Comcast to Place a Cap on Internet Downloads

[khosk]

Some commentators were quick to characterize Comcast’s decision as having a chilling effect. Om Malik, the founder of the technology Web site GigaOm, called the cap “the end of the Internet as we know it.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/30/technology/30comcast.html?ref=business

Very interesting and discouraging article on a new policy implemented by Comcast to limit user bandwidth usage to 250Gb per month.

[Ga_Gamecock]

whats the point? to stop song downloads?

how can they track it?

[Dr. Cock]

I think this whole thing is laughable IMO. That's what... about 7 or 8 HD movies or so? I expect Time Warner to follow suit soon. But anyways, lets see. We got faster, cheaper, competitors that are offering lower rates and no limit. I don't know what genius up in their office decided to go back towards some early 90s internet business model, but I expect the entire concept to fall through and fail ultimately unless everyone else catches on... which I don't see happening.

[khosk]

whats the point? to stop song downloads?

how can they track it?

The FTC ruled that Comcast had to quit blocking torrent traffic earlier this month. Even though Comcast says this has nothing to do with that ruling I would say nobody believes them and it has everything to do with it.

[FlorenceCock]

I have a dedicated machine that does nothing but download torrents 24/7 and I don't think that I even come close to 250gigs a month. That is some serious downloading right there.

[akn4bkn]

to quote the dark knight.... "Good Luck"

[garnet812]

LOL 250 gigs a month? I don't even have that much space on my computer.

[Spur]

Agree that 250 is an absurd amount but that may be a problem in a few years if downloading movies becomes more common, etc....

[acejrock]

I didn't think it was possible to be a worse company than sprint or time warner but congratulations comcast... you did it...

[ultimatetailgater]

The FTC ruled that Comcast had to quit blocking torrent traffic earlier this month. Even though Comcast says this has nothing to do with that ruling I would say nobody believes them and it has everything to do with it.

FCC actually, and yes this has nothing to do with that ruling. Comcast has yet to comply with the disclosure of practices requested from it. Unofficially yes I think they finally disclosed this info as result however, they have already been using this cap for a while to combat excessive users they just didn't make it public.

I have a dedicated machine that does nothing but download torrents 24/7 and I don't think that I even come close to 250gigs a month. That is some serious downloading right there.

You must not be dling much HD stuff or T.V. series
Agree that 250 is an absurd amount but that may be a problem in a few years if downloading movies becomes more common, etc....

Actually its nothing. You could easily reach terabytes of data with HD video/content

Fully uncompressed 1080p video is 3000mbps(375MB/sec) so for a 2 hour video thats almost 3 terabytes. Which obviously only some major video editor with tons of storage will be using but lets break this down a little more.

An average blu-ray movie is closer to 40mbps(5MB/sec) so a 2 hour blu-ray quality movie would take up approx: 36GB. Even regular DVD quality compression is around 1MB/sec which would be about 3.6GB per hour of content so say you dl a tv series from itunes or from a video on demand service say netflicks or a VOD device like vudu the show 24 would be 24 episodes about 43 min each without the commercials. So thats 3.6GB/hr *43*24/60=approx:62GB of data in standard 480p DVD quality. Multiply that times 5 for HD quality is 310GB of data for 1 tv series. Also services like Direct TV require internet for VOD which means you'll be using your internet connection for that as well so if you are a big movie watcher or VOD user plus your everyday internet use and say play some games as well this cap is insane. And yes most of the true internet generation does this stuff every day.

Comcast is a joke they are too cheap and greedy to upgrade their already severely dated infrastructure to the levels of other technologically advanced countries. They already have speeds of 1/10 of most major European nations and don't even mention Japan its soo embarassing. You can get a 100mbps connection in most of those places for $30 a month with unlmited transfer rates. So instead of putting up the cash for its customers Comcrap as usual decides to choke them down with more and more regulations to keep from having to spend any money. This is one of the major reasons the U.S. is getting further and further behind Europe and Japan in technology because our sorry ass corporations are only in it for the money. Japan already has cell phones that make most laptops over here look obsolete.

I hope the FCC rakes Comcrap over the coals before they get done with them.

[FoghornLeghornCock]

Ultimatetailgater has it right the internet in the US is an embarrassment in comparison to Japan, South Korea, and parts of Europe, but I guess when these countries don't have to spend money on defense. Oh well

[khosk]

FCC actually, and yes this has nothing to do with that ruling.

Right, stupid 3 letter government agencies keep messing me up.

[FoghornLeghornCock]

It appears a number of cable companies have limits or they are on the way and it appears Comcasts is rather liberal in comparison to some.

The cap is also above those of some other ISPs. Cox Communications’ monthly caps vary from 5 gigabytes to 75 gigabytes depending the subscriber’s plan. Time Warner Cable Inc. is testing caps between 5 gigabytes and 40 gigabytes in one market. Frontier Communications Co., a phone company, plans to start charging extra for use of more than 5 gigabytes per month. http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/stories/2008/08/29/comcast_internet_cap.html

[FlorenceCock]

You must not be dling much HD stuff or T.V. series
Actually I am downloading entire T.V. series in HD and I do not get near 250 gigs a month. If you are downloading over 250gigs a month then something is wrong. With the use of the divx and .mkv file format you can compress stuff pretty good these days and a HD movie should not be over 1 gig.

[ultimatetailgater]

Actually I am downloading entire T.V. series in HD and I do not get near 250 gigs a month. If you are downloading over 250gigs a month then something is wrong. With the use of the divx and .mkv file format you can compress stuff pretty good these days and a HD movie should not be over 1 gig.



a 43min episode of Stargate Atlantis with x264 compression and 720p source resolution is about 1.1GB and thats highly compressed which barely qualifies as true HD quality unless you're watching it on a 19" LCD but I tend to watch those things on my 46" LCD which needs much better quality to look good. This pretty much only applies to torrents. Any streaming HD content such as video on demand won't use that high of compression for the sake of saving some quality. Also most of the best compressions used in torrents and newsgroup video are good but no professional grade. You're not gonna stream a 1080p from Vudu compressed with Divx.

Regardless of the technicalities you're paying around $550(after taxes) and close to $80 for pro account for "UNLIMITED" internet service. To me that says I should be able to use my connection at full throughput 24/7 for 30 days. If their network can't support that then they need to get off their asses and upgrade it. As I said before the speeds of U.S. ISP are a joke compared to other countries in most cases 10x slower, there are some cities in sweden testing 1gbps consumer connections using fiber optics. Given Comcraps paltry speeds if people are maxing out their network to the point they have to put caps not only on bandwidth(yes if you use your connection to its potential for extended periods they'll cripple you until their shitty network can recover) but usuage as well then they have a problem.


Please come to Columbia Verizon FIOS!!!!