2P applications to share with each other, a practice loathed and detested mainly by the corporate movie and music cartels who claim, falsely, that sharing is “devastating” them.

With that as their excuse, the entertainment industry has been trying to turn ISPs, of which is Comcast is America’s largest, into a vast network of copyright enforcement agencies paid for by subscribers.

Could this be a backdoor way of locking up the activities of P2P communities under the guise of “providing the best online experience possible for all of its customers,” as it puts it in its Network Management Policy ?

Nahhhhhh.

Contributing disproportionately

Comcast has, “not received a single customer complaint in trial runs in five areas,” says Reuters, implying Comcast’s plans to block traffic are being met with universal approval.

In its network management transition compliance plan, the company says its approach will be, “protocol-agnostic,” which is to say 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’s already using Chambersburg, Pennsylvanian; Warrenton, Virginia; Lake City and East Orange, Florida; and, Colorado Springs, Colorado, as test beds and, “If Comcast management deems it necessary to conduct additional trials, they will be announced on Comcast’s Network Management Policy page,” it states.

Says a p2pnet Reader’s Write »»»

Warrenton, Virginia pop 6,670
Lake City, Florida pop 11,953

Then …..

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 … maybe half their population counts in this …

so we have one city that [has] 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?

Indeed. Where is it?

Responds Comcast’s ‘Jason’ from its national engineering and technical operations »»»

“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.

Now you know.

Or do you?

Putting users in a “penalty box”

Comcast has an “Excessive Use” capacity of 250 GB (combined upload and download),” says Topolski.

Users are allowed to exceed it, but if they also fall within Comcast’s “top 1000 users” list, they may be warned and a, “repeat warning in six months will result in disconnection,” he says, going on »»»

If you’re a Comcast user and you do P2P all day and all night, to avoid exceeding 250 GB in a month, users should budget their activity properly.

If users want to dedicate all 250 GB to P2P use, then they should limit their P2P clients to about 90 KB/s (perhaps dividing this into 30 KB/s upload and 60 KB/s download). 

If they want to save 100 GB for non-P2P, then the budget should be about 55 KB/s (20 KB/s upload, 35 KB/s upload).

If you’re a Comcast user and only occassionally upload large files for extended lengths of time, the issue for you isn’t the bandwidth cap.  The issue will be their strange throttling scheme, which puts users in a “penalty box” for using more than 70% of available bandwidth in any 15 minute window and releases them from the box when their activity drops below 50%.

Users should adjust their file-transfer clients to avoid exceeding 50% of their upload tier subscription.

Users with 1 Mbps of upload should use a limit of 60 KB/s.  Double that if you have a 2 Mbps subscription.  Even with normal surfing or gaming while doing a file transfer, placing these limits make it unlikely that subscribers will be put in the penalty box.

Now if you’ve got 3-4 people in your house doing P2P or extended file transfers, you have to budget even more carefully — but that’s a problem that the readers will have to solve for themselves!

Comcast’s throttling scheme also monitors dowload activity, but the chances of ever having an issue related to downloading congestion is very slim. Comcast’s network structure just isn’t prone to any downloading congestion.

The currently-disclosed caps and throttling thresholds aren’t much to worry about. However,  Comcast has also said that they will change these targets as the situation changes.

Currently, Comcast’s trials show that about 1% of users are affected, which should make one wonder why they’re bothering with such a complicated scheme.

Network upgrades are constant and expensive, and having this scheme allows Comcast to avoid upgrading the network as often as they need to.

That’s why Comcast used forged RSTs to attack P2P  in the first place.

Definitely stay tuned.

Jon Newton - p2pnet

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This entry was posted on Sunday, September 21st, 2008 at 11:27 am and is filed under Freedom, P2P. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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