Comcast Caves In to P2P Pressure
Comcast Caves In to P2P Pressure
MARCH 27, 2008
Comcast Corp. has relented to growing pressure over its peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic management policies by teaming up with file-sharing technology specialist BitTorrent Inc. and the broader Internet community to address its network capacity and "rich media content" distribution strategies.
The news follows months of public pressure over Comcast's treatment of P2P traffic on its network.
Although the details have yet to be hammered out, Comcast has already agreed to migrate to a "protocol agnostic" capacity management system by the end of 2008. Among components of that system, Comcast reportedly will ensure that P2P connections are not reset.
Comcast, the U.S.'s largest cable operator, has been under fire about how it throttles P2P applications. In January, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) opened an investigation into complaints brought on by P2P player Vuze Inc. and pressure groups such as Free Press about Comcast's network management policies.
Comcast had denied blocking applications, but has acknowledged delaying some traffic using what it believes to be "reasonable" network management techniques so that all cable modem customers, and not just the heavy users, get a quality experience.
Detractors have asked for more transparency into Comcast's practices.
As a result of recent discussions with BitTorrent and other parties, Comcast "will have to rapidly reconfigure [its] network management systems, but the outcome will be a traffic management technique that is more appropriate for today's emerging Internet trends," said the MSO's CTO Tony Werner in prepared statement.
Werner added that the MSO has been discussing the migration plan with other "leaders in the Internet community" for several months. Following some additional adjustments and refinements based on that feedback, Comcast expects to publish its new capacity management and early trial results, though no date has been set for that information to become public.
"We believe that P2P technology has matured as an enabler for legal content distribution, so we need to have an architecture that can support it with techniques that work over all networks," Werner added.
Comcast also expects to more than double its upstream bandwidth "in several key markets" by the end of the year, according John Schanz, the MSO's EVP of national engineering and technical operations.
While that should enable P2P applications to run more smoothly, he didn't specify how much upstream capacity those customers might be able to expect. The MSO's present high-end tier, "Blast!," caps the upstream at 2 Mbit/s.
That number should rise once Comcast and other MSOs gain access to the full features of Docsis 3.0, a new CableLabs specification that uses channel bonding techniques to increase shared burst speeds beyond 100 Mbit/s.
Schanz reiterated that Comcast expects to wire up to 20 percent of its footprint for Docsis 3.0 by the end of 2008.
For its part, BitTorrent extended an olive branch of its own, acknowledging that ISPs need to manage networks, particularly during times of peak congestion and as more users tap the Web for video services, but maintained that it wasn't a huge fan of the way some service providers were delaying or throttling traffic.
"While we think there were other management techniques that could have been deployed, we understand why Comcast and other ISPs adopted the approach that they did initially," stated BitTorrent CTO Eric Klinker in a press release.
"Recognizing that the Web is richer and more bandwidth intensive than it has been historically, we are pleased that Comcast understands these changing traffic patterns and wants to collaborate with us to migrate to techniques that the Internet community will find to be more transparent," added Klinker.
BitTorrent noted it will also optimize its client applications to work with a new "non-discriminatory" broadband network architecture for rich media content being explored by the P2P company, Comcast, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) , and other ISPs.
回覆: Comcast Caves In to P2P Pressure
[QUOTE]by Ernesto
ISPs have been throttling BitTorrent traffic for years now, but only recently has this turned into a political issue. In a huge victory for BitTorrent users, the FCC has now announced that it will order Comcast to stop interfering with BitTorrent traffic.
Almost a year ago we first reported that Comcast was actively disconnecting BitTorrent seeds. Now, after numerous debates and false promises from Comcast, the FCC has ruled that Comcast’s BitTorrent interference is unacceptable, and orders the company to stop doing so.
Kevin Martin, FCC chairman told AP that Comcast’s BitTorrent throttling is “arbitrary”, and that the company had violated the principles of the Federal Communications Commission. Martin said that Comcast slows down BitTorrent users independent of the amount of traffic they use, and that the company failed to communicate their network management practices to their consumers.
Indeed, a recent study by the Max Planck Institute showed that the company had misinformed the FCC and their users. Comcast has always argued that BitTorrent upstream traffic was only blocked during periods of heavy network traffic, this turns out to be a lie, as the study showed that they blocked BitTorrent upstream traffic 24/7.
The FCC has announced that it will take appropriate action against Comcast, and the ISP will be ordered to stop interfering with BitTorrent traffic. Comcast has said before that it will invest in its network capacity and stop slowing down the traffic of their users, but these were all false promises.
Marvin Ammori, general counsel of Free Press who filed the complaint with the FCC is delighted with this outcome, and said in a response: “Nine months ago, Comcast was exposed for blocking free choice on the Internet. At every turn, Comcast has denied blocking, lied to the public and tried to avoid being held accountable. We have presented an open and shut case that Comcast broke the law.”
“The FCC now appears ready to take action on behalf of consumers. This is an historic test for whether the law will protect the open Internet. If the commission decisively rules against Comcast, it will be a remarkable victory for organized people over organized money,” Ammori added.
It is to be expected that - if the pipes are really congested - Comcast and other ISPs will have to step away from the all-you-can-eat plans they have been offering for years, now that people are actually using bandwidth they signed up for.
Source: Torrent Freak[/QUOTE]
內容大概就是 FCC 命令美國最大有線電視系統業者 comcast 停止對 bt 流量作干擾動作
台灣的 NCC 勒？
