""The FCC has failed to make it absolutely clear that the network owners that are building the internet need to build it neutrally. It is this failure of clear policy that makes us wonder why exactly Comcast is doing what its doing at the network level." ......

Of course, it is unclear, Darling, because for them to articulate on how to build a Utopian Neutrality for Web leaders/ISPs/Programmers/Semantic Web dDevelopers, would have them collaterally expose the Present day "Real World" Infrastructure and its Lead Institutions to .......well, critical Peer Review which they are not going to survive, is putting it mildly...... for it will reveal that they are as bugs and trojans and worms and virii in the System, masquerading as the System. Although quite whether their inability to clarify on certain matters is a reluctance born of such knowledge as would crash the old analogue Established/Establishment Belief Systems with Organised Religions and Promisory Note Profit Businesses/Banking and Trade for Money, rather than the Sharing of Wealth with Mutual Benefits to eradicate Divisions and Educate Ignorance, being the Immediate and Catastrophic Losers [and you may like to ponder on papal visits to capital created lands in such a Time as now, as sees the Money Markets discovered to be feeding on themselves, for lack of Intelligence and Investment Opportunity to make them Money from Nothing, without everyone knowing exactly what it is they are doing] or an Abject Ignorance of such Matters, as has Wealth and Power and Control conjured up and put in place from Nothing, or just a Plain General, "We don't really know about Virtual Reality and ITs Clouds Network InterNetworking Java and AJAX, but we just think that we oughta jump in and bluff our way into putting Controls on it for our friends who are threatened by all this Information and Knowledge zipping around the Globe in seconds.

But all of that is the least of their worries, whenever there are NINJA RobotIQs into Java and AIJAXXXX, Embedded and Embedding Real dDeep Colossal Crack Computed Coding Controls for Virtualised Realms in Powerful Command and Immaculate Territory Control with Special IntelAIgent Speech Communications ...... for Full Disclosure Transparency of Semantic Intent with IT Content.

And before anyone would wish to waste their breath and disagree, rather than XXXXPlore, a simple Google of C in its various stages of development, C++, C+++, C++++, C+++++, C++++++ [and Wow, do some of the dDeeper Ones get right to their Point of Being, and this is an interesting page for Global Operating Devices :-) ... http://www.thecoffeeplace.com/Jokes/aaaaabqc.html] will reveal that there is more available in the URL Space than can be Imagined and therefore Anything and Everything is Possible and therefore Definitively Probable.

And given the Significance of Registering All of that, it is always Best 42 Share IT, so that Anything you would Care to Dare to Do, can be Done Together, at nothing more than ITs Cost and Reward, Energised with the Supply and Flow of Paper, Darling. It is also excellent Virtually FailSafe, Preventative Binary Medicine Therapy which keeps one in touch with the Reality of Others, who of course, Live in a World of their Own Unique Knowledge Store, although whether they are Creating and Expanding it, Sharing IT Openly, or are a victim/player in IT with no notion that they have/can have Control of IT, is the Money Shot Question. To conclude that they do what they do for money to survive is to admit that money survival is dependent upon them working for it, rather than for themselves. A Pernicious Hidden Agenda that Enslaves/Rules the Globe rather than Enriching Lives. But IT can Change All of that, and for the Better with AI Beta. I Kid U Not.

And we've been here before with El Reg, and not so long ago ..... Coming via Tele-Visual Programming to you ..... Colossal TEMPEST Works* By amanfromMars Posted Thursday 28th February 2008 06:20 GMT .... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/27/gov_boffin_nerve_gas_dirty_bomb_simulation_in_london/comments/

And it is a crying shame that, for whatever reason, "XXXXStream Feeding the Animals .... Taking Good Care of the Eggs." Posted Sunday 20th April 2008 09:49 GMT to http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/04/18/oducat_sells_hdd_kit_to_mystery_vendor/comments/ ...... didn't make the Cut, as it would expand and add further clarity to the Lead Position that AIR&dD Registered in and/or on these Virtual Spaces/Digital Pages has. However the missing link can be viewed here, ... http://jamesstgeorge.proboards32.com/index.cgi?board=UKdomestic&action=display&thread=16187&page=2#301420 .... for Peer Review and Comment with regard to Mr Lessig's Parallel Dilemma as aired on these Pages/Spaces.

There is a Parallel Relativity, in the XSS ZerodDay Trade, which in AI Virtualised Environment, has a Registered CyberIntelAIgent Bourse Created ...... and Open for Business.

