Posts tagged Comcast

FCC approves Net Neutrality Rules

Oct 23rd

Posted by mike in Opinion

2 comments

You can find a ton of information all over, I’ll include links below for a few sites with commentary.

My comments are such…

I am VERY happy to see that something is going on to shake up the industry who seems hell bent on making the Internet not the Internet any further. The Internet is a collection of networks with data passing between them. It is not about having separate islands with explicit permission required to do X and Y or even to access Z. It is about cooperation and equality.

I am VERY sad to see that it is requiring government intervention to enforce a fair playing field for all networks and content/service providers. I’d have thought we were all adults, that pissing in the communal pool was considered bad form, that what is good for everyone is also good for business. I could be wrong.

I am not saying that these telecom companies need to give things away for free. I am not saying they should allow wonton abuse of their networks (based on reasonable definitions of abuse). I am saying that if I wish to use Skype (referenced in multiple articles) to call my friend, that I should be able to use Skype to call my friend. If I wish to use BitTorrent (the protocol, though I did the caps to give homage to the company) to move legal data around, I should be able to do so unhindered. If i want to watch television over the Comcast cable Internet network from NetFlix, then please, stay out of my way and don’t impose restrictions because you (Comcast) sell television service. (and let’s reference my old article on Comcast and the arbitrary byte caps)

Cheers FCC, sorry you had to be involved, hopefully once things are playing well you can remove your fingers and we people (businesses and consumers) can play in the park without supervision.

Boo on telecom companies who think they should control what I can and can not do or try to tell me what I can and can not access over my devices.

And the promised links:

My google query is here.

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Comcast implements bandwidth cap, network still sucks

Aug 30th

Posted by mike in Networking

2 comments

Yah, I am a Comcast Internet subscriber.  No I do not love it, nor do I hate it.

Personal Opinion: I don’t mind a 250GB cap – I can live with that…I hope.

Subjective Opinion: But some of their numbers do not make any sense to me.

If you view their FAQ on the bandwidth capping, they may not have investigated what their users might use the Internet for or their data is based on the Internet of 2001.

  • Send 50 million emails (at 0.05 KB/email)
  • Download 62,500 songs (at 4 MB/song)
  • Download 125 standard-definition movies (at 2 GB/movie)
  • Upload 25,000 hi-resolution digital photos (at 10 MB/photo

Okay, so you look at the numbers – and wonder…

Email of .05KB is… 1024 * .05 == 51 bytes.  Who sends a 51 byte message?  The headers alone are larger than 51 bytes.  Is my math broken?  My email address with my name included is 36 bytes alone.

BOGGLE

4MB song?  At what bitrate?  Checking my iTunes library the majority of items I have ripped from my CD collection is closer to 6MB per song using AAC and variable bitrate encoding.  Looking at Moby’s Play album (owned and ripped), the songs range in size from 2.1MB (Guitar Flute & String) to 6.7MB (The Sky is Broken).  Who listens to 128Kbps MP3s anymore?  Eeek!

Movies?  Oh my, you may want to continue reading where I give my (obviously) subjective views on this topic.

And photos at 10MB per photo.  Wow.  My Canon EOS-20D (8MP) is 7MB each.  My buddies 5D (12MP) is 11MB each.  My wife’s new Canon SD770IS (10MP) is 4.2-5.3MB each.  Most people I know don’t have photos of this size (in MB, not resolution).  Their math works, but only on the broken assumption that the photos really are 10MB in size.  This is the area where they actually overestimated in my opinion.

Complaint and possible solution to negative commentary: How about Comcast implements this new cap, and fixes their network so I no longer have to deal with subpar performance at any time of the day.  I regularly get approximately 4-4.5Mbps while I pay for 8Mbps.  Ignore that PowerBoost Technology, that’s just junk.  Sure, I have downloaded at the full bandwidth I have purchased, and downloaded for a long time at that sustained rate.  But I don’t normally get said speeds, and time of day doesn’t matter.  This has been tested via my firewall (Fortigate 60) and direct connecting of my laptop (a Mac Book Pro) and my workstation (Mac Pro).  Can be frustrating sometimes, but then it is time to just walk away and go check out the big blue room – scary stuff if you ask me.

Continue reading to see more of my (possibly broken) math dealing with television and movies and why the cap could hurt real people.

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