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Comcast Invests in P2P
AHTuttle writes to mention Comcast, recently under fire for throttling P2P traffic, has decided to invest in a P2P video-delivery startup called GridNetworks. "Seattle-based GridNetworks on Monday said that Comcast would make an unspecified investment in the company and collaborate on developing so-called peer-to-peer file-sharing techniques that are 'friendly' to Internet service providers."
It's the age-old philosophy of "understand or destroy." Once they realize something can make or save them huge bucks, they'll no longer demonize it. Or at least not their own brand of it...
The CB App. What's your 20?
Aren't they just trying to speed up their internet for the average user, and bitTorrent just happens to be the biggest bandwitdh hog?
Do they really care if you're downloading newestLinuxDistro.iso or newestDVDrelease? I wouldn't think so.
On the other hand, if Comcast was my ISP, I would prefer faster p2p over normal web browsing. I want an open Internet. Period.
BitTorrent isn't illegal though. It would be like saying HTTP is illegal because I can download ROMs, MP3s, Cr@ck3D Warez just the same as via P2P. P2P just happens to be able to download things very, very, very efferently, so therefore people *gasp* download things on it because it is better and faster then via HTTP. As for the "legal" downloads, I am sure that
A) This program will be proprietary and won't work on platforms other then Windows and possibly Mac
B) Doesn't include a repository of all legal downloads, so if you want to download some legal content via P2P BitTorrent is your only option
C) Will be monitored more heavily then regular P2P technologies can
All of them are disadvantages, and all of them are legal reasons to use BitTorrent over Comcast's (probably) horrible P2P network.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
*nodding* using a tool that was posted here on Slashdot recently I tested for Comcast BitTorrent tampering over the weekend. It came back and said that every single way it could run a test BitTorrent transfer, it was being tampered with by Comcast.
When you have Comcast or Cox Cable, it is a good bet to blame the ISP first.
;-)
That's true, but don't fall into the trap of thinking it must be so.
We recently moved to a VOIP system at my work, and we have a lot of employees who work from home. Some of them are having problems. They can make a call, it connects, but no audio. One of my first thoughts was, "Stupid ISPs blocking traffic to sell their voice service". Our tech from the company we bought the system from took a phone that worked fine connecting to our office from their office to his house where he has Comcast and it failed the same way, lending another data point on that side.
I took my phone home today, plugged it in and it works fine and I'm also on Comcast in the same area.
My boss did the same and we had a nice clear conversation.
So I can't blame Comcast on that one. I'd like to blame my users (obvious next step), but as of right now, I think it's probably just an issue with certain brands of home firewall/routers. Of course, if more than two
users had even responded to our request for issues, I might have more data upon which to base my opinion.
So, while it's good to keep in mind that they're sleazy operators and *will* lie about it, other things still fuck up
Comcast wants a slow hobbled P2P network because P2P ultimately threatens their fat juicy monopoly cable television content delivery monopoly. I don't believe it's oversold bandwidth for one second. Those fiber optic cables are just proportioned 90% cable television crap channels, 10% internet (if not 95/5%). The profit margin on internet is probably ten times greater than the profit margin on cable channels, but losing the cable channels monopoly probably represent a threat to 66% of their revenue. It's all about controlling the delivery of electronic bits.
If bandwidth were to start growing like CPU power grew, every cable television company will be competing against every cable television company in every city market for content delivery. That means eventually a la carte cable television channels. Why is it that allegedly oversold bandwidth doesn't have the slightest effect on the delivery of cable television content?
It looks like Comcast wants to move in on P2P so they can try to dominate it, eventually infest it with commercials, and control it so that it doesn't threaten their content delivery business. Right now almost every Comcast cable television customer is paying for a whole bunch of commercial infested crap they don't really want. Who has time to watch all 200 channels of crap being sent through fiber optic cable 24/7? Comcast could increase internet bandwidth a *hundred fold* if customers could start choosing to knock out the total waste of bandwidth caused by delivery of content nobody wants to watch, including HD bandwidth hogging versions of content nobody wants to watch.
It's imperative for Comcast's long term business survival that they become a P2P middleman, or they are screwed. Since they can't shut down P2P without politically unfeasible anti-trust violations (threatening every web site, every VoIP business, everything on the internet), they are going to try and grab a hold of P2P and use their dominance to try and shape P2P. You damn kids consumers trying to skim the skim, trying to middleman the middleman.
This is Comcast 2.0, as in become the 2 between the Ps.
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr