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The real meaning of Comcast generosity

by with 3 Comments InternetPoliticsTechnology

 

In the old days –

10 years ago, I entered the "broadband" world as a DSL customer with GTE.  I started at 768 kbit/s service, and it was about $35/mo.  A lot has happened since then, GTE spat out Verizon, and eventually offered more speed for the same money.  Cable modem service was pretty lousy until Insight Communication unleashed their 10 mbit/s service in my area.  I have been a cable modem user ever since.

I do IT work, as well as independent graphics and filmmaking work (bit of a hobby), so my life is tied very tightly to the internet and I don't mind paying a little more for extra capacity.

However, I live in one of those "effective monopoly" areas where there's effectively only one cable provider, only one phone provider, and most of the independent ISPs have been run out of business.  My cable provider, Insight, eventually gave way to Comcast, which brings us to today.  Comcast's service didn't start out "too bad", the only thing I noticed is that all in all, performance went down a bit.

The loss of Net Neutrality –

In addition to Comcast's secret, but well known practice of shutting off service to those who exceed a secret amount of bandwidth per month, it was also discovered that Comcast was secretly and arbitrarily slowing down specific kinds of network traffic, at their discretion.  The FCC told them not to, Comcast said they stopped, but of course, it was discovered that this was not entirely (nor partly) true.  But NOW they say they've stopped, for reals. 

The FCC of the last 8 years hasn't exactly been consumer-focused.  But surprisingly, even they saw Comcast's secret bandwidth manipulation for what it was – anti-competitive behavior.  I'm not sure how much of that was FCC fortitude and how much of it was political pressure, but at least it was something. 

The New (double) Deal –

Comcast, theoretically, gave up its secret manipulation of your internet traffic, deciding instead on taking a different course.  They announced plans to implement a new two-pronged scheme that they publicly claimed was aimed at both curbing internet usage preventing congestion on their network.  A plan they call "generous".

This has been implemented as of January. 

Prong #1 – Comcast now has a publicly stated limit of 250 Gigabytes of downloaded data per month.  You are not currently allowed to know how much bandwidth Comcast thinks you've used, but if you use more, and if Comcast chooses to, they will call you to and ask you to curb your usage.  If you don't, you may be disconnected for 6-months.  Seems pretty straight forward.

Prong #2 – This is more interesting.  If you use more than 70% of your bandwidth for 15 minutes or more, your data may be delayed or dropped.  Theoretically, this only happens during times of congestion, but details on how it specifically works are sparse, so knowing what Comcast is really doing is, how to put it, "a matter of faith".

Generosity or something just a tad more selfish? –

On the surface, these two rules might appear to be part of a new, data-neutral Comcast, just trying to to relieve clogged network traffic on behlf of their customers.  But the curious mind would naturally ask –

  • What kinds of data are likely to put someone over 250 Gigabyte limit each month?
  • What kinds of data are likely to utilize 70% of one's bandwidth for 15 minutes or more, tripping the delay/drop switch?
  • Why isn't the data that Comcast sends to me part of the data limit?
  • If Comcast is having throughput problems that necessitate these bandwidth constrictions, why did they just announce and implement 50 mbit/s service?

Never presume stupidity when greed is a possibility –

This is better said with an analogy.  Let's say you buy everything from various online vendors and have it shipped to your house via FedEx, because it's the only courier who delivers to your house.  Amazon is a vendor that depends on a delivery service, so they buy FedEx.  Now Amazon is both a distributor and controls the means of delivery for all other vendors.  Then, Amazon says "we'll ship as many boxes of Amazon goods to your house as you want, for a monthly fee.  We'll still ship boxes from other companies, but you can only receive 100 lbs. of boxes per month, and if you try to send a lot of boxes at once, we reserve the right to delay or lose them at our discretion.  It should only affect 1% of our customers, it is very generous.  It will help ease shipping/delivery congestion."

Comcast is a content distributor, and they rely on sending their data to your home like other content distributors.  Now that they are in the ISP business, they control the means of delivery for all content providers who need to send their data to you, but their goal is, of course, to protect the profits of their own content distribution business. 

So, naturally, they would seek to arrange things so that their services supersede all other vendors.