MeThinks/Meknows that that will make El Reg Hacks, Rich beyond their Wildest Dreams when they can Play their Cards Right Royally.

Happy Birthday El Reg. You deserve IT for keeping the Faith and pushing against the Barriers that Bind and Bound/Confine and Confound? And all at the Expense of Nothing more than Sharing Alien Thoughts in this Space/on a Page visited by Fellow Travellers Searching for ITs Knowledge.

My apologies for the somewhat tome nature of the post, but a sound-bite just would not cut the mustard this morning.

OK, that was HEROICALLY obscure, top marks!

On the article, if we accept that the ISPs simply do not have the bandwidth to support peak speed for all users all the time, and that they don't ACTUALLY advertise that they do, does Ou have a point? Agreed that Comcast should have been and should now be transparent about their policies, that's a given, but are such policies a necessary evil absent a paradise of unlimited bandwidth? Ou says that there's "nothing fair or neutral" about what the activists on behalf of P2P are demanding, but is that conflating two ideas that are in fact in opposition? They may be demanding neutrality in the sense that no distinction should be made or restriction imposed based upon the type of traffic being carried, but absent unlimited bandwidth, does that mean that everyone else's traffic is choked as the infrastructure gets swamped by a relatively small number of P2P'ers? If so, is that not inherently UNfair?

“Like Lessig, Ou attempted to define the controversy in terms of net neutrality. Of course, he came at things from the other side, arguing that P2P file sharers put an undo strain on the network and thus have no right to complain about someone throttling their traffic. ’The P2P bandwidth hogs yell 'discrimination' and persuade activists to portray them as victims of evil corporations who are being deprived of their civil rights,’ he said”

Actually, I wrote that in a letter, not stated at the hearing and it was in the context of asking 10 people who are taking up 75 seats on a 100 seat airplane to move their feet off the other seats so that 90 of the other paying passengers can sit down in a single seat. Full quote in my letter was:

“Even Japan, with one of the world’s fastest Internet broadband infrastructure, where many homes have access to 100 Mbps or even 1000 Mbps fiber service are facing the same P2P induced congestion collapse. This has caused their government to spend the last two years studying the issue. Recently, the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications released a study showing that just 1% of Japan’s broadband users using P2P account for roughly 47% of Japan’s Internet usage. Furthermore, only 10% of Japan’s broadband users using P2P account, on average, for 75% of all Internet usage.

This would be like 10 passengers on a 100-seat airplane taking up 75 seats and forcing the other 90 passengers to share the remaining 25 seats. One of those 10 passengers would take up 47 seats while the other 9 take up 28 seats. While it’s perfectly acceptable for 10 people to take 75 seats when there are only 25 other people on the plane who don’t mind using a single seat, it is outrageous when 90 passengers who paid just as much for their ticket as the 10 seat hogs get “de-prioritized” in to 25 seats.

On the airplane, the obvious thing to do is to tell those people to take their feet and bags off the other seats so that other passengers may sit down. Yet on the Internet because it isn’t easy for everyone to see what is really going on, the P2P bandwidth hogs yell “discrimination” and persuade activists to portray them as the victims of evil corporations who are being deprived of their civil rights. If anyone dares to throttle their over overconsumption in any way, activist groups demand trillion-dollar FCC fines and immediate enjoinments1 before the facts are even in. But there’s nothing neutral or fair about what these groups are asking for and they’re not the protectors of consumer rights they portray themselves to be.”

So basically if he leaves out the part about 10% of users hogging 75% of the resources, it makes me sound like some unreasonable shill. Quote me in context and all of a sudden I sound independent and reasonable.

“Yes, the Stanford crowd cheered even louder. But this drew a positive response from Ou as well. "I'm all for transparency," he said. So, is that everyone? Or, at least, everyone but Comcast?”

Cade, you're misrepresenting my position, I’ve always said I’m all for transparency for EVERYONE publicly in my writing and in my talks on Net Neutrality panels. EVERYONE includes Comcast and I've always stated that Comcast has a transparency problem and that they behaved badly with the bus incident at Harvard. That does not undermine my arguments on the need for Network Management.

George Ou

"This would be like 10 passengers on a 100-seat airplane taking up 75 seats and forcing the other 90 passengers to share the remaining 25 seats."

