Comcast Xfinity throttling

2 months ago I had to switch from 50Mbps FiOS to 20Mbps Xfinity when I relocated. I didn't notice the fine print about their 250GB bandwidth cap on all residential services. Last month, I was unable to take a scheduled exam (WGU) through the online proctor because I didn't have sufficient bandwidth. Comcast's magical speed test showed the full 20Mbps but both Speedtest.net and Speakeasy showed 600Kbps. I wrote this off as a fluke and a few days later, it was all back to normal (new billing cycle started).

I am now 2 weeks into my billing cycle and it happened again. This is when I finally learned about the 250GB cap. After several minutes on my account, I found the meter showing that I have just exceeded my limit. While looking at my account, a live chat popped up so I decided to inquire further...

Chris: Thank you for being a Comcast customer! What services do you currently have with us?

You: Xfinity
You: internet

Chris: Going back from your inquiry awhile ago, Comcast has established a 250GB monthly data usage threshold for all residential XFINITY Internet accounts. This threshold is in place to provide a clear definition of excessive use of the service.

Chris: All our internet plans really provide a data bandwidth of 250 GB.

You: That's unfortunate to hear. I will be shopping around for another ISP

Chris: We have different internet plans you might consider that has higher speed than 20 Mbps.

You: So I can reach the 250GB cap faster?

Chris: Yes, possibly.

Chris: May I know what specific speed do you wish to have?

You: I am happy with my current speed of 20Mbps at the start of my billing cycle. I WISH to have that speed throughout the billing cycle. However, I reach the 250GB cap halfway through the month.

Chris: I understand your point. It is a standard data bandwidth we have for our internet plans.

You: Is this business model expected to continue as we migrate further to cloud computing?

Chris: Let me check the information for you.

Chris: If you wish to have an unlimited bandwidth, you can take advantage of our Business offers.

You: Can you provide further information on your business plans available?

Chris: We do not have enough information regarding our business offer. For questions on our business services, You may call them through 866-682-7927

Chris: For the business plan, you can click on the "product" tab located on the upper portion of your page then click on the Comcast Business.

You: Sounds like it would just be easier if I switch back to Verizon DSL until they expand FiOS service in my area. Thanks for your time and assistance.

Chris: I understand your consideration to other providers.

Chris: With Verizon, they charge up to $15.97/month for Verizon Internet Security Suite, costing you more than $383 extra over 2 years. Comcast includes the top rated Constant Guard software which includes Norton Security Suite with every internet plan (a $360 value).

You: I have no need for either of those products. I am only interested in internet service.

Chris: In as much as I would want to cater your request, I am sorry, that as an Online Sales Agent, I'm only allowed to offer deals that are existent on the website.

You: Understood. Thank you for your time.

Chris: You are always welcome.

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Comments

vinbuck

This is the kind of gear that the internet runs on...a few of them actually

Add chassis, power, processors and maintennace and you can figure on a half million...easy - for one box. These are the kind of carrier grade routers that Forsaken is talking about running near capacity. This stuff isn't that old, but the net neutrality folks want us to chunk that investment out the window and pay 4 times more for 100 Gigabit ethernet and the next generation and the next so that nobody has to live with any kind of bandwidth limitation...ever. Seriously?

Cisco Ethernet Services Plus 40G Line Card switch - 4 ports - managed - plug-in module - with Cisco Distributed Forwarding Card DFC-3CXL - Compare prices, reviews, user opinions - Shopper.com

Oh yeah....we kinda have to keep spares for this stuff too

erpadmin

NewManSoon wrote: »

You can always tell when they are Indian agents .. they always say "May I know .." , and they use an "American" first name.

Which is why I also stated the Phillipines. They actually have a lot of American names, because of the GI presence. American and Spanish....I know a few with American names.

SteveLord

erpadmin wrote: »

Which is why I also stated the Philippines. They actually have a lot of American names, because of the GI presence. American and Spanish....I know a few with American names.

Yes. My wife's has many cousins that do this. And I too, agree that many businesses have call centers in the Philippines.

vinbuck

erpadmin wrote: »

You're a network guy...what the ---- does it matter if a packet is video, voice, html, email, etc. What the people on the good side of net neutrality is saying is that data is data.

Yes it matters. Video puts a bigger dent in the network than anything else. Assuming they have invented interfaces that run at 1.21 Gigawatts and can transfer unlimited data (which they haven't...and that's science not money grubbing evil corporations) you still have to deal with the physical layer of the internet backbone....Fiber. An average cost to put fiber in the ground is $50,000/mile to connect all this ridiculously expensive hardware. Once you use all the strands in the ground, you have either:

A) Use the new 1.21 Gigiwatt interface that hasn't been invented yet to speed it up or..

