FCC chief wants to throttle Comcast
Enforcement order on agenda
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The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is taking aim at Comcast for violating the agency’s guidelines on providing open internet access by blocking P2P traffic across its network and keeping schtum about the policy.
The agency is investingating Comcast's torrent-busting activities following a complaint from Free Press, a non-profit advocate of "network neutrality".
FCC chairman Kevin Martin told AP yesterday: "We found that Comcast's actions in this instance violated our principles." These require ISPs to provide open access to the network, “subject to reasonable network management”.
Martin has concluded that Comcast arbitrarily blocked filesharing apps, regardless of the amount of traffic they accounted for, and was not open with its customers about what it was doing.
Martin will circulate a recommendation on enforcement action, which the Commission will vote on next month. The order would demand Comcast cease blocking P2P traffic, disclose details of its actions to the commission, and tell customers about its future network management plans.
The FCC is not a bland panel of technocrats - politics and lobbying means Martin is not guaranteed to get his way with fellow commissioners.
Comcast has already gone on the attack, arguing that the agency has never given any indication of what it means by “reasonable network management”.
According to the AP, a company spokesperson denied Comcast blocked content or servives, but took “carefully limited measures” to manage traffic and ensure all customers got a quality service.
The spokesperson denied that it blocks internet content or services and that the "carefully limited measures that Comcast takes to manage traffic on its broadband network are a reasonable part" of the company's strategy to ensure all customers receive quality service.
It is unclear if this applies to previous management techniques, or the throttling techniques it is currently experimenting with in Pennsylvania and Virginia. ®
COMMENTS
Martin's faux "enforcement" is one-sided anyway
Martin's FCC never seems to find any time to tap the big telcos (ie ATT, Verizon) on the wrist in any way, but keeps finding excuses to go after the cable companies.
I'm no fan of Comcast by any means, but trying to assert that this sort of nonsense actually amounts to doing broadband users any real favors is laughable. The next lovely action by the FCC will be to give their blessing to the Sirius/XM merger, which is about as "pro-competitive" as pork fat is health-food.
The old old story
The old old story of all US Govermint Compartments run by the DC Chimp , is to basically threaten loudly and visibly in public with meaningless propaganda , then do absolutely nothing but miniscule token fines , take the extra kickbacks in bribes and ass polishing and boot licking over paid consultant jobs a few years down the track , then go back to sleep again ! For that is what he has been doing well since the mid nineties for then it becomes some other very minor nobody without any power to enforce it properly or effectively do the job in question as it's arms and legs have been fully amputated by that time and it now no longer is his problem as the buck has been passed to the absolute bottom of the feeding chain !
Oh well fool me four thousand times plus already on a daily basis "Dana Perino Style" , maybe one day I will catch him at the gate without his propaganda ministry and built in oil slick to back him up !
Let the flames continue , but as always far too little far too late to be effective , forgotten much about continued suffering of all Hurricane Katrina Victims at the hands of FEMA even now to this very day and will for a long time to come have we , where as all those lucky enough to score private free self help group aid continue to recover from the same trauma without the same hindrance !
A cynic is never truly dissappointed with any US elected and/or appointed administrators , as the predicted outcome of all these crooks and carpet baggers always falls within their predicted range parameter of low expectations of not doing the right thing at any time and we all know that all thieves and charlatans have absolutely no honor at feeding time !
It's not Throttling. It Is Denial of Service
They are talking about using the TCP Reset Flag Denial of Service Attack and calling it Traffic Management.
Setting traffic priority or QOS to ports or IPs is traffic management.
Saying we will fake a "Fred is not home" answer to any computer trying to connect to Fred's computer, when Fred IS home, is a Denial of Service.
What the TCP Reset flag attack does is similar to this. You phone someone. You hear a busy signal, but their phone is ringing. You hang up before the other end can answer.
I don't do torrents or peer to peer. I do use various network management tools on non-standard ports. I have been affected by this type of interference. Comcast is not the only one doing this, as they were not in the path causing the problem for me. This practice needs to be stopped. Utilities should not be adversarial to their clients.
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