If I'd paid for an advertised 8 seats, I'd feel perfectly justified in occupying them, and if the plane capacity is oversold so that other people don't have the seats they paid for, that's the airline's problem, not mine.

I'm afraid Craig is right George, we all know why ISP's offer fast connections they are farming the P2P demand, they have no right to moan when thier choice demographic is overloading the system. People demanded faster conneciton speeds for the sole purpose of downloading P2P content. The ISP's then supplied this knowing full well that people would use it for P2P afterall at the time streaming media wasn't even out of the proverbial closet. Now Comcast et all can't have thier cake and eat it. The ISP's got greedyand now they are trying to externalise thier problems to the consumer, typical business procedure unfortunatly.

"If anyone dares to throttle their overconsumption in any way, activist groups demand trillion-dollar FCC fines and immediate enjoinments before the facts are even in. But there's nothing neutral or fair about what these groups are asking for and they're not the protectors of consumer rights they portray themselves to be."

How can I OVER-consume bandwidth when I only get what I pay for from the ISP? Surely to overconsume I would need to force 8Mbps down a 2Mbps connection and if I could do that then I would have found a way to INCREASE the network's capacity without any investment in infrastructure whatsoever - ISPs would be tripping over themselves to offer me work.

"This would be like 10 passengers on a 100-seat airplane taking up 75 seats and forcing the other 90 passengers to share the remaining 25 seats. One of those 10 passengers would take up 47 seats while the other 9 take up 28 seats. While it’s perfectly acceptable for 10 people to take 75 seats when there are only 25 other people on the plane who don’t mind using a single seat, it is outrageous when 90 passengers who paid just as much for their ticket as the 10 seat hogs get “de-prioritized” in to 25 seats.

...So basically if he leaves out the part about 10% of users hogging 75% of the resources, it makes me sound like some unreasonable shill. Quote me in context and all of a sudden I sound independent and reasonable."

Try again Georgie-boy, you still sound like an industry shill. It would be more like an airline selling 200 tickets for a 100-seat plane and then accusing the 10 passengers who demand a seat to themselves (as they paid for) of using twice their fair share of seats.

Try to remember that ISPs are commercial organisations and NOT some collectivist social endeavour. If they want us to treat the network resources as a shared community property then they need to start treating the company profits in the same way.

I PAID for a service with the intention of USING it. If they cannot provide the service I want, then taking my money while promising to deliver is FRAUD!

That's an argument to terminate the connection of the guy using 47 seats for abusing the network, not to throttle 100 people because of the one guy.

You didn't pay for 8 seats, you paid for a guranteed single seat and you'd see that if you read the terms of service and you listen to the full advertisement.

A business-grade or server-grade T1 line with 1.554 Mbps costs about $300/month. My 3 Mbps DSL connection costs $35/month. The reason it costs more than 10 times less is because I'm sharing that capacity with 10 other users. The advertised "3 Mbps" is the PEAK rate, not the MINIMUM rate and every ISP in the USA have a disclaimer that "actual speeds may vary". If you want a guaranteed pipe with a guaranteed minimum, I'd suggest you get yourself a commercial-grade T1, DS3, OC3, or OC192 with a CIR (Committed Information Rate). If you're not willing to pay for a commercial grade pipe, then don't expect guaranteed throughputs and READ your terms of service.

This is how it is all over the world and Japan with their 100 Mbps fiber-to-the-home is no exception. It’s the same reason that roads can’t support every car on the road; it’s simply not possible. When you have 1% of the Japanese broadband population accounting for 47% of the heavily congested pipes, that’s a state of anarchy and it isn’t fair to the rest of the population.

So what this means is if everyone is using the network at the same time (extremely unlikely with non P2P applications), then you only get a tenth of your connection speed. The problem is that P2P applications can use the multi-stream cheat (http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=1078) and refuse to slow down to an equal share of the limited resources. The only way to equitably share out the resources is to manage the network (http://www.lanarchitect.net/Files/Network_Management_n_Internet.doc).

I don't see why there would be a problem with throttling any kind of traffic as long as it is made explicit that this is being done and customers have a choice to change provider to someone who allows them vast amounts of bandwidth or to pay for the amount they use.

I don't see why Comcast should be selling a service they can't offer. If -as they claim- the service they can offer is what the vast majority of their users want then what benefit to selling to the minority. Why not apply a bit of 80/20 type thinking and just tell the bandwidth hogs to go fun themselves?

