Starting this week, Comcast is running trials in three US local markets of a new method to manage traffic on its fiber broadband network. Comcast has recently come under fire for filtering and blocking P2P data on its network, causing both legal and illegal torrents to stop working or have their speeds reduced to a crawl. Comcast has responded to the criticism by publishing a new network management policy along with new tools to assist them in the task of managing bandwidth usage.
The new approach is protocol-agnostic and will apply to all traffic, rather than specifically targeting only P2P traffic. Comcast has set out to restrict usage to the very top percentile of users, rather than penalizing all users of a particular protocol. The approach will throttle both connection attempts and download speeds for the top consumers of bandwidth during times when the network is experiencing high load. The approach seems a lot fairer than targeting specific protocols, but it effectively results in a bandwidth cap for some Comcast users.
In an email to customers who belong to one of the three market areas about to enter the trial, Comcast claims that there should be no effect for the vast majority of users. Comcast cites a number of methods that are used to control or restrict network usage:
(i) identifying spam and preventing its delivery to customer e-mail accounts, (ii) detecting malicious Internet traffic and preventing the distribution of viruses or other harmful code or content, (iii) temporarily delaying peer-to-peer sessions (or sessions using other applications or protocols) that users of the Service may wish to establish during periods of high network congestion, (iv) limiting the number of peer-to-peer sessions users of the Service may establish, and (v) using other tools and techniques that Comcast may be required to implement in order to meet its goal of delivering the best possible broadband Internet experience to all of its customers.
Since the controls apply to the top percentile of users, it would ordinarily have an effect of gradually lowering what is considered ‘high’ usage, since it always applies to the top users regardless of what the actual usage is. Comcast says that they prevent this pattern from happening since restrictions are applied against the total network usage, so the top users should still expect maximum throughput at off-peak times. The reasons they are running the test is specifically to find out just how far this will reduce network load, and how effective it would be in dividing network capacity and access fairly across users. The company hasn’t specified what they consider ‘high’ network usage to be (eg. is it 40, 50, 60% of total network capacity) but they are likely to refine this process during the trial.
The Challenges Facing Comcast
There are many reasons why Comcast is attempting to reduce network usage, and why they attempted to block all P2P traffic. Comcast is facing stiff competition from DSL based providers, satellite television and downloaded content replacing Cable TV. With these pressures applied to the company, they must find ways to either increase revenues or cut costs in order to maintain growth. Comcast stock, as with other cable companies, has been volatile - with a 52-week low of $16 and a high of $30. While they have recorded strong revenue growth (25% between ‘06 and ‘07), net income remains flat as costs have increased.
The company has little room for growth in the US market, as currently 58% of households have some form of basic cable, and of those, approximately 70% utilize the cable connection for broadband. Cable connectivity seems to have reached a saturation point, as has the broadband adoption component - and the major cable companies have divided up the market and each dominate their own area. The cost of an average cable TV subscription has increased 77% in the past 12 years, and subscribers are on average only utilizing 12% of available channels because of forced bundling. The other potential growth paths include providing telephony to existing customers; layering on other online services (such as the recently-acquired plaxo, and recently-launched Fancast); and bundling TV, Internet and voice (the triple play) to users to achieve higher margins.
The issue with web downloads cutting into the Cable TV business is particularly interesting, as the effect on Comcast is that not only do they see lower cable TV demand, but at the same time higher demand on their broadband network as users download more of that same content using online sources. On one hand they are losing lucrative cable subscription revenue, but then on the other also paying for the bandwidth customers are using to download legal and illegal alternatives. It is easy to see why their knee-jerk reaction was to attempt to prevent all their broadband users from accessing P2P services, as they were not only trying to lower costs but also preserve their television business.
With a reported 70% of net traffic consisting of P2P, the ability to have that traffic disappear from their network would have been a big boost to Comcast. The P2P blocking didn’t work out, and it remains to be seen just how the new network management plan will affect overall usage. During the trials the company will certainly be adjusting the network so that they can reduce as much P2P traffic as possible while affecting as small a number of users as possible, all the while being able to claim that they aren’t directly targeting P2P.
