News
June 8, 2011
Comcast Gets Into Home Security
Poster: Rich
Posted on June 8, 2011 at 2:37:22 PM
Is Comcast for real? I don't know anyone that has Comcast who likes Comcast. I wouldn't buy another thing from them if I could help it. I guess they're reaching for another source of revenue since they cause their customers to run screaming to someone else.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-20069844-266/comcast-expands-into-home-security-biz/#ixzz1OiOKB2zw
Quote
The company plans to announce tomorrow that it's expanding its Xfinity Home Security service. Last year the company began testing the service in Houston. Now it's adding six more cities. Additional cities that will get the new service include parts of Philadelphia; Portland, Ore.; Jacksonville, Fla.; Sarasota/Naples, Fla.; Chattanooga, Tenn.; and Nashville.
The Xfinity Home Security service offers traditional home security features, such as police and fire alarm protection with 24-hour monitoring. It also offers some home automation functions, such as the ability to adjust thermostats and lights remotely. And when people are not home, they can also watch live video streams from wireless cameras that are positioned in and around their home.
The technology behind the system is slightly different from traditional home security systems from companies, such as ADT. The Comcast Xfinity Home Security system works over a broadband connection rather than a phone connection. And as a result it's able to offer the video service and remote management. The company uses cellular networks as a back up to the broadband connectivity to ensure uptime.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-20069844-266/comcast-expands-into-home-security-biz/#ixzz1OiOKB2zw
April 7, 2008
Comcast Blocking More Traffic
Poster: Aron Schatz
Posted on April 7, 2008 at 8:23:31 PM
It is pretty stupid that Comcast takes it upon itself to block bandwidth that customers pay for, but now they are intruding on services that really effect daily life. They are injecting packets for any sort of internet stream. Last Saturday, I couldn't get to my website for most of the day while other sites worked. I could ping aselabs.com and could not connect through SSH or HTTP. The server was fine, it was Comcast blocking the traffic.
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Recently, it has been observed that Comcast is disrupting TCP connections using forged TCP reset (RST) packets [1]. These reset packets were originally targeted at TCP connections associated with the BitTorrent file-sharing protocol. However, Comcast has stated that they are transitioning to a more "protocol neutral" traffic shaping approach [2]. We have recently observed this shift in policy, and have collected network traffic traces to demonstrate the behavior of their traffic shaping. In particular, we are able (during peak usage times) to synthetically generate a relatively large number of TCP reset packets aimed at any new TCP connection regardless of the application-level protocol. Surprisingly, this traffic shaping even disrupts normal web browsing and e-mail applications. Specifically, we observe two different types of packet forgery and packets being discarded.
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