Total Pageviews

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Who needs traffic management? Can US follow Canada?

Dave Bustein notes the recent CRTC decision on net neutrality rules applying to mobile, and asks whether the US can achieve similar transparency while questioning whether upstream congestion is actually very manageable: "Comcast currently throttles far fewer than 1% of users and then only to a speed of 7 megabits, faster than most DSL connections. They rarely do that for more than 15 minutes. If that were clearly disclosed, most of the criticism would disappear. But there is a problem if a carrier slows down, for example, Netflix streaming video. The current “complete information” doesn't let me distinguish. How often are users throttled? How much are they slowed down? Typical disclosure hides what we really need to know. Dale Hatfield, are you listening? The minimal Comcast throttling is possible because they have essentially solved the p2p upstream congestion issue. Comcast top technical people have described how they've made inexpensive upgrades to 10-20 megabits from the 2 megabits of older systems. Explaining why they are moving slowly on DOCSIS 3.0 bonding, 4 CTO-level execs told Cable Show audiences they have essentially no upstream congestion these days."

No comments: