February 22, 2008 12:00 PM PST
Comcast vs. BitTorrent to be focus of FCC hearing
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This time, the Federal Communications Commission will depart its headquarters just off the National Mall in Washington and head north to a courtroom on Harvard Law School's campus in Cambridge, Mass. (The FCC wouldn't comment on why the site was selected, but Boston is the home turf of Democratic Rep. Ed Markey, who chairs a House Internet subcommittee.)
The hearing, which will be open to the public on a first-come, first-served basis and be otherwise accessible via an "audio-only" Webcast on the FCC site. It's an outgrowth of the agency's recently launched inquiry into what constitutes "reasonable" network management practices by Internet service providers.
The FCC in 2005 said broadband companies should not block or interfere with lawful Internet use, unless they're doing so for "reasonable" network management purposes, but revelations that Comcast was stalling uploads to BitTorrent protocol clients raised new questions about what "reasonable" means.
The public forum will give the commissioners a chance to quiz company executives and networking experts, and perhaps reveal what they may do next. The regulators have already accepted thousands of written comments from private citizens, interest groups, and corporations concerned about the topic. They may choose, based on the comments, to start a process that would more clearly establish what Internet service providers may and may not do, but they're not obligated to do so.
The event--coupled with Rep. Markey's introduction of an arguably less-regulatory Net neutrality bill last week--also signals a clear revival of a temporarily dormant debate over whether Net neutrality laws are needed.
"What we're going to see on Monday is a trial of the Internet," said Columbia Law School Professor Tim Wu who has written extensively in favor of Net neutrality regulations and is slated to speak on a panel Monday. "Comcast is in the docket, accused of crimes against the public interest, and we'll see how well they are able to defend themselves."
Net neutrality, of course, is the idea that network operators like AT&T and Comcast should be prohibited from prioritizing Web content and applications, or charging content owners extra fees for premium delivery. Two years ago, Congress considered handing the FCC extensive power to regulate Internet practices, but it rejected the proposals.
Proponents say such policies are necessary to promote democracy itself--and to ensure that little guys won't be squeezed out of the Internet ecosystem in favor of larger, deeper-pocketed entities. But opponents, including the network operators, say they deserve flexibility to manage their networks as they see fit to serve their customers' interests--for instance, blocking spam and ensuring that use of high-bandwidth applications by some users at peak times doesn't clog the pipes for everyone else.
See more CNET content tagged:
Comcast Corp.,
Net Neutrality,
BitTorrent,
network management,
Internet Service Provider
Even though Comcast states that they "shape" aka block traffic on peak congestion times it would appear to me, based on my meager testing over the last month that "peak" must mean 24/7.
Three months ago I was getting throughput as high as 6000 Kb/s downloading from services I pay for such as usenet and a few content vendors that provide their content via HTTP. Now, I am lucky to get about 200 Kb/s and my usenet downloads are at 1000 Kb/s. Sometimes my download rate drops to 25 to 10 Kb/s for hours on end. I checked with the services I pay for and they didn't change anything on their end. One can only conclude that it was a change in the ISP not the vendor.
I might also bring up that fact that the services I am mentioning are not like bittorrent they don't upload at all rather it is download only.
How does that fit into their convenient little lie.
Also, might want to check if your modem is Docsis 2.0 or 3.0 compliant. If not, that could be an issue as well.
Regulation of business is a double-edged sword, but in the whole history of the United States it has never, repeat NEVER, hindered growth of the country.
It has on occasion hindered competition, but even then those times are few and far between.
Remember, bandwidth is never free, its paid for by someone. These companies that use BT do nothing but leech off other people's bandwidth. They are the ones that should pay for their own bandwidth.
I use BitTorent for one purpose: to download the most recent version of Fedora when it gets released. No matter whether I download it via HTTP, FTP, or BitTorrent, the amount of inbound bandwidth I will consume is roughly the same.
The difference with BitTorrent is that the amount of bandwidth consumed uploading increases. But, this balances out in the end, because my computer would only transmit packets if somebody else wanted them, right? So, if my system is not transmitting the data, then the users are consuming bandwidth via HTTP or FTP. So, where is the increased traffic?
I think the real problem is that there is a huge amount of illegal content that gets shared in this manner. My guess is that if things like BitTorrent did not exist, then the overall bandwidth would decrease since people would not be otherwise downloading illegal content.
Whatever the case, every subscriber pays for service and it is Comcast's responsibility to deliver the service for which customers provided payment. What they do with that bandwidth is their business, no? If Comcast feels differently, then they should sell their cable lines to another company who would be more "net friendly."
Comcast always has the option to increase network capacity, increase subscriber fees, etc. They can always offer multiple tiers of service for those who use less bandwidth and those who use more.
The real solution, though, is to increase bandwidth. With more and more services on the Internet, lots of new streaming video services, increased utilization of video conferencing, etc., then there is absolutely no question that all broadband providers need to put a certain amount of revenue into constantly improving network capacity. I get the impression that Comcast does not want to make that investment.
engineered network requires management to deal with abnormal
conditions... fire, flood, hurricane, earthquake, terrorist attack,
etc. Covering up for being too cheap and sneaky, etc. to provide
the equipment needed to meet customer demand is not network
management... it is CRIMINAL behavior. If the phone companies
under engineered the way comcast does, you could die in a fire
waiting for dial tone or a line or both to reach 911.
But in fact, the consumer is - in both cases - the first one to suffer. Do we really need our service providers to police us? To patronize us? Isn't most of the Internet Traffic pornography? Any chance these control freaks do something about it? Of course not.
