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.
NCTA President Kyle McSlarrow
(Credit: National Cable and Telecom- munications Association)"One of the ironies is that most of these applications depended on cable's rollout of residential broadband and our ongoing efforts to optimize the network to deliver the experience our customers expect," McSlarrow said during a morning conference call with reporters.
In a 15-minute monologue, McSlarrow spoke of the importance of allowing network engineers to tackle "challenges" that arise from heavy peer-to-peer file-sharing use, particularly at peak hours where the potential for "congestion" is high. They're only trying to help cable Internet subscribers have the smoothest possible surfing experience, he suggested.
In fact, the cable industry fully recognizes the value of peer-to-peer file sharing for moving large chunks of data more efficiently, McSlarrow said. He favors participation in working groups that are conjuring up more "intelligent" ways of routing peer-to-peer traffic, such as so-called P4P software being explored by Verizon.
Concerns about copyright infringement also make peer-to-peer management important, McSlarrow added. Cable companies will never block their customers access to "lawful" content and applications, he said, but they are exploring "technological solutions that address piracy in ways that respect our customers' expectations and respect copyright holders' rights."
"Technology is agnostic, but it is plainly the case that some significant percentage of the peer-to-peer traffic is pirated material," he said.
Internet service providers have traditionally dealt with copyright infringement on their networks by removing offending content when asked, but in recent months, some ISPs have indicated plans to be more proactive. AT&T is among the companies testing methods to filter out pirated content on its networks, which some consumer advocacy groups argue poses privacy concerns and runs the risk of chilling free expression. Verizon, by contrast, has said it's not interested in going that route.
Note to regulators: Leave us alone
As for the Comcast-BitTorrent controversy, McSlarrow had one clear message for regulators: Butt out.
"I'm not a technical expert, but I know enough to know when technical experts and engineers should take the lead to resolve what are basically tech challenges," he said, adding: "Regulators should recognize some humility and let that play out."
McSlarrow said he welcomed "open and balanced" hearings on the matter but that new rules will only chill investment in new broadband deployment--the argument that network operators have long used in their crusade against
The FCC is currently weighing whether degrading peer-to-peer traffic constitutes "reasonable" network management by Internet service providers and what to do about those who take steps that fall outside that realm. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has suggested that his agency may take action against Comcast and other providers who fail to disclose clearly to customers what they do to "manage" their networks.
McSlarrow said Thursday that he believes Comcast has always been transparent enough about its practices and that it's impractical for cable operators to reveal, on an application-by-application basis, how they manage their networks.
"If you're disclosing 8,000 things, no one's going to read these things," he said, adding that there's also a chance that "proprietary" information could get out.
Comcast, for its part, has said its slowing of "excessive" BitTorrent traffic at peak times falls within the bounds of "reasonable" network management. After reports of its peer-to-peer file-sharing manipulation trickled out, the company updated its terms of service to better reflect what customers should expect.
A network is a "very complex organism," McSlarrow told reporters, adding that he thinks engineers "would be stunned to know that we're actually having a conference call about decisions they make every day."
Today P2P. Tomorrow video downloads from Amazon. After that who knows?
Cable companies brag that their home broadband plans are faster than DSL plans, but they completely oversell their aggregate bandwidth. Either they should fix the upstream bandwidth issue or they should promise people what they can deliver instead of trying to throttle back individual users to hide the ball from consumers.
-Mister Winky
Sounds great, but how far of a stretch is it for flagging something as questionably-lawful at the beckon of some large, deep pocketed business that has something to gain if this content was blocked (such as Microsoft greasing the Cable company's palm to slow, drop packets or otherwise cripple Linux downloads?)
May be far fetched, but stranger things have happened.
They are going to get regulated eventually, and they need to get used to it. Laughing in the face of the FCC and law-makers about it is not a good strategy.
Now don't get me wrong, I think that if they are going to do this they should be monitored so that they don't inappropriately target competitive applications. But lets be honest here, you have purchased a service, not a product. It is the ISP's job to make sure that the service is acceptable to everyone, not just the bandwidth hogs. I would expect that most of the readers here are against those big SUV's, and the gas that they guzzle. Yet heaven forbid somebody should slow down their guzzling of internet bandwith.
