GNG News Guy
12-04-2007, 07:59 AM
http://i.dslr.net/urls/7/507.gif (http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Traffic-Shaping-Honesty-Is-The-Best-Policy-89935)
Cox and Comcast both employ caps, though the two companies have taken very different approaches to informing their customers about them. Comcast is cryptic and denies their caps exist, while Cox clearly states (http://www.cox.com/policy/limitations.asp) what the limits are. And while both companies use forged RST packets to throttle upstream p2p bandwidth, Comcast uses semantics (http://thegng.org/shownews/88711) to tinker with definitions, while Cox admits (http://thegng.org/shownews/89571) to "traffic prioritization and protocol filtering."
You may think there's little difference there, but customers generally respond very positively to honesty (even in the case of price hikes (http://thegng.org/forum/r19399703-Solution-for-BandwidthUnlimited-and-better-Premium-too)). Some argue that if Comcast made their service limits clear, users would simply skirt the edges of what's allowed and abuse the system. UK ISP PlusNet is direct (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20071203/030737.shtml) about precisely what kind of traffic shaping they employ, while offering users ample tools to see precisely what's being done:Plusnet also provides each of users a detailed view of how much bandwidth of which type they are consuming during the month. Plusnet tools even allow the user to inspect each packet to see how it is tagged and opens the possibility for users to provide feedback if tagging of a particular obscure service is incorrect.
Meanwhile the company's customer satisfaction ratings continue to climb.
read comment(s) (http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Traffic-Shaping-Honesty-Is-The-Best-Policy-89935)
Cox and Comcast both employ caps, though the two companies have taken very different approaches to informing their customers about them. Comcast is cryptic and denies their caps exist, while Cox clearly states (http://www.cox.com/policy/limitations.asp) what the limits are. And while both companies use forged RST packets to throttle upstream p2p bandwidth, Comcast uses semantics (http://thegng.org/shownews/88711) to tinker with definitions, while Cox admits (http://thegng.org/shownews/89571) to "traffic prioritization and protocol filtering."
You may think there's little difference there, but customers generally respond very positively to honesty (even in the case of price hikes (http://thegng.org/forum/r19399703-Solution-for-BandwidthUnlimited-and-better-Premium-too)). Some argue that if Comcast made their service limits clear, users would simply skirt the edges of what's allowed and abuse the system. UK ISP PlusNet is direct (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20071203/030737.shtml) about precisely what kind of traffic shaping they employ, while offering users ample tools to see precisely what's being done:Plusnet also provides each of users a detailed view of how much bandwidth of which type they are consuming during the month. Plusnet tools even allow the user to inspect each packet to see how it is tagged and opens the possibility for users to provide feedback if tagging of a particular obscure service is incorrect.
Meanwhile the company's customer satisfaction ratings continue to climb.
read comment(s) (http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Traffic-Shaping-Honesty-Is-The-Best-Policy-89935)