Category Archives: Throttling

The Amazon Channel

It’s all very well to talk about net neutrality or Internet freedom and how it affects 700Mhz spectrum sales or freedom of the press. But what does all this have to do with the average Internet user?

Suppose the telcos and cablecos get everything they want.

To buy a BBQ grill on eBay, you’ll have to pay for the eBay channel. This is above whatever you pay the seller for the grill or eBay for your membership. You’ll have to pay your local Internet access company just to let you get to eBay to participate in the auction. Oh, maybe you’ll be able to get there anyway, but your access may be so slow that you’ll pay for the eBay channel out of frustration.

If you want to buy a book from Amazon, you’ll have to pay for the Amazon channel. For search you’ll need the Yahoo channel or the ask.com channel or the google channel. Assuming your favorite search engine is even offered as a channel. Many smaller services probably won’t be.

Maybe it won’t be quite this bad. Continue reading →

Comcast’s Secret Bandwidth Limits

Just when you think it’s all telcos doing things dire for Internet freedom:

Comcast has warned broadband Internet customers across the country to curb their downloading or wind up on the curb.
The company has a bandwidth limitation that, if broken, can result in a 12-month suspension of service. The problem, according to customer complaints, is that the telecom giant refuses to reveal how much downloading is too much.
The company, which a few years ago advertised the service as “unlimited” has an “acceptable use policy” which enforces the invisible download limit.
The 23-part policy, states that it is a breach of contract to generate “levels of traffic sufficient to impede others’ ability to send or retrieve information.” But nowhere does it detail what levels of traffic will impede others.
—Comcast Cuts Off Heavy Internet Users, Customers complain bandwidth limits are secret, By Joseph S. Enoch ConsumerAffairs.Com, August 24, 2007

And you have to wonder how long that AUP said that while Comcast was advertising “unlimited”.

This part is especially enlightening:

Douglas said the company shuts off people’s Internet if it affects the performance of their neighbors because often many people will share a connection on one data pipe.

So instead of fixing their bad topology, they penalize customers for using it.

Well, it’s a free market, right? Comcast users who don’t like it can switch to, er, if they’re lucky and have any choice at all, probably to whichever of Verizon or AT&T happens to be in their area. There couldn’t be any problems with those providers, could there?

Meanwhile, if you want to follow this Comcast controversy, here’s the Comcast Broadband dispute blog that one of the cast-offs started, presumably using his new DSL connection.It’s kind of like salmon organizing against a dam upstream.

-jsq

Freedom to Degrade

BT made an interesting presentation at an IETF meeting in which it described a spectrum whose endpoints are

demand side — freedom to degrade others
…
supply side — freedom to degrade competitors

— re-ECN architectural intent by Bob Briscoe, UCL, BT, 68th IETF, Unofficial Birds of a Feather (non-BoF), Prague, 21 Mar 2007

My, freedom is so degrading. Continue reading →

Incumbents Preparing

Cringely gets pessimistic:

In the end the ISPs are going to win this battle, you know. The only thing that will keep them from doing that is competition, something it is difficult to see coming along anytime soon, rather like that lemonade-powered sports car.
— Beyond Net Neutrality: If at first you don’t succeed, change the game. I, Cringely, Pulpit, April 6, 2007

Is he just whining? Continue reading →

Ted Who?

The comic is the message.