Andrew Crystall says: "That's an argument to terminate the connection of the guy using 47 seats for abusing the network, not to throttle 100 people because of the one guy."

10% of the population (using P2P) is consuming 75% of the resources. Of that 10%, the seeders are the heaviest users especially on the upstream. Comcast ONLY issues TCP resets during congested times of the day to people trying to seed a P2P file. P2P seeds use 10 to 1,000 times more upstream capacity than any other non-P2P application by virtue of operating non-stop all day and night.

You’re not making any sense Andrew.

All sounds very much like a Clone of the Sub-Prime Credit Crunch Scheme/Scam/Meltdown/Fiasco/Business Model. ...... Ye Olde Promise the Stars and Deliver the Pits Routine. ......Money for Nothing and the Chicks/Coke for Free. Not at all [never was actually] sustainable for it Creates a Totally False Money Market based upon Nothing of Intrinsic Value against which to Measure Wealth.

And that makes it Fatally Flawed and Vulnerable to Catastrophic Collapse, even without any Obvious Sustained Attack. And if there is no Effective Fix put in, [and you may indeed Ponder as to what that Koohinor Crown Jewel Bit/Great Byte of Code may be] there is an Undoubted Inevitability in the Systems Suicide Attack.

"OK, that was HEROICALLY obscure, top marks!" ... By Nick Palmer Posted Tuesday 22nd April 2008 09:23 GMT ...... I trust in Global Operating Devices, Nick, that is NEUKlearer HyperRadioProActive for some Code Fusion rather than Message Confusion .

El Reg are certainly on the ball with further comments, even if others are not ..... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/17/business_communications/. A Blast from the Past .....Classic RockIT and Roll Running Bandwidth.....for Added IPDepth.

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/20-of-Comcast-Users-To-See-DOCSIS-30-in-2008-89821

Yes the upload isn't there yet, but regarding the heavy users unless they are just exchanging traffic between themselves, they are providing a service to the leechers.

At no cost to you! Of course until the DOCSIS 3.0 upload bandwidth issues are resolved you still want the asymmetric distribution.

To use the airline metaphor: They are the pilots providing the service and you are trying to play air traffic control. You just need to expand the air corridors.

The (dslreports) story suggest that the delay in upload been available on DOCSIS 3.0 will not help in your competition with FiOS. Of course neither will your traffic management.

Do we have to go back to David Isenburgs - Rise of the stupid networks.

http://www.rageboy.com/stupidnet.html

Just deliver the bits, ASAP.

amanfromMars making sense ??

Sorry, kain preacher?

DOCSIS 3.0 is 80 Mbps shared between 200-400 users, Japan has 100 Mbps per home and they STILL are getting killed by P2P traffic. You cannot grow your way out of congestion; it must be managed.

The issue from a business model perspective is thus:

ISP's pay transit typically on usage based terms.

"Consumer" grade flat rate you're not charged per bit, but rather for a Hose that may be constricted somewhere up stream. This is certainly an issue for your ISP and is a major reason why George Ou has a more technically grounded point than his detractors... even though cable co's and telco's did this to themselves because they believe that people generally aren't willing to pay for data service; it's considered an add on to existing revenue streams like TV or Voice, so they never bothered building the billing infrastructure into their OSS systems.

Discussing the technical remediation issue without first addressing the core business problem is at best a bandaid, at worst a PR disaster.

I propose that consumer grade ISP's switch to a usage based billing model; this would provide the "transparency" everyone wants: if you leech you'll pay more than granny who sends a couple emails every week. Plus you'd get the added benefit of cutting down on abuse issues related to bot nets; you get infected and start spewing crap on the network, you'll end up paying for it.

~Max

You're attempting to muddle the issue Georgia. The problem is, Comcast is selling a package. Lets say 3Mbit down, 256kbit up.

Now, we're NOT all saying 'we're not getting 3Mbit down, thats wrong' and thats not what's happeneing. What Is happening is that comcast are selling these packages, and then doing these reset's on people who are using what they have paid for. It's not that they can't get the speed advertised, its that Comcast has oversold the network way beyond reason, and now they're in trouble for it.

Soon if every one of their customers tried to even check their email, the comcast network would be overloaded. There has been a lack of network infrastructure expansion, BUT at the same time, there has been NO lack of new customers, all trying to use the same network. The UK is feeling the same crunch with the road network.

Right now, it's easy to blame 'p2p', but even without p2p, the same problems would exist, and manifest themselves, but it would be youtube, or iplayer, or pandora (or just loading myspace pages). The amount of data is just data, and the fact that the amount of data comcast's users are transfering - up and down- is going beyond comcast's capacity,

If you went out to drive your car, what would your reaction be, if as you attempted to leave your driveway, you were pulled over by a cop and told 'sorry, but the roads are too congested, you're not going to be able to drive'. You've paid your insurance, you're smog-checked, and your tag is up to date - why shouldn't you be allowed to drive your car. If someone dared propose this system for cars, they'd be out of a job within hours. Why is it acceptable for an ISP?

If a cable company's setup can only handle, say, 1000Mbit, then sell 1000Mbit of access. Let us not also forget, though, that 100GB/month is considered excessive on comcast (or was a year or two ago) so if thats the limit, make sure no-one can go over. if 100Gb/month is the limit, then limit people accordingly, (which is a 0.4Mbit connection). Now, you can sell 2500 accounts on your line and never have to worry about people going over 100Gb, or your connection being saturated. Indeed, they did, years ago. Everyone did. 0.4Mbit doesn't look good in adverts though, so they've upped the peak speed, but left everything else the same BUT DON'T TELL ANYONE THAT.

However, it is not surprising that this has shown up with a cable company. They have no real competition, certainly there are very few places that are served by two different ones. Internet service might compete with DSL, but only if you are lucky to be able to get both (the last two places I've lived, I don't have cable, even though one was in the city limits of the county seat of a metro Atlanta county)

In short, George, lets not lose sight of what this is about - Comcast's practices in dealing with a situation where they're selling 2008 plans, on a 1998 infrasctructure, and finally being publicly brought to task for it.

Andrew Norton

Pirate Party of the US

http://pirate-party.us

Andrew Norton, when the facts aren't on your side, you insult my name and sex. Sorry to confuse you with the facts.

Max, the EFF, Free Press, Media Access Project, Larry Lessig are all saying that metered Internet or some form of Volume caps are better than throttling. I can't disagree more with them and your conclusion. The solution is to let the P2P users download as much volume as they like SO LONG as they don't get more priority over low volume users. The solution is for the FCC to stop playing politics and educate the public. If Comcast and other ISPs have a transparency problem (which I believe they do), then fix that. Don't "fix" it with something worse like metered Internet or no network management like the Free Press proposes.

ISPs should all have to quote average throughput a user on their network can expect which is typically much closer to the PEAK throughput than the MINIMUM throughput. The average throughput should be computed based on the previous month in operation and it should be published on the front page of the ISP’s website next to the PEAK advertised throughput.

Sorry George, I live in Georgia, so I start typing, and it's second nature to end -ia than -e. No insult was intended, just tired muscle memory, typing on automatic.

There is a problem, yes. Transparancy is one way to deal with it, but as long as we have these 'exclusive' franchise areas, cableco's will continue to treat their customers like dirt. DirecTV isn't much better either, for Tv, and who can trust the phone companies when they're busy breaking the law, and the constitution, because 'someone told them it was ok'.

Your suggestion does make a lot of sense, however, it will still not be the best if it advertises a peak of 8Mbit, an average throughput of 4Mbit, but still has a 100Gigabyte cap, giving an effective average speed of 0.4Mbit. The caps would have to be taken into account as well. Perhaps the best solution would be that peak speed, average throughput, and average max data transfer speed be advertised similarly, with none given any excessive preference or prominance over the others.

That would do more to educate the public, than any homepage figure, and give two more areas for rival providers to compete on.

"Comcast ONLY issues TCP resets during congested times of the day to people trying to seed a P2P file."

The 'congested' times being those between 00:00 and 23:59.

"The 'congested' times being those between 00:00 and 23:59."

The aggregate data from Vuze shows that between 14 to 23 percent of TCP sessions during a 10 minute period were reset. That includes resets from everything, not just for seeds and a lot of those may not be injected by the ISP. A lot of consumer routers can't handle the large number of NAT sessions and the inject resets as the University of Colorado found out when they tried to blame Comcast.

So obviously, it isn't anywhere close to constant like Rob Topolski says.

That te ISP's were banking on P2P to roll out their 8Mbit accounts, They arn't selling to email checkers they are selling to p2p peeps, and now theyve bitten off more than they can chew they should be hel acountable for that 256kbps is fine for me :)