comcast throttling giganews

Haven't had any "throttling" problems downloading either an 81 meg file from lucasarts or the 4.3 gig linux dvd; did the download via a command mode ftp client.

Do have sporadic disconnects of about 1 sec while listening to web audio streams.

Just remembered regarding the download of the linux dvd is that it dies of disconnects when using the browser to get the iso file; switch to command mode & got the 4.3 gig at about what is a bit higher than 6 mbps.

IF they really are throttling it is done at the main station and there is nothing you or I can do about it. Are you sure they are throttling? Could it be just a slow net and/or a slow connect point? Look here and then click on the closet to you and you can drill down to see if yours is slow.

I don't think there have been any credible reports of throttling on Comcast in recent years unless you want to count the forged RST packet issue from last year, but IMO that was too crude to be called throttling. Prior to the soft 250 GB cap that was recently announced, the even softer cap was somewhere between 400-800 GB, so by an ISP yardstick it was pretty generous. Even so, if a person's activity rose to the level of getting noticed, they still didn't get throttled. Instead, they would get directly notified and asked to tone it down.

Have you noticed a change? I haven't, so I'm curious.

Not true. The system throttles a user's connection if a particular CMTS port is congested, and if that user has been identified as a primary reason why. The system will flip a user from the standard "Priority Best-Effort" traffic (PBE) to lower quality of service (QoS) "Best-Effort" traffic (BE) for fifteen minutes if they're a major reason congestion exists.

That was never true, and also isn't true now under the new system.

I am not talking about caps, I am refering to throttling.

yes, it went from 2.1 megabits down to about 800K

which is basically the same thing I just said.

you obviously do work for comcast, i suggest that you actually go to dsl reports and check out the reports on comcast's new algorithm. I know, 'dls reports' is lying. since you have indicated you work for comcast, further discussion is useless.

Umm, not even close.

What's this about working for Comcast? I'm just someone trying to help clear your considerable confusion.

Feel free to provide a link to where you found a credible report supporting your claim that "It seems that comcast used to keep you throttled, if they had ever throttled you". You won't be able to.

Comcast Internet throttling is up and running Cunning plan replaces P2P blocking By Egan Orion Tuesday, 6 January 2009, 11:08

COMCAST, the second-largest US cable television and Internet communications service provider, has a new broadband traffic throttling scheme installed and operating in all of its markets.

The ISP's new regime for restricting its customers' bandwidth utilisation replaces its former stealthy practice of arbitrarily blocking subscribers' peer-to-peer (P2P) upload traffic, which was criticised by the FCC last year after it was exposed by the Associated Press and others.

Comcast's filing with FCC (PDF) says it has put in new hardware and software technology at its Regional Network Routers locations to effect this cunning traffic management plan.

Its network throttling implements a two-tier packet queueing system at the routers, driven by two trigger conditions.

Comcast's first traffic throttling trigger is tripped by using more than 70 per cent of your maximum downstream or upstream bandwidth for more than 15 minutes.

Its second traffic throttling trigger is tripped when the Cable Modem Termination System you're hooked-up to ? along with up to 15,000 other Comcast subscribers ? gets congested, and your traffic is somehow identified as being responsible.

Tripping either of Comcast's high bandwidth usage rate triggers results in throttling for at least 15 minutes, or until your average bandwidth utilisation rate drops below 50 per cent for 15 minutes.

The Comcast two-tier traffic throttling system enforces different quality-of-service levels. Internet packets to and from a specific subscriber are assigned 'Priority Best Effort' (PBE) queueing by default, and the traffic rate is throttled by switching packets to lower priority 'Best Effort' (BE) queueing.

Comcast uses a bus analogy to explain how its two-tier traffic throttling system works:

"If there is no congestion, packets from a user in a BE state should have little trouble getting on the bus when they arrive at the bus stop. If, on the other hand, there is congestion in a particular instance, the bus may become filled by packets in a PBE state before any BE packets can get on. In that situation, the BE packets would have to wait for the next bus that is not filled by PBE packets."

According to the company, upstream and downstream traffic is managed separately, and its router packet queueing increments - the waiting time between each 'bus' in its analogy - are two milliseconds, or

1/500th of a second.

Comcast says that a throttled subscriber's connection that is forced into the lower BE quality of service queue "may or may not result in the user's traffic being delayed or, in extreme cases, dropped before PBE traffic is dropped."

Thus, Comcast's latest traffic throttling method can lead to transfers being blocked, too. But only in 'extreme cases' it says, so that's alright then.

Comcast has also imposed a monthly 250GB bandwidth usage cap on all of its customers, and it will, after one warning, terminate service for one year to those who exceed that cap twice within a six-month period.

