good ...F those bastards


waiting for FIOS to hit my condos

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Net Neutrality NOW and forever!

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What about Shaw users in Canada.....

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Wow, you guys should think yourself lucky - almost every ISP in the UK is guilty of this kind of practice (I use newsgroups and the throttling is insane sometimes, ie 200KB/s using FTP but 2KB/s using NNTP) - its considered standard practice and none of our regulators seem to have a problem with it.

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this is everyday news in Canada. Both Bell and Rogers in Ontario throttle bit torrent downloads.

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I find it highly unlikely that Kevin Martin, the conservative corporate friendly FCC chairman is going to fine anyone for this. I would not be surprised at all if he in fact condones this type of practice publicly or at least refuses to take action.

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I'm glad you found my picture useful!

I'll check up on that box again when I get home tonight, but the last time I looked, the cables were still hanging out like some guy's intestines.

And this would be why I don't get cable.

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I'm of two minds about this -- obviously, I don't like it when my torrents of Mythbusters and 30 Rock trickle in slowly (especially when it causes the rest of my network to bog down), but at the same time I don't want my entire community's shared pipe clogged up by the guy next door downloading 500 gigs of Swedish porn a month (and paying the same price as me). Maybe the solution is a modified version of what Comcast advertises. Have a more reasonable "average" download speed (say 1MB) with "speed boost" applied to the first e.g. 2-3 minutes of each spike in your downstream traffic. That way, "lighter" users who are just getting web pages and the occasional iTunes store download or even Unbox movie get most of their content at a faster rate (say 5MB or even 10) while "heavy" users get their gigs and gigs of torrents fast for a minute or two, but can't hog the pipe forever.

I know it sounds harsh to favor anybody over anybody else, but the fact of the matter is that even with recent capacity upgrades, there's still a limit to the size of the pipe and bandwidth still costs money in the end. I for one would rather pay 40 bucks a month for legitimately high-speed access that slows down when you use it a whole lot (for sufficiently generous definitions of "a whole lot") than pay 80 bucks a month for truly unlimited use that stays at the same high speed all the time. I at least want that *option* available to me.

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I'm on Cox and so far, at least in my state, they haven't throttled anything.

And in fact, usually when I get a small file (ie < 500 MB), it only takes a matter of seconds because I get a speed boost for a minute or two up to 1.25 MB/s.

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Now, I'm all for Net Neutrality and Comcast being required to stop filtering BT traffic, but I don't think FCC fines are the way to go. If you think about it, making Comcast pay billions in fines will just keep them from upgrading their outdated hardware and networks with new equipment that could actually handle the increased traffic. This is an ever expanding and developing business that requires billions of dollars in investments and infrastructure development. They are one of the few companies that have the resources to enable us to see anything like the bandwidth that is provided in some European countries. Would you want that to be hindered? It's like that speeding ticket you got over the holiday that's keeping you from getting that new HDTV this month.

Hopefully, any action from the FCC will at least scare Comcast into a better stance on BitTorrent traffic. I'm don't care for making them pay for what they've done, only enforcing that they do the right thing in the future.

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On the same note as Andrew, additionally, Comcast will simply charge consumers more money for their services to offset the fine. Just as taxing oil companies simply results in higher gas prices, giving Comcast a huge fine will simply punish the end user. Rather than fine them, force them to use the money to upgrade the network and not pay out a dividend or bonus.

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"I know it sounds harsh to favor anybody over anybody else, but the fact of the matter is that even with recent capacity upgrades, there's still a limit to the size of the pipe and bandwidth still costs money in the end."

I understand the logic behind this, but this really isn't a problem. My internet now is fine, let's keep it the way it is. There's no need to make up some special plan for each user just for Comcast to squeeze more profit out of people.

And yes, there is a limit to the size of the pipe. BUT, you have a bandwidth cap now, so it's not a problem. It's large, but it's there, and it's there to prevent this "bandwidth whoring" problem.

And even if that did become the case, there'd still be other service providers.

The scenario you're describing is not going to happen.

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I think as the technology progresses cable users will fade away bit by bit because the satellite will be taking over specially in remote areas where cable solutions are not feasible.
http://www.postonfire.com

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