Spend 50 grand a mile to make sure that EVERYONE has equally unlimited bandwidth.

erpadmin wrote: »

Yeah, video is a lot of data, but welcome to the 21st century. You guys are getting your money from the front end anyway....you're only trying t increase profitability by getting it from the backend from those content providers and the argument is it is stifiling innovation.

See above and started adding up all these pesky little "figures" i've been putting out. I'm already on call 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. Our engineering team gets up for enough 3 and 4 am "network upgrades" as it is. I'd rather not do it every day.

erpadmin wrote: »

Ehhh, I just like going toe to toe with some good ol' boys, period. LOL. Network Engineering is outside of my scope, careerwise, but I do know that those network hardware companies are investing big to sell to you guys the hardware necessary to meet the heavy demand that customers have.

Think about how many network devices are in the home today, versus, oh 15 years ago. Ten years ago, people probably had at most three PCs and at least one. There was none of these Internet TVs, video game consoles that could go out to the net, tablets, smartphones (with wifi), etc. Hell, me being in IT, I can count 7 devices that I got hooked up to the In'net. Now times that by a couple of hundred million. That's just in this country, and even in rural areas, they have broadband (which btw, you're welcome...no doubt I helped pay for that courtesy of the USF...)

Your technical arguments are nothing more than corporate justification for why innovation will be stifiled. We both know that bandwidth can be upgraded to accomodate for heavy uses.

BTW, my professor is no Vint Cerf.....that net neutrality paper was for an organizational behavior class. We had to focus on coalitions who are for and against net neutrality. While the school I'm attending is a tech school, this is a non-tech class. My information systems principles class, on the other hand does touch on these topics, but my professor seems to love the supply chain/value chain/porter's five forces model. Nothing really about the sexiness of IT.... [Though still a good course nonetheless.]

So your argument that the Internet should be upgraded overnight regardless of cost or technological challenges is based on the fact that you have a bunch of tech toys in your house? Maybe the Net Neutrality folks should **** their money into developing that 1.21 Gigawatt interface instead? Just a thought. Comcast is publicly traded...have you bothered to look at how much they spent on their infrastructure vs. how much they made in profit?

Bottom line, we want to upgrade our networks but as Forsaken pointed out it takes time (and money) to make this happen. Google found that out when they started having to deal with negotiating right-of-way contracts for their "gigabit" communities they wanted to put in....and they were like "wait we have to get laywers and pay landowners and stuff....maybe you dodn't hear us, we just want to bury this little cable on your property.. you won't even notice."

Asif Dasl

Not sure why you guys don't have a option in your control panel to add additional bandwidth for a cost. The percentage of people who use ALL of their bandwidth is pretty small and if you are that small minority then you should be able to buy whatever extra you want.

We have an ISP called Eircom and they traffic shape Bittorrent and block access to ThePirateBay among others - they would be the most popular ISP, but then almost all of the others don't block anything at all - most probably because they have less users. I don't believe an ISP should traffic shape or censor anything but in Ireland anyway you can always move to someone who doesn't.

Why don't your ISPs co-operate in buying infrastructure? or does it not work like that? - there is a bloody big fibre link between Ireland & the UK (is 7Tb/sec big guys? sounds big - Google & others have European HQs here so money has probably has been poured in to make them stay here)

Here is the option in my control panel - that would be on top of my 300Gb cap as it is:

Vodafone add-on.jpg

dead_p00l

vinbuck wrote: »

This is the kind of gear that the internet runs on...a few of them actually Add chassis, power, processors and maintennace and you can figure on a half million...easy - for one box. These are the kind of carrier grade routers that Forsaken is talking about running near capacity. This stuff isn't that old, but the net neutrality folks want us to chunk that investment out the window and pay 4 times more for 100 Gigabit ethernet and the next generation and the next so that nobody has to live with any kind of bandwidth limitation...ever. Seriously?

I can definitely Vouch for this and forsaken's points on the time, cost and vastness of infrastructure upgrades at the ISP/SP level. The company I work for has dropped a little over a million into a single market just in the first quarter this year. This includes additional core and edge routers, CMTS, and two 10 Gig circuits being landed. The purchase orders for all of this went out before the end of last year. We are finally getting ready to cut in the new CMTS and the 10 Gig's wont land for another month. There is definitely more involved than most people think.

dead_p00l

Asif Dasl wrote: »

Not sure why you guys don't have a option in your control panel to add additional bandwidth for a cost. The percentage of people who use ALL of their bandwidth is pretty small and if you are that small minority then you should be able to buy whatever extra you want.

