Comcast Subpoenaed for P2P Traffic Throttling

[gonzo]

NEW YORK - According to published reports, the New York attorney general's office has subpoenaed broadband provider Comcast for information about its interference with subscribers' file-sharing traffic.
Comcast, which said interfering with file-sharing traffic is necessary to keep all Internet traffic flowing efficiently, told the Associated Press it is cooperating with the office of New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

The subpoena came as the Federal Communications Commission held a public hearing in Massachusetts on Monday to discuss peer-to-peer traffic throttling done by Comcast and other Internet service providers. The FCC announced no actions as a result of the hearing.

Several consumer advocacy groups criticized Comcast for paying people to fill seats in the room at Harvard Law School, where the hearing was held.

"The sad thing about this is that literally hundreds of people who were not paid to stand in line, or paid by their employer to attend, were prevented from even entering the building," Craig Aaron of Free Press told Portfolio.com.
Comcast told Portfolio.com that its actions to fill seats at the hearing were prompted by the actions of groups like Free Press, which encouraged the public to attend.

[RawAlex]

Here's the problem:

P2P is the sort of methods that use a ton of bandwidth, and can really slow a network down. Companies like Comcast can find themselves having to add more and more resources for no increase in income.

It is particularly an issue when it comes to services such as Skype and other "pay" style services that are dependant on end users providing free commercial bandwidth to these companies. It will only get worse with live video going P2P (what is that video service the skype guys made?) as well as the commercial distribution of software over P2P networks. Essentially, they are shifting the bill to run their services to the end users, who are reselling their bandwidth without permission.

My understanding is that Comcast's blocking device only cancelled income requests for P2P connections, and didn't stop end users from receiving information, just from resending it, by sending out cancels under the user's IP to stop incoming requests. that in turn may slow down many P2P systems that require up/down ratios to support their systems.

I am not sure at what point Comcast is doing wrong... especially considering that the vast majority (essentially all) of the P2P traffic out there is in trading illegal files and supporting commercial services.

[DannyCox]

Yet another brilliant lad...