WTF Comcast

[xoxoxoBruce]

Why does Comcast(xfinity) use megabits in their commercial about being the fastest internet?

[elSicomoro]

It's the general standard of measurement for internet speed these days. For example, our service is up to 300 megabits per second, though it's usually around 100.

[tw]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Why does Comcast(xfinity) use megabits in their commercial about being the fastest internet?

Comcast advertising once compared their coax speed to DSL. So that consumers did not notice FIOS was always faster. So that consumers did not notice that even S Koreans had five times faster internet for 40% of their price.

DSL is no longer offered. So Comcast needed a new bogeyman. Coax cable companies are now forced to dedicate more frequencies to up their internet bandwidth since FIOS was always faster. And they have no competition that is slower.

They are advertising that they always could have provided faster internet for less money. They only admit they are now faster - and hope you still ignore their outrageously overpriced billing.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by tw

DSL is no longer offered.

My cousin has DSL at his house. Painfully slow. Maybe his service is grandfathered and it's new subscribers that can't get DSL service. Seems unlikely. I bet the phone company would be more than happy to sell you a shitty product if you are willing to pay.

[Pamela]

I had DSL at my house. It was the only realistic game in town. Coax vable was not available, satellite is just ridiculous and the wifi thing from Coyote doesn't work after five pm. Guess the hamsters on the wheel need a break.

The price wasn't too bad because it came with landline service on copper wires. Speed wasn't much to brag about but was enough to stream netflix and roku or youtube. Only one major device at a time though. No sneaking off to the bedroom to watch netflix if the wife was watching youtube at the same time or neither could stand the spinning arrow thingies.

[fargon]

We have DSL and it works flawlessly. In 10 years it has gone out 3 times for a grand total of 1.5 hours, and they called and told me when it went out for the hour. We have no complaints.

[tw]

Originally Posted by glatt

I bet the phone company would be more than happy to sell you a shitty product if you are willing to pay.

Some little phone companies still may install DSL. Install and still provide are two completely different topics.

But Verizon is now removing all copper service in some venues - leaving some customers only with Fios or a few third party providers that remain. Mostly removed in venues where Fios has been available for more than ten years. In some venues a decade ago, they literally removed all copper when FIOS was installed. No copper; no DSL.

DSL is more than fast enough to even provide Netflix. DSL was originally offered in the early 1980s by Rochester Telephone to download movies. However service was suspended when customer still kept trooping to the BlockBuster.

In some towns (ie Fire Island, Mantoloking), hardwired services was (to be) suspended.

Megabits says nothing about latency. Another relevant parameter. Always take Comcast advertising with skepticism. Purpose of the company is profits; not the product. If honest, they were not comparing their service to DSL. And compare their service to what has been standard is S Korea for most of the past decade.

Comcast (who denied and then were caught subverting Skype packets - and other shady practices) has a long history of playing consumers for fools. Its not hard. Note how many even believe Donald Trump - facts and numbers be damned. Those only glaze over eyes.

How many megabits faster? Totally ignore it if they do not provide specific numbers with each claim.

[Undertoad]

Originally Posted by tw

Comcast (who denied and then were caught subverting Skype packets

Not responding to tw, but to the rest of you;

Here is a terrible example of how tw's mind has gone. A DECADE ago I debunked that, and then some time later debunked it again.

IIRC some company (that wanted to sell to Comcast) released a press release saying they have the ability to detect and change voice traffic on networks, suggesting that this would be useful for these companies to "manage" voice traffic, perhaps by subverting it; and tw fell for it, assumed it was perfected and happening every day. And now he has it cemented in his brain, so every few years he makes the error again.

It was just a press release, and nobody actually showed that anybody was doing anything; I imagine we could even find the post and show that the company that issued it never went anywhere; I don't believe they were a current vendor for Comcast but I may be wrong on that part.

Well, well, well... now I have wound up working in the VoIP industry. Surprise, I have become a call-over-IP engineer. So now I am no longer a layperson to that conversation. And now I can see how insanely stupid it was. And how right I was to declare that Comcast was not subverting any voice traffic and never would.

ALLLLL of telephony is transported over data networks. A huge amount of it, maybe a majority of business traffic, goes over the public internet. Any subversion of these packets is EASILY and IMMEDIATELY detectable and considered network failure.

These days, Comcast will be thrown out of a building for not providing a network that can handle call traffic where they aren't a call trunk provider. Even if they ARE a trunk provider, call traffic will go through their network constantly. Different buildings connecting to each other, forwarding of calls that came in one network and go out another, etc.

There's a whole protocol that manages this. You can detect and debug all of it with the press of a button in open-source software. Nobody subverts anything; in fact, they spend all of their days making sure the network supports it.

In short, expect tw not to remember any of this and bring it up again in three years.

ETA: search google for "comcast subverts skype" and the second result is our old thread. The first result is a PDF from Comcast explaining how to use Skype on their service.

[Undertoad]

Original thread:

http://cellar.org/showthread.php?t=9994

It's a lovely thread and TIME HAS PROVEN that I was absolutely fuckin' right about every single thing I said in it!!

Not to be, like, too boastful about it, or full of myself, or anything.

[Undertoad]

Oh yes and the company that wrote that press release about "managing" Skype? Out of business in 2014!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narus_(company)

[tw]

IEEE stated that many Gulf States and Comcast bought a software package to subvert Skype packets. Also stated technically what that sofware does. Gulf states, in particular wanted this software because international phone calls were a major revenue source. Skype calls (and those from American call centers) were severely reducing tax revenues.

Comcast denied buying that software.

U.S. broadband-cable companies are considered information services, which by law gives them the right to block VoIP calls. Comcast Corp., in Philadelphia, the country's largest cable company, is already a Narus customer;

UT's argument was

YES, tw, my argument is that they probably weren't doing it because nobody has any indication that they were.

Then the FCC accused Comcast of subverting Skype packets. They bought the software to do it. Then did it. Somehow that was debunked?

UT knows that is wrong by ignoring what both the IEEE and FCC said. George Jr also admitted Saddam did not have those WMDs. UT insisted they must exist even after George Jr admitted they did not. It goes to how UT's mind works.

Is subverting VoIP traffic legal? That is part of the contraversy, still unresolved, if VoIP is an “information service” or a “telecommunications service” (data transporter). A major decision in 2010 put a kink into that resolution.

UT: if you know Comcast did not subvert Skype packets, then explain why both he IEEE and FCC said they bought the software and were doing it. Somehow working in call center means you know more than the FCC and IEEE? Understand what is an information service vs. a telecommuniation service?

BTW I am still awaiting these citations.

[Undertoad]

The IEEE article said no such thing if one parses it correctly.

Comcast Corp., in Philadelphia, the country's largest cable company, is already a Narus customer; Thomas declined to say whether Comcast uses the VoIP-blocking capabilities.

This quote tells you they were already a customer of Narus, "a company focused on telecommunications billing and customer market intelligence" (Wiki). But it doesn't say they bought the VoIP blocking product, if one parses it correctly.

VoIP-blocking was not a major product for Narus. It's just something they thought there might be a need for. There wasn't. The company died. VoIP blocking doesn't even make their Wikipedia entry.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

The IEEE article said no such thing if one parses it correctly.

And then the FCC accused Comcast of subverting Skype (and other) packets.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

VoIP-blocking was not a major product for Narus.

Narus also had another product. It was a main supplier to AT&T for software to spy on internet traffic for the NSA.

From AT&T’s Implementation of NSA Spying

Narus is a 7-year-old company which, because of its particular niche, appeals not only to businessmen (it is backed by AT&T, JP Morgan and Intel, among others) but also to police, military and intelligence officials. Last November 13-14, for instance, Narus was the “Lead Sponsor” for a technical conference held in McLean, Virginia, titled “Intelligence Support Systems for Lawful Interception and Internet Surveillance.”

All this centers on what Comcast needs to subvert net neutrality. The controversy remains unresolved: telecommunication provider (data transporter) verses information provider. Permitted to subvert packets went right to the heart of Netflix survival.

[tw]

Comcast Corp. v. FCC

In 2007, several subscribers of Comcast high-speed Internet discovered that Comcast was interfering with their use of peer-to-peer networking applications.

But this was not happening according to ...