On Monday–following months of scrutiny regarding Cablevision’s broadband speeds–the FCC commended the New York-based cable provider in its Measuring Broadband America report for delivering 90 percent of the advertised 15 Mbps.

In the August report, the FCC criticized Cablevision for delivering internet download speeds of only 50 percent what was marketed to customers during peek hours. Verizon and Comcast–two of Cablevision’s main competitors—both were reported to deliver speeds faster than advertised in the August report.

Cablevision is also offering high-speed internet access at a discount price to low-income homes that are the same 15 Mpbs as the standard Optimum Online service. Comcast also has discounted access, but at 1 Mbps.

In a blog post, Joe Gurin, chief of the FCC’s Consumer and Goverrment Affairs stated, “We are pleased to note that the performance of one company—Cablevision—markedly improved from earlier this year.”

Television and Internet services are expensive. And we’re juiced into buying service because we simply need both in our lives in the 21st Century.

I’ve written previously about the tricks and traps that both Verizon and Comcast throw at you. It’s a racket. Everyone knows it. Everyone pays.

But there are things you can do to help mitigate the screwjob. Here are five things you need to do before you sign up for television and/or Internet service.

1. Buy your own modem

SURFboard SB6120

Do not rent a modem from the company. It’s a waste of money, and you will may end up with an older model that actually can’t process data as fast as your cable service can send it out. Translation: Blast! Comcast Internet might not come through any faster than the basic package with an older modem.

If you DO rent a modem, make sure they give you one that is “DOCSIS 3.0.”

The Motorola SURFboard SB6120 is the best modem on the market. The newer SB6121 model is only more expensive. It won’t do anything else for you. Both are supported by Comcast, however, so if you’re one of those people that needs the newest model, go for it.

Generally avoid modems that have wireless routers built in.

Now, you may have to ignore this step entirely if you are bundling your home phone service , because you’ll need to buy or rent a modem that handles your Internet and phone service. One of the best is the Motorola SBV6220, but Comcast currently does not support it. (Check Comcast’s official compatibility list before buying anything)

2. Buy a router

The Netgear N750 WNDR4000

By rule of thumb, here in late 2011, you should buy a Wireless N router with gigabit Ethernet.

The major brands, D-Link, Cisco, Belkin and Netgear are all usually pretty good. I prefer Netgear, but it’s more of a personal preference.

This is not the kind of thing you want to skimp on.

The Netgear D600 WNDR3700 is a good, affordable router. It’s one of the best values in wireless routers. It is great for gaming or streaming movies and does 300 MBPS wireless networking.

If you want to go a little better, the N750 WNDR4000 is probably the best wireless router you can buy for home or small office use. It can do 450 MBPS WiFi and has a USB port to plug a portable hard drive in for an instant network attached storage device.

3. Do not cancel your home phone service ahead of time.

If you’re making the big Comcast (Or Time Warner, Cox, etc) leap, the odds are you’re going to buy a bundle package that includes home phone service. If you’re a big land line user, this could save you some money. Do not cancel your existing home phone service yet. Order the service, give the cable company your phone number, and they will port the number to your new service, just like you do when you switch cell phone companies. Otherwise, you could get stuck with a new number, new area code, and lose the number you’ve had for years.

4. Argue, lie, cheat

When you’re on the phone, ordering your service, don’t accept their offer. Tell them their rival is cheaper. Tell them the price is way too high. Lie if you have to.

They likely will come down on the price or magically discover a hidden deal they can offer you that might save you $20 per month. You might get transferred a few times, but hell, it’s money!

5. Check your wiring

Or have the tech check your wiring. If you live in an old house or are renting, the odds are good that the cable wires have been there for a while. Check for cable splitters too. Nothing is worse for cable Internet than a signal that’s been split a bunch of times over old wiring.

The tech will do some replacing if need be. Broadband is FAST these days. You’re paying the same as everyone else (unless you followed step 4 really well) so you might as well get the same speed in the end.

We reported on this type of problem back in November. A problem with domain name servers may be negatively affecting Comcast internet customers.

Four days ago, a broad DNS attack was reported that hit the sites of UPS, Acer, and others in a coordinated attack that may have been carried out by Turkish hackers. That was a hack on the NetNames DNS provider.

TechCrunch.com also reported at 11:30 p.m. Thursday that Microsoft services, including Hotmail, SkyDrive, and Office 365 were all down because of a DNS problem. Service was restored about four hours later.