So, why a 250 GB cap?  Because the media content Comcast competes with is big.  4 gigs or more for a standard full-quality DVD.  A Blu-ray HD movie in its native format could technically be up to 50 GB (though usually around 25 at the moment).  Add a few movies on top of all the little crap you download every day, with windows updates, maybe you have a few remote desktop sessions open 24/7 like I do, internet radio, maybe you downloaded the Windows 7 beta, you watch a lot of netflix streams,  webcams,  etc, it all adds up. Comcast is well aware that the few who get their media from other vendors today will multiply over time, because cable service just isn't very competitive compared to the on-demand, wide variety, internet world.

So, why a delay/drop if one uses 70% of bandwidth for 15 minutes?  Let's say you download a movie from one of Comcast's competitors, Vudu, which is sort of a Netflix for HD video.  Vudu movies take a long time to download, even at 100% of your bandwidth.  Disrupting such services would be in Comcast's interest.  If your download keeps dropping, you may give up and just use Comcast's competing services instead.

So, why isn't the data that Comcast sends to me part of the data limit?  Because Comcast makes the rules and you're lucky you even have internet service in this town, chump.  When it comes down to it, your digital cable service is essentially video streamed over the network, but you can watch Comcast HD all day with no penalty or restriction, the restriction only applies to the stuff you get from other distributors.  If this doesn't underline anti-competitive practice, I don't know what does.

So, If Comcast is having throughput problems that necessitate these bandwidth constrictions, why did they just announce and implement 50 Mbit/s service?  Well this is an interesting one:

As I said, I started in the broadband world 10 years ago with 768 Kbit/s monthly plan.  One would assume that 10 years later, Comcast would have a network backbone that's a little more substantial.  So let's do the math:

Today, I pay for 10 Mbit/s service:

10 Mbit/s = 3240 GB/Month

but Comcast tells me I'm not allowed to use 92% of it, leaving me with 250 GB/Month:

250 GB/Month = 771 kbit/s.

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On a monthly basis, everyone on Comcast, whether they have 1mbit or 50mbit service actually has a maximum of 771 kbit/s of service over the course of the month, period.  No different than the DSL I had 10 years ago –  except that no one was secretly deciding whether my data was important enough to actually make it to my desktop, and there was no threat of being cut off for actually using bandwidth that was paid for and made available to my connection. If Comcast's network is as frail, outdated, and oversold as it claims – such that it can barely stay up with a decade old level of bandwidth – something seems very wrong.

So, in short, I struggle to find any logic to the notion that Comcast's primary interest is in preventing network congestion.

You might say "Other ISPs have used download caps and speed throttling in the past. What makes Comcast different?" Well, this is an issue for the FCC to figure out. It can be argued that the independent ISP is largely a thing of the past, and capping downloads contributed to the demise of many. But Comcast is not just an ISP, it has a vested interest in pushing you toward services it, as a content distributor, provides. In many areas it carries monopoly weight, sitting on cable infrastructure embedded into just about every home. So the question isn't about the rights of an ISP to set its terms of service… it's about whether Comcast, as a content distributor/infrastructure/ISP hybrid, can align its ISP terms of service and operational practices in such a way that discriminates against competing internet based services.

 

A New FCC, a New Hope –

I actually wrote this article in October, but sat on it until now because yesterday's FCC just didn't give me a lot of confidence (to put it very, very nicely).  But as of today, the FCC is new, hopefully has a new direction, and will hopefully take a more critical look at the conflicts of interest posed by Comcast and other media vendor/ISP hybrids.  In fact, today they are taking a look at Comcast's VOIP policy with the same lens.

There are three critical principles that I think should govern the behavior of any company that wishes to engage in ISP-like business (and yes, these are broad generalizations, not necessarily worded as I might word them in a final regulation, and I recognize that there must be some nuance).

  1. Data is sold as throughput only, not as a cap or combination of factors.  If you pay for a gym membership, you can be at the gym as much or as little as you like.  If you pay monthly for 10Mbit/s, you should get up to 10Mbit/s ALL MONTH LONG.
  2. It is up to the ISP to provide sufficient throughput to reasonably support the levels of service they have sold.
  3. Packets sent or requested by a subscriber are routed BLINDLY.  They are not inspected, parsed, subject to delay, unless there is a warrant or external evidence that the machine in question is engaged in an intentionally malicious activity against the function of another machine. 

