Thu 31 Jan 2008
Dear illustrious reader,
You have come here to find (hopefully) some great (terrible) information, or perhaps something relating to engineering. Not this time, this time I will use this place to put forth a public complaint, as well as the counter point. My gripe is with Comcast. Having just written a small summary regarding comping custom Fonera images, I figured that I would try to write something up regarding cross-compiling from a favorite operating system called FreeBSD. I followed the same footsteps, create a VMware configuration, download the latest FreeBSD ISO (i386) but then it stuck me, lets use BitTorrent! System activates and then nothing else works, meaning, while I am downloading the ISO, I can’t even check my email. Others have seen some of the same problems. So if Comcast is actively downgrading my connection using some silly tool, what can I do? There is no answer. I live in the middle of nowhere there is only one viable broadband provider with whom I must live.
The counter point is that Comcast owns the infrastructure, so they should be able to shape traffic regardless of any group of individuals that stand in their way.
Summary: The United States is an area that is sparsely populated so that most geographical areas can be controlled by one or two monopolies without competition.
Please feel free to comment to let us know how excellent/terrible your service has been and where you are located.
Dear illustrious reader, I commend you for making this far. Thank you for reading my blog.
del.icio.us |
digg
February 1st, 2008 at 8:07 am
There are ways to get around this although they’ll usually cost additional money. VNC comes to mind.
February 1st, 2008 at 10:38 am
Hi Ouroborus,
I use VNC to log into my home machine from work and vise versa, however, it does not do anything about the traffic shaping. What I am unhappy about is that I am not allowed to use my service indiscriminately.