On Mon, Jun 09, 2008 at 06:50:50PM -0400, Charles Cranston wrote: > It's amazing how their karma sometimes runs over their dogma. > > First they try to prohibit NAT boxes, to maximize the number of IP > addresses they can sell. > > Then they run short of IP addresses, and then start supplying NAT boxes. > > First they complain about bandwidth usage. > > Then they sell their ability to stream movies and TV shows... > > You'd think they're just a bunch of brainless boobs, wouldn't you???
Agreed: Comcast's advertising *continues*, to this day, to tout the speed of their network. One would think that if they actually had a real problem (as opposed to a fabricated one) that someone in network engineering would talk to someone in marketing and ask them to stop trying to sell what they're fully aware they can't deliver. The larger picture, though, is that we here in the US are "enjoying" considerably less bandwidth and considerably higher prices than many other countries, thanks to the telco/cableco monopoly. And they appear prepared to sustain this artificial scarcity (and as an aside, to prop up their audio/video content sales) by making sure that consumers can't avail themselves of alternative delivery methods. [In case that's not clear: Comcast would much rather you pay $5.95 for a pay-for-view instance of a program rather than downloading it for free from Hulu or equivalent.] If Comcast actually had a real bandwidth problem and was actually serious about addressing it, then they would have done something years ago about the unceasing flood of spam from their operation -- a flood so large that Comcast is often listed in the top 25 spam-source networks worldwide, surpassing even some of those *owned* by spammers. Their failure to address this (beyond issuing press releases with the usual "We take this problem seriously" BS) is a pretty clear signal that the problem here isn't technical -- it's revenue. ---Rsk
