Comcast: Another chapter of lies, misdirection and ps. good luck using bittorrent

The following collection of lies, misdirections and legal-speak is typical of Comcast. I’d like to take a moment to point out a couple of the larger errors in this statement. The post/statement itself was taken from the Comcast Help forums which require a Comcast uesrname/password to view.

There have been many news reports speculating about how Comcast manages it network. It is important for us to provide you with the facts.

The facts have already been brought to light. What they really want to do is provide you with a patently false response to make you feel a bit better about your current situation, which is only getting worse.

First, and most importantly, our customers have unfettered access to all the content, services, and applications on the Web.

False. I know that Mitch has access to dictionary, so please don’t use words like unfettered. Sending reset packets on behalf of Comcast subscribers does not fall into the “unfettered” category.

They use the Internet for downloading and uploading files, watching movies and videos, streaming music, sharing digital photos, accessing numerous peer-to-peer sites, VOIP applications like Vonage, and thousands of other applications online.

It’s also important that we make something very clear: Comcast does not block access to any Web site or applications, including peer-to-peer (P2P) services like BitTorrent. We also do not discriminate based on the type of content.

Sigh. Again, sending reset packets on behalf of Comcast subscribers is the very definition of discriminating based on the type of content. Unless by “type” you mean file type (.gif, .jpg, .mp3 etc) - in which case this is again, nothing more than fancy legalease look over there while I pull this rabbit from my hat.

So, what do we do? We use the latest technologies to manage our network so that our customers continue to enjoy these applications. We do this because we feel it’s our responsibility to provide all of our customers with a good Internet experience.

Customers who use bittorrent to share files with friends and family have got to disagree here. I would hardly find it “enjoyable” not to be able to share files via bittorrent because of your packet resets. That does NOT fall within the realm of “good Internet experience”.

As numerous studies show, peer-to-peer activity consumes a disproportionately large amount of network resources, and therefore poses the biggest challenge to maintaining a good broadband experience for all users – including the overwhelming majority of our customers who don’t use P2P applications.

That’s right. The majority of their customers use broadband to send emails, watch videos on “The Fan” and surf the web. Just like Comcast wants. Because it costs them money if you use broadband to transfer large files - which is what most of us thought broadband was for. If all we wanted to do was surf the web and send emails, we would have stayed with AOL.

We never prevent P2P activity, or block access to any P2P applications, but rather manage the network in such a way that this activity does not degrade the broadband experience for other users.

I’m tired of explaining why the above statement is a lie, aren’t you tired of telling it?

Network management is absolutely essential to ensure the health of our network for all of our customers. All major ISPs manage their traffic in some way and many use similar tools.

Network management helps us protect our customers from things like spam, viruses, the negative effects of network congestion, or attacks to their PCs. As threats on the Internet continue to grow,

Sorry I had to cut this one off mid-sentence - where the hell did spam, viruses and “attacks on PCs” come from? The issue that prompted this statement has nothing, and I repeat NOTHING to do with spam, viruses or attacks on any network. NOTHING. This is the typical feel-goodery that Comcast tries to include in any statement on how it runs its network. Oh and speaking of spam, maybe Comcast could do a little more work on not being the #1 source of it (source).

we will do everything we can to ensure that our network management tools evolve and keep pace so that we continue to maintain a good, reliable online experience for our customers.

Mitch Bowling
Senior Vice President
Comcast Online