Tonight, some Comcast customers in Boston have reported that “the lights are on” on their cable modem, but websites will not load. Changing the DNS servers on your router and/or computer to Google’s public DNS (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 as secondary) just as we recommended in November, seemed to fix the problem. Make sure you restart your computer or other device before trying to get back online.

Are you having/did you have Internet problems? Let us know where/when by commenting on this story!

QUINCY — Internet outages were reported by Comcast customers across Massachusetts and elsewhere as the communications giant’s DNS servers appeared to have crashed Sunday night.

The problem was corrected by Monday, but many people still had problems or needed to power cycle their modems.

To prevent the problem from happening again, change your network adapter’s DNS settings to a public DNS server, like Google’s 8.8.8.8 server. Instructions can be found here.

While service was not technically “down,” countless thousands of customers did not have Internet access, as changing your DNS server settings is not a common computer task among home users.

The internet service was “down” on the North Shore and South with other reports as far as New Haven and Western Connecticut. Reports then came in from Washington, Baltimore, New York State and across Northern New England.

Television service was not affected.

In Quincy, where Blast is headquartered, DNS service was down, but high-definition TV is working. Changing to the Google DNS service solved the problem.

This article was initially written via an iPhone with AT&T 3G service.

Time was, everyone complained about their electric bill. Time is, everyone complains about their water bill, especially with The Great Boston Water Boil Order going on this week.

But the real ripoff is television and Internet service, and it doesn’t matter which company you select.

Let’s take the example of our fair city.

Comcast enjoys a virtual monopoly over most of the residential parts of the city, and if you go to Comcast.com, you’ll see a variety of innocuous-looking deals.

Digital Preferred Cable, with most of the popular cable channels, including MTV, Discovery Channel, Nickelodeon, ESPN, and CNN. It’s $39.99 per month for the first six months, but it jumps to $79.99 per month after the first year.

Internet has an even bigger jump. It starts at $19.99 per month for the first six months, and goes to $44.95 per month after that.

Of course, they want you to get the “bundle.” So you can move your home phone service — or sign UP for home phone service if you’re like the rest of us — and pay $199.99 per month for TV, phone and Internet.

The average American household has three televisions. Get ready to add $14.95 per month per cable box. Then you either have to buy a cable modem or rent one from them. They charge a monthly fee for each remote control you have, too.

DVR service is also extra.

And Comcast, conveniently, makes it hard to find the “double play” option that let’s you opt out of phone service. They really want you to have to buy the phone service to get the “deal.”

You can get 15 Mbps Internet and Digital Preferred Cable service for $79.99 per month for six months, which then jumps to $119.00 per month. You get one box but would have to pay extra for DVR, any other boxes, and rental fees for remote controls and the cable modem.

Some people even get stuck paying a rental fee for a router that they supply you. Buy your own router.

Add it all up, and you could be paying $200 per month.

Forget about Xfinity. It doesn’t exist. It’s just Comcast with a different logo. If you go to Xfinity.com and click “order,” it forwards you to the same Comcast.com site we just visited.

Verizon is the other player in Boston, but they’ve been so slow to expand their FiOS service — it’s not available in most places, let’s put it that way.

You can get DSL service from Verizon for $19.99 per month, forever, and they throw in a free wireless router. But you still have to rent or buy a DSL modem.

This price sounds great, eh?

Wrong.

This price, advertised at the top of Verizon.com, is only good if you’re a Verizon phone service customer.

Upon closer examination, we also find that the $19.99 plan is the “up to 1 Mbps” plan. That’s as slow as it gets in the “broadband” world. If all you do is send e-mail and visit a few websites, you might get by, but we do not recommend this plan.

The “turbo” Verizon plan, which maxes out at 7.1 Mbps is $39.99 per month to phone customers, and $49.99 per month to regular Joe six-packs.

That’s a higher price for service that’s about 1/3 the speed of cable Internet.

If you don’t have FiOS in your area, you’d have to get DirecTV satellite television service if you went with Verizon.

There’s an interesting bundle there: $84.99 for television, phone and Internet. But let’s dissect that bundle. It gets you more than 210 channels, including your local stations and most popular “cable” channels. It even includes DVR, but you don’t get any HD converter boxes with this package. You’d have to upgrade to the $99.99 bundle to get a box that lets you display in high-definition. Then you’d still have to pay for additional boxes for your other televisions. With any bundle, you’re stuck with home phone service that you may not use.

There’s nothing we can do or say that will make this any better for you. For now, the going rate for fast Internet and most of your favorite television channels is upwards of $200 per month.

Comcast Corp., the country’s largest cable provider, and General Electric have come to an agreement on ownership of NBC Universal.

