Hart V. Comcast - Comcast High-speed Internet Service

Comcast High-speed Internet Service

Comcast, the largest cable provider in the United States, offers downstream speeds of up to 4, 6, 8, or 17.6 Mbit/s and upstream speeds of 384 kbit/s (48 kB/s), or 768 kbit/s (96 kB/s) for the 8 Mbit/s downstream package, for standard home connections.

According to the Comcast High Speed Internet terms of service, customers are provided with dynamic IP addresses. Despite the general expectation that Comcast's service is unlimited, Comcast has a policy of terminating broadband customers who allegedly use excessive bandwidth. Comcast has declined to disclose a numerical bandwidth limit, arguing that the limit is variable on a monthly basis and dependent on the capacity of specific cable nodes. Comcast claims this policy only affects users whose bandwidth consumption is among the top one percent of high-speed internet customers. Statements issued by Comcast in response to press inquiries suggest that excessive usage is generally defined as several hundred gigabytes per month. However, their terms of service state that a customer's use should not "represent (in the sole judgment of Comcast) an overly large burden on the network."

Comcast has implemented traffic shaping measures using Sandvine hardware which sends forged RST packets, disrupting the BitTorrent protocol. This has prevented some Comcast users from uploading, or "seeding" files they have downloaded via BitTorrent. Some Comcast users also may experience packet loss and latency, resulting in lag. This effect is most often noticed when dealing with time critical traffic in online gaming, and especially pronounced when such users host online games on ad-hoc networks (such as in Halo 3). This practice is becoming an increasingly common trend. The effects of packet loss and latency vary greatly depending on locale and the conditions of the local plant. Some Comcast customers may experience severe packet loss, while others may see no packet loss. The issues resulting from local variables affect all Internet Service Providers.