That works fine on a smaller scale. But when you have hundreds of thousands of user all with that ability even if only a very small percentage take advantage of it then your asking for a potential utilization disaster. Case in point that increasing the transit bandwidth can take months minimum. Not to mention that billing model for all internet usage/connectivity has always (since way back in the dial-up days) been contention/over subscription based. Like it or not ISP/SP's have to make money in order to continue to provide service and the higher level of service they attempt to provide the more money it takes. Just imagine if over subscription rates today were still what they were years ago. Most providers have gone from 1000-1 or 800-1 down to 200-1 or less in order to provide higher speeds and more services.

Forsaken_GA

erpadmin wrote: »

Very thoughtful response. My only advice to you on that (and you can use it however you wish...) is to pay attention to the "sensationalist bullcrap..." I understand that upgrades take time (believe me I know...you network guys aren't the only ones that have to contend with that...), but my whole thing is that they have to start at some point, which according to you, Comcast is. But my fear is that they will want to keep caps on folks indefinitely and not let the Internet fly like it always has. As long as that possibility exists, the "sensationalist bullcrap" will continue.

Until we reach a point where bandwidth and the gear it runs over is as much of a commodity as cars, you're never going to see caps removed. Either that or the software that runs over the network is going to have to get a whole lot more efficient. Users data appetites are so voracious that the bandwidth usage grows faster than it can be provisioned. Eventually we'll either develop better protocols to make link usage more efficient, coders will learn how to actually lessen their data usage by implementing compression or tighter code, service providers will start doing some serious caching, or there will be enough fiber lit up all over the world that bandwidth won't be an issue.

That won't be this year. I seriously doubt it'll even be this decade.

And believe me, I pay alot of attention to the politics of the service provider world. And the peering disputes with Amazon and Netflix are just that. The only reason that particular peering dispute has gotten so much attention is because of the players involved. The Netflix one in particular irritates the crap out of me.... Level 3 and Netflix ***** about Comcast wanting increased fees to handle the increased bandwidth, but when Comcast tries to tell their side of the story, Level 3 bitches about the breach of an NDA.

If most folks understood how global internet routing actually worked, they'd be amazed that the internet was ever as open as it is. The entire global Internet is essentially a bunch of private networks that agreed to interconnect for the mutual benefit of those providers. They didn't do that to be nice guys and provide everyday folk like you and me with the ability to ***** about Obama on Facebook or look at funny pictures of cats. They did it to make money.

What Level3 and Netflix want is to send increased traffic under the existing peering agreement with no increase in price. That's great, except it requires the providers, in this case Comcast, to upgrade infrastructure to support that.

So one side wants the other side to increase it's opex and capex so that the other side can increase it's revenue.

That is not a fair and equitable business arrangement.

Now, my opinions on this matter predate my employment by a good bit. Comcast is hardly the shining paragon of all service providers (neither is Level 3, god I hate those bastards), and they've been at fault for a few other things. But this particular matter, they're in the right for. Those interconnections and that bandwidth costs money. You think if we all of a sudden started dumping a metric crapton of traffic into Level 3's network that exceeded our peering agreement that they wouldn't be asking for more money?

As always, the truth is somewhere in the middle. What annoys me is that the net neutrality fanatics like to bring an extreme form of idealism that simply isn't practical in the real business world.

And if you think Netflix is bitching..... just wait until later this year when the brick and mortar movie theatres start bitching

Novalith478

Honestly I don't understand how people come to use 250GB in a month. I live in Toronto, and we have unlimited internet here (no cap). In a month of heavy torrenting (aka 16 hours a day non-stop torrents), I barely come close to 100GB. I watch all my stuff in non-HD. It's an unnecessary spoil. If I want HD I'll go buy/rent a Bluray.

Arguing that people should have unlimited bandwidth for all their spoils and pleasures is like trying to justify owning a Ferrari after all the world's oil has dried up. I'd rather have capped internet for $60 a month than have unlimited internet for $300 a month because my ISP has to charge me that much in order to keep up with infrastructure costs, just to please all ye Netflix aficionados.

Just my $.02, and I have unlimited internet. Fortunately in Canada we don't have enough people to warrant caps...yet.

