Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style

Jeroen van Aart jeroen at mompl.net
Tue Dec 14 21:11:54 UTC 2010


Backdoor Santa wrote:
> Ever wonder what Comcast's connections to the Internet look like? In the tradition of WikiLeaks, someone stumbled upon these graphs of their TATA links. For reference, TATA is the only other IP transit provider to Comcast after Level (3). Comcast is a customer of TATA and pays them to provide them with access to the Internet.
> 
> 1 day graphs:
> 
> Image #1: http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/78/ntoday.gif

> Another thing to notice is the ratio of inbound versus outbound. Since Comcast is primarily a broadband access network provider, they're going to have millions of eyeballs (users) downloading content. Comcast claims that a good network maintains a 1:1 with them, but that's simply not possible unless you had Comcast and another broadband access network talking to each other. In the attached graphs you can see the ratio is more along the lines of 5:1, which Comcast was complaining about with Level (3). The reality is that the ratio argument is bogus. Broadband access networks are naturally pull-heavy and it's being used as an excuse to call foul of Level (3) and other content heavy networks. But this shoulnd't surprise anyone, the ratio argument has been used for over a decade by many of the large telephone companies as an excuse to deny peering requests. Guess where most of Comcasts senior network executive people came from? Sprint and AT&T. Welcome to the new monopoly of th
e 21st century.
> 
> If you think the above graph is just a bad day or maybe a one off? Let us look at a 30 day graph...
> 
> Image #3: http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/8917/ntomonth.gif
		 	   		
This tells me two things:

1 - Don't use comcast as your ISP. Personally I prefer to use a local 
ISP, maybe even "ma and pa store" style, if available.

2 - If for some reason you just can't live without comcast, then plan 
ahead do all your leeching between 7 AM and 5 PM. Then watch your 
previously saved videos at your leisure without interruptions in the 
evening. And plan on finding a better ISP :-)

-- 
http://goldmark.org/jeff/stupid-disclaimers/
http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/plural-of-virus.html




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