Comcast will obtain 51 percent ownership in NBCU, and GE will retail the remaining 49 percent after the company bought back a 20 percent stake owned by Vivendi valued at almost $6 billion.

For its stake, Comcast will pay $6.5 billion in cash and $7.5 billion in assets including Comcast-owned cable networks.

The deal could take over a year to finalize.

NBC Universal, which includes the broadcast and cable networks, Universal Studios, the theme parks and several local affiliates, is valued at more than $30 billion.

The price is $5.8 billion for the 20 percent of NBC Universal held by Vivendi. GE will acquire this 20 percent and then immediately sell 51 percent majority control of NBC Universal to cable giant Comcast. The final word can come as early as Thursday. For its end, Comcast is expected to put up as much as $6 billion for control of NBCU.

On the ABC side, Charles Gibson’s last day as anchor of “World News” will be December 18. ABC will honor the storied newsman throughout his last week. Diane Sawyer will take over in January.

The third major network, CBS, confirmed what most of us knew: that its new medical drama, “Three Rivers,” was a flop. The show has been pulled off the schedule, though CBS has promised to compete production of the 13 ordered episodes. The Sunday time slot will be replaced by repeats of the previous weeks’ “Cold Case,” “Criminal Minds” and the smash new hit spin-off “NCIS: Los Angeles.”

FX, which has really come into its own lately, announced its midseason schedule. “Nip/Tick” opens its final season on January 6, and will air nine episodes over nine weeks. The final show will come March 3 — it’s also the show’s 100th. Also, the FX comedy “Archer” debuts January 14 at 10 p.m. “Justified” with TOmothy Olyphant starts in March.

The series finale of “Monk” is Friday. Last week’s episode garnered nearly 6 million viewers.

Finally this morning, we learned that ABC is working on a comedy with Nicole Richie playing a professional woman with a complex family life.

Not much at all in terms of premieres today. Just cable stuff, really.

Lifetime has “Sherrie” at 7 p.m. and Rita Rocks at 7:30. Logo has “The Decorating Adventures of Ambrose Price” at 10 p.m., and BET has “The Mo’Nique” show at 11.

The two-hour season premiere of Ugly Betty will be pushed back a week from October 9 to October 16 on ABC. Then it will settle into every Friday at 9 p.m.

The Versus network opened its fifth season of NHL game coverage with about 830,000 total viewers total watching the Bruins vs. Capitals and Avalanche vs. Sharks. Versus is the only cable channel that airs NHL matches.

The first two-hours of the three-hour/two-week premiere of Stargate Universe did well for itself, drawing 2.35 million total viewers, beating Dollhouse on Fox, though some will argue that these numbers represent live views only and not DVR views. This argument holds that Sci-Fi nerds have nothing better to do on a Friday night than watch Stargate, while Dollhouse’s stalwart fanbase is out clubbing on going on dates.

NBC will cut back its drama “Day One” from 13 episodes to a meager four-part miniseries after budget issues.

Comcast is continually trying to take over the digital world. The company is in talks to buy NBC Universal and it’s also working with Hulu to try and get that company to charge for its online video service.

In a move that we and every other content provider will strongly applaud, FCC chief Julius Genachowski will propose a series of network neutrality rules that will require content providers to treat all internet traffic equally, regardless of content. While no official announcement has been made, a public announcement is expected Monday.

Network neutrality is a contentious subject. In a way, everyone has an understanding that ISPs will provide an uninhibited flow from content providers to the end users without purposely affecting traffic. Companies that provide internet connections, like Comcast and Verizon, often discuss their displeasure in the fact that content providers, like Google and Amazon, make their profits using the infrastructure that the ISPs have set up, without having to pay for any of it.

In theory, ISPs could choose which traffic is allowed to travel over their pipes, blocking entire domains if they wanted to. While this has never officially happened in the US, there exist no rules to actually bar ISPs from doing so. While blocking domains is a rather draconian measure that would likely never occur, Comcast has been known to throttle BitTorrent traffic, giving other data priority over the file-sharing platform.

Comcast got a scolding from the FCC, but BitTorent wasn’t a company out to make a living, so there weren’t really any damages — other than the dishonesty over its actions to Comcast’s customers. Nevertheless, it’s easy to see how an ISP could throttle one company’s traffic over another’s, resulting in damages to a business.

The FCC panel is made up of Chairman Genachowski, two democrats, and two republicans. The panel previously voted 3-2 to favor net neutrality rules, so this could be an indication of how they will vote in the future to formally codify these rules.

