Slaughtering the hogs
August 28, 2008 – 10:42 pmHow much Internet is too much? Apparently it’s 250 gigabytes, enough Internet content to fill up a $55 hard disk drive.
Comcast made news today by announcing a usage cap for Internet users. You can read more about it at PC Magazine. See also the DSLReports coverage.
The reason for the cap isn’t economical, it’s technical. In a shared physical topology, there must be management of usage in order to prevent performance problems due to congestion. Cable networks today are Hybrid Fiber Coax (HFC) networks, where the video and data is carried on fiber to distribution nodes which serve 500 to 2000 homes. All of these homes are on a common coaxial cable network, and share the capacity of the network. An image is worth a thousand words, so please view a simple HFC network diagram now.
This is a bit before my time, but a cable network is like a telephone party line. Common until around the 1940s, shared party line telephone service was how most homes received telephone service. It was cost effective because they didn’t have to run wire from every home back to the central office. Instead, it ran from house to house, so the circuit was shared. Telephone companies abandoned party line configurations over fifty years ago, and this has given them/us a big edge over cable.
For the last few years, Comcast has managed heavy usage by warning customers who used “too much”, without defining what too much was. This practice has been called an “invisible cap”. My guess is that this invisible cap is actually more effective than one which is well defined and documented. If you know how much you’re allowed to use, it’s possible to use bandwidth monitoring software to run up to but not over the limit. When the limit was unknown, users simply lived in fear and would presumably curtail their usage. Notably, users in locations where Comcast was the only broadband option would really be motivated to avoid getting the boot, as they’d have nowhere else to go for broadband Internet.
Of course, telco’s response was to point this weakness out in the ads many of us fondly remember. PacBell was criticized by cable companies who claimed they really didn’t have a problem. In fact they do, and the issue then and now is the same, and caps are the only real solution. (see that diagram again, and think “shared network”. There’s only so much to go around between the 500-2000 homes.)
The other solution they tried was filtering peer to peer traffic. They got in trouble with the FCC for this, and the new openly documented and disclosed cap is the result. Also notable, the illegal filtering of P2P traffic by Comcast is what really kicked the net neutrality cause into high gear. The folks at Save the Internet are continuing to fight for uniform and unfettered Internet access.
So, sit back and relax, watch the old PacBell ads and enjoy the trip down memory lane. Comcast has finally stuck the pigs, and they sure are squealing!
Related articles
- It’s official: Comcast starts 250GB bandwidth caps October 1
- Comcast to dam and damn the Internet with usage caps
- FCC to Comcast: Throttling Broadband is Unlawful
- Groups cheer reports of FCC acting against Comcast
- Comcast: The More You Surf, The Slower Your Speed
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8 Responses to “Slaughtering the hogs”
Great, count me in as one of the great masses of the fuXX0red. The place I moved to in Santa Venetia (unincorporated San Rafael near China Camp/Civic Center) only has cable as an option. C’MON AT&T, GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER. Really WTF. It’s inexcusable that there’s no DSL option in 2008. This is putting aside the fact that we were all supposed to have fiberoptic 10 years ago in the reduced regulation deal with the telcos. Americans are screwed for broadband from every direction I guess.
By Jim on Aug 29, 2008
Well, we left cable years ago. They just keep upping the price and providing very little in return for it. They claim to increase the price to improve their service but all they improve are the services that cost you more money.
DSL maybe slower but it isn’t Comcast. I wouldn’t touch cable/Comcast now with someone else’s computer.
I can very easily do without DSL and if sonic or AT&T did something like this I would drop you both in a heart beat.
I don’t play these games.
By Robert Barnett on Aug 29, 2008
This is one of the reasons why I’ve always loved Sonic. It’s truly unlimited. I’ve never been threatened or denied service. There was one time where Sonic found a bottle neck and needed to replace a router. The router wasn’t coming in for a few days. Sonic just sent a nice email to the top 1% users to voluntarily use less traffic until that time. I graciously stopped all hosting until after the new router was installed.
I doubt I use more than 250GB a month. That’s over 8.3GB a day.
By Jeremy on Aug 29, 2008
Reply to Jeremy-
Yup, that’s why I’ve maintained sonic dialup – keeping my email address & domain because I know that eventually we’ll get DSL and when we do, I’ll be back with Sonic.
Heh. Back in ‘02 when I was unemployed I had the time to testify on behalf of Sonic and CISPA in their case against SBC. Sonic’s reliability, transparency, and customer service have kept me on and I continue to refer business their way.
By Jim on Aug 29, 2008
I don’t know, Dane. You really want Ted Stevens deciding how you can run your network infrastructure?
By John Fitzgerald on Aug 30, 2008
Even if you could upload 768Kbps continuous for 30 days, it would be less than 250GB: (768 kbps) multiplied by 30 days = 237.304688 gigabytes. Sonic does not need to advertise a bandwidth cap since the limit is built into the service.
For those that use Bittorrent, 250GB is a very low cap and would benefit from renting dedicated servers which give terabytes of monthly bandwidth rather than gigabytes.
By Sun on Sep 4, 2008
Sun, Comcast’s caps apply to downloads too, so it’s easy to reach them quickly.
By Dane Jasper on Sep 4, 2008
Right. I think the a low monthly cap like that is a dumb move by Comcast. Sonic offers better customer service and lower pricing for 768 Kbps. There would be no reason for someone to stay with Comcast since the bandwidth cap is almost the same. My contract with Sonic is up in a few months, but I just might stay with you guys.
By Sun on Sep 5, 2008