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Comcast's Xfinity Mobile Is Now Throttling Resolution, And Speed. Even Unlimited Users.

Arika

i remember with nostalgia the days before NN in Europe when my ISP said it had to throttle speeds because it was the only way the network would survive.

The day NN was in place they completely renovated the all network, i think the Pope is considering it for an official registered miracle.

 

Still this is a bit more ingenious, this ISP is doing this for YOUR benefit. In this case i think the Pope should consider sainthood. Saint Comcast patron saint of mobile internet sounds good.

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There's a lot of obvious stuff to be talked about here, but tbh at the moment, I'm more interested in the technical side of it.  I find it highly concerning that this is even possible.  I mean, ok so you watch youtube, netflix, etc. using an app or in the browser, etc. but by the time that data is flowing through the ISP, it's just data, generic and unintelligible.  How is it exactly that they have control over what quality of video you select!?

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14 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

There's a lot of obvious stuff to be talked about here, but tbh at the moment, I'm more interested in the technical side of it.  I find it highly concerning that this is even possible.  I mean, ok so you watch youtube, netflix, etc. using an app or in the browser, etc. but by the time that data is flowing through the ISP, it's just data, generic and unintelligible.  How is it exactly that they have control over what quality of video you select!?

England's largest ISP and the company who own the telephone network (BT) have been using traffic shaping for at least 10 years, it's nothing new.

 

During peak times (which they define as midday to 8pm weekdays or 10am to 8pm weekends) they throttle all non web page traffic to 400Kbps so things like Netflix & Amazon (via anything except your web browser), file sharing, gaming and music streaming (again unless it's browser based) will be running at reduced speed/quality. If you run the speed test app on your phone it shows 400Kbps while running speed test through the website shows your full connection speed.

 

It's part of the reason why I left them tbh, that and the fact they sent me a faulty router then refused to replace it and suggested I go and buy another one myself.

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3 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

England's largest ISP and the company who own the telephone network (BT) have been using traffic shaping for at least 10 years, it's nothing new.

 

During peak times (which they define as midday to 8pm weekdays or 10am to 8pm weekends) they throttle all non web page traffic to 400Kbps so things like Netflix & Amazon (via anything except your web browser), file sharing, gaming and music streaming (again unless it's browser based) will be running at reduced speed/quality. If you run the speed test app on your phone it shows 400Kbps while running speed test through the website shows your full connection speed.

 

It's part of the reason why I left them tbh, that and the fact they sent me a faulty router then refused to replace it and suggested I go and buy another one myself.

I know it's nothing new, but it's just the first time I've bothered to give it some thought, at least on here.  And I can see how they might do what you described, but I don't see how they're locking the quality within the apps.  It would see to me that would require some software control over the phone, which surely is beyond the abilities and "jurisdiction" of the ISP?

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30 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

There's a lot of obvious stuff to be talked about here, but tbh at the moment, I'm more interested in the technical side of it.  I find it highly concerning that this is even possible.  I mean, ok so you watch youtube, netflix, etc. using an app or in the browser, etc. but by the time that data is flowing through the ISP, it's just data, generic and unintelligible.  How is it exactly that they have control over what quality of video you select!?

They don't control the quality of the video rather your available bandwidth which in turn will affect what you can stream. All popular media streaming platforms dynamically switch between video quality based on your stream rate, if you don't have enough bandwidth to run 720p i'll drop down to the next quality till you can sustain a healthy buffer.

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6 minutes ago, schwellmo92 said:

They don't control the quality of the video rather your available bandwidth which in turn will affect what you can stream. All popular media streaming platforms dynamically switch between video quality based on your stream rate, if you don't have enough bandwidth to run 720p i'll drop down to the next quality till you can sustain a healthy buffer.

oh, that's all it is then?  I see

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1 hour ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

There's a lot of obvious stuff to be talked about here, but tbh at the moment, I'm more interested in the technical side of it.  I find it highly concerning that this is even possible.  I mean, ok so you watch youtube, netflix, etc. using an app or in the browser, etc. but by the time that data is flowing through the ISP, it's just data, generic and unintelligible.  How is it exactly that they have control over what quality of video you select!?

Comcast, Lord of the Packet Sniffers laughs about figuring out how to manipulate traffic.

 

Seriously, Comcast was at the forefront of almost every packet identification technology. Much of the development of Bittorrent was BT vs Comcast.

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1 hour ago, schwellmo92 said:

They don't control the quality of the video rather your available bandwidth which in turn will affect what you can stream. All popular media streaming platforms dynamically switch between video quality based on your stream rate, if you don't have enough bandwidth to run 720p i'll drop down to the next quality till you can sustain a healthy buffer.

that's not what he was asking. In here it's not youtube that regulates the quality accordingly to your bandwith. It's the ISP that only let's you stream at a certain quality by capping the bandwith, and if you want higher quality you have to pay a fee.

 

2 hours ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

There's a lot of obvious stuff to be talked about here, but tbh at the moment, I'm more interested in the technical side of it.  I find it highly concerning that this is even possible.  I mean, ok so you watch youtube, netflix, etc. using an app or in the browser, etc. but by the time that data is flowing through the ISP, it's just data, generic and unintelligible.  How is it exactly that they have control over what quality of video you select!?

there is no such thing as "just data", they know what kind of data it is (Packet sniffing and the likes) and where it comes from, It's easy to cap the available bandwidth and in doing so youtube will only be available at a certain resolution.

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1 hour ago, asus killer said:

that's not what he was asking. In here it's not youtube that regulates the quality accordingly to your bandwith. It's the ISP that only let's you stream at a certain quality by capping the bandwith, and if you want higher quality you have to pay a fee.

 

YouTube do regulate quality based on bandwidth by default, that is fact. Your ISP will regulate your bandwidth which in turn will cause your YouTube client to stream lower resolution media.

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1 hour ago, asus killer said:

there is no such thing as "just data", they know what kind of data it is (Packet sniffing and the likes) and where it comes from, It's easy to cap the available bandwidth and in doing so youtube will only be available at a certain resolution.

Your ISP cannot see your data in secured transmissions, all they can see is the protocol used and IP addresses.

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23 minutes ago, schwellmo92 said:

Your ISP cannot see your data in secured transmissions, all they can see is the protocol used and IP addresses.

He didn't say they could see your data, he said they can see the data's type.

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2 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

He didn't say they could see your data, he said they can see the data's type.

They can see the protocol and origin, that’s about it. From there assumptions can be made.

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While this sucks dick, after working at an ISP I understand it. 

 

Streaming spiked in the last two years and if the back bone cant be upgraded fast enough then either streaming gets throttled or everybody's internet gets throttled because bottlenecks. 

 

Sometimes its done for greed, sometimes there is literally no fucking bandwidth.  

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I am sure many people saw this coming. Comcast is one of the most corrupt companies out there. They only care for profit and will crap on any consumer to make it.

 

Now with the repeal we have handed them even more power to fuel their monopolies. Give it 6 months to a year and they will be charging you a premium to stream 1080p or higher on your home connection. Hell, the worst part about the home connections is there aren't even accurate. I am running custom firmware on my router that gives me a monthly bandwidth meter. It will consistently be 150-200gb a month lower than the comcast meter, despite all my network traffic goes through my router.

 

So unless they are taxing the hell out of me for just normal background noise on the cable lines there is no reason that much discrepancy should exist. Except for the fact that it being inflated makes them more money in overage charges each month.

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I think some missing the fact that: Comcast Mobile is basically Verizon mobile with Comcast brand smacked on it.

Comcast is in a sense acting as a reseller of Verizon.  Saw the limits on the unlimited and went, well that looks familiar.  Found out, its Verizion, no wonder why it looked familiar:

5b3bc7fcb90ca_Screenshotat2018-07-0315-00-38.png.6c977c65573e79b72bc02f45935fb265.png

 

1 hour ago, mynameisjuan said:

Sometimes its done for greed, sometimes there is literally no fucking bandwidth.  

I know that pain.  Was down range, had to warn folks to back off on the streaming; otherwise, say bye, bye to streaming.  Considering the chaps that are the end point on the sat dish kept calling warning us if the bandwidth usage did not go down, the whole node would be unhooked.

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Comcast will do whatever they can to maintain revenue for shareholders. They've actually been in kind of a slump as of late after multiple years of consistent gains.

 

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2 minutes ago, MyInnerFred said:

Comcast will do whatever they can to maintain revenue for shareholders

Why does everyone keep saying this when there isnt a plan to get out of the throttling? 

 

There is valid reasons why throttling is needed. 

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1 minute ago, mynameisjuan said:

Why does everyone keep saying this when there isnt a plan to get out of the throttling? 

 

There is valid reasons why throttling is needed. 

My statement is true, and not linked to throttling. In regards to throttling or inconsistent service I've traded in the ISP sector for long enough to know that just about all US based ISP companies over utilize their hardware when they have more than enough revenue split off to remedy the issue. 

