Friday, January 9, 2009

Comcast Can Now Slow Bandwidth Hogs Across Its Network - Comcast's New Network Throttling Now In Place

Comcast Can Now Slow Bandwidth Hogs Across Its Network
Stacey Higginbotham Monday, January 5, 2009 12:36 PM PT

Comcast, which got in trouble with the FCC for its P2P-throttling approach to network management, has now completed its plan that deals with bandwidth hogs by slowing all broadband traffic for heavy Internet users during times of network congestion. The nation’s largest cable provider has posted a chart on its network management page showing that, as of the end of the year, it stopped throttling P2P traffic across its entire service footprint. The most useful thing about the little Google Gadget, though, is that it gives a bit more detail on exactly which markets Comcast serves — data that’s sometimes hard to get from cable providers.

Thanks Stacy from www.gigaom.com

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For the last few months, Comcast has been transitioning how it monitors and throttles broadband traffic. DSLreports.com claims that this transition is now complete for all of Comcast's markets, meaning that Comcast users might see their connection speeds drop if they use too much sustained downstream throughput and they can even potentially lose their service if they exceed Comcast's monthly broadband cap. Comcast previously received quite a bit of flack for throttling the throughput of users who were downloading certain types of data, such as torrent packets. While torrent traffic can often mean someone is downloading illegal content, that it not always the case--there is a growing amount of legitimate torrent content. Comcast decided to transition from this packet-inspection type of network monitoring to one that is content-agnostic.

Screenshot of a beta version of Comcast's bandwidth
usage meter tool ( Credit: http://www.dslreports.com/ ). The new system, which is now in place, monitors the amount of downstream traffic a user consumes and not what that traffic is actually composed of.

The new system, which is now in place, monitors the amount of downstream traffic a user consumes and not what that traffic is actually composed of...

Thanks Daniel from http://hothardware.com

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