Comcast is juggling a very fine balance here, being forced to reduce costs and preserve their core business while at the same time not wanting to drive users away to alternatives. They were the first cable company to target P2P, and they are now again the first cable company to develop a compromise solution through intelligent network management. There is almost no doubt that with whatever solution Comcast settles on, the other cable providers will undoubtedly follow suit. The effect this will have on web businesses and services is difficult to predict, but hopefully Comcast will find the right balance.
They are basically begging users to head to FIOS.
I’m a Comcast Subscriber and I’m pissed about this trend. Not sure what we can do about it, though.
they just need to get more bandwith to the ppl ref. the hacker manifesto by mentor old but the line of “service would be dirt cheap if not run by profitering gluttons” rings more tru today than any.
Scoble, order fiber to the node, screw giving them your money, I think the web should go on strike against these mother f*****s
Just to follow up, there is no set timeline to extend the new network management outside of the 3 trial cities - but they do say that the trial will last the whole summer
I had comcast, them limiting my already slow connection for a linux torrent with a phone call about using too much gb a month really changed my mind about them.
“temporarily delaying peer-to-peer sessions (or sessions using other applications or protocols) that users of the Service may wish to establish during periods of high network congestion”
Sounds a lot like the BitTorrent screw-fest they engaged in earlier this year when they claimed they were only “delaying” packets and not blocking them.
Time Warner is doing the same thing.I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks this sucks asss. I also wonder what will happen about those of us who occasionally connect to someone elses wireless connection. they may start sending us to jail. im going back to dial up
Stop writing “Comcast are” and “Comcast say”!! It’s “Comcast is” and “Comcast says”. No one writes or talks the way you’ve written this post.
Stop writing “Comcast are” and “Comcast say”!! It’s “Comcast is” and “Comcast says”. No one writes or talks the way you’ve written this post.
It’s not the American English format - it’s the English format.
“It’s not the American English format - it’s the English format.”
Ye we went through this on the last post. I try to Americanize it all since everyone else on TC is US-English, but I have spent years referring to The Economist Style Guide
Comcast seems to do everything they can to irritate their customer base. Evidently decisions to ‘improve’ their system come from cost-conscience executives and not from users. They forced me to buy into their cable tv service in order to get an ‘adequate’ internet connection. It’s not even close to DirecTV yet their ads spew misinformation on how they compare so favorably.
Hopefully newer technology will become affordable and it will put Comcast and the like out of business (or at least bring them to their knees).
Remember that Dave Winer was deemed a bad guy and cut off by Comcast. So the guy who helped create blogging, RSS, podcasts, and more is a bad guy. Comcast has no way to know what is good from what is bad and Dave’s the poster child for that.
And why aren’t they using p2p to help them manage traffic: use it instead of kill it? What’s happening with their supposed work with Bittorrent?
The only way this is going to be solved is via competition. And that competition has to come from entrepreneurs (like Winer and Arrington).
Jim: that is a really interesting story. I can’t imagine that they would force somebody to signup for cable to get a better net connection, that just doesn’t sound right - I will look into that.
The biggest problem with the cable industry is government regulation. John McCain has mentioned that if he is elected that he will tear up all the government regulated protection that the cable companies are granted. The cable lobby is one of the largest in DC, mainly because their survival depends on it. Entrepreneurs wont be able to do much until the government fully deregulates (which has all sorts of side-effects associated with it). My next post on cable will talk about that and the net neutrality factor as well
Nik, your a genius. Deregulating cable will surely make everything better!
What were the three test markets? I don’t believe it was mentioned.
If McCain could be successful in the effort to deregulate, oh what a great world. Not to digress, but from there to airlines, to even the subsidized farm industry, just let the free market prevail! People who think the government should stick their nose into an industry to “help” it have such short-sited views; in the end, we all pay dearly for this stupidity.
hmm wondering if this has anything to do with crazy comcast issues over the last 3-4 days. The thing is, if they offered a plan with more bandwidth, and didn’t do this crap - even at a higher price, I’d pay for it. My pickings are slim, and the business class package has so much bloat from other stuff but no better performance than the highest speed they offer.
