Comcast Service for Non-Cap Bandwidth

Wed May 30 00:41:43 UTC 2012

PC:
I also wish to know how much the Comcast "Paid Peering" service costs, and if this is an option that can get us the delivery we require.
Could you please help me to understand why it is protected by NDA? Is there anyone on the NANOG list who can share this pricing with me in private?
Sincerely,
Nabil

Date: Tue, 29 May 2012 11:18:37 -0500
Subject: Re: Comcast Service for Non-Cap Bandwidth
From: paul4004 at gmail.com
To: Jason_Livingood at cable.comcast.com
CC: nabilsharma at hotmail.com; nanog at nanog.org

Hi Nabil,

DSCP tagging on inter-domain internet traffic is not expected to work (I wouldn't expect this to work at any ISP, quite frankly, absent some very special arrangements).

>From reading the article in the link below, it sounds like they are using DSCP to ensure when a user has maxed their bandwidth allotment (say, downloading the latest WOW update), that TV viewing is not disrupted.  Instead of providing QOS on it to do this, it seems they provide you an included-with-the-service additional bandwidth allotment/connection not related to your internet connection, much how normal video is sent.  In theory, this service could work if you cancelled your internet.  In reality, it probably won't.  Many providers do the same for VOIP traffic if they have phone services, etc (which do often work with no internet service).

I will say this -- I do telemetry data distribution which is nothing more than a 1.5 megabit constant UDP stream (multicast anyone?  I wish).  The amount of traffic I push is roughly ~350gb/month per site.  With hundreds of business account sites on Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, cox, and others -- The statistics don't lie.  The Comcast network has the least packet loss of the bunch by a wide margin in many cases, and in my opinion, is the most well built consumer broadband access network out there.  With forward error correction, It's an extremely rare event that I see any requests for retransmission, generally isolated to maintenance activities.

My suggestion?  Just send your data towards comcast from a Tier 1 ISP.  Get it as close to your users (geographically) as you can, or use a CDN.  Then, I think you will be fine.

As for the connectivity, you might find it a good idea to explore the comcast paid peering/transit solution if comcast is your primary destination and packet delivery is critical.  Heavy NDA requirements resulting in lack of general pricing range input from the community every time the question has come up on NANOG has kept me from inquiring about paid peering.  But I will tell you just purchasing from the many transit providers who do publish pricing has not resulted in any problems or congestion, which is a good sign.

On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 9:25 AM, Livingood, Jason <Jason_Livingood at cable.comcast.com> wrote:

Mail formatting issue with my mail client again… Note that the 1st paragraph was quoted from Nabil...

>I generate http test stream with DSCP code point 5 to match the Xbox service,

> however Comcast is rewriting the packets as CS 1, even when serving out a

> server at Soft Layer (paid peer).  This is why I ask for name of service Microsoft

> is using, it is not the regular paid peering.

[JL] Yeah, that won't work but that marking is just for byte counting (which per my other not does not really have any effect now anyway since the 250GB policy was suspended. See also http://blog.comcast.com/2012/05/the-facts-about-xfinity-tv-and-xbox-360-comcast-is-not-prioritizing.html

For peering & interconnect, see:

http://www.comcast.com/peering/?SCRedirect=true

http://www.comcast.com/dedicatedinternet/?SCRedirect=true

Thanks

Jason