Comcast's Technical Expert: Mary Bono?
from the that's-convincing dept
We've already discussed just how weak Comcast's defense of its traffic shaping efforts are, but Ed Felten chimes in with another point. It appears that Comcast relies on rather questionable "experts" in trying to present its traffic shaping as reasonable. For example, rather than quote an actual technical expert concerning how P2P file sharing systems work, it quotes Congressional Representative Mary Bono Mack saying (totally incorrectly):For the record, broadband service providers are investing in their networks, but simply adding more bandwidth does not solve [the P2P problem]. The reason for this is P2P applications are designed to consume as much bandwidth as is available, thus more capacity only results in more consumption.As Felten notes, P2P apps are not designed to consume as much bandwidth as is available, and certainly just having more bandwidth does not result in more consumption -- but the larger point is why is Comcast not just using incorrect statements, but relying on a Congressional representative to support a technical argument?
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Filed Under: bittorrent, file sharing, mary bono mack, traffic shaping
Companies: comcast
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What?
Uh... what?
So I live in the arm pit of the middle of buttf**k egypt and I build a 6 lane superhighway and suddenly I'll have 60,000+ cars a day driving down it?
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Re: What?
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Re: What?
Building them in the middle of nowhere won't do anything. But add roads into and out of a cit, and people who used to take the bus to work will start to drive because the traffic jam is gone. Well, the traffic jam on the highway is gone, the inner city traffic will still suck.
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Dear Mary
Sonny Bono's been dead for 10 years and you've been married twice since then. Stop using his name you publicity-seeking whore.
Thank you.
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Re: Dear Mary
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"...P2P applications are designed to consume as much bandwidth as is available"
I see this as technically being true, since if 2 peers are transferring a file, the application will likely use whatever bandwidth is available.
However, "thus more capacity only results in more consumption" isn't a good conclusion to draw from this. More consumption is a result of more or better content being made available. It is also a result of advancing technology.
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Maybe we will learn to have experts leading the way in areas instead of politicians. "A jack of all trades, is a master of none!"
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So we should elect politicians based on their indepth knowledge of the Internet? Forget about war, security, healthcare, social security or the economy, lets get people in there who really "get" the Internet.
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For traffic shaping I do not mind it as long as its done correctly. IE emergency services have first priority. and then all users that pay for the bandwidth to be limited equally depending on the resources available at the time.
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Interesting
http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/2008/02/sort/time_rev/page/2/entry/9:141/2008021610 5049:E8968774-DCA6-11DC-B890-DCE656A607E7/
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P2P Can sap bandwidth...so she is right...sort of
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Politics & Me
To me it looks like a simple attempt at playing politics. Mary is known to the body of Congress; respected or hated, but known. So by using her words Comcast kills several birds at once: Mary will rally for Comcast because it serves her purposes, Comcast can save a bit of bribe money and the blow hards in Congress won't have to have the issue explained to them (since Mary will be talking their language). Hopefully someday Congress gets a clue...
@Me: Unless your network works like Comcast which imposes b/w caps and limits, I don't think your Uni's network compares. When I attended college, most user accounts were on our mainframe which had no b/w caps (storage limits only). Our Unix network accounts were wide open although storage quotas were enforced when needed. Standard policy was that networks were for class work and non-academic related traffic received low priority.
Comcast's main problem is that they oversell the lines and ensnare users with their "up to" promises. What Comcast is doing is adjusting the data volume to fit their over-subscribed pipes.
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Re: Politics & Me
(Shaping 2million P2P sessions @ 750Mpbs.)
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It's not that it grows to match...
I find it ironic that a lot of Peer to Peer was initially developed to distribute bandwidth load, and take it off of the destination server. It shifts the bandwidth availability problem onto the ISPs instead of the filehost and therefore the ISP's are lashing out at the technology that enables it...
But in a much more sensible fashion couldn't they just dynamically cap individual users to guarantee everyone gets access to an equal share of the data pipe?
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Re: It's not that it grows to match...
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the internet
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If you increase your pipe, consumption will go up, although p2p is only one issue.
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Bono: rent-seeking, special interest copyright bar
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baroness
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Traffic Shaping
However, it all depends on the implementation. Available Network bandwidth should be evenly distributed among the different users, not according to what protocol is being used.
Furthermore, I believe if you are going to sell a service described as 10mbps "Always On" internet you should be prepared to provide 10mbps of data transfer to each user 24 x 7 x 365.
You shouldn't be able to sell an unlimited "always on" product and then piss and moan about it later when it turns out some people actually want to fully utilize it.
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Re: Traffic Shaping
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At the very least, two at a time, with 60,000+ spectators.
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I think they should cough up the money to fix things even if they choke on it! Look at what the CEO of ATT made in 1995 and look how much it is now! All through the 90's the government let them "not pay taxes" so that money could be used to provide and better faster internet.
Now they want to charge us more for what we already have because they didn't build what they were given money to build and we need! We were sold "high speed internet so you can do more! Download movies! Music & MORE! WOW you must have it!" It is the same old bend over and get screwed again. Might as well assume the position for next time...you know its coming!
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