Comcrap doing it again. Boycott Comcast.

[computoman]

Comcast new policy will no longer allow you to access your network externally if I read their policy right. They also want to limit you to just one computer in effect accessing the net. They must not want people actually to be able to use their computers for anything, I am unhooking my equipment now including their bridge to take back to them. There are other ISPs in town. One one important feature is that they say they will access your credit record with out your permission.. My understanding is that it is allegedly NOT legal. That was the last straw, Comcrap What a bunch of jerks. Time to go to Philadelphia and kick some <expletive deleted>. <expletive deleted> carpet bagging Yankees,

[xfuuey]

heh. won't happen... (them limiting you from accessing your network externally)

[davmoo]

Comcast new policy will no longer allow you to access your network externally if I read their policy right.

I think you're reading their policy wrong. I just read over their AUP, Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and the new updates they just sent email about. And unless you are attempting to run a commercial enterprise as a residential customer or run a server that is for the use of others outside your household or family, in which they should whack you in both cases, I see nothing in any of this that says you can't access your own network externally, nor are you limited to one computer.

Maybe your area has different terms than my area, but I seriously doubt that.

Oh, and I guess I should mention I am a Comcast Internet customer. And I will continue to be a Comcast Internet customer. Especially since the only other choice around here is AT&T, and I will gnaw my own arm off before I subscribe to anything AT&T.

heh. won't happen... (them limiting you from accessing your network externally)

Actually they could do it quite easily if they really wanted to limit it. I can think of lots of reasons they shouldn't do it from a customer happiness standpoint, but there is no technical reason they can't do it tomorrow.

[judaz]

I think you're reading their policy wrong. I just read over their AUP, Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and the new updates they just sent email about. And unless you are attempting to run a commercial enterprise as a residential customer or run a server that is for the use of others outside your household or family, in which they should whack you in both cases, I see nothing in any of this that says you can't access your own network externally, nor are you limited to one computer.

Maybe your area has different terms than my area, but I seriously doubt that.

Oh, and I guess I should mention I am a Comcast Internet customer. And I will continue to be a Comcast Internet customer. Especially since the only other choice around here is AT&T, and I will gnaw my own arm off before I subscribe to anything AT&T.



Actually they could do it quite easily if they really wanted to limit it. I can think of lots of reasons they shouldn't do it from a customer happiness standpoint, but there is no technical reason they can't do it tomorrow.

Acytually I can think of many ways to cercumvent any atempt by any ISP to prevent me from accessing my home network .

The may try, but they will fail. They tried it here 10 years ago, didnt work and they where forced to stop their attempted practice.

Of cource in the States things are diffrent, and Comcast seems to be a big player.
If you have no choice accept use them or be without, its harder to force them to stop with idiotic metods and ideas. But you can always use them, grin and bear it , and go around their pathetic attempts to block servers, open ports and such.

It's sad for the once beeing basicly forced to use Comcast , seems extremly expensive and , their Caps (if they still have them )
seems just moronic. I use up more data traffic in half a week then they allow for in a month. Their speeds dont sound so impressive either.
(But I might be wrong, but for what I'm reading on the Comcast webpage, I would never pay that much for those slow speeds (cant get to all the information on an European Ip, cant be bothered to connect via an american Ip at the monment, not that interested, maybe when I check out hulu later)

[nav13eh]

I Live in Canada and never have any Bandwidth or any other problems. And then in the US People are constantly having problems. It`s the same way with the hydro. Get a little wind, half the US is in the dark. Here the lights don`t even flicker.

[davmoo]

It's sad for the once beeing basicly forced to use Comcast , seems extremly expensive and , their Caps (if they still have them )
seems just moronic. I use up more data traffic in half a week then they allow for in a month.

You burn through 250GB (that's Comcast's limit in the US, and is roughly 53 completely full single layer DVDs) in half a week, and you do it faster than 16-20 mb/s?

And I stand by what I said...by closing most ports and using deep packet inspection on the ports that are open, Comcast could eliminate accessing your home network from outside.

I Live in Canada and never have any Bandwidth or any other problems. And then in the US People are constantly having problems.

I have yet to have any problem with bandwidth. See the first half of this post.

[trunolimit]

You burn through 250GB (that's Comcast's limit in the US, and is roughly 53 completely full single layer DVDs) in half a week, and you do it faster than 16-20 mb/s?

And I stand by what I said...by closing most ports and using deep packet inspection on the ports that are open, Comcast could eliminate accessing your home network from outside.



I have yet to have any problem with bandwidth. See the first half of this post.

you can probably used encrypted packets to access your network if they are going to be scanning your traffic. If they use ACL type of defense and try to stop traffic that doesn't establish a session within your network then you can set up something that is constantly keeping a session with an outside server from within your netwrok then use that server as sort of a proxy to access your network from the out side.


all in all I think it's totally bogus that you are forced to use one ISP. I think the way these companies do business needs a serious over haul.

[computoman]

Normally I do not leave any ports open except 80 anyway. And I know quite a few tricks to get around the system, but I like to go by the book, Comcast has been known to block and redirect ports. Who is to say what commercial use is especially when they change the rules on the fly without real notice? I do not have time to deal with legal problems. I would have been happy to upgrade to commercial, but it was never offered it. They just said call the legal department. Before I could them them to cancel my account they cut off my service. That was the last straw I did then recontact them to discontinue the service.