On Tuesday, Karin Gilford, chief of Comcast’s online division, told PCWorld.com about the latest move by the cable giant. “The Comcast On Demand online video service will allow Comcast subscribers to sign in with a username and password, then access any standard or premium cable content that their cable subscription entitles them to watch.”

Fancast has always provided VOD, over 3,000 film and TV titles are currently available, with pricing starting from $3.99 for 24-hour film rentals, $9.99 for film purchases, and $1.99 for TV shows.The difference being, with it’s recent push in both the hardware and now content, it’s stands a chance against the likes of Hulu.com and Veoh.com, among other video sites, when it begins streaming it for free of charge. Available only to those whom already have an cable subscription with them.

While no specifics were mentioned (When will I be able to watch any show from any cable network at any time?), and the issue of recent bandwidth usage caps wasn’t addressed, the most we can be sure of is Comcast’s cautious steps into the wild west of the digital realm. With a complex system of how to pay for all the content it’s going to provide, subscribers to Comcast should look forward to milking this deal before it will surely become a paid-for-service entirely. Who needs Blockbuster or Netflix when you got this?

The day has come for all Comcast High-Speed residential Internet customers: You officially have a usage cap.

The “customer-defined” usage limit is 250GB a month. Comcast‚ says it’s “an extremely large amount of data, much more than a typical residential customer uses on a monthly basis.”

They include in their Terms of Service that this roughly constitutes:‚ 
‚ 
* Send more than 50 million plain text emails (at 5 KB/email);‚ 
* Download 62,500 songs (at 4 MB/song); or‚ 
* Download 125 standard definition movies (at 2 GB/movie).‚ 
‚ 
Comcast also released some of their current customer usage data, which puts the average residential Internet traffic downloads at 2-3 GB a month.

You should‚ notice some key word usage in the statement, that will be coming as a bill stuffer, as harmless and not worthy of another glance. “Managing the network is essential as Comcast works to promote the use and enjoyment of the Internet by all of its customers. The company uses reasonable network management practices that are consistent with industry standards. Comcast tries to use tools and technologies that are minimally intrusive and, in its independent judgment guided by industry experience, among the best in class.”

The italics are mine. With such mitigating word usage, Comcast is trying to drive the point to it’s docile customers that it’s doing this for your good, and the good of the network.‚ 
‚ 
To all the Comcast customers who just check their email,‚ you won’t be reading this unless it’s forwarded, and‚ you‚ won’t care about the limit.

To the people who read news and emails‚ and visit Myspace or Facebook, you might think about it for a second, but disregard it.

For the users who email, social network, game online and download, a notice about this usage cap will hold more weight.

Finally, there’s the Comcast customers whom utilize the Internet more efficiently and can do all of the activities above while running a P2P agent in the background. These users know exactly what it means to them.

So why should anyone who doesn’t live on the Internet care? The speed of technological advancement dictates that pretty soon, this “massive” usage cap will become a noose we so quickly placed on ourselves. With the advent of not only high-definition video on demand, and digital downloads, there are a score of other‚ programs that‚ use the bandwidth while people just check their email, or just check their networking sites.

Even websites have become more content rich. Heavy text news sites have become a multi-media room. What 56K once could handle is‚ a neanderthal-like usage now with higher speeds becoming standard. As Internet speeds rise, and our daily lives connect more to the Internet, the usage cap will seem more and more stringent.‚ 
‚ 
“Though the proposed cap is relatively high, it will increasingly ensnare more users as technology continues its natural progression,” said Free Press Research Director S. Derek Turner.‚ 
‚ 
For those Blast Magazine readers live on the Internet and are worried about what would happen if you crossed the line, don’t worry. “As part of our pre-existing policy, we will continue to contact the top users of our high-speed Internet service and ask them to curb their usage.”

“If a customer uses more than 250GB and is one of the top users of our service, he or she may be contacted by Comcast to notify them of excessive use. At that time, we’ll tell them exactly how much data per month they had used. We know from experience the vast majority of customers we ask to curb usage do so voluntarily.”

For now anyway, although the Internet is abuzz with future network shutdowns and or including excessive bandwidth usage fines, all of this is on top of the confirmed diurnal network bandwidth-throttling practices that Comcast got in trouble for.
‚ 
For the non-Comcast customer, all this should be a red flag. Comcast clearly states in their ToS that, “The need to engage in network management is not limited to Comcast. In fact, all large Internet service providers manage their networks. Many of them use the same or similar tools that Comcast does.” Comcast is‚ leading Internet service provider, so it’s only rational to expect other major ISPs to follow suit, especially if they see any Comcast practices as a “success”.