Here is the real problem. Broadband links to the Internet cost MONEY…lots and lots of it. Comcast decided to push their Broadband sales by pricing that is below its cost…..which is fine as long as you don’t have clients using huges amounts of data. But they are, and there are more and more of them.
This problem is like a gas station charging $99 for unlimited gas…it can’t be done if you get a line of SUV’s draining the tanks every day. Someone has to pay to keep filling them up.
So, charge a fair base price, and charge for what people use (I don’t mean every single Gig) in Tiers. If people want to download 1 Terabyte of stuff per day, let them pay for it……-and- use that money to increase network capacity. If people want to ‘trade’ copies of movies, by whatever file transfer method….why should this huge network drain be included for free?
FIOS, and dsl, are just transport methods….they have to pay for their
feeds to/from the internet too. So there is no magic bullet. My experience with FIOS is that is is hella-slow. Installing new Fiber cabling (or copper) to the internet backbone costs insane amounts of money.
There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.
Great. So now that I watch hulu.com and CBS.com and the like instead of regular TV, I will have to switch back to watching cable tv if I want to see those shows? otherwise i could have my bandwidth crippled? This seems like total BS to me. They are trying to up prices by first imposing this limitation and then rolling out a “new”, higher priced unlimited plan. might be a few years out but i bet this is where this is going.
What are the three markets?
When will this begin?
How long will the trial last?
What is the technology used?
What types of services will be affected?
This article is seriously lacking any useful information.
Maybe Comcast should reduce costs by decreasing their expensive direct mail marketing. I receive 2-4 full-color, glossy ads in the mail every week. This has been going on for years. When I used to have their cable internet service, I’d even receive ads for that. (I’ve since switched to DSL over the P2P filtering as I found it was adversely affecting much more than just P2P traffic, including HTTP.) As a bonus, they’d also save a ton of trees.
Comcast already has extremely high rates for their broadband offering. I now pay less for DSL and it’s faster (up and down). I’m in the Denver market.
Fred, Another source said Chambersburg, PA, Warrenton, VA and another market to be announced. That site said the first two would last for 30 days. No technology was announced but it would presumably mean turning off TCP resets. There may be some related material posted over at Funchords @ http://www.funchords.com/p2pi/slides/. For my money I’d rather have this kind of approach rather than fully metered / variable pricing.
Just a note about deregulation: Anyone remember the AT&T breakup back in the 80s?
Long-distance rates WERE something like $.30/minute. What are they now - 30 years later?
Any company that believes the reducing the quality of their product is the way to “increase revenues” or “cut costs” is doomed.
dude, quit writing “comcast are.” seriously. I’m having an intern clean it up. It’s not British English. It’s not English. It’s just made up Nik English
In my area Comcast promises up to 16 mbps but I can never achieve more than 2 mbps according to dslreports. Rather than limiting bandwidth they should focus on ensuring a better than DSL perfomance. Come Feb 09 if they try to charge us more for the HD signal I am quitting cable forever.
“I want a free pony” gets my vote for the ‘Most realistic viewpoint of the day’ award.
Thanks for the article Nik. I will be watching this development closely - as well as Time Warner’s quota-related trials.
I am already involved in a similar discussion/project, albeit at a much smaller scale, at the University where I am employed. We are doing everything we can to ensure good performance, with limited and expensive resources, for the 98.5% of our student residents who do not consume large amounts of network traffic. For the 1.5% who do, their traffic will get slower during high use periods.
We need an intern API so I can write a wordpress plugin
What are they thinking? Is it their business plan to force everyone to a different provider?
http://injoke.org/2008/06/04/c.....he-future/
Buying web traffic is a particularly lucrative business online today, partly because people like you and me with niche web sites need traffic to keep our business going.