
The new Comcast Xbox Xfinity app is the first nail in net neutrality’s coffin - SkippyZA
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/124041-the-new-comcast-xbox-xfinity-app-is-the-first-nail-in-net-neutralitys-coffin
======
JumpCrisscross
This mangles two issues - discriminating based on source versus path.

Source discrimination is bad. The Internet allows applications and services to
run “at the edge” of the network and not centrally; this encourages innovation
[1].

Path discrimination is more complicated. Many content providers already pay
private networks to transport their traffic on faster than the public internet
[2]. There is even a market for traders paying tens to hundreds of thousands
of dollars for low latency connections [3].

Given that ISPs charge each other for transporting traffic [4] it costs more
to broker traffic across others' networks versus its own. It doesn't seem
unfair for the ISP to charge less for the latter. This would allow Comcast et
al to compete with the Akamais and Level3s that irk them today [5]. Sooner or
later they will find it makes more sense to offer the discount for same-
network traffic to everyone.

Comcast has made shitty statements about net neutrality before [1]. But it's
not okay to vilify anything Comcast says by virtue of it being said by Comcast
- that's straight up ad hominem.

[1]
[http://www.stern.nyu.edu/networks/Economides_Net_Neutrality....](http://www.stern.nyu.edu/networks/Economides_Net_Neutrality.pdf)

[2] [http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/11/level-3-lands-netflix-
strea...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/11/level-3-lands-netflix-streaming-
business-will-double-its-storage-capability/)

[3] [http://www.highfrequencytraders.com/article/682/options-
it-o...](http://www.highfrequencytraders.com/article/682/options-it-optimizes-
chicago-new-york-trading-latency)

[4] [http://blog.teracomtraining.com/how-isps-connect-to-the-
inte...](http://blog.teracomtraining.com/how-isps-connect-to-the-internet-
peering-vs-transit)

[5] [http://blog.comcast.com/2010/11/comcast-comments-on-
level-3....](http://blog.comcast.com/2010/11/comcast-comments-on-level-3.html)

~~~
onemoreact
Local Monopolies have little incentive to improve their infrastructure. When
you enable them to charge premiums for degrading existing service to carve out
'bandwidth' for premium service everyone looses so they can make a higher
profit from the same crappy service.

Bandwidth is cheap. The bandwidth to give everyone in a mid sized city 100mb
internet access costs around 20$/person a month + the cost of the wires. So,
if Comcast provides 5mb internet for X$ they can make money providing 100mb
for X + 20$. Yet, they want to both charge 3+ times that AND make money on
side deals AND keep their local monopoly.

Now, latency is a slightly different issue. I would suggest that it's
reasonable to either run an extra line OR host some servers locally to deal
with that. But, assuming you have a sane network topology there are vary few
cases where latency is actually important. Yet, if Comcast sees an opportunity
to profit from the latency game they will do so. They already provide crappy
DNS service to slow people down just think what they will do if they think
latency is the path to extra profit.

PS: You could replace Comcast with Cox and probably just about any other local
cable company and say the same things. But, I just happen to know more about
Comcast and they are in the article so I stick with them.

~~~
ComputerGuru
_Now, latency is a slightly different issue. I would suggest that it's
reasonable to either run an extra line OR host some servers locally to deal
with that._

How does running an extra line lower your latency? I think you're confusing
bandwidth and latency here. Latency would involve replacing your line with
better infrastructure (small impact) or changing the route your packets would
tend to take to one with fewer hops and shorter distances (big impact).

~~~
Drbble
Bandwidth isn't literally width like a pipe of water. It is linespeed. That is
why higher quality cables have higher bandwidth, even though packet
transmission is completely serial. "wdth" is an illusion created by time
division multiplexing, like multitasking/multithreading on a PC.

~~~
rbranson
This isn't always true because time isn't the only multiplexing strategy used.
For instance, modern cable modems use code-division multiplexing, and fiber
optic communications typically uses a variant of wavelength-division
multiplexing. In both of the later cases, there is actually simultaneous
transmission.

------
roboneal
Comcast claims that the app turns the XBox into essentially a set top box and
that all data is streamed over Comcast's "private" network capacity and do not
use any of the traditional public facing internet infrastructure.

Standard usage of "On Demand" programming from a DVR or other set top box do
not count against the existing data cap quotas.

If this app essentially allows an XBox to plug into this private network
capacity like any other set top box, I think this is an important distinction.

~~~
mikeryan
Its true (full disclosure I used to work for Comcast - via an acquisition)

One of Comcast's biggest (and most hated) capex expenditures are the cable
boxes. They hate with an unholy passion having to upgrade boxes. In this
context they're basically trying to get the users to upgrade their boxes on
their own dime. When I put on my consultant hat and talk to analysts in this
area we've been talking more and more about how connected tv's and OTT Boxes
can be beneficial to cable operators. One of the downsides of cable cards is
that you never got a guide with it. Combine a cable card and a Samsung
Connected TV and you can really do both and get rid of the card all together.

Second they're quickly realizing that maintaining two on-demand
infrastructures (Web and traditional VOD) the really sensible thing is to move
as much as possible to delivering via your cable modem as opposed to the
broadcast channels.

Of course as they do so they're going to have to do something about the
bandwidth caps. Stories like this put Comcast in a strange position. They want
to deliver more "TV" video content over their internet pipes but apparently
can't do so and maintain a cap at the same time.

~~~
doki_pen
I find that funny because I looked into replacing my Comcast HD box with my
own box and found out that it is nearly impossible. It seems like they want to
maintain control over what happens with the content, and to do that, they have
to pony up on the cable box. Recently I tried to fast forward through
commercials an On Demand TV show and wasn't allowed to! Of course, no 3rd
party box would have such a "feature".

~~~
unreal37
I remember ReplayTV once getting sued because they provided a "commercial
skip" button that fast forwarded through commercials automatically. So yes, a
third-party may indeed prevent you from fast forwarding due to lawsuits.
[http://news.cnet.com/ReplayTV-puts-ad-skipping-on-
pause/2100...](http://news.cnet.com/ReplayTV-puts-ad-skipping-on-
pause/2100-1041_3-1015121.html)

------
pasbesoin
Here are a couple of questions to consider:

Does Comcast allow a user to purchase additional bandwidth beyond their 250 GB
cap?

If so, how much does that cost?

It's not just a cap, it's a hard limit. If you want more, you are forced to go
with the ISP's own "blessed" option.

This is a significant portion of what bothers me with these caps. They are not
graduated in a reasonable fashion. Instead, they are a cliff -- either
entirely, or through absurdly high "addtional bandwidth" costs, limiting the
service that the user can receive.

THEN, the ISP comes along and offers the user a sole way around/past this
limit: Purchase whatever subset(s) of the additional service exclusively via
the ISP's "value-added" content. (You can only have more bits if you buy your
movies (well, movie viewings) from us.)

THAT, my friends, is a monopoly. Especially when you only have one or two ISP
options, and they're all doing it. (Again, to you overseas, this is the case
for much of the U.S.)

~~~
pdubs
What I love is their statements that "only 1%" of users are affected by the
cap. If "only 1%" of your end-users have the ability to disrupt your network,
there's something seriously wrong with your network.

That, and the 250GB cap hasn't changed since 2008. In the meantime I can now
fit 250GB into less than 1 cubic cm for around $150.

~~~
Drbble
That's not fair. As a group, 1% of Internet users can DDOS anyone.

~~~
pdubs
Fair point. Difference here though is that the 1% is not coordinating in an
attempt to disrupt network communications, but rather using bandwidth to their
definition of "normal". If you want to do daily online backups for a
household, plus HD video streaming (what I would call "normal" behavior), you
can hit several TB pretty quickly.

