Comcast’s woes over their network management practices seem to be without end. It would help if the company would just fess up, stop it and move on, but this has not been their strategy so far.

The head of the Federal Communications Commission said Thursday he will recommend that the nation’s largest cable company be punished for violating agency principles that guarantee customers open access to the Internet.

The potentially precedent-setting move stems from a complaint against Comcast Corp. that the company had blocked Internet traffic among users of a certain type of “file sharing” software that allows them to exchange large amounts of data.

“The commission has adopted a set of principles that protects consumers access to the Internet,” FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told The Associated Press late Thursday. “We found that Comcast’s actions in this instance violated our principles.”

Martin said Comcast has “arbitrarily” blocked Internet access, regardless of the level of traffic, and failed to disclose to consumers that it was doing so. (Yahoo)

There’s a deeper problem at work in all of this. It’s the endless ongoing effort by the cable guys and telcos to artificially create bandwidth scarcity. The only real scarcity is in the capacity their last mile infrastructure, which they have continuously refused to adequately upgrade. The larger internet continues to scale up exponentially, with operating costs in a free fall moving closer to zero every day. At the risk of repeating myself: more competition in the last mile will fix the problem without FCC intervention.

We have of course covered the whole BitTorrent - Comcast war. Well it is an interesting thing to watch. But if you are a Linux user you can map your data flows in and out of your system and avoid the whole thing, while at the same time improving your traffic and seeding patterns.

The how to do it is here. One minor observation. You will need root access to accomplish this with all its attendant ills if you get something wrong. But if you are comfortable with the commandline you should be able to do this in about half a hour.

I do have a caution. This is not a panacea. If enough traffic gets generated using alternate port numbers it will be nothing for Comcast add that port to the bit filter. But enjoy the freedom while it lasts!

Man, what can I say? Some CableGuy gets the itch to go fast and this happens.

More pic here.

I’ve often postulated here that the cable guys are feeling threatened by streaming video. New web only original programming is becoming more common, and is taking some viewers from their closed systems. They’ve been heavy handed about “managing bittorrent” claiming it consumed 80% of its capacity to deliver illicit content. Not only is the claimed 80% out of line with reality, but the fact is legitimate programming from services like Revision3 and Joost are delivered via bittorrent and traffic is growing as more viewers discover them. In the last year, the cable guys’ premium content providers have begun to offer ad supported streams free to anyone with broadband access. People like consuming content on demand as opposed to on a schedule, prior success of the VCR and Tivo proves it. With greater convenience, more programming will eventually find a larger audience. With content going directly from producer to consume , the long term viability of the closed content distribution system model is not viable. In other words, the cable guys’ 150 channel set top box business will be on life support soon.

Naturally, the cable guys are not going down without a fight. While publicly, they have stated network management and tiered service levels are needed to evenly distribute scarce resources, it’s only a small part of the bigger picture:

….given the fact that the company (Comcast) previously promised that it only managed traffic during times of congestion, only to have those claims disproved, we might have to take the term “network congestion” with a grain of salt. Also unsettling is the fact that the company hasn’t revealed any further details about what constitutes a high-bandwidth user and how limited those users will be during times of congestion. If Comcast chooses to roll out this type of technology, it will have to be upfront with its customers about what the exact limitations are. And given the company’s secrecy throughout the Bit Torrent fiasco, I wouldn’t hold my breath for that kind of transparency.

So, we’ve established that while technically “neutral,” both Time Warner and Comcast’s new network management techniques are not without their share of issues. There is still, however, one very large elephant left in the room: the fact that both Comcast and Time Warner are cable television providers. And as we all know, despite the industry’s constant invocation of the P2P bogeyman, at present, the largest bandwidth hog is actually streaming video. Clearly, the emergence of online video is something that cable video providers find very threatening and by capping off bandwidth usage, they’re effectively killing two birds with one stone; discouraging users from using their Internet connections for video while increasing the efficiency of the network. Is this anti-competitive? It sure seems like it. But is it anti-neutral? Technically, no. While Time Warner and Comcast both deliver video and Internet service via the same pipe, the two services live on separate networks. (Public Knowledge)

I am sorry to repeat myself so often, but if the cable guys had any real competition, none of this would be happening.

