Comcast to cooperate in FCC Web traffic probe

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sandvine traffic shaping

The problem Comcast has, is that they don't have intelligent enough cable modems to move the traffic shaping into it. So, they have to try and control the traffic from afar (back at the NOC).

But by the time the traffic gets there, it's too late. The network is already overloaded by the packets flying out of the cable modems and bouncing into each other.

Rather than retrofit all their cable modems, they chose to use a technology that intrusively sends reset packets to bittorrent apps, and after bittorrent clients started using ssl, they started doing the same thing to ssl traffic, making VPNs basically useless.

Of course the real problem is that cable bandwidth has been oversold since day one, so when everyone starts trying to use their bandwidth at once the network collapses.

I noticed above someone complaining about DSL being slow. It might be slower at max speed than cable, but on DSL I'm not competing with my neighbor for each bit that goes through my lines. DSL can be traffic shaped efficiently and unobstrusively at the NOC, unlike cable.

Posted by: Sxooter_z   Posted on: 01/11/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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