Comcast: Not A Member Of The Fat, Dumb Pipe Club
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A couple of weeks ago, Comcast issued a press release saying they were going to “undertake a collaborative effort” to address “rich media content and network capacity management.” They are going to do this by migrating to a “capacity management technique that is protocol agnostic.”
My friend Aaron Huslage points out this means is that they’re still shaping traffic. I agree with that assessment. On the other hand, they are deploying DOCSIS 3.0 to roughly 20% of their service area. Since that’s going to push more bandwidth to the end user, you’d think you’d think they’d have to upgrade their core by a commensurate amount–at least in those areas. Then again, they’ve cocked things like this up before.
It’s hard to say what Comcast is doing. I just wish they’d be up-front about it. I haven’t noticed anything unusual on my Comcast link so far. I guess we’re not too oversold here in Gig Harbor, but your mileage may vary.