When a market lacks adequate competitive forces, providers will invest in rationing before they invest in more product. Here’s more proof that there is not adequate competition in American broadband access: Comcast has cooked up yet another network management AKA rationing scheme. This concept is as old as the service cue at any government office. It’s called take a number and wait. Comcast’s subscribers are going to love it!

Comcast CTO Tony Werner stated at the time that “the outcome will be a traffic management technique that is more appropriate for today’s emerging Internet trends.” According to an internal memo obtained by Broadband Reports, this more “appropriate” system will be tested in the Chambersburg, Pennsylvania and Warrenton, Virginia markets from June until July.

The memo indicates that the company will be testing several management techniques (I’d assume from different vendors) in the two markets over the next month, all of which solely target high-consumption users at peak congestion times. If you recall, Comcast’s existing system throttles the upstream BitTorrent traffic for all users twenty-four hours a day (something Comcast denied).

This new solution will ensure that heavy users are “temporarily placed behind other users until the congestion has passed.” Those users will be forced to “wait in line” while other customers’ data requests go through first. (Broadband Reports)

Tony Werner, Comcast CTO says that his company will begin to manage heavy users during peak hours rather that protocols in this video interview with Cable Digitial News.

Obviously, if implemented, this will make a few who are most likely paying for higher level service tiers very unhappy. While efforts to more equitably manage existing capacity are understandable, they should not be done at the expense of creating more capacity. With new bandwidth intensive content and services coming daily the common user will consume more bits than last years heavy user very soon. Expanding capacity would be Comcast’s only option if we had real competition.

In what has to be the most galling of lies, Comcast has been caught again. But first lets set the stage for why. Comcast in a informational filing before the Commission made the statement that they only block P2P traffic when conditions warrant the necessity –

As described in detail below, Comcast manages the use of certain P2P protocols in a
minimally intrusive way, and only when necessary, based on purely objective criteria; these management techniques are not based on the content of the files users are sharing or the identity of the users who are doing the sharing. More specifically, Comcast’s network management practices (1) only affect the protocols that have a demonstrated history of generating excessive burdens on the network; (2) only manage those protocols during periods of heavy network traffic; (3) only manage uploads; (4) only manage uploads when the customer is not simultaneously downloading (i.e., when the customer’s computer is most likely unattended) (“unidirectional sessions” or “unidirectional uploads”); and (5) only delay those protocols until such time as usage drops below an established threshold of simultaneous unidirectional sessions. These network management practices are fully consistent with the Internet Policy Statement.

Comcast is asserting that they do this on an as needed basis. But hold on a moment. Germany’s equivalent of MIT, Max Planck Institute conducted a study in may that both Cox and Comcast blocked P2P traffic at all hours generally without let up. –

The Max Planck Institute collected data between March 18 and May 15 from 8,175 unique hosts that ran its BitTorrent tests. Participating hosts were in 90 countries, connected through 1,224 ISPs, and ran the ‘Glasnost’ testing tool.

The only locations where cable ISPs blocked BitTorrent traffic to a significant extent were in the United States (Comcast and Cox) and Singapore (Starhub).

Tests showed that Comcast blocked at least 30 per cent of BitTorrent upload attempts and, during most hours, Comcast blocked between 50 to 80 percent of BitTorrent traffic. Cox blocked at least 20 per cent of BitTorrent uploads (except for one period at 3 AM where one request wasn’t blocked) and, during most hours, Cox blocked between 50 to 100 per cent of all BitTorrent traffic.

