Friday, October 19, 2007

Comcast Disrupts P2P

Salon explains the story that Comcast is managing their network traffic but systematically shutting down peer-to-peer connections; pointing out that this is network neutrality issue.

"This is a difficult story to explain, but it's quite important. For years, consumer advocates have been demanding that Congress and/or the Federal Communications Commission impose 'network neutrality' regulations that would force broadband providers (like Comcast) to treat all data on a network equally. Lawmakers have so far failed to do so.

Broadband providers, meanwhile, insist that they do treat all traffic equally, but they reserve the right to use certain technologies to 'manage' data on their network. The Comcast plan suggests that broadband providers mean something very broad by 'traffic management' -- including, it appears, purposefully stepping into your network sessions to shut them down."

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