Comcast Makes Nice with BitTorrent

An anonymous reader writes "In a dramatic turn-around of relations, cable provider Comcast and BitTorrent are now working together. The deal comes as BitTorrent tries to put its reputation for illegal filesharing behind it. The companies are in talks to collaborate on ways to run BitTorrent's technology more smoothly on Comcast's broadband network. Comcast is actually entertaining the idea of using BitTorrent to transport video files more effectively over its own network in the future, said Tony Warner, Comcast's chief technology officer. '"We are thrilled with this," Ashwin Navin, cofounder and president of BitTorrent, said of the agreement. BitTorrent traffic will be treated the same as that from YouTube Inc., Google Inc. or other Internet companies, he said. It was important that Comcast agreed to expand Internet capacity, because broadband in the United States is falling behind other areas of the world, Navin said. Referring to the clashes with Comcast, he said: "We are not happy about the companies' being in the limelight."'"

Comments

Re:the water is still wet.

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"As long as they insist on port blocks and traffic shaping, they are an enemy of freedom."

Let me start by saying I'm a huge advocate of net neutrality.

Now, I support net neutrality in the sense that no one should be able to block/shape traffic based on source or destination (everyone should be treated equal), but I also think that traffic should be allowed to be shaped in tiers based on WHAT it is.

Bit torrent traffic, video downloads, whatever....should always be lower on the priority scale then from http/port 80 traffic and email. I know at one extreme this can fuel an argument "well the ISPs just don't want to deliver bandwidth" and I agree with that.

I guess what I'm saying is that it's unrealistic to completely not allow any form of traffic shaping based on information content (of course, this would be an organized process with a lot of oversight, and based off of protocols).

I just don't want some kid down the street downloading porn making my simple after-work email checking a slow process. At the same time, if I choose to download movies I'm okay with being at a lower priority then people who want to check their email, go on the web, VoIP, etc etc