------
ricardobeat
You can see the danger of this right here in the comments. Everyone is fine
with it depending on the way it's presented.

Imagine that suddenly your smaller, lesser-known favorite sites are all
bandwidth limited. There are just a couple hundred sanctioned ones that you
get "for free". Small endeavours like Reddit or HN don't have a chance to grow
fast anymore. That's the future if you are ok with this.

------
jsz0
About 90-95% of the bandwidth available 'on the wire' is already being used to
deliver Comcast's video service. So if this is the first nail it's been there
for an awful long time. The way traditional VOD is delivered (QAMS full of
MPEG2 programs) is actually very inefficient. There may be 4-8 QAMS just
sitting there inactive if your neighbors aren't watching VOD. The switch to IP
delivery eventually will allow Comcast and other MSOs to use their bandwidth
more efficiently.

From the customer's perspective nothing really changes. Technically your modem
will probably be provisioned differently to support the extra services. So for
example if you buy a 50Mbit/sec Internet package and a video package from
Comcast your modem would actually be provisioned with multiple service flows
-- a 50Mbit/sec for Internet traffic and another 50Mbit/sec reserved for
Comcast services. That second 50Mbit/sec service flow allows you to have the
same video service functionality as the 2-3Gbit/sec of broadcast video they
presently waste 90-95% of their spectrum on. This will be reclaimed for the
big general-purpose IP data pipe. Comcast will continue to use some percentage
of that pipe for their own services but it will be a much smaller percentage
than they use today.

So really everyone wins in the end. IP set tops are cheaper than traditional
cable set tops. Consumers get to use Comcast services integrated into devices
they already own. Comcast's competitors get a bigger dumb-pipe into people's
homes to ride on. I admit it looks bad if you don't understand the technology
but it's important to remember the bandwidth crunch that Comcast and other
MSOs have is directly related to how they presently deliver their own
services. Any effort they make to solve that problem is good for consumers in
the end.

------
gioele
I do not like this trend, but my fears is that Wikipedia is being used in a
similar way. You can argue against free XBox traffic, but can you argue
against free Wikipedia traffic?

Past HN topic: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3505922>

------
parrots
I think the nail in net neutrality's coffin will be when they start charging
(or discounting) other parties' services. That isn't the case here.

The way I see it you get all their content through a cable box today without
paying data usage fees for the bandwidth TV uses on their network (that's the
point of the TV subscription fee). Now they're allowing that content on
another "set-top box", in this case the XBox. The implementation details (the
fact it uses internet streaming vs cable tuner card) shouldn't matter to the
end-user. You pay the TV subscription fee, you get it without additional fees.

If the situation were reversed and they were charging data fees for accessing
content you already pay for, we'd be up in arms about that, too...

~~~
Klinky
The XBox is not another set-top box though. It does not use the same network
as their other boxes, it uses the customer's internet connection. The internet
connection is capped at 250GB. If they are going to cap other services using
the customers internet connection, they need to cap their own as well.
Anything else is hypocritical & anti-competitive.

------
guelo
Our government's failure to enact network neutrality is the latest sign that
it is completely driven by corporate interests and will work against society's
overall interest when there is a conflict. The only way to get any true
democracy anymore is by creating mass panic as with SOPA, but it isn't
possible to achieve that with every issue, and corporations are tirelessly
relentless. I believe that without a functioning government this superpower is
in a period of decline which will be characterized by increased
authoritarianism and chaos as we go from crisis to crisis.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
Game of Thrones on Xbox not counting towards data cap -> government failure ->
chaos, crisis, and collapse of the present world order

~~~
guelo
That's funny, but I'm not basing my comment on only this one event.

------
doki_pen
This announcement is contrary to a statement made in July of 2011. Do they
suddenly not give a shit about other customers service if it's xbox live
traffic?