Our lives get more and more "internetized" every day. We pay online, we buy online, we rent online, we travel online, we fill taxes online... Our personal information is already out there, and we do not need our ISPs to have more power over. Letting them control where we go and what we do is a first step that should not be - legally - allowed.
But then again, who REALLY cares about - us - consumers?
This debacle does prove one thing IMHO however. Our representatives need to clearly understand that net neutrality legislation IS MOST ASSUREDLY NEEDED. I suggest we ALL write to these folks who are SUPPOSED to be working in our favor and tell them we will fire them if they don't stop pandering to BIG BUSINESS.
Period
Those kids that are hogging with World of Warcraft bought the service because they were promised they could play World of Warcraft as much as they wanted.
I'm sorry if your ISP made promises to both you and another customer that conflict in a way that the ISP cannot keep their promises to both parties. However, that is an issue you need to take up with your ISP. If they cannot provide the promised capacity to you then you are a victim of fraud by the ISP.
You should not be mad at other customers who are simply paying for the service that the ISP promised them.
Perhaps because you have paid money and bought into the ISP service you feel you have made a wise decision, and you don?t want to admit that your ISP is screwing you of the advertised service. Perhaps you are afraid that makes you look foolish. However, you do not look foolish because you are paying for something you are not getting. It happens to the best of us, and it is the basic nature of any fraud that anyone can fall prey to.
The bottom line is if your network connection is not up to par with what was promised you are the victim of a fraud. The quicker you realize it the quicker you can remedy your situation.
How many people are on your node?
How do you know what the kids download?
How much did the kids download?
What is the capacity of your node?
How do you know if the kids are on your same node?
How do you know if it's not your cable provider problems?
How do you know if it's not the DNS problems?
i really doubt that anyone from your cable internet provider would tell you that they are spooked by FCC, especially level 1 & 2 support.
This is the same crap as Comcast tells you that you need to have cable tv before they can hook up cable internet for you. As a matter of fact, they used to hook up cable internet without cable tv service for the longest time. On the same BS level of how the upstream is capped because of capacity. Years ago, Comcast upstream is at about 1.5mbs.
If you want to pay $60 bucks for browsing and email like Comcast wants then feel free to do that. However, please refrain from spreading false informations that your low level tech supports told you.
This fight against Bit torrent technology has nothing to do with bandwidth. It's a conservative scheme using illegal tactics to support big Money.
Once a democrat is president we can campaign for internet neutrality with greater force and greater success.
So we should bide our time and strike when the chances of success appear to be greatest.
Now we have the same type of "squatting proposal" that gave rise to the Fairness Doctrine (among other forms of censorship) in broadcasting, except it's called "Net Neutrality"--that is, when it comes to property rights in cyber space, there are none. It should be called, for accuracy sake, "Rights Neutral."
Cyber space is open to all who wish to investment in the necessary infra-structure costs to become an ISP. That infrastructure and the "roadway" it lays on the Net is *private property." Those who wish to loot that wealth in the name of "fairness" haven't clue one about the meaning nor the application of justice.
Net Neutrality is a license to steal--to steal the billions of infrastructure created by Comcast, Cox, Time-Warner, etc.--and then to censor them by limiting their choices of what they may or may not send out (or limit) over/on their "broadcast signal."
Democracy is a very old and very failed form of political philosophy. Our Founding Fathers did *not* create a democracy when they wrote the Constitution. They knew history and knew well its failure. They create a Constitutionally limited (by property rights, including individual rights), democratic republic--with "democratic" strictly contextualized to mean the electorate (and their representatives) are to be checked & balanced AND trumped by the rights of the individual, whether that individual is a man or a corporation (of men).
If you want to see real Internet regulation, taxation and eventual censorship, just allow the FCC this toehold. Give a rat a cookie--and he'll next want a glass o milk.
As for academe's who support this trash, someone opined a few years ago, after the Soviet Union crashed & burned, that the only sanctuary left for Marxism was America's universityies.
As for the rich who declare their support of the State--whether it's increasing taxes, maintaining capital gains or inheritance taxes, establishing forced volunteerism or net neutrality--well, Hitler had his Krupps and Voglers.
And we have our Soros's, Buffets, Gates's & Newmarks's.
"Net Neutrality is a license to steal--to steal the billions of
infrastructure created by Comcast, Cox, Time-Warner, etc.--and
then to censor them by limiting their choices of what they may
or may not send out (or limit) over/on their "broadcast signal.""
Spoken like a true Comcast shill. How much did they pay you for
that garbage anyway?
Comcast is violating the principles of the internet by
purposefully TERMINATING BitTorrent traffic. I know they're
claiming they're just "shaping traffic" and holding it for a bit, but
in fact they're forging packets to terminate BitTorrent traffic.
Some people buy into the RIAA/MPAA bull plop, thinking it's
only affecting illegal downloads and pirates, but how do you
think open source OS's like Ubuntu perform their updates?
BitTorrent is just a technology, not inherently "good" or "evil" in
any way. Forging packets to terminate all BitTorrent traffic is just
wrong, period. This is why net neutrality is needed.
A new pricing structure is what is needed.
Do you go to an "all you can eat" buffet, only to be allowed one serving?
Hope the FCC is as offended as a fat person at a buffet...
No easy solution.
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by kogashuko
September 9, 2008 10:18 PM PDT
- If you live in Va there is a criminal code for what they were doing, § 18.2-164.
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