I'm glad to see some degree of transparency and am I willing to give Comcast the benefit of the doubt in that this is an effort do the best they can. That said, it's not the best that can be done - just the best that can be done within the framing of broadband as we've known it.
The real solution is to separate the transport business from the content business. This way Comcast Content would have the same interests as we do. Would they accept this policy from Comcast Transport? Could they survive such a policy? First, the high order bit. It's not the cap itself but the locking down of the entire path to make sure that only my bits flow past the meter that is so destructive. It makes it difficult to provide modest capacity for live-saving applications wirelessly to all nearby. Think of it as E911 but instead of just for the most crucial emergencies it would be available for all uses and make far more effective use of the resources than today's labor intensive and brittle 911 system. But what does a cap of 250GB have to do with instantaneous capacity? It would be helpful to have a pointer to the relationship between offerings and caps. Better to have a cap that increases but the month time base without recourse is problematic. But then so is a shorter time base - if I watch an HD live event on my PC am I going to be punished and have to watch most of the program in SD? Perhaps it would help to have a short technical summary of the entire proposal - my quick read says that there are caps over various time periods with varying consequences. But I'm not going to focus on the particular policies such as whether a 15 minute sampling period is appropriate. I consider accepting any cap or even long time base as a bailout for a company that has an inappropriate physical plant - one primarily designed for distributing their own content. Where is the post-bailout plan to solve the basic problem of scarcity? Is there any reason not to transition to a full IP-symmetric meshed network? The video just becomes another content type and if a particular portion seems to be running at capacity then there should be funding to increase the capacity of that portion. Each user would be able to presume, statically, a portion of the capacity. Video should fine statistically - after all, that's the way it works now and I do get glitches on both Comcast and FiOS when they lose the bet. But with IP and a large commons we can invest in improving the odds since incremental capacity is very inexpensive. From: George Ou [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, September 20, 2008 01:28 To: 'Bob Frankston'; 'Livingood, Jason'; [email protected] Subject: RE: [ NNSquad ] Re: Comcast's FCC Filing Today Bob, I need to correct your assumption. This is not a FiOS FTTH, U-verse FTTN, or DSL architecture where "local" i.e. within 1 network hop from your home capacity really IS abundant. DOCSIS capacity is NOT abundant on the first hop because it is shared on the first hop and you really don't have a "local driveway" so to speak. DOCSIS 1.1 is 40/10 down/up Mbps of total shared on a node which might be 100 to 200 people. There is scarcity on the first hop and the cap of 250 GB is absolutely needed. As a matter of fact, if we assume 100 people on a node, your per user budget is about 130 GB. If it's 2-channel DOCSIS 3.0, your per-user budget is 260 GB. If it's 4-channel DOCSIS 3.0, your per-user budget is 520 GB. The only reason you can get 250 GB is because of all the "under achievers" who don't use that much capacity. If you want more than 250 GB, I would suggest you get the commercial version of Comcast broadband service which I believe is under $100/month with no caps plus some other nice perks. George From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Bob Frankston Sent: Friday, September 19, 2008 9:45 PM To: 'Livingood, Jason'; [email protected] Subject: [ NNSquad ] Re: Comcast's FCC Filing Today This policy means that no matter how abundant the capacity is locally I can't take advantage of the abundance. That's a serious public policy issue - why should local connectivity be limited for any reason? It's like being told that I can't leave my driveway because the highway downtown is congested. I don't want to belabor this but it's one more conflict between the concept of telecom as path dependent and the concept of the Internet as path-indifferent. -----Original Message----- From: Livingood, Jason [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, September 19, 2008 23:40 To: Bob Frankston; [email protected] Subject: RE: [ NNSquad ] Re: Comcast's FCC Filing Today Hi Bob. Some replies below and some general comments following the IP post you linked to below. But first, I just wanted to clarify that the FCC filing today was about our congestion management practices (present and future), rather than the recently-clarified 250GB byte limit. Jason -----Original Message----- From: Bob Frankston [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Fri 9/19/2008 11:19 PM To: Livingood, Jason; 'Ted Koppel'; [email protected] Subject: RE: [ NNSquad ] Re: Comcast's FCC Filing Today No surprise that I have a basic problem with the very idea that Comcast is engineering my connectivity with a subset of applications in mind (http://www.frankston.com/?name=IPNeutralPurpose) among others. [JL] I read that and noted you wrote "The important point is that there is no need for you to make any assumptions about the devices in my house or the protocols I use." [JL] That was actually one of the many design goals with the new congestion management system. So I think we basically agree on that. ;-) One question is whether the cap will apply to local connectivity as well as distance. Is there a limit to how long I can watch a broadcasts of local city hall meetings? I presume the answer is "yes" and that it is a policy question. [JL] A byte is a byte, no matter how far it traveled, what kind of data it is, who it is from, etc. Is there any technical reason why local traffic can't escape the cap? Clearly the cap doesn't apply to traffic with my house (except when I need to bridge from my Verizon connected devices to my Comcast devices). [JL] Well, for one, we'd have to start looking at the destination and source addresses, and that's something I think most people would prefer to avoid.
