Barefootsies

It's official: Comcast and BitTorrent are calling a truce.

Ever since the cable giant admitted to disrupting file-sharing traffic based on the BitTorrent protocol, a very public debate has erupted over what constitutes appropriate "network management" by Internet service providers, and with it, a resurgence of calls for Net neutrality rules that would prohibit such practices.

But as companies are wont to do when regulators are breathing down their necks (read: the Federal Communications Commission), the companies announced that they're going to become collaborators.

The "collaborative effort" doesn't mean that Comcast will give up on managing the way traffic flows through its network.

Rather, Comcast said it will work on reconfiguring its networks so that, by year's end, it manages data in a "protocol agnostic" way. Comcast has confessed to "delaying" uploads to the BitTorrent protocol at peak congestion times, but the new process would apparently involve managing traffic based on how much bandwidth consumers use, rather than what sort of applications they're running.

It's not clear what levels of bandwidth use would trigger such steps. As a Comcast vice president said during a recent FCC hearing about his company's network management practices, the cable operator tells its customers what broadband speeds they can expect, but it doesn't spell out how much bandwidth they're allotted. Instead, it says that subscribers are entitled to use the service in a way that doesn't degrade other subscribers' experiences.

BitTorrent Chief Technology Officer Eric Klinker said in a statement that the idea is to develop "techniques that the Internet community will find to be more transparent."

Comcast has been working on this "technique" for several months, said Tony Werner, the company's chief technology officer. It plans to publish the technique and refine it based on feedback and testing.

In turn, BitTorrent also plans to work with Internet service providers, other technology companies, and the Internet Engineering Task Force, a nonprofit standards body, to develop ways to optimize file swapping on networks like Comcast's. It also plans to publish its work in forums and Internet standards communities so that other application developers can get a glimpse of what's going on.

As News.com's Jon Skillings noted earlier Thursday, the makings of a Comcast-BitTorrent truce seem to have been in the works for awhile, as evidenced by recent comments BitTorrent CEO Doug Walker made to News.com's Maggie Reardon.

And the idea of Internet service providers attempting to embrace peer-to-peer applications also isn't new. Verizon Communications has recently touted its participation in a working group that's trying to formulate a way to route peer-to-peer file sharing traffic more "intelligently."

A strike against Net neutrality rules?
It wasn't immediately clear how the companies' announcement would affect the FCC's ongoing inquiry into what constitutes "reasonable" network management practices--and, specifically, whether it should find fault with Comcast's special treatment of file-sharing traffic.

Republican FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has hinted that some action may need to be taken--specifically, that Comcast was not being transparent enough about its practices, and that it and other network operators should be required to be more forthcoming to their subscribers. A Martin spokesman said he did not immediately have a comment Thursday.

Meanwhile, Democratic Commissioner Michael Copps said in a statement that the agreement never would have occurred without the FCC's playing a "proactive role" in the situation.

"I am confident that, through this process, the FCC can come up with clear rules of the road that will benefit American consumers and provide much-needed certainty to both network operators and Internet entrepreneurs," he said in a statement.

Republican FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, for his part, issued a statement commending the deal, which he said "obviates the need for any further government intrusion into this matter."

Proponents of Net neutrality regulations, which would prohibit network operators from prioritizing Internet content, said the Comcast-BitTorrent collaboration does nothing to blunt the need for such rules. One such group, Public Knowledge, went so far as to call the agreement "irrelevant" to that debate.

"The FCC has the responsibility to protect the rights of consumers against discriminatory network management practices," said Public Knowledge's president, Gigi Sohn. "Any future agreements in the private sector do not change that reality, particularly if the companies involved reach agreements that work specifically with some technologies or network companies and not with others."

The cable industry called the deal a win for consumers.

"Government interference in the development of this market could easily foreclose or otherwise prevent the emergence of efforts such as this one," said Kyle McSlarrow, president of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, "and it could never anticipate the kinds of consumer-responsive approaches that further improve and enhance the user experience, including efforts to respect the rights of copyright owners and to fight piracy."

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9904494-7.html

__________________
Should You Email Your Members?

Link1 | Link2 | Link3

Enough Said.

"Would you rather live like a king for a year or like a prince forever?"

Barefootsies

__________________
Should You Email Your Members?

Link1 | Link2 | Link3

Enough Said.

"Would you rather live like a king for a year or like a prince forever?"