http://daviswiki.org/Comcast

lawl

How the widgets are made is absolutely none the business of the person supplying them. Finding new ways to use existing technologies is the basis for innovation. Instead of trying to limit it, finding ways to capitalize on it should have been the goal. Comcast under-estimated the required infrastructure required to supply the market demand, and then continued to accept more customers than they could handle. Instead of building up their infrastructure to meet their contracts, they looked for ways to get our of their obligation.

Building new infrastructure: easy? Not at all, but virtually every other developed country in the world has found ways to build it up, with far better results. Yet the US continually says how hard it is, and it's not worth it, or sets a goal a decade in the future for something that's needed today. This isn't trashing talking the US (though I have no wish to ever live there on a permanent basis), but I've seen far too much justification for not putting the world or money into things that are needed and complaining that things are just too hard and not worth the effort.

As for the legality, P2P is NOT illegal. P2P has never been illegal. No method of transfer data has EVER been illegal. As an ISP's job is the transfer of data, NOT the policing and judging of what data their customers are sending.

How the widgets are made are 100% the business of the widget provider, because in this analogy the widget provider (being Comcast) builds and uses it's own infrastructure to provide those widgets to it's customers. Building widgets costs money to the company, and if they have to build out to supply even more widgets to how many customers they have, it's going to cost even more.



Comcast does not have a contract to supply you with any specific data rate. Unfortunately, there are many provisions in the subscriber agreement that they will provide you with "high speed" but not necessarily a specific amount of bandwidth. This is a practice I've always found deplorable, but probably legally necessary for cases just like this. Comcast guarantees it's services to work flawlessly and be on all the time, but doesn't guarantee you an amount of bandwidth.




You know, you're right. Comcast really should be building up their network instead of complaining. I'd love to see the 1 and 2 megabit upload speeds we enjoy in Seattle all over the place.

The problem is that we don't know what Comcast's intentions were, we only know that their intention was to delay bit torrent traffic that was choking up their network. Even I don't know if they had plans to support this kind of thing in the future, or if they were just being cheap.



Right again Oldro!

However, you're dodging the point I was making. I was referring to what people are doing with those widgets, not the widgets themselves being illegal. Having a knife is legal. Stabbing someone is not. Owning a car is legal, but driving it without insurance is not.

The vast majority of P2P traffic is piracy of games, movies, music, and other various software.

Now, that isn't to say that I don't appreciate that, and in fact I do. Really, I kind of like the system we have set up, whereby you can only get things that other people have gotten, and even then you have to be somewhat savvy to do it right and without getting a virus.

The point I was making in your analogy is that it was a motivation in Comcast's decision making process, and a valid one.


--Locane

Well, yer forgetting, that a lot of these communication companies also have investments in the entertainment industry, and/or have investors who do (especially blatant in the case of Aol/Time-warner – but in the end, true of all of them). There are really only five telcom’s and six media giants, and there’s a lot of overlap. So they are doubly motivated to limit certain kinds of traffic, not only based on the “widget eatingâ€

Well, yer forgetting, that a lot of these communication companies also have investments in the entertainment industry, and/or have investors who do (especially blatant in the case of Aol/Time-warner – but in the end, true of all of them). There are really only five telcom’s and six media giants, and there’s a lot of overlap. So they are doubly motivated to limit certain kinds of traffic, not only based on the “widget eatingâ€

Well, while dish companies are competition for the TV end of things (of which there are really only 2), there’s no real threat to the broadband market there… And yes, Qwest is a Telcom DSL provider, we already established that DSL is the only real competition for broadband (I think Qwest also has some cable holdings, but in like, 3 major cities?). On either end, TV or Internet, Comcast has only one company to compete with per area. (Although, tis true, in areas where the competitor is Verizon, they can attack from both ends.)

Wireless broadband may actually break that, but at the moment, they have similar issues, in that it’s only one company per area – save for the fact the areas are much more scattered – and they have a much more limited supply of widgets to work with. I pay about $60/month for my wireless broadband, and I get sh*t coverage and dependability for that. Although it beats looking for Starbucks, it’s still bad enough that 90% of the time I VNC my home computer and let it look up the web pages, as it does so much faster and more dependably (being on business SDSL, aka “fake partial T1â€

That was a typo. Not how they're made, but how they're used.



I wouldn't call delaying and/or blocknig traffic "flawless service" or "on all the time". Again, they did not meet their contract with their customers. If this was another major business they would have been sued countless times by now.



If they had plans to support this in the future, you can damn well expect their marketing department to be hyping that for all it's worth. Simply looking at their record and how they handle their business makes it pretty clear where their priorities are (profit, exactly where a corporation's focus should be, they just had a lot of people inside the company making a lot of bad decisions about it).



The guy loaning someone a knife isn't responsible for the guy who stabs someone else. The guy who sells a gun in a gun store isn't responsible for a customer shooting someone. The guy selling the car is not responsible for their customer's insurance.



Again, not their job to police it. Not their job to judge it. They provide a service (badly).

Honestly Locane, take a step back and look at the company, and indeed the entire industry, as a whole, instead of your own experience. Compare it against other examples, not just in the States, but elsewhere in the world. Look at the numbers, and find out other people's experiences (and not just in Seattle).



Honestly, the only solution will be making it viable for smaller companies to work without having to route through the major providers. The major issues there being connections between major cities, equipment, line cost, etc etc etc. The reason there were so many dialups back in the day was, again, the last mile problem. The major providers didn't want to setup dial-in locations in every city, so they provided more expensive (worthwhile) lines, and let other companies resell that as dialup. Saved them the administration and build-out costs, and still let them grab big chunks of the market.



