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Comcast Finally Files Suit Against FCC Over Traffic Shaping
Following up on their threat last year to sue the FCC over sanctions imposed, Comcast has finally filed suit, stating that there are no statutes or regulations that support the FCC's authority to stop traffic shaping procedures. "First, let's recap: After months of proceedings, hearings, and investigations, the FCC concluded on August 1, 2008 that Comcast was discriminating against certain P2P applications using deep packet inspection techniques. These methods thwarted the ability of users to share video and other files via BitTorrent. 'Comcast was delaying subscribers' downloads and blocking their uploads,' declared then FCC Chair Kevin Martin. 'It was doing so 24/7, regardless of the amount of congestion on the network or how small the file might be. Even worse, Comcast was hiding that fact by making [affected] users think there was a problem with their Internet connection or the application.'"
Following up on their threat last year to sue the FCC over sanctions imposed, Comcast has finally filed suit, stating that there are no statutes or regulations that support the FCC's authority to stop traffic shaping procedures.
Traffic shaping is writing rules like "give ssh and http packets priority over ftp-data". This is good and something almost all ISP that care about good customer service already do. What Comcast was doing, aka packet forgery, was a deliberate attempt to disrupt certain types of transfer. NO good ISP does this, by definition.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
On top of your great observation, the article blurb specifically states: "..."First, let's recap: After months of proceedings, hearings, and investigations, the FCC concluded on August 1, 2008 that Comcast was discriminating against certain P2P applications using deep packet inspection techniques...." Now, IIRC, we had a Republican administration in the White House at that time and a Democrat majority in the House and Senate. So, who was responsible for the August 1, 2008 conclusion by the FCC? Why, the Republican administration, of course. Sure, there may have been members of the House and Senate (various committees) that helped push or prod it along, but it was the Republican administration, which the FCC falls under, that gets the majority of the credit here. I believe the grand parent is a bit myopic.
... a Republican is a Democrat is a Politician ... they're all the same
Lack of government regulation can be bad. Some government regulation is good. Massive amounts of government regulation is bad.
who here disagrees?
That's all fine and dandy, except what Comcast was doing wasn't packet shaping. What they were doing was actively manipulating traffic (inserting reset flags onto P2P packets to disrupt connectivity). That's a big no-no that they should suffer for dearly.
Comcast could be free to throttle.
This is what a lot of people, and comcast, are not seeing.
No body at all (except comcast) has said they can't throttle!
Comcast wants to be free to do 'thing A', because there are no laws against doing 'thing A'
And they are right. And they CAN do 'thing A' and no one said otherwise.
Problem is, comcast is actually doing 'thing B' which is totally different and unrelated.
The FCC told them they can't do 'thing B' because it is not legal.
Comcast replies "But but but, 'thing A' is legal! we should be able to do it!" as if that was relative to anything at all.
Obviously, 'thing A' is traffic shaping and throttling. 'thing B' is packet forgery and spoofing.