Or some facsimile thereof.

As for Comcast itself, I actually have to give them a hand.  Other companies tend to hide their contempt for the customers as a general rule.  But in providing real-world, straightforward and crude examples of why we need it, Comcast has done more to progress the cause of net neutrality than the EFF.

Reddit sends more, Diggers read more.

by with 7 Comments bloggingInternet

As any start-up blogger knows, no matter how great (or poor) your content is, getting people to read it is the big trick.  Tech Op/Ed, for example, is here for general technology editorials, but I wanted to get some IT management topics off my chest first, and these articles appeal to a certain niche of readers.  Finding those niche readers, however, has turned up an interesting side note.

To generate tech blog traffic, common wisdom says that one should submit their articles to Digg… which is a social content site founded on tech articles.  In addition, I submitted each article to Reddit, a more general social news site.  Both Digg and Reddit have their own voting mechanisms for bringing content to their “Front Page”, where more eyes will see it.  Digg, clearly, is the 500 lb. gorilla.  Sites that are fortunate(?) enough to see the Digg front page can be flooded out of existence by the Digg reading frenzy known as “The Digg Effect”.

But as any Digger will tell you, the front page is not always where the best stuff is.  Rigged voting, duplicative links, rehashed content, referenced links, etc… permeate the front page along side the genuine content.  But for every “undeserving” item on the front page, thousands of articles are submitted, drowning out articles that should be getting a second glance.

At the same time, only a microscopic fraction of the Digg audience will vote on articles, so there is a clear slant toward content providers who have a loyal (or paid off) group of Diggers bringing their content to the front page, whether it’s good or not.

Reddit, of course, has the same issues, but Reddit has a smaller user base, so submission congestion doesn’t seem to be quite as big of a problem.

Either way, since Technology is the topic, I expected that the Digg audience would take to the articles on Tech Op/Ed at a far greater rate than those on Reddit… and that’s what surprised me.

Across the 15 articles on Tech Op/Ed, submitted to both the Digg and Reddit audiences, Reddit has referred traffic at a 10:1 ratio over Digg.  Even StumbleUpon has outpaced Digg in sending readers.  In fact, standard Google searches have yielded as many hits as those using Digg.

On the flip side, Digg readers spend twice as much time, and visit twice as many pages on Tech Op/Ed as their Reddit counterparts.  So, Digg readers who visit are seemingly more interested in the content, as was expected, but a lot fewer of them see it… so what gives?

Well, the major flaw on Digg may not be the rigging of votes after all, it may simply be the volume of submissions.  On average, so far as I have been able to tell, an article submitted to Digg has about 1 minute or less on the first page of the Upcoming Stories queue.  If it doesn’t achieve enough votes to make it to the front page in about 10 minutes or less, it never will.  The shear volume of submissions ensures that no one can keep up with the incoming submissions, so only a tiny fraction of the already small fraction of the Digg audience that actually reads the Upcoming Stories queue ever sees a given article in the queue, and if they don’t vote the instant it goes online, it’s gone at the next refresh.

So, sure, if someone posts a picture of Paris Hilton wiping her cell phone on her boob, that’s going to the front page, rigged or not…. but for common content of interest, rigging votes on Digg may very well be the only way to make the cut.

Reddit, on the other hand, has a more sane volume of submissions, seemingly fewer duplications, referenced links, etc.  Also, it has a mechanism by which articles that receive votes get a bump in the incoming submission queue instead of perpetually sliding into the ether.  This may be granting articles the extra time necessary for a fair hearing amongst those paying attention to new submissions on Reddit.  So it’s not that more Reddit readers are interested in Tech Op/Ed, it’s just that more Reddit readers are aware of Tech Op/Ed submissions.

That translates to a 10:1 margin over Digg, even though we’re talking Technology, Digg’s chief marketplace.  Even if my analysis of the reasons is faulty, there is still a clear peculiarity.  These are Google Analytics results collected over the life of Tech Op/Ed… so while your mileage may vary… this is my experience.

The world of social news is still young, and there are still of a lot of things to try.  We’ll see how Digg and Reddit evolve and I’ll make sure to check the stats again in another 6 mo.

Happy linking!

