Comcast vs. Vonage

Posts: 7 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 07, 2005 Posts: 7

The situation here in Memphis/ San Antonio should provide a good test for this Concast blocking theory....As Comcast is gonna swap the SA market for the Memphis market with Time Warner....This is scheduled to happen sometime this spring I understand. I'm currently in memphis with TW and vonage works great, if it goes to crap after Comcast takes over the same network, we'll have our proof.

Posts: 2257 · Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2006 11:05 am Post subject:

navydavy2001 wrote:

I seek to understand the geographical differences in Comcast support, infrastructure, etc. I have Comcast is PA, and I've had absolutely no problem whatsoever, as compared to the issues in the Midwest. My question is, how can Comcast be so crappy in one part of the country, but be stellar in others? Also, IF they were implementing some sort of "traffic queueing" , why wouldn't ALL Comcast customers see this, instead of just isolated areas of the country? I'm asking because I think we should break this down, and understand how Comcast is organized.

Comcast didn't necessarily BUILD all of their infrasctructure. Some of what they have is purchased from other companies in takeovers and transfers.

For example (he said with a shudder), my ISP, SusCom (Susquehanna Communications) is going to be purchased by Comcast in a few short months. SusCom uses "Axxis" networking gear, which is oddball and can't do firmware upgrades to standard cable modems, etc. I cannot believe for the life of me that Comcast would go to the expense and trouble of actually replacing SusCom's backbone gear, so they may not be ABLE to block/hinder VoIP traffic everywhere in one fell swoop. A mishmash of incompatible gear scattered across the country will, at the very least, slow down the effort, assuming the "conspiracy theory" is true.

Of course, there's also only a real reason to do this in areas where Comcast offers competing VoIP services. Once Comcast upgrades their equipment at each customer center and gets local numbers plugged into a VoIP gateway, THEN they have a reason to make sure their VoIP works better than the competitions'.

There is also the possibility that Comcast is doing routine upgrades to their servers, and the affect on Vonage and only Vonage is simply a really bad routing issue that they are struggling to overcome. Of course, if you believe that, I have a couple of dixie cups and some string I'll be glad to sell you as the ultimate in portable telephony. Wink

Posts: 60 · Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2006 11:27 am Post subject:

This is now on a very popular tech website, Slashdot.org

Here is a link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/02/139241&from=rss

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 02, 2006 Posts: 3

I can't find your original to quote, sorry.

ISPs are not considered to be normal businesses by the Federal government, just like utility companies, including phone companies. One of the burdens placed on both phone companies and ISPs, in exchange for this special treatment, is the requirement to allow access to their infrastructure by other competing companies. This is based on many things, not the least of which is the use of public easements at little or no cost for the placement of the infrastructure and the use of tax revenues to subsidize them. One of the benefits of this special treatment is immunity from any liability for the content passing through their network. For example, the MPAA can't sue Comcast for not stopping somebody on their network from downloading a movie on Bittorrent. The phone company is not responsible if somebody makes a threatening phone call. They don't want to lose the benefits of this special status, but they want to be free of the restrictions placed on them due to it. This is a testing of the waters, so to speak. Can they weasel out of these restrictions?

That's why Vonage was able to successfully force an ISP to stop blocking their traffic. Blocking that traffic violates the FCC requirement for access to the infrastructure by competing companies. It's not just a market issue, it's a Federal oversight issue as well.

Posts: 2135 · Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2006 12:23 pm Post subject:

dconnor wrote:

Often certain threads on our forum make the major press, here is a link to this one:
Some Vonage users are frustrated about Comcast connection quality

Many eyes are watching this thread...

and again... Slashdot: Comcast Accused of Blocking VoIP

...and once again: Vonage vs. Comcast row continues on Slashdot

Posts: 409 · Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2006 12:33 pm Post subject:

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 02, 2006 Posts: 1

I live in Massachusetts and Verizon's FIOS service is available at the same price I currently pay for Comcast broadband service.
My Vonage service through Comcast works great, but if suspect for one minute that Comcast is intentionally degrading my Vonage experience I will drop Comcast immediately and go with Verizon's FIOS service the next day.

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 02, 2006 Posts: 2

Uncovered Potential latency issue
I am one of the people that has ongoing , intermittent issues with dropped packets, dropped calls, echo, and poor QOS in general. Here is something I uncovered and I am not sure if it is relevant or not. When I ping a domain name from a command prompt I get a average latency of about 88 ms, consistently. When I test the connection with a variety of online bandwidth testers I get an upload seed that averages about 350 Kbs and a download of about 6 Mbs. When I use the speed test on the vonage site https://www.vonage.com/help.php?article=497&category=102&nav=102 I show a latency of over 4500 ms. I do the same test at work and I get a latency of about 140 ms over a metrocast cable connection. I spoke to a techie at vonage who suggested it may be due to the splitter I use for cable TV & High Speed internet which has an upper frequency limit of about 1Ghz, He told me that such a splitter cannot pass efficiently pass a signal as high of mine and even though I thought that was BS, I have ordered a 2Ghz splitter from Monster Cable. I have yet to try this but I have a sneaking suspicion that it will not do any good as long as Comcast is my provider. I would not doubt in the least that Comcast is using Traffic Shaping to discredit vonage, So they can pull in more phone business, at nearly twice the price.
Comcast, having the market share that it does needs to have its practices audited. We are paying a premium price for a certain about of bandwidth, that bandwidth should be ours to do with as we please, within legal parameters. WE as consumers need to have this industry regulated to protect us against, such unfair practices that may be considered to be of antitrust nature perhaps???? I love a good Conspiracy Theory!!!!! Perhaps the FCC should be made aware of the potential here for an antitrust infringement!! [font=Times New Roman] [/font]

Posts: 8 · New Forum Member Joined: Jan 27, 2005 Posts: 8

There was expressed (on Slashdot, I believe) some time ago concern over this scenario, where commercial ISPs like Comcast would place artificial delays on VoIP packets if they planned on competing.

The disadvantage here with Vonage is they use fixed port ranges (as I understand). Some other services use a "range" of ports and those are randomly utilized during the transactions. That makes it much harder to identify.

Anyone more technically inclined, please feel free to correct or add to that theory.

I think it's a good thing that this is now heating up in public - as per the standard rules of Utility companies sharing infrastructure, they shouldn't be allowed to behave in this manner.

Will be interesting to see if Comcast gets more public relations flack for this, especially if it goes to the FCC, FUC, or court, etc.

Posts: 1123 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: May 26, 2005 Posts: 1123

If any of this gets proven, and they are indeed engaged in chicanery, I think Comcast is going to suffer heavy customer losses. Who the hell wants an ISP that won't respect a customer's right to choose their own services. Heck, it's not like VoIP is illegal. We're not talking about illegal file sharing or hacking here. This is a legitimate service. It's kind of like if they decided to block FTP, because they were trying to roll out some sort of GUI-enabled "Comcast File Exchanger Pro" (I just made that name up Smile