[davmoo]

Your problem is going to be that unless you get real lucky almost every ISP has words to the effect of "no commercial use" in their residential terms of service, and they are all just as vague about what constitutes "commercial use". The only exception to this I've ever seen is small regional or local ISPs that do not differentiate between "residential" and "business" customers for their standard accounts.

[dark_shroud]

Comcast did not like people using routers but had no choice but to allow it. I'm on AT&T DSL and I'm going back to Comcast.

[xfuuey]

Actually they could do it quite easily if they really wanted to limit it. I can think of lots of reasons they shouldn't do it from a customer happiness standpoint, but there is no technical reason they can't do it tomorrow.

of course they could do it easily - not what i was gettin at....but they won't. like you said...customer happiness

[computoman]

I always try to keep one door open. I made temporary peace with Comcast for at least a month anyway.

[tokenuser]

Comcast did not like people using routers but had no choice but to allow it. I'm on AT&T DSL and I'm going back to Comcast.Despite living within 15min of a large university campus, ranked in the top 5 for CS in the country (#3??), I am living outside the city limits.

As much as I would have liked to have gone Dish/DSL, I am too far away from a local branch exchange to have good quality DSL. That limited my choice to Comcast. So far they have been as good, if not better than TimeWarner as a broadband supplier.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/560210218.png (http://www.speedtest.net)

In my field, I need good quality broadband (no FiOS :( ) - and this one seems to be delivering.

[guytheninja]

You burn through 250GB (that's Comcast's limit in the US, and is roughly 53 completely full single layer DVDs) in half a week, and you do it faster than 16-20 mb/s?


I use Comcast, and its pretty hard to go through 250GB of data per month. I have Juice downloading 5 Revision3 shows on the 720p 30fps setting. Juice also downloads 4 other podcasts throughout the web each week.

I also watch playthroughs of videogames on youtube (not speedruns mind your -- just your regular play the game and talk nonsense playthroughs :D). And these playthroughs can be 30 to 120 or so 10 minute segments. Many of them are in 720p HD.

I download all this stuff and I still can't watch all of it in a given week. (There is only so much you can do in a week with work/other duties). So I save around 1/4th-1/2 of it to watch later. (And no, I still haven't caught up, maybe I never will :D).

I still can't get anywhere near 250GB up and down! I guess you just have to run bittorrent 24/7 on an extremely popular torrent in order to get to 250+ GB per month.


Comcast did not like people using routers but had no choice but to allow it. I'm on AT&T DSL and I'm going back to Comcast.


How in the heck is Comcast going to determine if you are running a router? If they check MAC addresses for Linksys Dlink etc... -- most routers allow you to change the address anyway. Heck, my router IS an old computer -- with an old PCI ethernet card as the WAN.

I have heard about this bogeyman in the past, and I have never seen Comcast or anyone else act on it. They know everyone has a router in their house.

[davmoo]

I use Comcast, and its pretty hard to go through 250GB of data per month.

That's how it is for me too. I download several Revision3 shows in the best resolutions possible, and a bunch of shows from other places. I also grab just about every new release of a major Linux distribution, as well as piles of stuff that comes with my Microsoft Technet Plus subscription. And if I'm working at my computer I probably have Pandora going. And in a month of really heavy usage the most I've racked up is 177GB.

And I'd be willing to be that most of us here have usage that is above average. The typical user is never going to come close to what we use.

How in the heck is Comcast going to determine if you are running a router?

I'd have to agree. Comcast, if they really wanted to, can figure out what you're doing with deep packet inspection, etc. But I don't think they can detect a router so easily, if at all. After the router does its thing with NAT, its going to look like all requests are simply coming from one machine with the MAC of the router. And if all they see is the MAC, how are they going to know what kind of box its actually talking to?

[guytheninja]

That's how it is for me too. I download several Revision3 shows in the best resolutions possible, and a bunch of shows from other places. I also grab just about every new release of a major Linux distribution, as well as piles of stuff that comes with my Microsoft Technet Plus subscription. And if I'm working at my computer I probably have Pandora going. And in a month of really heavy usage the most I've racked up is 177GB.

And I'd be willing to be that most of us here have usage that is above average. The typical user is never going to come close to what we use.


I never got up to 177GB. Well I didn't measured my traffic before I installed Traffic Monitor on IPCOP last December though.
http://blockouttraffic.de/nt_index.php

My monthly traffic is around 60-100 GB month. I got up to 120GB one time, but I just tend to stop at 100GB. I think Comcast's cap is reasonable, but I don't think it will be reasonable forever. Comcast needs to be thinking of how to make money off of packets instead of trying to impose caps.

[davmoo]

I think Comcast's cap is reasonable, but I don't think it will be reasonable forever.

I think 250GB is reasonable also. But I think they (and the other ISPs) should have had reasonable caps all along, instead of overselling their networks as "all you can eat". At the same time, though, I think some of the other ISPs are idiots...40 and 50GB is not reasonable by any stretch of the imagination.

As for needing to monetize packets, I don't see their having a need for that. Comcast and the other broadband ISPs are making money hand over fist now, contrary to their gloom-and-doom testimony to the FCC, and their own financial reports confirm that.