Level 3 Communications Issues Statement Concerning Comcast'sActions

Tue Nov 30 16:39:43 UTC 2010

On 11/30/2010 10:23 AM, Rettke, Brian wrote:
> I think we need to start with education at every level. Watching 1-2
> movies a day, some additional streaming content, using the VoIP phone
> whenever, and surfing the web is normal behavior. Running occasional
> P2P is normal behavior.
>

What are you using to determine normal? Here's the deal. The more 
bandwidth the average household has, the more the bandwidth content 
providers will push.

When we were mostly dialup, heavy flash/video/content was a rarity. Now 
that people have much higher speeds, making dialup friendly pages is a 
rarity.

> You'd never leave the water running all day, even though if you rent
> it probably wouldn't cost you any more (landlord usually pays for
> water). It's not simply a question of "what can I get," it's a
> question of being a good internet citizen. There will never be a
> network so robust that everyone in the world could go full throttle
> all the time at the same time, so we have to share.

While I agree with the sentiment, my household is way over your 
so-called normal. My son falls asleep with a video stream running (no 
different than falling asleep with tv going, except his favorite stream 
never stops streaming). My wife usually falls asleep with the wii 
streaming something on netflix (which does stop streaming eventually). 
During an average day, my son, wife, mother-in-law, and myself probably 
watch a combined total of 12 hours of video streaming (not uncommon for 
3 streams to run simultaneously to 1 computer and 2 tv's and many are 
auto detecting and bumping to HD with higher bandwidth usage as content 
providers improve their offerings).

Then there's the MMO's, the iso downloads, the video conferencing to 
relatives all over the world. We aren't abusive users. We don't leave 
p2p seeding applications 24/7/365. We usually try not to leave streams 
running when we aren't there (though like any television, sometimes it 
does get left on).

Jack (Internet TV only for 2 years now)