Jonathan's Universe

Posts Tagged ‘Comcast’

For years Comcast has had an invisible data-transfer cap that seemed to vary from node-to-node. Basically if you transfer more than [some number you dont actually know] gigabytes of data (uploading/downloading) in a month, you get a phone call. If you do it again, they disable your account. I think at the time it was for a year.

Many people have had a problem with this. I mean, hey, you don’t know how much data you can transfer before it’s considered abusive. It’s kind of well.. just lame, Comcast. So it seems Comcast finally caved and have announced that effective October 1st, 2008, the data transfer cap is 250 GB monthly. This is a bit, it depends on what you use the internet for. Someone who just checks their mail has very little to worry about. Someone who watches multiple high definition movies and TV shows a day might have to curb their habits.

This kind of affects me. I have my brother who uses the internet for whatever, I use internet frequently for work, communications and programming where I constantly have many connections to open remote command line interfaces. And also my dad uses the internet. And also, there’s no way to accurately monitor your internet transfer quota easily.

I guess the fact that Comcast was forced to specify their caps is a victory in itself.

Also, Comcast has been enforcing network administration & management policies that involve throttling users that use BitTorrent and other P2P software. This means that these users who use those services will have slower upload/download speed and generally their requests will be deprioritized. Comcast claimed that it was doing this only during peak times to prevent other users from being affected by the heavy bandwidth consumption. But somebody posted some photographic evidence that their connection was throttled constantly all day.

Comcast was recently ordered by the FCC to cease this practice as it violates Net Neutrality regulations. Comcast is now attempting to sue the FCC and overturn the order… because it’s “unfair.”

I predict the downfall of Comcast and it will probably run out of business within the next decade.