Rich Fiscus
19 Oct 2007 10:46
The Associated Press has confirmed what some Comcast customers have been claiming; that the company interferes with the flow of P2P uploads on their network. Comcast officials have denied that this practice occurs as recently as August.
Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas indicated at that time that customers "downloading and sharing video, photos and other rich media" were using their internet service "as intended." His only comment to the AP's new test results was that "Comcast does not block access to any applications, including BitTorrent." Of course blocking uploads hardly blocks access to the program.
Based on Douglas' past comments, this doesn't appear to be a case of ISP censorship, because they don't really seem to care what's being uploaded from their network. They're just trying to sustain high connection speeds for all their customers without adding a lot of additional bandwidth.
Instead of treating file uploads as a nuisance to be stamped out, broadband ISPs might do well to take the opportunity to explore how P2P traffic affects their network, and find optimizations that can help alleviate speed issues with the least amount of financial overhead. With streaming video already gaining a hold and true IPTV applications being marketed to the general public in some areas, it seems like a sure bet that a glut of traffic is coming soon.
ISPs that have long marketed their service for multimedia are finally having that claim put to the test in a serious way. Those that choose to limit customers instead of improving their networks may face an uphill battle staying competitive.
Source: Associated Press