UPDATE EDITORIAL – It has been sad, but interesting, watching this article getting upvoted, then downvoted on Reddit by those thinking they can prevent abuse of Reddit by burying articles that cast it in a positive light.  IMHO, burying valid articles to achieve a political end *is* abuse… but that’s an issue for another article.

"Here’s your dorm key and your RIAA bill…"

by with No Comment InternetPolitics

RIAA institutes collective billing practices? –

If you managed to miss this week’s RIAA wrangling, you probably don’t use the internet.  Here’s the skinny: The RIAA has sent 405 so-called “pre-litigation” e-mails in various quantities to a group of 23 selected universities.  The RIAA has asked each university to identify and pass on the appropriate e-mail to the appropriate student.

As I thought about this, a couple questions have come to mind.  One, what is the difference between a letter that specifies a fiscal responsibility and a “bill”?  Two, is a public institution legally allowed to serve a bill on behalf of an outside party?

Is it a settlement, or a bill? –

The RIAA calls the e-mail a “pre-litigation letter”… I call it a “bill”.  There could be a special legal definition here I am unaware of, but to me, it seems like a bill.  You could say that your electric bill is a “pre-litigation letter”… if you choose not to pay, they have the right to sue you.

But if the RIAA notices are a “bill”… that may put the RIAA into a whole new legal frying pan.  It’s one thing to litigate on behalf of a group, it’s another to engage in collective billing.  Does this make the RIAA a company in and of itself?  Who chooses the prices?  How does it pay taxes, etc…

We’ll let the lawyers figure it out.

“I am not pleased that taxpayer money is being used to deliver bills on behalf of the RIAA.”

Compelling students to comply –

Universities have to deal with a little thing called FERPA, or the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act.  This is the law that requires institutions to protect student information.  A university cannot, for example, disclose the name of a student who was using a particular IP address at a particular time without a valid subpoena or permission of the student.  Now note, universities have not been complicit in file sharing activities, despite the assertions of the RIAA… they have simply been dealing with the problem as the RIAA sends complaints about specific activity they believe is infringing.  Usually, this results in threats of expulsion for misusing university resources as stipulated by university policy.

This time, however, the stage is set for some unusual legal wrangling.

Let’s say that a university delivers an e-mail from the RIAA to a student.  The letter instructs the student to contact a 3rd party and identify themselves.  They will have the option to pay the “bill” by credit card or other mechanism.  By the university legitimizing such instructions to identify oneself to a 3rd party, it seems reasonable to think that a university would be in a bit of a FERPA quagmire.  Perhaps not in specific breach, but at least in breach of the spirit of the law.

Again, we’ll let the lawyers figure it out.

Doing the right thing? –

Two of the universities on the list have made bold moves.  The University of Wisconsin gave the RIAA the collective finger by choosing to not forward such emails on to the students without a valid subpoena, as has always been the accepted practice.  The University of Nebraska, on the other hand, is exercising its right… nay… responsibility… to charge the RIAA for the processing work incurred by delivering the RIAA’s bills… and has notified the RIAA that it does not keep records of which computer uses which IP address past 30 days.  The assumption, of course, is that if the RIAA’s information is a little stale, most of the e-mails will not be able to be served as there will be no way to identify the infringer.

These two universities, currently, are the exception… but that may change with the first student who receives a notice, particularly if it’s by mistake, and feels that a university has overstepped its bound by compelling them to call the RIAA and identify themselves.

Sympathies, not empathies –

As someone who creates copyrighted content, I am not condoning copyright infringement… I would like to be paid for my work like anyone else.  This position, however, is NOT in conflict with my stance against the practices of the RIAA, which I’m not sure can be characterized in any other way than “anti-competitive” and “extortionist”.  This has resulted in legal actions that aren’t just “innocent accidents”, but some of the most ludicrously moronic abuses of the legal system in this, or any other age.  The RIAA is getting a free ride to harass the public with impunity, where other copyright holders have to meet a higher standard to protect their content.  Getting public institutions to bill for you is just one of the ways this is expressed.

I am not pleased that taxpayer money is being used to deliver bills on behalf of the RIAA.  As such I am pleased with the University of Wisconsin’s responsibility in the matter…. and that the University of Nebraska is making sure there is at least some cost recovery in response to the abuse.

Of course, if you’re really pissed, consider Gizmodo’s RIAA Boycott. 

Should be an interesting couple months.