So you punters who signed up with Comcast as your ISP can be assured that the company will deliver only about half of the maximum bandwidth it advertises, on a consistent basis. µ

L'Inq DSL Reports

ACTUALLY I do not and will not get throttled by Comcast, at least not yet! I have their Business Class Service which means NO bandwidth caps and NO throttling. I have only had it for a couple of years now and have never experienced bandwidth throttling prior to having it. I am now bowing out of this conversation as I have no more relevant data to provide. Thanks for the conversations.

this explains why no throttling or caps.

I dropped Giganews recently, and after shopping a few other providers (Easynews, Newsguy, Newshosting) I settled on Newsguy. I was getting spotty connection performance to Giganews through my Roadrunner cable connection, but have seen quick download speeds through Newsguy.

Depending upon the ISP and how they're throttling your connection, you may want to try an alternate NNTP port number. The standard port is 119, and you may be able to bypass an ISP's restriction on that port by using a different number. Newsguy for example allows you to connect through several ports (8080, 80, 563,

443), and I use the 80 option.

Someone also mentioned concurrent connections, and that's a good suggestion as well. I was only getting 10 connection through Giganews, and currently get 32 through my Newsguy service. I'm also paying a lot less (Newsguy 60GB / $10.95 - Giganews 35GB / $12.99), get free SSL and my unused GB's rollover (something Giganews doesn't do).

Most of the bigger services off free trials, and you may want to check out a few to see if your dload speeds improve.

K

one good bit of news is obama's new appointment for the FCC. The woman is a former law professor who won't tolerate all of the lies and crap comcast pulls, like filling the hearing seats with comcast employees in it's first hearings with the bush fcc. I expect comcast will be broken up like bell tel. this geographical monopoly crap has to end once and for all.

I can see that.

I never said it was.

More people on FIOS created more traffic and same people downloaded more files from news server at a faster rate. Faster pipe locally relieved local congestion. Congestion just moved upstream.

No way. Just another Verizon customer charged more money for less service.

why are you people so touchy? I was TRYING TO FIND OUT what server you were talking about, so i asked you, and now you unload a ton of crap on me. I was told by verizon FIOS was not a wan, so it was not subject to a slow down like comcast, which is a WAN. are you saying that giganews servers or a commercial newsfarm is the server that is more congested because of FIOS?

I am not "so touchy". You made comments/questions, I responded.

Sorry, I missed your question. Looking back through the thread, I can see why. You NEVER ASKED.

It was Verizion's usenet server. I only knew of two, both up around Maryland/New York.

You make crap statement/question you get crap responses. Just one example: "or is this one of 'wired magazines' comcast stealth employees?"

Hmmm, you might find this definition illuminating.

Both are WANs. Comcast had problems with their overloaded auth servers so I added code to my usenet script to watch gateway ping times to give me a heads up when the gateway and/or news server was slow.

When I first got FIOS gateway response was impressive at under 5 milli-seconds during prime time. As I type this at 2am response is now $ ping -c1 gw PING isp_gateway (96.226.25.1) 56(84) bytes of data.

64 bytes from isp_gateway (96.226.25.1): icmp_seq=1 ttl=126 time=10.1 ms

As you can see, gateway response time is starting to creep up.

A quick check of my script shows I have set delay threshold alarm for Verizion's News server at 64 milli-seconds. Speed at this time is

$ ping -c1 news.verizon.net PING news.verizon.net (199.45.49.11) 56(84) bytes of data.

64 bytes from news.verizon.net (199.45.49.11): icmp_seq=1 ttl=251 time=63.1 ms

No, I was saying Verizon's own Usenet server was getting slower and slower. You asked why. I was telling you as Verizon added on FIOS customers we saw slower and slower responses. FIOS just allows us to hit the server faster and demand downloads faster. That creates more load/congestion at the gateway serving the news server and an increased load on the news server.

Verizion's Usenet response time is now quite snappy because they dropped everything but the big 8 text only news groups and a bunch of verizon customers have gone to other Usenet servers.

A quick scroll back through the thread indicates you were banging around on two different themes but was/are trying to put theory on Usenet servers.

The players in your Who Done It are, your gateway, ISP and server.

Running a ping plot on your gateway would show any gateway congestion.

Doing a few DVD/CD download test should bring to light that your ISP is throttling your connection.

Once those were ruled out/understood you would then be able to monitor the news server for throttling which was what caused you to start the thread.

In the past I have seen servers dynamically throttle users as the server load increased. Most were by reducing number of simultaneous connections by a single user. I believe Giganews would throttle any Comcast connection in the past. That was part the agreement along with max number of bytes per month.

Giganews offered Comcast customers a slight discount if you wanted to buy a higher speed/qouta limits.

That is good news, and I agree with your monopoly comments! More consumer choices will drive these guys to deliver a better product (pricing, quality of service, etc.) all of which benefits a failing economy. I hope the FCC takes a look at this sooner rather than later.

K

Yes there is. You can use a VPN to circumvent that, as long as it is not TunnelBear. TunnelBear, I found, blocks all port 119 traffic, but any other VPN service should do the trick.