comcast

Cable chief: Let us 'experiment' with our networks

With discontent still festering over Comcast's admitted slowing of file-sharing uploads, the cable industry's chief on Thursday set out to do a little damage control.

Kyle McSlarrow, president of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, said he's "amused" that in all the coverage of the Comcast-BitTorrent spat, no one's talking about the cable industry's role in getting high-speed Internet service to millions of American households and, by extension, enabling online applications and services to take off.

"One of the ironies is that most of these applications depended on cable's rollout of … Read more

FCC plans broadband hearing at Stanford, after all

This post was updated at 9:08 a.m. PDT to add some remarks about the hearing from FCC Chairman Kevin Martin.

Those zany regulators at the Federal Communications Commission sure like to keep us guessing.

A few weeks ago, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told reporters that he wasn't planning a follow-up hearing at Stanford University on "network management" issues raised in large part by Comcast's slowing of BitTorrent file-sharing traffic.

Sure, rumors on the blogosphere had suggested otherwise, but Martin brushed them aside, saying they may have started because he was planning to speak to an Internet law confab at its law school. (… Read more

Buzz Out Loud 682: The murder of CableCard

EPISODE 682

Web creator rejects net tracking http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7299875.stm

BT confesses lies over secret Phorm experiments http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/17/bt_phorm_lies/

Yahoo Buzz is a game-changer for social media http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ yahoo_buzz_is_a_game_changer.php

Google says Microsoft’s Yahoo buy might hurt Internet http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/ idUSPEK15292020080317

Flickr Video beta due in April http://www.news.com/8301-13953_3-9895044-80.html

Firefox 3 goes on a diet, eats less memory than IE and Opera http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/ 20080317-firefox-3-goes-on-a-diet-eats-less-memory-than-ie-and-opera.html

LimeWire digital music … Read more

BitTorrent's dysfunctional relationship with Comcast

NEW YORK CITY--You've heard about the controversy over Comcast throttling back BitTorrent traffic on its network. But did you know that before the news exploded in the media, Comcast's chief technology officer was actually advising and working with BitTorrent?

That's what BitTorrent's CEO Doug Walker told me Friday when we sat down for a one-on-one interview at the Distributed Computing Industry Association's P2P Market Conference here.

According to Walker, Tony Werner, Comcast's CTO, was acting as an advisor to BitTorrent before the hoopla over traffic shaping even came to light.

"The funny thing … Read more

For once, we should applaud Verizon

In the long and arduous battle between P2P file sharing services and ISPs, the former have done all they can to stay on top, while the latter have done all they can to eliminate them as quickly as possible. And just when I started losing hope, Verizon, for once, made me feel just a little bit better about ISPs. Will it last? I doubt it.

According to Verizon, it will do everything in its power to ensure that P2P downloading is brought into the new century and given the kind of treatment it has deserved for years. The company researched P2P file sharing and found that when an ISP cooperates with an P2P file sharer, they can speed downloads by a whopping 60 percent.

"This test signifies a turning point in the history of peer-to-peer technology and ISPs," said Robert Levitan, chief executive of file-sharing company Pando Networks Inc. "It will definitely show ISPs that the problem is not peer-to-peer technology, the problem is how you deploy it. It is possible to deploy P2P to their advantage."

But perhaps what's most important to this test is that Verizon is pledging availability of some of its infrastructure information to P2P file sharing services to increase the efficiency of both services.… Read more

Verizon touts smart P2P software

A real-world Internet test reveals that "intelligent" routing of peer-to-peer traffic can drastically reduce network utilization and speed up downloads for subscribers, according to a new study.

Verizon Communications, which participated in the study headed by researchers at Yale University, plans to release the data on Friday at the Distributed Computing Industry Association's P2P Market Conference in New York City.

Using network topology data from Verizon and Telefonica, Yale University tested a software enhancement to the peer-to-peer protocol that it developed with software developer Pando Networks.

What the researchers discovered was that when using the so-called P4P … Read more

DirecTV takes on video-on-demand

Constrained by the technical limitations of its satellite television service, DirecTV has watched from the sidelines as cable operators and phone companies' high-end TV services have rolled out increasingly popular video-on-demand features.

The company is now preparing to launch its own VOD service this spring, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Called DirecTV On Demand, the service, now offered in beta, is designed to deliver VOD content to customers in two ways: via automatic transmission of selected movie titles, which will be stored on subscribers' digital video recorders and then ordered up for viewing whenever the subscriber … Read more

Review: Apple's Time Capsule, mind-numbingly easy backup

I've been hunting for a good network-attached storage device for my home wireless network for several years. I've come close to buying one several times (though there haven't been many from which to choose), but always ended up deciding not to because of cost and poor integration with my Mac.

I was therefore very excited to learn about Apple's new Time Capsule. Time Capsule doubles as a wireless router and network-attached storage. Once you have it set up, it automatically backs up your hard drive using Mac OS X's Time Machine software.

By automatically, I do mean "automatically." It is the most seamless, easy to use backup system I've ever seen. At $299 (for the 500GB version) it's not cheap, but considering that you get a great a rock-solid wireless router along with a large hard drive for that price, it's definitely worth it.… Read more

FCC hints at taking action against Comcast

The Federal Communications Commission is edging toward taking action against cable operator Comcast for monkeying with its customers' peer-to-peer traffic, according to several news reports.

On Friday FCC Chairman Kevin Martin indicated during a speech at Stanford University's Law School that the commission may take action against the cable operator, which has been accused of blocking or slowing down the peer-to-peer file sharing service BitTorrent on its broadband network.

Martin didn't say for certain that the FCC would take action against Comcast. But he did say that he was troubled by Comcast's initial denial of slowing or blocking traffic, … Read more