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pwalker8 · 03-28-2014, 06:43 AM

Wiki is a pretty useless reference for anything controversial. Lot's of people claim that Comcast throttles, but then again lots of people claim to have seen UFO's and Bigfoot, so lot's of people isn't really much of a proof either. Comcast and many other internet providers throttle high bandwidth users. I have yet to see any what I consider believable proof that Comcast actually throttles down incoming data streams. Here is a good story that explains what is actually happening.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...m_business_pop

I've been following the Netflix issue for a couple of years now. The initial issue was that Netflix was sole sourcing their internet connections, i.e. the connection from Netflix to the rest of the internet, and their provider couldn't handle the load at peak times. More recently, they have switched to the google model of spreading out their nodes geographically, to minimize bottle necks. What netflix and comcast agreed to is a direct high speed connection between the netflix network and the comcast backbone, bypassing the various parties that use to be in between.

There are a lot of tools out there to show what's going on with a connection. I use visualroute myself. While it only gives an idea of what's going on, it does show all the nodes that you have to go through to get to a site.

I rarely have trouble with quality of service for netflix and I have used both Comcast and AT&T u-verse. Of course, I generally don't use netflix during peak hours. As Napoleon once famously said (to translate to English) "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence." People want to claim conspiracy all the time, but frankly, large corporations just aren't competent enough to hide a conspiracy like that. If you know anything about networks, you know that a huge number of people would have to be involved to throttle down a specific service. It's a very non trivial task. If you think that AT&T and Comcast could pull it off without a bunch of incriminating emails or memos surfacing, then you have a much higher opinion of their competence than I do.

03-28-2014, 06:43 AM	#16
pwalker8 Grand Sorcerer Posts: 7,196 Karma: 70314280 Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Atlanta, GA Device: iPad Pro, iPad mini, Kobo Aura, Amazon paperwhite, Sony PRS-T2	Wiki is a pretty useless reference for anything controversial. Lot's of people claim that Comcast throttles, but then again lots of people claim to have seen UFO's and Bigfoot, so lot's of people isn't really much of a proof either. Comcast and many other internet providers throttle high bandwidth users. I have yet to see any what I consider believable proof that Comcast actually throttles down incoming data streams. Here is a good story that explains what is actually happening. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...m_business_pop I've been following the Netflix issue for a couple of years now. The initial issue was that Netflix was sole sourcing their internet connections, i.e. the connection from Netflix to the rest of the internet, and their provider couldn't handle the load at peak times. More recently, they have switched to the google model of spreading out their nodes geographically, to minimize bottle necks. What netflix and comcast agreed to is a direct high speed connection between the netflix network and the comcast backbone, bypassing the various parties that use to be in between. There are a lot of tools out there to show what's going on with a connection. I use visualroute myself. While it only gives an idea of what's going on, it does show all the nodes that you have to go through to get to a site. I rarely have trouble with quality of service for netflix and I have used both Comcast and AT&T u-verse. Of course, I generally don't use netflix during peak hours. As Napoleon once famously said (to translate to English) "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence." People want to claim conspiracy all the time, but frankly, large corporations just aren't competent enough to hide a conspiracy like that. If you know anything about networks, you know that a huge number of people would have to be involved to throttle down a specific service. It's a very non trivial task. If you think that AT&T and Comcast could pull it off without a bunch of incriminating emails or memos surfacing, then you have a much higher opinion of their competence than I do. Last edited by pwalker8; 03-28-2014 at 07:09 AM.