The New York Times' Brad Stone has this bit about how Comcast is responding to the allegations that it blocks P2P uploading on its high-speed Internet service. Stone believes, and I agree, that the Comcast PR people are "genuinely baffled" about the accusations that Comcast uses Sandvine's technology to thwart users from uploading videos using BitTorrent. (In my earlier post I suggested that Comcast truly doesn't know why there are problems using BitTorrent.)
But Stone's conversation with a non-PR Comcast executive was not all that enlightening either. Comcast still insists that it doesn't block P2P uploads, but merely slows them down sometimes, which is probably true -- most ISPs do this as a routine matter. My sense is that Comcast really believes what it says. There is no "secret agenda to shut down file-sharing applications."
Yet...that still doesn't answer why in fact the uploads are being blocked, as evidenced by the AP's unsuccessful attempts to upload the Bible using BitTorrent using multiple Comcast connections. In the absence of a clear explanation, a lot of folks are going to get paranoid about what Comcast is really up to and start hunting around for gunmen on the grassy knoll. That would not be good for Comcast because conspiracy theories live on forever and prompt endless scrutiny, and not of the good kind.
As Stone writes:
The problem Comcast may now be facing is that in the absence of a plain explanation about what the company does to disadvantage certain applications in the name of managing traffic on its network, anecdotal reports and conspiracy theories fill the vacuum.
Cynthia Brumfield at 12:00 AM|Comments(1)
I was doing a little research on this and I just found it on the Comcast forum, thought you might find it interesting. It's Comcast's Senior VP for Online statement to customers:
There have been many news reports speculating about how Comcast manages it network. It is important for us to provide you with the facts.
First, and most importantly, our customers have unfettered access to all the content, services, and applications on the Web. They use the Internet for downloading and uploading files, watching movies and videos, streaming music, sharing digital photos, accessing numerous peer-to-peer sites, VOIP applications like Vonage, and thousands of other applications online.
It’s also important that we make something very clear: Comcast does not block access to any Web site or applications, including peer-to-peer (P2P) services like BitTorrent. We also do not discriminate based on the type of content.
So, what do we do? We use the latest technologies to manage our network so that our customers continue to enjoy these applications. We do this because we feel it’s our responsibility to provide all of our customers with a good Internet experience.
As numerous studies show, peer-to-peer activity consumes a disproportionately large amount of network resources, and therefore poses the biggest challenge to maintaining a good broadband experience for all users – including the overwhelming majority of our customers who don’t use P2P applications.
We never prevent P2P activity, or block access to any P2P applications, but rather manage the network in such a way that this activity does not degrade the broadband experience for other users. Network management is absolutely essential to ensure the health of our network for all of our customers. All major ISPs manage their traffic in some way and many use similar tools.
Network management helps us protect our customers from things like spam, viruses, the negative effects of network congestion, or attacks to their PCs. As threats on the Internet continue to grow, we will do everything we can to ensure that our network management tools evolve and keep pace so that we continue to maintain a good, reliable online experience for our customers.
Mitch Bowling
Senior Vice President
Comcast Online
Posted by: Clark at October 23, 2007 9:16 PM
Blogs We Read
