Comcast bandwidth follies

Comcast has a usage limit, but it’s a secret.

I’d like to run Azureus (BitTorrent) to download (legal) things like the South-by-Southwest Featured Artists. However, recently Comcast has started throttling BitTorrent traffic, and there’s talk on the net of people getting their internet yanked for exceeding usage limits.

Being a prudent person, I figured I should ask first (there’s plenty of discussion elsewhere about how futile this is, but what the heck), and the regular customer service person referred me to the “Comcast Customer Security Assurance”. But when you call them, you are presented with two voice mail options — if your service has been disconnected, and if you are returning a call, neither of which addresses my case. I relayed this information to the regular customer service person, along with a suggestion that they fix their voicemail, or perhaps they could contact the other arm of Comcast to get the information for me.

Haven’t heard back from them since. If DSL worked here, I would get it. FIOS is just down the road, but not here yet. I should find out who in this town is reponsible for choosing cable providers; maybe we can change.

And IF you insist on running Azureus on Comcast, at least in the Boston area, you need to make encryption mandatory, not optional.