FCC Chief Says Comcast Violated Internet Rules

Several readers sent in word that the FCC chairman, Kevin Martin, is calling for sanctions and enforcement actions against Comcast for resetting BitTorrent traffic. "Mr. Martin will circulate an order recommending enforcement action against the company on Friday among his fellow commissioners, who will vote on the measure at an open meeting on Aug. 1... Martin, a Republican, will likely get support from the two Democrats on the commission, who are both proponents of the network neutrality concept. Those three votes would be enough for a majority on the five-member commission."

Comments

Re:Interesting...

[Docboy-J23]

I've noticed that Comcast's approach to advertising also indicates an assumption that their customers are dim bulbs and don't know what's good for them. There are at least these two types of TV commercials:

1) You, the customer, are a dim bulb and have no idea what our "Internet service" is. Just buy it. Whatever it is, we assure you that it's fast and you have no other choice.
2) Our competitors are hapless morons.

They may boil down to a couple more similar bases, but those two stand out in my mind. Moreover, telecommunications advertising is a dirty, competitive game.

Re:Is Martin acting within his bounds?

[value_added]

Nicely done, but to elaborate further, the following excerpt from a better article on Ars Technica should help.

But the precedent this could set has ramifications far beyond the narrow matter of Comcast's particular throttling scheme. Should the order go through, it would send a strong signal that the "four freedoms" outlined in the policy statement have teeth behind them, that these are more than "suggestions," and that the principles of openness and consumer choice will guide the FCC's approach to broadband. In case you're one of the few who don't have the principles committed verbatim to memory, here's a recap (emphasis added):

• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice
• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement
• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network
• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers

Re:... except when you want it

[nabsltd]

Hmm. I'm not convinced. What about VoIP? I *like* my low-latency reliable VoIP, and I like the fact that my ISP is able to prioritize it over bulk traffic like BT. Ditto small HTTP traffic bursts, DNS requests, etc.

Prioritizing (i.e., QoS) is OK, but what Comcast did wasn't any sort of QoS...it was forging packets to say "please permanently disconnect". I know that some people may define cutting off connections as QoS, but it isn't. QoS implies that every connection gets to send all of its data, eventually.

Re:... except when you want it

[slashgrim]

Hmm. I'm not convinced. What about VoIP? I *like* my low-latency reliable VoIP, and I like the fact that my ISP is able to prioritize it over bulk traffic like BT. Ditto small HTTP traffic bursts, DNS requests, etc.

This is not an issue of prioritization; this is a forced destruction of undesired (by ISP standards) streams.

Besides your ISP more than likely uses hot-potato routing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot-potato_routing which does its best to take the shortest path _out_ of their network regardless of increase in latency caused by taking a longer path once out of their network. Unless you have a SLA, you're getting the worst service available. Oddly, with hot-potato routing, you even have a chance of some streams taking a shorter path when the network gets more congested (depending on topology, of course).

Also, congestion is hardly an issue with modern ISPs (in the US, tax dollars funded development of new optical backbones): http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2004/09/65121

IMHO, if I purchase a "bulk" link, I expect all traffic to be treated equally and the ISP to not cancel streams. I do like you're idea of users flagging traffic as bulk but wonder about the implementation, incentive and enforcement details.