[Discuss] Local ISP Recommendations?

Matthew Gillen me at mattgillen.net
Mon Jan 18 13:10:39 EST 2016


On 01/18/2016 11:59 AM, Dan Ritter wrote:
> Comcast has been voted Worst Company In America far too many
> times, and they seem to revel in it. Avoid them.

More specifically w.r.t. their ISP business, if it is just fast bits you 
want, avoid Comcast.  If you do anything "internet-like" (for example, 
run a server of any sort) you'll eventually run afoul of their "abuse" 
department, whose purpose seems to be more abuse of customers than 
dealing with abusive use of their network.  They are really into this 
idea that the internet is for one-way content delivery (to you), and 
anything else /must/ be abuse of their network.

In other words, Comcast does not view their network as a bunch of bits 
flying around, they view it as a bunch of data streams, and they like 
some and don't like others.  You *will* eventually try to use something 
they don't like (e.g. the BitTorrent/Sandvine curfluffle; 
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/10/eff-tests-agree-ap-comcast-forging-packets-to-interfere 
).

I spent too much time arguing with them on the phone to ever give them 
more of my money.





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