"If someone's behavior is such that it degrades the quality of service for
others nearby -- that's what this threshold is meant to address," said company
spokesman Charlie Douglas. "It can negatively affect other people."

<http://hothardware.com/News/Comcast-Cuts-Customer-Off/>

------
symbiotic
I might be wrong but hasn't the Kindle been offering a free internet access to
browse its store and even some online content for a while now?

~~~
TylerE
It's "free" in the sense that it's not a subscription. Not free in the sense
that Amazon pays the provider (AT&T in the US) to provide the access, the
costs for which are rolled into the business model -> Amazon's fees from the
publisher -> Content prices.

So you end up paying for it in the end, since say, $0.05 of every dollar
(totally made up figure) ends up going to AT&T.

So, to coin a somewhat wordy phrase, it's free-as-in-jet-fuel-when-you-buy-a-
plane-ticket.

------
Pwnsauce
Just another point of the Xfinity app's disregard to Net Neutrality is the
sensing of "viewership". By "viewership" I mean switching video inputs and
finding a nice network error upon returning to xfinity app's input. This was
tested yesterday with an HD enabled Samsung and 1st gen Xbox360. I imagine
this is just a preview of what is to come when Kinect enabled commercials stop
entirely if you are not physically looking at the tv and restart the video so,
you have to view in full in order to progress. Can you imagine starbucks
making you have to watch a commercial before you drink your macchiato?!

------
Atomus
A good book to read is Tim Wu's "The Master Switch", which predicts this as
something called The Cycle. Reading the book gives you a sense how history
repeats itself with new and open technology and how these open systems
eventually get molded into closed systems that only a few companies control.
It's been done with telephones, the radio and television. It seems the
internet is in the early stages of this transistion.

What Comcast is doing is testing the waters. I personally find it just the
beginning, as if this is allowed, other companies will follow suit.

------
omellet
There are already quite a few nails in that coffin, unfortunately.

------
conradev
FiOS already does this, in a way.

I recently switched to Verizon FiOS for TV, which necessitated the
installation of a FiOS branded Actiontec router, so that the cable boxes can
access the Internet over MoCA. The router has QoS rules to prioritize VOD
traffic over all other traffic (which is why I purchased an Ethernet to MoCA
bridge, so I can use my own router).

~~~
jsz0
AT&T U-Verse also works in a similar way. One pipe carries data and video
services. The circuit is provisioned to accommodate video services. AT&T could
technically offer faster packages to customers who did not use U-Verse video
service. It's very difficult to micro-manage how providers want to utilize
their network bandwidth especially when we're looking at services that do not
transverse the public Internet.

------
spindritf
Maybe it's different here in Poland, where ISPs really have next to nothing to
offer except for Internet access and maybe some VoIP services, but the whole
discussion around net neutrality sounds panicky to me. Using your ISP's
services is obviously technically easier and cheaper for them so why
wouldn't/shouldn't it be reflected in prices?

Maybe we'll reach a point when consumer connections start to be billed like
business ones are now (95th percentile, or whatever) but I don't think there's
anything wrong with pricing that better reflects real usage. It may turn out
to be a little more expensive for some of us, here on HN in particular, but if
we want a better Internet infrastructure, we'll have to pay for it because
AFAIR ISPs' ROIs aren't particularly impressive.

~~~
victork2
In the long run not preserving net neutrality will give a competitive
advantages to the big companies. Let's imagine that Microsoft does a lot of
lobbying with Comcast and they manage to make Bing Videos not count as part of
your network cap whereas Youtube will be limited. Who do you think users that
want to preserve their caps will turn to? Now imagine that the same scenario
with Google vs a small company that does search with a totally revolutionary
technology. Same thing, Google lobbies a lot and they come to an agreement and
they add 1000 ms to every request that is not made to Google Search. Again,
who do you think will win?

Net neutrality is the safeguard of many things but for entrepreneurs it
guarantees they get the same treatment as big companies. In other words what
matters most is the quality of your product and not the ties you have with
ISP.

It works and guarantee pretty much the same thing as the antitrust laws. Fair
competition is a huge source of wealth but requires constant care.

My leitmotif is always: Think about the [negative] externalities!

~~~
spindritf
> Let's imagine that Microsoft does a lot of lobbying with Comcast and they
> manage to make Bing Videos not count as part of your network cap whereas
> Youtube will be limited.

OK, let's imagine MS actually puts their servers in Comast's closets or
arranges for some sort of direct connection(s) and it becomes cheaper for
Comcast to serve Microsoft's content, now hosted on Comcast's own network or
topographically close by. Should Comcast not be allowed to pass (some of)
those savings to their customers just because a smaller company couldn't
afford to keep their servers with multiple providers?

~~~
markkanof
That's an interesting way to look at it, but I would frame the issue in a
different way. It's unlikely Comcast would pass on the savings to their
customers. It's more likely that they would charge their customers more for
accessing the other services that are not hosted in their closets. Then that
becomes the scenario that so many people are worried about where big companies
who can negotiate deals with Comcast have a huge competitive advantage over
smaller competitors who might not be able to negotiate the same deals.

~~~
spindritf
> It's unlikely Comcast would pass on the savings to their customers.

It's not unlikely, actually, the probability is 100% because they just did.
Customer's quota didn't change but Xfinity app usage doesn't count against it.

------
unreal37
I don't understand the outrage here. Comcast is offering something for free to
its customers that other ISP's customers have to pay for. It's good to be a
Comcast customer I guess.

A lot of the arguments in the article and even some in this comment thread are
"imagine if"... Either something is wrong on its face or its not. You
shouldn't have to come up with theoretical examples of Comcast charging for
unlimited access to Youtube and Netflix in order to make your point.

My cell phone service by the way (Bell Mobility) offers free unlimited access
to Twitter, Facebook and Myspace that don't count against my mobile data plan
cap. If you consider that against net neutrality, then net neutrality died a
long time ago.

~~~
gioele
> My cell phone service by the way (Bell Mobility) offers free unlimited
> access to Twitter, Facebook and Myspace that don't count against my mobile
> data plan cap. If you consider that against net neutrality, then net
> neutrality died a long time ago.

How isn't this against Net neutrality? Suppose you run a service that competes
against Twitter. With Net neutrality you must prove to the users that your
service is better thatn Twitter. Without Net neutrality you must prove to your
users that your service is so much better than Twitter that it is worth to pay
additional money to the phone company to use it. Or you can pay the phone
company to add your service to the number of non-data-cap-eating websites.

In the end the phone company is paid twice: a first time by the users and
another time by the websites.

~~~
unreal37
I'm assuming Facebook, Twitter and Myspace are not paying Bell Mobility
anything for this. Essentially, Bell is offering it to customers as a carrot
to sign up with them. "We don't charge you for social networking, which we
know you will use every day!" sounds catchy to a lot of people.

~~~
gioele
> I'm assuming Facebook, Twitter and Myspace are not paying Bell Mobility

It is quite likely that they are, see the nice error message you get from
<http://0.facebook.com> . I suppose the deal requires Facebook to pay ISPs;
the ISPs are free to offer free access to any site whenever they want and I
doubt they are really after a text-only interface.

But this is not the point. The main problem is that all the Facebook
competitors will have to pay if they do not want to be relegated in the
I-have-to-pay-for-it separate internet.

------
recoiledsnake
>Comcast’s FAQ strongly implies that Microsoft is compensating it in some
fashion for the new service; the document states several times that the
Xfinity app is only available to those with an Xbox Live Gold subscription

>For companies like Comcast, which has railed against the concept of being a
dumb pipe, Microsoft’s decision to pay it for free access for Xbox Gold users
is a major coup.

Why does the article take as a given that Microsoft is paying Comcast? What if
the arrangement is that MS gets more value added to XBox Live Gold
subscriptions and Comcast gets more value added to it's TV service? Now this
may not be the case, but doesn't seem any less likely than the article's
assertions given what we know.

------
codgercoder
This was an inevitable outcome of deregulating monopolies, refusing to
recognize antitrust violations, and it's not the last shoe to drop.

------
joaorj
That's ok. Those kind of things only happen there in the US. In Europe we have
and will have internet like it is supposed to be. No bandwidth limits at all!

~~~
giulianob
Bandwidth limits are fine. The problem is when they calculate bandwidth prices
based on what you are using it for. It would be like the phone company saying
"Want to talk to your family members? Well that costs 10c per minute but
talking to your friends is only 5c per minute."

What the consumer pays for the bandwidth should be based on the actual cost
the ISP incurs for that bandwidth and not on the value the customer is
getting. That's none of the ISPs business.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _It would be like the phone company saying 'Want to talk to your family
> members? Well that costs 10c per minute but talking to your friends is only
> 5c per minute.'_

You mean like wireless carriers making in-network calls free? Or Skype making
in-network calls free?

> _What the consumer pays for the bandwidth should be based on the actual cost
> the ISP incurs for that bandwidth and not on the value the customer is
> getting_

This _is_ based on the costs the carrier incurs - it costs more to transport
traffic through a NAP and across another carrier's network than it does
through one's own [1].

Preferring cost-based-pricing, i.e. fixed margin, versus value-based-pricing
says carriers are a utility. The wording used implies cost-plus pricing (which
has it's own boat of troubles - witness NASA contractor costs versus SpaceX
[2]) is inherently superior to market pricing.

[1] [http://blog.teracomtraining.com/how-isps-connect-to-the-
inte...](http://blog.teracomtraining.com/how-isps-connect-to-the-internet-
peering-vs-transit)

[2] [http://www.parabolicarc.com/2011/05/31/nasa-analysis-
falcon-...](http://www.parabolicarc.com/2011/05/31/nasa-analysis-
falcon-9-cheaper-traditional-approach/)

~~~
giulianob
You make good points.

------
IanDrake
Net Neutrality legislation scares me. Any legislation of the internet to
"protect" you from corporations will most likely include new and invasive
powers of government to monitor and control the Internet (like SOPA). No
thanks.

Let's see if I understand this article though: I can pay $$$$ dollars a month
for 250GB of _dumb_ data transfer a month. If I go over that quota, I have to
pay $$$ more or I get shut off or slowed down.

But now Comcast allows me to pay $ to get an unlimited access to certain sites
like NetFlix that would otherwise eat up most my "dumb" quota (if I watched
movies all day).

That sounds good to me, I'd rather pay $$$$+$ than $$$$+$$$ for the 400GB of
NetFlix traffic and 100GB of other traffic I use per month.

In a way, this is the market's solution to the piracy problem. Licensed media
sources are offered at a discount while torrent traffic is still allowed, but
under general traffic prices. Say what you will but, if the market doesn't
create a solution, the government will and I guarantee you won't like their
solution.

~~~
icebraining
_That sounds good to me, I'd rather pay $$$$+$ than $$$$+$$$ for the 400GB of
NetFlix traffic and 100GB of other traffic I use per month._

Sorry, but that's a shortsighted view. You're now glad that you only pay +$,
but a year from now you could be paying +$/4 if only the competition hadn't
been crushed by these deals.

~~~
IanDrake
>competition hadn't been crushed by these deals.

I assume you mean NetFlix's competition.

I can see your point there. In a perfect world, as a consumer I would have a
choice of ISPs. I wonder if this will become an antitrust issue:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2000/08/06/business/how-coke-
pushed-r...](http://www.nytimes.com/2000/08/06/business/how-coke-pushed-
rivals-off-the-shelf.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm)