Enjoy the gallows.

Earlier this year, Comcast defended its position on its questionably lawful practice of “diurnal network pattern” (more active in the daytime than nighttime) stoppage, which informed users know as “bandwidth throttling.”

Filing against Comcast, the Free Press and Public Knowledge non-profit organizations prompted the FCC into litigious action. As the battle went on in the courts, it seemed to be going in favor of the consumers. Last Thursday, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin dealt another blow in keeping with that trend.

“The commission has adopted a set of principles that protects consumer’s access to the Internet,” Martin told The Associated Press late Thursday. “We found that Comcast’s actions in this instance violated our principles.”

His word was the tipping point that consumers and organizations supporting ‘net neutrality’ needed.

Comcast has said publicly that the FCC’s policy on broadband standards is not enforceable and that the commission has “never before provided any guidance on what it means by ‘reasonable network management.’” The FCC approved a policy statement in September 2005 that outlined a set of principles as a means to ensure that broadband networks are “widely deployed, open, affordable and accessible to all consumers.” Those standards have been set forth as:

• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice
• Consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement
• Consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network
• Consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers

Other Internet Service providers argue that this kind of unclear regulation and enforcement, naturally leads them to come up with network solutions, among them ‘network bandwidth throttling’, and ‘ceasing P2P network patterns’, to manage their billion dollar hardware network traffic as they choose. This activity isn’t central to America. Bell Canada Enterprises and Rogers Communications Inc. have also reacted in much the same way as Comcast has.

FCC chairman Martin (a Republican) had strong support from the two Democrats on the commission, who are proponents of the network neutrality concept. Their two votes were enough for a majority ruling on the five-member commission. Without being dealt a fine, but a stern warning instead, the commission asked that Comcast release any information that pertains to the practices of its current mode of ‘network management’, and to divulge to its consumers on how its implementation of any future network management practices will affect them. Any new network management practices will be in use by the end of the year.

“We want to make sure the Internet stays as it is,” said Ben Scott of Free Press, earlier in the year. “Should we give more control to the network owners, who can then decide which Web sites load quickly?” Scott asked. “Can they become the gatekeepers for Internet content?”

Germany’s Max Planck Institute has recently done testing that illustrates practices that cable Internet users have suspected for some time now — major US Cable ISPs, Comcast and Cox, are blocking peer-to-peer network patterns.

The Institute, spurred on by a CNET report showing that Comcast defended its blocking of BitTorrent P2P traffic to the FCC “as a necessary practice that is done only during periods of heavy network traffic.”

Using the well-documented diurnal pattern of most P2P network (meaning it is more active in the daytime than nighttime) the study’s tests were instead done during the evening and morning hours. The Institute wanted “to see if hosts in Comcast and Cox networks see fewer of their upstream transfers blocked during early morning or weekends (when network load is generally low) than during other times of the day.”

The study found that the cable companies lied about their regulation practices of their networks, blocking traffic no matter what time of day.

The Max Planck Institute conducted the testing between March 18 and May 15 from 8,175 unique hosts that ran its specific BitTorrent tests. Participating hosts were in 90 countries, connected through 1,224 ISPs, and ran the Glasnost testing tool. The only locations where cable ISPs blocked BitTorrent traffic to a significant extent were in the United States, with Comcast and Cox the guilty parties, along with Singapore’s Starhub.

Comcast had blocked 30-80 percent of BitTorrent uploads. Cox blocked 20-100 percent of BitTorrent uploads, except for one period at 3 a.m. where one request wasn’t blocked.

The Institutes’s report notes that “ISPs may throttle (rate-limit) BitTorrent traffic without blocking it. The results we present here are limited to hosts whose BitTorrent transfers to our servers are blocked, i.e., interrupted by RST [Reset] packets generated … along the path.”

The report also noted that only upstreams were completely severed and downloads were largely untouched. While cable ISPs were actively shutting down the upstream connections, DSL hosts were largely unaffected.

“P2P traffic doesn’t necessarily follow normal traffic flows,” Comcast said responding to the report. “[Comcast is] now working with a variety of companies including BitTorrent [to] move to a protocol-agnostic network management technique.”

The backlash has already begun. Organizations like The Open Internet Coalition have beefed up calls for so-called “network neutrality” legislation that would prohibit service providers from blocking any Internet traffic or favoring certain types of content over others.

Net Neutrality is shaping up to be one of the biggest battles of the Internet age. The problem is that many consumers are largely apathetic to what’s going on (or not) in the background.