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12 minutes ago, MyInnerFred said:

more than enough revenue split off to remedy the issue.

Ok but how about trying to work at an ISP and ordering all the correct equipment, laying new fiber, getting grants, digging permit, new ONTs, SFPs, scheduling down time with business customers, scaling up equipment, correctly configuring the switches...on and on and on. Not including tech able to properly do it which is in a huge shortage in a lot of areas.

 

People think you can just throw fucking money at it and BOOM, better internet. Its not that fucking easy and sometimes not cost effective. 

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15 minutes ago, MyInnerFred said:

My statement is true, and not linked to throttling. In regards to throttling or inconsistent service I've traded in the ISP sector for long enough to know that just about all US based ISP companies over utilize their hardware when they have more than enough revenue split off to remedy the issue. 

No doubt.  Probably biggest issue is the full configuration and roll out.  I talked to a chap during my AT that is a senior net admin, and he just does big hospital network roll outs.  The bigger the network, the longer it takes.  He said it takes like a year or longer to just to do a roll out for a network handling just 30,000+ devices.  Along with making sure the different routers and switches talk to each other.  After him explaining a Juniper router to me....yeah, Cisco sounds a lot easier to deal with in certain regards (though, Junipers are neat in the regards you can get them to roll out update configs without being there).

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8 minutes ago, mynameisjuan said:

Ok but how about trying to work at an ISP and ordering all the correct equipment, laying new fiber, getting grants, digging permit, new ONTs, SFPs, scheduling down time with business customers, scaling up equipment, correctly configuring the switches...on and on and on.

 

People think you can just throw fucking money at it and BOOM, better internet. Its not that fucking easy and sometimes not cost effective. 

A company hires appropriate people to handle decision making and task handling to get things done. 

 

A lot of fiber in major cities that have stagnating internet improvements already have pre-laid fiber, you can name a hundred different tasks that ISP companies have to deal with in order to provide better or even stable quality of service to the consumer but the fact of the matter is large ISP companies neglect to fix QoS issues because they can afford to do so and it draws more revenue overall at the moment. 

 

US ISP companies are falling behind other countries more and more every passing year.

 

I've talked to a gentlemen I know on discord who works as a Comcast onsite contractor and he's hinted at negligence from Comcast to maintain stable service or improving service in general due to corporate funds being *redirected elsewhere*.

 

4 minutes ago, Ithanul said:

No doubt.  Probably biggest issue is the full configuration and roll out.  I talked to a chap during my AT that is a senior net admin, and he just does big hospital network roll outs.  The bigger the network, the longer it takes.  He said it takes like a year or longer to just to do a roll out for a network handling just 30,000+ devices.  Along with making sure the different routers and switches talk to each other.  After him explaining a Juniper router to me....yeah, Cisco sounds a lot easier to deal with in certain regards.

Oh lord getting different routers and switches to cooperate certainly sounds like a giant pain in the ass.... 

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On 7/2/2018 at 2:58 AM, FlpDaMattress said:

Welcome to a world without Net Neutrality... 600kbp/s is borderline unusable.

fyi, Verizon has their hotspot throttled to the same speed on their unlimited plan. This was before Net Neutrality was official repealed.

 

I hate when people over exaggerate what NN did and didn't do because it actually really didn't do much. However if I recall this sort of talk may be forbidden by the CS, I'm not sure.

 

Literally a lot of what Xfinity mobile doing is a lot like Verizon's.

 

a soft data cap on the unlimited plans, in times of high congestion in an area. Accounts with high usage will be throttled first.

At least how it works on Verizon, video over 480p loads in general but sometimes it is a little slower.

Vote with your wallet if you don't like something, there's plenty of MVNOs and Carriers in the US that you can use.

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2 minutes ago, MyInnerFred said:

Oh lord getting different routers and switches to cooperate certainly sounds like a giant pain in the ass.... 

Yeah, there usually not just one type of router and switch involved (not counting firewalls, proxies, DHCP servers, DNS servers, etc.) .  O and pair with the fact routers and switches can be on different iOSes.  If one ever messed with some Cisco hardware, they know what I am getting at, especially if they touched any of the DTECH models.

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1 hour ago, AngryBeaver said:

I am running custom firmware on my router that gives me a monthly bandwidth meter. It will consistently be 150-200gb a month lower than the comcast meter, despite all my network traffic goes through my router.

What is the total traffic that they say and the total traffic that your router reports? 

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