Puts the lie to their Commission filing. Personally, if Comcast wants to manage traffic it would be fine with me provided there were alternatives for customers. Sadly in many locations that is not the case. You have Comcast for broadband or dialup. But what should not stand is the Commission doing nothing. Comcast committed the equivalent of perjury and in my view they ought to be slapped with a $10m fine because of their duplicity.

The twist on the old saw — “The omission was more costly than the crime.”, comes to mind.

Linky.

What’s this? After telling us the P2P traffic is the arch nemesis of all things good on their network, Comcast investing in a P2P video delivery network.

Seattle-based GridNetworks on Monday said that Comcast would make an unspecified investment in the company and collaborate on developing so-called peer-to-peer file-sharing techniques that are “friendly” to Internet service providers.

Comcast, the country’s second largest Internet service provider, hampers some file-sharing traffic by its subscribers in an attempt to keep the traffic from slowing down Web surfing by other subscribers. Complaints by consumer groups and legal scholars that the company is discriminating against particular software have led to an investigation by the Federal Communications Commission.

Comcast has said that it will stop targeting specific types of traffic by the end of the year. It has also reached out to file-sharing companies to try to develop mutually acceptable techniques. (Yahoo)

The more conspiracy minded may think Comcast is buying in to collect more useful data on new ways to meddle with P2P traffic. I think the scenario that is closer reality is someone in the tech dept has convinced the suits that P2P is likely to be the most efficient way to do IPTV for themselves. Perhaps they could be even more forward thinking to understand doing TVoIP to any network (not just their own) may be the real path to growth for any content provider. Naw, maybe they are not quite that smart. One thing for sure, mixed signals that continue to come out of this company show a real disconnect between technology and operations .

If you’re foolish enought to be holding Comcast stock, get ready to take a hit. If you’re a Comcast broadband customer, they have a message for you: They’ve already invested enough in taking care of you and are moving on to bigger and better things. Since many Comcast customers have no alternative, we send our condolences.

Comcast, the Philadelphia-based cable giant, has finally announced that it’s buying Plaxo, a Mountain View, Calif.-based social networking & connected address book company, for an undisclosed amount of money. Plaxo, whose co-founders include Sean Parker, has raised $23 million since 2002 from VC firms including Sequoia Capital, Globespan Capital Partners and DAG Ventures.

This has been the worst-kept secret, with people speculating about the price of this acquisition. Plaxo and Comcast officials declined to comment on the price when I had a conference call with them earlier today. Even today the price range is being pegged between $100 million and $170 million. I have on authority that the price is $170 million including earnouts. This is yet another megamillion-dollar bet by the cable firm in its ongoing transformation into a web-based company with an eye on advertising dollars. (Gigaom)

Even in a non competitive environment, any company that constantly rations, raises prices and has adversarial customer service for a commodity product is doomed. An agressive competitor will eventually find a way to work around the last mile. When that happens, owning Plaxo will be irrelevant. The missed opportunity of growing and nurturing the core business will be gone. So will most of the shareholder’s equity.

Comcast, never the sauvest of companies in the customer service department has come up with a new scheme to tick off customers. Fat green utility cans sitting in your front yard. You know those suckers that look about the size of a dorm refrigerator.

“I came home to find Comcast had put a green utility box smack-dab in the middle of my lawn,” said Cheryl Davison, who lives in northwest Santa Rosa. “You couldn’t miss it. My stomach just turned.”

The plastic boxes, about the size of air conditioners, are appearing across Santa Rosa as Comcast upgrades its cable network.

The upgrade has caused sporadic service outages across the city, irking customers and leaving some without Internet or cable for more than a week.

Davison, an assistant lab director at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Santa Rosa, spent three weeks trying to get the box removed. It was far more obtrusive than the old Comcast equipment, which had been buried in her yard and covered with a plastic lid that was flush with her grass.

it would be interesting to know what is so sensitive with the new equipment. Considering that most cable plant is passive I certainly would like to know. You know, sheer curiosity. For the homeowners they may on may not have a leg to stand on. It depends on the easement rules associated with their property.

Linky.