Again, I was not commenting on the state of comcast's pipe. God knows I want it bigger. I was saying that some of the assumptions upon which he made based points were false. ------Original Message------ From: Nathan Angelacos To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Some truth about Comcast - WikiLeaks style Sent: Dec 15, 2010 5:34 PM On 12/15/10 14:13, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:

On Wed, 15 Dec 2010 15:51:05 EST, Mikel Waxler said:

...

The reality is that most customers do not make uncapped connections. File servers cap bandwidth per user and certain services, like gaming or streaming media have a maximum rate. As long as the average data rate allocated per customer is close to the usage then customers will not notice the difference. Does it matter if it takes 10 seconds or 15 seconds to download a 5 minute youtube clip?

The problem starts when that the choke point is congested enough that the question isn't "10 seconds or 15", it's "4 mins 30 or 5 mins 30 for that 5 minute clip". Buffer underruns are incredibly annoying.

Or, from personal experience: The movie stops because the buffer was exhausted, Netflix informs you "Your network connection has changed", shows a progress bar while it buffers /at a lower bitrate/. Then you get to watch the rest of the movie like it was 1995. Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T