Comcast Proposes 'P2P Bill Of Rights'
Operator, Pando Networks To Develop Best-Practices Framework With Others
By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 4/15/2008 9:48:00 AM
Comcast is looking to further position itself as proactively—and responsibly—addressing the issue of managing peer-to-peer traffic that traverses its network, announcing Tuesday it will lead an industry-wide effort to create a “P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities” for users and Internet service providers.
The cable operator and peer-to-peer technology firm Pando Networks said they will collaborate with industry experts, other ISPs and P2P companies, content providers and others to create a framework “to clarify what choices and controls consumers should have” when using P2P applications and what processes and practices ISPs should use to manage P2P applications running on their networks.
In the last several months, Comcast was caught off guard by the outcry over its practice of throttling back peer-to-peer traffic, which culminated in a pending Federal Communications Commission investigation and at least two subscriber lawsuits. Last month the operator announced it would work with BitTorrent and others to make P2P run more efficiently on its network.
The FCC has scheduled a hearing April 17 at Stanford University on network-management practices of Internet service providers, following its meeting on the topic at Harvard Law School last month during which Comcast was grilled over its P2P policies.
Comcast chief technology officer Tony Werner said the proposed “bill of rights and responsibilities,” to be released later this year, is in the best interest of service providers, peer-to-peer companies and consumers.
“By having this framework in place, we will help P2P companies, ISPs and content owners find common ground to support consumers who want to use P2P applications to deliver legal content,” Werner said, in a statement.
In addition, Comcast said it plans to conduct a test of Pando’s “network-aware” P2P technology to capture and analyze the data flow associated with downloading a file using Pando’s P2P application. Pando recently claimed that a test spanning 1 million broadband users showed its technology sped up peer-to-peer file transfers 235% on cable networks in the United States.
Comcast said the Pando test will provide additional data to help it migrate to a “protocol-agnostic network management technique” by the end of this year.
National Cable & Telecommunications Association CEO Kyle McSlarrow weighed in later with a statement: "We applaud today's announcement by Comcast and Pando Networks, which is further evidence that private sector collaboration, not government intervention, is the most appropriate way to address complicated technological issues. NCTA stands ready to support this important effort and we encourage the participation of other industry participants."
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"...Comcast was caught off guard by the outcry over its practice of
throttling back peer-to-peer traffic..."
Let's get the nomenclature right. Comcast was not "throttling back",
they were spoofing packets to completely cut off the connections. I
know, I attempted to download Ubuntu and FreeBSD ISOs via bittorrent
and was unable to do so. I was unable to determine the problem until
reading about it online. I downloaded them via _h_t_t_p_, anyway, so it
was a net loss for Comcast (or, at best, a break-even).
I actually have no issue with them throttling bittorrent if it's going to
make my voip smoother, but they weren't throttling at all.
What I really want from Comcast is a network connection, nothing
more. I'm not sure what unnamed "content providers" have to do with
this, either.
(Note to webmaster, _h_t_t_p_ isn't a swear word or a spam word. You
might also mention that html isn't allowed, particularly since the
instructions above the comment box imply otherwise.)
Michael Chaney - 4/16/2008 3:55:00 PM EDT -
Today, Comcast Corporation and Pando Networks announced that they will lead the industry to create a "P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities" for users and ISPs. With an FCC hearing on Comcast's anti-peer-to-peer practices scheduled for later this week, this is hardly a surprise. Once again, Comcast makes another sweetheart-sounding deal, but at the wrong time, and with the wrong sweetheart.
It takes a special kind of arrogance for a company that sells Internet Access to team up with another company that sells Content Delivery and together decide what rights and responsibilities that the world's Internet users should have.
As in its earlier "deal" with BitTorrent, Inc., Comcast's announcement today doesn't change any of the facts it faces: in 2006, it assured Congress that network neutrality laws were not necessary, saying it would not "deny, delay, or degrade" its customers in order to deal with traffic congestion. Within a year it was caught secretly doing exactly that! Even after a long string of deceptive and deflective statements and tactics, Comcast continues to degrade their traffic today.
As was the case in the BitTorrent "deal," neither Comcast Corporation nor Pando Networks represents the millions of customers and other members of the Internet community who were impacted when Comcast secretly launched its anti-P2P attack.
Today's announcement comes less than 48 hours from the US Federal Communication Committee's public hearing at Stanford University. There, the FCC is scheduled to hear from two panels of experts followed by two hours of public testimony on the Comcast incident specifically as well as similar industry practices in general.
No doubt we will soon see Comcast and Pando Networking executives start to explain why today's "deal" signals that Network Neutrality regulation is not needed in the Broadband Marketplace.
Robert M. "Robb" Topolski
Robb Topolski - 4/15/2008 4:53:00 PM EDT
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