02/08/2008, 3:25pm, EST
Friday, February 8thComcast changes terms to allow traffic throttling
Comcast has changed the wording of its terms of service to allow controversial behavior on its part, reports say. The company was accused late last year of sabotaging BitTorrent traffic, in some cases making it unusable regardless of the intended purpose. In keeping with some of the company's excuses for traffic shaping, Section III of Comcast's new terms of service now explains that it "uses reasonable network management practices that are consistent with industry standards."
The contract goes on to say that "all major" Internet service providers use traffic shaping, and that this is being done to protect users from "spam, viruses, security attacks, network congestion, and other risks and degradations of service." This language is said to mirror the FCC's 2005 Internet Policy Statement, which gave ISPs permission to enact "reasonable network management," albeit with full customer access when no harm is done to the ISP or the law.
Comcast may still face serious legal problems, as it is under investigation by the FCC for possibly violating network neutrality, an act which could cost the company as much as $195,000 per affected subscriber. The company has also been threatened by others with a class action lawsuit. [via Ars Technica]
Filed under: industry
Other story tags: FCC, Comcast, lawsuits, net neutrality, cable
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Isn't that "traffic shaping" counter-productive to the person having their traffic shaped?
Yes, I understand that they are trying to prevent net hogs from impacting their more conservative users, but blocking legitimate services really only punishes people for the providers inadequacy.
The provider should promise a theoretical maximum throughput based on every subscriber sucking down files at the same time at that theoretical maximum. If they cannot provide that throughput, then their hard maximum cap is too high for their infrastructure to handle. Build the infrastructure to handle your proposed maximum cap with about triple the capacity so you can grow your subscriber base without impacting each users service. If you get near triple your existing subscriber base, either add onto the existing infrastructure enough capacity to handle triple again, or STOP TAKING CUSTOMERS!
As far as Flying Meat's suggestion to just build more infrastructure to support every user concurrently downloading the the max speed...congratulations, you just quadrupled the cost of your internet service!
I download stuff too_ I don't actually "seed" torrents except when I'm downloading I allow an up stream_
But - every single time I have any issue with the speed of my connection - I am instantly on the phone complaining either to the Reps or Tech Support until they fix it_
Policy terms or not - I am paying for a 6-8Mps Connection and I expect to have that 99% of the time 24/7/365_ Period_ End of story_ So I will annoy them until I get it_