You do have a choice, you don't have to use the internet. I don't believe that it says anywhere in the Constitution that we have the unalienable right to high-speed internet access. And until it does, stop whining about it.
AND WITH THAT LINE, he adds another reason that Cable TV companies should NOT be allowed to inspect and then discriminate on traffic at their whim.
The ISP is supposed to connect the end-user to the Internet Cloud and charge for said transit. If the ISP decides to inspect your packets to ensure you're not violating the copyrights and distribution rights of his Cable TV or its media partners, then your right to privacy is infringed.
Furthermore, we've already seen the collateral damage -- due to such inspection and "management," the Associated Press could not upload the King James Version of the Holy Bible (which has no copyright interest as it is in the Public Domain).
Way to go, NCTA! Thank you for making our point for us!
Robb Topolski
1) Take a close look at what cable vendors like Comcast are PROMOTING. Sure, the fine print is the fine print, but their promotional materials are intentionally deceiving when it comes to their high speed networks. My in-laws' cable connection, advertised as 1.5MB/s, maxes out around 700kB/s and often (for several hours each afternoon and evening) dips below 128kB/s. My DSL bandwidth speed never varies more than 10% from peak. If you'd rather read the fine print, goody for you, but what matters is performance in the real world, and the cable companies are over selling and under delivering.
2) If you think it's acceptable that cable networks perform as well as our underfunded, overburdened freeway systems, your expectations are set far too low. Given the right prioritization and investment, the bandwidth issues can be addressed upstream, even if it means higher rates for consumers. The problem is that vendors like Comcast have boxed themselves in with false advertising for too long. They can't say "our $19.95 plan offers 3.0mB/s, but our new $29.95 actually delivers 3.0mB/s 90% of the time." Being disingenuous for so long will come back to bite them.
Funny that you mention the Constitution (which does guarantee free speech), then tell everyone to shut up. Nice.
-Mister Winky
One fact they choose to overlook is that the best solution to network congestion is to provide more bandwidth. All other efforts are mere fudges that degrade the network quality. Their response is that increasing bandwidth merely enables heavy users to further dominate the network which is not true! If a customer who was using "excessive" bandwidth suddenly upgrades to a business package the problem goes away!
After Comcast has lied repeatedly about their network "management" can we believe anything they say?
Why do all these discussions repeatedly make the FALSE claim
that con-cast was "throttling" P2P traffic? The reality is they
were FORGING TCP reset packets to DISRUPT P2P traffic. They
weren't "slowing it down", they were forcefully terminating it. Big
difference here people. If this wasn't considered a big deal to
them, why do they threaten to FIRE any employee that reveals
this FACT?
Quoted from another C|Net article:
"So what is Comcast doing? It is letting BitTorrent traffic flow
across its network, and thus is not technically "blocking"
anything. Instead, it is forging TCP reset packets that are
misleadingingly labeled as being sent by one of the two ends of
the BitTorrent connection. That is, Comcast is masquerading as
its customers, and sending out data with false sender
information. When the BitTorrent clients receive the false reset
packets, they themselves terminate the connection, as they think
the other host has told them to go away. Thus, through sneaky
techniques and network-level false statements, Comcast is able
to trick users' software into terminating their own transfers."
Maybe if you make people dizzy enough with the spin you can
fool them into believing your lies. For a while at least.
Sources:
http://www.cnet.com/8301-13739_1-9802410-46.html
http://news.digitaltrends.com/news/story/15732/comcast_defe
nds_blocking_p2p_traffic
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071028-comcast-to-
employees-talking-about-blocking-p2p-can-get-you-
fired.html
- Comcast is too arrogant for their services
- by Mathea Shane March 21, 2008 6:06 AM PDT
- Arrogance will come back to haunt you Comcast. Your services are not that great and there are numerous interruptions to service not to mention that technical service is non-responsive to Internet interruptions. I have no respect for any company that thinks it is above the law!
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