Roguetadhg

I need to visit canada long term.

Novalith478

Roguetadhg wrote: »

I need to visit canada long term.

The Canadian equivalent of the FCC recently ruled, however, that caps are allowed. Although it's under heavy debate, ISP's are technically allowed to cap our internet. However since the volume here is nowhere near as bad as the US and because the ISP's know that Canadians will be in uproar, they will most likely not put caps into effect. For now lol.

powerfool

I don't mind caps, per se. I also don't mind purchasing based on data rate. What I cannot stand is paying for both. You either charge me a premium for a higher speed and leave me be, or give me unthrottled speed (based on the technology) and a data cap, with the option to charge for overages. What really stinks for me is that I have AT&T DSL and have a 150GB/month data cap... if they offered U-Verse, I could pay the exact same and have a faster speed (at least double), and my data cap would be 250GB/month.

I am considering switching to Comcast. I have had them in the past, but their customer service (which I deal with only for their stupid billing mistakes) is horrendous. For the past eight years, they have been trying to get me to pay $400 for cable modem that I returned when I moved and switched to DSL... they seem to think I never returned it. Last summer I thought I would finally be able to get past this and signed up in a Best Buy and would get $200 in gift cards for signing up. Well, they never showed up for the install, or even called. I called them and they were still nagging about the modem. I explained for the umpteenth time and they offered to knock 90% off since it would be rather outdated by now... I told the guy that there is absolutely no way I am paying them for the modem, at all. Now that we have three TVs that we stream on, and my three kids all have tablets where they stream, our data rate is really cramped. So, I am thinking of trying again. I currently only pay $20/month for AT&Ts fastest DSL... so maybe I will keep it around and give Comcast another shot... I guess I will just have to remind them that the statute of limitations would have expired, had I not returned the modem.

powerfool

Novalith478 wrote: »

Honestly I don't understand how people come to use 250GB in a month. I live in Toronto, and we have unlimited internet here (no cap). In a month of heavy torrenting (aka 16 hours a day non-stop torrents), I barely come close to 100GB. I watch all my stuff in non-HD. It's an unnecessary spoil. If I want HD I'll go buy/rent a Bluray.

Arguing that people should have unlimited bandwidth for all their spoils and pleasures is like trying to justify owning a Ferrari after all the world's oil has dried up. I'd rather have capped internet for $60 a month than have unlimited internet for $300 a month because my ISP has to charge me that much in order to keep up with infrastructure costs, just to please all ye Netflix aficionados.

Just my $.02, and I have unlimited internet. Fortunately in Canada we don't have enough people to warrant caps...yet.

I have gone over 150GB in a month on several occasions on my slower DSL... it isn't impractical for it to happen. We don't have cable or satellite TV service, so we either use the rabbit ears or stream (NetFlix, Hulu Plus, and Amazon Instant). Plus, I download a decent amount of stuff, including plenty of ISOs for my TechNet subscription and do work from home on a occasion (so plenty of VPN).

SteveLord

Novalith478 wrote: »

Honestly I don't understand how people come to use 250GB in a month.

Willing to bet a chunk of it are people torrenting music and movies illegally. Let's be honest here.

tpatt100

SteveLord wrote: »

Willing to bet a chunk of it are people torrenting music and movies illegally. Let's be honest here.

I know Netlix uses a lot but I ended up cancelling Netflix when I really couldn't find much to watch after a while, there are only so many "B" movies one can watch.

Besides that I know torrents was up there in usage and that is usually a lot of pirated stuff and pron lol.

Everyone

Asif Dasl wrote: »

Why don't your ISPs co-operate in buying infrastructure?

They kinda sorta not really do... or at least they used to, not sure anymore. The main backbones were all owned by the big telcos. MCI/Worldcomm or whatever they are called these days owned a HUGE chunk of them. AT&T another. Qwest owns a bunch out west. ISPs might have their own infrastructure in a local area, but they all connect to and lease from the big boys to get out of that local area. Even in 1 local area, it may be a single, or a small handful of companies that own the infrastructure for that area, and all the others lease from them.

zenhound

SteveLord wrote: »

Willing to bet a chunk of it are people torrenting music and movies illegally. Let's be honest here.

I was assuming its pr0n. When one video can be 20GB and people have pretty much n unlimited appetite for it, it adds up quick.

RobertKaucher

I've linked to this in other threads, but it's applicable here. This problem must be solved because it will only get worse. We already have some tech out there that can help a little, but it's not enough for video and voice.

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