I have mixed feelings about something like this. There's no guarantee the QoS would actually go up. Government agencies/pubilc services have abysmal records. They go over budget and provide less than they were tasked for. Without going into the reasons why (an entire conversation in and of itself), I would assume this wouldn't be different for any type of nationalized network.

Not all traffic, just the traffic that was disrupting other "normal" user's experience with the service. Again, we're talking about a very small percentage of the user base.



Actually, this isn't the case.

Comcast's marketing techniques are geared toward the end user who doesn't have service, and since it's already well known that Comcast is the fastest thing Joe Schmoe can buy for his house, advertising those speeds just confuses people. It wouldn't confuse you and I, but think about your grandma, or maybe a sister or the shop mechanic that works on your car. They have no idea what a megabit is or how it relates to their connection, they just know that it's fast.

If Comcast quoted speeds in all of it's advertisements, it would just be an extra number that people have to think about before they order something.

Comcast High Speed Internet, now at 15 megabits down and 1 megabit up - WAY faster than DSL!

Comcast High Speed Internet, WAY faster than DSL, and now with Power Boost!

Which of those do you think is going to be more effective? As soon as you put numbers and math in something, especially something as critical as advertising, now you're forcing your audience to think. Now you're making someone try to remember if they've seen these megabit numbers before and how much megabits their DSL or their dialup gives them.

The first advertisement would be effective with the IT crowd, (you and me, most of the people in this forum) but think about how many people in America that is. 2%? 5%? I really have no idea, but I do know that if everyone did IT there would be no jobs for us, so it must be pretty low.

As a marketing professional, your job is to get subscribers and meet sales goals. You need to reach as wide an audience as possible, and convince as many people as possible to get your service.

Anyway, my point is that if Comcast was building out their network to handle upload traffic, they would NOT be yelling it in the hills and all over until it was ready to use, and further, they wouldn't be quoting anyone speeds of any sort. They might say "Upgraded Network!" Or something to that point, but you won't very often see transfer rates for the specific reason that thinking is a barrier to getting the service.

Corporations don't want you to think, they just want you to order their service.




I'm not arguing this point at all - I agree with you.

I am saying, however, that it was another weight on the scale that made the decision. It's NOT Comcast's job to police the internet, and stamp out piracy (although they have cooperated with efforts before), but in making a decision about delaying a certain kind of packet or internet traffic, you can see how it would come into play. This wasn't one of the "Official" reasons for delaying bit torrent packets, but you can bet it was something that was thought about in the meeting they had about this problem.




I have to honestly say that I don't know enough about ISPs or quality of service outside of Seattle to make a judgment like this. I can only use my experience and my contact with other people to define my opinion of Comcast and it's services.

My experience tells me that 95% of any kind of trouble a customer has with our service is due to bad cable or cable accessories, stuff that Comcast probably didn't install, and, more often than people would like to admit, stuff that the customer has modified or installed themselves.

My experience and my contact with everyone who works at this company tells me that we have a bad reputation that isn't deserved. Yes, we do make mistakes, and yes, I have seen some cluster fucks of communication errors, but on the whole, the service we provide is good and we have a vested interest in getting and *keeping* customers.

I don't know how Comcast's internet speeds or quality of service stack up against other countries, but if it's anything like Thoth says I would imagine it's not great.

Comcast is not "Holier than thou" but when compared to the other choices consumers have in the US, we're definitely "Holier than them". (lol)

--Locane

Small percentage or not, they're still customers that Comcast made a contract with, then broke. Not everyone is "average". You're saying that Comcast is only required to keep their deals with the majority of people.

As for not posting numbers, I find your argument rather amusing, and indeed, gives me a tough decision. On the one hand, I know there's a much larger section of the population that would like hard numbers to judge different ISPs by. On the other hand, I can't help but agree the majority of Americans are dumb (sorry guys). I especially like the part about not making them think.

Again, not their job to police it or judge it, so no, I don't see why they let that come into play in their decision making process. It was a stupid move on the executive's part (which came back to bite them in the ass).

Your stated experience is just the same old Comcast tag-lines (no offense intended). Again, compare it against other services in the world. You can find them easily enough online. If Comcast is the best the States has to offer, you guys really are further behind than you realize.

This is becoming somewhat cyclical, so this is going to be my last post in the thread.

Ah, my point about all of the talk about marketing was that Comcast wouldn't advertise something like that if they were planning on building out the network to handle upload bandwidth, hence, we don't know their intentions.

--Locane

Did I mention it was insane?

No, I don't trust our government to do a good job with the lines either. Even if it is, as something states and businesses have to share, something the government should control, I think it’s too corrupt, and too tumultuous, to manage it. The corps are just as corrupt, but less tumultuous, as they only have the one goal. As per usual, be it the wars or the telcoms, I see the catch-22, but no way out of said. Problems aren't all that dissimilar either: just kinda backed ourselves into a corner following good business sense to its logical conclusion.
_________________
"One worse is there, fit to heap scorn upon—
More ugly, rank! Though noiseless, calm and still,
yet would he turn the earth to scraps and swill,
swallow it whole in one great, gaping yawn:" - Les Fleurs du mal
Thothie

wtf

I'm sorry. I forgot to put the goff balls in with my quote file.
_________________
"Folly, depravity, greed, mortal sin
Invade our souls and rack our flesh; we feed
Our gentle guilt, gracious regrets, that breed
Like vermin glutting on foul beggars' skin." - Les Fleurs du mal
Thothie

Heh, so I took the machine down from my living room so I could set up a linux box and code for a mud I play at.

I'm using Utorrent to download a slackware distribution, and I'm watching the upload speeds for it.

The uploads for the slackware distro are blinking in at .1kb, then turning off. (Evidence of what I would assume is Comcast's spoofed reset packets) Then I load up Utorrent on this machine, and watch it upload porn and pirated games at 70kbps. Go figure.

--Locane

*cough*