Cox Communications and "Congestion Management"

imamac writes "It appears Cox Communications is the next in line for throttling internet traffic. But it's not throttling of course; Cox's euphemism is 'congestion management.' From Cox's explanation: 'In February, Cox will begin testing a new method of managing traffic on our high-speed Internet network in our Kansas and Arkansas markets. During the occasional times the network is congested, this new technology automatically ensures that all time-sensitive Internet traffic — such as web pages, voice calls, streaming videos and gaming — moves without delay. Less time-sensitive traffic, such as file uploads, peer-to-peer and Usenet newsgroups, may be delayed momentarily...' Sounds like throttling to me."

Comments

Don't confuse things!

[thule]

Yes, the technology could be the same, but let's keep the issues separate. After reading about this stuff for a while now it hit me that there is confusion. I am starting to wonder if the confusion is on purpose.

One issue is over subscription. Unless a company is large enough to have lots and lots of peer connections, your ISP is probably over subscribes their upstream connections. This is fine, because on average traffic goes in bursts. The problem is that everything starts to break down once you have a small pool of people running P2P 24/7. These people are just as greedy as the ISP's they complain about. They want a huge "dedicated" pipe, but have others subsidize it. I have no issue with someone like Cox de-prioritizing their traffic so that the people that just want their Vonage to work don't get squashed out. This is a temporary solution because the ISP will eventually have to up their pipe speed.

The other issue is granting certain companies privileges on a network and penalizing other companies they don't like (e.g. penalize Vonage and prioritize a VoIP partner). This should be illegal. This is a clear case of violation of neutrality. At the same time, the company should be able to directly peer with a company (say a VoIP provider) without violating the law. This may seem unfair, but peering has been a perfectly valid way of reducing traffic on a transit connection.

The last issue is traffic caps. I don't think there should be a law against it as long as the company is upfront about it. Putting caps on traffic allows ISP's to maximize their over subscription and cater to people that want low cost Internet service. We *want* people to afford Internet services. The market chooses. If you are a big user of P2P, then you will have to go with another ISP that does not have caps. You may have to pay more for this privilege... sorry, but that is how things go. The market must have a way to manage scarcity of resources. If you want more of a resource, you will have to pay for it even it if looks the same (e.g. 5mbit from Cox versus 5mbit from FiOS).

Don't confuse QoS with net neutrality. As long as the QoS is applied equally, then it should be perfectly fine.

Re:Don't confuse things!

[Braino420]

If you don't like it, go to another ISP have has bigger transit connections.

You keep saying this. Why do you assume that most people even have the option to switch and even switch to an ISP with "bigger transit connections"? I live north of Atlanta, GA and I have two options: Bellsouth DSL and Comcast cable. The highest plan I can get with DSL is 1.5Mbps, Cable 12Mbps. Oh ya, I can also choose to get a phoneline with Bellsouth and pay some third party for DSL over Bellsouth's lines (none of the 3rd parties will do naked/dry DSL). Guess which one I go with.

Not only this, but you somehow expect other companies to decide to lay down some expensive fiber of their own to compete with these ISPs, when the current ISPs had taxpayer money to help them. This is why we, the people, should be able to have a say in this or the invisible hand of the market is gonna bitch slap us all. The ISPs need to upgrade their stuff, with the money that we are all giving them, and stop wasting money on finding out solutions on throttling people. It's possible, other countries have 100Mbps+ connections for their citizens.