[IP] Re: Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Overage Fees

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

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From: Brett Glass [brett@lariat.net]
Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2008 9:14 PM
To: David Farber; ip
Subject: Re: [IP] Comcast Considering 250GB Cap, Overage Fees

[Dave: A reply for the list, to prevent people from being confused -BG]

At 06:36 PM 5/7/2008, Dan Lynch wrote:

>Uh?  Comcast gets Internet bandwidth for free?  Surely you jest, Brett.

This is not what I said. What I said is that purchasing a pay per view
movie from the cable company does not cost the cable company money for
Internet bandwidth (which the cable company itself must buy from a backbone
provider at a high and increasing cost). Thus, there is no need for an
additional charge, as there would be if the cable company had to buy the
bandwidth to convey the movie to the customer.

What's more, since each download would be individual, the cable company
would pay again and again for each customer. On the other hand, pay per
view movies conveyed via video are commonly done in a way that allows
many customers to view the movie on the same channel at the same time,
creating still greater efficiencies.

>As for TCP being a good way to distribute video, you are right on there.  I
>don't understand why vendors have not instituted Multicast.

Because there are some savings, but they are not great. Transmissions are
still quite inefficient, especially over certain "last mile" media which
essentially do not multicast.

--Brett Glass


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